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F/8 and be there...
My blog - our latest photographs, family news, and occasional ramblings. Regular updates, almost daily when time permits!
Newsfeeds
Your portal to the world's online news services, with my unique compilation
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Clipart Library
Completely free clipart and animations to use for your own projects. New
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Archives
I'm using Flickr for all my up to date photographs now, as I no longer have the time to produce galleries on this site like I used to. All the old stuff is still here though, in the archives!
My Awards
Much to my surprise, this website has managed to win an award or two
since I built it in February 2000.
Dan's
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my guestbook (some are quite funny) and leave one yourself.
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| About this site |
| This site was designed to share news and photographs
between family and friends who are scattered around the world. I should
stress that I make no pretence the content will be of interest to anyone
who does not know our family - but you are welcome to stay and look if you
like. I hope you enjoy your visit - Dan
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site, please leave a message on my guestbook,
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| © Dr Dan
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LABELLED
WITH ICRA |
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| • Raffy & Vanessa off to Portugal again...
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Vanessa and the boy will be nipping over to Cascais again next week, to visit Jo & James Groombridge. It will be our last chance to do this before the new baby arrives and Raffy reaches his second birthday (when we have to start paying for him on flights!) so it would have been rude not to. Vanessa is very excited at the prospect of the holiday but is not looking forward to the flight with Rafferty! He gets quite excited about 'aeroplane in the sky' now, though, so she might be able to entertain him with looking out of the window... and waving at the passing flock of pigs!
Posted Tuesday, April 29, 2003 |
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| • Rafferty's progress
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The young man has been coming along in leaps and bounds over the last couple of weeks - often literally. His speech is coming along nicely - starting to string words together into little sentences now. Favourites include "helicopter in the sky", "where's Mummy?" and today, while out for a walk "Mr Bear, where are you?". Not that we'd been trying to get him to say it for ages or anything... Potty training is underway (God help us) and he seems to be getting the idea very well - he had his first success at christening the potty tonight. I can tell all the parents amongst you will be going 'Aaah' at this, while all the non-parents are suffering from a little too much detail! Fear not, I will draw the line at including pictures.
At the moment, current favourites are Winnie the Pooh (having toppled Bob the Builder from the number one slot in popularity stakes) and Toy Story. He has just started drawing (usually on the nearest flat surface if we don't get to him in time!) so we bought him a little blackboard and easel. His style tends more to the Picasso than da Vinci at the moment, but there's always time.
I'll be posting some new photos from March and April in Rafferty's Album over the next few days.
Posted Sunday, April 27, 2003 |
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| • A busy Sunday...
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On Sunday 6th April, we had an unexpected (but very enjoyable) party, including the first barbeque of the year. Vanessa's dad Eddie came to visit at lunchtime, followed closely by Filipa and Max, who drove up from London. Filipa is expecting their first baby, and is due to pop about a week after Vanessa. There was much comparing of bumps! We haven't managed to see Max & Filipa together since Raffy's christening, so it was excellent to catch up again.
Filipa and Max see who has the biggest bump... er, that'll be Max then! | | 
Lucy with her mum, Vanessa and Raffy. |
Our friends from Canterbury, Lucy & Mel, arrived at about 3pm with their daughter Emily, and Lucy's mum & dad who were visiting for the weekend. They were planning to stop for coffee, but soon changed that to wine and then we persuaded them to stay for the BBQ. Finally, Tim Hucker arrived from Chichester after a nightmare journey and was glad of a cold beer or two. Again, we hadn't seen Tim for far too long, so it was great to get everyone together.
Raffy starts playing a bit of footy... | | 
Rafferty grabs the camera. | | 
Playing on his slide. |
Rafferty had a wonderful time playing with Emily, and he started to kick a ball around the garden. Tim kindly pointed out that he didn't get his excellent football skills from his dad, which is sadly true! Now, a few weeks later, the football has become his favourite toy... it looks like I'm going to have to start watching the game myself. After a very nice meal, most of our guests left, but Eddie and Tim stayed for the night and we had a glass of wine or two and chatted into the wee hours. A great day!
Max relaxes with a cold beer. | | 
Mel Woodruff enjoying the occasion. |
Posted Wednesday, April 16, 2003 |
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| • Gustav's LAN party...
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A friend of mine from work, Gustav Strandvik, held an excellent LAN party today - the first I have been to. I rocked up at about 09:30 after a week of nights on-call; with my usual fantastic timing the car is in for a service so I had to get a taxi to shift my PC over to Gustav's house. My system is not exactly built to be portable - in fact you probably won't find a bigger beige box in all of Christendom - but once we got the network set up, there was a lot of Half Life and Counter-Strike going on. Awesome fun - I will definitely be doing that again. Took some more pictures with new camera, so will post these when they are done.
Posted Saturday, April 05, 2003 |
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| • Dan's Gallery updated
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I've just redesigned the Dan's Gallery pages - they now have a new menu system which will allow easier updates, and I have rearranged the photographs in reverse date order. The earliest was taken in 1986, which is starting to make me feel quite old! Click on this link to have a look at the new design.
Posted Thursday, April 03, 2003 |
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| • First pictures from Dan's new camera...
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I've finally replaced my trusty old Canon EOS 10, which died in September after 13 years of good service. It's been strange to be without a 'proper' camera, and although Vanessa's Olympus Mu takes quite good pictures for a compact, it is not the same as using a decent SLR. I didn't have any legacy Canon hardware left over, so I was free to change systems if necessary - and in the end that is what I did. I picked up a Minolta Dynax 7 on Saturday, with a 24-105mm standard zoom and a 75-300mm telephoto lens. A very nice bit of kit indeed! Vanessa and I took it for a spin early on Monday morning, as the light was good. Here is one of the first photographs; more will follow, and I am about to revamp the design of Dan's Gallery in the next few weeks.
Springtime tree blossoms in Westgate park, Canterbury. |
Posted Tuesday, April 01, 2003 |
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| • Rafferty in the wars...
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It's been an interesting week. Rafferty was quite poorly with a nasty flu-like illness - it's the first time he's actually looked ill. Most of the time when he has had the odd bug he has smiled and laughed his way through it. This one seemed a bit more potent and the poor little chap was very listless and miserable for a few days. He's much better now though, and his sense of humour has returned. Just in time for him to fall over at nursery today and give himself a black eye! Oh well, what with boys being boys I doubt it will be his last! Otherwise all is well with us: my sister VIckie and her new boyfriend Richard visited on Saturday. I haven't seen her for nearly two years (while she was living in New Zealand and travelling) so it was good to catch up.
Posted Tuesday, April 01, 2003 |
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