James Titcumb

I’m doing absolutely everything I can to avoid the World Cup football. In doing so we ended up at Alton Towers (handily a 30 minute drive from Hannah’s mum’s) on Monday. We had a BOGOF voucher to get us in too which made getting the Fast Track tickets (which I think are totally necessary) a little more affordable. Turns out we were hoping it would be dead quiet, but it was packed, and I figured it’s because many students have finished uni now. Last year we went and the then-unnamed ride Thirteen was still under construction so I was looking forward to checking it out this time. We started with Squirrel Nutkin of course, which Freyja loved, she grinned the whole way around which was adorable.

Me and Han proceeded to Oblivion after, which I rate and was much busier than last time we went; we practically walked straight on last time no queueing – twice! We also checked out Submission and Enterprise for once – we normally skip over those as Hannah doesn’t like them for one reason or another, but I swayed her and it wasn’t too bad (and there wasn’t really a queue so didn’t waste much time), apart from on Enterprise, she sat in front of me and squished something that shouldn’t be squished!!

We headed off to the Charlie and Chocolate factory ride after that, which was an “It’s a Small World”-esque water ride with a Charlie and Chocolate factory theme of course, although it noticeably missed the loveable Oompa Loompas for some reason. Freyja really loved it, but the best bit was the ride in the great glass elevator after! A group of riders were put on a hydraulic platform and 3D projections display to give a convincing illusion of the elevator flying around and smashing into things – Freyja absolutely loved it and didn’t stop smiling – lovely!

We went on Rita after (just me and Han of course, Freyja is a little young still…) for a quick thrill and then had some yummy lunch – turkey and ham snammiches and Freyja had some raisins, and we even shared a couple of doughnuts – even Freyja had a few bites. Post-lunch we had to queue for Thirteen as there was no Fast Track available for this annoyingly, so that took about an hour or so. This new coaster was well worth the wait though – at first a fairly standard ride until the cars end up in a derelict wooden shed. The lights darken, and the cars drop vertically, which was a great surprise I was not expecting. A backwards stint followed which added more unexpectedness, and we came back to the station grinning from ear to ear. Certainly worth the queue, although I really wish there was Fast Track for this ride. Whilst we were queuing for Thirteen, Hannah’s mum took little Freyja on Galloper’s Carousel in a little princess carriage, which she apparently loved.

Next followed the all-time-favourite Nemesis, always worth Fast Tracking I think – 10 minutes or so queue and makes queuing for the front seats a little more palatable. As Freyja had fallen asleep on the walk to Nemesis, we took advantage of Han’s mum looking after her and squeezed in the last two rides in one, and got a quick go on Ripsaw in (although came off disappointingly dry) and onto Air, what I like to think of as the “Superman” ride.

We ended up all very weary going back on the monorail, on which Freyja stood on the chair and proceeded to have a little shout at a young couple who sat in the same section as us which amused them slightly. She’s nice and warm, tucked up in bed now and I’m sure she’s zonked out for the count all night. A busy day, but I think everyone had lots of fun. Same time next year, eh?

Regular readers of my blog who visit the site (not just subscribe to the RSS) will have noticed over time, since I made this theme and released it on June 3rd 2008, my blog slowly changing and looking more sleek and refined. I’ve literally just finished the comments CSS, so comments are nicely boxed up and styled, rather than the basic numbered list. Also, people might’ve noticed the sidebar suddenly shifting to the left. As Sii says, the posts being below the search box makes more contextual sense as well. I also recently added a shiny RSS icon, made by Jay Hilgert. Looking at the picture to the left (it’s the only one I have unfortunately so it’s a bit low-res), you can see how much it’s changed.

And thinking about it, how much I’ve changed as well! I’ve been dabbling an awful lot more in trying to make things XHTML compliant and using CSS in the proper fashion recently, and after a bit of modification to the Picasa widget, my page is fully XHTML 1.0 Transitional valid. I’ve not bothered making it strict yet, as generally widgets made by other people take a lot of work to make them strict. In fact, up until Matched.co.uk went under, my pages have been non-compliant due to non-compliant Matched.co.uk ad code.

And last, but most certainly not least, the biggest change is of course the pregnancy, which is coming along swimmingly by the way!

At lunch, I asked Sii (one of our design guru’s here at Netbasic) to see what he thought of my new theme. He said pretty much straight away to get rid of the solid black lines, so I’ve replaced them all (except the date by the post titles as I stupidly put the border in the image itself…) with more subtle greys. So if you’re still seeing solid black lines around stuff, clear your cache and enjoy the new easier-on-the-eye greys. Cheers Sii!

If you’re reading this on the site as opposed to your normal feed reader, then you’ll notice my brand new shiny theme. If you’re reading it in IE, it will look crap. It works in Firefox, but I have yet to do IE-compatibility – if anyone fancies taking a gander at the code and fixing it for me, please do! I’ve got some minor tweaks to do to it (comments are un-styled at the moment for example), but mostly I’m quite happy with it. If anyone notices anything broken or odd, please do let me know!

Edit: I’ve decided I prefer the way it looks in IE, so I modified the theme so Firefox matches the layout of the IE theme

This weekend, me and my cousins met up at the pub that my grandparents used to own, the Old Duke in Bristol. We had a lot of fun and had a really good night. My head was quite painful the day after, but I’m OK now after going to sleep at 8:40pm Sunday night!

You may also notice that I’ve put up a new theme here. I don’t really have time to make my own, so I used one from the WP Theme Viewer. Credit for this theme goes to a Spanish Italian chap called Tommaso Baldovino. I’ve taken out the flowery bits but the general colour and simplicity and accessibility of it I like, so I thought I’d use it until I get my ass in gear and make my own theme (hah, one day…). My 360 Gamercard is missing for now, but I’ll live…