… of nice beer, I’ve been having some Crow Valley Bitter (Cwmbran Brewery) this evening. It’s actually rather nice, and has followed the Pedigree I had with dinner in a pleasent pub in Little Bookham quite nicely. I think I should drink more beer. Coming home and working/catching up with email sucks. I need to live by a nice pub with decent beer, good value (and also nutritional, nice tasting) food, and good company. Why I am living on the outskirts of London, heaven only knows.

So much for the early night Want an early start tomorrow too.

Been having some interesting beer: Gaoler’s Ale from the Alcazar Brewery. Got it in a selection of ‘fine english beers’ from Waitrose. It’s quite nice, but very strong - would be great in a nice pub with some nibbles and a good conversation

Before this, I had some Ruddy Glow from J. W. Lees. It was a very different taste to this Gaoler’s Ale, but it was OK. I think I prefer the Gaoler’s Ale; it’s just a shame to be drinking it on my own

Our Lager, Which art in barrels,
Hollowed be thy drink.
I will be drunk,
At home as in the travern.
Give us this day our foamy head,
And forgive us our spillages,
As we forgive those who spill against us.
And lead us not into incarceration,
But deliver us from hangerovers.
For thine is the Beer, the Bitter and the Lager,
Forever and ever,
Barmen.

(via) Ah well, it made me laugh…

Been a nice day today. Went for a bit of a drive/walk in Surrey with my camera. Had a rather over-priced lunch in a pub (£7.20 for a ploughmans, packet of peanuts and a beer!), then went for a walk up a hill where I was promised “impressive views” of Dorking. What tosh. Still, it was good to have a bit of an explore - may do more of the same tomorrow, though having said that, I remember I need to do my laundry

Long time no blog. It’s been a long week I’m afraid!

Today has been a good day. One of my brothers has just got engaged, so I met up with him and his other half for dinner. Had a really nice (pub) meal which was a bit of a surprise. It seems increasingly difficult to find a decent pub with decent beer and decent food. My bro’ got me a Good Pub Guide last Christmas and this has helped a lot, but I am generally disappointed with pub grub these days. Anyway, I can’t remember the name of this pub, but it was a good one.

Before meeting them I stopped off at Park Cameras and picked up my brand new camera: a Canon EOS 20D. It’s my first foray into the digital world, and I’m looking forward to seeing how the camera does. I’ve not really had much of a chance to look at it yet though - the battery was nearly flat when I got it, so it’s charging now

I got a Canon EF 17-14mm f/4.0 L lens with the 20D body. This seems like a good lens, but it weighs a ton! I’ve just tried it on my rather old (film) EOS 5, and it’s great! You don’t get the full wide angle effect on digital (see the lens calculator) like you do with film, so I’m really looking forward to taking some sweeping landscapes with it on my film body

Canon EOS 20D and EF 17-40mm f/4.0L - picture from Imaging Resource

I had a quick look through the manual and it all looks rather complicated. Not like film, but there we go.

Woohoo! The charger has stopped blinking, so I think that means the battery is charged. I’m off to play! I’m quite sure there are going to be lots of snaps appearing on the site now!

It was supposed to be an early night tonight, but that doesn’t seem to have happened

Anyway, I’ve updated the lens calculator so that it now includes the new Canon EOS 20D. This camera has a slightly smaller sensor than the EOS 10D, 300D, 60D etc., so it has a slightly different angle of view (given a specific lens) than you might expect. (Though you would normally have a hard time telling this.)

This is a bad thing for me, because as sensors get smaller the harder it is to get a decent wide angle lens for your camera!

As Canon have introduced two new EF-S mount lenses (that only fit the EOS 300D and the EOS 20D), I’ve moved all three of them now to their own catalogue. You can also find the LensCalc Lite version just for the Canon EF-S lenses.

I’ve just realised that for the first time in months I’ve not cooked a casserole tonight! I get pizzas and fish & chips once or twice a week, and sometimes I even eat out. But whenever I’ve made myself a real myself in the last few months (we’re talking more than three here…) it has always been a casserole! Strange but true

Now it’s time for bed.

Yeah, I know this is probably getting a bit repetative, but boy do I need a decent holiday!

It’s nearly 9:30 PM, and I’ve just finished work. This wouldn’t be so bad if I hadn’t started working until, say 2.00 PM, but today I was at my desk by 8:30! If only I got paid by the hour… Anyway, while this work is taking way too long, it should be a good site when it’s finished. I’m too much of a perfectionist and this tends to slow things down at times.

I took a break just over an hour ago to make my dinner, and it should be ready soon so I’m going to open a nice bottle of beer. (Found a great deal in Sainsburys the other day: £12.99 for 12 bottles of Black Sheep Ale ) For a change I’m having casserole for dinner. Unfortunately I’m out of nice bread to soak up the gravy, so it could get messy! Ooh err missus!

Right, beer calling!

.. or did that happen years ago? Perhaps.

Anyway, my new telephone came this afternoon, so for a bit of light relief I’ve been playing with the Sony Ericsson theme generator. So here are the results of my labour:

Anna Falchi theme for Sony Ericsson K700i
Click for preview (requires flash)

(You can get the theme here if you really want it!)

I was inspired by forgetfoo, who uses the picture as a wallpaper for his ‘FooDesktop’. Anyway, after a quick search of Google I found the original and tweaked it for use on my own desktop.

So there you have it: matching computer and phone desktops. Is that sad? (Don’t answer that please…)

Right, I think I’m going to prepare my dinner (casserole) now, so that it’s ready for when I’m hungry instead of the usual 10:30 PM…

I’m finally back from the lakes. Hoorah, I hear you all cry!

Well, out of the 8 days I spent in The Lakes, it rained (heavily) on 7 on them. One day was glorious sunshine without a cloud in the sky, but alas that was the day I was driving back

The journey shuold take about 5 hours (from Surrey). However, the journey there was quite bad: it took 7 hours with all the traffic on the motorways. There was a pretty bad accident just past Birmingham, and I sat there for about two hours. Joy. And though I thought it couldn’t get much worse, the jouney back just took the biscuit! I spent 10 hours in the car, most of which was spent sitting in traffic once again. It was mainly Birmingham that was screwing things up (as usual), so I think I’ll make a point never to drive past there again!

So the weather was bad. Very bad. It wasn’t just wet, but it was rather windy too. I went for a short walk on Tuesday and managed to catch a cold, so didn’t really feel to great for the rest of the time. I did see some family though which was good, and I tried lots of new beers! Here is a taster of some that I tried:

Friday

Dinner: Landlord, Timothy Taylor (x2). Loverly beer

Saturday

Lunch: Bluebird Bitter XB, Coniston Brewery. OK, but too much of a bitter.

Dinner: Cracker Ale, Barrrington Brewery. Excellent food, but naff beer.

Sunday

Lunch: Hawkshead Red, Hawkshead Brewery. Bottled beer. Excellent!

Dinner: Jennings’ Cumberland Ale. OK, but a bit bland.
Jennings’ Sneck Lifter. Strong, like something from a beer fest. OK, but couldn’t drink a lot of it.

Monday

Lunch: Morhouse’s Witches Cauldren. OK, but not as nice as thr Hawkshead Red.

Dinner: Raven Ale x 2. Very nice indeed. Defferent to Hawkshead Red: much weaker, but still nice. A good session beer. 1 x Hawkshead Red (bottled) when home (very nice), and 1 x Hawkshead Gold (bottled) (fairly nice, but not as nice as thbe Red).

(More to some, but I wrote them down somewhere else).

So the beer and food was very good.

When I got back I had about 4000 emails to go through. To give you an idea of the spam levels I get, one mail box had over 200o mails in it, and 26 of them were actualy for me. I use spamassasin, but it seems a bit crap. Must try and sort this out sometime. If you mailed me and I missed it, please try again - chances are I deleted it by accident!

And it’s not just email spam I’m getting - I’m getting comment spam now too! So if youre comments don’t seem to work, please don’t worry - I’ve just turned on the comment moderation for a bit while I try and get it under controll.

BritBlog seemed to do quite well while I was away. I’ve got over 400 members now, so it seems to be doing quite well With all the rain, I managed to get some good work done while I was away too. It was planning and preparation for some work that I’m about to start. It’s good being able to spend proper time on this stage of a project - always ends in better results!

Right, got to press on. I’ll be updating this post shortly, when I’ve found the other beers….