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Katie’s 30th Birthday

Jamie — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 06:15:58 +0000

It was Katie’s 30th at the weekend and we all had a fantastic time. Starting with a picnic in the park with all the family and friends (the photo is from the cake my mum had made for here).

Everyone had a to bring a something to eat with them and I’ve never seen such food, we had to bring some of it home, if you need any sausage rolls or a meat selection give me a bell

After that Katie and I spent the night at the malmaison, living it up like a couple of swells. Sunday was a glorious relaxing affair with a good breakfast, a spot of shopping, wondering in and out of various galleries and topped of with a combo massage and facial for Katie. She really didn’t want the weekend to stop and neither did I to be honest

So happy birthday beautiful, I love ya lots and looking gorgeous xxx

If you want to see the photos from the picnic they are here http://www.flickr.com/photos/jmgarner/sets/72157624346387863/

The NYC Trip In A 1 minute and 50 second-ish video

Jamie — Sun, 28 Mar 2010 09:29:55 +0000

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Jamie — Sat, 27 Mar 2010 16:03:04 +0000

So I don’t know if I told anyone but I have just come back from NYC. The trip was a belated 30th birthday present from Katie and a very much welcome break. Although being the city that it is, we didn’t feel very relaxed after we came back, in fact I think we need another break.

The best way to describe NYC is a city, but the proper definition of city, a full non stop 24 hour buzzing city, where some thing is always happening or going. Architecture wise its stunning I could stare at the building all day long and going to the top of the empire state building to view it all was brilliant. Although it did remind me a lot of lego mainly because of how the were arranged in the block structure. Which incidentally made it very easy to navigate the city. We covered most of Manhattan on foot (racking up a pretty impressive 9 miles a day at one point I think) it gives you a great feel of the place and much it can change from block to block.

Saturday
We arrived into JKF Airport after an extremely bad appraoch to the runway, full on turbelence and bad weather conditions. Some people were even using the sick bags (which I have never seen), after getting through customs and immigration we went to our hotel, had a shower went our to some random irish bar for a couple beers and then back to the hotel and passed out.

Sunday
Had breakfast opposite Grand Central station (which was delicious) and then had a walk around, still quite grey and rainy. Decided to go to The Met, The Guggenheim, The Natural History Museum and the Planetarium. All incredible places and worth a look. On the way back to the hotel grabbed a slice of pizza (yum) and ended up having some drinks in a hotel bar, which was a library and had a jazz mariachi band playing. Brilliant

Monday
More looking and walking around and finally the sun is starting to break through and its like a different place, lots more wondering around and headed over to the docks and wall street and manager to get cheap tickets to a broadway show (Momma Mia) which was good (I’m not a big musical fan, I really only like Avenue Q), Time Square (aka flashing lights a go-go) which is just incredible and dinner was at Bubba Gumps where I had a beer as big as my head, fact!

Tuesday
The empire state building, brilliant go you have to its incredible. We also walked around China Town, Little Italy, LoLita (left of little Italy), SoHo.

Wednesday
St Paddies Day, enough said.

Thursday
Pretty much a write off after the events of Wednesday, however did do the circle line cruise and tour around the island, saw the Statue of Liberty. Incredible. We headed back to the hotel through Time Square again and grabbed a bagel on the way.

Friday
Last day as we are flying back late, headed off to MoMa and saw, some pretty strange things. The highlight for me was the Tim Burton exhibition, that man is very creative. Lunch was at Katz deli (from where Harry Met Sally) and we shared a plate of pastrami and ruben sandwiches (they are very big) and a plate of pickles washed down with some Dr Brown Dark Cherry Soda. Dinner however was at a awesome little place called Ninja, which is a Ninja restaurant. We had the presentation dishes which involved people setting fire to the food, or having to pull out ninja swords out of it. Brilliant

There’s a whole bunch of flickr sets:

There’s the full one.
A set of just St Patricks Day.
A set called, Stuff I Ate In NYC. Which funnily enough features stuff that I ate in nyc.

Katie’s Birthday

Jamie — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 13:59:15 +0000

So Friday was Katie’s 29th birthday, which she revelled in greatly by saying “hey at least I’m not as old as you are!” (I’m only one year older!). She had a great day starting off with a surprise breakfast with her mum and dad at ours. I got up extra early to blow up balloons and cause a lot of mess in the kitchen while making the breakfast. We had toast, marmalade, blueberry jam, poached eggs and special scrambled eggs on English muffins with herbed butter, sausages, mushrooms and beans and a tiny little chocolate muffin as Katie’s birthday cake. Later on in the evening we all headed out into town as you can see from the photos. When we all came back to the house Katie only wanted to do 3 things:

Open the Moet from my party
Play Buzz
Put on her wedding dress

As it was her birthday we all obliged, in fact I felt a little left out and went and put on my wedding suit. It was a brilliant day and Katie had an excellent time. Now all energies are devoted to planning Katie’s 30th Birthday which will be a joint party between and her auntie Sara (who will be turning 40). At the moment the current theme is a roller disco.

My 30th Birthday Party

Jamie — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 17:25:22 +0000

Well there was a lot of cooking, a lot of painting, loads of wiring for the lights and not to mention the 1 hour torrential pour down before 6pm which caused quite a bit of stress but the party was brilliant, I think everyone had a brilliant time and I would really like to thank everyone who came and the gifts the brought, they were all great-fully received. It was quite a long one, we started at 4pm and went on till 5am and only realised it was that late because the birds were tweeting. All in all its been a brilliant birthday week and one which I have to especially thank for Katie for organising and surprising me at the party with a trip to New York (whoop-whoop) next paddies day.

There’s a link here for the photos, I also setup a webcam in the living room to do some time lapse photography. It was running for about 12 hours and below is the party summed up in about 12 seconds! I think I should have taken a few more though to make it last for at least another 5 seconds.

My Birthday..Day

Jamie — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 20:00:46 +0000

So I had a most wicked birthday yesterday, I would like to thank everyone for their card, messages and generous gifts they were all much appreciated. Had a good session at the gym in the morning to make room for food later, had Steak and Eggs for breakfast which was massive! Then Katie took me shopping and spoiled me rotten (she also was the most patient person in the world as she waited while I tried on clothes. I’m not very good at it but I think its man thing). We met Gez & Anglea Mangela in town and headed off for some tiki crazy golf and then headed into to meet up with Bob and Becca for some drinks, tapas and karaoke (I discovered, I rock )and shape throwing in the reflex. Brilliant and if that’s not enough this Saturday I have my party and even more presents.

There was a small bit of bad luck that my mum, dad and brother were supposed to be coming up from Wellingborough to join me for a meal but sadly there was a massive accident on the M6 and they were stuck in traffic between junction 4 and junction 5 for about 7 hours.

Becca created a list (which I have slightly modified) to celebrate me being 30, here’s a list of 30 things about yesterday.

It was my birthday and I am awesome.
I was wearing a tshirt with yoda on it, yoda as a DJ
I found out that I can fit into a pair of 34″ jeans, I used to take a 40″!
I have stripy green adidas trainers
Katie and Angela Mangela stole pashminas
Bob bought a house
Gez has the most golden tan ever
Liv spelt no instead of know
Steak and Eggs
I had a absinthe shot
A chorizo/rioja tapas thing
I threw nacho cheese at Anglea Mangela
Gez and I holding hands skipping towards Island bar
Jon calling me and Becca answering the phone and sounded very confused
Cheeky vimtos
Singing “I love rock and roll”
Being a backup singer for “Easy Lover”
I made friends with a guy in Relfex who thought I was the best singer ever
I did a MC Hammer dance to “Can’t Touch This”
Me and Katie dancing to “Time of my Life”, comical
The fact that I am now thirty which rhymes with dirty and flirt
Tiki Golf
Getting a hole in one at Tiki Golf
A girl sand “I will always love you” badly
The photos
The fact it is nearly my party
Organic cider
The generous gifts
Masala fish
No hangover

I also took some photos

Australia and Japan

Jamie — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 09:25:15 +0000

So I’m heading off to Australia and Japan this October and November for the big holiday. I wasn’t really supposed to be doing this again, as after last years saving all the holidays for the wedding and honeymoon, which while amazing was knackering as we had to wait ages before either Katie and I could take some time off.

So this year, we planned to have lots of smaller holidays, to give us a break, relax and chop up the year to manageable bit size chunks. But sadly this year its not happened as I have three weddings to go to this year. One with our friends Robin and Laura (in September), Matt and Leanne (in August) and then my brother has popped the question to Amelia and that’s happening in October but it just to happens to be in Australia! Don’t get me wrong its great never been but it means I have had to save everything up again, grrr (only kidding Jon).

I don’t really mind, I have never been to Oz (Katie has) but we have decided to combine the trip with somewhere either on the way out or the way back and after much discussion and a grumble from Katie (she wanted to go to Fiji, but then I think all girls want to go to Fiji) we are heading to Japan. At the moment I’m building up research for hotel, guides and the like. I think from memory we are there for 6 days, 5 nights. Ideally I would like to spend maybe 2 days in Tokyo (Electric town is of course a major stop off, plus singing Karaoke till 5am) and then the rest going off on an adventure around Japan without spending a fortune.

I’ve stumbled across the following sites Trip Advisor, Nextstop and the Rough Guide. If you have any other recommendations please leave a comment below, all help is appreciated.

No More Decorating Please

Jamie — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 21:22:43 +0000

So its been a long time since the last update, most of it I have spent visiting people over the weekends but also redecorating the front room. Yes what use to be my office is now a proper dinning room, there is no evidence that I ever worked from home at all. Also as well as sorting out the dinning room, we no whave a sweet new setup in the front room which includes my new Full HD telly. There’s a little storage system set underneath it where the PC and Wii now live and thanks to the marvel of wi-fi, NAS Below are some photos which I have promised a lot of people I would take, so its been so long.

Decorating and my Macbook

Jamie — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 22:06:14 +0000

Well at the moment Katie and I are in the middle of redecorating the front room which used to be the office. We recently bought a new dinning room table while we were in Edinburgh over new years. Its an immense table looks gorgeous and so Katie and I have decided to paint, varnish and wallpaper the room so it looks awesome and when its finished it will look brill.

At the moment we have stripped the wallpaper and repainted the ceiling and painted the coving and the room looks well to be honest quite empty. I’ve had to go through all my old documents and draws and throwing a lot of stuff away, which has been quite cleansing. As part of the redecorating I’ve had to strip the PC away and use only the Mac. Having done this for a few days I’ve found Firefox(ff) is quite sluggish to run so I’ve been checking out Flock and Safari.

Safari, well I can’t quite remember what the time difference is but Apple quote it as fast and on the mac I agree its almost instant it load time compared to the 5-10 seconds it can take ff to load, as being the native browser would suggest it integrates perfect with OS X and all the lovely keychain-ness (or 1Password which I’ll really recommend you buy). I did have to tweak a couple of things namely setting the Status Bar to appear as I find not having anything at the bottom of screen worrying, as if the pages could quite easily slide off the browser and into the vents on the macbook. My biggest bugbear about it, is lack of plugins/addons call them what you will. The browser is presented as is, you can’t sync bookmarks with Firefox or anything else its just there, as I use a PC a work and a Mac a home some sort of sync capabilities would be brilliant and I’m sure I can’t be the only one to think so(hopefully there might be something in Snow Leopard). In a nutshell its a faster as is browser and it does its job incredibly well, because of this it has replaced firefox as my default browser.

However I like social media (sc), I think its great and can’t think of a browser that implements it any better than Flock. The sc aspect has been tightly integrated and I can see by using that a lot of thought has gone into the to making it seem part of the browser that an after thought. I like that Gmai,Delicious,Twitter,Facebook and Flickr all login at startup and I can see an overview of what my friends have been doing across all networks (similarly to what you see on the facebook homepage once you’re logged in). I like that you can easily share content with your friends by dragging stuff across to them in the sidebar, the same principle works for uploading photos to facebook/flickr/picasa. It also has a nice built in blogging tool (which I’m currently using to write this) which I like as it means I can have the browser open looking for content for posts without having loads of tabs open and swapping between them (some people may consider this a non-point as I could just login and keep it open in tab, well I don’t want to). Flock is based on Mozilla code so it has the Firefox feel but (once again) there is limited (and I mean really limited) addons available for it. The Firefox extensions don’t work grrrr and again no bookmark syncing! Also as it is based on ff there is lag at startup but no where near as bad as the fox takes to load. I find that Flock takes the aspects of mozilla and reworks for a browser that a lot of people would use if they only knew about. I like sc integration and tools and enjoy using it but I find the lack of add-ons annoying.

What would be great is if there was some sort of hybrid of both, because Safari’s blistering speed is let down by a lack of plugins and Flock’s fantastic social features suffer from a lag at start up. Which leaves me switching between both as the mood takes me. Mainly I’ll be using Safari (particularly while I’m at work and social media is blocked) but if I need to blog or share stuff then I’m using Flock. So if you are reading this Apple Developers (and I know that’s not really probable and also you’re probably in code freeze) please extend the features of Safari, I’ve seen you do it with iPhoto’09 so I’m hoping you’ve done something like this for Safari too.

Mr and Mrs Garner

Jamie — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 07:44:43 +0000

Wow, well its been quite a while since the last updated over a month ago in fact. For those of you who don’t know Katie and I are now married. The social event of the year went off with only a small hitch the bungie run didn’t turn. It actually expired that the company had a brake in but because its impossible to get a signal where we were getting married. We had brilliant weather sunshine for the whole weekend.

The pavilion was decorated marvellously by Richard Watson, you did a stunning job sir. Liv and Becca who played the guitar and sang as Katie walked towards up the path and also at the end of the service, girls you were great . The best men (my brothers) did an amazing and also the ushers. I can’t really say enough about the whole day it was amazing, it was so great to see that we were loved by so many people. Thank you everyone. Now today I picked up the photos from the photographer (all 633) and I also have collected loads of other photos from the weekend and I will be putting these up on flickr shortly (its gonna be quite a big job).

Our honeymoon was amazing it took quite a while to get there 18 hours in total. We stayed in the Shangri La Rasa Ria Kota Kinabalu. It was gorgeous built right on to the beach our room was beautiful. We went kayaking, went out on a hobby cat. We also went into to the jungle saw crocodiles, monitor lizards, urang-tans, proboscis monkeys, king fishers and also wild pygmy elephant. I took shed loads an I mean load of photos I think it was about 1200 now I didn’t want to force these any to many people, but out of these I have 400 on to flickr and you can see these here.

Anyway its been a while and I’m feeling this post is a little haphazard and random, but in a nutshell my wedding day was the best day of my life to be surrounded by family and friends. Seeing my gorgeous wife walk towards is a site I will never forget, I have never seen her look so beautiful and the time we spent together on the honeymoon was unforgettable. I love you beautiful thank you for the best perfect time.