| Website Awards Galore in February! |
| The last month
has been an eventful one for this site - so far it has won fourteen
awards, some from highly rated awards programs. I'm pleased
to say that most of the submissions for review have resulted
in an award of some description. Many thanks to everyone who
reviewed my site, and for their kind words and advice on improvements.
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The Team Creations Silver award (reduced to fit this column).
See the awards
page for the rest. |
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The Believe to Achieve Silver Award, from Tiny Ray's excellent
website. |
| List of Awards for February: |
| Vicki's Place Webmaster Award,
Peter's Corner Silver Web Award, Sandpiper's Design Award, 42nd
Street Merit Award, Cristina's General Award, The Chilihouse
Jalapeno Award, Team Creations Star Site Silver Award, Bob's
Steel Website Award, Believe 2 Achieve Silver Award, The Critical
Mass Award, Globemaster Bronze Award, Cool Colors Award, Southwest
Web Design Award, Val's Bronze Award |
| Nathan's 31st birthday... |
| Congratulations to Nathan Holt on reaching
the grand old age of thirty-one. It's been hard work breathing
for that long, take it from me! We visited them in Coulsdon,
where Ruth cooked an excellent dinner (by herself with no help
at all from M&S) and vodka redbulls flowed freely. The Holts
are about to nip off to Malaysia for two weeks, but we're not
jealous... |
| Image Optimisation Program Complete. |
| I've been improving the JPEG compression
of the photographs and graphics on this site over the last few
weeks, to reduce download times. I've got compression
up to 35% with progressive encoding, and the average photograph
at less than 20k - any more and quality suffers too much!
Loading times are down by about 30-40% though... |
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Party in Brighton - from the left: Clare Billings, Nick
Sherwin, Hamid Yasdian-Tehrani, Tim Hucker, Ellie Chambers
and Mat Thomas at the front. The fact that Mat's head looks
enormous is purely an artefact of the camera, lens focal length
and light from Venus reflecting off nearby marsh gas... |
| Beers with Mat in Brighton... |
| On Saturday 24th February we had an excellent
evening in Brighton at Mat Thomas' new flat (actually he bought
it nearly eighteen months ago, but none of us had got round
to seeing it yet!). It turned into a bit of a Ferndale Road
reunion as Tim, Ellie, Hamid & Clare managed to come along
as well. As for Nick, he was nearly always at Ferndale (our
hall of residence in the last two years of medical school) so
he counts as an honorary member. |
| We started the evening at Cafe Rouge in
Brighton, and then moved on to the Fishbowl, a favourite bar
of Mat's, where many vodka redbulls were consumed. Then Tim
& Hamid decided to start buying rounds of shooters (which
tasted rather like cough syrup) as forfeits for a game of "twenty,
twenty-two" which most of us haven't played since medical
school. Mat suffered, as we stitched him up so that he lost
(and drank) four times in a row, ending the evening in pieces.
The excellent evening was finished off with a little drunken
Age of Empires... Many laughs all round - unfortunately I had
to be up at seven in the morning to go and zap tattoos in Croydon,
but that's another story. |
| Eddy Greene and his magic finger! |
|
Eddy Greene shows off his magic grouting finger "the high-tech
tool he's had since the day he was born". No comment to
that required, I think. |
| Vanessa's dad Eddy has been an absolute
star over the last few months. With the nipper on the way we
have been trying to get through all the DIY jobs we have been
putting off for ages (because soon we will have neither the
time nor the energy!) To help, Eddy, who is an ex-plumber by
trade, has completely revamped our bathroom - new bath, new
tiles, new carpet... and it looks fantastic. Vanessa and I would
like to say a very big thank you indeed! |
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| West Tytherley Gentlemens' Club AGM
on schedule. |
| Plan for the lad's weekend on the 20th April
are going well so far. At present we have eight members who
can definitely make it, with a few others checking their on-call
rotas, but very likely to come along. Members are listed below;
if you are listed in blue or red please let me know your plans
as soon as possible. |
| Confirmed
-
Craig Anderson
Dave Butler
Duncan Coles
Nathan Holt
Dan Horton-Szar
Ben Hunter
Nick Sherwin
Max Tomlinson
To Confirm -
Mat Thomas
Hamid Tehrani
Tim Hucker
Alex Marshall
To Reply -
Rich Taylor
James Coupe |
| The bad news is that Izzy won't be able
to attend this year as he is on a week of nights at work (that'll
teach him to do A&E!) and is unable to swap. There's always
next year Izzy - we'll save you some gin! I've found a few potential
cottages in the Hampshire area which I am looking at, and will
book this week. I may collar one or two members to help sort
out the Karting & Paintballing once the venue is confirmed.
Watch this space for more news... |
| Baby Update... |
| All is well as we reach the six month mark
- not long to go now and we are both getting very excited, and
stockpiling sleep. We've bought the pram, sorted out the nursery,
and Vanessa is laying in supplies of Johnsons baby lotions that
would put Mothercare to shame. |
|
Vanessa showing off her bump at 24 weeks. |
| The bump is growing rapidly now, and Vanessa
has had to start wearing her maternity tent to work (which does
not please her!). The nipper is probably going to be good at
football, judging by the amount of kicking it manages
to do! No cravings so far, except for feta cheese and alcohol,
which the poor girl has had to give up for the last six months. |
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