I just read this article and not that I am in any way pro the Olympics, but I think that it will be good for Southend's ambition to become a top cycling town.  By the way Hadleigh is where we sometime go to see the animals.

My parents received a postcard on Friday from Alisdair - it's only taken about 6 weeks to arrive! Anyway it clearly shows that he was having a fantastic time in Bulgaria and I know it has made everyone feel much better.

I just want to keep this bit of info handy that's why I have put it on my blog - I got it from Jeffrey Veen's blog. It basically tells you all the switches to download a directory (possibly music) from the command line, very simply and stably.

Here's the code, go here to find out what it all means:

wget -r -l1 -H -t1 -nd -N -np -A.mp3 -erobots=off -i ~/mp3blogs.txt

Wikilook is a great add-on for FireFox. It tells you the meaning of a word just by pressing the shift key and moving your mouse over the word. It also allows you to search for the word on wikipedia.

Ever wondered what the meaning of incunabulum, floccinaucinihilipilification, ይሉኝታ, كوردی, Bân-lâm-gú or lets say лютий?

Install this add-on and see what they mean.

I have just been playing with the themes for drupal. This theme is called pixture and it is possible to change the width between fixed and fluid and the dimensions % and pixels.

I think I will keep this theme for the summer - if we get one!

I wrote the text below on 23 June 2008. I have now come to terms with Alisdair's death, although I do miss him - I will leave the post as I wrote it.

My brother died on his own, in an apartment complex on the outskirts of Bansko, Bulgaria sometime in the last few days (probably 18 June - I found out on 22 June) just before his 40th birthday which would have been on 6 July.

I was recently introduced to Meet the Gimp which is a series of video-casts by Rolf Steinort. The Gimp stands for GNU Image Manipulation Programme and is the free as in beer, multiplatform open-source equivalent of Photoshop.

Derek Shaw of SoSLUG has agreed with Rolf to put together a DVD of the first 46 episodes and to sell them for £5 plus £1.50 P&P. I bought a copy (which helps save on bandwidth) and I am currently working my way through them and have got to episode 13. If you want to buy yourself a copy then there are more details here or click on the button at the end of this post.

The photo below was composed of 3 images that I took back in 2005, it was the composition of the triptych that I wanted to try.

We have been obsessing about the weather for next week when we go camping in Rendlesham Forest and I found this google mashup - I think it's really cool. It's called weatherbonk - take a look.

Today and tomorrow is Southend's annual airshow. I just popped out to take a few photos of the Red Arrows. This is about the best photo - I think I need a more powerful zoom lens. The weather was much better than the weather forecast, I just hope it stays like it for our holiday...

Last Friday we went to Ocean Beach for a romantic meal, the views and sunset were fantastic - in the height of summer when it is possible to sit on the terrace it will be even better (although the menu on the terrace is more limited).

I have just about got over my downer on the restaurant due to the issue of toilet signage or lack of it. You see it is a converted tram shelter (from the days when there were trams running along the seafront) and when it became a restaurant the council made it a condition that they took over the running and upkeep of the public toilets. However it wasn't signed as such. Now it says toilets facility rules apply and the door is left open most of the time - what it should say is "Public" Toilets - anyway enough of my rant.

It was full of Southend's attempt at WAGs, however the food was really good and this made up for some of the noise. I had moules to start off with and there were plenty of them too. There wasn't any swordfish for my main (even though it was a special) and so I had the lamb which was extremely succulent. Mandy had the smoked cod and we shared (which Mandy ate!) a dessert of meringues. We ordered some side dishes, but I think the quantities were so large that we didn't really need any.

I think that the waiting staff were a bit inexperieced, for example I questionned the moules and asked if they were New Zealand green lipped and she had to go and check, luckily they were native rope-grown - and were very good with plenty of them.

I think that for convenience to our house and not having to drive it is the second best restaurant in Southend - the best restaurant is still the Pipe of Port in my opinion, although it is probably more suited to the winter, because it is in the basement with no outside light. We are going to try the Roslin "Beach" Hotel next - I'll review once we have tried it.

If any of my more mature relatives go to Ocean Beach they should go fairly early because there is background music which they probably wouldn't like - I reckon about 6pm for them.