New blog!

After Slorpedo sneaked in to our travel blog, I thought a new blog to hide all my more geeky/ranty postings in might be a good idea! So here it is: Notes from a small field

Next stop.... Brighton!

After splashing out on a trip to New York in the spring, this year's summer holiday will be a night in Brighton!! We seem to have picked a tiny lull between the TUC and Lib Dem conferences, so that should be nice. I spied a doughnut stand on the pier which I had to walk past last time- no chance of that happening twice! Mmmmm, doughnuts!

After two amazing weekends SLorpedo was finally ready for an eager public to try the first few games...

It's a one handed game so a bottle of beer helps avoid inadvertant cheating:


Placing the playing board directly in front of the big screen lets the contestants' shadows join in:


There are sound effects as well as smoke:


Viewing the action in Second Life before the pre-party 4th birthday crowd arrived:


Video from the real world should be available soon to match the Second Life action.

Nice view but it was flippin cold at the top of the empire state building. Still, at least I had some film unlike the first time I was here:

Somehow I managed to con Jo into having a look round the UN! It's interesting, honest! Anyway, here's one of the rooms they argue in:

Much better view without those two idiots in the way from the other side:

Nice and sunny the rest of the time though- here's us catching the rays at the top of the rock:

We some how managed to pick the wettest day to visit the statue of liberty, as you can see from this pic back across to manhatten:

Bit of a delay but here are a few of the photos that came out ok from New York. First up, a well known statue:

We're off on holiday again. This time to New York and instead of blogging we're giving twitter a try...

http://twitter.com/jtonline

There she blows!

One of the few snaps of our mad glacier hike (too busy climbing up, over, through, round, between, accross a large lump of ice to stop and take photos!)

(17th time lucky! Time to get broadband I think!)

Us with our trusty van (the smaller one!), which took us 4,200 kms and only suffered one minor injury when I drove off without unplugging the power cable!

Some giant marbles (the Moeraki Boulders)...

Photos (and home) at last! A bit spaced out after spending what seems like three days on a plane, so straight to some pics now I can get them here!

First stop was Singapore, which we had a pretty good view of out of our hotel room...

Hello All! We are finally in Auckland after our five day mad dash around the North Island. I have to say I'm most impressed with how much we have packed in!

After Wanganui, we went to the Waitomo Glow worm caves, which were fantastic! We went on our tour through the caves to the 'Cathedral', where the Tenors and Kiri Te Kanawa have sung, and a member of our group sang a little hymn for us all - amazing! Then we went on a boat through the caves to see the glow wornms - lots of little blue lights highlighting the caves for us.

We then drove on Rotorua for the thermal pools - all very foul smelling like sulphur! The pools were all sorts of colours, including one which one luminous snot green - nice! We then went onto the Bay of Islands (where James' relatives used to live, but sadly don't anymore!), which were beautiful!

We visited Waitangi where the famous treaty was signed, where basically the Maori gave away sovereignty of their land, in return for 'protection' from the Crown. It was us or the French! We then took a mad day trip up to Cape Reinga, which is the northermost tip of New Zealand. To get there we took a coach along ninety mile beach (in fact only 50 miles long), but had to drive on the sand and sea to get there! Very cool!

We arrived in Auckland last night, and today I have been dragging James round the famous Xena beaches (all VERY interesting) with the black sand, etc. which got all over the van. Luckily, the hire comapny didn't notice today when we handed it in, nor the electircal cabel that James managed to break by driving away with it still attached to the van! OOPS!

Off to Fiji in two days for a short break, and then it's back to the UK by the end of the week! Am typing this whild drunk - i hope it all makes sense! Take care!

Greatings from Whanganui! We're in a nice campsite at the mo... strange I should mention that except that last night we camped in a carpark in the middle of Wellignton!! Very handy for Te Papa in the morning but a little strange! We handily arrived off the ferry in Wellington just as a Rolling Stones gig was kicking out down the road - 45000 people descended on our bus! EEEEEEKKKKK!!!!


We went to the Lord of the Rings exhibition in Te Papa, which if you're a fan is fantastic! All the costumes, behind the scenes stuff (although it's all probably on the DVDs), and a fantastic device that takes photos of you in that weird perspective, so i looked even shorter than James! Very cool for me, but James was bored senseless!

We are currently in the world's most deserted caravan park, but it's clean and we had a good nights sleep (compared with the noise of SH1 !) The roads actually have more than one lane in the N Island, and everyone drives like they do in London, cutting up our 6metre long bus!

Anyway, it's off to Waitomo for the Glow Worm cabes today, and then onto Rotorua for the thermal spas! Huzzah!

Yes Millwall are relegated - you wanna make somefing of it?

Just a quick post today as we need the internet time to work out where we're staying tomorrow night! (There could be a handy place right in the centre of Wellington if we can find the number! That or outside the IBM building!!)

Just had to post about the whale watching though -- we saw FOUR! I went whale watching a few years ago but just looked at the sea for three hours so this was awsome. We went straight to the first one and had seen three withing the first hour! Brilliant. We even saw a masive pod of dusky dolphins on the way back!

A bit of an aside: New Zealand takes "Bio Security" very seriously. Not just at the airport but all over the place, with signs of doom about cleaning shoes, equipment and everything, including dogs which you should aparently leave to dry for 48 hours! So if you ever declare war on New Zealand I recommend just dropping seeds on them!

Looks like we've been neglecting the blog again. Far too busy on our mad dash around the south island; we've now reached Kaikoura, almost round the whole coast to where we started. I'm struggling to remember everything we've done on the way but a few highlights have been the Shotover jetboat, the Franz Joseph glacier, seals and pancake rocks, and we've been to the centre of New Zealand. We did a helihike on the glacier which was a bit of a shock, especially to Jo, since there was no soft tourist option on our hike because one of the two guides was doing a tour for one. That left the rest of us with mad Troy who, it turns out, usually does day hikes... but we only had two hours on the ice! If there was a flat bit he managed to navigate round it completely! It was fantastic though, and afterwards we decided we'd earned our fist night in a cabin, which included a free go in their spa! Nice!

Still no pics- none of these terminals have any kind of ports available! How does anyone post pictures on the road?! Might have to wait until we get home. Hopefully have some good ones if they survive the trip and tomorrow we're off to spot some whales, so should have loads of sea pictures too! (Still, we get an 80% discount if the whales don't show up... or is that a plastic whale I see at three miles due east?!)

Happy Easter everyone!