Thomo's Hole Rebuilding

Yep - finally I am rebuilding Thomo's Hole. When I have finished, it will contain all the posts from my blogs as well as all the cool stuff (well, cool if you are a wargamer) that was present in Thomo's Hole.

So, from now on, look at http://thomo.coldie.net/ for Thomo's Hole. Become a blogbunny there.

Go on, look in. You know you want to - just to see what's happening.

Blogs, Home Pages and Life

I need to reorganise my online domain. I need to change Thomo's Hole (http://thomo.coldie.net/) as it is getting a little long in the tooth. Time for a new image and to play with some new technology.

I want something that is between a blog (like this or MSN Live Spaces) but at the same time I could use some Wiki-ability about the home page too - for those articles I keep threatening to write. The Wiki allows me to upgrade them from time-to-time.

The other thing I want there is a gallery and a download area.

Jeffro has a technical problem on his hands I can see - looking after his old man's requirements. Well, I think we are going to try WordPress. I'll let you know when you can stop in for the first looks.

Family Night In Saudi Arabia

Last night (Wednesday night in Jeddah and therefore the same as Friday night in the rest of the world) we went to Chili's for dinner. Neither of us had eaten there before, either here in Saudi or elsewhere, so we thought we'd give it a try. We got to the singles entrance (can't go into the Family entrance as where the women eat is separate from the single men ... this is to protect the women and prevent lasciviousness I guess).

Of course, single women and married couples can go into the family section so you work that out.

Anyway, we went to the singles entrance and it was closed. The family entrance was open. We then walked up to the road to Ruby Tuesday's. There was at least a sign there on the singles entrance saying "Wednesday Night is Family Night" - so only single women, and married couples (with or without children) can go. It sucks.

We then walked on to TGI Friday's which was open for families AND singles and ate there.

We then decided that we would not eat at Chili's, or at Ruby Tuesday, because of their ill treatment of singles (er, men not accompanied by their wives) at any time and will positively encourage all those we know not to eat there either.

Friday's, on the other hand, gets our full support ... and our dinner Riyals (unless of course they are closed tonight for "Family Night").

Nine MSN Goofs It UP

December 8th, 2006, and I started Internet Explorer. ninemsn out of Australia is my IE Home Page and it appeared as it normally does. The difference this time was that the person taking care of the sport headlines obviously knew nothing about sport. The picture shown here was displayed with the following text/Hyperlink underneath it -

Ashes news

Now to my mind the picture appears to be from the Wallabies v Ireland Rugby Union match played not so long ago rather than from the 2nd Cricket Test between Australia and England where the English were reminded that it doesn't matter how well they play cricket, the fat lady always sings with an Australian accent :-)

The Desperate Life of the Lonely Traveller

You know that you have spent too much time travelling for work, sitting in hotel rooms, departure lounges and aircraft when you pick up the morning paper in Jeddah and reading it over breakfast you notice a story about al Jazeerah finally getting around to starting its English language broadcast. They then give you a list of the reporters there and you notice names like Riz Khan and Veronica Pedrosa .

Apart from knowing the names, the desperation sets in when you think back and can remember Veronica Pedrosa presenting and anchoring the news on BBC Worldwide and CNN International. So travelling for business so long leaves your pin-ups and heroes global news presenters rather than sportsmen and such.

Definitely time to get out of this business :(

Saudi Censors

OK - I posted an entry to the blog here called A Test Post - Can I Post a Picture and posted it. I included a picture of two models of the Russian warship Poltava. It appears as though the post went through correctly and the upload of the picture worked as the link to the picture is http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger2/1101/1098274519422064/320/PICT2944.jpg.

However, whenever I click on what should be the image in the post I get a wonderful message from the Saudi Arabian Censors saying (in Arabic as well as English):

Access to the requested URL is not allowed!

Please, fill out the form below if you believe the requested page should not be blocked:

Form for URL unblocking request

Please, send other sites you feel should be blocked using the following form:

Blocking Request Form

Of course, I could list any sites that annoyed me and I am sure they would be blocked without checking.

I am not certain that I want to try the unblocking request yet - perhaps when it is closer to my time to leave.

More importantly, the Censors are blocking pictures posted to Blogger beta here ... but permitting access to pictures elsewhere, on other blogs hosted by other organisations. Seems that Google's influence in the Kingdom here is not as great as other American Organisations.

A Test Post - Can I Post a Picture?

This post is to have a further look at Blogger beta blogging and to see how it goes when I need to handle a picture. I really do not want to use Hello - I was not happy with it 6 months ago when I first tried hello and I really do not want to go back and use it.

OK, so some ships, my favourite past time. They should be showing at the top of this blog entry. The vessel is the Poltava.

Wonder how that went? If it worked you should be seeing a ship from the Russo-Japanese War, painted in both its pre-war colours as well as its during way colours. I can't check this but I will explain why in a later blog entry.