Yebo Gogo! and here we go a-Blogging once again. It's sure to be sporadic, but that is the nature of life these days. Hang in there, and check back often!

Hot (well 23 degrees is hot in Connemara!) Sunday on the side of our mountain in Maam Valley, and a very lazy day it has been, too. However, I did find time to tinker with the online photo album sites, and have posted new (and some duplicates too, by accident!) stuff up at:

http://picasaweb.google.com/alan.cookson
http://www.flickr.com/photos/alan-cookson/
and www.snapfish.co.uk

The best photo place seems to be picasa, they have just set up a picasaweb service that integrates with a new version of picasa, and with Hello! - a photo orientated chat program. Works best if both parties are on line at the same time, although it will apparently queue stuff for someone offline, and deliver when they go online.

Broadband looks like it could reach this outpost of civilisation by the end of next year, since rumour has it that there is a Government directive to the effect that all schools have to have broadband up and running by then. We shall see! Meantime we have upgraded to ISDN, which is no faster than dialup (unless you you both lines together, and pay for 2 calls!) but does allow us to use the telephone and surf at the same time. Works fine on my old desktop, but whenever we switch the modem across to the laptop - that has to be rebooted. VERY inconvenient! Have no idea what causes that. Maybe the fact that my desktop is running XPSP1, but the laptop runs XPSP2, which has more strenuous security features?

Nina's birthday today, so had a cheerful chat with her around midday, just as festivities were getting under way in Amsterdam! She had already received my wee parcel, sent off on Thursday, so that was great. Sounds like it was a really hot day over there, with 30 forecast.

That's it for now, must go and pour some Birthday Booze, and get supper on.