Holiday Hangover
Posted by stephen on Monday, 17th July, 2006 @ 13:54
I came back from my holiday just over a week ago feeling incredibly relaxed, more so than I've been in a very long time. And what's surprised me is just how long the feeling has lasted. It was great getting to know Matt's friends better and I'm very much looking forward to seeing everyone else's pictures. I seem to vaguely recall flash bulbs firing whilst I was very drunk and most likely pulling unbecoming faces.
It was definitely a good recharge, though I think another might be necessary come September/October. I'm currently deciding between Wales, Budapest and France. Much as I liked Budapest, I think I'd prefer another relaxing countryside type holiday next, so it's more likely going to be Wales to visit my aunt and uncle and the lovely countryside where they live, or off to south-west France.
I feel very drawn to France, mostly for the lifestyle. Everything less busy, the food and wine so cheap and produced locally and not sold by Tesco. A trip down into the little town everyday, a coffee and pain au chocolat in the caf?, on the pavement in the sun. Then pick up some fresh bread and cakes from the boulangarie. And looking at houses I could get something huge in a lovely little town near the coast for the price of my house in Bedford. But that's thinking forward a little further than a holiday! In the mean time, practising my French is working quite well, I don't feel like I'm translating to English in realtime any more, I'm simply associating the word with the article.
But I shouldn't get too carried away really, I've only ever been once, and that was a school day trip on a coach to one rather nice town and another rather more functional one, many years ago.
In the mean time I'm doing the best equivalent I can in the UK. I'm currently in Uxbridge with very little to do for a couple of hours, so I've popped into Weatherspoons and am partaking of their incredibly cheap coffee (69p for a cappuccino, bargain!). There's a 'The Cloud' wifi access point here, but I'm assuming that costs money. So instead I've locked on to another open network, albeit one lacking a DHCP server, but a quick guess of the IP range solved that. It's not quite the terrace of a caf? in Paris, but it'll do for now, and it certainly won't break the bank.
In other news I've wasted about 30 hours of my life over the last three days playing Civilization IV for Mac. Great game, totally recommended. Though it once again proves I'm a peace loving person, because I've invested loads in improving my empire's culture and haven't really engaged in any conquest. Not sure why I have so much trouble being nasty in computer games. It was the same in Black & White, I only ever managed to be good!
And now some work, I really should fix the Captcha verification on our client's site. Currently I'm just using a hard to scan image, but I saw a suggestion earlier for an even more foolproof method. Using the AmIHotOrNot API to determine if the user is human by making sure they identify the hotties, great idea!
Holiday
Posted by stephen on Tuesday, 11th July, 2006 @ 23:28
On Friday I returned from a week's holiday on the Greek island of Mykonos. I had a fantastic time and I expect I'll talk about it more soon. In mean time I'm a little short on words, so you can look at the pictures.
It was nice waking up to this view everyday...
