So I find myself in a hotel bar in Bahrain for reasons I won't go into (mainly because it's very dull!) My phone has a non-Bahrain SIM in it, (it's also not a UK SIM) so I am doing a "local" roam (it's a GCC SIM and Bahrain is another GCC member), so you could liken it to roaming in the EU on an EU SIM. The point I am trying to get to (you must excuse me - I have just had proper alcohol for the first time since January!) is a compareison of how cheap things are outside of the UK and the EU.

So a quick word tonight on a bottle of what proclaims itself "the strongest Belgian beer", coming in at a fairly hefty 12%abv.

(For those who don't know the Ministry of Crap Design, or MoCD for short, comes from the stand-up comedy of Ben Elton from many years ago. We all experience it many times through life, I have a blog, the rest is history; except Ben is a lot funnier than me!)

So it finally happened... I have bought my first Apple product. Given the amount of travel I am likely to be doing over the next few years (clocked up nearly 9000 miles in August alone, 10000 if you add in associated car journeys) I decided to get myself an MP3, and in the end I opted for the iPod Touch (2nd generation, 32GB: Now superceded by the 3rd Gen, 64GB, the gits!)

Well firstly, first blog in a while! About 4 months ago I moved overseas to start a new job and haven't really had the time to blog so far. Am not going to say exactly where I am, only that it's in the Middle Eastern region.

Anyway, now I'm getting a little more settled in am starting to look for other activities to get involved in; but it seems one of the most common ones out here is golf. Only problem is, most of this area is desert. Yes, some grass courses do exist, but my experience today was on one of the desert courses.

Using Drupal - Choosing and Configuring Modules to Build Dynamic Websites
* Author: Jeff Robbins, Angela Byron, Addison Berry, Jeff Eaton, Nate Haug, James Walker
* ISBN: 978-0-596-51580-5
* Publisher: O'Reilly
* Publication Date: December 2008
* Pages: 490
* Price: £34.50

Photshop CS3 RAW
* Author: Mikkel Aaland
* ISBN: 978-0-596-51052-7
* Publisher: O'Reilly
* Publication Date: 2007
* Pages: 252
* Price: £26.99

As memory cards get larger, digital cameras more sophistaicated and software more affordable and feature-rich, an increasing number of digital photographers have the chance to capture the RAW data from their camera's CCD to manipulate in the digital darkroom.

Well, is it weird. I'm having trouble thinking of a decent title for this post...

They say you should never talk about sex, religion or politics. However, every now and then a story appears that you just can't help but have a giggle at.

Ok, so recently I've had to do a few trips back to my spiritual home of Blackpool. Part of this ritual involves the M6 between junctions 38 and 33 or 32 (depends on exactly where am visiting).

Right, lets start by getting the hippy and marketing crap out of the way...

For the envirohippies; Innovation is brewed in a new energy efficient plant, the glass is thinner and so uses 34% less glass, and the cardboard box is made using recycled waste.

For the marketing drones, it's a limited edition beer. I have bottle 1533.

So let's now get on to the important stuff... The beer! Comes in a 500ml bottle and is 6.7%ABV, so 3.4 UK units.