Last Saturday was a day to remember. This day was the first day that having two huge Bramley Apple trees in our back garden actually paid off. Before that day (in days gone by) I had to pickup endless brown and manky windfalls sometimes two wheelies full.

So last Saturday we made good use of the beautiful green bounty from old "mother" nature.

The main Protagonists were me Raz, Next Door Dezza, Jonnie the Recipe and Real-Ale Tex.   

Is this the worlds largest Bramley Apple?

We think so.

Over 13 cm wide and 9cm tall. We recon old Norris Mcquirter would be foaming at the mouth to get his beady eyes on it.

It was delivered by Gregory on Saturday 12^th September 2009.

If you have been looking for a new website for a while, you will (no doubt) have visited many websites of developers and companies that can create them.

Lots of these companies bandy about terms such as W3C and CSS. So what is all that about and why do I need it?

To answer that question we need to look at how web pages are created. In olden days the web page was typically just a bunch of text and the odd picture. This was fab at first but then people wanted to do more with web sites, they wanted to format the page better. But the rules behind the web page (HTML) wouldn't let you do that, so web developers being the canny individuals that they are decided to use tables to organise the material.

Where shall we put the bathroom?

This is a big issue in our house as we are having a bit of a re-design at the moment. The problem being that we need to maximise upstairs living whist not scuppering ourselves for when we can eventually afford to build the Phase Two of our building extension.

Cathy is scratching her head but really doesn't have the cranial power to think this baby though.

The problem lies with access to the third bedroom and the new bathroom whilst giving access before and after Phase One building works.

Confused? Me too.

This is him. In his fancy Aquascutum suit at my wedding. He managed to run up a bill of £760 when there were only 9 people drinking.

A self confessed "early adopter" of shite technology, Christian has managed to fill his flat with all manner or gizmos and technical wizardry. I actually think he was sober when this picture was taken. No doubt, ordering a bottle of Vintage 1961 Chateaux Nerf Du Pape.

Still I won't have anything bad said against Christian...unless i say it.

I know I am over 40 and shouldn't really be playing games anymore, but I have just finished this game and would like to give you my thoughts on the achievement that EA Games have accomplished.

Dead Space is a typical FPS (err that's First Person Shooter to non geeks) with a difference.  You run around this Giant Space Ship called the Ishimura blowing away the baddies with a various assortment of death wielding goodies.

What I did like about Dead Space was that you can't bring down the Necromorphs by blasting alone. Aim for the outer limbs or necks and chop'em off to bring'em down. This does takes a while to get the hang of it and the Keys for PC are not arranged that well. But you soon do get the hang of running (left shift) using your stasis (C key) while aiming (right mouse click).

Umbraco is touted as the all seeing all doing CMS for the ASP.net platform. For a designer turned developer it poses a few obstacles in the learning curve required to integrate existing ASP.net objects.

This is a pity as the main stumbling point I have noticed is the Umbraco terminology or how it names and references aspects of the Umbraco architecture. I fully expect that for a seasoned ASP.net developer this poses no problems whatsoever, but the simplicity of creating web spaces with business logic has with the advent of Umbraco version 4 got a touch more difficult.

Is there a problem then? Well no not really, I have been banging away at Umbraco trying to figure it out and basically I think I am sort of there now. Well enough to be able to sell an Umbraco enabled website anyway.