A chance to relax, a chance to reflect, a chance to sit in the house and watch the rain gently play it’s music on the windows to the house. Last weekend it rained! It poured down! On Saturday I couldn’t be happier. I sat on the sofa, watched some rugby, played some Skyrim and generally scratched my balls.
it has a strange name but it's great fun
The problem came on Sunday when we all started to go stir crazy. 1 year old children do not react well to being locked indoors. Our plans to go all ‘national trust’ on his ass fell through due to the bad weather. I was going to nip down to the Isle of Wight and drive around some of the sights. Wear him out and come back late in the evening but it was so miserable we stayed in.
Sunday morning I set off to collect my brother who was staying with me for a couple of nights. He introduced me to a very beautiful girl he met travelling. They both stayed and it was very pleasing to see my brother with his metaphorical stepladder, punching way above his weight.
We managed a trip out to a nursery that afternoon. We had to get my son exercised and I picked up some fish food for his goldfish. It was probably the only interesting thing to happen to us all and my poor brother and his girlfriend were sarcastically pleased I took them on a day out to a garden centre. It is a Garden Centre of a difference and I will do them justice with a blog entry at a later date as they have live chickens and amazing fish displays (A weird combination I know).
I’ll sign this off here because i’ve written too much about nothing already.
Peace ,\/,,
BD
Check out this great deal for amazon plugs:
Some very useful reviews help show the true value in the product:
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After one of my 62 million neighbours left the lights on while on holiday and ran up a huge bill, we decided to use this and run an extension lead across the channel to see if it’s cheaper. The man from EDF reckoned we could save ‘up to £200′ per year!
At that rate, this will pay for itself in just 25 million years!”
read yourself here: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Universal-Adaptor-into-Black-GrandGadgets
Buff Daddy
Godstone Farm
There are plenty of animals to watch and feed as well as a petting zoo for rabbits, ducklings and chicks.
Pigs, Llamas, Emu, Donkeys, Horses, Goats, Turkeys, Mice, Ducks, Cow are all I can recall from the top of my head. Nothing too exotic, and all things you will find in the chiller isle of your local Morrisons really but with a bit more animation about them. Apart from the ‘play’ dead Llama we spotted on the way in.
There’s also Lambs and piglets that have just been berthed in the sheds to really get your appitite going. When you are in the Sheds, check out the practice milking stations with cut out animals and rubber teats hanging down.
Milking Station at Godstone Farm. Just like the real thing
The tractor ride looked more queue than ride. I watched people queue for 10 minutes and ride 10 meters 1 way and then back again. It did make us laugh.
The size of the farm and the amount of animals is what strikes you. I have been 3 times before and found a new section. We still haven’t explored the adventure playground.
For heath reasons they insist you wash your hands every 3 minutes due to the risk of e-coli and that children do not take dummys and for whatever reason elephants? I think that may be an in-joke.
The only thing that sticks out on the entire day was the cost. £2 for my son. This will go up to £5.90 when he is 2. and £5 per adult. £15 total? bit of a sting. But with food available and so much to do you can easily spend the best part of the day here.
BuffDaddy.
So I was walking over London Bridge last night and saw this:
- The mayors pot of gold
It wasn’t until this morning that I noticed where the rainbow was leading. This leads me to wonder where the pot of gold could be? Is it burried somewhere in the Mayors office? Could it be a sign for the olympics? All I know is, the last time I followed a rainbow I was tackled by a little hairy chap with a funny voice protecting his pot of gold. Come to think of it, I maybe that was Borris’ office.
It was interesting to see how many people were photographing this with their mobile phones last night. I should have really photographed the photographers. I’m tempted to search the web to see how many copies of this were uploaded.
Buff-Daddy
So we have been trying to get out more on our weekends. We find just getting out first thing on a Saturday and Sunday morning makes the weekend feel so much longer. We used to just wallow on the sofa until Saturday kitchen finished but then the kid goes crazy and the weekend is gone in a flash of 2 grown ups snapping at a screaming boy trying to push a fork into a plug socket.
This week took us to Claremont Landscape Gardens near Esher, where we met up with my wife’s parents, sister and child. Me and my wife are National Trust members, have been for a few years now. But in the last few months our memberships have really been getting a workout. It’s a great chance for the kid to stretch his legs and really get a workout. We just slipped straight in with our membership cards. No parking or entry fees for members.
They have a playground with a large wooden castle and a house, this was our first stop in an attempt to get a quick win trying to wear the kid out. Loads of kids were making use of the playground. It’s very beautiful and the castle was very impressive.
Next was a stop to feed the ducks. What an amazing collection of colourful ducks they were. We had a great time pointing out strange colours and patterns.
There’s a large and unusual grass amphitheatre overlooking a small lake. We were regretting not coming over when it snowed as the stepped slopes would have been great sledging. Not sure if they would have allowed it though as you’d struggle to not get a bath in the lake.
Final stop for our group was the victorian toys and dressing up. My son enjoyed playing with the wooden horse and a very modern mamas and papas pram that was confiscated from us shortly afterwards by an older woman that gave us a look that said, “You should know this was our toy and not one of the official victorian toys”. We enjoyed ripping into my wife for a bit after that.
I then found the ball and cup game. I couldn’t understand how anyone could be amused by anything so low-fi. After 20 minutes of playing with it I realised it might have potential. Especially when I started making my own rules to the game and nearly beat my record.
Here’s a couple of snaps from the day. I didn’t think of taking any pictures of the amphitheatre, the playground or the colourful ducks. Bit of a waste but I wasn’t planning on writing this up. I’ll make a point of taking some snaps of the good stuff next time. In the meantime, here’s some very approachable doves.
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- Get this man a flat cap!
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- Time for a closer look
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- How many horsepower is that?
So I recently thought I might need to make a mad dash for the door in this current contract and thought I had better make the most of my dropbox and put some of the documents I have been working on into my dropbox. 5GB limit? Better increase that biatch!
The wonderful Dropbox
What a waste of money this turned out to be. It cost somewhere around £20 for the month. They increased the size instantly. No sooner did the credit card page clear than a notice appeared in dropbox and notified me of the increase in size. I moved all the useful data I could to the dropbox only to watch it get stuck instantly.
It turns out they have a 10GB daily limit. Even for when you first create the increase. Now, this is fine if I want to slowly increase but I really needed to get data online fast. I ended up using my readyNAS FTP site but I was really hoping dropbox would come through after I parted with my cash money.
Oh well. I have since decreased my allowance to the free 5GB and will ontinue to use the service. But they are giving the milk away for free and the cow is no race-hoarse. Pardon the ridiculously maimed metaphor.
In conclusion. Thanks Dropbox, thanks for the wonderful free service that I use daily on all my smart devices, laptops and PC’s. Why do you make it difficulty for me to want to give you money?
Buff-Daddy.
For all you Sci-fi horror fans, here’s my Sphere review for your delectation.
Sphere poster
Release date
27th March 1998
Review
So my tastes in films is really starting to show here. Sci-fi and horror are my staple. and as usual the usual sites are marking my film tastes down with no real reasoning. The explanation of Rotten Tomatoes saying “Sphere features an A-level cast working with B-grade material” were obviously waiting for the snogging cowboys or something because they were in the wrong cinema. I personally thought that by the time the plot twists played out the film was flawless.
From the get go, this film has a great feel to it. The throw away comments that help establish scale and characters are a plenty as you would expect when you have a film that deals with situations and physics outside our normally daily experience. This is something that does not have to be done as obviously in very geeky Sci-fi shows because its fan base is already familiar with the universe.
Sphere is geared toward a larger audience, this is made obvious by the great cast. Hoffman, Jackson & Stone. As such,
I received a notification in the software update section on my iPhone 4 recently. It might be because I opted to download the update but not install it via iTunes. My iPad has not been plugged in for a few days and has not asked if I want to update so I suspect that is how the iPhone knows I need to update. It would be cool if it just new by checking online. So many features of the iPhone do not require PC anymore so if it hasn’t already i suspect it will very soon.
Running the iOS 5.0.1 untethered update
Hello, what’s this? I received a notification in settings recently. Read more »
The Warrior’s Way Review
Release date
3rd December 2010
Review
When the movie started, it reminded me of some of the fantastic epic films coming out of the far east at the moment from the likes of crouching tiger to hero. But very quickly the dynamic changes, the protagonist leaves for the old west and there’s some great comical moments that reminded me of Kung-Fu hustle. The mostly English speaking film has American actors portraying most of the roles except for the protagonist and one of the anti heroes.
After our recent post regarding the apple iOS 5.0.1 update on this site we found an article claiming the battery lengthening fix has actually caused some issues with the new iPhone 4s:
Apple’s iOS 5.0.1 update makes iPhone 4S battery even worse?
iOS 5.0.1 update makes iPhone 4S battery even worse
