“Auld Lang Syne” is not Chinese !

Nor, for that matter, is “Herge’s Adventures of Tin-Tin”.

These little nuggets of information may not appear earth-shattering to you, but they did come as quite a surprise to Amanda.

“How ?”, you might ask…

So, as expected, Steve Coppell has parted company with Reading F.C.

Today is a sad day.

After my beloved “Royals” (Reading Football Club) last chance of promotion finally disappeared in the play-offs last night, Steve Coppell announced that he would be leaving the club.

I would venture to suggest that this comes as no surprise to anyone.

Reading F.C. owe Steve a tremendous debt of gratitude for everything he achieved with the club during the five and a half years of his managership. He is a gentleman in the true sense of the word, a man of tremendous integrity and someone who is almost universally respected throughout English football.

Thank you Steve for taking us to heights which many of us thought would never be achieved. May you be happy and contented in whatever you decide to do in the future.

Right, now the niceties are done with it’s time to get down to some serious talking…

Google Chrome: Some likes, some dislikes, and an oddity

Firstly I must say that I am only making comparisons between Chrome and Internet Explorer. This is because I have never used any other browser (other than Firefox for about a week, some six years ago… so that doesn’t count).

It is quite possible that the things I like about Chrome are available elsewhere. I would bow to the readers’ greater knowledge.

Likes:

• Compared to IE, goes like poo off a gardening implement (not a difficult achievement, but this is impressive)
• The Most Visited option when opening a new tab is a neat idea
• The fact that what’s going on, rather than just ticking over somewhere nondescript at the bottom left, appears in a “foggy” box down there which catches the eye, so you are likely to notice that something is going on, especially if you weren’t expecting it.
• Much cleaner and less cluttered screen
• The Incognito window is useful, especially when you don’t want to “pollute” your history.
• Show all Downloads is particularly useful for somebody like me. Having downloaded something I will invariably forget where I saved it to. Show all Downloads brings up a list of everything you have downloaded and then lets you look at it in the folder you saved it to. Neat.

Dislikes:

• The most obvious thing is that Chrome doesn’t (at least yet) allow one to automatically transfer to a new tab which is being opened.
• Some of the obviously preferable options are not set as the default so one has to change them. Can’t remember which at the moment, and it was only slightly annoying. Actually having to “go find them” was a useful tutorial exercise anyway.
• I know I shouldn’t really complain, but Chrome is less tolerant of outdated (deprecated) HTML. This is a little annoying for me as, (due to my short-term memory problems) I am struggling to keep up with the latest incarnations. Some of my favourite sites are apparently not fully up to speed either, so they could look a little better. But, hey, I’m all in favour of progress when it’s warranted.
• The extended History takes a while to get used to (for me, for some reason), but has an annoying quirk. The visits for today run backwards in chronological order, but once one reaches the turn of the day everything is ordered by time of day, not date ! This means that a site you visited months ago at 23:59:59 comes before the last site you visited last night. Arrgghh !

Oddity:

• (and this is wierd !) The display quality of some fonts is a little “fuzzier” than when using IE….. but some graphics are clearer ! That one I really don’t understand….

So there we are, after a few days of normal (not geeky) usage all in all I’m pretty pleased. I still haven’t decided whether there are any security issues involved. Reading up on it before I took the plunge there seemed to be some concerns among the more technical boffins, but I took the plunge and I’m glad I did.

There will probably be follow-up reports from time to time.

Thanks for listening, and it would be good to hear what others think.

I don’t normally do irony…

… but it is ironic that I used Internet Explorer to download Google Chrome. That’s a bit like handing a gun to your executioner !

I know it’s early days (well, about 30 minutes actually) but all the claims about speed were certainly true. Wow!

Here’s hoping that it’s stable enough to continue to use (not much competition there ! ), and that it doesn’t give me any security issues.

Have had to download the Adobe Flash Movie Add-on in order to see my stats here on WordPress, but that seems only a minor irritation.

So far I like what I see.

Ok, so I’ve been working on other things

Haven’t posted for a while on here because I’ve been working on my other blog, the one that explains about my head injury.

Click on the link above if you’re into the “real” me and the reasons why an intelligent guy in his early 50’s suddenly becomes confused, disorientated, has no sense of time, and can be too “off this planet” to be able to cope with day-to-day living.

On the other hand, if you couldn’t give two monkeys about that and just want to gaze at more pictures of my beautiful wife… watch this space

“Look at your wife” (2) … The official wedding pictures

Well Amanda had a good day on Thursday… not only did the Official Wedding Photos arrive, but she got her new visa too. Yes, A full 2 year, multiple entry visa which gives her the freedom to come and go as she pleases.

Anyway, now you can see why I was so starry-eyed that day ….

My beautiful Amanda with her new husband

My beautiful little wife

Hello you ! .... Kiss ?

This is Amanda's favourite picture

Words fail me

Beautiful and happy

All pictures copyright A&TH

Winter sky

Off-blue, off-grey, off-white… the colourist has laid out an unmistakeable winter sky.

Clouds: Blending yet separated, defined yet merging, static yet fluid, focussed yet blurred, the palette used in ways of wonder and mystery.

Behind me the sky is more monotone, more threatening.

This evening it will rain.

(c) TNH 2009

More wedding pics

Okay, so here are some more pictures of us on, or around, our wedding day.

The two of us at an office dinner	Getting ready to go in	Getting the paperwork done
Saluting the flag	Yes, Mr & Mrs !	Double Happy - Job done

The official photographers have said that they will need around 50 days to get the proper pictures ready.

I dread to think how much “air-brushing” they need to do of me …

“Look at your wife.”

Nervous moments

Double-checking

It's time for the rings

The photographer spoke in a monotone voice the whole time, and yet with a certainty that was apparent even though I could not understand a word that he said, except on the occasional times when he broke into his limited English. 

 

As the sessions continued I became more used to what was required of me, and gradually his utterances of “Sir” and a hand gesture became easier to understand.  He smiled and said “Oh yes!” more often.

 

All the while his assistant busied himself with the task of positioning us, our hands and our clothes. His favourite expression seemed to be “Okay, Sir, take a break” whenever my involvement in a sitting was complete.

 

Sometimes there was a degree of confusion but, on the whole, things went fairly smoothly. 

 

Amanda acted as translator for us, passing on the instructions from the pair of them, and the instruction I enjoyed hearing from her the most was “Look at your wife”.

 

 

I looked at the beautiful face so close to mine. 

 

I looked into the eyes of my Amanda who was radiant as I had never seen her before.

 

 

She was happy, delighted, and delightful. 

 

I looked into the eyes of my beautiful Amanda and wondered how life could ever be better than this.

 

Amanda in her 'Wedding Dress'

Give me a proper blogging site

I originally began blogging on one of the FriendFinder dating sites.  I had never understood before what it was that people saw in blogging, but I had a look one day just out of curiosity and there seemed to be some happy, friendly people chatting about all and sundry so I thought I’d give it a try.  From that, and my new-found need for more facilities, came my eventual expansion onto WordPress.

I have a profile on FaceBook but I rarely (if ever) go there because I don’t like it, and I’m not on BeBo, MySpace or any of those “youngster’s” sites.

So why am I writing this post ? …