Today was the northern hemisphere's longest day of the year, and this far north in Edinburgh it sure is bloody long! After a really misty morning, this was the scene looking over the Firth of Forth at 9pm.

And this was the scene from my bedroom window at 10pm, and again at 11pm. It'll start getting light again in just 4.5 hours at 3:30am - awesome huh! The sun set at 10:03pm after rising at 4:26am - that's 17.5 hours of daylight compared to the miserable 6.5 hours we'll get in six months time on the shortest day of the year, when the sun sets at bloody 3:30pm after making an 'appearance' at 9am!

After the attempted terrorist attack in central London yesterday, a pair of Asians decided to deliberately drive their Jeep Cherokee right through the front door of departures at Glasgow Airport today. Full story here...

And Jen, in reply to your comment below somewhere, I also noticed the light on the horizon last night. These two photos were shot looking north just after 1am (the photo on the left was shot as is; the right was shot using my camera's 'Night scene' mode to emphasize it). We're obviously just far enough north here to be able to see the sky on the horizon over where it is light 24 hours a day at this time of year. I've never noticed this before but that'll be because it's always bloody overcast.

As the rain continues to pour in what the Brits call 'summer', the bombs continue to fly. London x2 on Friday, Glasgow Airport on Saturday, Royal Alexandra Hospital (in Paisley, near Glasgow Airport) on Sunday, and Bathgate (40kms from Edinburgh) today. More info on the timeline of events over the last few days here. Mum, try not to be worried :)

I went out to Glasgow Airport after work today to survey the scene after Saturday's failed attempt by, yup you guessed it - Muslims, to blow the place up. There were some pretty good photos in the paper this morning of the whole incident including a good one of the Jeep driver running around on fire and screaming "Allah Allah!" after he'd just set himself alight. There was also another good one of him being pinned to the floor by a cop after he was put out by a fire extinguisher. He's now in a critical condition in hospital, and my usual feeling on situations such as these is fuck 'em - pull the plug and let 'em go, but in this case that's exactly what he wanted so I've changed my mind - let him suffer. A number of other people were arrested today over this, all of them Muslim, of which three were doctors at local hospitals in the area - unreal (I hasten to add I'm not taking a swipe at the Muslim community here - not that I think any of them read my website hehe - just stating the facts). Links between Glasgow Airport and the attempted car bombings in London on Friday are still being investigated. What the hell do these people hope to achieve by all this?!

Some chick was quoted in the paper as saying "...thank the Lord the bombs didn't explode, thank the Lord for this and thank the Lord for that..." Where was this Lord of yours two years ago on July 7, 2005 when several bombs were successfully exploded in a coordinated attack throughout the London public transport system, killing 52 and injuring 700? Where was your God on September 11, 2001 when four commercial jetliners were hijacked by another tribe of Muslims and slammed into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and (unintentionally) the middle of nowhere, killing close to 3,000 people? I know one reader of this site in particular is a very religious person, and apologies for the religious offence but if you could leave a comment on this subject and perhaps educate me (and probably a few others) on the matter I'd be greatful because I just don't understand.

Here's what's left of the Glasgow Airport's front door hehe. A huge area of the ceiling is charred, and the place absolutely stinks of burnt stuff (and the air conditioning just spreads it through the terminal).

This was on my train home tonight. Apparently we now have to resort to this subject being advertised on public transport. Yup, the world we live in. Where's this God of yours?

The rain continues to piss down, the Wimbledon Tennis Open continues to get held up, and new revelations surrounding the recent bombing attempts continue too. The latest development is that Brisbane has now become a part of all this with a Gold Coast-based Indian doctor (yup, another doctor) being detained at Brisbane Airport as he was attempting to fly on a one-way ticket back to India. I'm not sure what his connection is to all of this, but he's just one of two being held in Australia which brings the total number in custody to nine with five of them being doctors. This just keeps getting weirder! It has also been revealed that Friday's two car bombs in London were to be triggered via mobile phone, and were in fact 'rung' by the terrorists several times but failed to detonate for "technical reasons" - scary! Also today there were more controlled explosions at Royal Alexandra Hospital, and a local Mosque. The action continues.

Davydd (who leaves inappropriate comments throughout this website) and Gav (who doesn't) were up here for the weekend (mates from Brisbane now living in London), so after living here for 10 months I finally did the touristy thing and went through Edinburgh Castle :)

Gav found himself a nice crown in the gift shop, and Dav made a penis of himself in the castle's underground prisons. Disgraceful.

Speaking of the prison, there's an original prison door in the museum complete with 200-year-old graffiti from prisoners of the time - unreal!

Although the castle is a tourist attraction, it still has a function as a military headquarters of the British Army, and when the castle closes to tourists for the day the military take over. Gav was quite taken with this little dude who looked all of about 16. Quote of the day: "Watch the trigger eh, I'm Australian, I'm not one of the bad guys." Disgraceful.

After our history lesson we hit the pubs. This is looking down the Royal Mile. There are some bloody great little pubs along here!

Boys on a stag night hehe.

We headed to the Grassmarket (another good spot for pubs, bars and clubs), and eventually caught one of these cycle-taxis back into town to meet a few others and get some dinner. I felt so sorry for this guy! I'm 70-something kilograms, Dav's as tall as a tree so he'd be a bit more, and these poor guys have to lug us up hills and everything hahaha bugger that! In my semi-drunken state I was really keen to swap seats with this guy and give it a go, but he wisely declined the offer hehe. I ran the camera home for fear of damaging it during the antics of the night, and it's probably a good thing I did and couldn't get anymore shots because it was a typical boys night out. Disgraceful.

Hell yeah! I've been gagging for the sun every weekend since I bought the bike back in May, and every bloody weekend it's been the same: rain, wind and cold! So when I woke up at noon and saw it through my squinting hung over eyes, I quickly stuffed my face with the usual morning-after-the-night-before, artery-blocking breakfast and I was straight out there - not even a hang over could hold me back! ;) A few weeks ago I put up some shots of the Water of Leith pathway that follows the river for about 15 miles (24kms). I only did some of it back then, and today I did the rest. It's a bloody great track too - asphalt here, gravel there, boardwalks and mud thrown in too, and some bloody awesome scenery!

Look at this - isn't that pretty!

You don't get this in bloody Glasgow!

There are a few random things along the way to keep a cyclist amused like old abandoned buildings, stone hut things, bridges, pedestrians to scare with your air horn - it's great!

The path has several exits and other little paths to the outer suburbs. It was pretty cool to actually see some of them for first time. After I'd been living in Brisbane this long I'd already seen most of it!

Eventually the path ends up out in Balerno, quite a nice little area some eight miles (13 kms) out of central Edinburgh. By the time I got home after doing my usual 500 detours to see what else is around I'd done exactly 50kms - the first time in far too long I've done that sort of distance!