http://www.fippy.net/blog Ramblings of a little Blue Gnoll Mon, 15 Dec 2008 01:28:09 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en A little while ago, I was sitting with a glass of port in the sunshine, relaxing and letting my mind wander, and I found myself considering what my life might have been like had I not become enthralled with computers, back at secondary school. My father was a photographer in the ... http://www.fippy.net/blog/archives/2008/12/a-parallel-life/ I haven’t found anything worthy of a post in recent months, so I thought I’d just post a little summary of events, so everyone knows that I’m still here. Obviously the big news around the water cooler is the economy, associated credit crunch and bailouts. Like everyone else, my ... http://www.fippy.net/blog/archives/2008/11/miscellaneous/ Here are a selection of photos from our recent travels on the Yucatan Peninsular. Bookmark this url since over time we will be uploading a lot more photos to Flickr. Enjoy! http://www.fippy.net/blog/archives/2008/09/photos-from-the-yucatan/ Yesterday we got back from a wonderful week on the Yucatan peninsular, on the gulf coast of Mexico. We purposely left it late in the year, knowing that summer months are both very crowded with beach-goers, and the weather very hot and sticky. It being hurricane season, we spent a ... http://www.fippy.net/blog/archives/2008/09/mayans-of-the-yucatan/ I’ve had my new iPhone 3G for almost a week now and I totally love it. It’s easy to carry in your pocket and works flawlessly. I’m particularly impressed with the way the applications work together, and don’t under-estimate the usefulness of the GPS, even if it doesn’t do full ... http://www.fippy.net/blog/archives/2008/08/iphone-and-gas-prices/ After a year and a half of us trying to sell our old house, we finally did so, a little while ago. What a huge relief that is. Although we had decent renters looking after the house, our costs exceeded the rent and in 18 months we have chewed through ... http://www.fippy.net/blog/archives/2008/07/house-sold/ Is Doomsday upon us? Is the world ramping up its natural disasters? Is climate spiraling out of control? Is the world economy on the brink of collapse? Recent media coverage would have us believe such things, with an astonishing variety of “end-of-the-world” what-if documentaries. Great floods, asteroid collisions, supervolcano erupting, polar ... http://www.fippy.net/blog/archives/2008/05/is-doomsday-upon-us/ Six months after the wildfires of 2007, I took some photos of how the landscape is recovering. Yesterday we went hiking at the Blue Sky Ecological Reserve east of Poway, and saw significant evidence of the huge Witch Fire. (The largest red area on that map) Most of the grassland had ... http://www.fippy.net/blog/archives/2008/04/fire-update-6-months-later/ Zelda, our eldest cat passed away yesterday. She had been very sick for about a year, and despite regular vet visits, medication and treatment, the time had come to ease her obvious discomfort. Zelda was our beautiful and adoring female domestic medium hair Calico, who had been with Tamara since before ... http://www.fippy.net/blog/archives/2008/03/zelda-1995-2008/ Take a look at this teaser video of Spaceship Two, presumably put together by or on behalf of Virgin Galactic. That looks like incredible fun and maybe closest that I might get to orbit in my lifetime, unless we accelerate our manned spaceflight projects. Not sure why you need those ... http://www.fippy.net/blog/archives/2008/01/virgin-galactic/