Dave mentions my wanting to know how long the beach was in Florida. His answer was in keeping with what I was thinking, but bigger, much bigger.

So after asking the question, I was also inspired to take some videos. This country is smaller, a lot smaller that the US. Everything is cuter, cosier, more bunched up. More squashed. The Ironbridge videos of yesterday explain this, better than I can in words.

I'll repost this to my cyberSaps category, as there's much here to do with Radio
OK, so I've made it easy for me to video blog. One thing I need, OK two more things I need, is some sort of queuing system in Radio, and more upstream bandwidth. I'm 3Mb down on cable but I'm only getting 30Kb/s up which when I'm trying to get up 10 avi files ranging from 17Mb to 1Mb plus their first JPEG image, that's 20 extra threads, on top of my existing 13... 33 threads in Frontier means she runs slowly. But with a nice orderly queue, things will go much nicer.

I'll probably not do so many vids in one go anyway. Still have to figure a way so that search engines don't go mad for my bandwidth.

How easy is it Steve? I simply drop the avis into a folder, the name of which can be 100, 150, 200, 300, 400 etc. This determines the size of the thumbnail you click through with. 200's best for these sized avis. And that's it. Radio picks them up, ImageMagick takes the first frame, jpgs it to the right size. Then, Radio upstreams them. And that's my only problem. Normally, my script works well for JPEGs, but with large avis...

I'm then presented with a list of shortcuts for the thumbnails, which I add to my post...

There's two main ways into the valley that is Ironbridge. This is the more westerly.

Esme and Bradley throwing rocks in the River Severn. But, it gets a little too exciting and she needs to go pee, "I'm desperate!"

Some bad background noise. Maybe I had my finger over the mic... Maybe it's too windy. This place used to be a warehouse. Now, it's the Telford Gorge's museum. One of many in the area.

Some more shots of the museum, and the kids throwing stones.

Pan down the river. And Esme wants to go paddling to get a leaf. Madness, she'd be swept away by the current.

As we walk up a tree lined path along the bank, Esme recounts a story about monsters, finds a leaf, then Bradley finds one too.

Ducks in the background. Esme asks a good question about English ducks and Chinese ducks.

Dead soldiers. Esme thinks they're in the big flower bed.

Pan of the Ironbridge itself. Birth place of the industrial revolution.

Time to go home, says Esme, after I pan from the church at the side of the valley back onto the bridge.

Get the remaining ones bunched up into one posting. Here's a few days worth of holidays, from the day spent crab fishing, another on the beach in St Ives, to Flambards which we went to last Easter and the last day on the beach.

I took Bradley up to the shop to get some pasties, and came back with a boat. I didn't think he'd use it much. He nearly wore it out. We dug streams and ponds in the sand for his boat.

Esme pulls a ballet pose.

A big shout for a small boy

Another face, this time a proper person. (I put two images together, to save space.)

One minute blues sky next thick dark clouds. But a relief since the sun was so hot.

More driving in a boat

Amanda made Bradley a sand boat, which he took the girls in for a spin, to the shops and to Flambards.

Brad in the rabbit hole. (Saving space again.)

Dragon? Crocodile?

Fantastic a teddy bear each!

The lady bug boats in Flambards. That water really was that colour.

Bradley being chased around the sand castle by Francis

Brad draws the sunshine

Esme walking towards the green bucket, and the other boy cousins

Bradley trying to catch a fish, while everybody else tries to catch a crab. The day before, it was just me and Bradley. We took fishing rods too. Our bait was sand eels, but as we hadn't caught anything, Bradley suggested strawberries. We didn't catch any fish with those either, though we had a few laughs from by standers.

Bradley, Alex, Francis and Amanda. Many crabs were caught this day. Using the fishing nets as landing nets increased the catch by double.

"No pictures today, Dad!"

Proud fishermen with the buckets full of crabs.

Amanda's sister

Brad, Francis and Esme with what makes them quiet

Bradley was the funniest he's ever been, with his goggles on, he discovered jumping in, and would jump in, swim to the side, climb out and jump in again. If he jumped in a hundred times he jumped in two hundred.

While pulling a Benny Hill 'dirty old man' face, with his stuttering shoeless run to the jumping in place, his walk backwards away from the pool, looking through steamed up goggles, counting the paving slabs, the run and leap...

He's funny anyway. Has natural comic timing, and plays to the crowd. But this was Bradley enjoying himself.

Preparations. There were numerous names for different jumps, which were all the same jumps to us. The funniest was the hands together, above the head praying dive, which was actually another leap.

With his arm bands, he didn't sink very far at all.

A quick doggie paddle to the steps and repeat.

He even learnt to 'sink' as both Esme and Bradley call holding their breath, and putting their head under the water. Here, he's searching for and picking up a penny. Initially, he couldn't reach with his arm bands on.

Esme learnt to swim 'underwater' from one side of the pool, under the child bar, encouraged by another 'dad.'

One of Amanda's sisters in the background

Distorted by the camera

We were joined for the final week of our two weeks break by Amanda's two sisters and mother. That is, five more cousins, ranging from 18 months to 11 years.

In the background their cousin, Francis. Bradley makes a sign.

I don't know what sign. I just asked him, and he doesn't know. Well, what can you expect from a three and ¾ year old?

No, not a monkey, he was talking to someone, and often adopts this position when replying.

Them in the tent. We usually awoke fairly early, around 8 or 9am, and the kids slept on a bit longer. Here they lie with Brad's teddy bear, 'Teddy.' And one of Esme's babies, I forget which one, not that I could tell at this resolution, nor right up close. All dolls look the same to me. Much to Esme's annoyance.

The sticky ball and bats were one of Bradley's favourite new toys.

They climbed and climbed these rocks infront of the beach, though both Amanda and myself were dead worried.

A pose that makes her look more than her 5 and ¾ years. In front of a drawing in the sand of the sunshine.

We were camped miles from the beach, and often took the park and ride train, which had wonderful views of the coast, between the trees.

OK, I admit it. This is an abandoned tump. The geezer sitting next to us built it. Once he left with his kids, we took over, and I built it a bit bigger.

Still a bit of a sweat with little spades.

Bradley has is digger, and Esme sits atop her horse. She called it that. Quite nice listening to them both singing songs while they were sitting on it.

More catching up with pix from holidays. These are from our golf game at the beach.

We always give Bradley an advantage, as he's younger than Esme by two years, and 40 younger than me (we've all got that competitive spirt after all.) Mostly, it's just a 5 second start in a race, but at gold he takes it too far, putting the golf ball about two inches from the hole.

No good trying, as we do, to explain fairness, 'only a game' type morals; he must win. Rather he must beat Esme!

Two inches from the hole

No wonder he gets a hole in one

What with sharks and huge spider crabs...

This is from the harbour, on a wet day, yet still warm. We find a spider crab, which is a huge deal to small kids. Much excitement when we reported back to mummy.

A must have on any holiday, a visit to the hairbraider. This time they are on the harbour in one spot, according to this cool chick they've been told to stay here, and not to spread out this year, so there's a half dozen to choose from. Takes 20 minutes and costs 50p an inch, Esme has 17inches, cool chick calls it eight quid.

Nice purples and greens.

And we did, just to make sure everything was there, and ship shape. It took up most of our small back garden, and we put it on the slope too.

Scared she maybe, but they have a fascination for her. Here she tries to pluck up the courage to feed a horse with grass, remembering to tuck her thumb in, "lest it's bitten off."

Maybe I shouldn't mention such things ;-)

Spent the past two weeks on the beach in St Ives, Cornwall, South West England. Wonderful time, relaxing away from any computers, and only a few support calls to deal with.

Will catch up with the pictures over this next week.