The Olivers In Thailand

After a seemingly long wait in the Apple AppStore Review queue, the new PocketWeather for iOS iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad is here! The word of the day - "Landscape".

As with all of our updates, all existing PocketWeather users are entitled to upgrade to this new release for free – upgrade details included towards the bottom of this post. Read ahead to get the full details about this exciting new release.

What’s New In iOS PocketWeather v3.5?

1. Landscape – rotate your device left, right, upside-down - the PocketWeather views now automatically rotate and re-arrange themselves to fit your desired orientation.

Please note that this is a PocketWeather Pro feature and is not available to the Free/Advert supported version.  If you have already upgraded to the Pro, Landscape will be ready and waiting for you!

2. Maps and Images Overlay – have you wanted to control whether the locations icon and/or the weather icon overlays are overlaid on top of the image or maps?  Well now you are in control.

On the Images, simply tap on the image to bring up the On/Off controls - this only applies to calibrated images which support Location and Weather Icon overlay.

On the Maps, tap-and-hold to bring up the On/Off controls.  In addition to the standard Location and Weather Icon controls, the METAR and Earthquake maps also allow control of Earthquake events, as well as GeoLocated PocketWeather Twitter and GeoLocated Twitter Feeds.

3. Resource Center CustomViews – the existing CustomViews in the SBSH PocketWeather Resource Center have been updated to support the new landscape orientation.

These can be easily accessed directly within PocketWeather - simply tap on the View to bring up the menu and select the appropriate icon, or tap-and-hold on the "Views" to go directly into the View Selection menu.  Access to the SBSH PocketWeather Resource Center is towards the bottom.

Further details regarding the CustomView technology within PocketWeather can be found on the CustomView Information page here.

4. Various – in addition to the above, below is a list of some of the other items improved or fixed:

Download the new PocketWeather for iPhone & iPad v3.5

Click here to get the new PocketWeather for iPhone & iPad from the iTunes App Store

Existing PocketWeather users will find the new update waiting for them in the App Store app as a free update – just use the Update option to upgrade to the latest & greatest for free.

Seasonal Theme CustomView

As part of the ongoing changes in seasons and various Festive Seasons throughout the year, we are constantly adding more CustomView themes to the  SBSH PocketWeather Resource Center.

If you have produced a PocketWeather CustomView which you would like us to include in this publicly available resource, please contact us to let us know.

All these CustomView themes are completely free and available to all PocketWeather users.

To access them, all you need to do is:

1. Select the Views tab

2. Tap-and-hold for 1 second to bring up the CustomView selection

3. Scroll to the bottom and select “PocketWeather Resource Center”

4. Select the CustomView of your choice.

The new CustomView will automatically download and install to your device.

At any point you can select your original layout, or another layout by repeating the above steps.

For more details on how YOU can create your own CustomViews, see here.

Adrian.

Our family had the privilege of being invited to share in the Christmas celebrations at Baan Saan Fan on Christmas Eve.

Beautiful girls dressed up for the party!

Let's remember whose Birthday we are celebrating!

Two retired couples from America are serving for a year with the home and the school. This year they organised a turkey and ham fest for the party.

Yum!

The children blessed us by presenting the dance dramas that they had prepared. This year Jenny taught the younger children a dance which included sign language to the song "Saviour of the World". Esther taught the older ones a stick dance to a Thai version of "Holy Night".

Boys!

Up, up and away!

A great start to our family Christmas celebrations!

We were honoured to have our friends from Baan Saan Fan over to share a meal. Thirty children were joined by fifteen adults including two retired couples from America who are serving at the Baan Saan Fan home and school for a year.

We had chilli con carne and Adrian had bought a 1kg bag of chilli powder. Despite using a substantial amount it still wasn't hot enough for the older girls!

The children all loved the soy bean vegetables which was amusing as we are used to children not usually getting excited about the veg.

Desert was ice-cream. Then we made pop-corn to take down to the Christmas event at our children's school (GIS).

A good time was had by all!

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Some people in Thailand get to be baptised in the Mae Kong river or in a waterfall or some such place of beauty. However, at our COC church here we use a giant, orange, plastic bucket!

I guess that's not so different from the home made tank using a pond liner that we are used to back home at Arun Community Church !

On Sunday 27th November 2011 it was a joy to see David take the step of being baptized. It was also a blessing to see Isaac baptized at the same time.

They were asked to give a short testimony (unprepared)!

David said that in the past he had been living of the faith of his parents but that he wanted to take ownership of his own faith and he felt that baptism was the next step.

Ready, steady, go! (Make sure you get completely under the water)!

During the summer we enjoyed a 5 week visit to England.

It was a wonderful time to connect with family, friends and church.

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We were blessed with accommodation, transport and meals.
Big thank yous to:

• Pip & Maggie Lear for lending us their lovely home whilst they were away.
• The West family for squeezing us in for a fun packed week at the "Pudding Palace".
• Kingdom Faith for lending us a tent for a week!
• Adrian's parents for having us to stay for the final week.
• Jurrie and Ann for so kindly blessing us with the use of their car for our whole visit.
• Heather and Powerpack for giving us a money gift towards our trip.
• For all the wonderful meals and hospitality. I sure we have put on lbs!.

We had the opportunity to visit Cambridge, Southampton and Surrey Universities.

Cambridge

Fitzwilliam College

Adrian was working full-time at Eurotherm and the indication was that there would be more work for hime during the year ahead. Tom had the opportunity of 3 days work experience at Eurotherm

Jenny's Aunt Nadine and cousin Mariana and Mariana's family were also in the UK and so we enjoyed a family reunion and BBQ together.

It was also a joy to celebrate Adrian's parents Golden Wedding anniversary together with family and friends.

The couple, the cake...

And the cousins!

We loved to see how our home church, Arun Community Church, is blossoming and developing. We had opportunities to share about what we get up to in Thailand and received a lot of encouragement.

We had an excellent week with Powerpack at Kingdom Faith in Peterborough.
We were able to share about the work of Powerpack Thailand with the children.
We also had the opportunity to share over the Kingdom Faith camp radio.
We ran a Powerpack Thailand shop and also had an offering by the children to help with our project to translate Powerpack resources into S.E. Asian language. Over £800 was raised and we have already been able to send money to buy a printer which will help our translator.

We arrived back in mid-August just in time to rush the children into school and it has been pretty hectic since then. Hence I am only just getting around to writing this blog!