And there’s more on the way!

But on the bright side:

• Nic’s had some time away from school - snow days!
• I’ve had a chance to use my camera in the park: http://www.snowdotnet.com/user/slodge

An example:

Bushy Park Stag - also check out the does fighting in the background

To celebrate New Year… here are my musical highlights of the recent weeks:

Kate Perry - I kissed a girl - such a good pop song (but I’m sure it says Cherry Chopsticks - and that one day I’ll find out it’s slang for something naughty)

Kaiser Chiefs - Never Miss A Beat

Johnny Mathis - When A Child Is Born - I think I only like this because of Gerald The Gorilla!

But instead here’s some of the charts I’ve been working on - based on some of my running, swimming and biking:

Well I like them anyway

(originally posted over on my more techie blog

I suppose it had to happen - slodge is now in the urban dictionary - and it’s not entirely nice about slodge:

Verb - To perform a menial or undesirable task with little hope of a positive outcome.
Noun - A amorphous gray porridge-like substance.

No!!!!!!!!!!

Courtesy of http://stackoverflow.com/questions/234075/programmer-jokes-whats-your-best-one

Oh Hai - Lolgriffin

It also ties in nicely with a chapter in the Freakonomics book I’m reading at the moment - the chapter talks about how humour was one of the main tools in reducing the influence of the Ku Klux Klan.

Full details in http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1858007,00.html

Half a beach break, half a cultural experience, some of the highlights were:

• Getting a new DSLR camera on the way out - I’ve been waiting to buy a new DSLR for a few years now and this trip finally gave me an excuse.
• Reading the one and only newspaper - Granma - truely a political vehicle and actually rather dull as a result.
• Flying in an Ilyushin IL-96 - I’d forgotten Russia had a jet airline business and really wouldn’t have recognised this as not being a Boeing or Airbus from the outside. However… from the inside there was a distinct lack of modern airliner luxury - economy was one big cabin, the chairs were really quite uncomfortable and (despite only being a year old) lots of the chairs were falling apart. It reminded me of flying in an old Continental jumbo ten years ago.
• Staying in a Sandals couples’ resort - I’d heard about Sandals from some friends who honeymooned there, and I’d seen them in the glossy mags, and I loved the luxury room, the nearby white sand beach and the overall ambience… but I wasn’t totally prepared for the entertainment - it was almost like being back in Pontins Blackpool, only with the entertainment slightly modified for couples rather than for kids and families.
• Eating and drinking way too much - oops! Guess it’s time to start my Ironman 2009 training now!
• Refreshing my scuba skills - just a quick shallow dive but still managed to see a really cool scorpion fish, and maybe also glimpsing a recently escaped lion fish.
• Seeing lots of old American cars in Havana - Pontiac’s, Chevy’s, Plymouth’s - there are plenty of new cars around too, but the old vehicles are still being kept going as working vehicles. It’ll be interesting to see how long they carry on - and indeed what prices they sell for when trade finally restarts between the US and Cuba.
• Talking with just a few Cubans about their view on the world - about their country and about their recent (in the last ten years) partial economic freedoms. It’s interesting to see how well some of the communist countries are doing recently - with China and Vietnam as especially successful examples. Will Cuba join their ranks? Given the US can import so much from Vietnam, how much will it one day trade with it’s Caribbean neighbour?
• Totally relaxing in the five star NH Parque Central - very nice to be pampered.

I’ll get some photos up somewhere sometime soon - but for now it’s back home and back to working on work…

I just thought I’d put a first post up so the page didn’t look quite so horribly blank - but I don’t really have much to say right now… so I just picked a random title.

However, as is so often the way, the title lead me to look at a domain… and so I found nothingtoseehere.net - a superb site which leads you around some very odd non-touristy tourist locations. Check out this football ground as an example:

Nothing to see here - Glasgow football!