Paws' and Herring's Ramblings

Christopher Wren Eat Your Heart Out

Paws — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 06:22:00 +0000

It started with gingerbread. A simple build your own gingerbread village kit, a present to James from Louisa.
We sat and looked at it.
“Of course, we don’t have to build it exactly as shown”, James pointed out. “We could build something else, like a cathedral…”
From that point on, the question was not ‘if’, but ‘how’. We agreed that other edible building materials would be needed and set about the project.
Here are some pictures that describe how we went about it.

Christmas In The Sun (Sort Of)

Paws — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 17:45:50 +0000

So this years Christmas holiday has been a little more exciting than most. I would loved to have posted here sooner but technology did not allow while we were away and jet-lag has been keeping me sleepy since we came back and just in case that wasn’t enough I’ve come down with a cold but I digress.

We went to the Philippines for Christmas. As it was (the end of) rainy season it rained a lot. There were also a couple of (very small) earthquakes. Oh and while the rain was warm the shower was cold!

On the plus side it was hot, sunny (when it wasn’t raining) and very relaxing.

I can’t possibly sum up the whole holiday in one post but here are some pictures of our Christmas Day.

Meeting Alfred

Paws — Sun, 04 Dec 2011 15:56:35 +0000

Last weekend we finally got to meet our new nephew Alfred. He was cute, adorable and cheery throughout as these pictures show!

Inventing on the Move

Paws — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 08:54:35 +0000

What I need is a little device like a bluetooth headset. Hey, why don’t we actually make it a bluetooth headset while we’re at it. This device needs to record subvocalised speech and for added inventor points could also speech-to-text it onto my phone.
Then I wouldn’t need to type this with my thumbs.

(I’m claiming copyright for this one)

Anniversary At The Eden Project

Paws — Fri, 25 Nov 2011 17:02:55 +0000

We went to the Eden Project for our anniversary. There is always so much to see here all year round, so here are a few of the things we saw today.

We Can See The Sea

Paws — Thu, 24 Nov 2011 19:25:34 +0000

So we’ve come to Cornwall for a couple of days for our wedding anniversary. Naturally we couldn’t resist coming straight down to the beach and enjoying the sight, smell and sound of the sea. One of those at least we can share with you.

Google (doesn’t) know where we are

Paws — Sat, 19 Nov 2011 16:34:53 +0000

Google seems to know everything these days. One of those things is my location. On any computer or even on my phone google will have a fairly good idea of where I am.

My phone has GPS so finding me accurately is pretty easy, if a little slow. So google intelligently short circuit the process by identifying the location of any wireless network I happen to be in the vicinity of.
Ignoring the slightly dubious question of where google happened to get that data from; it all seems like a pretty good idea.

So while we’re enthusing about technology, let me enthuse also about our mobile wireless access point. Connecting to the mobile network, it provides a wireless access point that our wi-fi only devices can connect to and have internet access wherever they are. Even our phones, which also have wi-fi, can use it for data rather than use their own network connection.

…hang on. Does anyone see a problem here?

Yes, you guessed it. Google has rather arbitrarily recorded the location of that access point as somewhere in London. Yes, it was actually at that location. Once. Now however it isn’t. So whenever I try to identify my location and I am near that access point google gets very confused and moves me alternately back and forth between my actual location and the apparent point in London which I must surely be at (after all Google says so).

‘Luckily’ google are offering an opt out of the wi-fi location database if we are prepared to rename our access point to give it a suffix of their choice. I think they may rather be missing the point here.

Our New Look

Paws — Sat, 05 Nov 2011 08:18:41 +0000

Have you wondered why our blog looks a little different than it used to?

Well we’ve moved it from Blogger to WordPress. The url is still the same (ah, the wonders of redirection) but the site is completely different.
This of course means new toys and new possibilities. We’re using a theme called Presswork which I’ve been customising through a child theme of my very own, so bear with us if the look and feel keeps changing slightly for a while.

I’ve been working on the gallery style, so I can post pictures of what we’ve been up to here as well as writing my usual ramblings. That is, of course, if I don’t spend all my time playing with php and css and none actually writing!

Boulogne in a day

Paws — Sat, 29 Oct 2011 06:39:00 +0000

“Let’s go to France for the day” we said. “Let’s go and buy wine and cheese and yummy things” we said. “Er, what else shall we do?” we said.
We didn’t want to drive too far, so we headed towards Boulogne-sur-mer with no idea where we were going or what we might find.
What we found was fantastic.

What I Did On My Day Off

Paws — Sun, 16 Oct 2011 06:55:00 +0000

Some days you take off to fulfill some long held plan. Other days you take off to recover from the execution of some long held plan. Some days, though, you just take off to chill out and relax and see where the day takes you.
In this case it took me up Ivinghoe Beacon with a picnic largely consisting of cheesy biscuits, carrots and cake. Given the alliterative nature of lunch, you probably think we should have been drinking cherry coke, but in fact we had ginger beer. The weather was yet again unseasonably warm and beautiful. So we took a few photos of the views from the top.