7 May 2017
As a child I was obsessed with Goosebumps books. I easily read at least 40 of them. Looking back I find it quite remarkable that the R.L. Stine managed to come up with so much horror content when I struggle to write one blog post a month. My favourite was Say Cheese and Die....
2 May 2017
One day, I opened my Dell Inspiron 15 7000 Series (the name is important in case any poor soul decides to buy this mechanical travesty of a laptop) to find the screen was coming aw...
4 Jan 2017
What good is a brand new amp for your stereo system if you don't immediately build some sort of switch comparison circuit to test it against another amp?
My parents got me a new amp - an Onkyo A-9010 - for my sound system for Christmas. I had one (Rotel RA 972) that was good once upon a time. Though the volume control was always a bit finicky and for the last 4 years it sometimes only played ou...
13 Nov 2016
When I lived in Galway I had to go to the Cliffs of Moher a lot. Initially of my own volition, then eventually because everyone who came to Galway wanted to go. This is roughly how...
18 Aug 2016
I'm not great with plants. I like the idea of growing my own herbs, like Jamie Oliver, but it never really looks like Jamie Oliver's herb garden. I once kept a parsley plant alive ...
10 Apr 2016
I got a job in Edinburgh so we moved here yesterday. Our reasoning was that we'd moved to Australia with a suitcase-worth of stuff, and that was fine. So really, bringing the car o...
2 Jan 2016
Battery powered Christmas decorations are a source of distress in the Middleton household. My Mum bought a nice string of lights with bows, and 3 AA batteries. No sooner had she ad...
15 Dec 2015
Seven nights was the longest we'd stayed in one place since leaving Australia. We'd read that a week is a good amount of time in Havana. This is true, but it probably wouldn't hurt...
6 Dec 2015
Mexico was only ever meant as a route to Cuba, but we figured we may as well see a bit of it so we booked 4 days. Originally we were going to stay on the beach in Cancun but Dan ri...
24 Nov 2015
Antigua is another old, scenic city surrounded by volcanoes. This one is particularly scenic and you can watch Fuego erupt a bit every few minutes. The first time I saw it (it's ju...
23 Nov 2015
Our trip from Flores to Lake Atitlan involved driving through a bit of Guatemala City. I admit to feeling a little wary when the driver stopped at a garage so we could use the toil...
22 Nov 2015
When we told people we were going to Guatemala they reacted with shock, mingled with trying to cover their shock, followed by sadness that they'd never see us again. That's sort of...