Prague and Residence Nosticova

Tossed Old SquareSo the word on the street was that Louis Vuitton is to celebrate his birthday on the Charles Bridge and have it closed for two days for a measly €40k.
The word was also that Madonna is to perform for him.
Whether this is true or just an urban myth we did not find out but we managed to have a great long weekend away in Prague nevertheless.
The reason for our trip was twofold. We wanted to introduce our son to my Czech family and my wife was craving her yearly Prague fix.
The introduction went very well, everyone got a squeeze or two and Dominick enjoyed his stay at Residence Nosticova very much.
The experience was unfortunately a tad bittersweet because of my auntie being very ill at the moment. We are hoping for a speedy recovery.
My wife has been yearly to Prague since 1996. She knows central Prague very well from her many walks and Mala Strana (Lesser Quarter) is the focal point of her Prague obsession.
residence nosticovaFor her a trip to Prague would not be the same without a stay at the tiny boutique hotel Residence Nosticova.
Positioned in the heart of Mala Strana, on the right side of the river Vltava to avoid drunk party goers, it is a little gem of comfort.
We have viewed all the rooms at Residence Nosticova and the Arcimboldo room is by far the prettiest standard suite for 2 people. If you book it next time we were planning to go, we will
Prices vary somewhat during the year but at the special price of €150/night, Residence Nosticova is good value for the luxury and service you get.
That is if you manage to avoid raiding the mini-bar like *somebody* did several nights in a row.
[As always there are photos from Prague 2006]

More Moving Traffic Contraventions and Enforcement

cctv-mobile-enforcement-vehicleWell, well, well. It seems as if the photographer has become the photographed.
Stumbled upon this piece of monitoring delight the other day and I cannot believe I missed it back when I was recorded for the moving traffic contraventions.
Must have been quite a day job during the hot days in London.

Huston we had a problem

huston-problemA brief message about the recent 5 day outage.
My hosting provider “had no choice but to suspend my web site due to extreme Apache overloading”. I was notified of the few offending CGI scripts and a single static jpg that were causing the havoc.
It was mainly the Movable Type track back script that was being hammered by various spammers and caused the overload.
To protect the web site from future high loads I have disabled some functionality just to be on the safe side:
Movable Type track-backs (only spammers used them anyway)
Movable Type search (use Google search instead)
Mowecam post image (you can deploy the PHP file on your own server to continue using it)
ImdbRatings4Vue
Welcome back!

Heavenly light in Scotland

heavenly-light-in-scotland.jpg
I often find it difficult catching an optical phenomenon on film (or on digital memory more recently).
Just like me, you probably pull out your camera when you see that gorgeous rainbow, sunset, aurora borealis or reflection on water. More often than not it comes out nothing like it was in real life.
The other day I saw some wonderful sunlight beaming down through a narrow opening in the clouds. To my surprise the captured version creates same amazement as the real thing did.
The tiny head in the bottom right corner is the top of a statue.
As always there are plenty more photos from Scotland in the Photo Gallery.