Just a quick post to say Merry Christmas to my readers and any passers by. Had a good but busy week off, trying to sort various things out whilst down at my parents. We're back home tomorrow then I've got more admin (plugins to fix, letters to write) to sort out before being back at work!

However, for now, the dinner is cooking on the BBQ (just how it should be), and the wine is calling out to me, so have a good Christmas and New Year where ever you are

It's been just work, work, work lately. Christmas is creeping up so quickly, I just don't know where the time has gone this year.

A quick wrap up of what's been happening:

WordPress 2.7 was finally released this week, and not a moment too soon. WP 2.7 is the best version yet, the admin is beautiful and the features are great.

We finally took a day off work (on an exceptionally cold but sunny day) and got to the zoo, something we'd been planning to do since October. It was all worth it when I got to see what I went for – the new lion cub. I could have just stood and watched him for hours!

Work has continued to be busy, which is obviously good from a credit crunch / recession point of view. I'm just a tad bit tired and need a break! However, come Friday I'll be stopping work (well client work) for Christmas, and certainly can't wait! Although I seem to be arranging to sort out so much stuff over Christmas that I'll probably be busier than ever!

I won a competition the other week and got a premium WordPress template for free, so I need to get around to injecting my own personality into that, plus the 2.7 code (yes another job for Christmas). So I'll be updating the design of this site soon.

Both Dave and I won a bit of cash off the BloggingTips.com forum competition, so we put our winnings together and put it towards a new Sigma 10-20mm camera lens. I've not had a chance to get any shots with it yet, however I hope to have a play next week and see what I can capture.

I've been eying up Sam's iPhone with a major amount of jealousy! Frustratingly, I've got over a year left on my current contract (yes the one that had no improvement on it whatsoever!). I'm quite tempted to take on a second contract just to get the iPhone, and use that for business, then keep my other for personal for the time being until the contract runs out. But I do keep trying to tell myself to just wait!

And I've finally got Family Ski (We Ski) for the Wii, a bit of an early christmas present off Dave. It's not as good as the real thing, but it's good fun anyway. I've only spent about half an hour on it due to lack of time, but it's quite surreal shussing down, round the trails and paths, avoiding the silly people standing having a chat on the slopes (it's just like real life!).

However, hopefully I can take a long weekend here and there next year and get up to Scotland to do the real thing

Last weekend we had our long weekend away in Dublin. It was nice to get away and not worry about work for a few days, plus besides a bit of rain on the first day, the rest of the time we had semi sunshine. As we'd been to Dublin before we knew what to expect and planned things a little better. Friday was the day to take a wander around the shops as it would be quieter, Saturday we took the tour bus round as it's a good journey (despite doing it before!) and we could jump on and off to grab photos where we wanted, and then on Sunday it was a beautiful morning so we took a walk out to the river and walked down towards the ports instead, admiring the architecture, along with stumbling onto a mini Oktoberfest!

We stayed right by the bus station in Dublin which was so great for the airport bus! The only downside to the hotel was the room was overheated and on the Friday night there seemed to be a group of people, possibly from the bar next door, who decided to congregate right outside the window (we were on the first floor) until about 3.30am! However, other than that it was a nice place and just 5 minute walk from O'Connell street, one of the main streets through the centre.

However, from a combination of the heat in the room, spending a couple of hours on the top of the tour bus on Saturday and the air conditioning on the plan, I came down with a head cold and have spent the past week with my sinuses full up with cold It's pretty frustrating as I'd taken this past week off work too, to allow us to get some admin sorted out, work on some personal sites/projects and also go to the zoo, instead I've spent every day under the blanket on the couch watching boring daytime television and just faffing all day. A very unproductive week! So I'll have to grab some time next month if I can, as I've got a few projects going live this month.

Other news… I've started to write twice a week for Blogging Tips. On Sundays I continue my WordPress coding and design posts, and on Thursdays I'll be writing about basic (x)HTML and CSS. As always, all of my posts for Blogging Tips can be found on my Author Page.

Finally, this week I've done a little bit of work on this site. As you're probably already aware, I merged the two blogs on this domain into one, hopefully creating a less confusing and better resource of info for everyone I've added in a new fancy plugin called comment info tip which gives you a bit more info on each commentator on the site. If you go to one of my other posts with some comments on, and hover over the name of one of the commentators (besides mine) you'll see how many times that person has commented on the site, the last 3 posts they commented on and, if the plugin can find it, an excerpt of their last post from their site (if it's a blog and uses a standard feed address). I've also created my own logo which can be seen up top ^^. I'm not a designer, so it's nothing special, but I quite like it, and it adds a bit of colour to the header

Yes, the autumn is here, the heating is on! Things have been pretty busy over the past two weeks. Work is still very busy, and my half year profits show an almost 50% increase on last year, which is, of course, good to see considering the whole credit crunch and the way a lot of businesses seem to be suffering. I also finally managed to understand and use Subversion and have finally got my first WordPress plugin into the WordPress plugin repository! I've had the alotted space available for a few months but just couldn't work out how to add my plugin, however after a bit of searching I came across some instructions that made it all clear. Once I got my first plugin online, I immediately requested to add my new Page Menu Editor plugin to the repository as well. 24-48 hours later and that was in too

Last week we both went back to school. We decided to enrol on the Spanish for absolute beginniners evening course, which is held about 5 minutes around the corner from us. As we want to go to a few various countries that use Spanish, we figured it was a good idea, plus it gets us out the house one evening a week. We've had 2 lessons so far and it's an 11 week course. Hopefully we can then continue on to the standard beginners course and maybe take it a little further. The Spanish we've learnt so far is quite similar to Italian too (with them both being derived from Latin it's not a surprise) so that's always handy too

Then on Friday we finished work early (well if you can call 5pm early!) and drove over to besides the Mersey as the QE2 Cruiseliner had docked in Liverpool for the day and was then due to do a quick tour of Britain before traveling out to Dubai where it's going to become a hotel and casino. I've never seen the QE2 before so it was literally the last chance to see it. Of course we took a few photos of it during the day, and also returned later on to get some shots in the dark before it left at 10pm. You can see all of the photos I took on Flickr. I've also been trying to finish my Photography blog off, and just need to finish off adding some more photos and content, however that should be finished off soon

It's still pretty busy here workwise. As one thing starts to come to an end and the stress eases off, 2 or 3 more jobs come along to just escalate it to another high! Next week is going to be a bit of a nightmare for work as clients have left things too late and seem to expect me to just work 24 hours plus invent a few more hours into the day to get everything they need done in time.

So this week was welcomed as we were going away on Wednesday for a few days break plus a visit to a county show that's only on once a year (so not something you could reschedule!). Despite all the bad weather we've suffered in recent weeks, also resulting in the cancellation of another country show we were due to go to 2 weeks ago, on the day of the show the sun was shining and the weather quite warm! Actually it's been the first time in years where I've been to the show and it's not rained! Of course we took our cameras along, just in case there was anything good to snap.

After a bit of wondering around I spotted that the falconry show had started in one of the arenas so made a beeline for that! I managed to get a few good shots of a gorgeous and cute barn owl, one of which was whilst it was in flight. They also brought a Falcon out, which decided that it didn't want to fly, and an Eagle. All my photos from the day can be seen in my Flickr Set.

We've now got 2.5 weeks of solid work and then we're off to Dublin for a short break, which should keep us going then until Christmas