21 Jun 2005
What should I do about computers? I am now somewhat unsure of which way I need to move. At the moment I have a Mac mini, a Windows PC, 2 Linux Servers and a laptop (that has been commandeered by my mother who has been eaten by the eBay bug). I need a new laptop as a priority but my main computer could do with an extensive upgrade aswell. Two weeks ago I was set to buy a Powerbook initially to cover the laptop side of things. This would let me retire the Linux servers into other homes and use the Mac mini as my main server. The plan was to then get all of the software I would need on the Mac platform before shutting down my PC and investing in a Power Mac. Unfortunately, things change… including the architecture of Apple’s computers! At this stage, I am not sure I can move to Mac’s completely until the new machines are released. Apple has claimed that they will support PPC for a long time, but in computers that could be just a few months. My instincts tell me to keep my current PC for as long as possible (It’s not really that bad, I just like to have the latest and greatest!) and buy a new PC laptop to use for the next couple of years. Is that the right way to go? I am not sure but if you have any thoughts, please feel free to offer advice!
08 Jun 2005
For anyone that is interested, Gringod and I have finally uploaded the new Aquasail.net homepage. This will allow you to see each of the loactions that the yacht Spinalonga has been to and will link to the relevant article. Have a look and see what you think. The map system is also being heavily used in a project that I am working on at the moment to ducument location photography and travel articles.
Dave will very soon have a presence online as we are building him a photoblog. Links and details to follow over the next few days. If anyone has any ideas for sub-domain names for him… let me know! We hope this will make him use his camera little more and get used to posting online!
07 Jun 2005
With my seemingly never-ending list of things I want to achieve with my time, somehow, posting to my website does not happen as often as I would like. Especially in these summer months, I barely have enough time to eat, let alone read, write and photograph. I have been very busy with Mystere over the last few weeks and have even spent some time away in France. You can read the full story of our experience in the Blenheim Triangle Race on The Sailing Bug. This coming week-end, most of us will be off to Jersey to compete in the annual Dresdner, Channel Island Yacht Race. Aidy will be absent as he will be on his way to an adventure in Norway. Last year we came 10th in this race from over 100 boats, this year we are not expecting such great things… though we will of course try as hard as we always do!! The weather report this year is not looking ideal for us but at least it will be sunny (fingers crossed)!! Dave, myself and Helen will be heading over a day earlier so that we can do some shopping and visit a couple of the local attractions. With any luck, Dave and I will have our cameras and so might have something to show for it aswell!! Leigh will be heading over Friday evening for the start on Saturday.
18 May 2005
It has to be said that FedEx rule! I have been impressed by them and other courier companies in the past but this time they have truly outdone themselves… let me explain;
Monday 16th May: 10PM
I order the ‘Big Kahuna’ set of DVD’s from the Luminous Landscape site. I will go into detail about these in another post but essentially a box containing 12 DVD’s is to be posted from Canada.
Wednesday 18th May: 11.04Am
The ‘Big Kahuna’ set of DVD’s arrives at my house!! That is just 37 hours from Order to arrival!!! The package covered approximately 5000 miles. I dont think you could travel much quicker that that!
Well done FedEx… have some pagerank on me!!
09 May 2005
The Little Britain Spring Regatta was held here in Guernsey this year. With over 30 boats from the UK and Channel Islands there was quite a lot of action out on the water. A few of us headed out on the Sunseeker to watch. Some of the best photographs of the week-end can be found at Encaptured.com. If you were sailing in the Little Britain Regatta, you should check out the pictures as there are some great shots!!
04 May 2005
Having just finished a 2 day MS Access Course my mind is full of the potential application that I could create to make my life much easier! Being that I barely have time to eat sometimes I am trying to put these out of my mind and focus on the real project that I am going to be attempting with my new knowledge. Because corporations value their data and security so highly, I am unable to directly access the DB where the data I need to manpulate for my daily work is held but I can get hold of all the data in a CSV file. I am not able to access my works SQL servers directly or run my own servers so I am left with one option, use the best (only) tool available… Access!! Now that I have learnt just how the query builder works, I feel that my chances of success have been greatly increased. Either way, I now think I should go on the advanced course so that I can the VB code needed to allow prompted queries and the like. Tomorrow will be update, append and split day me thinks!!
25 Apr 2005
Leigh has placed a post on his site about the last couple of races and a small note about the ‘Boathouse’ in Guernsey where we ate breakfast. I would like to expand on his comments as I am still in shock over how bad the service actually was, I mean, how many times should you have to ask for milk?? There was not one part of the transaction that went through with no mistakes. The staff do not speak a work of English and one strutting Eastern-European-like person has a face like stone and an attitude akin to an unemployed German who has been given a uniform and instructed to manage some traffic. Now if he should read this, I would like to point out that people usually ask for things to be excluded from the plate because they don’t like them, not because they do not have enough money to pay!!! I can categorically state that I will not be (willingly) going there again!
