Archive for category Holidays
IoW day8: Freshwater & Sea Creatures
Posted by martin newham in Holidays, Travel on April 4, 2010
What’s quite unusual is the way the weather changes so much here on the island – rain, windy and now bright sunshine. The Easter weekend truly started for the island, it had been very quiet over the past week but today the bay was very busy in comparison.
The Freshwater lifeboat was out for a practice as well today; first time I’d seen it this year.
… the pictures of the bay today are amazing; what a great day and it had only just started.
IoW day7: Cowes Go Moo!
Posted by martin newham in Holidays, Travel on April 3, 2010
Saturdays are days of madness, stay clear of any shopping districts I tell myself – specially when your on holiday…
So what did I do? Went to Cowes!
IoW day6: Old Friends & Sunsets
Posted by martin newham in Holidays, Travel on April 2, 2010
Wow, the weather certainly changes quickly here – yesterday was amazing, but today was raining for most of the morning, so it was off to an indoor attraction.
The only one I could think of was Amazon World near Newport, so I jumped in the car waterproof coat in hand and headed East along the coastal road…
IoW day5: Weather transformation
Posted by martin newham in Holidays, Travel on April 1, 2010
Wow, what a day makes. The weather has totally changed – overnight! Although still below 10 degrees, it was bright clear with a light breeze – amazing.
Decided to try out some new stuff, and some old… It’s mainly pictures today, I’ll pop in some notes here and there, but enjoy them – please comment if you’re enjoying the holiday series.
… overlooking Freshwater Bay Read the rest of this entry »
IoW day4: Holiday Cancelled
Posted by martin newham in Holidays, Travel, Work on March 31, 2010
Those that frequent Twitter will have known that my server crashed on the 31st March, not just a single site but over 30 sites including a number of Charity sites, so my holiday was cancelled.
I setup a temporary office in the hotel room, and worked a good 12 hours on/off liaising with support teams in Germany and USA to resolve the problem…
… I really can’t remember how much coffee I had!
The weather outside although dry was extremely windy, as you can see from this shot the seas were angry…
The web server is back up again, initially it was believed that it had a fatal disk crash, but after much investigation by the support teams it was discovered that the servers BIOS had become corrupt and the OS simply couldn’t see the disk.
Once the BIOS was re-flashed the drive came back online with no ill effects, I have my fingers crossed and will continue to have them crossed for the remainder of the holiday..
IoW day3: Parting Clouds & Butterfly’s
Posted by martin newham in Holidays, Travel on March 30, 2010
Well, I’m glad to say that the weather is improving all the time, it started off a bit wild as you can see;
… but the rain disappeared about 2pm, still about 7 degrees though.
IoW day2: Wet, Wild & the Art
Posted by martin newham in Holidays, Travel on March 29, 2010
Today, the first full day didn’t go so well. The weather had taken a turn for the worst, it was stormy with low clouds and late afternoon the skies opened with a vengeance.
Not much to say for today, the weather was awful, so spent most of the time driving around, jumping out to take some pictures when I could;
IoW day1: Time to go.
Posted by martin newham in Holidays, Travel on March 28, 2010
The 2010 holiday starts today, left home about 10:40 to catch the ferry at Southampton at 3pm – what was I thinking! It’s only 60 miles away.
Anyway, I’m at Fleet services about 40 miles from home and it’s 12:40 so chillin’ and doing a bit of surfing on the free Wi-Fi, played a couple of online games, but I’m a little bored now.
I’m not sure how the holidays going to turn out for a couple of reasons
1. This is the 4th time I’ve been to the Isle and it’s been more and more difficult to find new attractions.
2. The weather; would you believe it snow is forecast on Wednesday ?!
Still time will tell, with my new Lumix G1 in tow I’m sure there will be opportunities for some great shots whatever the weather.
More to follow…
Holiday Essentials: Digital Pocket Guides
Posted by martin newham in Apple, Holidays, Web/Tech on September 14, 2009
Yeah, before you tell me I know the holiday season is almost over – but hey, there’s always next year!
But I digress; regular viewers will no doubt have seen by expliots in Paris in early September this year. So whats the post about? Well its an overview of some of the applications I used during the break.
The holiday was in two parts; first in Disneyland Paris and the second part exploring the City itself, for a bit of culture. Before hand I bought some travel guides, which I hope would aid the adventure – but they were bulky and although they had a useful map in the back, they were hardly 21st centry.
So I dipped into the iTunes store to see what was avaliable for both the iPod Touch and the iPhone; all the applications mentioned will work on either, but the running on the iPhone will utilise the built in GPS functionality. If you are using an iPhone, make sure you look out for off-line applications – these require no data connection to operate. Remember if you’re outside your country or data area covered by your service provider data costs are heavy. To give you an example O2 in the UK charge £3 (about 5 USD) per MB of data while roaming.
Paris Day7: Say Goodbye
Posted by martin newham in Holidays, Travel on September 5, 2009
After another great breakfast to keep me going throughout the day – I sadly packed my case and ordered my taxi to the station for 2:30pm
Doing the tourist thing I hadn’t finished; I was only able to work half way through Rick Steves’ Historic Paris Walk that I mentioned yesterday – so it was back on the Metro and out to Notre-Dame again to pick up the rest of the tour.
Below you can see the Conciergerie, not to be confused with the guy that helps you out at the front desk of a hotel 
The Conciergerie is a gloomy prison famous as the last stop for 2,780 victims of the guillotine including Marie-Antoinette. Previously the building had be used to torture and execution of failed assassins.
