Pauly's Soapbox

Turkey 2012 - we flew with Thomas Cook

Fri, 18 May 2012 06:49:19 GMT

Was a super early start as our flight was 7am or something? Maybe before. Anyway we ended up getting up at about 2am, to leave at 3am. We were going to try and transfer Harry to the car, but he woke up OK and was fine with it. Online check-in worked ok, so I had time to go in the pub at the airport. That's the best bit about holidays, going to the pub at stupid o'clock. I'm not a fan of flying, particularly not that early, but it went fairly smoothly, only a short delay. Harry was fine with it all, took the whole thing in his stride, we weren't sure how he'd be with an aeroplane. Only thing is, he fell asleep while we were taxiing, so missed take off.

The plane was a manky old crate, leg room was awful, and there were no TV screens. Man I hate flying at the best of times, this was a bit rubbish. Food on the plane was not that bad, I took a picture. I think Jim booked this as an extra, and at least it was vegan.

I tried to take a few pictures while we were flying, as visibility out of the window was great, and it looked as if the GPS in the camera was going to kick in, but they did not work out.

We landed safely.

You need a visa to get in to Turkey, it's just a case of queueing up and paying cash on arrival though.

Transfer to the hotel was a bit long, over an hour, and the driver seemed to get lost once, but was alright. Then this is where the previous blog post picks up...

Turkey 2012 - we stayed at Hotel Turquoise

Fri, 18 May 2012 06:39:11 GMT

We are just back from holiday (nearly a week now, where has my tan gone?) and it was smashing. We went to Side on the South coast of Turkey, ten days all inclusive at Hotel Turquoise. Transfer to the resort was not bad either, it was long (over an hour on a bus) but the driver only got lost once. Then in to our resort and a welcoming glass of champagne (or something like it - everything in Turkey seems to be a copy).

No wristbands for the all inclusiveness here, is that a sign of it being a particularly posh one? I like to think so. We tested it with a glass of wine at the bar right away and it works! Particularly handy to be able to pick up bottles of mineral water whenever you like, no having to cart a slab of them back from the shop every day or anything. Checked in, bags dropped off in room, and out the door to explore! Hmm, not quite, Clare wanted to unpack properly... Come on let's go!

The resort was great. Maybe slightly incongruous that it was a solid preformed massive block of luxury dumped on the coast with dust and nothingness to the rear and on in to "normal" Turkey, but that is the way of beach resorts like this I suppose. You couldn't build something this big in the middle of a village. Our rooms were in blocks nearest to the beach and pool, which were to one side of the resort. Not loud enough to notice any noise, or maybe I just slept well. Lots of different types of rooms available, we had two room family suites, but I think there were rooms and suites and maybe some little villas. There is one private house near to where we were, strange but lovely place to live. The resort was "deeper" than it is wide, so it'd take you longer to walk from the main gate down to the beach front than it would to take you to walk from side to side. I think. Can't really verify this by looking on a map, as it is mostly covered with trees. Some guests were delivered to their rooms by golf buggy. But not us. No we did not attempt to steal a golf buggy.

There's plenty to do at the resort, food is amazing (more later), lots of bars, lots of pools, lots and lots of staff to help you out. Not many English people, it's not in the Thomas Cook brochure for this year so maybe they're not marketing it to English any more? Lots of Swedish, Dutch, German, Russian, all sorts. There was karaoke one night, which I was not tempted but but it turns out I would clearly have aced. There was a Michael Jackson tribute show, am I making it sound tacky? It's not really... anyway the Michael Jackson show was postponed at the last minute as it had rained when they were meant to be setting up for it, so they replaced it with a big old quiz. OH YEAH, we won it! Prize was a bottle of wine, that'll come in handy on an all inclusive holiday then...

Anyway, smashing resort and I recommend it.

I just bought a Raspberry Pi

Thu, 17 May 2012 16:12:05 GMT

What's the betting it spends most of its live gathering dust on the desk, like my Arduino does..?

Due in 3 weeks...

The future of luggage

Wed, 16 May 2012 14:00:59 GMT

The future of luggage

I have seen the future of travel, it is suitcases / bags that have built in scales. For starters, weighing your travel bags is getting more important. Never would have occurred to me before (I never take much) but on this trip Clare wanted a spare kitchen sink (just in case) so we were quite heavily laden. Then because we were travelling with Thomas Cook and their luggage limit was a less than generous 15kg each, we struggled a bit. The suitcases we had borrowed weighed nearly that on their own, so here's my advice dump your samsonite suitcases now! It's going to become more and more important to have super lightweight travel bags.

Ah damnit I thought I had invented the self weighing suitcase while on holiday but there are loads some... hmm not as many as I thought, maybe this has got legs.

Don't carry one like this in your hand luggage though, Mother-in-law had hers confiscated at Turkish security (though they then relented and returned them. Something to do with the massive hook I suppose.

Turkey 2012 [img]

Wed, 16 May 2012 13:59:26 GMT

On our holiday to Side on the South coast of Turkey:

[*] We flew there

[*] We stayed at Hotel Turquoise

[*] We walked to some historic sites

[*] We ate a lot

[*] We did some sports

[*] We shopped

[*] We swam

[*] We read

[*] We even saw a film

I will be back to cover all these points in multiple boring posts later. Meanwhile, we have lovely pictures:

We're off to Edinburgh Fringe

Tue, 15 May 2012 12:02:26 GMT

Not been to Edinburgh Fringe / Edinburgh Festival before, it's a treat for my forthcoming 40th birthday, thank you the wife! It was going to be a surprise (sort of a surprise, I have been hinting I want to go for the past few couple of years) but as it looks like events are on sale already we needed to start picking some shows to go to. Is this right? Looks to me like A LOT is already on sale on edfringe.com, is there more to be announced? Clare keeps getting emails saying "It's due to be officially launched on the 1st of June" and so on. What is still to be announce? We have dived right in already and panick bought three shows that looked good, looked limited (ie only on one day that we could make), looked like they might sell out, were people we had not seen, and were people we really wanted to see... so where do we go next? Do we book tickets for everything in advance?

Amazingly, Stewart Lee is doing a show and we are probably not going to see him. Not amazing that he is doing a show, but amazing that he is my favourite comedian, Edinburgh would seem to be a natural place to see him, he fits in with our dates, and we are probably not going to go. He's doing a show that we have already seen this year (Carpet Remnant World) and there is too much else to choose from... Richard Herring's podcast show looks brilliant from the previews, I hope the lineup of guests is as good when it is in Edinburgh...

Comparing Titanium and PhoneGap

Tue, 15 May 2012 11:55:19 GMT

Useful article via @nilanp.

How do I get to picasa from google plus?

Tue, 15 May 2012 10:36:56 GMT

When someone adds a comment to a picture of mine, then the email takes me direct to that picture in the google plus - how can I get from there back to the original in picasaweb? For example my dad just added some comments with the address where this picture was taken, and so I want to edit the picture in picasaweb so I can put the correct location in. But I can't figure out how to do this. Any ideas? Is picasaweb on its way out?

Day off

Mon, 14 May 2012 18:08:44 GMT

I took an extra day's holiday today as we got back later than planned yesterday. Still got up early enough to go to work, earlier than usual actually, so got some good jobs done. First the lawn, I mowed the lawn for the first time ever. I had arranged with the neighbours to borrow their mower while they were away and take care of both of the front gardens, but in the end their holiday was shorter than ours so I pictured them seething that a) their mower was locked in my garage and b) the lawn was growing like crazy because of all the bad weather. So, I was out doing that before 9am, how manly.

Then also, good things achieved, I arranged quotes from a couple of builders to do a garage conversion, and contacted the council about change of use. This is quite a frightening thing actually, will be the biggest expense (other than buying the house) EVER! We've already had one builder round who has done this job for one of the neighbours. We need the space with a new baby on the way, so it's either convert the garage or buy a camper van and park it on the drive. We have a room for the new baby, but then we'd have no room for visitors, and who would not want to visit to see a new baby? Plus we need all the help that visiting grandparents can offer. Clare is not keen on the camper van idea, so we definitely have to do the garage conversion. And now it's underway.

Big job I really wanted to get done today was sorting all of the holiday photos and video. I have over three hundred, but DON'T PANIC I won't foist them all on you, lots of duplicates in there and just rubbish shots I took to remind myself of things. I've done maybe a quarter of them so far, I hope to have holiday pictures to share in the next couple of days...

What's your biggest holiday fear?

Mon, 14 May 2012 17:48:44 GMT

What do you mean you don't have holiday fears? I always have the same thoughts when I'm away on holiday, and it's these, in order of likeliness:

1. Someone will die

2. The house will be burgled while we're away

3. There will be an invasion of zombies

4. The house will burn down

I have these thoughts every day while I'm away, and for the full duration of the journey back to the house on the last day of the holiday. This time, somehow, one of these very nearly happened. When we got back (oh yeah, we have just been to Turkey, more later) there was a smell of gas - one of the rings was on. No idea how this happened, seems like we must have left it on the night before we went away. We were away for TEN DAYS? How did we manage this? And how did it not cause us a bigger problem? And how much is our gas bill going to be? We could have had bigger problems than a gas bill though I suppose.

So, holiday review or exciting news first?

Sun, 13 May 2012 21:54:39 GMT

OK, exciting news first, we're having another baby! We had the twelve week scan and all looks good. Due in November.

Right after that we went to Turkey for ten days, it was very nice. Write up and pictures and video to follow.

My hosting company are dumping me after nearly 15 years!

Wed, 2 May 2012 11:23:41 GMT

Dear Customer,

The UKShells shared hosting and Linux shell platform is being retired, and is no longer available for purchase. Existing customers will be able to continue their service for the pre-paid term but will not be able to renew any services as they expire.

We thank you for your custom over the years.

There's no need for me to be paying them quite so much money anyway, time to move everything to AWS or something instead I think!

doh my blog does not like json code as a subject line then (ROBOT BUTLER!)

Wed, 2 May 2012 08:50:00 GMT

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It may not look like much but this is a big step in my robot butler project! I connected the ethernet shield to the arduino and made it return some json that reports on the readings from the analog and digital input pins. 6 analog inputs, with no device connected so all responding nonsense unfortunately, and only one digital pin that (7) that is set to off. I've made good progress on the phone app too, I can change and save the config of the house, how many rooms, and what are the addresses of the devices in each room. Now I have the json coming from the arduino I just need to get the app requesting the json and reporting back, then make the phone send post / put requests too to change the state of the pins on the arduino.

The json is deliberately hard to read (lets call it terse), it's for a computer to read, not you.

Getting there!

Olympics opening gig at Hyde Park is now common knowledge

Tue, 1 May 2012 09:23:12 GMT

I knew about this gig in honour of my 40th birthday already (coincidentally the opening day of the 2012 London Olympics, but now you do to. Four bands, one for each home nation, Duran Duran for England, Snow Patrol for Northern Ireland, Stereophonics for Wales and Paolo Nutini for Scotland. If all goes according to plan we are going, tickets go on sale Friday.

My 40th birthday and Clare's birthday too...

Hmm is it legal to hashtag 2012 Olympics like that, or will the Olympics copyright police be after me now?

[tickets]Duran Duran[/tickets]

Flooding here in Portchester [img]

Sun, 29 Apr 2012 12:19:02 GMT

Thank You - The flooding has been reported.

'Track it' number: Your Track it number is - 111001070701

You can use this number to Track it online, and see the status of this problem.

What happens next?

What happens when you report a Highways Problem?

When you report the problem online, your report is recorded on our enquiry system and allocated to the Highways Engineer responsible for the area in question. A site visit may be required before taking further action.

Not just flooding, there is a big hole opening up in the road opposite mum and dad's house, look:

Oh yeah, we are in Portchester for the weekend. Sorry I did not have time to meet up.