A quick trip away

Thursday, 26 February, 2009 @ 11:40 PM

I'm off to Miami this weekend. Yay! It's my first trip off-island since I arrived back here in June, so I'm definitely looking forward to it. The plan is to head across the panhandle to a town called Naples for a couple of days, and hopefully take a quick look at the Everglades on the way there.

One minor downer about going away this weekend, is that the newly re-scheduled Art@Governors art exhibition happens to be on this Saturday. I was offered the opportunity to exhibit some of my photography there, and as it turns out, a fellow camera club member has offered to display some of my pics in my absence, so all is not lost.

Barkers by horseback

Thursday, 26 February, 2009 @ 7:40 AM

Last month, thanks to the generosity of a friend I had the opportunity to go horseback riding at Barkers, the national park located at the Northeast corner of West Bay. There are several outfits that offer horseback trips at various spots around the island, and I often see groups of people riding on the beach when I'm there windsurfing.

We rode with a guy called Paul, who trades as "Spirit of the West". His animals seemed well cared for, and the horse I was assigned was a fairly spirited but generally well behaved roan. I haven't been on horseback for quite a few years now, but it seemed to come back fairly quickly, and I was soon trotting and cantering along the beach without feeling too nervous about being dumped head-first in the sand!

After riding down the beach for half an hour or so, we stopped and unsaddled, then mounted up bareback and headed out into the small surf. I've never been swimming on horseback before, but it's a lot of fun! All told, a really good way to spend half a day on Cayman. Thanks Kelly! I didn't bring a camera along, so the pic is one I took a few weeks earlier at the same location.

Site diary

Saturday, 20 February, 2009 @ 11:45 PM

For a while now I've had the intention of giving the site a bit of a perk up. What I've had in mind is not so much a redesign as just a minor wax and polish – a few tweaks to neaten up the look and possibly improve usability. As a first step towards this goal, I've utilised a nifty little Javascript called Fancy Zoom. FZ causes a thumbnail image, when clicked, to smoothly zoom to the linked hi-res image in a floating window within the current browser window. Much more visually pleasing than simply popping open another browser window containing the linked pic.

Fancy Zoom is currently only active on this page. Please test it out, and let me know if it's not working for you for any reason. If I dont get too many complaints, I'll retrospectively roll it out across the rest of the site. Apologies in advance to John and all the other CSS purists out there :-)

Steve

Saturday, 14 February, 2009 @ 8:00 PM

Today marks my brother Steve's 32nd birthday. As always, a time of sadness and contemplation for me. It's still hard to believe he's gone.

The cephalopod mollusk of luxury

Sunday, 25 January, 2009 @5:50 PM

Two weeks back, Grand Cayman was honoured with a visit from Octopus, the 127m superyacht behemoth owned by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen. Seven decks, two helicopters, a basketball court, submarine, swimming pool and 60-man crew, this baby has it all. Octopus was the world's largest private yacht up until a couple of years ago, however according to Wikipedia it's been surpassed several times and is now down to number 8.

Registered right here in George Town, too.

Happy 25th birthday...

Saturday, 24 January, 2009 @ 8:00 PM

...to the world's best computing platform, the Macintosh! I propose a toast to the next 25 years bringing a continuing supply of innovation, elegance and user-friendliness to those of us who care about such things. In my life to date I've rarely had the pain of using Windows, and am quite happy to have never owned a PC. Thanks Apple for the easy ride!

"I will not be pushed, filed, stamped…"

Tuesday, 20 January, 2009 @ 10:25 PM

"…indexed, briefed, debriefed or numbered. My life is my own. I resign."

I was sad to hear that Danger Man Patrick McGoohan passed away last week, aged 80, after a brief illness. His most famous role, as No. 6 in The Prisoner, addressed issues that are still critically relevant today, almost half a century later, and was perhaps the most thought-provoking television series I've ever seen.

Interesting to read that, among other highlights in his long and distinguished career, he was considered for, but declined, the role of 007 in 1962s Dr. No.

I've added a couple of extra pics...

Wednesday, 14 January, 2009 @ 11:45 PM

... to last month's Christmas Lights posting. And here's a bonus one for your consideration :-)

This sad news item...

Tuesday, 13 January, 2009 @ 6:05 PM

... (link) is just a little too close to home. My sympathy goes out to the families of the two lads.

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