This week my new MacBook Pro arrived diret from Apple after being delayed for about a week due to the entire product line (including my new Mac) being upgraded to better processors.

I have to say that I am impressed with it so far.  Everything about it speaks quality as well as the performance.  It houses an Intel Core 2 Duo 2.66GHz processor, a mighty 4Gb of RAM and a 320Gb 7200rpm hard drive to storing all of my (ever growing) data.  Oh and it looks good too!

I am currently making use of an Apple Bluetooth mouse as I am really not a fan of touch pads, even though Apple have made some improvements to the one of the new MacBooks.  As yet I have really to put it through its paces with some intensive application work however no doubt in the near future that will happen and I will report back here.  For now enjoy this photo!

Yesterday my cousin came up to see up with her 4 month old Baby – James.  As you know my son, Harry is now nearly 3 months old and therefore this got us wondering whay relationship are they to each other?  After a long, complicated conversation and consultation of the Oxford English Dictionary we still were not sure, hence some research was needed for this post.

Searching the net I managed to find a good page on Wikipedia.  Here we can clearly see the type of cousin they are and in order to help me in the process, I drew a little diagram to help me get my head around grandparents and great grandparents etc.

It is this sentence from the Wikipedia page that stands out in this example

If we [Harry and James] share great grandparents [Me and My Cousins Grandparents] but have different grandparents [My Mum and Dad and MY Cousins Mum and Dad] we are second cousins.

Therefore Harry and James are second cousins!

We also took some really cute photos of the two of them.  They even had the same sleep suites!

Today started much better than yesterday.  Yesterday with both myself and Helen rather upset with Harry still not being settled and causing us much worry and lack of sleep we decided to take action!  A friend down the road had recommended a Graco Baby Swing that she had for her little boy and praised it no end.  So off I went in search.

First point of call was of course the Internet.  Toys R Us was the first stop and yes they sold the Lovin MyBear version which was the one we wanted.  It is a rather large contraption that swings at several different speeds, plays music, nature sounds, and even mothers heartbeat as well as having its own mobile of toys.  Unfortunately it doesn’t feed or change the baby, but you can’t have everything!

So off to Toys R Us in Preston.  Once I arrived it took me some time to wade through a number of the different toys in the store until I found the very items that I wanted.  Problem.  “I am sorry sir but we have none of these left in stock, although the line is still active so they should be in soon” said the lovely Beth (store assistant).  No good I thought, we need this sorting today, so Beth rang around and found one in the Bolton store.  Great I thought, near the Reebok easy to get too and reserved it.

On closer investigation of the location of the store it was clear that it was nowhere near the Reebok and therefore I would have to venture further afield to the south of Bolton.  On the M61 I got and off I went.  The journey was fine until I left the M61 at junction 3.  There was a diversion going onto the A666 into Bolton, the very road I wanted.

Half an hour later I rejoined the A666 and finally spotted the store on my left.  As I walked into the store, there was Donna and Julie the very assistants that I spoke to on the phone.  I quickly located the item, and even remembered to buy batteries otherwise it would have been a wasted journey.

Then it was time to set off after a quick stop at Burger King (sorry I know not a good thing but it was 1430 at this point and I had not eaten!).  The journey back was simply a nightmare.  I ended up going round the houses all over as I could not get back onto the M61 at junction 3.  So through Tyldsley, Leigh and finally onto the M6 at Haddock (Junction 24) and back home.

It was relatively easy to construct even with the crude diagrams that are supplied with the instructions.  It is very funny watching Harry in it, and on the whole he seems to like it.  Lets hope so and here’s hoping that he settles down soon.

Over the last few days Harry has had a nasty, but little cold.  Coughing and sneezing and keeping us all up through the night.  Its not his fault poor thing, but is is very sorry for himself at the moment.

However today he was much better as he managed to get some sleep during each feed.  He was long overdue sleep as from 0200 on Saturday morning to about 0400 on Monday morning he never really got any more than about 2 hours of quality sleep.  I think he was over tired and not feeling well.

Hope fully he is on the mend and will be back to his usual self again soon.  The photo was taken this morning in is only comfortable position really.  He does look ever so cute.

Some of you will know that I recently sold my Mac Mini in order to raise funds for a more modern MacBook computer.  Before doing this I used the Time Machine facility to make an entire copy of the files on my Mac so that I would have them for restoration when I get the new Mac.  But I have some questions which, after scouring the Internet I am yet to find the answers to.  Perhaps someone here can help?

The things is, is that although I want to restore my old files from the Mac Mini I don’t want to restore them all.  I mean lets face it our computers get riddled with all sorts of rubbish these days.  The more you do then the more they get cluttered and therefore I am a big fan of starting from fresh every now and then.  As far as I am aware when you switch on your new Mac it will give you the option of restoring a Mac from a Time Machine backup.  Well I sort of want to do that, but I want to simply look at the files that are backed up and then select which ones I wish to backup from.  Can this be done with Time Machine?

I suppose the other two questions that I also have are what is the easiest way of getting all of my photos from iPhoto onto my new Mac and the same with iTunes music?

Have you ever wanted a way to protect pages or post on your WordPress blog or website, so that only logged in users can see them?  If so then this is the post for you, as it tells you how to protect your posts and/or pages.

First of all my appologies to all you readers out there who are not viewing this site for my WordPress posts and want to see photos of a cute little baby Harry, but this post is all about how you can code your WordPress theme so that you can stop the general public looking at certain pages and allow only logged in users to see them.

It took me a long time to work this out.  I don’t know why really because it is a doddle.  I initially wanted it for the school website so that teachers could add pages to their sites that they did not want to let pupils have access to, such as answer pages etc.  But I have been recently developing WordPress to use for invoicing customers and did not want general viewers to be able to see the invoices.  Therefore I wanted to protect the posts that held the invoices to logged in users only.

The answer to this is a simple WordPress if else statement.  The code below is what you need:

<?php if (is_user_logged_in()) { ?>

//do whatever you want if the user is logged in here

<?php } else { ?>

//do whatever you want if the user is NOT logged in here

<?php } ?>

Line one of the code above checks to see if the user is logged in (I guess it checks to see whether you have the correct cookie).  If you are logged in then it will do whatever you put directly underneath that.  I have included a simple loop in here displaying the content, title and dates etc.  The else part basically means if you user is not logged in then it will do what is under the else part.  You can add this to posts and pages, simply by adding the code to the appropriate file in your themes template files.

Pretty simple but a really effective way to protect parts of your WordPress blog or website so that only logged in users can see your posts or pages.

About 2 months before Christmas it became clear that the derelict land that was next door but one to our house was going to be development by Roland Homes.  Since then the whole thing has been a nightmare and it has brought to my attention the terrible way in which Rowland Homes have gone about working with the local residents in order to keep disruption to a minimum.

Work started back in late October 2008 when the company were preparing the site for development of around 22 4 and 5 bed homes we are led to believe.  The company had large lorries ( and by large I mean really large!) coming down a residential road that leads to around 20 homes.  As you can imagine the width of the road is not wide and there are usually cars parked down the side of the road and often children playing on bikes and other toys.  Lorries were coming down at speeds in excess of 30 mph which was incredibly dangerous.  As I wrote late last year in the post entitled “What A Day” the disruption has been horrendous.

First of all the staff that Rowland have working for them are most unpleasant and have not taken into account the disruption that is being caused to the residents.  On that day back in August several of them were verbally offensive towards 1 or 2 of the residents, swearing at them and also making rude hand gestures.

Also at this time we were ensured by the director of Rowland Homes himself that every time lorries were turning in and around the entrance to the new development and around all of the houses and cars belonging to the residents, a banks-man would be used in order to safely direct the lorry into position.  I would say that this happens about 30% of the time.  You can see in the video above, there is no banks-man present.

Well today the situation was getting back to the same again hence the reason why I am motivated to write this blog post.  A delivery wagon came along the road with what I assume were breeze blocks for building with and parked right across the front of mine a next doors drive ways.  He could easily have parked across the other side of the road where there are no driveways or better still pulled into the development and unloaded there, but no they had to cover our driveway.  This prompted a call to Rowland Homes and we were told that this would be actioned.  Sure enought 10 minuntes later the lorry was moved.

It is just disappointing, that although this development is going to happen, Rowland Homes have gone about it in a poor way, blaming any problems on the tradesman that they are contracting out and not taking responsibility for what is happening.  I don’t think that develops a good company image, but maybe that is just me.