Ooops, I’m not on the ball here.
Yesterday was my blog’s 3rd anniversary. At times it’s seemed hard work and I’ve been uncertain whether to continue, but even after the quiet periods, I’ve still carried on.
Not bad for 3 years, I have made 304 posts and received 549 comments (not including spam – I’ve had 1000’s of them).
Oh well, I’ll keep plodding along.
I have been following J. Scott Savage’s blog Find Your Magic for some time now, since he joined cre8Buzz back in February. This is his blog to promote his new book Water Keep (Farworld)
Another book that I have pre-ordered is Raymond E. Feist’s next book Rides a Dread Legion (The Demonwar Saga)
WordPress 2.6 was released late last week, so I updated my test blog to check that everything worked before updating my live blogs.
The upgrade was straight forward and all my plugins activated without any apparent issue. However, when I checked my stats, the page wouldn’t load any details, just a blank page. I have used FireStats since migrating to WordPress and had got used to the results it gives, so I headed over to the FireStats site to see if there was an upgrade. I found version 1.5.12 and so downloaded and installed it. To be on the safe side, I installed to a new database so that I didn’t have to upgrade my existing stats database. This didn’t resolve my blank stats page issue and gave me some messages about features needing a higher version of MySQL than my host 1and1 provides, so I uninstalled it and reinstalled my previous version 1.4.4.
Last night Jo and I went to The Grove Theatre in Dunstable to see Hayley Westenra in concert. It was a bit of a rush, as it was a 19:30 start, but we got there in plenty of time and met up with my mum before we went in.
We hadn’t been to the Grove before, so we weren’t really sure what to expect. It is a reasonably new venue, having opened in April 2007 and seats 780 on 2 levels, the stalls and the circle. We had seats in the stalls, 9 rows from the stage, so we had a good view. The acoustics were great and Hayley Westenra even commented on that; they really liked it during their soundchecks and would consider revisiting. The seats were comfortable and there was enough leg room (some thing I tend to notice if its missing).
![hayley westenra - Copyright (c) 2006 Steven Hayter [HWI].](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:HayleyWestenraWikipedia1.jpg "hayley westenra - Copyright (c) 2006 Steven Hayter [HWI].")
The concert started a couple of minutes later than expected when her musicians came on stage, followed shortly by Hayley Westenra in a green gown. She opened with Pokarekare Ana and then followed with another 2 songs, Ave Maria and Scarborough Fair, before introducing her musicians, violinist Fiona Pears, guitarist Andy Moore and pianist Ian Tilley. She then left the stage to Fiona, which I thought a bit strange. I was thinking, ‘I came to see Hayley Westenra, not her musicians’, but then Fiona started playing a piece called Tangisimo that she had written about her time in Prague and all concerns were gone. Fiona was a surprise find on the evening, her playing is inspired and animated and very enjoyable. She followed this with another piece called Memories of Martin and Mary from when she was travelling in Ireland. Hayley then came back on stage for another 4 songs taking us to the interval.
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I bought a Ridgeback Melody bike for my daughter off Ebay a few weeks ago. It was collection only, but was located almost where my brother lives, so he collected it for me. Last weekend my brother and family came up to visit and he brought the bike with him. The Melody comes in a bright pink, so it is the perfect colour for my daughter. The Ridgeback bikes for kids are great, they are well designed for little hands and little people.
She hasn’t really had the confidence that she could ride without stabilisers, so we told her that she could only have the pink bike when she was riding without stabilisers. This proved to be the added incentive necessary. This morning I took the stabilisers off her bike and she was out on our patio, scooting it back and forth to get her balance, then before we knew it she was trying to pedal; there is only really room for a couple of rotations, but she was trying.
This afternoon, we took the bikes out to Marston Vale again. Her bike went out without the stabilisers, they were in a bag in case we had to put them back on. I rode off ahead with my son, while Jo stayed with our daughter. Initially we waited for them to catch up, but then we just went off ahead and did a lap in about 30 minutes. When we caught up with them, they had stopped, but Jo said she was doing well. With that she rode of and instead of the couple of pedals that I expected before she stopped, she pedaled and pedaled and pedaled. She went about 100 yards before she decided to stop….. wow, brilliant. We went on to finish the circuit and waited at the car for them. To see her ride down the path and round the corner towards the car was great.
When we got home, I set the saddle and handlebar height on the Ridgeback and then she was out there on the patio, scooting and pedaling it back and forth.
Last night, Jo and I went to Aylesbury to see the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain. We had only seen them on DVD before, but were really looking forward to it.
We were on the first row of raised seats, about 6 rows from the front on the right hand side, so we had a good view of the stage.
From their website:
The Ukulele Orchestra is a group of all-singing, all-strumming Ukulele players, who use instruments bought with loose change, and who believe that all genres of music are available for reinterpretation, as long as they are played on the Ukulele. A concert by the Ukulele Orchestra is a funny, virtuosic, twanging, singing, awesome, foot-stomping obituary of rock-n-roll and melodious light entertainment featuring only the “bonsai guitar” and a menagerie of voices; no drums, no pianos, no backing tracks, and no banjos. A collision of post-punk performance and toe-tapping oldies. See the universe in the grain of a Ukulele. You may never think about music in the same way once you’ve been exposed to the Ukes’ depraved musicology. The Orchestra use the limitations of the instrument to create a musical freedom with Ukuleles, (little ones, big ones, high ones, low ones) revealing unsuspected insights into popular music. From Tchaikovsky to Nirvana via Otis Reading, the Orchestra takes you on a world tour with only hand luggage and gives the listener “One Plucking Thing After Another”.
It was a really fun evening with songs from Teenage Dirtbag by Wheatus, through Wuthering Heights by Kate Bush, to Back in Black by ACDC. They are a really funny bunch and I’d thoroughly recommend seeing them if you get the chance. I don’t think I ever been to a concert where so many people were laughing. We got their most recent album ‘Precious Little’ on CD and continued the experiance on the way home.
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