Woody the Dog.

At the end of the May, this little guy will be moving in with me.
He's a miniature wire haired Dachshund and his name will be Woody.

A little late but my thoughts on The Masters.

The Easter weekend also marked the playing of the 2012 Masters at Augusta.


Once again the Augusta National looked as pretty as a picture and some amazing golf was played over the four days.

Once again there were high hopes that a British winner would happen with either Lee Westwood or Luke Donald breaking their duck in majors. Westwood was in contention eventually coming third, Donald didn't seem to get the pace of the greens and his short game wasn't up to his usual immaculate standard.

Anyway to follow up, here are three amazing shots that got the crowd shouting and hollering.

First Phil Mickelson on Day 3. An amazing wedge shot into the 15th green.

A double eagle (albatross) for Louis Oosthuizen. An astounding second shot into the par 5 second hole.

And finally the shot that won the Masters for Bubba Watson, an astonishing recovery from the rough in the sudden death play off. (I can move a golf ball like this too but it is never a planned shot!)

A Massive Shock

Last weekend I returned to Wales to see the family. We had a brilliant Saturday, a round of golf with my Dad in the morning, Wales winning the Grand Slam against France in the afternoon followed by a fabulous Indian takeaway.


Sunday, the plan was to get the family together and go to a local restaurant for a Mother's Day Meal.


This is where things took a massive turn for the worst.....


On the way to the restaurant my Dad was driving, felt unwell and suffered a cardiac arrest in the car. A series of fortunate coincidences came together, I saw the car stop and turned around. The scene I was met with was a massive shock. My Dad was collapsed and was being attended to by a nurse who witnessed what had happened. She found he had no pulse and was administering CPR, I stepped in to help. I managed to perform chest compressions as I'd been trained at work. I think that I got through three cycles of CPR with the nurse. At this point two first responders arrived and took over,shortly afterwards, a paramedic arrived with a defibrillator. This diagnosed Dad's heart had fallen into ventricular fibrillation and effectively he had no circulation. He was connected to the defibrillator within 5-10 minutes of the initial event and electric shocks given to his heart started it beating again. 


This set of circumstances and coincidences probably saved his life!


Since Sunday, Dad has been on the coronary care unit at the University Hospital in Cardiff. The care he has received has been amazing. Today, he was moved from the coroner care unit and onto a high dependancy ward. He can move and is sitting in a chair, and is moaning that his chest hurts :-), it's not surprising after having three people push on for chest for five minutes or so that you are getting a bit of pain!


Two things I want to say, one,  thanks to all the people who helped with Dad, the Nurse at the scene, the first responders and paramedics and the nurses and doctors on the CCU in the hospital. Second, if you are reading this, learn CPR, you could save someones life. Watch this video from video starring Vinnie Jones there are some good tips here from the British Heart Foundation.

QR codes. What's the point?

Apparently these are now the latest thing in marketing and providing links to your web content. I'm not normally a tech phobic person but I don't see the point of these codes. See below for what I'm talking about. (This is the QR code linking to this blog)

So to make these work you need the following:

1.  A smartphone, be it of the Apple or Android variety.
2.  An app that can translate the QR code to something meaningful.

So for me I need to start an app on my iPhone, photograph the code and wait and see if something happens. If it works it eventually directs me to a bit of web content related to the advert the code is on. On my iPhone this takes a couple of minutes (maybe the software and hardware are slow) but why not just put the URL on the advert instead. Its a lot quicker to copy this down into your browser.

Maybe I'm wrong, who knows?

Tooth Whitening. A simple way to transform your smile!

There are many reasons why you may want to get your teeth whitened. Everyone’s teeth are different; and just as our skin and hair colour vary, so does the colour of our teeth. Very few people have brilliant white teeth, and our teeth can also become more stained and discoloured as we get older.

Your teeth may also become stained on the surface from eating certain food and drinks. Also smoking may stain your teeth.

Tooth whitening is a highly effective way of lightening the natural colour of your teeth without removing or damaging the tooth surface. It cannot make a complete colour change, but it will lighten the existing colour of your teeth.

Tooth whitening has now become one of the most common and safest cosmetic procedures in the world. There are many studies in the dental literature that confirm the safety and success of tooth whitening.Your dentist will be able to tell you if you are suitable for tooth whitening treatment, and supervise it if you are. Your dentist will provide you with custom made mouth-guards that fits on your teeth like a gum shield, and a gel to place in the tray and on your teeth. You whiten your teeth at home and results are usually visible within a few weeks. 

The results of tooth whitening usually last around three years but you can easily “top this up” using tooth whitening gel at home.

Is this some thing that may interest you? Why don't you contact our team at Spicer Road Dental Practice and arrange a consultation, to see what we can do to transform your smile.

Music. So when was the last time you listened to a whole CD?

I was thinking the other day how in recent years the way we listen to music has changed. My thoughts were prompted when I realised its been more than 2 1/2 years since I've listened to a CD. Thinking about it, the only CD player I now have that works is in my car.


So what has changed for me? I was a fairly early adopter of MP3 players. Over six years ago I bought a Creative Zen Touch MP3 player, the idea of being able to carry my entire CD collection around in my pocket appealed to me.

It was at this point I stopped listening to whole albums and started to play my music on the random shuffle setting. I love listening to music like this because tracks get thrown out from the darkest corner of my music collection, and sometimes these long forgotten tracks are absolute gems.


MY zen MP3 player lasted over three years, but when I converted from PC to Mac at home I discovered my trustee MP3 player wouldn't connect to my mac and there was no mac compatible software for the device. 


So sadly my zen touch was retired and I converted to my iPod classic.

I love my iPod and via iTunes I have over 4400 tracks. I think my music consumption has changed, I tend to buy one or two tracks off albums now but via digital music stores I can access tracks from bands I loved as a teenager, guilty pleasures like A Flock of Seagulls, Visage, Gary Numan and Ultravox. My 80's music collection was mostly on cassette and it great to be able to rediscover how good (and naff) some of this music was.

I hope you don't think me as a philistine for on listening to my iPod on shuffle but as I said I love it when I get to hear a track I haven't heard in ages. Two recent favourites thrown out recently were Broken Land by the Adventures and From the Stars by White Lies.

Some Apps for iPad that are cool!

Here are a few apps for iPad that I'd like to recommend.


First up there is Flipboard, this works on iPad and iPhone. Imagine looking at your social media feed from Twitter and Facebook and getting them displayed to you as a magazine. You can also get clips of articles from your favourite magazines such as Wired or Golf Digest to name but two, there are many more to subscribe to but these are a couple I'd choose.

Next up I would recommend a couple of eReader apps, iBooks and Kindle. I have both on my iPad. Personally I think that I prefer Kindle but both are good. I don't mind reading on an iPad ( I know some prefer to read a real book) but its great for holidays, you can take loads of books without exceeding your baggage allowance. By the way these aren't mine :-)

The Kindle APP

iBook APP

Finally, I love Evernote, this allows me to clip and store content and sharing it across all my devices. My mac, iPad and iPhone. This maybe photographs, emails web clips, even voice clips. There are free and paid versions of Evernote. There is a monthly allowance for data you can share and you organise the uploaded files via your Mac or PC.