Time marches onward

Bah, I honestly don't know where the last few days have gone! It's been a busy one for me what with raiding and what with work actually expecting me to *gulp* work I've had very little time to find a minute to sit down and write.

Talking of raiding, last Thursday night meant a return to Ulduar for our first real session with XT-002 Deconstructor.

It's quite a tricky fight in many ways though not for me as I'm melee dps and my job is fairly easy - if I get either of the 'bomb' effects, run away from my group, if not, stand still and beat the living daylights out of XT. There are a number of other trickier jobs that need to be handled elsewhere involving off tanking, specific ranged dps burning down spawning mobs from different directions before reaching (and basically healing) the boss and as seems to be looking the norm these days, healers have to work their little socks off keeping us all up through the mass aoe damage that seems to be prevalent so far in the dungeon.

Anyhow, the long and short is that we wiped lots (including to a respawn of some trash mid-boss event, bah) but bit by bit we'd get a little closer, or a certain aspect a little more polished and then out of the blue all our moons aligned and the big tin can fell over and blessed us with loot, hurrah!

Unfortunately I have the memory of a tea-bag and by the time I remembered to take a screen shot half the raid had already run off to the next area - boo!

I'm fairly sure that both Razorscale and XT will still prove challenging to us when we return for this week's raid but regardless of that it feels mighty good getting 2 first kills under our belt on consecutive nights.

This Sunday past we did also manage to get a strong enough line up to go back for a rare 3rd progression raid where decided to go pay Ignis, the last boss of that portion of the dungeon a visit. We had in fact had a single try at him the same night we killed XT, getting him down to 65% so we were feeling quite upbeat about our chances. Unfortunately he seemed to have different ideas and for whatever reason we found him to be a lot tougher upon our return, largely revolving around premature main tank death.

None the less it did prove to be very educational and our last few attempts were getting him below 50% and this was when people were getting a bit weary, especially our healers. It was thought at the time that XT was a healer stress test but Ignis actually managed to be even more brutal. Lots of pan raid damage (though at least that was at controlled intervals and predictable), random single target damage requiring quick reflexes (when players are placed into his jiggling sporran, er, I mean his slagpot) and last but certainly not least there was the massive and unrelenting spike damage to the main tank.

It's a tough and demanding fight and one we're probably only half way through mastering but we've been doing a lot of brain storming since amongst the entire raid so hopefully next time we get back to him we can build on what we learned. Unfortunately he is also buried behind the most irritating trash - not so much difficult (though they certainly have the ability to wipe the raid), just annoying as hell. I really don't like them, grrr!

Side by side

A couple of weeks back I mentioned discovering AlphaInventions - a blogging directory that works in the manner of a slide show allowing you a few precious seconds to 'sell' your blog to an audience with all the POW! of a visual rather than a few lines of text you usually have to work with to catch a person's interest.

It's been an interesting time watching it and - by my standards anyhow - it's definitely upped the traffic to my site by a large degree. I can't make the claims a few others have made who reported thousands of hits but I've been getting anything between 100-400 unique visitors a day (depending how dedicated I am to keep re-entering my site into the reading cycle) which is significantly more than the 2-10 I got prior to that!

I've also found that - tool for my blog aside - I've been somewhat hypnotised by the slide show myself and I find myself occasionally watching other people's pages float by just in case something interesting catches my eye. I swear it's addictive.

Anyhow, it was during one of these 'whizzing of pages' that I happened to notice another blog comment about a site called Condron that did the exact same sort of thing. Rubbing my hands together in glee, the first thing I did was start throwing my blog in to both sites simultaneously and seeing how they performed.

So far I've had significantly more hits coming via AlphaInventions than Condron however to be fair up till now I'd not made mention of Condron and on their home page they do mention their crawler checks if people link back to them which may keep it in the cycle for longer presumably. Anyhow, we'll see if things improve with them now that I've linked back.

I'll be honest, despite decent throughput of hits I'm unconvinced by the actual quality. According to Statcounter most visitors don't stick around for more than a second or so which suggests it's just the auto-visit from the directory flashing up rather than a real person clicking through. I will persevere a bit longer while I compare the 2 directories but right now I'm not sure the effort (re-entering your address 3+ times a day) vs reward (finding a person who actually stopped to read) is worth it.

A close shave

From one world (Earth) to another (World of Warcraft).

Last night marked the beginning of a new raid week and a trip back to 25 man Ulduar. I wasn't originally down to raid myself but due to losing people with connection issues I did end up getting drafted for the final hour - and there I'd been looking forward to an early night too!

Earlier in the evening the group had successfully killed the Flame Leviathon again. Due to the ease of this fight last week we had decided to try him on one of his harder modes which involves leaving a tower up. We opted to leave up Storms and happily were still able to kill him on the first attempt, wee! The rewards aren't amazingly better (it's still a fairly easy encounter after all) but did give everyone an extra Badge of Conquest so all good really.

Next the group moved on to Razorscale once more. As you may recall from last week the angry proto-drake for some reason wasn't particularly fond of us trying to beat her over the head while in captivity and her response was swift...she kept killing us all (How rude!). After some tweaks to our positioning and a few days on our forums chewing over ways to maximise our dps we put all our brain storming in to action and began battle once more.

After a handful of attempts with the new tactics things steadily improved. There was a very promising 16% attempt however one of our dps had disconnected near the start so we'd actually got that far with only 24 people and the raid could smell that the kill was coming. It was at this point that I switched in for the person who kept disconnecting.

We had one more failed attempt but then things came together and down she went, though only 6 seconds before the enrage timer (Razor...close shave...geddit? Haha!). There were many excited shouts on Teamspeak though and finally vengeance was served for all the pain of the previous attempts. We still have to work on polishing the fight but now at least we're over the main hurdle and can kill her.


I usually forget to take screen shots and as we were eager to move on and see XT's new trash because they were supposedly the personification of evil (they're not) I had no opportunity to check the shot at the time and hence I didn't realise my User Interface was still showing, so sorry for all the mess around the edges. As you can see I also suck at taking them as while everything was obviously big on my monitor, it's teensy in the pic, doh!

Anyhow a good night all in all and tonight we go back to have some serious attempts on XT - had a brief try last night where we got her to 56% - a long way to go still but promising in light of us not having had much opportunity to explore the fight so far. Might poke Ignis too just to find out what he's like but will see.

Happy Earthday Mother Nature!

Earth Day is 'celebrated' a bit more in the US than it is over in the UK and Europe but regardless of that it does give me an excuse - compliments of the NASA website - to post a beautiful picture of this little old planet of ours. And I think you may be figuring out by now that I don't need much of an excuse to post a piccie!

It is of course all about reminding us about the precious and delicate balance of nature so I also thoroughly recommend checking out NASA's own Earth Day slide show tribute that shows some memorable shots of the Earth from space over the years (be sure to turn captions on too for explanations).

Looking down on this place we call home it's a rather sad to realise that the single most threatening thing to this little miracle in the universe is mankind.

Red sky at night...

Not much time to write today but after a gorgeous sunny day here I got to be thinking about warmer climates so I thought instead I'd post on old holiday snap.

When 'un-educated' people hear you talk about Walt Disney World (WDW) they are usually just thinking about the characters and the castle which in reality is basically just the Magic Kingdom park - WDW enthusiasts will tell you that there is much, much more to the destination than that!

An often overlooked pastime for even regular visitors though can be the beautiful resorts. I'm fortunate enough to be a DVC member which means I always get to stay on site, hurrah! This also means I get to experience things like this beautiful sunset - taken from the bridge in Old Key West resort.

The camera never lies...

Last weekend my poor little pocket Canon clicked it's last click and went to the great photolab in the sky. It had been acting a little moody recently anyhow...when I say moody I mean it would only take pictures sometimes unless I shook it first - violently - so can't say I was particularly surprised when it finally just gave up the fight. Guess was a loose contact or something inside.

Anyhow, it wasn't expensive enough to bother getting it repaired and it was way, way out of it's warranty so I did what any self respecting geeky wonk does. Remind herself that it's her birthday in a couple of weeks and decide it's the perfect opportunity to justify spoiling herself with a shiny present to herself.

My old camera was a fairly decent one for it's range but ultimately was just a regular point n click jobbie. After some thought, and due to the price of Digital SLR's dropping quite a lot since the last time I bought a camera I decided that this time I would take the plunge and upgrade to something that was still capable of all the point and clicky stuff, but also had a little bit more oompf in it should I want to mess about a bit more with shots.

So off I go and start my research.

First off, I want it to look 'normal' - I don't want it square as a brick or thin as a wafer and I don't secret compartments that pop out or be some crazy colour, I just want a camera that looks...like...a real....camera!

Next, I want something that is clever enough to take pretty pictures without me needing a degree first. It needs to auto focus and, well, do stuff, just like a normal point n click - but better.

Next, I don't mind laying out a bit of dough on it as long as I feel I'm getting value for money but that said, I don't need an all singing all dancing top of the range model. Just want something a little 'up' from the budget ones.

Anyhow, after a bit of pondering I think I'm down between 2 models of the same make. I say think because I'm infamous for making up mind on difficult decisions, go to make the purchase and walk away with the other choice instead after all, hehe. Hey! Woman's perogative ok? ;)


Basically my dilemma at the moment is between the Olympus E-420 and the E-520. - they are virtually the same model but the principal difference is the 420 is a bit smaller and lighter and the 520 is larger (which could theoretically make it more comfortable to hold) and has a built in image stabiliser - which sounds pretty good in my mind. Alas it's also close to a £100 (around $150 dollars, €130 euro's) more expensive to buy so begs the question, is the image stabiliser *that* good.

So if anyone has any experience of either of those camera's or has a hot recommendation of a entry level DSLR I'd love to hear from you about it!

Bah humbug!

Just a quick Ulduar update.

Unfortunately we didn't have enough healers last night to go back to Ulduar after all *sulks*

On the bright side we were still able to go smack Malygos, Sarth +1 & Archavon with some of our newer and undergeared members - poor guys, they don't have the gear for Ulduar so have been a bit abandoned this week while we all go play with the shiny new bosses of painful death, so glad we got to give them some fun still!

We also had some attempts at Emalon, the new boss in Wintergrasp next to Archavon. All I can say is owwie! We'd heard he was tougher than the easy-peasy Archavon but, but....OWWWIE! Ok, so we had a few attempts but didn't get him - he's a proper grown up boss with a large co-ordination and dps check and we just didn't have that on the night.

I'd love to get back there with a raid full of our main raiders to exact some revenge but not entirely sure when - as Horde need to own Wintergrasp for access it's always a bit tricky co-ordinating a raid there for us as we like to plan stuff in advance.

Ah well, you win some - you lose some. His days are numbered though.

Busy, busy, busy!

For someone who has the potential to talk alot, I've been pretty quiet the last couple of days. This has mainly been down to the previously mentioned 3.1 patch that was deployed to World of Warcraft on Wednesday.

Wednesday night was met with both excitement and trepidation - anyone who's ever logged in straight after a major patch will no doubt know what I mean! A big patch brings with it lots of new and shiny toys to play with but it also usually brings a bunch of technical problems along with it too.

Our 25 man raid group usually raids Wednesday and Thursday nights and so the decision was made to head straight to Ulduar. Even though we knew there would be some headaches we just felt it was exciting to be in a new raid at launch when nobody really knew any of the tactics for the fights. It's a situation that, as a relatively casual raid group, we've never been in before as we are usually trailing way behind the hardcore pioneers.

Off we went to the Flame Leviathon who is the gatekeeper boss. The encounter starts in vehicles via a gauntlet event so basically you just keep fighting and fighting and fighting till you get to the other end and the boss pops out! Obviously we had a secret little hope that we would be able to kill something that night but I don't think any of us were quite so optimistic to have predicted we would kill it on our first attempt, but we did yay. It was certainly a close call though with just a few people still alive at the end but who cares about the details, a kill is a kill, right?

Pleased as punch with ourselves we moved onwards and after hearing that Ignis was bugged (despite the US realms getting a hotfix EU hadn't, presumably because it would have meant taking us all offline during peak time) we decided to try our luck on a different boss, Razorscale, a captive protodrake.

Phase 1 involves spawns of iron dwarves attacking us in waves which need to be handled very carefully as they hurt. A lot. During these waves you get brief windows of opportunity to attack Razorscale (though she's subdued and can't fight back at this point) and attempt to get her to 50% health as quickly as possible. When you reach 50% phase 2 begins, the dwarves stop spawning and Razorscale breaks free from her bonds and is, presumably, pretty pissed with us because we've been trying to kill her when she was captured in chains and helpless. Can kinda see her point to be honest!

Anyhow, she had the last laugh as while we were improving, we were still a long way off downing her and the fiery drake lived to tell the tale. It was a long evening but everyone came away happy from our first trip to Ulduar. Even though we didn't get the kill we enjoyed learning a new fight in a new instance that was pretty challenging for us.

Thursday night being our 2nd raid night we headed straight back to Razorscale for more of the same. After a few wobbly initial attempts while we got warmed up we started to get into our stride and pick up where we'd left off the night before.

This time our attempts were lasting much longer and generally had a better feeling of control about them. We even managed to get her to the magical 50% mark but alas we were a bit slow in achieving that and as she has a 10 minute enrage timer it wasn't long before she went nuts and we all very quickly died. We had a few more attempts after that but we'd been there a while again and folks were starting to get a bit tired so a change is as good as a rest and we decided to finish the night with a couple of attempts at XT-002 Deconstructor so we could get a feel for what lay ahead for us.

XT is another mechanical boss like Leviathon, however instead of being a vehicle she's more like a robot. A very odd robot too as while we were watching her down the hallway she was doing what could only be described as aerobics. Clearly being locked up in a temple with an old evil god has some very odd side effects.

In a technical sense I think she is an easier fight than Razorscale, however she is more of a gear check - she has 25million health points and a 6 minute enrage timer so it's pretty tight with our level of gear. Of course it would also be too easy to just let us stand there and kill her so we have to deal with all sorts of other distractions like blowing up or having her helpers spawn and do annoying things like heal her. Still, of the 2 attempts we had it seemed pretty promising.

So after a 2nd night we walked away again without another kill but the atmosphere in the group was good and spirits were high - we're enjoying the difficulty and while we might not be the fastest, I feel we are getting there.

We normally only have 2 progression raids a week however due to all the enthusiasm for Ulduar we're actually going to go back again for a couple of hours tomorrow (Sunday). Not 100% sure but think we'll be poking XT again from the start of the raid while people were still fresh and get some solid attempts at her if nothing else that should give us a better idea of how within our reach she is with our gear. Wish us luck!

When dreams come true

Today on my guild forums, between the excited chatter about the upcoming patch and the trauma's of actually getting the thing downloaded there was also an 'off topic' (that is to say, had nothing to do with Warcraft) post that caught my eye. I'm not usually one to get caught up in the hype and instant gratification of internet fads, especially 'entertainment' ones, but sometimes, just sometimes you get swept up by something that's just a little bit special and it's little wonder that this one seems to be making it's way around the globe.

In the UK we have a tv programme called Britain's Got Talent - and it's exactly what it says on the tin, a televised talent show for the man (or woman) on the street. I don't ever watch it myself, while I'm sure there are a reasonable amount of decent, maybe even good acts that appear on it to my mind it's just 'car crash tv' - people don't watch it for the good, they're there for the toe curlingly, cringeworthy, embarassing bad acts. I've never been a big fan of things that are there just to make fun of people, even if they do set themselves up for it.

So this weekend Susan Boyle, a middle aged, slightly quirky, 'plain' woman from Scotland was on the show to sing - not your normal run of the mill performer by any stretch of the imagination. The car crash watchers were on the edge of their seats in anticipation of disaster.

At this point it's not really worth me going in to how it went as the video tells the story by itself. It's around 7 minutes long but trust me, it's well worth watching it (more than 5 million viewers so far agree - that may be the reason why YouTube won't let me embed the video).

Susan Boyle Sings on YouTube

I recommend not reading any further until after you've watched the video.



**************************



I've watched this so many times now. I just can't help myself! She is judged for her age and her appearance as soon as she walks on stage and she stands tall when the audience are openly snickering at her when she says she would like to be like Elaine Paige ...and then she sings. In 3 1/2 minutes she goes from sneer worthy joke to worshipped heroine - it's a transformation nothing short of mesmerising. The dropping jaws - totally priceless.

Now without doubt she has a wonderful voice, especially taking into account that she's untrained but is that really the only reason this video is affecting so many people and taking the internet by storm? Personally I don't think so. It's way beyond being able to sing and was before she finished the first line.

It's because she breaks every stereotype in the book - she's a normal woman who's not thin, or young or pumped full of silicone, yet hidden beneath the surface there's pure magic. It's the quintessential fairytale come true. The Ugly Duckling who bursts into song. The ultimate Hollywood feel good movie. The daydream where after years and years the world suddenly sits up and says 'yes, you are amazing!' and isn't that something we all secretly want?

Except it's not a movie and it's not a daydream, it's real - and that's why it leaves you feeling light hearted, or with goosebumps, inspired, or perhaps even with a little lump in the throat - hell, maybe all of those.

Good luck with the competition Susan, in all honesty though you're already a winner.

Now if you folks will all excuse me I have an appointment with some more goosepimples.

'Twas the night before Ulduar

At long last the much anticipated patch 3.1 for World of Warcraft is going live *geeky cheer*

The US received their version this morning though seem to be having some teething problems and as I write the extended realm maintenance has been further extended by 3 hours. People are also reporting issues downloading and applying the patch to the game in the meantime so kinda a double whammy of problems.

This is not entirely surprising of course as the patch in total comes in close to 1gb of data which I'm told makes it the biggest patch bar expansions in the game yet. Thankfully Blizzard also gave us the option of laying our grubby little hands on some of that data early via the background downloader a few weeks back so most folks will probably only have to download the last couple of hundred mb now.

The US and the EU divisions of Blizzard/Warcraft are handled independently of each other. Normally this makes no difference to day to day playing of the game but one time we do see this is during patch day. Due to time differences the US receive their patch Tuesday afternoon/evening (our time) whereas EU realms don't go offline until around 8-10 hours later.

Some might find this a reason to complain about poor European customer service however I consider it a blessing at times like this. The US gets the patch first - and all it's associated meltdowns, most of which are usually fixed by the time it comes to our turn to be patched. What's not to like about someone else being the guinea pig?!

Anyhow, like many guilds we plan to head straight into the new, big and shiny raid dungeon Ulduar as soon as we can tomorrow night. Patching problems, broken add ons, hardly any known tactics and Ulduar itself will probably be full of lag..and I can't wait!

The final leg

Now then, where was I? Oh yes that's right, if you've read part 1 and part 2 of my little journey through the Panama Canal then you'll know I'd just reached the 2nd lock (Pedro Miguel).

With that cleared we are in no time sailing under the Centennial Bridge and making our first real headway inland via the Rio Chagres towards Lake Gatún and starting to see the rainforest close in on us.




The river is also starting widen as we approach the lake, revealing lots of interesting (and remote) little islands - I have no idea if someone actually lives in that little building but if they do, they're quite the hermit!


Kinda handy this but if you were feeling a little bit worn out and wanted to go back to your cabin to cool down and rest your feet it fortunately didn't mean you had to miss out on the action. The whole journey had a live camera feed from the bow showing our progress. And yes, I really am that sad that I took a picture of my tv screen, haha! That's the crew area by the way if you were wondering why it's so empty of people and the pool so teensy.


Blue sky at last, yay! Getting quite late in the afternoon now though and our journey is nearly over. That's the top of the Gatun Dam and we are just approaching our final barrier to the Atlantic coast now - Gatun Lock. Unfortunately we also reach a little bit of a bottleneck and are held for quite a while while waiting for other ships ahead of us to still pass through.


Oh howdy neighbour, haven't we met somewhere before? Proof that we're running to a strict schedule - after all those miles traveled we are still side by side with the same ship we started the day with.


As you may have noticed by now, the traffic in the canal is almost exclusively cargo ships so as a cruise ship we were turning quite a few heads from both other ships and the Canal workers as we traveled - we waved at a lot of people that day as we passed which was a lot of fun so thanks guys, you helped make the trip even more memorable for us!


The little trains are once again doing their thing as we go through the first part of the lock - so close now!


Been a long old day and dusk quickly moves in as we traverse the last level of Gatún Lock - this is finally it, at the end of this we've arrived at our destination. Unfortunately the pictures I take after this are a bit blurry due to poor light and me not having a great camera.

Exhausted, happy and with many memories of a not-so-ordinary journey I slept well that night...

If you managed to stick with me for this long, thanks for not nodding off half way too!

Lock, stock...

Ok, part 2 coming up of my little adventure! If you missed it, part 1 is here.

Finally we start our approach to the Miraflores, the first of the 3 locks that make up the Panama Canal.


Technically there are 2 side by side. Later in the day one of these locks starts taking the ships that have entered via the Atlantic but for now we have both dedicated to 'our' direction because it's still so early and no ships from the other side have reached them yet.

As you might also have noticed the locks are quite long and so not only do you go up or down but you also have to travel along them too. Both the locks and the ships are vulnerable to damage if either collide so the ships don't move under their own power but are rather pulled along by little trains along the lock-side.


Here are our 'little helpers'. The lock gates are still quite a long way ahead at this point however they take no chances and we are under their full control now with both the pilot on board and the trains to our side.



Breath in! This pic is taken looking down from deck 5, the lowest open air deck on board so yes, we're quite close to the lockside and no, that's not an optical illusion - there really is only a teensy gap between the ship and a wall of concrete.


Just in case people forget which way they are going I guess, haha!


Near the end (or the beginning I guess if coming from the opposite direction) of the lock there is a tiny building you pass. This is the only concession they seem to make to the significance and history of this tiny gateway leading to the other side of the world.


And then suddenly we're coming to the end and are all the higher for it. But the action's not over quite yet as no sooner are we out of one than we are approaching the next.


This lock seems a bit smaller or perhaps just now that we've seen one before it doesn't seem such a big deal but it felt a little easier to negotiate and we pop right in.


Anyhow, that's all again for now. Final installment where we sail through the lake, past rainforest and the last lock tomorrow - the sun even sneaks out at one point too!

The chicken or the egg?

Easter is celebrated in different ways depending on your country (and how religious you are) but commercially it's known in the US or many parts of europe for the easter bunny or the easter chick. In the UK however the chocolate egg is what it's all about.

Major UK brand Cadbury claim to make approximately 40 million chocolate eggs a year which is still only in the region of 50% of the UK market.

That's a lot of chocolate! Obviously that makes it my morale duty to eat a Flake egg later on today...well would be rude not to wouldn't it?

Happy Easter everyone :)

I saw 3 ships...

As I mentioned previously I got a little nostalgic about my holiday from a few years back when talking about Disney Cruise Line moving the Disney Wonder permanently to sail from LA on the west coast.

I duly pulled out my pictures yesterday with a view to posting a couple of them here only to get even more nostalgic and I spent a good hour or more just sitting here looking through them all - and trust me, I took a lot that day!

So now I've decided I can't just throw up a couple of piccies and say 'look at these', it was way too exciting to be glossed over like that. I'll now be posting the entire event and give it some commentary too. I really think I'll have to do this over a couple of days though otherwise it'll take forever to plough through and load.

I'll set the scene and start with a picture of the Disney Magic (though this one wasn't taken when embarking but from a different cruise) which was to be my home for the next 14 days - I know...poor me, huh?





The itinerary involved several stops along the way on both coasts but the highlight of the cruise was the one place where we weren't actually stopping at but simply passing through - the famous Panama Canal.

That said we did have a little extra unscheduled 'excitement' too as we also managed to have not 1 but 2 tropical storms/hurricanes to contend with (one on each side), the first being Tropical Storm Irwin which we got directly caught up in and gave us some very choppy waves indeed. The 2nd of which you can probably guess if you read the link about Irwin, there was a lot of speculation at one point about whether Hurricane Katrina would be a threat for us when we emerged the other side of the canal. Fortunately (for us at least) she moved north towards New Orleans and went on to become one of the most infamous and deadly hurricanes to have ever hit the United States.

The big day itself arrived and around 6.30am or so I headed up on deck to see us begin our journey - as you can see though, I was very far from alone!



We had been anchored overnight just off the coast from the entrance where we re-fuelled and so that there would be no risk of us being late and missing our slot. The Panama Canal is insanely busy and just like an airport with it's runways we had a strict schedule for moving through each lock.

The day itself was pretty cloudy which initially was disappointing because obviously I wanted to take lots of pretty pictures! However this actually ended up being a blessing as the day turned out to be extremely hot and humid so I shudder to think how uncomfortable it would have been with the sun blazing down on top of that. Pretty sure I wouldn't have been able to stay out on deck and see as much of the action as I did otherwise.


So off we went!


This is the Bridge of the Americas and is basically the entrance to the Panama Canal from the Pacific side - note that I've now stopped saying west coast now. At this point our journey from coast to coast has taken a quirky little twist due to the geography of the region and because of what I will now very technically describe as 'the bendy bit' in Central America it actually meant our journey from the Pacific Ocean begins in the South East and moves North West to the Atlantic.




Here's the bridge again but looking backwards along the ship after we've passed by. If you look carefully in the background you can see the line of cargo ships all queueing up behind ready to head through as well. See? I told you it was busy!




This is our 'pilot' arriving. Negotiating through the locks is a very delicate business and so all the ships have to basically hand over navigation to an employee of the canal ensuring that everyone moves safely - and just as importantly - swiftly through each lock. Even the smallest delay could cause a massive tail back for all the ships waiting behind.

I'll stop at this point as we're about to reach the first lock and that means lots more piccies. Will post more soon!

Keeping it simple

Today I found a rather interesting and unique blogging tool that I thought was worth a special mention all to itself.

Often the most simple ideas are the most brilliant ones and I think AlphaInventions is one of those ideas.

What does it do? Well remember, I said it was simple....every time you make a new post to your blog it can pick it up and then feed it into it's own directory, and here's the brilliant bit...that directory is 100% visual and it basically makes your blog flash up on screen for a few seconds as a sort of snapshot - think of the whole site as something of a Blogging slide show!

This also happens in real time so for bloggers who are looking for that little cherry on top of your proverbial blog cake then look no further. This tool means that readers have the opportunity to see your updated post minutes after you've published it and if they like what they see and leave a comment you'll likely still be around to respond. How about that for instant communication? Not to mention some personal gratification!

Obviously another plus to this method is that your blog may catch someone's eye who otherwise might not have found you with a traditional blog search engine which basically throws up a huge list of weblinks and a brief synopsis which isn't the easiest way to set yourself out from the crowd.

I'm really impressed with the whole concept of this and plan to try it out for myself right now. Will keep you posted if I feel it's effective at raising my profile with a suitable audience or whether I just get end up with a million comments offering me viagra ;)

East meets west

A little bit late with this news, but last week Disney Cruise Line announced that they plan to relocate one of their cruise ships - the Disney Wonder - permanently (well, for as long as the contract lasts at any rate) from Port Canaveral in Florida to the Port of Los Angeles on the west coast in 2011.

This is something that has been on the cards for a while now and is the direct result of 2 things. First is that Disney Cruise Line (DCL) has previously tested the waters (haha, geddit?) with 2 summer seasons in 2005 & 2008 previously and they proved extremely popular. Second is that DCL have contracted two further ships called The Disney Dream and the Disney Fantasy to be built to join their existing fleet of 2 (the Disney Magic being their other currently existing ship) which not only gives them a lot more flexibility to offer a larger variety of itineraries but also the 'problem' of where to actually park all the beasts!

It's very exciting news, not least because it means there will be another relocation cruise taking the ship through the Panama Canal.

I was lucky enough to experience one of these relocation cruises during the 2005 stint with the Disney Magic and I can't even begin to describe what a truly amazing time I had. Not only does DCL provide a fantastic time on any one of their cruises (I've been on several and they've all been an absolute blast) but our day negotiating the Panama Canal itself is something that I will never forget - there really is nothing quite like it!

For a start, it does pretty much take a full day to negotiate. I was up at something like 6am to be awake for our entry into the start of the canal from where we were anchored a little off the coast the previous night and we cleared the last lock around dusk.

Secondly, 'canal' is something of a loose term. It's actually a number of locks at either end with a very large lake framed with rain forest in the middle. The locks may be slow to get through (and snug, oh so very, very snug - we literally had barely a couple of inches to spare either side) but the waterway that connects them was far from insignificant yet I've noticed that people almost forget to mention that bit!

DCL provides a top class cruising experience but alas is not known for being friendly on the bank balance. My Panama cruise was no exception but it was one of those things I justified at the time as my 'trip of a lifetime' however I must admit, with 2 years to save for it I now have a little voice trying to tempt me in to repeating it.

Can I afford it? I don't know. Would it be worth it? Oh yes, every single last penny.

I'm feeling very nostalgic now. Expect some pictures of my Panama cruise over the weekend!

There's no place like home

Clear blue skies. Riverside views. Big palm trees. Obviously it's tropical....Devon! This was the view from my verandah where I sat and woke up to a nice cup of tea in the Autumn sunshine - and they say it always rains in Britain, pfft!

Yes, the Devon Riviera lived up to it's name late last September when I went on a credit crunch style vacation and stayed in the good old UK for a week of rest, relaxation and self catering in a little holiday chalet in village called Shaldon near Teignmouth.



It's so easy to forget just how beautiful our little island is and having gone abroad for the majority of my holidays for the previous few years it was a refreshing change of scene for me and a well needed reminder that there are some just wonderful places to visit sitting right under my nose.

There are many parts of the UK I love to visit, but I've always had a fondness for the West Country (both Devon and Cornwall) and if ever I get to have a quiet little cottage to retire many years from now in I have a sneaky suspicion that I might end up in that direction.



With it's gentler climate, rugged coastline, beautiful moors, picture postcard villages with little rivers running through them - such as Polperro in the pictures directly above and below - and a colourful history (the area is well known for it's smuggling and wrecking back in the days and was the inspiration for the classic book and film Jamaica Inn) it has a charm like no other.



These were just a few of my snapshots from my trip, I hope you liked and if you ever get the chance to head down that way I can heartily recommend it!

It's good to talk

During my general blog wanderings I found a site yesterday that caught my eye but not for the reason I expected. I was originally looking at Warcraft blogs when I spotted one called girliegeek "For all your girlie geeky needs" - well being female, a gamer and just a wee bit geeky myself I headed on in to see what I could find!

Reading her latest entry "Commenting for all of us" I found not a gaming or geeky topic but a rather philosophical post about not just the urge to blog but the (kinda) secret desire bloggers have to want someone to not just read what you write but to interact and comment about it too.

This really got me thinking. My own little blog is not even a week old and in my very first entry I made reference to the fact that the chances are that no one would even know I existed and at that time I honestly didn't care. And yet...

I had to acknowledge, it wasn't long before the old brain had started thinking actually, yes, it might be quite nice to have someone pop by for a read - just so I didn't feel like a complete lunatic babbling away to myself! So a day or two after my first post I set about registering at blogcatalog and Technorati just to get me 'out there' and even though it wasn't much I knew I now had a slim chance of visitor - I even added a stat counter to my page...well, nothing wrong with a little optimism, right?

As I say, I then found girliegeek's blog and it did make me take pause for a moment and think about it all. She makes the comment that many bloggers are in their own way vain which I was quite dismissive about..me? Vain? Never! I don't really care if anyone reads my silly prattle.

And then it happened.

I woke up this morning and to my surprise I found the holy grail, the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, the winning lottery ticket...yes, you guessed it, someone had left me my very first comment!

So hurrah to my new blog buddy at Gardening for Turtles for making my day (that was SO not an excuse to mention that name again...honest...no really...hey, don't look at me like that!) infact I was so excited that it's actually a teensy bit embarrassing to admit, hehe. Yet with that also came the full realisation that obviously I did care that someone had read my words and responded which then meant I had to admit that maybe I was just a teensy bit vain too - but boy did it feel good.

So from now on I've decided, whenever I see a blog that I like I am going to make that little bit of extra effort to post a comment rather than be lazy and just read them. Who knows, maybe they'll get a little happy thrill from it like I did which makes it kinda cool for both of us in my book.

Time to pay girliegeek a visit methinks.

A question of taste

So as I mentioned yesterday, one of my bigger interests is World of Warcraft.

I play an Undead Rogue on the EU servers, am a guild master of a decently sized guild that's existed virtually since game launch and am a co-raid leader of fairly casual 25 man raid group who are making reasonable progress.

Wrath of the Lich King's new raiding philosophy really suits a group like ours down to the ground as our members are generally older and have work and families to juggle along with their game time and so far we've killed everything bar Sartharion +3 Drakes which we've yet to attempt.

However that's not what I want to talk about now as really today I just wanted a reason to mention the fact that I am horde. Yesterday I found a really cute thing during my online adventures over at Cupcakes Take the Cake - and a double treat for me as not only is it WoW connected, but also ties in with one of my other hobbies, baking.

I'll definitely be having a go at making these myself if I get the chance for the next guild meet I am able to attend, I'm sure they'd go down a storm.

In the meantime it does give me an excuse to post a delicious looking picture of some food - nice job Snack or Die who created the tutorial, I must say you have excellent taste when choosing your faction!



For the Horde! *noms*

Feeding the obsession

Having hinted at my wonk tendencies with the birth of my blog already you might wonder what else lies ahead for the poor person who takes a wrong turn and ends up in my cyber-psyche.

When bouncing around looking at other people's blogs I noticed the majority of them were 'specialist' - that is to say they focus on one topic. Be it celebrity gossip, to money making to Gardening with Turtles (don't worry, no turtles were injured in the making of this blog, they are merely innocent residents and not actually used as garden tools), each blog had a clear cut topic they wanted to talk about.

Nyeah, that's not really me though. For a start, I have more than one obsession - how could I possibly only write about one and not another? It's like asking a parent to choose their favourite child. I could always start a separate blog for each pet subject but....why? That just seems like extra work to me (and I'm a slacker remember) besides, this is my corner of the internet so I can play in it how I like!

So it's my intention for Land of Wonk to be largely an unfettered 'General Interest' blog where I am free to talk about whatever I fancy, however it goes without saying that my fondest obsessions will be a major recurring theme. If you're interested in The World of Warcraft aka WoW, Walt Disney World in Florida or Disney in general, London & Great Britain or yummy food (particularly baking) then you should find something here at some point that will be of interest to you. If not then I still plan to intersperse other things to talk about too - after all it's really not every day you can find an excuse to talk about Gardening with Turtles is it?

Blog-tastic!

Being new to the blogging world I also decided that it might be a wise move to check out the competition for hints and tips. What I found was a mind-boggling array of blogs covering just about anything you can think of. Fortunately there are also a number of directories where you can hunt for blogs of your chosen subject. Phew.

For a start Google has their own dedicated blog search engine currently in beta. Not only are Google kings of searching the internet, they also have the advantage of auto-listing bloggers from their own services (blogger.com and blogspot.com) without the need to wait for their crawlers to find the sites first.

Then you have Technorati who lay claim to being the leading blog search engine with over 1.5 million blog posts in their index. It sounds impressive but due to so many entries and their rating system it basically means any search you perform will give you pages and pages of corporate sites at the top. This is all well and good but to me it's the smaller, personal sites that usually hold the charm. You might have to sort through a lot of chaff to find the wheat, but when you find a good one it's worth it.

Offering a broader package is blogcatalog who along with their search tools also have an active community with groups and discussions where you can chat with your fellow bloggers. The discussions also seem to be actively moderated by the site - this is a very good thing and a big plus in it's favour! A well-polished site and it's definitely one that I can see myself re-visiting a lot.

Bloghub also offers forums for bloggers to talk to each other in, however I found it harder to navigate and it's not exactly easy on the eyes (the whole thing is very poorly designed to my mind). Claiming more than 35k+ members and 72K+ blogs it has potential to develop further but really, I'm not kidding - they need to find themselves a web designer with a clue.

With these 4 blog search engines in your bookmarks you're sure to find something on the subject you're looking for but I'm sure there must be others. Do you have a must-visit blog resource to share?

Who or what is (a) Wonk?

The dictionary I have here at the moment says wonk is a studious or hardworking person : a person who takes an excessive interest in minor details of political policy.

Umm, ok, well neither of those describe me!

For a start I'm a bit of a slacker in real life, I'll always take the easy route if I can. As for an excessive interest in political policy...well I might take a cursory interest during the government elections but once that's over with you can be guaranteed that if the topic comes up again before the end of the election cycle then it'll be accompanied by a very glazed look from me. Nuh huh, I don't do politics.

Which begs the question then, why on earth is my site called Wonk?

Well the particular dictionary I looked in 5+ years ago when I bought my domain name instead described it as a person who could have a single minded (excessive) interest in any subject and this is much more like me.

Take for example this very blog. I decided on April 1st that I would create it and poked my local domain host where I found that they did indeed have their own blogging facility. I quickly threw up my first entry (identical to the one below this one now) using the limited tools at hand. However, by that point blog-mania had already taken over, where as in the morning it had merely been an idle thought that crossed my mind to try, by the afternoon it had become nothing short of major military mission.

I didn't like the old blog as it forced me to have a google search box on it (nothing against google and in fact this new blog is driven by their software), if there are going to be any adverts, logo's or branding on my blog then they're going to be there by my choice not someone else’s. It also had my domain company's name appear in my page header. I don't mind given credit where it's due but I disliked the 'in your face' approach this had.

So after some research I ended up at blogger.com where I was basically given free rein to have my page look however I wanted on my own web address - and this is where I start to qualify for my wonk status. With total design control brings....templates.

For those that don't know there are hundreds upon hundreds of free templates for your blog to make it look funky without having to do the design or html work yourself. I know this because I think I've looked at every single one - twice! When you find one you like, upload it, and (hopefully) all the features it has will work with your blog engine.

Personally I wanted to use a template called Aspire but the 'Post comment' box which was meant to appear at the bottom of each entry failed to materialise (*sulks*). This meant I either had to change template, switch to having comments in a pop-up window, or learn XML. Wonk or not I wasn't quite prepared to learn a new language and as the pop-up looked horrible I reluctantly resorted to an alternative. This took me 2 days of 'research'.

So if ever you should wonder if you are a wonk, ask yourself a question. Would you spend 2 days looking for a template....only for the end result to basically be plain black page?

And who knows, maybe now that I have I can actually write something in the blog that took me so long to get 'just right'.

The voices in my head - aka jumping on the band wagon

So. Here I am.

I've seen and read other people's blogs. I've heard the hype. I've wondered more than once - why do people have blogs when in reality most of the world carries on blissfully unaware they exist?

Personally I think the answer is that it's about the chance (even if the reality never manifests) to tell people about all those constantly random little thoughts that fly through your mind but ordinarily you'd sound a little nuts just blurting out loud to the guy sitting next to you on the bus.

And so I finally succumbed to the blog phenomenon, I jumped on that bandwagon and yes, my little inner voice now has it's very own soap box to stand on and talk to...well, the blissfully unaware of me world.

Today The Land of Wonk was born, time will tell whether writing a blog will be a short lived novelty or a long term hobby but hopefully will be fun finding out.