Had fun with the kids a few days ago making this fairy doorway into an old stump on a tree in our front garden. We even cut some steps into the tree to make it easy for the fairies to finish off the inside………..
Fairy garden, with doorway into the magical world!
Real steps!
Fairy doorway complete with window on the upper floor!
Stay well
Ian
It was bound to happen one day, William has beaten me at fishing. Especially well done as it was very windy and we only stayed a short time. Double well done as William spent most of that short time fossicking on the beach….and he still beat me.
Williams first Dab and a Dad beater at that!
However; magnanimously and graciously, I have never been more happy to be ‘last’ in my life… his face was a picture.
Looking forward to many more evenings spent down at the beach,
Stay well
Ian
p.s.
The moment when William learns that ‘dead’ fish can still move…
Rest and relaxation Norwegian country style. Sausage anyone?
Found a little hideaway today in the woods close to home. We drive a short way and then hike (well, saunter really) up the ski trail for 10 or 15 minutes to find a little semicircle of low, open fronted huts catching the sun. The huts are provided by the local authority along with fire-pits, covered firewood stores and even new shovels to move the snow off the benches etc. all gratis!
Fantastic place to toast some marshmallows and drink coffee with friends whilst the kids jump of the roof into deep snow drifts and try the suicidal sledge run behind the huts! A rustic ‘cafe in the woods’ is a mere 5 minute walk away should you find yourself craving sweet sticky buns made by Swedish serving wenches!
Come visit, we’ll take you there………
Stay well
Ian
Oh I love this! I wanted to make one of those ‘tag clouds’ as an image for a chapter in my book and wondered how to do it. But not for long, as I soon found wordle.net and was in heaven!
First let me briefly explain what a word cloud is if it’s new to you. Word or tag clouds are produced when a nifty bit of software scans a bunch of words (from a website for example) and assigns ’importance’ based on that particular words appearance frequency. It then adds this importance to the font size; i.e. the more often a word appears, the bigger it is in relation to other less frequent words.
Why do I love it so much? Well let me post the results from popping this blogs URL into the program…..
Not altered in any way I promise!
You have to smile!
But then I realised I could make up a word cloud of my own to use as an image. Simply open up a spreadsheet and pop the words I wanted to feature into columns. Then its a simple measure of dragging (using the little cross feature in the bottom right hand corner) to repeat words down the columns. Of course the more words in the column the bigger the result for that word. Then copy all of the words and paste into wordle.net and play around with the randomization to get a cloud you like or alter the settings manually. All so easy, oh and free.
Thanks to IBM for allowing this software to ‘escape’ onto the web and for being free to use however we want. Kudos.
Stay well
Ian
We normally visit Hemsedal (about 3 and half hours North of Oslo in Norway) in the summertime, where we walk the peaks followed by cozy evenings in the cabin. But this week we got the opportunity to visit during the skiing season and oh boy what a different place it is in the wintertime!
Awakening on the first morning after arriving at the cabin in total darkness.
A totally new landscape awaited us as we traveled the familiar roads, but at last we find the blue sky that so soften eludes us in the summertime!
The bluest of blue skies aided by sunshine and silence.
With so many ski tracks to chose from and the fact that most are drawn to the nearby slalom slopes, it means near solitude on the tracks around Hemsedal.
The view downriver from Rjukanfossen waterfall.
And what a difference a few degrees make! This is a raging waterfall in the summer.
Frozen Waterfall at Rjukanfossen just outside Hemsedal.
We’ll definitely look at Hemsedal a little differently this summer!
Stay well
Ian
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