Archive for the ‘photographs’ 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 !

Post to Twitter

Chasing Rainbows, Rainbows End

Friday, December 4th, 2020

Whilst out walking today for our daily lunchtime walk to break up the day working from home due to COIVID-19!

Two rainbows appeared over the ‘shire’.

Double Rainbow above 'The Shire'

Double Rainbow above ‘The Shire’

Chasing the end of the rainbow!

Chasing the end of the rainbow!

almost there!

almost there!

 

Post to Twitter

Squirrel nutkins!

Tuesday, November 24th, 2020

I’ve now got a grey Squirrel which visits my nuts daily, and buries the nuts in the lawn!

Post to Twitter

Merry Chrimbo 2019 from Andysworld!

Tuesday, December 24th, 2019
Merry Christmas from Andysworld!

Merry Christmas from Andysworld!

Post to Twitter

50 years ago today (well almost!)

Sunday, November 10th, 2019

I’ve been scanning the photos my Brother salvaged from the remains of my parents house fire. (that happened a while ago now!).

and I came across these photos of me!

A Young Andy!

A Young Andy!

Young and Innocent and I always wondered why I like a fab ice lolly!

Post to Twitter

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

Post to Twitter

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!

Post to Twitter

Merry Christmas 2018 from Andysworld!

Wednesday, December 12th, 2018

It’s possible this is the last blog of 2018, as the Hosting company is upgrading PHP (a computer development language) on 14th December 2018 and it’s very possible that underlying change will break the blog!

So here is a photo of some Christmas Tree lights near where I live!

Merry Chrimbles everybody!

christmastractor

This Christmas Tree tractor, is in dedication to a local farmer, which died of cancer a few years ago. So all donations raised go to Cancer Research UK.

Post to Twitter

Merry Christmas from Andysworld! and York iconic St Nicholas Fair?

Sunday, November 25th, 2018

We don’t venture out to York very much, but Lindsey took me to Ippuku Tea House yesterday for my Birthday meal, which is a Japanese Tea room in York. If you like Japanese food, the food is excellent!

tearoom

The Christmas Shoppers in York, were terrible, drawn by the iconic St Nicholas Fair?

Post to Twitter

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!

Post to Twitter