Days out diary - child friendly and family activities

Family days out butterfly farm Family days out Baby Elephant at Twycross Zoo Family days out childrens farm Family days out children friendly narrow guage railways Family days out Wookey Hole Cave Family days out Lake district cruise on Lake Windermere Family days out Avoncroft building museum

We have recently been on a holiday to Butlins in Skegness. I have not been to Butlins since I was a child and it's certainly changed since then. I will post a more comprehensive review of the holiday, but in the meantime here is a holiday diary through the eyes of a toddler.

Butlins Skegness holiday - Toddler diary 2008

This is similar to one I have already done: Dudley Zoo and Castle through the eyes of a toddler

A photo diary created using open source software

This diary was created using only open source software. If you have not heard of open source software this is free software, both in the sense that you can download and use the software without having to pay for it, but also in being able to make changes to the software if you wanted to.

Linux Operating System

Firstly this was all run on a laptop running the Linux operating system (alternative to Windows).

Even if Windows came with your PC then you are still paying for a Windows license when you bought the PC. Linux provides a completely free alternative.

See: Review of Linux - Ubuntu 8.04

Linux can be installed on the same computer as Windows, or even be run direct from a CD - so it's well worth giving it a go, but if not then all the following software is available for Linux or Windows.

OpenOffice.org - Draw

OpenOffice.org is a free alternative to the Microsoft office suite. It is fully featured and just as easy to use. In fact as all the programs are included as standard, it has far more available than the Microsoft equivalent. The part of the office suite that I used is Draw - which is a vector drawing application. There is no direct equivalent included in the office suites that I have used on Windows. In fact the drawing application is more like a basic version of CorelDraw.

OpenOffice.org also includes the export to PDF feature used to create the PDF file (resolution deliberately kept low to reduce the file size), or can be printed using a high-street / online photo printers by using the export as JPEG option.

More on OpenOffice.org

GIMP - Photo editing

The GIMP is a feature rich photo editing application. It's user interface may seam a little unfamiliar to those more used to Windows software (but is more in-line with the way that Unix software was commonly written), as it uses multiple pop-up windows. It's well worth persevering and learning how to use the GIMP though.

GIMP the GNU Image Manipulation Program.