Having had my new MacBook Pro for a few weeks now I decided that it was time to seriously start thinking about regular and reliable backups in order to prevent problems if a failure or error on my part should occur.  It has happened to me before and it is not good.  Therefore I invested in a Time Capsule from Apple to wirelessly backup my MacBook and provide wireless access to the Internet.  He is how I set things up.

First of all let me say this.  Finding out how to set up the Time Capsule pre-sale was a little difficult.  You see for some reason the Time Capsule is exactly like a ‘normal’ wireless modem router only it doesn’t have a modem inside.  Therefore by itself it cannot connect directly to the Internet.  In order to connect it to the net you need to have a modem.  Of course I have a modem but it is not a dedicated modem, it comes in the form of a Belkin wireless modem router and I was having great difficulty in finding out from Apple, or anywhere else on the web for that matter whether it would work.

Well I can safely say that it does work.  The setup that I am currently using you can see in the diagram above.  So what I have is my original Belkin Wireless modem router plugged into the phone socket, accessing the Internet from Tiscali.  Then out of the 4 Ethernet ports at the back I have my Ethernet wires going around the house, when I completed my home networking, one of which is plugged into the time capsules Ethernet WAN port, which provides the Time Capsule with the Internet.  In the setup I have to use ‘Bridge Mode’ on the Time Capsule in order to get it working.  Then I setup a wireless network from the Time Capsule following the very simple steps in the Airport Utility that is already on your Mac (Leopard needed although the disc does come with the Time Capsule).

All my devices no connect to the Time Capsule which shares or routes the Internet to each device.  Also the Time Capsules built in 500Gb hard drive shows up as a network drive and so I have using that as my Time Machine drive when backing up all my Mac.  As usual a cracking piece of kit from Apple and very easy to setup.  Highly recommended.

Every since Harry was born I have been looking at him wondering who he will look like when he is older.  Would he look like me or perhaps someone from my wife’s side of the family such as her brother or father.  Today I did some analysis with some good news.

As you can see from the photo above those two babies looks pretty similar to me.  When I am pleased to tell you that the baby of the left is me at 3 months old!  On the right is Harry at 3 and a half months old.  I couldn’t believe it when I looked at the photo of me today at my parents house.  I think Harry has got some of my features when I was little for sure.  Lets hope he keeps them – or maybe not!

This afternoon my wife was feeding Harry in the lounge with the TV on.  It was a usualy bank holiday afternoon film, and this time it was the animated film, Chicken Run.  Harry was engrossed for a good 20 minutes, which is the first time we have really seen him do this.

Over the last week Harry has changed so much.  In fact he is almost becoming a little boy rather than a baby as he has learnt so much.  He is now so alert and always looking round trying to find new things to see and interact with.  We have had so many smiles this week.  In fact it is wonderful as when I go into his room in a morning to get him out of bed I am greeted with the most wonderful smile.

He has also found his voice, as I wrote about earlier and he is constantly talking.  We can;t understand him yet but he clearly knows what he is on about!  This morning at his Grandma’s he found his hands.  He was looking at them in a very odd way and then he learnt that he could move them.  Apparently he was facinated with them for a good 15 minutes.

He is an absolute pleasure and is getting more and more rewarding as the days pass.

Harry is now getting rapidly towards 4 months old – how time flies!  Anyway he is now more and more taking not of what is around him, we are getting lots of smiles and over the last week or so he has really found his voice.

He can talk to us now, although clearly we have not got a clue what he is actually saying he seems to enjoy having a chat from time to time.  Being off work for the Easter Holidays I have been able to spend a little more time with Harry and he has been delightful.  It makes you want to treasure every moment we had with him while he is still so young.

For the last 4 months we have been having to put up with much disruption from Rowland Homes as they are constructing a new 25 house development very near to our house.  There has been lots of noise and disruption but most of all there has been a massive safety risk due to the way that the site has handled the delivery of materials and the general running of things.  Let me explain.

I have had many people say what do you expect when you move onto a new housing estate, surely you are to expect there to be some disruption and upset.  Usually I would agree with them there, but the thing is, is that this is not the builder that constructed out property.  When all the residents moved into this location we were all assured by Bryant Homes that they would be nothing being developed on a patch of land near to our homes.  Yet 12 months down the line we hear that Rowland Homes had planning permission and work would start after Christmas.  Being lied to like this was very disappointing.

During the planning of this small development from Rowland Homes access to the site was clearly not considered enough.  The only access to the site now is through an already completed phase of the Bryant Estate which is just narrow residential roads.  These are roads that have parked cars on them, kids playing in the street and all sorts of other hazards that clearly are going to play a massive health and safety role in the consideration of access to a site.  Quite how the council have approved this to be safe is beyond me.

Anyway to top it all the safety standards set out by Rowland Homes themselves on their safety board outside the development are clearly not being adhered to at all.  Take point number 10 on the safety board, which is also clearly highlighted with a key blue square on the board to – “No vehicles to be reversed without a banksman”. This clearly does not happen at all.  I have several photos and video footage of this not happening.  With children playing in the streets and so many parked cars around (as well as other trucks around parked outside our homes) this is highly dangerous and not conforming to the health and safety policy that was laid out by Rowland Homes themselves in a discussion with local residents a few months ago.

As you can see from the Photos below lorries are clearly using residential roads and space in order to unload bricks, roof tiles and other materials.  Yesterday we had a forklift truck zooming around the residential roads (very dangerous in my opinion) with no banks man present at all, loading and unloading palettes of what looked like roof tiles.  On more than one occasion these ended up blocking peoples driveways.

All in all I am disgusted with Rowland Homes and the way in which they have run this development.  The residents of the area, although not happy that the new development was going ahead, accepted this some time ago with the hope that Rowland Homes could run the site safely and efficiently.  This is clearly not happening and at the moment the evidence presented here suggested that Rowland Homes are not adhering to basic health and safety rules and Rowland Homes are not true to their word by carrying out their operations to the guidelines that they stated, both by word of mouth to the residents and on the written safety information signs that they display at their sites.

We all look forward to what the council and health and safety excecutive will have to say about the lack of consideration for health and safety by Rowland Homes at this development.

Yesterday was Harry’s Christening (sorry baptism if the Vicar is reading this!) and a good time was had by all.  It was really nice getting many of the family together looking smart.  The photos and gallery link are below.