Weekend

George and his best mate Milo on the left; Brendan and Ruby on the right

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George and Rachel with George's newest plaything - a sand and water playtable.  The little tyrant has exhibited a mortal fear of sand and beaches, and we thought that this little contraption might go some what towards helping him get over his peculiar little phobia (he loved it).

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You will be shocked to learn that I failed Art in school

Kristine asked me what the "Valley of Death" was, and in the absence of photographic evidence, I turned to the wonders of MS Paint to show her: .

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I know, I know - I am a supremely talented artist.  Signed copies are available on request (they'll be worth a lot one day, especially after I'm dead... which could be sooner than you think, in view of the subject matter of the artwork).

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Odds and ends

Hanging by the pool over the weekend with his mates Ruby (top right) and his best friend Milo  (bottom right)

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How to solve the "whose surname do we take?" conundrum  (this is a receipt from our lovely vet)

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Gordon and the Breakdancer

For someone who understands virtually nothing about politics (I still get policies of the Left and Right confused), I have a morbid fascination for elections.  Maybe I just like bashing the "refresh" button on webpages - who knows. Anyway, as I was following the running tallies of the UK elections on the internet (as I type this, the Conservative Party needs 40 of the last 49 seats in order to get a simple majority), I came across this photo of Gordon Brown:

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What the hell is the guy behind him doing? My money is on the robot dance, but I couldn't be sure.

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Shazam! I am a geek.

A few years ago I stumbled across an unknown album in my laptop's music library.  I was searching for an album (I can't actually remember what, perhaps it was Missy Elliot) and found an album by a random lady called Missy Higgins. I assume that one of our visitors dropped it onto my hard drive as they topped up their iPod in anticipation of the next leg of their journey, and as it was a quiet afternoon I turned it on and had a listen.

It was a pretty good album, and after a few plays both Rachel and I were quite happy to listen to more.  When her next album came out, we bought it online through iTunes - I don't actually have a physical copy.  This is what it looks like:

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It's a great album (clicking on the picture should take you to her official website where you can listen to a few of her songs), and her followup EP "More Than This" (yup - A Bryan Ferry cover) was pretty cool too.

Anyway, what was I getting to?  Ah yes - this weekend we were out in Ap Lei Chau getting a few things for his lordship and a few things for his lordship's court jesters (the cats).  As we walked into the pet store, they were playing what we thought was Missy Higgins. I hadn't heard the song, so I did what any ubergeek would do - I fired up a song recognition application on my iPhone and held it next to the speakers for 10 seconds:

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...and 20 seconds later:

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The clever old application (Shazam) identified the song, the artist, the album it came from, and even presented me with a link to buy an electronic version of the song.  So, this morning I downloaded the entire album from iTunes and have been listening to it today - it's a bit lighter and more "poppy" than Missy Higgins, but it's extremely catchy.

And there ends the celebration of how much of a geek I am. (Really, I'm the only person who finds this stuff interesting - I could have started this post with "Dear Diary...")

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Weekend photos

A bit of flash experimentation, hence the colour weirdness in one or two of them... .

Picking a book to read

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Enjoying his new toy (identical to the one that we gave Charlie Robinson on his first birthday)

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A Sunday morning treat - watching the animated BBC version of The Gruffalo

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More Sri Lankan randomness

Sarah on the beach - this was just before we took photos of the Sri Lankan kids jumping in the sunset

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A frog (Sinhalese: "gemba") on the wall of one of the restaurants we went to in Galle

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More elephant bathing action from Pinnewela.  Those two brown lumps at the top are indeed what you think they are.

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Tim and Charlie walking around the villas in Sigiriya

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George during a game of hide and seek in our hotel room in Colombo

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