Friday 25 April 2008

Alcohol: The theme for my vacation

That is not to say I have had a lot to drink this week.  However, looking through the souvenirs I have for this vacation:





  1. An old fashioned, dimpled, beer class from Cheers (this was the buy a draft ale in one of these glasses and keep the glass offer).




  2. A set of four Cheers shot glasses




  3. A set of Cheers beer mats/coasters




  4. A (free) Samuel Adams Brewery beer tasting glass




  5. Two Samuel Adams Boston Lager "perfect" pint glasses (scientifically designed - I had to have them, I can be geeky about anything)




  6. A (free) Samuel Adams slim beer glass (free because I bought two perfect pint glasses)




  7. A Boston travel mug (a bit of a stretch, but I could put beer in it)




IMG_0996


I also have two silly hats (silly because hats don't suit me, so for me all hats are silly) whose main purpose was to keep me getting further sunburn (what I have isn't too bad, and I want it to stay that way), and a portable jigsaw of the USS Constitution.  But, mostly my souvenirs are alcohol related...

Why have a blog and never post?

Well, the main reason, is that I usually don't have anything of interest to post.

However, right now I am on vacation in Boston.  I flew out to the US on Saturday a couple of weeks ago (12/04/2008) to attend SIPit 22 (up in Durham, NH) with two colleagues from my work - I must say that the environment up in New Hampshire is wonderful, I believe I am unlikely (for a number of reasons) to ever want to live in the US, but if I had to it wouldn't be too bad if it were up in New Hampshire.  My colleagues flew home last Saturday but I have stayed out an extra week, and it seems like (based on the weather alone) a good week to spend out here.

The only disappointment I have had so far is sunburn on my face and ears (guess which genius went out whale watching on the hottest day of the year without using any sun-cream or wearing a hat), the Prudential Tower (or Towah, as the door man called it) observation deck being closed, and a bit of queasyness cause by my decision to skip breakfast and lunch and then go on the Samuel Adams Brewery Tour (with free beer at the end of it).  I highly recommend the Brewery tour, it is free and the beer is excellent.

I have put the pictures from my vacation (so far) online.  There are a lot of photographs there, but I am particularly pleased with some of them (especially some of the ones from the whale watching and some of those taken in the New England Aquarium).

 My SIPit 22 and vacation pictures are located at: http://gallery.dunkley.me.uk/v/pd/SIPit/SIPit22/

Monday 11 February 2008

Upgrading websites

I noticed that the software behind some of my websites (specifically, Joomla, PhpGedView, and WordPress) were out of date.  So, I decided to click on the "upgrade" buttons on the "one-click install" page of my service provider.  Not the smartest thing I have ever done...

WordPress upgraded more or less painlessly.  However, Joomla stopped working.  There appear to be issues with my (admittedly bodged) theme that I could not quickly get around.  I have now rolled that back - I suppose I will have to fix it properly eventually.

As for PhpGedView, I now see an error at the top of each page.  Searching the Internet for possible solutions only took me to a number of other sites that display the same error.  Not really important I suppose, it's not like I ever got around to using it properly anyway.  Another job for a rainy day...

My blog and homepage do now have a "better" link to my LinkedIn profile page though!

View Peter Dunkley's profile on LinkedIn