Archive for the ‘holidays’ Category

Bees First, Photos Later – Malaysia 2023 Finally Online!

Wednesday, April 23rd, 2025

The Photo Album! (sorry for the 2nd post in 2 days!)

Finally! (Yes, really… finally!) The holiday photos from our amazing trip to Malaysia in 2023 are now up in the Album. No more delays, no more excuses — just a good old-fashioned dose of reality: everything else always comes before holiday photos. But in the next month, I’m catching up before Bees work takes off!

Let me explain…

Bees, VMware, and… Bees Again

Since returning from Malaysia, life has been buzzing — literally. Between caring for the bees, running Meltonby Honey, preparing fondant blocks, doing swarm control, extracting and jarring honey (with proper batch tracking!), and delivering to customers — it’s a full-time job.

Then, there’s my Hancock’s VMware Half Hour HOW TO series (which keeps growing), all the vExpert stuff, and, oh yes — my actual day job. So when it came to uploading holiday photos? Well… that always ended up at the bottom of the list. Along with finishing my coffee while it’s still warm.

Holiday Snaps – What’s the Point?

I often end up in conversations with people about what we all actually do with our holiday photos. Most of us take thousands on our smartphones, and then what? They just sit in iCloud, Google Photos, or a hard drive somewhere — never looked at again.

And it does raise a good question:
If we never view them, why take them in the first place?

The answer, I think, is memories.

They’re little digital keepsakes. Not always for today, but for some rainy day in the future. That’s why I still try to get the best ones up on the website — so we can look back and smile, or relive that adventure, even if it takes me a year (or more!) to get around to doing it.

The Process: Not for the Faint-Hearted

Getting the holiday album onto the website is no quick task. Here’s a behind-the-scenes look at how the magic (eventually) happens:

  1. Devices: We take two Apple iPhones and a trusty DSLR bridge camera. So far, so good.

  2. Storage: Photos land in iCloud, Google Photos, and locally from the DSLR. That’s right — manually copied from the camera (how quaint).

  3. Sorting: Enter Lindsey, who heroically goes through the ~3,000 photos and selects the best ones. (She’s got a great eye!)

  4. Converting: Once selected, I get the fun job of converting hundreds — sometimes thousands — of HEIC images to JPG. Because of course, not everything plays nice on the web.

  5. The Website Album: Now for the real time sink — manually coding the photo album. I’ve been running this HTML-based album for over 20 years now. And honestly? I don’t write much code anymore… so remembering how it all works takes a bit of head-scratching.

  6. Fixes and Tweaks: This year I ran into some broken HTML, incorrect folder names, and layout issues that needed fixing. So it took even longer to get everything polished and just right.

Getting Older (and Slower at HTML)

Let’s be real — this code is vintage. My own custom creation from decades ago. Back then, I had all the tags and folder structures in my head. Now? Not so much. Every time I dive back into it, I feel like I’m solving my own little legacy puzzle.

But hey, it’s done now, and it’s up!

Go Take a Look

So if you fancy a bit of armchair travel, check out the 2023 Malaysia Holiday Photos in the Album. Temples, tropical beaches, cultural sights, food (of course), and lots of little moments that made it such a special trip. The Album Index is here – https://andysworld.org.uk/album/index.html, and includes all the photos from 2006, to present, okay I still now need to complete the last holiday to Sri Lanka in 2025 ! I’ll start on those now!

Thanks for your patience — now I’m off to label some more jars of honey… or fix some vCenter upgrades… or maybe take a nap! Off to edit and publish all the videos to YouTube !

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Drone flights near Dartmoor!

Saturday, August 10th, 2019

A few photos from Devon.

RAF Harrowbeer

RAF Harrowbeer

RAF Harrowbeer

RAF Harrowbeer – if you look closely you can see the old runway.

View over Horrabridge

View over Horrabridge

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Back on Dartmoor!

Sunday, August 4th, 2019

Umm lovely….

Taking a break in the West Country, and just dropped by Dartmoor, where I knew there would be an ice cream van!

I also cam here to fly my drone, outside the National Park!

Lovely my lover!

Lovely my Lover!

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Walking the Bird – Excerpts from China Holiday Video – 2003

Sunday, March 3rd, 2019

Now I’ve got the ability to import and edit DV videos, this is a small taster of Excerpts from China Holiday Video in 2003!

I’ve got 8 hours of videos, to edit and cut down to 1 hour!

Watch the man take his bird for a walk in the park…..

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Big in Japan

Friday, February 22nd, 2019

The first post of 2019, and the year is slipping away as we almost enter March, the daylight now extends into the evening and the birds are starting to make their nests…

I’ve been re-visiting memories of Japan, when we visited in 2011, the year of the earthquake and then tsunami in Japan (whilst we were holidaying there!), why you may ask?

Read on.. for many years I’ve been trying to find a software package which would import all the clips automatically from a Sony DV Tape HandyCam using Firewire (IEEE 1394) to easily create a 1 hour holiday video.

The problem is that Firewire (IEEE 1394) was retired by Apple in 2012, and has since been abandoned.

BUT, I noticed a Firewire port on my current Windows 10 laptop, and the device drivers were loaded (Device Manager), “Would it be possible that if I simply connected my HandyCam to the firewire port it would be automatically recognized by Windows 10?”

I connected my HandyCam to the firewire port and to my amazement, the Sony DV Tape VCR appeared within Device Manager.

Now to find, a software package, in the past I used to use a Sony laptop, and it’s own DVLink software, but it only ran on Windows 95, and it kept crashing.

I downloaded a trial of Vegas Movie Studio, and it does it exactly what I needed!!!

So the tape currently in the HandyCam, was a Tape from Japan!

So here are a few trailers…

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Return to China – on our own this time!

Monday, November 12th, 2018

It’s been about 15 years since we visited China, and as it’s one of my favourite countries, I’ve visited so far, so it was about time we returned to see how China has changed in 15 years!

So in early spring this year (2018), we returned to China.

2018-11-11-23_55_47-untitled-map-e28093-google-my-maps

We visited

1.Beijing

2.Datong

3.Pingyao

4.Xian

5.Luoyang

6.Shaolin

7.Kaifeng

8.Qufu

9.Taian

10.Shuzhou

11.Shanghai

It’s taken Lindsey a while to sort through all the thousands of pictures which were taken on a digital SLR and my mobile phone, so please enjoy:- these are the best.

They’ve been uploaded to the Holiday Photo Album, which also contains all the other photos taken since 2006.

Holiday Photograph Album 2006 – Present

China Photographs

I’ve also uploaded some of the videos, to You Tube here, in a playlist

and WOW has it changed!

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Merry Christmas 2018 from Andysworld! Too early ?

Wednesday, September 12th, 2018

There we go, I’ve pushed the button on Christmas 2018, and here is your first Christmas Greeting of 2018!

As I write it’s 104 days until Christmas, and Lindsey hates everything Christmas, so today whilst I was in Tescos, I purchased the first Christmas 2018 Chocolates!

Merry Christmas 2018 from Andysworld!

Merry Christmas 2018 from Andysworld!

I’ll not be here for Christmas 2018, more on that later…..

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Holiday Photos 2015 – 2017 (at last!) – I told you I’d get round to it!

Wednesday, August 23rd, 2017

This blog post is long overdue, and it’s to notify you that I have now fully updated the Holiday Photograph Album, to include the holiday photographs we’ve taken on the following holidays from March 2015 to August 2017. If you are interested in looking at our photographs, there are a few….(and a special treat the Reviewer – Lindsey has included a few photos of herself, which is a rare treat!)

I’ll also include some written “narration” because I’ve removed Lindsey’s catalog numbers, the link above will take you directly to the album if you want to go direct to the photos for specific holidays, click below

1. India & Bhutan (Feb/March 2015)

(Photos in this order – Delhi, Wagah, Amritsar, McLeod Ganj, Shimla, Kurseong, Darjeeling, Thimpu, Dochula Pass, Punakha, Punakha Tshechu, Paro, Tigers Nest, Kaziranga NP, Gatoonga Tea Estate, Kolkata)

2. Spain – Barcelona my jolly to VMworld (Sept 2015) – just me!

2015-10-15-084326

Just a few snaps of interesting things in Barcelona.

3. Jordan (March 2016 Postponed due to Accident)

4. Spain – Malaga, Cordoba, Seville, Granada (Sept 2016)

(Photos in this order – Malaga, Cordoba, Seville, Granada)

5. Jordan – (March 2017)

(Photos in this order – Amman, Jerash, Mount Nebo, Madaba, Shoback, Little Petra, Petra Day 1, Petra Day 2, Wadirum, Dead sea, East Desert Castles).

I have got an excuse, as you know I was involved in a car accident in 2016, which delayed me completing the album, and it does take a lot of work, as I have to resample all the photos, and manually code the website, and that involves my brain and some JAVA! (not coffee, computer programming!), and the computer the code was on has failed!

Anyway another Task on the To Do List – Completed!

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A taster of Holiday Photos…

Thursday, March 30th, 2017

Just come back from the Middle East – Jordan to be exact, and it’s a very safe country, only 4-5 hours flying time from the UK!

So please do not be put off in booking a visit today!

So here’s a taster of some photographs coming to Andysworld! soon!

A taster of Jordan

A taster of Jordan

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CHILDLIKE, WITH MY EYES AND MIND WIDE OPEN

Wednesday, July 29th, 2015

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I returned to my childhood whilst watching the Punakha Tsechu. Watching stories unfold before my eyes, I started to believe in magic again, in demons and monsters, in angels and saints, casting away my cynical view on life. Bhutan is like that … it opens up the mind and soul!

by Lindsey

(PS Help Lindsey win her Holiday to Jordon, click here to vote: – http://www.onthegotours.com/feelgood/entry/Childlike-with-my-eyes-and-mind-wide-op)

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