Sunset 2008 and 2009

 

Time to sum up the year that has nearly gone and to have a peak ahead at 2009. 2008 was the year we didn’t manage to sell the house and move – that’s my personal credit crunch story. The boys are now all at the same Nursery and School, Marta has been doing lots of craft and I started a new job in the spring. We’ve all had a splendid Christmas and been able to spend time with many family and friends.

In 2009 we will hopefully have a bigger house one way or another. Right now, I am setting some smaller goals for 2009. Podcasting has been one of best ‘things’ I picked up in the past few years and I have been able to effortlessly entertain and educate myself in many areas. It has put me off main stream media. I definitely want to watch more video podcasts rather than TV. So much so that I am pondering a iPod (if I can every pick which model!). I have finally given in and use iTunes for media. It’s a handy one for the front room PC and life is easier if I keep theme the same. I would like to consider some outdoor pursuits but even today’s slightly sunny weather can’t get me in the mood.

Maybe spring will bring the inspiration for exercise…

 

Snowmen!

Snow

Needless to say the boys and dog were very excited. Dandy and I dashed along the beach…

Playing with Picassa 3 Tonight

Shanwell Carnoustie a few years ago, given a soft focus and some gradient treatment!

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Another Castle in the Sand

Built to keep spaniels out!

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We made a Den!

Summer fun in the garden

Wick

It is better to light a single candle on the water in the wind where the answer is blowing like a rolling stone.

Pirate Storm

Jack sparrow battles the elements!

Westhaven

Feed Prune

Clutter, clutter, clutter has been filling up my Google Reader lists for too long so I am in the process of severely pruning the feeds and adding some carefully chosen new ones. For instance, I never really got through the BBC news feeds and some podcasts I listen to every single day have related blogs which I have never got round to reading. Of course Google help out here by giving you feedback on the trends of what you are reading and providing some recommendations of feeds that you would like. The latter is very impressive and has made some spookily good suggestions for and automated system.

Another source of more interesting feeds is page2rss which is useful for tracking more obscure websites that haven't got round to RSS. Google alerts is good too but I have had mixed results - scratch that - duplicated results of the same forum post 5-12 times a day!!

For more life decluttering, I recommend the Lifehacker website. It has suggestions for the real world too though I find them much harder to implement than a simple hack on the laptop.

Friend Feed

Friend Feed is a welcome bit of organisation for the web 2.0 chaos - basically it puts all your stuff from different sites in one place with little fuss. Have a look at my page here.

Flying the Flag

Perhaps it is something in the water but I have been feeling unusually nationalistic of late. For an everyday example, Radio 4 is getting pushed aside for Radio Scotland on the daily commute - though I would like it more if News Drive got rid of the stupid musically jingles. My other listening matter originates from the US mostly so I went on the hunt for something more local.

BBC Radio Scotland's Scottish Life podcast is unfortunately not original material but is a good collection of clips from various programs on the station. Well worth a download especially if they run more stories about the fisherman's false teeth that were found in a clam. No really...

Jellyfish

Read all about them here!

Swans, Blogs, No Bees and Banter

This blog was going to feature some bees but I decided the video wasn't good enough! Given the blog title there should be some Bees sometime soon. My back garden is buzzing with them, despite what Dr Who is saying about vanishing bees.

In other miscellaneous matters, the unread Lee Strobel that once lurked on my sideboard is now much unread and is a page turner. I'll save a full review until I reach the end of once of the first books I've read in a long while. I first heard of Strobel on one of my favourite podcasts Stand To Reason. STR have a great web site too but I somehow never seem to spend enough time on it!

Aside from reading, I am also working on an another Blog for the Drama group which I help at. I have a domain and hopefully Blogger will suffice to handle some fairly simple content. Windows Live Writer is a solid program for updating many blogs of the most common types and is a cool application which shows Microsoft's better side - its free, easy to use, has plug-ins and generally plays nice.Ok I could be writing a CMS or using one of the many free ones online for creating websites but they generally create more fuss than they are worth. Now if only Blogger had a great interface on the iPaq...

Trip to Arbroath Harbour

  Continuing today's watery theme, we had 2 hours to kill in Arbroath.This was easily filled in with a picnic and a stroll around the harbour. We did hunt for some ducks to feed our crusts to but they were oddly absent. We dashed back to car missing a heavy downpour by seconds. Phew!

Power Walking in the Rain

It was a rather wet dog outing this morning. The paths by the beach were full of hooded walkers power walking along with their hounds. Dandy was a little disappointed not to get his paws sandy but was glad to get home for his breakfast. As he has got older, he has become more interested in food and loves dairy products and pork. As a pup he often left plenty in the bowl. Being a pet a semi-vegi household, it is a fairly rare treat for him to get some carne.

Given the weather today, Dandy does resemble the soggy photo in the previous blog entry. On my return to the house things got a little more watery with the sink needing some plunger action. All fine now hopefully leaving the rest of the day for some blogging and some reading. An unread Lee Strobel lurks on my sideboard...

Daftspaniel

 

Time Goes On...

... and trouble with Twitter means I feel uncommunicative all evening so I am digging up this old blog for the first post since Christmas. Some of the more dated entries have been deleted. 6 months and much has happened. Also rather difficult to recount in a single blog post.

So, am I moving back to Blogger? Maybe - I've heard good things about MS's Live Blog client (particularly the image editor). We will see.