A number of people have asked us about our planned route around Europe. It’s still a little bit up in the air, but at the time of writing the plan is as follows:
Start: Bath
End: High Wycombe
Distance: 98 miles
Time: 2h10m
We left two cats and two parents (we’re not quite sure who’s looking after whom) at 5:50pm on Sunday and hopped in the van, steaming up Box Hill at 40mph. At one point Kathy got up to 65mph on the motorway; Tim, of course, didn’t stray above 60.
We arrived in High Wycombe after an uneventful journey to a wonderful meal of pie (mmm, pie), mash and veggies. Thank you Clive & Claudia!
Then it was off to bed, but not before Tim had (yet again) attempted to upgrade C&C’s computer to Windows 2000 Service Pack 4. He’s not giving those computers up lightly, you know.
I’m getting away from it all for five (count ‘em!) weeks with my lovely wife, but you can read all about it at our Campervan Blog.
Ciao!
This (see pic) is what we’re driving in: a 1985 Renault Trafic T1000 Richard Holdsworth campervan conversion with 37,000 miles on the clock. Yes, it’s old, but it’s been well looked-after!
If you would rather not receive our e-mail updates regarding our tour of Europe then let us know by e-mailing tim(at)timandkathy.co.uk or kathy(at)timandkathy.co.uk.
We’re counting the days and starting to panic ever so mildly at how much there is left to do: pack, tidy the house, finish writing instructions for those looking after the house and cats while we are away etc.
Tim gave me a real scare this morning when he passed out, this happened in March and he hit his head quite badly. Today he got up with really ad pain in his shoulder and thought it might be a trapped nerve. It was so scary, I had to get him onto the floor as I wasn’t sure he was breathing and then thank goodness he came round and I called for an ambulance. They did lots of tests at the hospital and think it was brought on by the pain (last time he had bad stomach ache).
So thank God he is okay and please pray for protection while we are away as I am a bit freaked out by it all!
Back to the trip. We picked up the camper van on Saturday and it is now sat outside the house just calling us to get on the road! Tim’s parents arrive on Sunday to look after everything for us and we travel to my parents as it is mum’s birthday on Bank Holiday Monday. Happy Birthday for Monday Mum!
Monday our ferry is at 4:15pm from Dover and we should arrive in Calais at 6:45pm and head to our first campsite of the trip. Which we have yet to book and maybe I should go and do that now……
I’m currently doing some work that involves CrossRef, “a collaborative reference linking service that allows the user to click on a citation and be taken directly to the target content”. All well and good, except that CrossRef play fast and loose with the standard we all know as HTML.
Their site generates only 75 validation errors, which is by no means a lot. The worrying thing, though, is their use of made-up tags and attributes, like <csscriptdict>.
Potentially more damaging (not to mention costly) is the sheer size of the pages on the site. When you run the home page through the Web Page Analyzer, the size is reported as 416 KB, of which 290KB is images and 95KB is images JavaScript. CSS isn’t used (according to the report), though this could be because of the non-standard tags that are used.
I fancy giving this site a makeover, just to see what sort of savings could be made. I rather think that they will be huge. This is one Barry White of a site.
According to the BBC Bristol web site, Neil and Tim Finn are to play the Colston Hall in October. As a long-time fan of Crowded House (I went to see them in the slightly larger surroundings of Birmingham’s NEC in 1994), this will doubtless be a top night out.
Of course, the Archos is allowing me to carry vast amounts of music around with me, including Crowded House’s four studio albums (Crowded House, Temple of Low Men, Woodface and Together Alone) all of which continue to delight and surprise me with their musicianship and intelligent lyrics. I’d better start saving up for those tickets!
I’m coming increasingly to the conclusion that (a) second-hand iPods are overpriced, and (b) eBay is a living, breathing example of the power of a heady mix of capitalism and stupidity. You know, more money than sense and all that…
I’ve been gathering data from eBay (manually) of the closing prices of iPods, which model they are and which generation.
[Note for the uninitiated: the latest "All New!" iPods are the fourth generation. The first ones were…oh, I think you get the idea]
At the moment it’s a CSV file. I will probably make a PHP script at some point to do strange and wonderous mathematical things to the numbers. Well, it will take the average for each model and generation, at least.
I suspect, though, that the numbers will bear out what I already know: second-hand iPods aren’t worth the bother, especially as the 4G models are (in the case of the 40GB) £100 cheaper than the 3G ones. I can only guess as to the mental state of the person who spent £215 (plus £8.50 p&p!) on a 3G 15GB iPod from eBay, when the 4G 20GB is £220 direct from Apple! If you’re on a budget, the Apple Refurb store last week had 3G 15GBs going for £175 with an Apple warranty.
The mind, quite literally, boggles.
I’ve just signed up for Del.icio.us, a "social bookmarks" service. It’s a great way to share your bookmarks between multiple computers (home and work, say) and also to share them with friends/fiends/random people on t’interweb.
You can view my profile, if you want.