Overall I say this Christmas was nice, nice seems to most appropriate word to describe it. It wasn’t too fancy or too big, if anything this year Christmas  was a little on the small side, but it was nice. 

I got everything I wanted from Santa, which was an 1TB external hard drive and a new Wi-Fi enabled printer. I also got a  rather awesome hoody cardingan thing which I can wear when I’m working from at home so that I can keep warm without putting the heating on. Yes, I’m the type of cheap bastard who doesn’t like to put the heating on, as it cost money.

The boy got a load of things from Santa, he got a new Wii Remote (his third one) and a  Nunchuk, so we can play more multiplayer games. He also got a couple of new games; Lego batman and Mario Cart (which is great fun)

New years eve was quiet this year, no real partying this year as the wife was still suffer from here rather nasty cough that has been bothering her for the last two weeks. 

New years day itself was fun, we were at the in-laws for dinner and my sister came along too. We spent most of the day playing multiplayer games on the boy’s Wii. Games like Mario Cart, Wii Sports, Wii Play and Boom Bloxs.

This is one of those quick catch up posts. I’ve had trouble writing new stuff recently, but I’ve still got loads of posts in draft I hope to have published soon.

Well there has a fair bit going on since my last proper update. A week in Ireland, two weeks working from Newcastle, one week in Tamworth and Lytham, and a weekend trip to Ireland for Bills and Ciara’s wedding.

Yes, again most of my time has been taken up with work related stuff but I during this time I managed to get back on the Wii Fit for the first time in ages (45 days). I was very surprised to find out that I’ve lost two pounds and I’m at my lowest weight for over two years. 

I also managed to have a couple of nights out while I was away with work, and made my long awaited return to Karaoke. I wanted to have a go at doing The Scatman (as it were) or The safety dance but they didn’t have them so I sang Cotton Eye Joe and Girls Aloud’s Love Machine. I believe you are going sing badly you might as well sing something bad.

In the last update you’ve seen some of the Website stuff I’ve been working on. I’ve also being playing with the design of this blog a bit, but I’m far from finished it with it yet.

July has proved an eventiful month. Work has taken me to Colnbrook, Attrichingham, Blackpool and Lytham (twice) and The family and I went away this weekend to Legoland for our Second (ahem) trip in the last year, getting the last drops out of annual passes before they run out.

Hopefully you’ll have noticed In the last post that I took a large number of pictures, this is because I got myself a new digital camera. I bought this Samsung NV4 as I think It is a great looking camera, with a good number of features and doubles as a mp3/video player as well, so I’m very happy with it.

I bough it last Friday as I wanted a new camera because the battery in my old Sony 3.2MP camera had packed in, and this one was much smaller and sexier camera. I also wanted it before I went away for the weekend and so I could take pictures of both the Legoland trip and the Holiday to Ireland I am on next week.

Yes, I am on holiday in Ireland next week, but don’t worry, the blog will still be updated.

I’ve done a fair few Legoland posts before, so this one is in a brief guide to our latest trip in pictures.

The weather was very hot and sunny the weekend we visited.

The good weather (and the school holidays) meant the park was very very busy.

The queues for most of the big rides where over an hour, so we invested ten pounds each in a Q-bot. Q-bot is a virtual queuing system which worked very well. we could book a ride, take our time getting there and then head straight to the (almost) front of the queue.

The first ride we went on was the Vikings’ River Splash, here are some nice people attempting to soak us.

Those people and the rest of the ride was successful in soaking me. Also in this picture you can see my Q-bot.

The crowds before the Revenge of the Aztec Queen show.

Two criminals, only one is wanted.

A duck!

A horrible mummy.

The Waterworks along with the Rat Trap remains one of Conor’s favourite attractions.

MiniLand, where the world has been recreated in Lego. You kind of take Miniland for granted after you first visit, but you shouldn’t because there are lots of little details hidden around it. Can you spot the one in this picture?

You Maniacs! You blew it up! Ah, damn you! God damn you all to hell!

Conor and I had to have another go and Build and Test to see if we could emulate our earlier successes

I couldn’t recreate ‘The Bus” but Conor built his model thinking bigger is better.

Here it is, in all it’s glory. It wasn’t very fast, in fact his earlier versions didn’t even move.

Conor also had a go at the Build and Test Technics, making this spinning people thingy.

A giant Lego figure made out of Lego. How much does this rock? (Answer is; Lots)

Well this is the end of our trip, and the end of our annual pass. Legoland will have to do without us for a few years.

You can find more pictures here.

Hi all, holidays are now over and I’m back at home, but I’ll tell you about the family latest trip to Legoland

We drove down on last Friday afternoon, but thanks to traffic we arrived a little too late get into with the park so we checked into the hotel and settled in there instead. As this hotel is close to Legoland there was loads of kids in the hotel, so Conor had plenty of people to play with and he made a few friends in the hotels play area. Later Conor and me had a little swim in the pool, well he played in the pool and I sat in the hot tub. My sister checked into the hotel later in the evening as she was joining us for the trip.

We drove from the hotel to Legoland on early on Saturday morning, and walked straight passed most of the queues thanks to our annual passes. We headed straight to the new viking area which was now open (after considerable delays), but the park newest and largest ride Viking Splash wasn’t working.

Highlight of weekend #1 for me was queuing for Pirate Falls, as while the adults are queuing the kids have a special area where they can play and build with duplo bricks. Obvious, I played in the area rather than queue, so Conor and (almost completely) myself built a very tall tower.

This is the first version of the tower, we built a couple poor versions after the originals fell down. The final version was much better which a lot stronger base and therefore had at lot less wobble, which plagued earlier designed.

We had a good go of the rides including the Dragon coaster and Viking Splash (when it was finally working). We also caught the new Johnny Thunder show (Johnny Thunder and revenge of the Aztec queen) and the Lego Racer 3D movie in the Imagination theatre.

On Saturday Night we returned to the hotel we caught the ‘Britain’s got talent’ final at the hotel (as the wife was watching it) and I must say well done to the winner on his genius idea of coping a three year old television advert and being much whiter than the other dancers.

On Sunday, we picked of the few rides we didn’t get to yesterday, before settling off to drive back home again. We headed straight to Viking splash to see if we could have another go but it was broke again, but we did get on the Jungle coaster and the Dragon coaster again.

The Highlight of weekend #2 for me was the Build and test centre, which is a place where you can again build stuff with Lego bricks, but this time the idea is to build cars and race them on a special made track.

This is Conor’s car, which he built with the help of his mother (I was too busy with mine), it was a good design and he won a few races with it.

This is mine, nicknamed (by myself) ‘The Bus’. It was built on the premise that heaver is better, which turned out to be good tactic as it won a large number of races and then races it didn’t win it took out a number of other cars. The kids didn’t stand a chance against ‘The Bus’.

Disappointingly the Lego shop didn’t have any new key rings, I was hoping for a new Indiana Jones keyring. I wife had even managed to buy me a sneaky Gift at the Lego shop, but I’ll cover that in another post.

Well my holidays are well and truly over, as I returned to the working world today. The holidays where good, even if I didn’t get everything done that I wanted to do. My Mother and Sister were visiting Middlesbrough during this time, so I spent a far bit of time visiting them.

During Easter we usual try and get Conor as few chocolate eggs as possible, so we buy him a little present instead. This year he got ‘Wii Play’ with a Wii remote, so we can two play games (like Wii Sports) together, and with the money he got from relatives over Easter he bought himself Classic Controller so he can play his Virtual console games. Pokémon Snap is a favourite of his, as he is quitebizarrely still Pokémon mad.

Oh, I gave myself a big of a treat over Easter too, Ebay give me one of the those vouchers of my next purchased. So I bought this;

For the less geeky of you, it’s a ‘Transformers Animated Starscream’ which quite a difficult figure to get hold of (I don’t even think they are out in the US yet) and thanks to the Ebay vouchers, I got it a very reasonable price (about 13 quids).

Finally I’m still working on the new design for the blog, which I’m pleased with so far and it should be ready quite(!) shortly.

Well Hello, just a quick update while I’m in the mood.

My Holidays are almost over, It’s back to work on Monday and I’ve not caught up with all the things I wanted to do while I was off (surprise, surprise) but I did get the C64Glen show episode #5 finished, and launched the new version of ObscureInternet which is no mean feat.

One of the jobs I didn’t get to was to make reasonable progress on the new blog design, oh well, I’m sure you can await.

I got an interest message on my facebook wall, this would have bothered me in the past as I was a bit obsessed with trying making everyone love me (which was obviously a totally lost cause), but no I’m just amused. I’ve offended someone on theInternet.

Anyway I’ve always hate people who say ‘Get a life’ because it usually used by comment trolls on YouTube (who surprisingly haven’t posted any videos) and it means nothing other than ‘Try and make better use of your time’. Thanks for the information, I’ll enrol in a time management course straight away.

Good day all, and what a good day it is. The sun is shining and most importantly I am holiday, no work for me for two weeks. Never was a holiday more deserved (by me) it has been quite a while long since the last one and work has been very stressful in the last couple of weeks.

It was Conor’s and my birthday at weekend, so we went off to Legoland again. We love Legoland, it is great theme park, better than Disneyland Paris. So good in fact we bought an Annual Pass so we can return some time in the next twelve months. We had a go on all the big rides – The Dragon Coaster, Pirate Falls and the Jungle Coaster. Conor got his Driving licence at the Driving School, we also learnt how to put out fires at the Fire Academy (we were the fastest), Conor got to go to his favourite areas the Waterworks and the Rat Trap, and we also watched the Johnny Thunder Show and the Spell Breaker 4D movie.

Conor got to choose how to spend his birthday money at the Lego shop, and unsurprisingly he decided to buy some Lego Star Wars, LEGO Star Wars 6210: Jabba’s Sail Barge to be precise. It wasn’t cheap but it’s a lovely lego set, with some great detail.

I decided it was time to update me Lego key rings , as the old ones had lost legs, hands and arms. So I bought new Sponge Bob Square Pants, Harry Potter and Batman key rings.

Probably my highlight of the weekend was the wife asking ‘Was Shergar the horse with big teeth’ when passing a sign for “Dubai Duty Free Shergar Cup at Ascot” on the way to the park.

Of course it would be a proper birthday without new Transformers, so here are the new addition to the family. The movie Starscream is mine, the other two – Cybertron Primus and Skywarp are Conor’s.

I’ve got an some news for you regarding the car, as regular readers will know someone reversed into it while the wife was driving a couple of months back, but the insurance was playing silly buggers. Well we got a call from a Garage in Stockton a couple of weeks ago to tell us we were booked in, unsurprisingly the insurance company had forgot to tell us everything had been sorted. So the car has no got a new driver’s side door all taken care of by the third parties insurances company. I think the car is pretty much on its last legs now anyway, it’s due for its next MOT in January which I don’t think it has a hope of passing without paying for repairs that would cost more than the car is worth. So I’m preparing to have to pay for a new car in the New Year.

Another bit of good news, is Conor passed is second grading at Karate, so he is now a Yellow belt. He is doing well but he will next to practice and train hard to keep getting his belts.

Thanks for the Birthday messages!

Sorry about that lack of updates, I have been writing, but various computer problems have eaten the words. So it’s going to be one of thos updates where I bring you upto date with whats been happening with me and those connected to me.

Conor lost his first tooth, got pupil of the week for the third time this year and the second week running. The precedent of getting him a toy for getting pupil of week has so far cost us, Four sets of Episode III Star Wars Lego, and the six Constructicon transformers which group together to form Devastator.

I’ve change role at work. This time it’s a sideways move but it more project management than people management, which is something I’ve wanted to have a go at. On the last day I with my old team, and again they made me feel I would be missed as they got me a card, cake and some munchies for the team to mark my departure.

I’ve been really concerned with the number of people who have noticed the size of my belly lately, I’ve definitely increased in size. I’m very nearly closed to joining the Gym.

One of the things I’ve missed writing about because of not updating for a while is the bombs in London. This has been most worrying for me as my sister lives and works in London. Fortunately she has been unharmed thus far. However this did remind me when the Omagh bomb went of all those years ago, my mother was in County Tyrone Ireland, which is not far from the Omagh and she could have very easily been shopping there that afternoon, and this was quite a worry because it took hours to get in touch with her to find out she was ok.

If this update seems longer and more thought out then usual it might be because most of it was typed at a laptop while listening to MP3 on my lovely K750i Mobile fun come Mp3 Player (with new 1GB memory stick thanks to Ebay) or it could be because I’m even more full of shit than usual, you decide.

I’m on Holiday from tomorrow, but I’ll be back next week with more words, promise

The Ireland and Legoland gallerys have been uploaded, go and have a look.