Wait 'til your father gets home

Basel Road Trip

2007-04-12T14:28:00.000+01:00

Freiburg Cathedral

Basel road trip

2007-04-12T14:25:00.000+01:00

My train into Basel

Playing in the park

2007-03-24T10:36:00.000Z

A lovely spring morning at Rouken Glen Park.

Testing my phone

2007-03-11T16:55:00.000Z

Just checking out my new K800i and its ability to post to this blog. Seems to work. My contract is with Three who I would highly recommend.

Flock this

2005-10-22T10:55:00.000+01:00

Having a stab at using Flock as my web browser. So far it seems to have some nice features (like inputting stuff directly to my blog which I am trying right now). The biggest advantage I saw with it was the (maybe) smarter way it managed bookmarks, but in what seems like a huge oversight given its targe market, it can't import from Firefox. . . . Doh! I'm sure this will come in a later build, or maybe I can dig out a workaround.

Other than that it has a nice interface, though it will take a little practice to get used to. It might eventually become my default browser, but I think that the rest of the family will probably stick with Firefox since it does everthing they want and for this reason, it may be that I stick with Firefox as well. Time will tell. If there was a way of turning off all the Flock features and just leaving it looking like Firefox, that would be useful.

Well it's finally all over

2005-09-04T21:28:00.000+01:00

Well it’s finally all over. The last item (Dark Conspiracy RPG) should go in the mail tomorrow and it is now time to tally up the winners and losers. Rules for the scorecard: item prices including P&P will be included. Here goes. . . .

Items sold:

Love all the People Bill Hicks Book £6.32
Kohan 2 Kings of War £3.49
Age of Mythology £12.50
Encarta 2003 Premium £4.19
Flight Simulator 2004 £29.00
Magix Music Studio £4.52
Age of Mythology The Titans £7.50
Microsoft Train Simulator £15.51
Severn Valley Expansion for MSTS £15.50
D&D Monstrous Manual £3.99
D&D Player’s Handbook £8.50
D&D Dungeon Master’s Guide £5.20
Teach Yourself Adobe Premiere £4.49
Sharp VL-PD3 Camcorder £72.00
D&D Player’s Handbook £3.99
Idiot’s Guide to Creating a Web Page £3.99
Dark Conspiracy RPG £4.99
Radeon 9800 PRO Graphics card £70.00
Dragonquest RPG £6.20
D&D Combat and Tactics £3.99

Total 20 Items £279.45

Items Bought:

4 Kiss Coasters £8.40

Ambush Game £17.01
Rebel Storm Royal Guard £1.30
Game of Dracula £7.52
Hero DVD £6.29

Total 5 items £40.52

Total Profit £238.93!!!!!!!!!!

eBay Experiment Day 28

2005-08-27T18:55:00.000+01:00

The last day. I'll probably ruminate on this experience a little tomorrow, but for now I'm just glad that I have seen this throuigh to the end. By this time next week, all auctions should be dispatched and I can add up the credits and debits and see if I made more than I spent.

Today's activities:

Selling Plantronics headphone/microphone for a computer.
Bidding on "The House of Flying Daggers". I have soft spot for Hong Kong action movies and I've been wanting to see this one. Check out the auction here.
My old graphics card sold for a tidy £70, so I think I am ahead in terms of money made.

2005-08-26T21:59:00.000+01:00

The penultimate day!

Selling Umberto Eco's "The Name of the Rose". Life is just too short to read this. I treid, but it was just too hard to get into.
Bidding on Hero, the Jet Li movie. Click here to view the auction.
Won "The Game of Dracula", so I will be able to relive all those childhood games. This is a cool looking game and i will post some pictures on my website when it arrives.

eBay Experiment Day 26

2005-08-25T19:49:00.000+01:00

Get this one done and there are only two more to go.

Selling a USB memory card reader.
Bidding on Stalingrad. Another one for my military history library.
Big disappointment was gettting outbid on the Mechwarrior Starter Set. I think I'll may be be getting this one once the experiment is over. We also had our first item not selling-The Berserk boardgame.

eBay Experiment Day 25

2005-08-24T18:30:00.000+01:00

Four more to days to go, four more days to go, hi-ho the witch is dead, etc. etc.

eBay activity today:

Selling Encarta Reference Suite 99 DVD-ROM edition. Our first ever copy of Encarta. If memory serves me right this one had a neat feature. A random search that would pull up an article at, well, random. . . .
Bidding on Dressed to Kill by Kiss. My favourite of the early Kiss albums.
Still top bidder on the Royal Guard and the Game of Dracula.

eBay Experiment Day 24

2005-08-23T19:34:00.000+01:00

eBay funk continues. I think the kids going back to school has tired me out more than it has them. I'm looking forward to using some of the time spent keeping my eBay posts up to date doing some other posts, and hell, who am I kidding, sitting on my arse.

eBay activity today:

Selling Combat and Tactics for 2nd Edition Dungeons and Dragons. Back in the day (i.e. before v3.5 came out) we were huge into playing 2nd edition and all its extra add ons. In my opinion this was one of the best.
Bidding on the Mechwarrior starter set from Wizkids games. Check it out here.

Highlight of a dull day at work was putting in a pre-order with the lovely guys and Leisure Games for the Axis and Allies Miniatures game. Looking forward to that one a lot.

eBay Experiment Day 23

2005-08-22T21:11:00.000+01:00

Activities for today:

Selling the Elvis Special 1978. I bought this cheap at a car boot sale several years ago with the intention of selling it on eBay. I never quite got around to it until now.
Bidding on "Cocktail" DVD for my wife. Outbid straightaway on this one. It is amazing what people will pay for DVDs on eBay. Have they never heard of play.com?? Check out the auction here.

The dark eBay funk has set in. Whilst the blog part and eth auction part are okay, the thought of packaging things up is crushing me. I'll try and get a few things done tonight.

eBay Experiment Day 22

2005-08-21T20:41:00.000+01:00

Games day today with my friends in Edinburgh. Usually this is an RPG day, but due to other commitments only two of us could make it so today was the first outing for Arkham Horror, the boardgame. One day I will write a review for this, but for now let me just say that it was exceptionally good fun and really captured the feel of the books and the RPG. Unfortunatley we didn't win (we came close though) but that didn't affect our enjoyment one bit.

eBay activity today:

The auction for the camcorder finished at a highly respectable £67.
Selling the Dragonquest role-playing game. This one dates back to 1981 and was given to me by one of my colleagues in work who found it in her attic! If this goes for a fortune I'll definitely be cutting her in. Check out the auction here.
Bidding on the Doom Boardgame. Outbid immediately so that was a quick one!

eBay Experiment Day 21

2005-08-20T18:40:00.000+01:00

One more week to go! I fianlly managed to get my new graphics card, though I had to drive to the courier's warehouse to get it. It was worth the wait though (almost). Everything look super sexy on our shiny new monitor.

eBay activities today:

Selling my old graphics card. A Sapphire Radeon 9800 Pro 128 MB. These seem to go for wildly varying prices but hopefully I'll get at least £10 for it.
Biddding on a Royal Guard figure for the Star Wars Miniatures game.
The camcorder has now reached £16 which whilst cheap, I'm pretty happy with. It's a lot better than 99p!!!

N&W-1135

2005-08-19T23:02:00.000+01:00

N&W-1135,
originally uploaded by sahst23.

Outstanding photo. It never ceases to amaze me the quality of the photos on Flickr. Of course I love trains, so that helps with this one, but nonetheless this one is incredibly atmospheric and oozes the power of the locomotive.

eBay Experiment Day 20

2005-08-19T20:28:00.000+01:00

Friday night and today's mantra is "Never Use Ebuyer". C'mon everybody, let's all chant along "Never Use Ebuyer. . . . . Never Use Ebuyer. . . . . . Never Use Ebuyer". You might have guessed that whilst the monitor did arrive, the graphics card is still MIA. Recall that it was supposed to be delivered on Wednesday. Here are some of my personal favourites:

An email yesterday saying that the card would arrive on the agreed delivery date. Pretty tough unless they can travel in time.
The card was with the courier today (allegedly) but somehow wasn't delivered. "5.31pm, we tried to deliver your graphics card, but there was nobody home. We left a card. . . . ." Hmmmm. Yes there was someone home, and no you didn't leave a card.

They might be cheap, but to be honest my time is worth way more than I am saving by shopping with them.

On the eBay front:

Outbid on the Sleepless in Seattle DVD for my wife.
Today I am selling the Dark Conspiracy RPG. We never actually played this one thouigh it looked pretty good.
Bidding on the Game of Dracula. I remember having a lot of fun with this one when I was younger and I hope to introduce the fun to my own kids.

A Big Day for the Family

2005-08-18T10:49:00.000+01:00

Balancing a shelf on my head,
originally uploaded by valandgreig.

My son is starting playgroup and my daughter goes into Primary 3!!! This is a photo of them both just before we left for the school.

eBay Experiment Day 19

2005-08-18T10:11:00.000+01:00

An early post today. I have the day off work as both my son and daughter were starting playgroup and Primary 3 today. Everything went off smoothly, with my son taking to playgroup like a duck to water. I'll post a picture from Flickr later on.

Auction stuff today. . .

Selling a boardgame version of the video game Berzerk. Hopefully someone with an eye for videogame nostalgia will want to snap this one up. Check out the auctiopn here.
Bidding on the boardgame Risk. An absolute classic that I'm ashamed that I don't own. Check out the auction here.

eBay Experiment Day 18

2005-08-17T20:31:00.000+01:00

Busy night tonight. My daughter starts Primary 3 tomorrow and my son starts playgroup. Lots to do to get uniforms, lunches, schoolbags, pencil cases etc. all organised for tomorrow.

eBay activity today:

Selling Microsoft Works Deluxe 99. To be honest I don't think this one will sell, but it was tucked away at the back of our desk and everything else I had planned to sell is in the loft and I don't want to disturb the kids.
Bidding on Diesel Days. A book about trains in Scotland.

On a final note I got my new computer monitor today from Ebuyer. Unfortunately they managed to not deliver the graphics card, despite the fact that I paid extra for delivery today. I've bought several things from them in the past and more often than not they have screwed it up. This is definitely the last time, though they are really cheap. . . .

eBay Experiment Day 17

2005-08-16T21:59:00.000+01:00

God, I can't be bothered tonight! Three things to package up and send. So far everything we have have tried to sell has sold which is pretty good going. Activity as follows:

Selling "The Idiots Guide to Creating a Web Page". This is a damn fine book for learning basic HTML and I can hugely recommend it.
Bidding on "Sleepless in Seattle" for my wife. Check it out here.

The reason I can't really be bothered is that I spent way to long playing World of Warcraft trying to get through the Deadmines instance with a way underpowered party. Eventually I had to give up as the kids came back from their grannny's and there was no chance of getting peace to finish it.

eBay Experiment Day 16

2005-08-15T20:49:00.000+01:00

Two thirds of the way through. Only one bid and one watcher on yesterday's camcorder. I'm getting a bit twitchy that someone is going to score this for 99p. I'm sure it won't happen, but I'll be glad if the amount rises to £20 or so.

Without further ado, here are today's activities:

Up for auction tonight is the 3rd Edition Player's Handbook for Dungeons and Dragons. With uncanny timing, and finger poised nowhere near the pulse, I managed to buy this minutes before v3.5 was released. As a result the book is in mint condition.
Bidding on Chainsaw Warrior from Games Workshop, long before they concentrated their product line on miniatures wargames, they used to produce a pretty diverse set of games. My gaming group used to dabble with these-mainly Rogue Trooper and Block Mania pretty regularly.
Two auctions were won last night. . . the Falkland War book and Ambush. Lots of wartime goodness.

Off to Ebuyer now to look into buying a new flat screen monitor and graphics card-not with the money I've made from this eBay experiment I hasten to add!

eBay Experiment Day 15

2005-08-14T15:15:00.000+01:00

Lazy Sunday afternoon and a big auction goes up. . . .

On sale today is our old camcorder starting at the bargain price of only £0.99. I really hope it hets a few bids because I'll be gutted letting this go for that low a price! Like it says in the auction, there is nothing worong with this little gizmo except that it isn't deteced too reliably by Windows XP.
Bidding on Ambush, a solo wargame. Check out the auction here.
I won yesterday's auction for the Kiss coasters which was neat.

Lots of things to package today so I'd better get busy.

eBay Experiment Day 14

2005-08-13T18:51:00.000+01:00

No auctions last night. It was a work's night out and I rolled home in no fit state to post a letter never mind post an auction. Highlight of the night was either comparing man boobs with a friend (both of us are actually pretty skinny) and watching the same friend drink his beer not noticing the miniature plastic penis bodding around in it. I guess you had to be there. . . .

Todays auction stuff:

Up for auction tonight is Teach Yourself Adobe Premiere 6.5 in 24h. Check it out here.
Bidding on some Kiss drinks coasters. This one finishes in an hour or so, so I'll soon know if I get lucky or not.
Outbid on the Apollo 13 auction which was a shame but I am sure I could get it for a similar price in a real shop.

eBay Experiment Day 12

2005-08-11T18:50:00.000+01:00

Here we go again. Day 12 and I must say I am getting a little bored with this. I'm going to keep it up though, but it is a bit of a struggle. The hardest bit is finding stuff to bid on. It turns out that there isn't really that much that I want.

Anyway, what's been happening today?

So far nothing I have offered up for auction has went unsold and I am optimistic of making a decent amount of money from Flight Simulator 2004 as it has a whopping 23 people watching it and it finishes tonight.
Up for auction tonight is the Dungeons and Dragons 2nd Edition Dungeon Master's Guide. Again this one is simply surplus to requirements. Check it out here.
Bidding on the Wizard of Oz. Check out the auction here. Definitely one of my favourite films and one that the kids have yet to experience, though I suspect that the witch will scare the crap out of them.
Finally, a load of stuff will be packaged up tonight to go into the post tomorrow.

Huntsville's Birthday Fireworks

2005-08-10T21:44:00.000+01:00

Huntsville's Birthday Fireworks,
originally uploaded by Godverbs.

Awesome picture I found on Flickr. Beautiful colours and I am a sucker for fireworks pictures. No idea where Huntsville is, but I guess it is in the USA somewhere.

eBay Experiment Day 11

2005-08-10T20:54:00.000+01:00

Busy night tonight, so a quick post. The Ella Guru album arrived today and it is pretty good so far. I only listened the first 3 songs but is nice and chilled out with some haunting melodies.

Auction stuff today. . . .

Selling the Dungeons and Dragons Player's Handbook from second edition. Check it out here. Again I have v3.5 and these 2nd edition books don't have sentimental value to me.
Bidding on Apollo 13 on DVD. Classic geek movie where nerds save the jocks! See the auction here.

eBay Experiment Day 10

2005-08-09T20:23:00.000+01:00

Another day, another auction, another bid.

Things are really starting to pick up with the auctions and whilst I'm not going to be retiring on the money I'll make, there are certainly plenty of bids going in.

Today's activites. . . .

Up for auction is the D&D 2nd edition Monstrous Manual. I'm enjoying playing version 3.5 at the moment and whilst I got a lot of milage out of the 2nd edition rules books, they don't have the same sentimental value as the 1st Edition rule books I've held onto all these years.
Bidding on a set of "Call of Duty" playing cards. I guess these were given away as a promo when the game was released. Call of Duty is one of my favourite video games and the cards seem to have nice nostalgaic wartime feel to them.
I was outbid on the Thomas the Tank Engine train.

eBay Experiment Day 9

2005-08-08T19:03:00.000+01:00

The activity ramps up a notch today as auctions begin to finish up and I need to do that most hated of eBayer tasks. . . packing things up and mailing them, and just to get off to a good start I have ran out of big padded envelopes so off to Asda.

Envelopes purchased, so the Bill Hicks book can go in the mail tonight.

Activities for today:

Won the Ella Guru album after managing to stay top bidder after a couple of late bids went in.
Todays auction is for The Severn Valley Railway expansion for Microsoft Train Simulator. This is actually a pretty awesome expansion and really shows what can be done with Microsoft's sim.
Today I am bidding on a battery powered James for my son's Thomas the Tank Engine train set.
Mickey Mouse CD came in the mail today. Super quick!!

Laigh Milton Viaduct info

2005-08-07T22:55:00.001+01:00

Laigh Milton Viaduct info,
originally uploaded by valandgreig.

Some information about the viaduct.

Laigh Milton Viaduct

2005-08-07T22:55:00.000+01:00

Laigh Milton Viaduct,
originally uploaded by valandgreig.

The world's oldest public railway viaduct! Pretty interesting eh? No? Well, there is a nice walk to the bridge and you can throw loads of stones from the bridge into the river below.

Dundonald Castle

2005-08-07T22:53:00.000+01:00

Dundonald Castle,
originally uploaded by valandgreig.

Great day out at this castle on Saturday. Unexpectedly they were holding the local fair in the grounds and lots of fun was had by all.

eBay Experiment Day 8

2005-08-07T20:37:00.000+01:00

Well a whole week of auctions has drawn to a close. So far I've only won a Stormtrooper for the Star Wars Miniatures game. Today I was outbid for the Han Solo figure which is a shame. The first auction has now ended with the Bill Hicks book selling for £3.82.

Up for sale today is Microsoft Train Simulator. Pretty geeky, but pretty good fun. As with most of the games up for sale, there simply aren't enough hours in the day to play them all. Click here to see the auction.
Bidding on The Falklands War to satisfy my military history cravings.

On a different tack, much family fun was had at West Kilbride beach with some friends of my wife's.

eBay Experiment Day 7

2005-08-06T20:16:00.000+01:00

Great family day out today at Dundonald castle where the Dundonald Games were taking place-kind of a local fair but with Highland games, mock battles and a Scottish pipe band competition. I'll link to some pictures later from Flickr. We followed this up with a nice wlak in the country to go and see the world's oldest public railway viaduct (more fun than it sounds!).

While I am writing this I am listening to Rancid. Specifically "Indestructible". Cool album.

Not a lot of activity in the auctions already posted. Today's stuff is as follows:

Selling Age of Mythology - The Titans. Another from the box marked, "Too Many Games, Too Little Time". Click here to see the auction.
Bidding on an Ace Frehley guitar pick. For those of you not in the know, Ace Frehley was the original guitar player with rock masters Kiss who have long (more than 20 years) been one of my favourite bands.

eBay Experiment Day 6

2005-08-05T18:59:00.000+01:00

The experiment continues. . . . As I expected I was quickly outbid on the R2-D2 figure from yesterday and my rules forbid me from making any further bids, so we'll just have to let that one go. One bid has come in for Encarta 2003, so that should sell. Today's activities are:

Up for sale is Magix Music Studio 2004. like the blog title says. I am a half-arsed guitarist and I thought it would be fun to record some music and it certainly is fun, but this program was a little to complex for my needs. It is pretty much capable of producing professional quality recordings and was a bit too complex for someone monkeying around with just a guitar. Instead I use Line6 guitarport and Riff tracker which I definitely recommend.
Today I am bidding on a Mickey Mouse learning CD for my son.

eBay Experiment Day 5

2005-08-04T23:33:00.000+01:00

Phew, late night tonight. Out for dinner with afriend so this will be brief. No changes in what I am winning. There is now one bid on the Bill Hicks book. Today's auctions are as follows:

Selling Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004. Check this auction here. I bought this when I wanted a real intellectual challenge in my gaming. Turns out that this isn't what I wanted after all. Without a doubt this is a great game, but I just didn't have the willpower to stick to the learning curve.
Bidding on R2-D2 figure for the Star Wars Miniatures game. I don't fancy this one myself, but the kids wanted me to go for it so what the hell. Turns out that it is a rare figure so I don't hold out much hope of getting it.

eBay Experiment Day 4

2005-08-03T20:51:00.000+01:00

Well the Starz CD isn't going to be mine. Not too bothered actually. I'm not a huge fan of live recordings anyway. I'm still the top bidder on the Ella Guru album, though there is still about 5 days to go. Today's activity. . . .

Up for auction is Microsoft Encarta 2003 DVD edition. This is great encylcopedia. The only reason I am getting rid of it is that we got the 2005 version cheap in a sale. My favourite feature is the fact that you can dump the whole thing to your hard drive and never have to insert the DVD again. I wish some games companies would do the same. . .
Today I am bidding on a Han Solo figure for the Star Wars Miniatures Game.
No bids on anythings so far, though items are beginning to appear on watch-lists.

eBay Experiment Day 3

2005-08-02T20:14:00.000+01:00

Well so far there have been no bids on naything I have posted, but the Bill Hicks book at least has made it onto someone's watch list. I'm still top bidder on the Ella Guru album, but like I said yesterday, I'm not sure if this is a good thing or a bad thing!

Today's auction is for. . . .

Age of Mythology for the PC. Check out the auction here. Yet another game in the series I like to call, "Too Many Strategy Games, Too Little Time".
Today's bid is for Starz - Greatest Hits Live. A band I was in used to play Starz covers and I've always had a soft spot for them. They were never popular in the UK though, so their CDs are pretty hard to come by.

eBay Experiment Day 2

2005-08-01T20:46:00.000+01:00

Day 2 of the experment. Time for an update.

No bids yet on the Bill Hicks book.
I won the auction for the Stormtrooper figure! Yay me!
Today's auction is a mint copy of Kohan 2 : Kings of War for the PC. This is a pretty good fantasy RTS game. I bought it at the height of an obsession with strategy games and to be honest, good though it is, there is no chance of me ever having enough time to play it.
Today's bid is on the first album by Ella Guru. To be honext, I'm not sure exactly what I am buying here! It has been ages since I heard one of their tracks on the radio and after looking on iTunes for a while, I finally gave up. The name stuck in my head though and low and behold, eBay delivers. . . . Hope it doesn't suck.

Not much else to say today.

eBay Experiment Day 1

2005-07-31T13:02:00.000+01:00

First item up for grabs is a Bill Hicks book. I bought this from Amazon, but got a second copy as a gift. I was lucky enough to see the great man twice before he died. Check out the auction here.

My first bid is on a stormtrooper for the Star Wars miniatures game.

First day so no wins and losses to speak of yet.

My eBay Experiment

2005-07-31T12:21:00.000+01:00

In the spirit of making a change to your life or trying something new for 28 days, I've decided to try an experiment with eBay. Each day I will list a new auction and each day I will bid on a new auction. Hopefully this will be a fun way of getting rid of some of the clutter in the house. I will keep a running total of money made versus money spent and at the end of the 28 days we will see who is ahead, me or eBay.

Rules for the game are as follows:

Only 1 new auction to be posted per day.
All auctions are to start at £0.99 and no "Buy it Now".
Only one bid per day is allowed.
I can only bid once on a particular item.
I'll need to rely on myself to be sensible abou this, but bids shouldn't be above the market value for an item just to make sure I win it.
Links to all the auctions and pictures of what I've sold and won will be posed to this blog.

Here goes nothing. . . . .

The Death of the Toy Soldier

2005-07-30T19:24:00.000+01:00

Back in the day, when I was but a youngster there was nothing better than than setting up huge armies of OO scale plastic soldiers and waging crazy warfare with a marble or other suitable artillery. Where did all these toy soldiers go? My preferred brand was Airfix, who had their financial problems, but if the demand was still there why didn't someone rush in to fill the vacuum? I wish I knew. These days toys are as much a fashion item as trainers (and I don't understand that either) and the days of the banker toy are almost gone. By banker toy I mean a toy that was a good gift regardless of the current fads. I'm not going to pretend that there weren't fad toys when I was young, but they weren't so all consuming. You could always fall back on a banker, namely (for me anyway), Lego, Airfix models, Airfix toy soldiers, or toy cars. Of these only Lego and toy cars still persist to any great degree and even then Lego is vastly different, consisitng now of kits designed to make pretty much the model you see on the box and nothing else.

Fad toys now rule the roost. Toy store shelves are now only just filled with "Batman Begins" toys, which will soon be discounted to make way for Fantastic 4 toys. My son's birthday is in June so he has missed most of these toys as potential birthday presents and I can be pretty certain that by Christmas they will have been swept from store shelves to be replaced with something else.

Of course it is not just about fad toys, there seems to be a move away from the kind of traditionally violent boy toys that my youth was filled with. The second world war was over 60 years ago, so should we still take delight in slaying hordes of little plastic Germans? Yup. We sure should. I liked playing with my Waterloo Assault Set. It didn't matter that Waterloo was 155 years before I was born. Without wanting to disappear up my own arse, this kind of play teaches imagination and creativity. They may be motionless plastic soldiers spread across your bedroom floor, but in your mind, they are fighting their way across treacherous battlefields, defining heroism and sacrifice. Surely this kind of play is way better for kids than using their Fantastic 4 toys to recreate scenes from the movie like little automatons?

Of course, if making a line of toy soldiers would be commercial suicide, what should take their place? Little plastic suicide bombers, insurgents (whatever they are) and car bomb plastic kits? I'm joking of course. We have just finishing celbraating the 60th anniversary of the end of the war in Europe. If there was ever a better time to launch a line of WW2 toys osldiers I don't know what it is. Maybe it is just nostalgia mixed with being thoroughly sick of political correctness applied to children's toys, but I really don't see the problem with toy soldiers and I certainly don't understand why they went out of favour. I could continue this rant to include toy guns but it is Saturday night I want to park my ass on the sofa.

The journey is complete

2005-07-30T19:22:00.000+01:00

10 days and a lot of washing, but my son now seems pretty much potty trained. He crossed the final hurdle this morning by doing a poo in his potty. I'm still prepared for the odd accident, especially when he is out with his friends and forgets to come back in, but for now the worst is past.

5 times in one day

2005-07-28T21:31:00.000+01:00

Well, with a subject line like that, I hope to get a few more hits. . . . I am of course referring to my son's potty training. 3 times in the potty and 2 times in the big toilet. Totally brilliant.

I also got a bunch of new toys in the mail today: a new Heroclix booster, D&D Miniatures Starter Set and Rebel Storm Starter Set as well as a couple of Spanish Main boosters. Many thanks to the guys at Leisure Games for their quick service. The new Heroclix got an outing tonight when my daughter kicked my ass. The other will stuff will have to wait for some Daddy quiet time. Spanish Main has already had some play at our monthly gaming days and it is a lot of fun.

Pretty sleepy today after pulling a late night at work yesterday. Looks like it was worth it though as everything is running smoothly (ish).

Dull night in work and cool kid's stuff

2005-07-27T21:24:00.000+01:00

Well. . . Despite my big machine fetish, spending the evening on a plant trial at work is not proving as exciting as I had thought. More on what my work actually invovles some other time, but given this gift of free(ish) time, I thought I'd take the opportunity to add links to a couple of things I like to do with my kids:

Heroclix. This is a lot of fun for grown-ups as well as kids, especially if you like comic books. The big advantage for kids is that there are basic rules which are still a lot of fun but remove a lot of the complexities. My daughter is 6 and loves playing this with me.
Kids of Catan. Nice, simple boardgame. Based on the complex adult game Catan. This is one for the whole family as my 3 year old son has just about the staying power for a whole game. The game pieces are a lot of fun to play with on their own and in a nice touch, the instruction encourage you to do just that.
Toy knights. A big castle, some knights and a dart gun and you can recreate Agincourt! Not quite, but almost. Endless hours spent with my son setting them up and knocking them down again. Papo rock.

2005-07-27T05:27:00.000+01:00

Make that 3 pees in 5 days!

Up and running

2005-07-26T22:18:00.000+01:00

Phew. After along day I have finally managed to update my website. It now contains a link to this blog on the navigation bar and some new content for only the second time this year.

The real question is whether or not I am able to maintain a blog with any more regularity than I was able to maintain the website. Time will tell I guess.

It worked out well that I had the day off work today (in-laws on holiday so I drew baby sitting duties) as I doubt I would ever have had time to modify the website at any other time, though I was going a little stir crazy around the house.

Potty training of my son continues (hence the stir craziness). So far he has managed to use the potty 2 times in 5 days. He can only get better tomorrow.