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There is no better way to start a Sunday morning than with a long letter (email) from an old friend - as in years that we have known each other, not making any social comment on my 40 something age. That, and seeing that my sailing hero, Ellen MacArthur has moved up to within 150 miles of the leader of the Vendee single handed around the world race (www.vendee-globe.com), and of course a nice fry-up breakfast, some nice classical music playing, and frost, rain and show outside.

Thanks for the email Matt and Fiona, it was great to hear from you again, and I can’t believe the stories of your kids – I still remember them as babies. Of course our kids are now getting pretty independent, Nicky is preparing for her GCSE exams, and Tarryn is just a year behind. Next year Nicky can get her learners driving license and has visions of being able to borrow the Z3 because I will of course be away on the oceans and it will need a drive from time to time.

Most of my communicating has been via the website (www.TheChalmers.com) , which I have been using as a testing ground for new bits of knowledge that I am slowly patching together. The “site” is hosted at brinkster, now brinkster (www.brinkster.com), geocities (www.geocities.com), photopoint (www.photopoint.com), and two areas at globalnet (www.globalnet.com), datak and personal web space. It is the fun part of the web trying to tie these diverse locations and code (.asp vbscript, java, Access databases, and HTML/DHTML) into a sensible looking web site. The whole security side of it has been fun too, using cookies, session variables and trying to walk the line between ease of use and safety.

The last few weekends have been spent shopping for some warm, synthetic fibre clothes for the first of the New World Challenge training sessions which starts this Thursday (25 Jan). The weather is cold and foul here at the moment, but equipped with my thermal underwear and obligatory multi-coloured jesters fleece hat with bells, I am really looking forward to it. The planned sail to Plymouth has had to be abandoned as only myself and another CV (crew volunteer) were able to commit to the time to do it. So it looks like a Z3 romp down to Plymouth and then some fun and exhilaration on the 67 steel hulled training yachts. The race will actually be raced on the 72 footers, but they are busy tied up in New Zealand at the moment after the third leg of the current BT Challenge made it there last week.

At home, everything is moving forward apace, as per normal. The kids are still very involved in their music, and their school work. Maggie has joined an orchestra and begins to delight them with her sultry Cello playing on Thursday. Tarryn is still part of the WASO orchestra and Nicky (and occasionally Maggie as the music dictates) is part of the 2K Flutes orchestra. Me, I console myself with the vast MP3 collection on Squelch and the occasional sing along in the bath or annoying the kids by whistling out of tune to their “music”. The dining room has been usurped as a sewing room, and so, apart from the occasional meal, we have resorted to eating in front of the telly. The home movie theatre has been completed with a 2.5m ceiling mounted screen and the “InFocus” 1000 lumen projector which is all now plumbed in. Even the Datak LAN is now connected and MP3’s can now be redirected via the 3Com wireless LAN, Eagle and the Sony monster audio/video switchbox/amplifier to the eagerly waiting 5 B&W speakers and Yamaha Sub-Woofer.

On the computer front, thinks are pretty much unchanged. DreamWeaver is now the HTML editor of choice, and Windows Whistler is used quite often, even though it is still quite unstable in it’s Beta 1 version. Well, not really unstable itself, just tends to crash application software which runs otherwise quite well in Windows 2000. The Fuji Digital camera is still the favourite toy of the moment, and I am proud to be able to say that I have taken some stunning shots, most of which are on the web (http://albums.photopoint.com/j/AlbumList?u=290523&Auth=false) although photopoint resizes the photos down to 640x480. I will put together a downloads section on the site soon to hold a gallery of my favourites.

The news letters (like this one) are available for reading/searching on the web, and there is a Reply facility so long as you are logged into the site. To login, supply your email address and a password of your choice.

Keep well everyone, keep having fun all over the world. In keeping with an old tradition, I am going to restart the elephant jokes, so watch out here comes another one…

Q: Why don't elephants water-ski?
A: Very few own boats.

Q: Why are elephants terrible dancers?
A: They have two left feet.

I didn’t say they were going to be good Elephant jokes…

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