We did very little last weekend, and got up late and wandered about town, ate out, went to the cinema and generally just enjoyed. Sunday we did spend the morning sorting the garden out but after that we went back to lazing and cooked cake and cookies.

We saw the Bourne Ultimatum which rounded the series off nicely although I still think I like the first one best. Also we watched the Man who Would be King on Sunday evening which was excellent (Thank you Will) - and neither of us had seen it before.

Recently I've been doing a lot of coding, starting work on another new WTRD website design. I've been thinking about doing more web-design (perhaps professionally), and sorting out functions to make it easy. I have recently written a number of classes in both Javascript and PHP - the Javascript ones being the most clever and facilitate AJAX requests, and perhaps the one I am most proud of -even though its mostly based on the Really Simple History framework, is a javascript history class which enables AJAX applications (and other if you need) to fake browser history so that the back and forwards buttons work intuitively - the usual drawback in AJAX style applications.

Maybe I will finish the "Code" section of this website to example these little scripts.

Anyway, I have Friday off this week to make it an extra long Bank Holiday weekend, and we're planning to camp down near Harlyn and surf and enjoy.

When I arrived in Bournemouth on Saturday I had no idea what was in store for me.

The Beach Lounge

The weather was beautiful and Drew had mentioned that we might go down the the beach. We did so and met up with some of Drew's mates. We chilled out on the beach for a bit in the glorious sunshine and chucked a frisbee about a bit. Then Drew suggests that we should build a lounge out of sand. Remarkably, this seems to capture everyone imagination and the four of us grab some brightly colored plastic spades - not the ideal tools but Ellie, Sebastian's daughter, didn't seem to mind us borrowing them and they were all we had - and started to dig.

We started with a trench, the idea being that we build a square table with four two-man sofas around it. After about a hour of sweat we had finished and impressive was the result. We decided that a BBQ was the way forwards so we chipped off to grab some food and drink while Sebastian fetched a BBQ.

The Beach Lounge 2

To our surprise when we returned, a guy with a solar powered van had set up a little amplifier a mic and a record player on the beach just near our lounge. It seems our house-warming party was going to have a live DJ. However the DJ turned out to be 'Dirty Ali' (which he warned us not to search directly for on Google) who has rescued all of his equipment from the Dump in Winbourne, so it's all discarded. That's everything - the truck batteries he solar-charges and uses to power the amplifier and record player and also the records themselves. This did mean that the selection was somewhat eclectic, from The Beatles and Gloria Gaynor to ABBA and I-can't-remember-what-else. Certainly it was quite an experience.

We sat eating a drinking and making merry until about midnight by which time it was getting a little chilly, but have spent a good deal of time watching the sky for shooting stars of which about 8 or 9 were spotted. Magical.

Today was less of a excitement, sitting in and watching Heroes until I left back for Exeter to write this and eagerly await the return of my sweetheart, Rosie, from Austria. My communication with her has been mostly by SMS but It sounds like she has had an excellent trip with plenty of exercise and eating and enjoyment. I can't wait to see her!

Rosie has gone to Austria for the week. She left last Thursday. Last weekend I went up to Hertford for a BBQ with my friends back in our old stomping grounds in West St. Excellent afternoon, real good to see everyone and enjoyed it thoroughly. Not to mention the return of GoldenEye on the N64 which looks so dated I can't believe how much we played it...

This week however I have been mostly lazy - as usually happens when Rosie is away. I'm sure I not actually like this but I guess the fact I can takes over whenever she is away. Of course, I reckon given a week I'd probably fall out of it again and start doing the washing up regularly and keeping the place tidy. I hope so anyway.

The main activity of the week has been the Wii-modding though. It certainly looked like a harder job than the Xbox is. There are only 6 solder points, but they are mostly tiny, 2 of them reasonable at about 2mm square, but the rest about 1mm maybe less.

Still I thought it was within my ability. Then I realise that this is a new version of the Wii in which Nintendo in there infinite wisom have remove three of the legs of one of the chips in the Wii, hiding the solder points and making it much harder to achieve the desired result.

So you actually have to whip your Dremel out and grind away at the top of the chip carefully to expose the three traces so you can solder to them. Again, not only is this careful and tricky to grind, but the exposed traces are seriously small and difficult to solder to.

Wii mod install - tiny wires

However after a long slow process I had the soldering done and went to try the chip. The Wii turned itself off immediately. Not a good sign. But that is enough for one night so I leave it to have a look at the next day.

During work however I am looking a one of the photos I took of the modding and realise that in my infinite stupidity I have solder one of the easy point to the wrong pad. D'oh! So I resolder that and it all works first time. Success! Then I tape everyone up with electrical tape and accidentally rip up some of the wires. D'oh again! So I have to resolder, tape down and finally finish the mod. I put the Wii back together and try it again....

It works! So all is good and I am happy. I let Jon know - who has been kept informed of the progress and was getting rather nervous about wether he would ever see his Wii again - and he is chuffed to bits.

So Wii modding isn't that complicated after all.

OK, just a quickie this time to show off some of the pictures from the Camping holiday.

I needed a Holiday, and the few days I just took off to spend camping down in Cornwall, near Hayle, were just the ticket.

It started off pretty badly with our car needing some TLC on the Thursday before we left and therefore didn't leave til later than expected on the Friday and then the rain most of Saturday - particularly the evening. However it was all worth it and we had a few cracking surf sessions, despite the surf dying out towards Tuesday.

Also I got to see my nephew, Thomas, and spend a good amount of time with him which was great. Oh yes and of course his mother and father to - especially as it was Nancy's birthday yesterday.

I'll post some photos in due course, in the Gallery and here in the Blog - I discovered I like taking portraits of people. But first I guess I should get back to work...