At Home with John and Debbie

While Debbie sat in the kitchen marking exam papers yesterday afternoon, I sang a song into Garage Band. Then I drew some very rough pictures with a biro. Then I put them all together into a video.

I have downloaded an album that excites me enough to blog for the first time in ages.
Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon was released in 1973, the same year I was born. It certainly wasn’t my parents’ kind of music, so I wasn’t exposed to it.
When I started paying attention to music, it was [...]

We are currently enjoying the beautiful Cape peninsula of South Africa. I’ve been blogging offline (that is, writing a diary into Notepad++), and I’ll be gradually transferring that into a proper blog, which you can find here at our travel blog pages.
Enjoy!

Did I mention we went to Mexico over Easter.
No? I must have done, surely?
Well anyway, I was on the beach looking for a specific song on my iPod, which I didn’t find. What I did find was an incredible ska version of the Third Man theme, which had been loitering on there unnoticed, nestled [...]

Look, a blog post!
But it’s not a proper one. It’s just solicitation for sponsorship, because we’re doing the Two Castles Run again, like a pair of idiots.

Here’s the link, in case the widget up there doesn’t work: http://www.justgiving.com/jhdp_2castles2009

Conservatory Daruma - (Flickr user ukslim).

The fact that both eyes are filled in tells you that a wish came true.

Leamington needs a Mexican restaurant. Yes, it already has one — Chico’s — but last time I checked it wasn’t very good. I wish them well, and a little competition would surely spur them to improve.
In the meantime, we felt conflicting emotions when we saw that Tarkos (nee Tarsus) kebab shop had closed down, [...]

So in my previous post, I explained how my Mac Mini died, just as I was feeling proud of my neat desk area.
I bought it in 2005 when they had only just been released. Since it proved itself incapable of running the GarageBand music software it was supplied with to any reasonable performance standard, [...]

We went to Solihull on Saturday. We had lunch at Wagamama. We bought valentine steak at M&S (having failed to find a proper butcher) and vegetables from a proper greengrocer. But the prime reason for going was so that I could get some audio bits and bobs from Maplin.
I love Maplin. I don’t understand [...]

Happy New Year!
Last night, rather than hold a big party, we invited a few people round for drinks, then hit town gently.
I fetched Tom and Abbi by car, then Jim turned up, followed by John and Suzanne with baby William, then Gary and MC with baby Amelie. Some mulled wine and several bottles of [...]