Well the lights just blew in our office and an imminent descent into darkness awaits the anxious individuals penned inside. This certainly would never happen with led gu10 bulbs! What better moment for a poem about darkness? Read on to hear the eloquent words of the poet, Lois Pedersen, in his ‘Ode to Darkness’.

“There is beauty in the darkness, in the blackness of the night;
In its velvety embrace you can sense the awesome might,
It covers and protects as a mother's loving arms
If you only but surrender to its soft enticing charms.”

I bet some other famous people have imparted fine words on the subject of darkness. Indeed they have, read on if you’re interested.

“Everything has its wonders, even darkness and silence, and I learn, whatever state I may be in, therein to be content.” – Helen Keller

“Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before.” – Edgar Allan Poe

We're off in the morning! After months and months of scrimping and saving we are finally off on our dream holiday!

We've done really well with saving so we've got plenty of spending to do when we get there, there is so much fun to be had.

Not sure if I'll sleep tonight with all the excitement (big kids that I am), and I can never sleep on planes so I'll probably be exhausted by the time we get there! I've loaded up both our R4i cards with new games, chocked the iPods full of music and when we get to the airport I'm going to load up on magazines, it's a long old flight!

I cannot wait to just get there and be in the warm, walk around in a t-shirt and shorts, go to the theme parks, go to the beach, go shopping, go for dinner, it'll be fantastic!

Photo: mathewingram (Flickr)

The big trip is fast approaching and we are saving every single penny we can in anticipation of it!

We've not gone out with our friends in ages, we've been buying the best value option of everything we can possibly save on in the supermarket and are refusing to buy any new clothes or anything until we get to America!

The shopping over there is going to be awesome - I've been researching all the outlet malls and they look amazing, we're probably going to come back with way too many suitcases full of goodies!

And we've already got our theme park tickets booked - there's a great 7 or 10-day ticket you can buy which is really great value and gets you into all the Universal Studios and other parks an unlimited amount of times. Sounds like a challenge to me!

Hopefully when we get back we won't have to live off of loans like on those Wonga.com ads on TV, but even if we do, it'll be worth it!

Photo: OrlandoInformer (Flickr)

We've been wanting a holiday to America for years and have finally found a way to do it without breaking the bank!

Thanks to the wonderful tools of comparison sites we managed to book a fantastic all-inclusive deal to Orlando, Florida, staying in a lovely little hotel on International Drive amongst all the craziness, and just a short drive from all the major theme parks.

The deal even includes car rental, and petrol prices are so much lower over there than here that it shouldn't be too much at all.

We've been saving for quite a while, watching the pennies at the check out, looking online for the best deals and using plenty of different websites to compare gas and electricity prices, and home insurance, car insurance, and even our holiday! With careful saving and bargain-hunting, anything is possible!

And to top it all off, at the top of International Drive is a huge selection of outlet malls selling all sorts of clothes and products with huge discounts. Can't wait!

Photo: rekkid (Flickr)

What’s the point?
People keep on telling me that I should equip my website with some kind of Failover cover, in case I ever have any problems with the server that I use or anything like that. Now, I’m a little dubious and slightly worried more than anything that it could be a bit of a con or a scam for getting money out of me. What are the actual chances of my server going down and me losing any important info. I mean, I have a busy and steady traffic to my website, enough to generate an income but I’m not really challenging any big hitters with my traffic. As much as it pains me to say this. I always thought that the reason that websites go down is because of them being over run by clicks etc. I just don’t think that I actually get enough hits to warrant it being a threat. How many hits does the average server need at once before it will crumple to the ground like the Berlin Wall?