Scouts!

Today was a long day, spent filling out application forms, updating some of the Scouting 2007 websites and basically just spending time writing to people via email. All in all I think I wrote to all the people I needed to, however, at the moment I am just looking forward to Summer, and the holidays!

This evening I did my usually Thursday thing and went to help at my local Scout Troop, tonights task was to put up tents and check they had everything they needed for camp at Marlow in the Summer which was fun!

Driving Training!

Today I went to York to complete some more driving, I was however surprised to see that the centre of York was quieter than the time I went previously, a fortnight ago now! I think it might be because the weather was slightly cooler, it was raining and therefore there was less tourists visiting the city.

Everything went well once again however, it is getting even closer to my reassesment time now so hopefully practice will make perfect!

I also heard that seven F1 teams are guilty on two of five charges over the US Grand Prix fiasco, but penalties will not be decided until September. The tyre firm Michelin has generously offered a full refund to all 120,000 fans after their tyre concerns sparked the farcical US Grand Prix at Indianapolis. However, surely the F.I.A. should accept some of the responsibility in their bad management of the situation?

Canoeing at Dacre Lake!

Tonight we took the Scouts canoeing at Dacre Lakeside Park in Brandesburton, I had my first session in a canoe for quite some time! However, this does not mean I will be transferring to the EuroJam Splash team in the near future.

The Explorers we took canoeing all seemed to enjoy themselves, it made me think back to when I first used to go canoeing, I used to really love it! But those times are past, life must move onwards and upwards! A very phylosophical statement to post in a blog I hear my readership shouting, anyway I shall move on and not get stuck in a time warp with myself, goodness I sound like I am in Back To The Future!

It is now getting ever so close to the Malvern Challenge which I am really looking forward to now. Another weekend of fun with friends, if only Summer could stick around a little longer!

Walked around Yorkshires largest natural freshwater lake in preparation for Malvern Challenge Checkpoint!

Today, as the weather is just so nice I decided to stop working on websites and go for a walk around Hornsea Mere in the beautiful English weather, whilst we still have it! I have kind of got bored of watching Wimbledon now all the British players have been knocked out, but that I think is just part of the course!

The reason I went for the walk today was because I was trying to prepare myself in time for the Malvern Challenge Checkpoint I am helping to run next weekend with other members of SAGGA, after reading other blogs this evening I now know that various people will be at this event. Including Heather and Andy and Het, as I haven't seen these people for a while I think it should be a good and enjoyable weekend!

Gym!

Today, I made my way to the gym I have joined at Hornsea Leisure Centre in order to increase my fitness!

Now I am feeling tired so I shall say goodnight, sorry for such a short update this evening!

Found out at last that I have passed my MSc!

Following on from Amy's comments last week I also can also declare some good results and news, even though it seems to have taken slightly longer than I would have thought! So I now also have some more letters after my name, I am Andrew Kemp BSc (Hons) Geography and also MSc Internet Computing! So, I think some kind of celebration is needed, this evening!!

The course was a struggle at some points during the year but some of my regular readership will know how much effort I put in, up to Christmas! So now I am all ready to go ahead with graduation at Scarborough, hopefully in beautiful summer weather! Even though having lived in Scarborough for a year I know that the weather is very rarely wonderful and at best unpredicatable!

A bit like the weather when I go camping, even though when I go to EuroJam from 29th July to 10th August, I hope the weather will be a lot better than the weather experienced at Glastonbury over the last few days as can be seen from these pictures courtesy of the BBC!

I would also like to take this opportunity to thank the staff at The University of Hull Centre for Internet Computing for all there advice throughout my MSc!

Out in Hornsea!

Went out in Hornsea for the evening before getting back in and getting back to everything! Also updated some EuroJam websites, so a busy day once again!

I also made it to the Gym to increase my fitness levels ready for Eurojam and driving.

Scouts!

Scouts was a bit different this evening in Hornsea as we had to get all the tents pitched and the pegs that where bent straightened before summer camp, so guess who got that little job? After straightening one hundred pegs I then went over to help some of the younger Scouts put up the tents, as I had never put up a lot of them before I was learning just as much as the Scouts this evening!

Anyway, by the end of the evening we had the kit ready to go to camp in the summer which was good, even though because of previous Eurojam commitments I am unable to join them on camp, this year!

To round the evening off the leaders started a waterfight for the Scouts to cool down on the last night of the Summer, which they where forewarned about!

In the last half hour of the evening things started to go a little bit pear shaped, one of the explorer's fell whilst playing volleyball on the grass outside and twisted his knee, nothing I will say to do with the water fight. However, this called for ambulance assistance! Even this event turned into a saga as even though the Scout Hut is opposite a ambulance station they were already out on another job, so we had to get a ambulance to come twenty miles from Beverley! Anyway, that made it a memorable evening for Hornsea Scout Troop!

Then to top it all off the District Explorer Scout Commisioner who was at the HQ for the evening couldn't start his car, so it really was a night to remember (or forget!) depending on how you view the evenings activities!

What a day!

Had a busy day today, doing general updates to the Scouting 2007 web pages particularly finding out why a page that should have been transferred to the new Content Management System had not, and was therefore missing from the frontpage of the site!

However after a lot of searching in various places I found a backup of the page and its French translation, which was good. This was then uploaded and another problem was solved, which took a while this evening!

Meaning I did not make it to the Gym once again, which I must say dissapointed me, as I was trying to make it two days in a row, but it is just too darn hot! And going to the gym would make me even more tired and warn out, why bother when you have the weather to do that?

Malvern Challenge 2005

After a lot of talking about it, it looks like the next SAGGA event I will attend will be the Malvern Challenge at the beginning of the next month! It will be good to see some of the people I have not seen for a while at this event an I am looking forward to the challenges it will pose!

On the work front not a lot is happening at present but I will update you my blog readership when it does. I had a comment recently that I should maybe change the template, as a lot of my friends have done with there blogs but I still quite like the blue one I have at present, if you have any thoughts on the subject please either comment or send me comments through my Online Contact Form box to the right of my blog!

Changed Sitemeter display!

Today I have been busy with EuroJam website preperations, with the event being so close now I might be a little bit less consistent with my blogging for the next few weeks!

I also made changes to how my sitemeter displays on the site, so now not only is it just a square it also informs you about the total number of visitors my site has received!

In the news it looks like the American's where not very pleased with the Formula 1 fiasco at the weekend, and according to a article I read today in the Telegraph Jackie Stewart thinks that the management of Formula 1 should look at themselves very closely over this issue! So, it seems nothing is going right for Formula 1 at the moment!

U.S.A. Grand Prix Farce!

Well I have seen quite a few events in Grand Prix racing over the years, however the event put on this weekend in the U.S.A. was the biggest farce! Only the Bridgestone shod Ferraris, Jordans and Minardis sat on the grid awaiting the start of the US Grand Prix!

Formula One has made itself look stupid on a number of occasions in recent years - but the fiasco that was the 2005 United States Grand Prix took it to a new low. I think that Formula One faces a bleak future in America after the Grand Prix at Indianapolis turned into a PR nightmare with the withdrawal of seven of the teams. The problems centred round the tyre company Michelin, who had made a mistake by not manufacturing rubbers that could run at more than 200 mph on the track

The seven teams affected asked for a temporary chicane to be installed but could not reach an agreement with Ferrari and the FIA, while Michelin could only guarantee safety of their cars for 10 laps. And as the race got under way, 14 cars pulled into the pits.

With just six left in the race: the two Ferarris, two Jordans and two Minardis. Michael Schumacher and Rubens Barichello made the most of their Bridgestone tyres...while the fans made their feelings clear! So what can be said is that it was certainly a bad day for Formula 1 in the U.S.A, but I suppose Ferrari will be quite pleased as at least they can say they have won one race this season, without any competition!

Doctor Who: The Parting of the Ways!

Carrying on from last weeks episode known as (Bad Wolf) where we did not find out who or what the Bad Wolf actually referred to the Doctor is trying to rescue Rose from...the Daleks!

Just like other cliffhangers in the series this one gets resolved all too quickly. Rose is captured on a Dalek spaceship, so the Doctor pilots the TARDIS there, uses a TARDIS force field (I don't remember that from previous series!) and escapes again. All too easy. But do you know what? I didn't especially care because I was happy to see lots of Daleks, that can now actually not just fly, but fly through space!

In summary, a crazy, brilliant episode, full of loopy explanations, with thousands of Daleks and a regeneration. Fantastic, a superb way to end the season. The BBC website is full of stuff for the episode, as usual, and the Daleks are still going ballistic on the front page. Hope I haven't spoilt the plot for anybody yet to see the episode, but I have a full review in my drafts folder that I will publish it in a months time, so get watching!

Doctor Who: Full Review

Then it's war! Thousands of Daleks streaming out into space to attack the space station. It never occured to me that Daleks wouldn't need small spaceships or suits, they are the Daleks, they can fly in space. Awesome. And they head down to Earth and attack, and bomb and invade (but it's left to our imagination).

So the Doctor tries to rig up some deus ex machina delta wave nonsense, which would have been rubbish and Star-Treky if it were not for the fact that it would not only kill the Daleks but kill all humans to. So the Doctor has a dilemma. Another great character revealing moment, does the Doctor become an exterminator, or die but retain his principals. Nicely engineered story point.

Meanwhile Rose got sent home in the TARDIS. And struggles to get back to the Doctor. Finally she looks into the heart of the TARDIS and gets back to the Doctor in the nick of time.

Rose, channelling the TARDIS's time vortex. What?! Lots of what?! moments this episode, but the pace and style and sheer entertainment value means that I just don't care about the crazy plot moments. So Rose magics away the Daleks and spreads Bad Wolf throughout time as a message to herself, a message to not give up on the Doctor. Rose's speech about living an ordinary life I really enjoyed. Something like "I get up, got to work, come home and eat chips. Is that it?" I reckon that will ring true for a whole generation.

Oh yeah and Captain Jack gets killed and Rose brings him back. Oh and the Daleks wipe out an entire crowd of innocent people on the space station (they're very nasty those Daleks).

So after all that, which lets face it is a lot for one episode, that must be it right? Wrong. Because the Doctor sucks the time vortex out of Rose and starts dying. And you know what the Doctor dying means? Regeneration! So right there at the end of the episode he regenerates into David Tennant. Brilliant! And Mr. Tennant doesn't use his native Scottish accent, he uses his Casanova accent, which is fine with me.

Out in Hornsea!

Today, I made my way to the gym I have joined at Hornsea Leisure Centre in order to increase my fitness! Before making my way to the local public house to meet with friends!

Scouts go to Dacre Lake!

Tonights little expedition involved taking the scouts canoeing once again at a local lake in Brandesburton the name of which is Dacre Lakeside Park.

My task this evening was supervising the younger Scouts by the waters edge and trying to keep them from getting restless, whilst Rob and Richard, the activity leaders took the Scouts on the water!

All the Scouts seemed to enjoy the evening and luckily the rain held off and it was a warm June evening. Not many of those you can say, and funilly enough even though it has rained such a lot of late, the evening was warm and the grass was reasonably dry! At the end the Scouts wanted to get wet so we ended up by building a water slide for the Scouts to use!

Doctor Who: Series Three!

The BBC have now announced that a third series of Doctor Who has been commissioned, along with a second Christmas special and a second series of Doctor Who Confidential to run alongside the second series of Doctor Who.

Well, for those of you that aren't Doctor Who fans, or at least like Doctor Who, just not that much it will be off the air after Saturday until Christmas, so Saturday night television will return to the same old boring rubbish, so this will mean that next week my posts will return to normal!

Doctor Who: Parting of the Ways!

Sorry, I just had to post about Dr Who having just seen the trailer for next weeks final episode called the Parting of the Ways, the BBC have even set up a separate website which seems to be very good! It promises to be a good finale to Christopher Eccleston playing the role of the Doctor, but will we get to see his replacement we will have to wait for the weekend to find out!

For those of my readership that way inclined I have put in a link to my friend Simons Blog at Bad Wolf Warning telling you all a little bit about the series and the various goings on!

Hope all is is going well with everyone, I was just reading an article on the BBC news website that Chinese bloggers posting their thoughts via Microsoft's Net service face restrictions on what they can write. I personally think that everyone seems to be judging this by their own standards.

The Chinese government have laws in place that, right or wrong, must be abided by. If Microsoft ignored this then it would be accused of pushing American views around the world and would be considered to be acting illegally. People who do want to get their voice heard uncensored will find a way, as they have on previous occasions!

Coldplay storm into album chart!

Coldplay's third album X&Y has rocketed to the top of the album chart and is on course to become one of the biggest sellers of all time. It is believed 464,000 copies were sold by Saturday, making it the second fastest-selling album since records began in the early 1990s.

Only the 1997 Oasis album, Be Here Now, has ever performed better in its first week, with 695,761 copies sold.

It's good when you fix something!

Tonight I have been trying to fix the allignment of a box on the IST web pages, and thanks to a piece of helpful advice from a colleague it turned out to be easier than I thought which is good! As it had been puzzling me for about a week. You always feel better after solving something that has been puzzling you!

Today in the Canadian Grand Prix McLaren's Kimi Raikkonen won to breathe life back into the world championship. The Finn reduced Fernando Alonso's lead to 22 points - the Renault driver having retired with a broken suspension after hitting the wall while leading. McLaren's Juan Pablo Montoya was disqualified for leaving the pit lane illegally while fighting for victory. Raikkonen held off Michael Schumacher in the closing laps, with the other Ferrari of Rubens Barrichello third.

Gym!

Today, I made my way to the gym I have joined at Hornsea Leisure Centre in order to increase my fitness!

Now I am feeling tired so I shall say goodnight, sorry for such a short update this evening!

Went out in Hornsea!

Tonight I had a night out in Hornsea with friends, so I have not got much to say really, will post again soon!

Scouts!

Tonight at Scouts we practiced and taught the younger Scouts how to do the more simple scouting knots such as the Clovehitch, Reef Knot and Sheet Bend.

The older Scouts did things such as lashings outside the HQ. The three main types practiced being Square, Shear and a tripod lashing, and I was quite impressed as I could still remember how to complete all these, without looking in a book! Goodnight all.

P.S. I just realised that my posts seem to be getting shorter over time, back in 2004 they where longer, I will try to make my posts longer in future!

Went to cinema to see Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith

Tonight I went to see the last in this trilogy of star wars films. Three years after the initial battle of the Clone Wars, the long and tiring conflict between the Separatists and the Republic is nearing its end. However, Obi-Wan Kenobi, now a Jedi Master, and Anakin Skywalker, now a Jedi Knight, learn a shocking development.

In the end, when it all comes down to it, Obi-Wan Kenobi had no choice but to face his former apprentice in battle, and as the Clone Wars end, the seeds will be sown for yet another conflict which will determine the fate of the galaxy. Overall, I think this trilogy has set the scene for the original three films rather well, but best of all in this last film of the trilogy, as you get to see how Darth Vader was created!

Gym!

Today, I made my way to the gym I have joined at Hornsea Leisure Centre in order to increase my fitness!

Now I am feeling tired so I shall say goodnight, sorry for such a short update this evening!

To little time, so much to do!

Goodness, what a busy time I am having at the moment what with preperations for graduation, helping with Hornsea Scouts and completing various updates to the Eurojam and Scouting 2007 sites!

However, I think I am enjoying life at present and hope everyone else I know is doing the same! One thing, I will have to remember to do is get back to posting daily to my blog rather than doing three days posts at once as it takes too long!

However, all the people I know with blogs I do check regularly what is being said as I use RSS syndication and the free RSS reader which I find to be most useful!

Pay-as-you-go road charge plan!

The government is throwing its weight behind a revolutionary plan that would force motorists to pay £1.30 a mile to drive on Britain's busiest roads in a bid to prevent 'LA-style gridlock'.

The Transport Secretary, Alistair Darling, will use his first address since the election to launch a 'national debate' on the importance of introducing a national road-pricing scheme to solve Britain's chronic congestion.

Unfortunately for me, this will mean I will just get back into driving after a eight year break and will have to pay these new tolls, which is not good. However, I suppose if it does encourage people to use public transport and therefore help the environment they must be a good idea!

Updated Sidebar!

Today I have been working on the computer, fixing things that needed fixing and I also found time to update my sidebar and did some more work on the Eurojam site! I also found time to go to the gym which was also good!

EuroJam Live is now live!

After many months of work on the Eurojamlive site, it finally moved from its test status to a fully live and hopefully working web presence today, hence my belated posts over the last few days.

As it took a lot of work by the web development team to get it into a working state, hopefully all the participants at EuroJam, in only 56 day time will be suitably impressed with the new site and will hopefully not break it. Heres hoping anyway!

Scouts!

Tonight at Scouts as it is half term, the younger Scouts get the evening off. So tonights activity was the 15 - 18 year old explorers giving a presentation to fulfill part of the requirements for there badge work, which was good!

Normally with having both Scouts and Explorers on the same night you do not get much time to talk to them so it is good to have meetings during holiday periods so I can catch up with what is going on! I should just state that at the moment we have more Explorers than Scouts in Hornsea which is good, and makes a refreshing change!

England beat Columbia by 3 goals to 2 thanks to in form Michael Owen!

Thanks to the inform Michael Owen, England scored a hat-trick last night as England beat Colombia 3-2 in New Jersey. Owen's 36th minute goal put him on 30 England goals where he joined Sir Tom Finney, Nat Lofthouse and Alan Shearer in the all-time list.

In the 44th minute he struck again to eclipse that trio and in the 58th minute he completed his treble. Colombia, having scored through Mario Yepes in the first half, got a late second through Ramirez. But I suppose the main thing is that England won the match I wasn't to concerned about the score as it was only a friendly, and David James was playing so the manager couldn't have been that concerned either!

It could be one of James last games as the new goalkeeper Robert Green could take up the place as the England number 2 to Paul Robinson, but we will have to wait and see!