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Posted by richard at 00:00 AM
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111 miles walked in June
As I mentioned earlier my running has pretty much stopped other than the occasional sudden burst when taking Skitters out for a walk. And you know what, that's fine. My motivation for running was down to two things:
- get regular exercise
- spend time out doors
Both of these are fulfilled just by giving Skitters the exercise she needs.
When I was still running I bought a Garmin Forerunner 205 to replace the Nokia SportsTracker application I was running on my phone. I take this watch out with me on almost every walk I do with Skitters, and record the majority of the route (sometimes, especially here in the built up part of Brighton, it takes a while to lock on to the location). I'm using the excellent application Ascent to read the tracks from the phone and create them into a usable format, and export them to kml format for use on our maps page. I've found this combination to work brilliantly, and have found Ascent to be a great tool allowing me to record what we've been up to.
It also provides a summary page, allowing me to summarise the month of june as
We've got ourselves into a bit of a routine. Generally, I do the morning walk, Richard does the evening walk and we both do weekend walks. In reality though, we often both go out with her. June started with Richard being away at Java One in San Francisco, so I was the only dog-walker, which obviously bumps up my numbers this month somewhat. On top of the daily walks along Brighton/Hove seafront, June has included walks in Stanmer Park [1][2][3], Lancing for low tides [1][2][3], Ashdown Forest [1], Devil's Dyke [1][2][3], Nymans woods [1], Firle [1] ending up at the excelent Ram Inn at Firle (a dog-friendly pub selling lovely food), Barcombe [1] (involving a beer at the Anchor Inn) and a weekend in Margate with Richard's folks [1][2][3]
A couple of my favourite Skitters related photos from June are:
and
Labels: exercise, gps, skitters
Posted by Jane at 10:17 AM
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Hull City - not relegated
After a great start to the season, it took until the last day to know whether it was going to be a single season in the Premier League for Hull City, or whether a repeat was on the cards...
But, there we are, nestling just above Newcastle, Middlesborough and West Bromwich Albion and all ready for season 2
Labels: football, hull city
Posted by Jane at 1:59 PM
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In the year I am 36 I will... or will I?
Last birthday I decided to write myself a set of "resolutions", or more probably intentions for the year in which I was 36.
Those intentions were:
Attend a photography course
Eat organic food when possible
Eat local food when possible
Make the most of my Madgex ILP time
Exercise at least twice a week
Do photography projects
Visit an IFA and do a full financial review
Get a massage once a month
So, 13 months later, and looking back, how did I do?
Attend a photography course - yup, I did a weekend Creative Digital Photography course at Evolution in Brighton
Eat organic food when possible - hard to quantify, but most food eaten at home has been organic, or at least local. Eating out and lunchtimes is harder, but fortunately Brighton has a good collection of different eateries.
Eat local food when possible - see point 2 above
Make the most of my Madgex ILP time - unfortunately, the cost cutting removed this in November, but I did use quite a lot of time to investigate tools and techniques and have also presented on the topics of Photography and Visual Studio Hints and Tips, ran SQL coding dojos and a SQL Snap session. Most of these have been written up on my technical(ish) blog
Exercise at least twice a week - after a slow start, I started running in July following the c25k programme and did well enough with this to take part in a 3.8K race in November raising £625 for the Alzheimer's Society. I kept this up and ran the (very soggy) Santa Dash 5K in December, and had planned to run the Race for Life 10K in July this year. Training was going ok until Skitters arrived, and now running has been overtaken by dog walking - lots of it - and I'm cancelling my place in the Race for life.
Do photography projects - to be honest I haven't done anything like the number of projects I'd optimistically hoped for, but I have worked on my Lego Santa project.
Visit an IFA and do a full financial review - after several years of no financial advice both Richard and I sat down with a new IFA and had a full financial health-check. Our new IFA visits us every 3 or so months and keeps us up to date with what is best for our situation. This has been well worth doing.
Get a massage once a month - hmm, no, not once a month, but probably every other month. Must try harder
I haven't got a list for this year, so maybe it should be something I reserve for even years :-)
Posted by Jane at 12:23 PM
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Skitters - 8 weeks on
It is 8 weeks since we brought Skitters home and she has settled in well. In that time, we've become really interested in low tide times (because sand appears near the West Pier and Skitters can have a great run), we've tried out lots of treats and come up with a short list (dried liver, sausages and schmackos), Richard has taught her to fetch, and a combination of me and Richard's Dad have taught her to shake hands.
Skitters has visited Hull, and met my Dad, and she's been to Margate and met Richard's family. She travels well, and settles down and sleeps in the back of the car.
We have both increased our exerise, I've decided not to run the 10K I was planning to in July because I just don't have the spare energy at the moment. I've tracked a lot of walks on my Garmin Forerunner watch and know that I'm averaging about 20 miles per week. Some of the favourite spots are Stanmer Park and the woods beyond (1, 2, 3, 4), the River Adur (1, 2), and any beach (1, 2, 3, 4, 5).
We're on to leads number 3 and 4 after she chewed her way through 2 retracting leads. She now has a shortish lead, that matches her collar, for when she's the dog-around-town, and a 10m long line for when we're out and about and there are too many interesting smells around to let her off the lead. Yesterday we lost her for a while as she'd gone sniffing in amongst some brambles, she seemed to have got stuck and we were trying to work out how to get her out, when Richard spotted her running off. Somehow she'd managed to get out of her harness, without undoing it (the straps have been tightened up now!). She ran off and ended up in a field of horses before trying to find her way back to us - which she did, covered in mud and looking absolutely exhausted. But this goes to show that she's not ready to be off the lead all the time yet - she still prioritises rabbits, squirrels and birds above us.
So, in 8 weeks I've spent less time at the keyboard, spent a lot of time learning how to take photos of a small dog, and have had a lot more exercise and seen the beach in a morning a lot more. It has been great fun.
Labels: photos, skitters
Posted by Jane at 2:38 PM
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Introducing Skitters
Richard and I have long talked about getting a dog, but it never felt like the time was right due to work commitments, the size of our garden, our work patterns etc. This year we decided to give it some proper thought and in January decided to go to our nearest Dogs Trust centre in Shoreham to find out more. When we talked to one of the staff they told us that there are dogs which can suit all manner of house sizes and that we should fill in the form and take it from there. We decided to do this, but to wait till after our snowboarding holiday in Morzine (on which probably more in another blog post).
Last Sunday we headed off with our completed form in our hands and handed it in. The next stage was to go and look at the dogs in the centre and see if we there any we liked the sound and look of (each dog has an information sheet telling you whether it can live with children, and if so what age, whether it gets on well with other dogs etc). Although we didn't need a dog that can live with children, we have family and friends with children ranging from 2 to 13 and so the children rating was important to us. We spotted a couple of dogs we liked the look of, one beagle cross and another one, and then headed back to the front desk where Emma, one of the assistants, was waiting for us. She told us more about the dogs, and neither of them were suitable, but she did have "one in the back" that we could find out more about. This dog, Skitters, had been brought back that day as the chief exerciser in her new family had been taken ill and they couldn't look after her any more. She had been handed in to Shoreham as a stray in February, had then been adopted by her new family and handed back 3 or so weeks later. We took her out for a walk, and got on well with her. She matched our questionnaire well and we decided to adopt her. She is a Jack Russell Terrier crossed with something a bit larger judging by her size. Having made our decision the next stages for us were to take her out for a second walk, have a house visit from animal welfare who provided all sorts of helpful information including a helpful map of Brighton places which are and are not dog friendly, and attend a rehoming talk.
Having done everything necessary we went yesterday and collected her and brought her home to Brighton. We had a lovely long walk along the beach (does anyone know if sea sponges are toxic for small dogs? because she loves them...) and no sooner had we got home than she fell asleep on my lap. After lots more exploring and sniffing around the house she seems to have settled down well and is currently snuggled up on Richard's knees looking completely at home.
Labels: photos, skitters
Posted by Jane at 8:36 PM
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Brighton Science Festival
Last week was Brighton Science Festival and we managed to get to 2 events, although we did attempt a third.
The first one we attempted was the Cafe Scientifique festival special on "The Frog who Croaked Blue: Synesthesia and the Mixing of the Senses". But we arrived too late and saw
on the door and so had to make do with a glass of wine in Browns instead...
Next up was the Big Space Show which consisted of 3 parts. The first was comedienne Helen Keen performing her show It Is Rocket Science which was an amusing and quirky look at space, rockets and science.
Next up was John Zarnecki talking about Spacecraft I have Known and Loved which was a trip through the various spacecraft that John has worked on, including this one about which he said "I was with this one longer than my ex-wife"
The final speaker of the evening was ex-Astronomer Royal, Sir Arnold Wolfendale, on The Origins of the Universe who showed us around various galaxies
All in all, a great evening of learning.
The last event we attended was Big Science Saturday, a day of science talks and demonstrations.
Our first talk was The Science of Superheroes, a humourous and entertaining look into how the superheroes superpowers could be replicated in the real world. The most amazing of which, at least for me, was invisibility.
Next was Dr Harry Witchel on The Secret Language of Negotiation which was an interesting introduction to tells and signs with some video footage to back these things up.
Final talk of the day was Ben Goldacre who allowed the audience to choose which talk he should do in a "choose your own adventure" style. He was fascinating, passionate and knowledgeable and we've since bought a copy of his book to peruse in our own time. Highlights for me were the formulas of "how to <insert verb here> a perfect <insert noun here>" taken from the Daily Mail, the BBC and the Daily Telegraph
If my teachers at school, or at least one in particular, had shown as much passion for his subject as the speakers did I might have managed to leave school with a science qualification. As it was, my Physics teacher announced on the first day of our GCSE course that "as far as I'm concerned women are only here to give pleasure to me and give birth to my children and I don't see why I should teach you physics" which I'm sure you'll agree is a great start to a 2 year course and something that affected my relationship with science. These type of events are a great way for me to reconnect.
Labels: Brighton, cafe scientifique, event
Posted by Jane at 6:14 PM
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Energy Information
Jono and then Graeme pointed me at Google's energy information project, which looks very much like something I'd be interested in.
Specifically I was wondering if it was possible to take the data from something like Wattson and using some heuristics or some kind of Fourier analysis to detect what appliances were consuming electricity. And better still, compare that against what's possible and, perhaps in some cases, suggest it's time to dump that highly inefficient model of refrigerator and replace it with a new one :-)
But anyway... I don't know what Google are doing, but take a look at the graphs they want to produce. They looks useful to me.
Graeme also pointed me at HomeCamp: it's a hack day/unconference, around the theme of energy monitoring.
Posted by Richard at 10:31 AM
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Gates vs. Jobs
Justing thinking: although I'm a MacOS X fanatic, and officially dispassionate with respect to Windows (unofficially I'd use a stronger word), Bill Gates could turn out to be the bigger geek hero in the long run. What? I just mean the stuff he's doing now has all the promise of turning out to be monumental.
Of course, maybe not enough to undo all suffering his company has caused. Time to go re-watch that Gates vs. Jobs video...
Posted by Richard at 5:49 PM
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Big Trip 08
I was just about to write a blog post about our week in Les Arcs last week, when I realised we'd never blogged about last years Big Trip. So here it is, better late than never. I've created 5 blog posts, one for each of the 5 different states we visited as this blog post was getting way too long, so follow the links in the list below to find out more about each state.
Last February Richard and I headed off on an adventure, a month in the US/Canada, mainly based at or near snowboarding/ski resorts. We decided to fly as far West as we needed to, and head back inland over the course of a month. We'd started planning by buying a map of the US, and attaching post-it notes to the cities with airports, and working out where we could get to by plane. We sat down and consulted the internet, and copies of the World Snowboard Guide and Ski Snowboard America to find a shortlist of resorts to aim for and then started plugging together a month's worth of flights, car hire and accommodation.
The states we visited over that month were:
There are a whole heap of GPS traces from our various snow days, and by my reckoning (with a bit of help from my Nokia 6110 Navigator and Sportstracker) we covered 506.09 miles on lifts and boards over 21 days on the slopes at 11 different resorts. We also ended up with a lot of photos and a couple of videos.
A great, great time, and something I'd love to repeat when I've saved up some more pennies.
Labels: bigtrip08, photos, snowboard
Posted by Jane at 1:45 PM
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Big Trip 08 - Wyoming
This was the fifth and final place we stayed on our BigTrip.
The drive from Big Sky to Jackson took us past the incredible Yellowstone National Park - if our drive had been shorter, and it hadn't been snowing, we'd have popped in to the park to take a look - maybe next time! Our accommodation in Jackson was at the Elk Country Inn, a reasonably well equipped log cabin within an easy, if cold (-20 deg C) walk of the many restaurants and shops.
Our first stop was Jackson Hole, a resort we've heard a lot about, but which we found somewhat disappointing. Yes, it was steep, but that was about it. No tree runs like we'd found at Moonlight, it was busy - even when it snowed it got tracked out really quickly, and I think we'd been totally spoilt by Montana. But we still had fun on our 2 days, and celebrated Richard's 40th birthday there.
The next day we headed off to Grand Targhee, in deep, fresh, powder, with really limited visibility. I wasn't feeling great, and so we only managed a half day, but we had some great fun playing amongst the trees with almost no idea what runs we were on, and where we were heading for. After a day off for me to attempt a recovery, we returned to Grand Targhee, on a day when we could see and managed a couple of runs before I had to retire ill. It was a very different experience the second day, and we realised that Grand Targhee isn't a very big hill, but it gets a huge amount of snow.
Wyoming was a bit of a disappointment - we'd expected Jackson to be amazing - it was the last stop on our trip because we wanted to improve so we were good enough to appreciate it based on it's reputation. Maybe we didn't reach a high enough level, or maybe we peaked at Montana and learnt more about what makes the perfect snowboard resort for us, but Wyoming wasn't the amazing final stop we'd planned.
From my sportstracker log in Wyoming we did:
- 2nd Mar - Jackson Hole - 23.64
- 3rd Mar - Jackson Hole - 23.61
- 4th Mar - Grand Targhee - 11.43
- 6th Mar - Grand Targhee - 5.55 - a token gesture as I wasn't well, but couldn't leave without a return to Targhee
A total for Wyoming of 64.23 miles.
Labels: bigtrip08, photos, snowboard
Posted by Jane at 1:21 PM
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Big Trip 08 - Montana
This was the fourth place we stayed on our BigTrip and my favourite.
After leaving Lookout Pass, we drove into Missoula for the weekend, staying at the lovely Gibson Mansion bed and breakfast - the only place I've stayed which has a pre-breakfast tray delivered to the room, followed by a freshly cooked breakfast in the dining room. We'd decided that by this stage in our trip we were bound to want a break from the snow. The first thing we did on Saturday morning, however, was to get kitted up and head over to Montana Snowbowl to take a look. We did, and decided that the conditions didn't look that great, and that we would, afterall, have that day off. So we spent the day wandering around Missoula, stocking up on gifts and postcards and the like, trying beers at the Big Sky Brewery before eating at the lovely, but hard to find, Red Bird restaurant.
After another incredible breakfast we headed from Missoula to Big Sky resort and our room at the Lodge at Big Sky. First impressions weren't good, the room was big but soulless, there was no crockery or cutlery in our room despite the "basic kitchen facilities" (microwave and sink) and it was all beige - it looked a bit like a travelodge. Breakfast was a communal buffet style effort, served on paper plates with plastic cutlery. Again, not great.
But, we weren't there for the accommodation (fortunately), we were there for the snowboarding and our first day was spent in fresh snow at Big Sky in conditions that are hard to beat. Our second day was clear and bright and so we made the hour long trip to Bridger Bowl for another fun day on the slopes, still finding patches of fresh snow to play in. Day three and a visit to Moonlight Basin, a resort which shares terrain and lift passes with Big Sky and which was my favourite resort of our entire trip - a resort with some amazing gladed tree black runs, and very few people. More fresh snow fell, and we re-visited both Moonlight Basin and Big Sky - having more great days at both.
Montana had great snow conditions, and some really good resorts - both Moonlight Basin and Big Sky are worth a return to, and even Bridger Bowl would amuse for another day. I'd probably base myself at Moonlight as it seemed to have a wider variety of self-catering accommodation than Big Sky.
From my sportstracker log in Montana we did:
- 25th Feb - Big Sky - 35.5 miles
- 26th Feb - Bridger Bowl - 25.75
- 27th Feb - Moonlight Basin - 31
- 28th Feb - Big Sky - 37.58
- 29th Feb - Moonlight Basin - 31.19
A total for Montana of 161.02 miles.
Labels: bigtrip08, photos, snowboard
Posted by Jane at 12:42 PM
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Big Trip 08 - Idaho
This was the third place we stayed on our BigTrip.
When we were planning for the trip, we wanted to visit a lot of lesser known resorts, and places that were hard to get to from the UK without changing planes etc. We knew we wanted to go to Oregon, and to Montana, and so Idaho seemed like a good place to visit that was between the two.
The Red Express dropped us back at Spokane airport, and we collected our car for the next 17 days.
We'd decided to visit Silver Mountain - I'm not sure why Silver won out over Schweitzer but it did. We found ourselves some lovely, lovely lodging at the Morning Star lodge and had treated ourselves to a larger room so that we could have some domestic extras - like a washing machine and a fully equipped kitchen.
Silver Mountain isn't really a destination resort - but it kept us busy for a couple of days. The snow could have been better, but it would have been hard to have had much more of the mountain to ourselves, the biggest lift queue saw us waiting for 10 people to load ahead of us - some of the lifts are a bit old but with the level of traffic it wasn't a problem. There is a 20 minute or so gondola ride to get from Kellogg to Silver mountain but this was quick and new and caused us no issues.
Whilst we were in Idaho, it was a total lunar eclipse, so we stood outside in the freezing cold to watch some of it, before heading off to nearby Noah's canteen to warm up again.
Would I visit again? Well I'd pop in for a couple of days on the way to somewhere else again.
As we left Idaho to head to Montana we decided, thanks to an OnTheSnow review I'd read, to pop into Lookout Pass - a small mountain on the border between Idaho and Montana. We spent a few hours exploring and playing in amongst trees before leaving Idaho behind us and moving on to Montana.
From my sportstracker log in Idaho we did:
- 20th Feb - Silver Mountain - 15 miles
- 21st Feb - Silver Mountain - 26.49 miles
- 22nd Feb - Lookout Pass - 19.26 miles
A total for Idaho of 60.75 miles.
Labels: bigtrip08, photos, snowboard
Posted by Jane at 11:53 AM
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Big Trip 08 - British Columbia
This was our second stop in our Big Trip.
We were concerned at how busy US resorts would be over Presidents Day weekend and so decided to hop over the border into Canada. We wanted to concentrate our trip on places that were hard to get to directly from the UK — what is the point in having a month in the US/Canada if you go somewhere that is a one hop flight? — so that ruled out Whistler. After a bit of research we decided on Red Mountain, British Columbia, and decided to base ourselves there for a long weekend. We flew from Portland, Oregon to Spokane, Idaho and took the Red Express bus service over to Red Mountain. This bus service worked out really well for us and saved us having the hassle of taking rental cars over national borders.
We stayed at the Ram's Head Inn, a bed and breakfast at the resort, rather than down in Rossland. It isn't quite ski-in/ski-out but there isn't a long way to walk to get to the lifts.
On our first morning we were offered the inn's free ski passes for the day which is a great way to start a trip. There was a lot of races going on on Red Mountain itself, but having spent a few hours on Red Mountain we decided that Granite Mountain was the one for us — especially the back bowl (Paradise basin) near the struggling Paradise lift (it was on restricted capacity when it was running). There is a really lovely area called the mini bowls on the trail map which is graded blue and which is just spaced out trees with snow in between. This was my favourite area, and started my love for fresh snow and gladed tree runs together.
Overall, an enjoyable few days, the unreliability of the lifts caused problems and what lifts were working were generally pretty old. We exhausted all the restaurants during our stay, and if we were to return then we'd probably opt for self-catering rather than bed and breakfast. The breakfast was good at the Ram's Head Inn, but the ability to cook does give some extra options.
From my sportstracker log, at Red Mountain we did:
- 15th Feb - Red Mountain - 27.38 miles
- 16th Fed - Red Mountain - 27.97 miles
- 17th Feb - Red Mountain - 27.65 miles
- 18th Feb - Red Mountain - 25.01 miles
A British Columbia total of 108.01 miles.
Labels: bigtrip08, photos, snowboard
Posted by Jane at 11:32 AM
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Big Trip 08 - Oregon
This was the first place we stayed on our BigTrip
We'd done a lot of internet research on Oregon, and spent quite a lot of time looking for a log cabin to stay in. Eventually we found Pappy's cabin, in Welches, and we based ourselves there for a week.
The cabin is on the banks of the river, and is down what is little more than a dirt track so was totally peaceful and a great place to relax. It is a short drive to 3 ski resorts—Timberline, Mount Hood Meadows and Mount Hood Skibowl—and we visited them all during our week, as well as having a day off to investigate nearby Portland. It was lovely coming back each night to a well equipped cabin with a cozy wood-burning stove.
We even had fresh snow on our first day.
Our favourite resorts were Timberline and Mount Hood Skibowl: Timberline, as its name suggests, has lots of trees and I love snowboarding through tree runs, and Skibowl has night skiing, lots and lots of it and snowboarding at night in fresh snow was great fun.
A great week, and a place I'd love to return to sometime.
From my sportstracker log in Oregon we did:
- 8th Feb - Timberline - 15.95 miles
- 9th Feb - Mount Hood Meadows - 23.68 miles
- 10th Feb - Mount Hood Meadows - 16.38 miles
- 12th Feb - Timberline - 33.84 miles
- 13th Feb - Mount Hood SkiBowl - 22.23 miles
A total for Oregon of 112.08 miles.
Labels: bigtrip08, photos, snowboard
Posted by Jane at 11:28 AM
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Jane on the Radio
Forget the religion aspect: this is an absolute gem.
A couple of weeks ago, in Hull, Jane was introduced to the vicar who christened her. That seems a pretty rare event to me, but extraordinarily Jane's christening was broadcast on the radio.
In 1972 BBC Radio Humberside were running a show called "In His Name", and their broadcast of 15 October 1972 was from the church in Hull on the day Jane was being christened.
Back at Jane's parent's house we found the C90 cassette that the vicar had recorded of the show. So, gather round, feel the full quality hiss of the tape: 36M MP3 version (or 35M Ogg format, for you freedom lovers).
Posted by Richard at 6:17 PM
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