Giles Shaxted

v=0 Everything is going good in Cayman, I have been lucky with accomodation, thanks to my Boss Mark, then Kelsey, and now Mary. I think now is time to move off the futon at Mary’s and get a bedroom, with a bed, and a bathroom !! I spoke to my friends Chris and Lynne today who work at Divers world .. they have a spare room and would love some rent money .. shame other friends with spare rooms weren’t able to commit to helping me out. Anywho .. life is great .. I have massive potential n0w for making a good life down here with good money, responsibilty and hopefully soon a home of my own.

I have had a good run of things so far, Kelsey being down was the best thing for making me happy, big up the Kelster for me Kelsey love ya chick. Now Alex is down for 3 weeks and that means spare time is spent diving. I have been snapping loads of photos and I thought it was time to share. These have all been taken with my D60 which is kicking ass underwater, it’s finally gotten wet thanks to my New Sea and Sea housing, thanks Dad i could talk more and probably will but I want to put some of the photos up so here they come

Is it too obvious to say that I would LOVE one of these new Porsche’s. Alex sent me the link to the site .. he has his finger on soo many pulses it’s amazing he finds such time to Party as he does .. anyways … that would be a nice addition to my Parking space once Iget back onto my little Rock !

Oh and by the way I am thinking this will be my last post from Northampton … so ‘toodles’ to this town (sorry Michelle I been saying that a lot recently sice you said it, it’s a catchy word)

OH and PS … I have set up a new email address … just so all my friends can email me and it doesn’t get mixed up with Spammy Junky crap. it is here in image form I am going to try and keep this one clean if you want further contact information, and access to other private posts you can register .. over on the right there …> and when i approve you you can see all the posts being made.

I’ll be in Rackams at about 10pm on Tuesday 15th March. If any of you wish to join me that would be super duper .. if not then i’ll see ya around, if you’re not in Cayman then I’ll see you sometime else .. come visit me or wait for my fly back to the UK to get some extra bits and bobs in the summer time
Oh if you have somewhere for me to stay in the Caymans that would be awesome ! (the one thing I haven’t sorted out yet!)

Well as was expected, I spent most all my money. I have some left, nothuge amounts, but it is probably the same amount my savings has been at for a while. Most of the money I have is actually in the Caymans still, some with electric company, some with phone company, and some with my old landlord. It was all strategically left there so that I couldn’t spend it. Everything I have in cayman sums up to be about twice as much as I have in my CNB bank account which I actually have access to.

Money isn’t a big deal there is always a way around having no money. Like working .. I have heard that can help when you have no money. That is one of the key reasons I am going back to Cayman, asides from the fact that it is where my life has dug itself a hole and so feels quite at home there, it is also the place where I can find and get and do jobs that pay me well and I enjoy doing. The key this time round is going to be two fold.

1. 1) Don’t piss all my money away on beer, I will refrain to doing that less regularly.
2. 2) Make more money by using my other skills that have often been used by others for free, mostly photo and web, but also make some money from my writing too.

With all of that going on I will be a very busy puppy. But this is a good thing, I can save up money (the busier you are the less you spend and the more you earn), afford things I want such as the laptop over there on the left, as well as when I finally do what I should do and buy a house or condo in Cayman I will not only need to be able to afford mortgage and insurance etc etc costs of owning a home but I will most likely be looking at shipping a whole bunch of my stuff over from England to make it more homely for me. That will of course all depend on how cheap it is to buy some of that stuff new in the USA by then, but I am mostly talking about personal items rather than material objects.

My Dad is being super generous and offering me some money for when I go back to Cayman, the biggext problem I am having now though is finding a flight and somewhere to live, but that should and hopefully will work itself all out by the end of the weekend. I am probably going to be sensible and get my dad to help me out with the flight so that I can get a decent one that maybe returns me to the uk in a few months so I can come home to get some stuff and take it back with me. I have to buy a return flight anyway. I think when it comes to spending money on things like a laptop I can go without, I will take my software with me, and if i can afford one I will buy one from the states and go up and get it, but a little time away from a computer would do me good .. even if it would be nice to sit around and design websites and mess with my photos in my free time. I am hoping to setup my portable harddrive to run such programs and then I can do so on other peopels computers without adding to their hard drive. I have nearly enough airmiles to fly me return to miami and back so at any given time I can jump on a plane and go and see Ian and we can see some manatees and stuff going snorkelling, take my cmera get some snaps, and if i work hard enough i will have enough money to buy me a nice light and small travel laptop such as the Acer above. (more…)

I just finished setting up my familys WiFi system. I have it on secure network as well so none of our neighbours if they are cheap enough or technologically minded enough will be not be able to pick up our signal, and even if they do pick up uor signal they will not be able to log into our network as they aren’t MAC’d in .. fun stuff.

The next thing for me to do .. and this will be more tricky I assume .. is create a remote log in. This will mean I can log into our home network from anywhere in the world and gain access to my computer here .. and all my files .. so even though I may choose to take a portable hard drive with me .. I can also use my computer here as a backup or an online repostitory of all my stuff. And I can also access any old information or programs that I have so I can use them or coy them or getsettings etc where ever I may be. That will be cool !!

Anyway .. until then I have to try and fix Marks (my brothers) laptop so that I can take it with me when I leave to Cayman .. which is looking increasingly like it may be this weekend when I head to Miami .. and then shortly after that I wil cruise down to Cayman … yeh mon !!

www.yup.org.uk is at long last finished .. or at least finished enough for release to get it back into the lime light.

I didn’t do all the coding myself, but the layout and design is all me. I needed some help with the backend, I went to www.rent-a-coder.com for that, cost me $10 to get it to this stage and quite a few headaches along the way. But the last guy I had helping me was great, he finished off what someone else started and we now have a fully working great looking website. And best of all the originaly idea to take the work load off the administrator has happened. As an admin all we have to do is add users username and email address and badda bing badda boom … new user gets sent email address andcan log in and fill out the profile ..and give themselves 8 portfolio images !!! brilliant !
The News is also controlled from online too … so there is no need apart from if creating new pages to ever have to not do it online .. it’s simple, it works and it’s all ours !!

If you are a Young Underwater Photographer ( YUP ) then please feel free to go over to the site check it out and sign up to get your own area to display your own work and get noticed.

Day at Donnington

Here is my favourite photo from yesterday at Donnington. As it isn’t the best (not very sharp) photo in the world I have done some photoshop work to distract from it. It’s actually a photo of Alex’s Dad in his e-type. It’s a relaitvely well known car I imagine amongst it’s cirle. A very old e-type that was rebuilt by the owner of Lacoste (I think) at a cost of �250,000. It was made faster and stronger than opther e-types and so won all of it’s races with great ease. All the other boys in the group at the time weren’t very happy they couldn’t win so they complained and had the car banned. There may be another bit to the story but I forget it. Alex’s dad has basically bought it and had it modified back to original e-type spec mechanics wise, but as his little off proved the car is still very strong.
I am currently making a new web site for myself as well as working on YUP. My new site will be based on new skills I have learnt and also have a lot more information on it with regards to me and stuff to do with me. I am also trying to swap over to wordpress from b2evolution, just because when wordpress is up and running how you want it it is much better than b2evo, I just don’t seem to be able to transfer my journal very easily. what I may do is just transfer over to the new site to kinda of have a new start date to signify my moving back to cayman and hopefully a more direction orientated part of mylife where I stop pissing it all up against the wall .. well every night anyway .. got to have fun, but got to also get to where you are going in the direction you are heading or wanting to head in. Oh and Jim will be amused to know I bumbed into Beaver of the ol Jame Bearne Photography while I was up there.

I seem to have a firefox problem which is a bummer.

Every time I go to open up a file type (and it has even happened with locally hosted .php) but thing like mpg avi swf file. I noticed it as being a real problem when trying to set up my own test server, geeky I know but seemed to make sense .. turns out IE6 works fine and does it all but firefox is kinda screwed up.
I think I will give my computer a break and ad aware it then virus scan all after having uninstalled firefox. And then I will redownload it and reinstall it. I am hoping I can back up my passwords cause I hate having to remember them, bookmarks already done so not too much else. I also need to fix the flash file i posted on the last post so that It only pops up when you click .. sorry if that has pissed you off, i personally could listen to that tune over and over.

Just quickly here are the photos in a brief summary of why they made it to the top five:
1)You may notice the Background, granted it’s not top five .. but it makes special honours by being the background, nice big sky scrapers, I had some fun in them.
2) Intro Photo, me on the saddle in the Cuban airport as we were leaving, I think those of us that were there will always remember it, what a bachelor party, those of you who weren’t there, well you’ll never know.
3) First Photo, related to the intro photo Dave and Sara’s wedding, Dave asked me to take the photos, I almost didn’t just because it was such a daunting task to take the images that will immortalise two of my best friends most memorable day of their lives, although chad has the good ones
4) Waves from the incoming storm that was to become the life changing Hurricane Ivan, the largest Hurricane I have ever seen, am likely to see and that most everyone will ever hear about. Now that was an interesting 60 hours or so, and a very strange couple months afterwards.
5) Photo of me and Rebecca, some great times were had in that house we lived in, it was our bosses house so large and homely, I look forward to having that feeling again sometime. It also reminds me of all the great times me and Rebecca had together over the years, we did didn’t we girl.

there shouldn’t be anymore .. but you may have noticed i cheated with a background image and an intro image … so I get two extras, and these two are top 5 not bonus ones

6) Elliot, i’m still waiting for that beer and a brawl, you and me have a friendship to sort out, kinda went pear shaped didn’t it bud. Anyway, you know where I am so why don’t ya come down and hang out as it’s cold in Greece The photo reminds me of a good mate who moved to Cayman with me, we had To me great times and i miss our dusk wake boarding.
7)The Nautilus gang, may never be the same again, but change happens, and we had a good group then that created some great times and all of whom were good to me when i needed them. It’s good to work for and with people you enjoy being with (most of the time) And I now have more of those days coming up with a new bunch of people