Reflection on a walk

The rain took a break for a few hours today, yay! I was able to get out for a walk and get some photos taken. The light is still not great for photography but I managed to get a few interesting shots. The shot above was taken while laying on what remained of the footpath and looking across the surface of the pond. There are a few other shots including a panorama of the flooded pond on Flickr.

Next week I hope to get out for more walks and possibly runs. I think I am going to have to ignore the weather if I am going to start getting fit.

View from Skye

Today has been another dark, wet and very windy day all over Scotland. In the last couple of months it seems as if there have only been a few days when it wasn't raining and raining hard at that. It gets quite depressing after a while so I like to go through my photographs and remember how nice it can be here when the weather is good.

The view above was constructed from three photographs. It was taken from a cliff view point north of Portree on Skye in February 2005. The water in the photo is the Sound of Rassay with the Isle of Rona in front of the mainland. I don't have a detailed map so I can't at the moment name the mountains but the area is Wester Ross.

Path to Temple Wood

Ballymeanoch_10.jpgOriginally uploaded by Darkest Before Dawn.

I have uploaded some more photos from my summer holiday in Argyll.

The photos in this set are of the Ballymeanoch Standing Stones and landscape in Kilmartin Glen, Argyll, Scotland.

I like this photo because it has a tranquil feeling for me.

I am Man...

... see me search pathetically for stock cubes!

Today I managed to get up before it got dark again, which is a major step forward. I needed a few things from the shops so instead of taking my car and assisting the destruction of the environment. I decided to have a walk as I am in desperate need of some exercise. So I walked to near by Super-Multi-Mega Store (SMMS) which destroys the environment.

On my way there I stopped by my local dealer for 50 grammes of extra hot dried chillies. It is good stuff, a few of them in a chili con carny and you can guarantee your head will sweat.

At the SMMS I got a packet of lentils and a packet of Scotch Broth mix as it is winter and it is time for soup making. At this point I remembered that I needed to buy some stock (bouillon) cubes. Now I usually expect to find stock cubes around where the jars of herbs and spices are or where the gravy granule's are kept but could I find them? Well no, as it happens.

So I start my search pattern, going up and down the rows until I reach the dairy section or the hard goods, nothing. Of course it had now become a 'thing' I must find them and I must do it without assistance mainly because I too scared to ask in case I am told "they are right behind you mate".

Passing the 'Fantastic Sale Offers' or as I would think it would be more honest to title 'Christmas Crap We Couldnae Shift', for the third time I noticed copies of Instant Confidence by Paul McKenna

Now some Instant Confidence is what I could use at this point and more especially when I get to the checkout and my IQ does it usual 100 point dip. However unlike the Super-Multi-Mega Book Shops that destroy the environment this sort of store is not happy about you sitting down in the aisle and reading books. From the infamous 'Duck a l'Orange Incident' I know they don't like you trying out their recipe books with produce from the shop unless you have actually bought the book and ingredients and taken them home first.

So without Mr McKenna's assistance I check throughly all the shelves around me several times and I am at least 50% confident that the stock cubes are not lying in wait to embarrass me and I ask a member of staff stocking a fridge where the stock cubes are. The answer was 'in the far corner of the shop above the freezers'. Of course I should have remembered that in shops with open top freezers the stock cube take up residence there.

Okay I am off to write to the Stock Cube manufactures to point out that their products are not actually cubes.

Finished tinkering…

This entry was originally published at Darkest Before Dawn

.. for now anyway

The two images in the header are now selected at random from a list, the same image cannot be displayed in the two positions. If anyone is interested in the code for this then comment and I will post it. The flickr image strip is now set to display squares as it is neater and it is using the same method as the header images to display either a random selection of images or the latest stream.

The menu buttons are now using a single file with the origin being moved on a:hover to achieve the mouse over effect. This prevents a flash of missing button when the user first hovers over the mouse and prevents the need for pre-loading of additional graphic files.

Kev

New Year, New Theme

This entry was originally published at Darkest Before Dawn

Hope your New Year is going will, mine was kind of quiet until 5:30 this morning when flat upstairs played Chas & Dave’s “Rabbit” at high volume while stomping about. It didn’t go on for long but I have been wide awake since then.

My new theme is based on the work I have done to construct Joomla! themes and only has a small section of code from my previous Jura theme. The 3 Column layout is based on one of the designs by Alex Robinson published under the Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication it is valid CSS and XHTML 1.1 I have tested it in FireFox and Safari but I have not had a chance to test the theme in IE. I will get this done later today, in the mean time if you spot any faults please comment here.

The theme is not quite finished yet, I want to add a way to display random images from a chosen set in the header and I want to add another one or two buttons to the header, when I remember what I had in mind!?

It has gone quiet upstairs now so I will try and grab some more sleep.