We're both back from our wedding, Whitby Gothic Weekend and our UK road trip.

The wedding was fantastic and I am so happy to be married to Tasha now. Thanks so much to everyone who helped out and to those who were there. I'm glad I have a good memory of the day as many people say weddings can be a blur.

WGW was great fun as usual. Enjoyed Faith and the Muse a lot on Saturday and the other bands were good although I meandered about a bit on the Friday night. Bought a few CDs but that's about it for myself. We got a portrait painting of Whitby by a local artist as well as a Victorian Image portrait of us in our wedding clothes.

Once we were done with Whitby, we made our way back across the UK staying in Premier Inns overnight via:

York, we had afternoon tea in Betty's Tea Rooms and perused the shops.
Manchester, popped into the Trafford Centre twice, Affleck's Palace, Cyberdog (I got new bag) and Forbidden Planet
Chester, skipped Chester Zoo and went to the Blue Planet Aquarium again, also wandered around Chester’s shops in the rain.
Portmerrion, Tasha had always wanted to visit here as it’s the setting of The Prisoner TV series which she loves.

Glad to be back now so we can sort out the house as we're finally moved in.

Working on photos at the moment.

So what have I been working on in the house lately?

Downstairs, Tasha’s dad built a wood frame around our electricity box in the hall. It’s clad with tongue and groove sheeting but looked a bit rough until last week. I cleaned it all down, took off the door, primed the lot, added some quadrant along the edges, filled in any gaps & painted it all. Now it looks great. Just need to get some decent hinges for the door.

Upstairs, I’m finally finishing off the bath panel. I finished off a bit of tiling near the head of the bath, shortened the tongue and groove sheeting a bit and fitted them in place. I have all the skirting done for the bathroom but need to do the cork floor first. I also have to build a level shelf at the end of the bath where it falls short of the wall.

Ho hum, drill drill drill, hammer hammer hammer.

As friends on Twitter & Facebook will have noticed, I've been experimenting with Ping.fm.

The primary idea was to update one place i.e. the Ping.fm website & it propagates to many i.e. Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, etc. This works fine just as Ping.fm designed.

However, another service called TwitterFeed added a new possibility. TwitterFeed primarily allows you to push RSS feeds to Twitter but more importantly it supports the Ping.fm API so you can build your feeds on TwitterFeed to update Ping.fm and consequently all your other services.

Ultimately, what this means is if you upload a new video to YouTube or favour one, add a new bookmark to Delicious, love a track on Last.fm, etc. it's automatically pushed out to Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, etc. as these all have RSS feeds that can be TwitterFed.

While some of these services do cross over e.g. Delicious updating Twitter, they don’t cover all the services like this solution.

In this way you’re making you’re normal activity on sites work for you instantly.

Like many, I’ve neglected updating LJ in favour of the quick fixes like Twitter and Facebook but here’s a catch up.

The house is still moving along. After big strides with the living room and front bedroom, things have slowed down but we’re nearly done with the bathroom and kitchen. Other rooms can wait until we’re moved in, which we’re holding off on until after the wedding.

Apart from that, we got a sat nav for the car, a Garmin Nuvi 205W. Hope to put it to good use when we’re over in the UK for the wedding.

Games wise, I got Batman Arkham Asylum from Tasha which is great fun although I play it too late at night when I’m tired. Also picked up Guitar Hero Metallica.

Tomorrow is a big day as it’s Beatles day, 09/09/09. I’ll be heading down to Dundrum before work to pick up The Beatles Rock Band and the new stereo re-mastered box set in HMV.

Last but not least, we are in the home stretch for the wedding. Over the weekend was 50 days to go so I got Tasha some more flowers. She’s done so much in preparing the wedding. Thank you Tasha.

Was very sad to hear that John Hughes died yesterday.

Only recently I had started to gather up some of his Brat Pack films having seen some of them in my youth.

This post was particularly touching and is a fitting tribute to the man.