Category Archives: Blog

General thoughts on life, the universe and everything. Stuff that doesn’t fit in the other categories!

Top 10 (2008)

It’s that time of year where every magazine and website does a retrospective, regurgitating old material with no shame. I didn’t want to miss out this year. Digging into my Google Analytics logs I found the following…

Ten most read pages this year:

  1. Installing Oracle 10g XE on CentOS 4. This page was actually 35% more popular this year than last despite the ageing versions of both Linux and Oracle
  2. Sri Lanka. This has been one of my most popular pages for years, although it took a 50% dive in page impressions this year due to the loss of a single referrer
  3. Oracle on Linux Installation Howto
  4. Minolta Dual Scan II film scanner review. Another surprise given the age of the scanner and the rise of digital cameras
  5. Belkin WiFi (Skype) Phone review
  6. Photobook Group Test (Part 1)
  7. Printing-1 Photobook Review (Part 1)
  8. Photobook Group Test (Part 3)
  9. Sophia Smith
  10. Photobook Group Test (Part 4)

Somehow part two of my photobook group test slipped out of the top ten.

I immediately noticed that no post from this year made it into the list, so here’s the Top Ten posts from this year:

  1. YoPhoto Photobook Review (Part 1)
  2. YoPhoto Photobook Review (Part 2)
  3. Eight Best Computer Books
  4. Cycling from the Czech Republic to Germany
  5. Byline Bypass
  6. PhotoFriday: My Little Secret
  7. PhotoFriday: The Great Outdoors
  8. PhotoFriday: Autumn
  9. PhotoFriday: Disastrous
  10. PhotoFriday: Tools

A number of my favourite posts of the year didn’t make the popularity grade. I had a good smattering, with some decent IT articles (1 2), a large number about developing my iPhone application Yummy (1 2 3 4 5 6 7) and I was quite pleased with my movie poster edits (1 2).

Overall it was a busy year! Thanks for reading. I’m sure I’ll be back with more in 2009. Stay tuned.

The November Plan

It all started ten thirteen years ago. In November 1998 I went with a friend to Amsterdam, and now every November since I have spent at least a few days out of the country.

For the record, those trips were:

It never started as a challenge and you can’t deliberately start a tradition, but I’m keen to keep this one going for as long as I can. Even if it is a little silly.

Updated Dec 1, 2009: Vienna trip

Updated Nov 29, 2010: Den Haag trip

BBB: B Becomes British

B The Brit

Full news on her own website, but today B said her “Affirmation of allegiance” and gained British Nationality. She was a little unhappy about having to pledge allegiance to the Queen so I’ve made a minor edit to the original picture.

I commented that a lot of our government clearly have not had to make such a pledge themselves. If they too had to respect democracy and freedom I think we’d be hearing rather less about 42 days in gaol without trial and ID cards. (End of rant.)