Matt Revell came to stay with me in Swindon. We went to Stone Henge and other stone circles on the Saturday and up to Bletchley Park on the Sunday. Note the extra-close up shots of some of the stones taken with my zoom lens.

I’m back in Swindon after taking a well needed break from the daily grind by heading off to the East Coast for the Saturday and lunching with my family on the Sunday.

The weather was most pleasant on Saturday and the atmosphere in the marina was wonderfully peaceful compared with the hectic nature of my last couple of weeks at work. I spied a couple of fantastic photography subjects but unfortunately had neglected to bring my camera – I’ve made a note of them for next time.

As far as the family catch up goes, Hannah is settling in well at Law School and has already been able to explain some of the more interesting points with me which is great. The positive difference it makes in academia when you are truly enjoying what you have to study is immeasurable.

Walking just beyond the Swindon canal I noticed a whole lot of new and uncompleted roads that are inaccessible bu car. I hopped down off the elevated path and walked along them, snapping some phots as I went.

Having grown up in a town steeped in Roman history I was delighted to spy the name of my old street above a doorway while wandering round Swindon.

I decided to test out my new zoom lens by taking some late evening shots of the skies over Swindon as well as some photos of the wildlife in Verulamium park when I stayed with my family for the weekend

I’ve added a thin navigation bar to the top of my site. This is partly because it was suggested by a couple of people at WordCamp who thought it would make certain parts of my site more prominent but also because I soon intend to cut down on side bar clutter and in the process develop a more dynamic homepage with more of my latest updates right there at your fingertips.

Twitter, Facebook and other social networking mediums are becoming more widely used than ever so I hope to integrate more of my content out there with what I post here; there are a lot of disjointed updates from me at the moment. Photos too are a big part of my updates here and I’d like to make them much more visible, in addition I want to emphasise that I value input from forum users about my open source software so I will look into making some of those posts more available too. Watch this space!

We went to my cousin’s house in London for a medium size family gathering at which we took a group photo and had some fun in the garden

I just put on Chris Botti’s slowing down the world album and heard this song which I haven’t listened to in ages. Never have truer words been sung.

In the wee small hours of the morning
While the whole wide world is fast asleep
You lie awake and think about that girl
But never ever think of counting sheep

Now when your lonely heart has learned his lesson
You’d be her’s if only she would call
In the wee small hours of the morning
That’s the time you miss her most of all

Now when your lonely heart has learned his lesson
You’d be hers if only she would call
In the wee small hours of the morning
That’s the time you miss her most
For as now you miss her most
That’s the time you miss her most of all

While a very useful site for Leeds School of Computing students when I was engaged there, SoC Gossip has now fallen into a state where it is no longer updated and thus is of little or no use to current or even past students.

I and others enjoyed blogging about our time in the school on a dedicated site, especially the academic postings from our final year projects but now that we have left and are no longer actively contributing and no others have stepped up and asked if they can do so, I think the time has come to close the site to the public.

I of course extend my thanks to those who have contributed to the site in the past and would also like to offer any current student of the school the opportunity to take over the site if they wish to maintain a SoC blog – please get in touch with me.

If no one steps up to the plate in the next couple of weeks however, I will be closing the site and allowing the domain to lapse. This will prevent new students from finding the site and thinking it’s something that will be updated while they are studying at the school.

A couple of weeks ago, I took a trip to Cumbria to stay with Jill Amey for a couple of days and then afterwards headed slightly further north for the Solway Festival where I stayed with Sarann and enjoyed the sights and sounds for the remainder of the bank holiday weekend.

When I went off to university I all but lost touch with my school French teacher and good friend Jill Amey, but fortune allowed us to get back in touch via e-mail and led to an invite to go and stay for a few days at her new home in Cumbria. We spent some time discussing what had been going on at my old school after I left and also caught up on everything we’d respectively been doing since I left A level French class. In addition I was given a grand tour of the local area and took in some fantastic sights. It was certainly not hard to see how you can move to the country for work and then fall in love with the surroundings.

Solfest was spectacularly good fun as always and catching up with Sarann and her family at the same time was great. To say we got a little wet would be an understatement but the atmosphere and music were excellent and I certainly wouldn’t hesitate in going again next year, especially seeing as the eclectic nature of my last.fm list is more than just a little enhanced by my visits to the event!

A full and more comprehensive description of my trip is best done in photos and these have already been uploaded to my gallery. I’ve tried my best to capture the Cumbrian scenery but the photos really don’t do it justice – you should definitely spend a few days in the area yourself.