Today has been such a long day, I’m exhausted and I’m not sure why although it was quite a late night, ending up watching Tin Minchin … very rude, very un-PC but very funny!

Just got back in (well a little while ago anyway) from a slap up meal (:-)) at Morrisons … 2 adult meals + drinks + child’s meal (Chicken Nuggets of course for Annabelle!) + drink + Freddo Chocolate bar + fruit bag £6!! Total bargain!  Annabelle was a little crazy though, she gets a bit like that when she’s very tired, she ended up pinching my cheek really hard twice and then tried again twice later on … I wasn’t impressed and she knew … calmed down in the end and she’s now having a bath to chill her out before bed.

Not much else to report today really except that I decided to keep the Lumix F3 camera in the end and it seems like quite a good little camera, very quick, pictures look sharp and well balanced, video looks good (although only 8.5 minutes on HD mode or 15 mins on other modes at a time), have yet to import photos and video onto PC to check properly but I’m pretty confident they will be good quality on a big screen too.

On the subject of photography, I ended up taking some photos of the work ‘celebration event’ yesterday as no one else had a camera, I popped home to pick up my Olympus E3, used the flash gun and the 12-60 pro lens and got some good shots, edited them last night and published them today and had some good feedback so far which is nice.  I also had three people ask that I do not publish any photos containing them which I thought was amusing but after reading interestingly that model release forms aren’t required in the UK and there aren’t any laws to stop photos of anyone being published (with obvious caveats around decency etc) I decided to ignore the e-mails, not that there are any photos of them other than in group shots anyway.  Photo law article here: http://bluenoxid.co.uk/photolaw.html … very interesting reading I thought!

Anyway that’s all for now … more exiting stories to come soon I’m sure! 🙂

Well after a very long break from blogging I’m back!  Kind of by accident really … I’ve just purchased a Panasonic Lumix DMC-F3 camera and have been looking at reviews and for best prices to see if I need to take it back (:-)) and I found a blog with photos from the camera … then I remembered – hey I have a blog!  So a few minutes later trying to remember which e-mail address i registered it with and I’m in and writing this post!

The camera by the way:

So anyway … what’s new?  Well our gorgeous and incredibly intelligent daughter is now 16 months old and I cannot believe where the time has gone!  She’s up and about walking, knows over 20 words in sign language and is able to speak a few words like chhheeessse (cheese!) and shooos and Keyyys.  She’s really helpful and loves to carry things around, pass you things and generally be really clever at knowing what you are doing and what you need.  I work from home now two days a week to look after her whilst Ailsa is at home for the rest of the week and this works quite well although there are days where it can be quite difficult to get work done … there’s always evenings!

Last week I had a bit of a heart in mouth, adrenaline overload moment as Annabelle decided to reach forward off the toilet (she’s been using the toilet now for a few months and does really well) and fell into the square metal post of a radiator valve, yep valve pierced her head and she’s head down with bum in the air … grab her, suck blood off her head, nappy sort of quickly back on, downstairs, suck blood off head again, antiseptic wipe, large plaster, into car and off to A&E … drive quickly whilst checking her in mirror.  All was OK in the end, they put some glue into the puncture wound and the rest of this fell off today, she now has a neat oblong mark which looks like it will heal well … truly terrible experience though!

In other news, serviced the Kia for the first time on Sunday (third service for the car) and it was pretty straight forward although having to clear a path through the shed past the roof box, bikes, cycle carriers etc etc to get the tools I needed and erect a 28 pole 3m square gazebo to protect against the rain that arrived suddenly meant that the job took quite a bit longer than expected … the Yaris service therefore has been moved to next weekend although it’s only an oil and filter change along with the checks so should be pretty straight forward (I hope!!).

In other, other news (:-)) we’ve recently been back out on our push bikes again now we have roof bars and cycle carriers which was fab although my left hand crank arm broke on the second trip out which kind of cut it (VERY) short!  Anyway I’m now in possession of a new crankset which I’m very much looking forward to fitting and testing at the weekend (time and weather permitting).  After much research I ended up with the Hollowtech Shimano Deore M590 crankset and bottom bracket:

Quite happy I got quite a good deal, £60 and I got some tools to fit it too which took it to £90 but then had a £10 off promotion code for ChainReactionCycles … just looked now and They’ve gone up to £64 🙂

That’s all for now, I’ll let you know if I decided to keep the camera next time 🙂

Posted from Mobile: 15 May 2010 15:10

Since my last post, the consultant has been to see us and they took the descision to induce Ailsa.  First application of gel given about noon along with more blood pressure tablets.
The good news is that Ailsa’s blood pressure has come down but apart from a few stomach pains there’s been no sign of things happening yet.
We’re both exhausted but preparing ourselves for another very long night.  I wish these chairs were more comfortable to sleep on!

Posted from Mobile: 15 May 2010 06:01

Sat by Ailsa’s bed with Ailsa asleep which is great news … but I can’t sleep in this chair no matter how hard I try.  Time now 6am, had about 1 hour of sleep in 24 hours and wondering if I’ll last what might be a very busy day 🙁

Posted from Mobile: 15 May 2010 03:54

Well I’m sat in the hospital delivery suite next to my amazingly brave and lovely wife at 3.30am thinking … Wow, what a roller coaster of a couple of days!  All was going swimmingly with Ailsa’s pregnancy until her routine midwife appointment on Thursday … concerns over Ailsa’s blood pressure and urine protein along with concerns over baby’s size led to a near immediate appointment at the hospital antinatal day unit.
Once we’d arrived the barrage of tests began … first was a blood sample and urine sample followed by a blood pressure reading followed by a scan to look at baby’s size.  Next was a fetal heart trace along with several more blood pressure checks at regular intervals.
Some many hours later and pretty much out of the blue, we were told that they wanted to keep Ailsa in over night to monitor her.  a night turned into another day and another night but things were looking reassuring with one of the many midwifes seeing Ailsa on the ward saying that they thought they might let Ailsa home.
Unfortunately that was all then and this is now of course.  I left Ailsa at 9.40 last night and spoke to her again later before bed and all seemed well.  All until my phone call from a very upset wife at 1.43am asking me to come to the hospital quickly because the midwife has moved her to the delivery suite telling her they are going to induce her NOW!!!
Dazed, half asleep and quite confused, I jumped in my car and headed down to the hospital, I raced up the stairs to be greeted by another midwife who told me to calm down, they were just observing Ailsa!  So me being me, I hit the midwife with many questions but didn’t get very complete or convincing answers until we saw a doctor.  Finally … time for answers!
So at last we got to know what we wanted although of course not really what we wanted to hear.  Turns out baby is estimated to be about half the weight they should be and they suspect Ailsa to have preeclampsia. Risks of baby staying inside Ailsa’s womb is that the blood supply from the placenta may be compromised and baby may die. Risks of baby being induced now are very low birth weight means they will need to go to special care and then who knows!
My head’s still spinning and I’m in awe at how strong Ailsa has managed to stay … she must be scared out her mind and totally confused but she still has a smile.
Latest update is the doctor has spoken to the consultant at home who’s reluctant to rush in with induction … good news I feel.  So Ailsa’s been given a beta blocker to lower her BP and they will check her again tomorrow.
What now? Try and get a bit of sleep I guess! Signing off.

Posted from Mobile: 15 May 2010 04:35

Ailsa’ asleep and I’m sat on a chair in the corner of the very hot room looking up baby names on apps on my phone but my head’s still spinning.
I think the thing that really unsettles me the most is thinking about the doctor’s answer to my question ‘I don’t know’ now I can understand that they still don’t know what causes preeclampsia and can understand they can only go off previous experiences but if the baby’s happy at the moment, is inducing really the right thing to do?
I keep asking myself the same thing over and over … if Ailsa’s blood pressure wasn’t spotted, would she carry naturally and normally to term and what used to happen before doctors and medical machines?  Now I guess a medical response to that would be more baby and mother fatalities but is that really true?
So bloody annoying not knowing what to do for the best. I’m just crossing my fingers that Ailsa’s BP will come down and stay down but who knows what will happen?
Life’s rubbish at times.

So there I am happily working away on my laptop at work, decided to google a technical issue, opened a few websites, speed read them and closed them as normal … turned away from the screen for a couple of seconds … next thing I know, my fully up-to-date (checks for updates every 10 mins) very expensive Anti-Virus product is going mad and windows are opening all over the place running executables on my laptop, including a full installation of a product called ‘wefi’!

Wow!  Of course I immediately removed the LAN cable, switched off WiFi and shutdown my pc, but checking the AV server logs shows that I had 27 infections detected in the space of 3 seconds.  My guess is that these were downloaded by a piece of malware that the AV company haven’t issued a detection signature for yet.

I’m currently running an AV scan in safe mode and watching all the infected files being listed one by one and have found a number of htm files that appear to be renamed executables with a fake XML footer appended to them.  So I guess I’m the victim of a new IE security hole.

The odd thing is, although I’m very annoyed, part of me actually wants to congratulate the writer of this evil malware for a well engineered piece of software.

Been a fantastically warm day.  Started the day by completing Infamous (excellent but very long PS3 game) on ‘Good mode’ followed by series 5, episode one of Lost (we’ve lots of catching up to do!).  Then onto the cars … both very mucky and had been neglected for too long … wheels, pre-soak with snow foam, rinse, snow foam, wash and final rinse. 

Next was the lawn … looking like a mini jungle so the first cut of the year was in order!  Oh and I also managed to get the Barbecue cleaned up ready for testing soon! 🙂 

All in all quite a busy day … off to watch some more Lost now!

Well so much for my …”I’ll post in my Blog everyday”… idea!  The truth is, that it’s been a mad couple of weeks work wise and when I’ve been getting home from work, I’ve been so tired that all I wanted to do was veg out in front of the TV!

So I thought I’d better add a catch up of the highlights of my fortnight!

My Birthday!

My Birthday arrived on Tuesday before last and although I was working all day, it was still a good day.  I started the day opening my presents in bed which was kind of cool and Ailsa got me some cool things (other people got me some nice stuff too!) including:

A cool card that kind of fits my lifestyle:

A cool card from Smirnoff, our Roborovski Hamster (now I know what she gets up to in the day):

a pair of gadget screwdrivers:

We went out for a meal in the evening which was nice and then it was back to work as normal really.

Ailsa’s car’s MOT


Strange this being a highlight you may think … however this wasn’t just any MOT … this was a very late MOT!  We had a bit of a panic realisation last Thursday that Ailsa’s car’s MOT was actually due in February and not May!  So a bit of Internet booking later and I managed to get a half price booking at Nationwide Autocentre … fortunately the car passed without any issues … phew!


New Tyre


OK you’re right … this isn’t really a highlight at all, but I thought I’d mention it anyway!  I managed to, very stupidly drive over the corner of a kerb stone on the exit ramp of the multi-storey car park at work and gashed the sidewall of my half worn rear nearside tyre and damaged my alloy to boot 🙁  That was a bad day!!  Fortunately I had a spare wheel in the shed and I’ve gone for an Avon ZZ3 … seems to have good reviews, will see how that does.

I’ve been playing with Google maps on my new phone this evening and although I played with Google Latitude on our 5800s, it didn’t really work very well; However on the Android OS it seems to work really well. Latitude, for those that don’t know, obtains your location using the handset’s GPS reciever and A-GPS using network transmitter triangulation; it then uploads this information at regular intervals so that people on your friends list can find where you are and if they wish can even generate a route to get to you from their location.

The technology is absolutely fantasic but it does make me start to think more and more about all the data Google hold on us all.  We already know that Google hold an index of the contents of millions of web sites but just look at all this additional data they gather:
– Search History : Google log IP addresses against a full history of every search you make using their engine
– YouTube : People’s Videos, comments made on them and your viewing history, even matches patterns in the videos to look for songs to target adverts
– Blogger : People’s blog posts covering all sorts including comments made on those posts and the IP address all those posts were made from
– Calendar : People’s events
– Picassa : People’s photos
– Google Docs : People’s documents and their contents
– Google Groups : Forums posts and conversations between users and their IP Address
– Google Mail : Contents of every e-mail you send and recieve including e-mail and IP Addresses, again looking for keyword content to target ads to you
– Google Street View : Pictures of your house
– Google Latitude : Full tracking history of your phyiscal movements

… and lots, lots more.  Every one of these data sets is very rich on it’s own but put together and Google are surely indexing not just the internet, but the whole world and the people in it!

Please don’t get me wrong, I think this technology is simply amazing and I feel privileged to live in this digital age where technology continues to go from strength to strength, but I can understand why there are so many nervous people out there.  Google have immense knowledge of the world and the people in it and of course knowledge is power ergo Google are a very, very powerful single entity.