Looking back on 2007 - blogging from January to June

At the turn of the year I thought I'd recap just a few of the stories and articles I have blogged about throughout 2007. Last year was my second full year of writing the Blog (I started the Blog on 1/1/06 and have written a few retrospective articles for earlier years) and in total I've written and published 116 postings.

Frequency of posting has been a bit erratic I know and as much as anything else has been driven by how busy I've been at work - sometimes I've been writing 4 postings a week, sometimes it's down to one every couple of weeks.

I'm not going to make a new-year's resolution to improve the blogging frequency as I know for sure that I will fail to keep it! Meanwhile I hope you do find what I write is interesting and fun.

January 2007
January was the month of car and weather problems it seemed with difficulties hiring a car to go to France after mine was rear-end shunted. Then the ferry was cancelled due to gales and I finally managed to hire a nice Ford Mondeo with cruise control and a week later couldn't get home from London due to more gales!

February 2007
The month started with me spending hours rebuilding and repainting the garden gates in France (in hindsight buying new ones would have been much easier!). An explanation of what RSS is all about, France was voted the best place to live in the world, Speedferries move into the old Dover Hoverport, I bought a new 15 foot frame swimming pool for the Gite and more construction of new Fence panels.

March 2007
LD Lines LD Lines announce they are taking over Transmarche Ferries and soon publish details of the Le Havre to Newhaven and Dieppe crossings. Articles about Advertising on the Blog (Blogvertising?), Photos of the nearby Nantes/Brest canal and using Pictobrowser as a slideshow for Flickr photos.

April 2007
Nearly missed the ferry going to the Gite due to an accident on the M20, but had a great April holiday with warm and sunny weather for all bar the last 2 days. Family photo of us all (and Dexter the dog) on holiday in Brittany, went to a Brocante (car boot sale) in France and spent more days repairing the Brittany garden gates!

May 2007
Trials and tribulations of applying for promotion at work, Photos of the Napoleonic town of Pontivy near our Gite, Google launches an improved Google Analytics service, Dilbert tried Blogging, Google Checkout opened for business in the UK but then wouldn't let me use it as I'm a travel-related business and finally a new Blogger Autosave feature which I have to admit I really love.

June 2007
We went over to our Brittany Gite again at the May half term and I managed to lose my passport and French cheque book causing lots of administrative nightmares. Back in the UK (reunited with my passport and cheque book), Sir Alan Sugar wanted to knock down my office, Brittany Ferries spends €81m on a new cruise ship, the differences between electricity sources in the UK and France, OnOneMap's a great Google mashup for finding properties for sale and Ryan Air launches a new route from Bournemouth to Nantes.

I'll carry on with recapping my ramblings from July to December 2007 in the next Blog entry.