Over the last few days I had been adding a few things to the Web site.

The biggest addition is the new “Kids songs” page. Filled with loads of tunes to really drive you around the bend while your kids have a whale of a time. Look on the Side bar under the Pages heading and click the link. Full of goodies from Barney and friends to Old McDonald and other favourites.

Also, In the Side bar I have added a weather section and in the links catergory, I have added two new links, the first is for Wilkinson’s World. A new website which my Mom and Step Dad run. If you are into Birding or Camping and travelling this site is a must see. Another new link is one we find useful at work. It is the US Geological Survey website, linking specifically to the Earthquake page. It shows all Earthquake activity around the world, very useful when you want to see when fibre optic cables are going to go down.

And last but certainly not least is that the Photo Albums have also been updated. Loads more pictures of the Kids and other day to day going’s on.

Pete

A year ago today, I started monitoring how many people actually visit my family site.  For those of you that noticed, on the right hand side of the page is a little picture of the world with a few red dots in it.  That tells me where you are all from.  So over the past year, I think it was from the 12th of June 2006 to the 17th of June 2007 I had 5627 hits on my page.  Not a staggering figure by any means but more people than I know socially. 

This coming year we are hoping to beat that.  Hopefully the up coming birth of Little Project X will help that number.

Anyway that is pretty much all I have for you today, Lauren has a story about her weekend, pop stars and Kyra getting down.  More to follow

Cheers

Pete

Tonight we had a Texas hold’em game onboard…   and I won!!!!  (to the un-initiated that is Poker)  Wa hey Pete is really stoked. 

It was a 5 dollar buy in and we were each given chips (well, actually they were tokens from the board game Risk) worth 500 pieces.  4 players so the pot was $20.  I played a slow game initially whilst sizing up the opposition, loosing a large portion of my stack quite early on in the game but then I had a come back.  Ah… I could hear the angels singing Handel’s Messiah and everything.  A truly wonderful night!!!

Pete 

Peteandlauren.com now has a Favicon.  Pronounced Fav-eye-con.  It is a small picture icon in the address bar before my URL.  On browsers like Firefox or IE 7 for example it will appear on the tab as well.

I used a site called Dynamic Drive – Favicon generator.   http://tools.dynamicdrive.com/favicon/

You upload which ever picture you want to use.  The site then converts it into a 16×16 .ico file.  Then there is a bit of code which you receive that needs to be pasted into the website code.  All very technical and daunting for a techno weenie like myself.

Moving onto other matters.  Lau & Mom  landed safely in Australia – completely knackered after all the long flights.  They landed in Sydney and had a whirlwind tour of the city.  Lau was very proud of the fact that she managed to navigate the subway system and get from the airport to the Opera house all by herself.  Then it was back to the airport for the short hop to Mackay.  I am sure that they are going to sleep soundly tonight.

More to follow

Pete

Lauren tells me that there a good few pictures to be added.  A friend of ours - Alana - is getting married soon and she has recently had her  wedding shower.  We are still in the process of crunching the pics down in size to be a bit more web friendly.  Give me a few days on that.

Next, Lauren will be heading to Australia soon.  Her flight leaves on the 3rd of November and she returns on the 25th.  During this time she will be available on her G mail account so don’t spam the Telkom one.  I am sure that she would love to hear the goings-on back home while she is away.

And finally in todays post.  My side of things.  Bermuda is starting to cool down a bit now.  It is still shorts and T shirt weather but I have cracked out a second blanket for the evenings now.  As far as my return to the Motherland goes, I am due back around the 16th or 17th of this month.  So put the beers on ice & start up the aircon  – Daddy will be home soon.

Cheers

Pete

There is a change afoot.  I have now added a Calendar to the site.  It shows future events (Red Items) we are looking forward to and also posts (Orange Items) we have made to this site.  Just move your cursor over the date and it will tell you what’s up.  Double clicking on the popup will take you to post or future event.  

Pedro

I trust everyone had a good long weekend.  Let’s see what the rest of the world was up to… (then I will get into my stuff)

Mom and Rob were trekking across the Etosha Pans up in Namibia, I hear it was great and look forward to having a chat and finding out all the details.

Jo and her squeeze Rudi went off to Splashy Fen and had a ball (unfortunately I don’t have any pictures of this… ), Mick and Jo had a quiet weekend with friends, the telly, the lawn mower and more telly. 

Lauren had a full house this weekend.  Tristan, Bronwyn and Clinton came down from Virginia (a small no-where spot in the middle of South Africa) to spend the weekend.  Apparently the sea water was ok, initially a little cold but once your body is totally numb you feel fine.    Then of course there was a Braai ~ for the non japie… a braai is more commonly called a barbecue  ~ at Johan’s house.  Apparently the whole clan back home attended, beer flowed and much happiness was had. 

Then to rub things in a little more Lauren had another braai at our home last night, and, seeing as how she had a sort of baby sitter, got very merry.  I partly attended that one via a web link on the Skype and that sort of brings me quiet nicely along to my weekend.

Out here, on the ship, if you are not working on a weekend you are allowed to go home.  (Sort of like parole for good behavior type of thing)  The only proviso is that, should the ship get a job, you are able to return in six hours.  Well that was me well and truly f&#$ed.  The Third Mate, Ewan, (he lives in the Shetland Islands) and I pulled the duties for the weekend.  I got Friday and Monday and he pulled Saturday and Sunday.  My weekend was a tad more subdued than most.  During the Friday I mostly sat on my PC and fiddled with the website.  You may have noticed some of the changes. 

First off, we have a whole new theme to the site.  The old Blue and grey scheme is out to be replaced by the new funky orange scheme.  It feels a bit warmer.  Then we have a new gallery/ photo album, yes I know it looks the same but there are slight differences that the techno weenies get really excited over.  One thing that I think you will find very hand is that I have added a HOME button in the Gallery so you don’t get stuck there any more.  Then as soon as I am done writing this I am going to add a few more Kyra and Tristan Pictures.  These are going into the Tristan album.

We (Mick and I) then added a cluster map to the site.  You will see it on the right hand side between the catergories and archives.  This tells me where all you guys, who are looking at my life story, come from.  Don’t panic I am not stealing your cookies trying to gain access to your pc or anything sinister like that.  This is just me being nosy!!!   Next we have right down at the bottom a "recently played music thingy"  This little pearl of an add-on tells you guys what music I am listening to in my media player.  Oh I need to put this in quickly.  Go out and look for a song called "I’d Like" sung by the band "Freshly Ground", the album is called "Nomvula".  They’re local South African and really are brilliant.

Right what else did we do….mmm, Saturday I took a stroll into Weymouth, did a bit of shopping and had my first bit of junk food since joining the ship all the way back in March.  For those of you bored enough to care, it was KFC and it was great. 

Seeing as how it started raining though, I cut my trip short and returned to the ship.  Many videos, a bit of telly and a few pints later, I went bed to have the most blissful sleep ever.  I only got up at 11:00 on the Sunday, which once you are used to waking up at 03:30 in the morning feels like an eternity in bed.  My first real lie in since retuning to Portland after the treasure hunting job.

That brings me to today and once again I was on duty so had to stay on board.  More time on the PC, a great chat with Lau and I made a start at a new Freddie the fly video.

So there you have it, watch this space for updates.

Cheers

Pedro

Update 20th of January 2006: Try out the spell checker… It’s woking now.

 I hear you are having a hard time finding the video clips.  Here’s what to do!

At the top right of the page, about my photo click on Photo Albums.  Then click on the Baby Pics album.  From their click on the Kyra’s Video Collection.  Then click the little Icon with the movie reel.  Then click download movie.  Viola

Pedro

I am pretty chuffed with myself this evening.  I have sussed out how to put short video clips on here.  If you go into the Baby Pics album you will see one called Kyra’s Video Collection.  In there I have a 10 second wmv file.  No sound on this clip though.  More will follow.

 Pete