the-warren.com

We’ve uploaded the video from Joshua’s Christening and it can be viewed or downloaded here.

Joshua was Christened on Sunday at St James Church. It was a great day - excellent weather and great reception.

It was a joint Christening with Ashton Macklin which made the ceremony even better. Two families who happen to be good friends with lots of mutual friends.

Another good friend of ours, Lisa Jones, kindly took photos and these are now online. Click the link in the right hand panel.

The reception was held at the Queens Oak right next to the church and the whole team at the Queens Oak really made it a great reception. This was also there last day in the pub before handing over to new owners. It was good that they were able to share the day with us.

As I opened our back doors on this fine Thursday afternoon James and I were greeted with a screeching from the bushes! Quick to investigate we expected to find a bird or mouse but to our complete horror (well my horror) there in full view was a SNAKE with a frog in it’s mouth! I of course hand a complete break down whilst James was almost in the bush with it.

I quickly phoned a friend of ours who runs a pest control company who advised “let him have his dinner in peace and then he’ll slither away” smashing! So James and I then calmly whatched it devour the frog before slipping off deeper into the bushes.

Once calm I took a couple of photo’s and said to James he was very lucky to have witnessed such a thing.

Think I’ll leave the rest of my gardening for another day

When most people want to find something on the web they just go to Google and enter a search term. Goole is incredibly good and it’s hard to see how anyone could compete with Google. Even Microsoft and Yahoo continue to struggle to gain market share against Google.

One way to enter the search market is to try something different. There are three search engines I want to share with you to see how others are approaching search. Two of these are from Microsoft and the other is independent, it’s this one I’ll start with. The search engine is viewzi and it attempts to make search more visual. It’s a great interface and rather than trying to do its own search it pulls results from engines like Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc. so you know the results are going to be good.

The two Microsoft search engines are Tafiti and MsDewey. Tafiti attempts to make it easier to bookmark interesting links while continuing the original search. MsDewey is probably one for the guys. It uses a more human interface to present your search results.

Get free stuff (and me a Mac Book Air) by registering at http://gifts.freebiejeebies.co.uk/8791and take advantage of one of their free offers.

Don’t forget to cancel the offer once the free trial has ended.

No posts for sometime, but we’re back. The last few months have been pretty hectic. The business is continuing to grow and we’ve both been tied up in that. Vicky has been making sure the backend of the business - the money part - has been going smoothly and she’s doen a great job. We’ve just changed accountants too which took a little time.

I’ve been travelling quite a bit; since the last post I’ve been all around Europe including Budapest, Vienna, Moscow and Brussells. I can honestly say I have not worked so hard for years and it’s great. Certaintly have no regrets setting up the business.

I keep updating the photos so you should be able to see semi-regular updates to these if you keep checking.

Both Vicky and I are also on Facebook too if you want to find us there. There’s also the business blog too.

More soon!

No post for a while and that’s simply down to being so busy. There has been a huge amount of travel this year, including Prague, Milan, Munich, Tel Aviv and now Dubai.

Tel Aviv was an experience if only for the way it was so difficult to leave the country. I breezed through passport control when I entered and then spent 2hrs with four Israeli security personnel when I tried to leave. Fortunately Dubai is much easier. The only downside to Dubai is that it’s 37c in the shade and way over 40c in the - honest, it’s a downside.

Budapest is next, I’m expecting it to be a little cooler.

More photos are being added all the time so keep checking them out.

Dubai Airport itself is pretty good as airports go. That is once you get through the security checks and check-in. The shopping is great although the prices aren’t that much better than in the UK.

The Business class Lounge is great. Full meals, full bar, big leather seats and loads of space. Like just about all of Dubai, the internet access is free too. Good facilities to freshen up too or have a shower. Next time I’ll have to blag my way into the First Class Lounge.

I’ve been in Dubai this week and I am impressed. It is true that the place is a building site yet it doesn’t feel like it. You see the cranes everywhere and the work is definitely happening yet they do it in such a way that somehow keeps the roads clean. The customer service in the whole of Dubai is exceptional. I have been so impressed just how well you are looked after here.

I had a problem with my hotel reservation and everyone wanted to help me. In the end the problem was resolved and to compensate me for any inconvenience I was upgraded from a club room to a suite - the place is huge!

It’s also very cheap here. I’ve been working in the Old Town and staying in Internet City (next to Media City!). It’s a 30min taxi ride and with a tip is comes to 60 UAE dirham - £8!!!

The hotel is very good, in fact I’m writing this blog entry while sitting on the 44th floor in the Champagne Lounge drinking free champagne - it’s a hard life.

I travel a lot and end up in many different airports, hotels and venues. Each location (generally) has wifi access yet never the same provider. Now this is not surprising as I travel from country to country but it is frustrating when I stay in the same country, for example the UK. The problem is that there is no one provider that has a large enough coverage. The result is that I have to sing up to different providers depending where I am.

BT has just teamed up with FON to try to address this problem in a way that I fully applaud – BTFON is creating and massive wifi network using private homeowners already installed home wifi. If you have wifi at home you will no doubt know that several of your neighbours also have wifi as your own home PC can pick up your neighbours signal. What BTFON does if you sign up for free on the BTFON website is simply change your own wifi router setup to show your own private connection so you can still connect safely as normal and a BTOpenZone connection.

The goal is to get as many people as possible to sign up and therefore create a massive BTOpenZone wifi network. For doing this, BT will give you 350 BTOpenZone minutes every month for free! This will allow you to connect to any public BTOpenZone access point.

It’s a great idea and it simply works.