Visit Counting

I am trying out some page-view logging tools (free, naturally!) from statcounter and sitemeter. It all works by javascript (don't know how...) It was really easy to set up following the instructions here. Oh, and from March 07, added Google Analytics as well (also free!)

Art!

Here's a piccy (one of many...) of an early attempt at painting!

More video

Here's a video of Anna wandering around our local Borders store. Somehow this reminds me of playing "Super Mario"...!

Mobile blogging!

Mobile blogging!
Originally uploaded by coffee-cat.org.

Here's another go at mobile blogging, this time without a laptop... The old trusty digicam died, to be replaced by something that takes sd cards (like the phone) hence with the free tool Xnview Pocket I can upload new pics to the blog straight away! (albeit at low quality, given the £4 per MB or whatever it costs to do mobile data over GPRS...)

Café Culture

Anna starts young with the whole coffee thing...

Coffee-cat email

I have finally got around to setting up email accounts to go with my www.coffee-cat.org domain name. So I can now be contacted at:
I have used google/gmail and the very cool "google apps for your domain" service, which (needless to say) is free! (and pretty good, too). This enables you to use gmail webmail with the email addresses that go with your own domain (eg. the coffee-cat one above), together with quite a few other online tools like calendars etc.

And... it supports POP3, so you can access it from desktop mail clients like Outlook etc, and (finally!) I can now even access my email to receive and send via POP3 from my mobile phone - yay!

Anna Picture Update - Engineering Appreciation!

Yesterday Anna went to see IKB's wonderful suspension bridge in Clifton:

She walked right the way across it (!)

And then she went for a well earned rice cake in a local espresso house:

(Where she drank water and we had "the usual"...)

I've Got a new Coffee Machine!

Like it says in the title! A bargain from House of Fraser: £135 for a Gaggia "Selecta Deluxe" - which is basically the guts of a "Coffee", or "Carezza", or "Espresso", (£180-£200) in a lookalike casing of a "Classic" (£300), for less money. I really could've done without buying a new one right now, but I REALLY couldn't live too long without an espresso machine! (NB: It is a real bargain, but not as much of a bargain as HoF would have you think). See the specific discussion threads on Coffee Geek
- my current fave website!

What a difference a fortnight makes...

Another walking video - 2 weeks on from the last one and Anna is walking around and about, room to room, no encouragement needed anymore - in fact no stopping her!




As usual, if you're not on broadband it'll only play through smoothly second time through.

Note the very stylish Adidas 3 piece tracksuit combo (well, 2 bits of it anyway)!

Anna has her first ever shoes!

Two weeks before her first birthday, and Anna has got her first ever pair of shoes:

She seems to like them...

Another Day Another Photo!

Here's another Anna piccy...

An uptodate photo

Here's a totally uptodate photo of Anna, taken today:

Tooth collection getting more every week!

Anna walks!

Enough said really - this YouTube video speaks for itself...

Just under 11 months, and she's off!



As usual, if you're not on broadband it'll only play through smoothly second time through.

Pandora Radio

I have recently discovered this, which is really cool: free user-customisable internet radio. It plays songs and you tell it whether you like them or not, and then it learns your preferences. You start by telling it favourite bands, songs etc. Links to some of my personal stations are at below right:

Technically this radio only works for listeners in the USA, but in fact you may find it works OK elsewhere too, with a tiny bit of lateral thinking...

Flickr

I now have a convenient link to my photos on Flickr - see link above.

Anna meets waves for the first time!

Here is a bit of video (4 minutes, Flash, hosted by YouTube) of Anna's first time walking into the waves of the English Channel, in very sunny Cornwall!

Summary: she liked it until a wave broke a bit high up her front!




As usual, if you're not on broadband it'll only play through smoothly second time through.
Oh, and I think the aspect ratio might be slightly broken?

Wireless holiday photo blogging from the beach...!

web_IMG_2520
Originally uploaded by coffee-cat.org.

I just *had* to do this: blog a photo of Anna's first paddle in the sea, wirelessly from the beach... armed only with an ancient digicam [ok, a 3 yo example of Canon's brilliant Ixus] and my trusty phone [GPRS, none of that pointless 3G]... oh, and this might've been a tad more tricky without a laptop, but hey who goes to the beach without one! But anyway, this is surely a geek right-of-passage, live holiday-snap-blogging, right?

Enjoy....

ps: photo hosted at flickr.com, along with a few others.

Kathyrn's First Ever Mother's Day

  

Yet another pointless web site

Yay - I have just tried out Google's new super easy free web hosting service, googlepages. Now I have yet another pointless web page that I can't think of a good use for! But, 100MB is pretty good for free web hosting, and it seems to allow linking to other sites, so it may be useful if only to host stuff to that gets served via my main home page...?

Anna has her first "real" food!

Today Anna had her first ever meal with something other than milk. She had a few spoonfuls of baby rice, whilst sitting in her lovely new high chair. Although obviously I am a biased parent, she did really well and clearly enjoyed it (takes after her Dad...). The attached video is hosted courtesy of www.youtube.com and needs Flash in order to play.

Just click once on the middle of the picture to start it playing.

Now we look forward to a whole new phase of fun (and food on the walls, floor, ceiling...)

Get a free wiki at PBwiki.com

I have been playing with wikis again - I have used PBwiki (Peanut Butter wiki) - apparently they say:

Our tagline is: “PBwiki makes creating a wiki as easy as making a peanut butter sandwich”. And as you know, setting up a PBwiki is free and takes only 10 seconds.

I have to agree with that, and it is really good, and free and easy. However I still can't think of a use for it for me personally at the mo' - it is really for collaborative/sharing websites, which I don't need right now, but hey...

There is a tour here:

Check out the PBwiki tour!

Logos and css templates

Having spent (wasted?) a few hours fruitlessly trying to figure out how to modify the css blogger template to add a logo (my new "coffee-cat" picture, featuring one of my cats, plus a cup of espresso that I photographed before drinking it...) I have given up and changed my "profile" picture from a mug shot of me to my logo. I don't think I have enough time in the day to figure out how to hack the css...

I have a domain!

I've finally bought a domain name: www.coffee-cat.org. I decided that me owning a bit of personal web namespace was well overdue , and I kinda like my "coffee-cat" idea so I bought it before someone else snapped it up (prompted by a really cheap deal I saw). Currently I have it pointing back to this blog, which seems appropriate enough, I suppose. In the interests of being properly British, I also bought www.coffee-cat.org.uk as well.