I love dogs, all animals really, and I'm a huge supporter of animal shelters and adopting rather than buying. There are so many dogs, cats and other 'pets' or companion animals out there that will literally be killed if nobody adopts them, so why would you go out and buy a dog instead? I'm so sick of all the chihuahua and teacup dog owners I see these days. Some of them love their dogs and treat them as dogs should be treated I don't doubt, but a lot of them are just silly people who want the animal as a fad and carry them around in bags. People like that annoy me, rather than getting a pooch as an accessory, why don't you just get an R4 3DS for your diamante-encrusted Nintendo and play Nintendogs instead, rather than buying a poor dog that will have to sit in a bag all it's life? Photo: Pay No Mind (Flickr)

I usually avoid shopping like the plague, especially for other people, even for myself it's a chore. I usually leave all that up to my other half, as she's much better at sorting out all that sort of stuff. But the problem now is, I really need some mens casual shoes, but have tried looking in shops and am having no luck at all. I actually went to a shopping centre with my lady when she needed to get a few things, and we had a look but there's literally nothing out there. They're all either sporty looking trainer type shoes, or horrible loafers or brogues - not what I want! I've worn Vans and Converse for years, but I feel like they're a bit teenage for me now, it's fine if you're in a rock band, but when you're a dad working a normal job, it's not really the same. I guess this is going to be an on-going battle. Photo: vavva_92 (Flickr)

I didn’t know this but an sd card stands for Secure Digital and it is a type of memory card used in a digital camera. It only has between 2GB and 4GB space on it but it is ideal for a little compact camera! I always thought they were something really technical! Why do they give such complicated names to these little things! Picture: Dell

I am being recommended by my IT consultant at the office to make use of what is called Private Cloud serving which will apparently make my life a lot easier and our computers run a lot better. The trouble is, how he explains the whole thing is throwing me off on a little tangent. He seems to think that Cloud serving or whatever it is called is basically broken down into being hosted by various different sources floating around in the ethers of the internet. Trouble is, I can’t really get my head around this. Isn;t that what we did already with our website? Has my main man in the lab coat been duped by some fancy buzzwords and is he about to go and cost me a great amount of dollar? I sincerely hope not, I can tell you that. I just don’t get it.

I took advantage of a special offer I saw recently to take the kids to Disneyland Paris, it was a short trip but included stay, park entry and some meals too. I always thought it was over-priced, and Disney is hardly my thing, but the kids were absolutely ecstatic when we told them, and in the months up to the trip it was all they could talk about! The accommodation was great, really clean and safe and children-orientated with Disney themes and models everywhere, and even stairlifts for disabled visitors. When we went to the park itself I've never seen the little ones so happy, their eyes full of wonder at the characters stopping to wave at them - we even had breakfast with Winnie The Pooh one morning. It's definitely a trip for the kids, but it was so easy on us too, and they were exhausted so early in the evening we made the most of the babysitting service and treated ourselves to a romantic (albeit Disney-related) dinner! The trips can be a bit pricey, particularly with travel, but if you save up and keep an eye out for discounts and special offers online, it's really worth the spend. Photo: wrayckage (Flickr)