Well it’s a month since myself and Tasha got married. Hasn’t time flown? The house is falling into place now as we have electricity in the shed so the freezer could get moved out of the house. We also finally have the bin collection sorted too.

One of the events in Whitby, which I neglected to mention was the Nights of Victorian Gothic. Organised by English Heritage over Halloween, it highlighted some of the grim professions of Victorian times such as hangman, surgeon and grave robber but also featured storytelling and alchemy. However, there were two key events which were the centrepiece of the night.

The first, about halfway through, was a live performance in the abbey cloisters to The Highwayman by Alfred Noyes featuring authentic costume, horse riding, rifle shooting and special effects. I felt this was the best part of the night and would love to have had a better view.

The second event, near the end of the night, was a full Victorian funeral procession featuring a four horse drawn carriage which looked beautiful, mourners at the front and rear and even an impromptu attendance by Gabi at the end if I'm not mistaken! The procession made full rounds of the main abbey lawn and was a sombre end to the evening.

It was also great to see the abbey lit up in purple and to see it at night which you normally can’t do.

Not long to another Whitby though as I’ll be going in April for Arthur’s stag.

I’m lucky to be in an office on the ground floor as I have a “flower” bed outside the window which comes up to the window itself.

This is good because I like to feed the wild birds. As many know, we have two cockatiels but the wild birds are like my adopted pets.

Every morning I cast out some wild bird seed and some peanuts or bits of bread. In fact, before I can even do that, the big wood pigeon usually lands and gives a nod that he wants some seed.

After that the two magpies come over and gorge themselves on the peanuts, stuffing 6 or 7 in their beaks before flying off to hide them.

Sometimes I get a robin or even a big hooded crow. In the past, I’ve also gotten blackbirds, jackdaws and even a few different types of tit (no jokes)

I’m sure the lads in work think I’m mad but what the heck, it makes me happy.

While we were away in the UK, we got a chance to visit Goathland aka “the Heartbeat village” or “Land of the Roaming Sheep”. Strangely, this was where we were going to have the wedding reception but that didn’t work out.

We headed out with Anna and Ian in the afternoon, Goathland is about 45 minutes from Whitby and luckily the rain held off that day.

As I mentioned, Goathland is where they do some of the filming for the Heartbeat TV show (they also film in Whitby too). I also think it’s a funny village because sheep wander about everywhere.

We made our way around the village, bumped into Tasha’s family, had a bit of lunch then went looking for Beck Hole. It was a long walk and we skipped Beck Hole but found a lovely river with a rocky bank to try to traverse. There were some slippery rocks and awkward hops but we all made it along safely.

Again, here are the photos from our little country adventure.

I figured I should go into a bit more detail regarding our trip so I’ll work backwards.

We got to Portmeirion at about 11 on Friday and knew the rain wasn’t going to let up, as it was like a carwash on the roads leading there, waves of rain washing over the windscreen. To add insult to injury, the window wipers were acting up.

But out into the smushy, leaf blanketed mud we went. We got a nice little guide book at the gate with our tickets but then we were stuck as a workman’s barrier tape blocked what looked like the only public route. We wandered around for a bit, confused, but the chap at the gate said it was the way to go; must’ve just been to stop cars.

However, even in the rain, it was worth it once we got into the village itself. It’s a stunning mix of Italian and old English architecture, all presented in bold colours and often with intertwining structures.

Some of the focal pieces were the clock tower, the fountain and the Japanese garden, although we missed others because of the strong wind and rain.

We made our way through, past the village and up the hills to the Japanese garden and finally back around to the village for some lunch and shopping.

We’re both keen to go back again to see what we missed. You can rent some of the houses in the village so it would be great to do that with some friends.

Here are the photos on Flickr.

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.

There are a number of handy calendars you can integrate into Windows Live Calendar.

First up is the Facebook Birthdays calendar. This is useful for cross checking birthdays in contacts or missing altogether. Just add the application here then follow the instructions to get an iCal link. Subscribe to the http version (webcal version is linked in fbCal) of this in Windows Live Calendar.

Next is Last.fm’s gig calendar. With the upcoming integration in Xbox Live, interest should grow in Last.fm. You can get an iCal URL on your profile’s event page, webcal://ws.audioscrobbler.com/1.0/user/<username>/events.ics to be precise.

Finally is a weather forecast for the next 7 days. Go to http://www.wunderground.com/ and search for your city. There’ll be an iCal URL on the results page. Dublin, Ireland is http://ical.wunderground.com/auto/ical/global/stations/03969.ics?units=metric

I stood on a rusty nail out the back garden over the weekend.

Had to get a tetanus jab at the VHI clinic, in and out in about 45 minutes. Foot doesn’t hurt but the jab did for a few days.

All ok now, no lockjaw.

Actually never mind that…

Happy Birthday Mr. Karl and Ms. Tara.

Hope you both have a great day.

Hope you have a great day, Cat

Love & hugs

BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger looks great (http://tinyurl.com/kuqbxa) & scored well (http://tinyurl.com/lrs79z). Hope it comes out here soon.

I was off work Wednesday and Thursday with the flu. I’m not usually susceptible to colds but I think the work on the house has me tired and vulnerable.

Tuesday night was the usual “I’m hot” then “I’m cold”, lie on the left then lie on the right. Had to take soluble painkillers to get any sleep.

Still left with a sore throat and sore back at this point but at least no more head/body aches.

We had a nice make shift BBQ in Arthur and Catherine’s over the weekend, just some of those disposable ones but the food & company was good. Tasha and I look forward to having people over once we get the backyard sorted out (might be next year for that). We also wanted to avoid Tasha’s mum’s house as it was Killian’s third birthday party and would’ve been a mad house.

I also got hit with a rapid cold over the weekend. Friday afternoon it started with sneezing and runny nose then Saturday was sore throat and now it’s clearing up. Finn was over to see the house and brought doughnuts, thanks Finn :)

As for the house, we having a go at coving in the front room now. I already messed up the first mitre. Doh! But we sorted it out.

It’s been ages since I posted any photos of our progress in the house & at least there’s some decent progress to show.

The kitchen is coming along very well, as is the bathroom.

Here are some photos of the 2 rooms.

I went to take some photos of the front bedroom but the battery died.

My sister gave birth to her second baby yesterday at 19:05. Her name is Caitlin Mhairi and she was 8lbs 8oz and both are in good health.

Congratulations to Sharon, Phil and Evie.

Chapters is such a dangerous bookshop to go into. Wander in and you’ve spent €80 before you know it.

• Edgar Allan Poe’s Tales of Mystery and Madness
• Edgar Allan Poe Collected Stories Illustrated
• Taschen's Art Nouveau 25th Anniversary Edition

Might get the Sherlock Holmes Collector’s Library Edition later. Info also here.

With a whole week off work we are almost done with the master bedroom. Only a second coat of paint & some skirting boards to go on.

The kitchen is awaiting the granite counter tops, some tiling & painting of the remaining walls.

Tasha tiled the bathroom so we still have to paint the rest, clad the ceiling, build up a bath frame and tile the floor.

We also had a nice break from the work on Sunday & went to Dun Laoghaire for the market. Good weather & nice food.

Un-house related, we’ve been forced to send back our X-Files & Buffy DVD collections because they had a scratched & duplicated disc respectively.