2005 05 13

OK, so much for updating the blog every couple of days. Since my last update, I’ve visited Bletchley Park and the London Eye and I’ve created a photo gallery for each of those outings. I’ve also added some examples of British food to the Terry’s Place gallery.

The London Eye is like a giant ferris wheel that was erected in downtown London for the millennium celebrations. Unlike a conventional ferris wheel however, each "capsule" can hold about 20 people and the speed of rotation is very slow. In fact, it takes about half an hour to do one revolution. From the top, there’s a tremendous view of the city.

Bletchley Park is where British intelligence cracked the German Enigma code during World War II. The tour I took of Bletchley park was really fascinating. There is a lot more to the story of the park and how it carried out its covert operations during the war than I had expected. Anyone interested in the history of codebreaking or the origin of the first programmable computers would do well to learn more about Bletchley Park.

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2005 05 07

I’m now thoroughly settled in and figured it’s time for an update.

One of Terry’s neighbors was good enough to lend us a couple of bicycles for the duration of my stay. They needed some parts and a little TLC, but an afternoon’s work was enough to get them roadworthy. Today, we took our first ride into the village of Little Wymondley and then into Gravely.

Tonight, we’ll have dinner at Liz’s house (Terry’s neighbor) and then probably settle down to watch something on the telly.

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2005 05 03

I arrived in Stevenage yesterday, feeling pretty tired as one would expect, but after a few hours sleep, I’m feeling a bit better. It’ll probaby be another day or two before I’ve completely adjusted to the 8 hour time difference.

Here’s a photo of Terry’s terrace house (townhouse). It’s got a decent sized back garden with some colourful wallflowers, a bird nesting box and an oak sapling that Terry has grown from an acorn. There seems to be quite a variety of birds around the garden, partly because of Terry’s neighbor who keeps several bird feeders. A pair of Bluetits have nested in a vent in the side of the house.

During my stay here, I'll be using a dialup internet connection with which I get discounted rates between the hours of 6pm and 8am local time (currently GMT+01). This means that I'm most likely to be checking email etc. from 10am to 4pm and maybe from 11pm to 12am Pacific Daylight Time. I'll try to add a new entry to this blog every day or so.