Celebrating my Mother's Birthday

During the summer the family celebrated my Mother's Birthday, she was 39 again or at least that is her story.

The family had a fabulous meal at The Caesars Brasserie and we all enjoyed a great family get together.

We even got the birthday cake right!

Podcasts

Just to let my readers know there are two great podcasts available from the BBC this week.

Two totally different topics but both amazing.

You can download them from the BBC website.

They are the Voices of Summer Gone By, a short history of cricket commentary via the medium of Test Match Special, my favourite way of wasting sunny afternoons in the summer. You can download it here.

The second is called The Mind of a Cyclist, an in depth interview with Sir Bradley Wiggins. Its interesting to find out what makes his mind tick. You can download it here.

Take the time to download these programmes, they are definitely worth a couple of hours of your time.

My Dad's 80th Birthday

Two weeks ago my father celebrated his 80th birthday. (my niece also celebrated her birthday too)

As an amazing family treat Dad took the family away to the Celtic Manor Resort near Newport. A place famous for a fabulous hotel and the place where Europe won the Ryder Cup in 2010.

Our family had an amazing time there. We watched Wales beat Ireland in the Six Nations, enjoyed a fabulous meal at the nearby New Bridge on Usk pub and just had a great time hanging out together.

Everyone really enjoyed themselves and we had a brilliant family weekend!

I'd recommend the Celtic Manor, definitely worth visit.

Today's solar eclipse.

Today  I was lucky enough to see my second solar eclipse in person. This was was a partial eclipse, I last saw the total eclipse in 1999.

When I woke up and up until about ten minutes before the maximum eclipse was going to be visible, the sky was cloudy. But with a few minutes to go the cloud's parted and we got to view the eclipse.

It will be at least ten more years until we see such a good eclipse in British skies. I feel very lucky to have seen one again.

It was like a smile in the sky!

My Obituary to the iPod Classic

It was with great sadness that I learnt about the passing of the iPod Classic. This amazing product was quietly removed from sale at Apple and other retailers last month, shortly after the Apple October Event.

They have now become collectors items and are retailing on Ebay and Amazon from private sellers for £300-£400.

I for one will mourn its passing. The iPod classic has had good life, its been with us for about thirteen years, and it has revolutionised the way we listen to and even purchase music. Over this time the design has stayed much the same, the circular clicker being an iconic feature. Over the last couple of years, nothing much has changed with this iconic device, maybe the amount of memory has increased  and a colour screen has been added, but not much else. I wonder why bluetooth connectivity wasn't added, many sound docks allow connection in this way. To me it seems Apple have treated this device as a forgotten and embarrassing relative, and have now retired it.

Now for my little rant, I have  rather large music collection, and I've collected music since my early teens. I'm forty five now, so that's a lot of albums. The new generation devices produced by Apple don't really have enough storage for me, take my iPhone 8 GB storage, my music collection is 40GB, not really enough is it! Apparently there is an iPod touch with 64GB storage that may keep me going for a while but where then?

Personally I prefer a dedicated music player, I don't need the other features of an iPod touch, my iPad and phone cover those requirements, but thats me. Hopefully one day the ipod classic or stand alone music player will return.

So hopefully my current classic will keep going for a while and I won't have to ponder this scenario!

I'm a Dryathelete, will you support me?

This January I've decided to take on the challenge and take part in the Dryathlon. This means during January I won't be drinking alcohol and giving my liver a little bit of a break. As part of the Dryathlon I'm raining money for Cancer Research.

If you wish to make a donation I have a Just Giving page, the link is here .

I'm now on week three and feeling great, may even do another dryathlon later this year.

Who says that even a cartoon film can make you feel emotional?

Was watching Up yesterday, this little sequence is absolutely amazing and shows that even a cartoon can raise emotions too. A little film masterpiece.

The rest of the film is great too!

Some places and things I've seen this year!

I've enjoyed 2013 and shortly we will say goodbye to this year and 2014 will arrive bringing new experiences and adventures.

Here are a few views and experiences from this year.

Happy New Year and may 2014 bring you all you want!

Possibly one of my favourite songs.

Elbow's One Day Like This is a piece of music I have loved since the first time I heard it.

Browsing YouTube, I found a performance of this song with the band and the BBC Concert Orchestra and Choir. This performance is absolutely awesome and moves me every time I hear it. Take a listen and see what you think.

Amazing Places a bit Closer to Home

Last week I posted a blog about places I had visited around the world, this time I thought I would show some photographs of amazing places a bit closer to home.