I've been going a little mad of late, with the size of my pages. This one, the home page of my personal category is certainly the biggest. Crossing two months, with plenty of pix, of Esme's birthday and of our Summer holidays. Weighing in at 8.5Mb — it's a hell of a page. 169 pix! phew!

So some people are still on dial up. OK most people are still on dial up. About half of the US is on broadband, about 30% of the UK is on broadband. So, someone on a 56k modem, hitting that page is gonna wait forever, or 28 minutes. While, little old me, on my 3Mb pipe I wait about 13 seconds. Which is OK in my book, I've always thought 13 secs to be a reasonable time, especially when I was on 64k myself.

One day, we're all going to be on much faster connections. These personal pages, are for then, when my kids look back at how they grew up. I'm not bothered at all if someone on dial up complains that this section of my site takes too long to load — they shouldn't be looking. Only me and people who know me can feel free to look, if they have broadband, or the time, as my parents do, to wait on 56k.

Be warned, it's going to get worse. More pictures. More video. Even I will be wanting more than 3Mb downstream.

A couple of hours on a Sunday, takes in the cinema and Garfield, then here, the Telford Steam Railway Museum. Then on to Ironbridge. From the archive:
This Summer's open day at the Museum
May 2003

We're a bit early for the cinema, so spent a half hour at the Telford Sunday car boot sale and market. I like to buy cheap batteries there, and sticky tape, this makes me happy. While the kids like to look at the spreads of toys, though I always say something like, "too big, we've got no room. " Or, "nah, it's junk." This doesn't make me popular with the kids nor the vendors.

So, I buy the kids some magnifying glasses, and Bradley a little battery hand fan, which come with two suspiciously branded batteries, soon enough they run out. But the magnifying glasses, ah, these cause hours of fun.

Looking at the path's gravel, close up.

January 19, 2003

So, I'm going to have to swap over to these penguins. For sure they'll be there for decades, which is my desire.

Bradley counts the elephants.

From the archives: January 19, 2003

Moa birds would stand up to 3 meters tall. They became extinct when the Polynesians landed on the islands of New Zealand 1,000 years ago.