Route Planning

Here is the summary of the first two days walk that I propose starting on Saturday. I intend to follow the GR5 from St. Gingolph on Lake Geneva to Nice.

I'm using , for the first time the memory-map software [Important the Alpes version MMV5/IGN/PE/MB388/CI is faulty call 01189062600  to get a version that has Geneva and St. Gingolph on it]

This enables me to send waypoints (each verical blue line below) to my Garmin Legend. Unfortunately the Garmin can only hack 20 days, so I'm having to merge two days together and at the same time keeping the waypoints below 50. (The Garmin is primitive, computer wise a bit like Palms were 5 years ago!) If only the Treo700 was available in the UK.

The Memory Map software prouces lots of pretties like this below:-

Summary

Route Distance: 30.5 km
Estimated Time: 11:35 Total Ascent: 3654 m
Total Descent: 2091 m

Elevation Profile (St.Gingolph on left, La Chappelle D'Abondance at 15km and Refuge de Chesery at 30.5km.)

Weather wise, I see the zero isotherme in Chamonix is at 2000 -> 2600 m. Which is the elevation of most of the walk.  Although this is promising:-

"High 1025 hpa east of Azores, extending gradually towards Southwestern France. Northwesterly stream over the Northern Alps becoming gradually more stable and dryer. High pressure condition expected to prevail thereafter and at least until the middle of next week."

Now i must get back to clicking away on my maps.

Result Day

Here is Em really jubilant at her excellent GCSE results. She managed 7 A* and 4 A's. I'm a really proud dad today. All of her friends also did well, interestingly her friends who went to Parkside did exactly as well as her friends at The Perse, and apparently  Joe from Parkside received a letter of commendation, been in the top 5 scorers in the country.

The only difference being that, I think, The Perseans did separate sciences .

So now they will all be reunited for the next two years at Hills Road. 

[Here is Craig's blog from Parkside]

River of News Revisited ..

Just under a year ago I organised the Our Social World conference here in Cambridge, UK. One of the cool things that Adrian kindly did for us was a river of news feeds that was displayed on the projector. This displayed all mentions of the conference, including all the delegates, and also since we are English the latest Test Match scores.

Today whilst reading Robert Scoble's blog I noticed he was swooning about the river of news that his big friend and creator of RSS Dave Winer has just released. This is a river of news feed stripped to its bare essentials for displaying feeds from The New York Times and later The BBC on a blackberry or other mobile device.

Since we are in a WEB2.0 world and Adrian was on MSN at 9.30pm I suggested maybe we should knock about with the series of feeds that the BBC has for football (Soccer to the Americans). So by 2am we had created 20 URL's one for each football team in the premier division. Each URL is the initials of the club plus FC plus river.com so Arsenal is http://afcriver.com nice and short for the mobile phone text entry (although it redirects to afc.newsrivers.com) and West Ham United is http://whufcriver.com Manchester United is http://mufcriver.com Adrian has written a script to display the stuff on your phone like this:-

All rather cool I think. Maybe we could offer a service to other bloggers such as Jeff Jarvis.

Medion MD5909 DECT telephone

For any of you out there who might be struggling, like I was, to locate the instruction book/manual for the MD5909 DECT phone that Aldi sells. It can be found here. In fact the problem was a duff base station that rang with incoming calls but non of the remote phones could answer :-( I know its a bit humiliating to have to declare that I do read instructions some times...

Living my life...

Thanks to Old-faithful Wolf from the MKP for this inspiring quote:-
From the book "The Four Agreements" by Don Miguel Ruiz:

1. Be Impeccable With Your Word
Speak with integrity. Say only what you mean. Avoid using the word to speak against yourself or to gossip about others. Use the power of your word in the direction of truth and love.

2. Don't Take Anything Personally
Nothing others do is because of you. What others say and do is a projection of their own reality, their own dream. When you are immune to the opinions and actions of others, you won't be the victim of needless suffering.

3. Don't Make Assumptions
Find the courage to ask questions and to express what you really want. Communicate with others as clearly as you can to avoid misunderstandings, sadness and drama. With just this one agreement, you can completely transform your life.

4. Always Do Your Best
Your best is going to change from moment to moment; it will be different when you are healthy as opposed to sick. Under any circumstance, simply do your best, and you will avoid self-judgment, self-abuse and regret.

So simple but certainly for me so difficult, especially 3 & 2.

Main stream media starts to trust the blogosphere....

A really excellent idea, outlined here, of how The Washington Post intends to make an improved version of a blogroll by:-

A link to members' blogs will be featured in our Sponsored Blogroll index, giving your writing promotional space on the washingtonpost.com home page and giving you an introduction to an audience of 8 million readers monthly. At the same time, our hardworking sales reps will help connect your signature musings with the huge number of advertisers we deal with every day who are looking for the next big, slightly-outside-the-mainstream idea.

As a Sponsored Blogroll member, you'll maintain your independence. But you'll get additional site traffic, a little buzz and maybe some additional income.

As I say in the comments:-
Sounds a really awesome idea to me. As people who are new to the blogosphere will have a helping hand to decent blogs rather than being put off when they find splogs in random searches. Will be interesting to see how much time they spend weeding the list once they have created it.

So instead of the A list we will now have arguments about how to get on the W list!

Insanely addictive - Popsugar

Amazing site for the teens and slightly above just look at this river of comments pouring in from its users, in real time. Another Myspace or YouTube in the making.

The site is still privately owned

"Sugar Publishing is a privately-owned media company focused on creating the best online editorial and community for trendsetting, passionate, smart women."

Ringing phone on plane.

Its seems true we are all going mad. This BA plane was forced to turn back

"Security teams on the ground advised that the plane could continue safely but after 90 minutes angry passengers complained and the pilot returned to the UK".

What ever were those passengers thinking off? and what about the poor guy whose phone it is(was) they will be getting a knock from PC Plod quite soon.

Latest cool web2.0 thingy

Just discovered LibraryThing. Fantastic site that allows you to enter all your books by ISBN number or author and title. First 200 books are free to enter (I'm now at 150) and I would say at least 300 more to go. The really cool thing is that you can generate clouds either by tag, author etc.

This is a tag cloud of my top 50 autors todate. It also generates a widget that you can put on your website that enables anyone to search my library. My widget is on my books page.

Other features let you see how many other users have the same books as you and suggestions based on your current profile.

As always the hardest part is working out what tags to use. Maybe after I have finished reading Ellee's present "Women Fire, and Dangerous Things by George Lakoff" - What categories reveal about the mind. I might be wiser, although it has to be said its a seriously heavyweight book.

A pretty good take on the bomb scare....

As spoken by Britain's outspoken Ex- Ambassador to the Central Asian Republic of Uzbekistan, Craig Murray:-

"None of the alleged terrorists had made a bomb. None had bought a plane
ticket. Many did not even have passports, which given the efficiency of
the UK Passport Agency would mean they couldn't be a plane bomber for
quite some time."

To me the whole episode smells and not of Acetone either, given that it all happened within 36hours of Tony leaving the country.

As Craig says about John Reid, Home Secretary "A hardened Stalinist with a long term reputation for personal
violence, at Stirling Univeristy he was the Communist Party's
"Enforcer",.....Reid was sent to beat up those who deviated from the Party line"

As Craig ends
- Be sceptical. Be very, very sceptical. and I most surely am.

More on it inplausibility here

Microsoft goodies..

Windows Live Writer seems to be getting some good reviews. I thought I would do a search for "Temporary Post Used For Style Detection" in Google, As this is a sign that a blogger has been using it. Today it gives 147 entries.

Here is the search window,  I inserted it merely by doing a paste after grabbing the screen with Alt & Print Scrn. Pretty nifty eh.

Looks as if Microsoft is getting its act together especially with news that they are releasing XNA studio express to enable folks to create their own Xbox games.

Where is Scoble on these two new products? not a peep so far, I guess he really has other things on his mind now. Especially when Maryam is doing posts like this one.

First post using Windows Live Writer

Thanks to Techmeme I've just learned about this great new tool from Microsoft, The Windows Live Writer. I just finished making a post to my Wordpress blog at www.geoffjones.net. It worked like a dream, especially the easy integration of images. Ellee is just going to love this when she is back from her hols.

My 58th Birthday party (Last year :-()

Dead easy to add an image, Enabling easily to put text around the image.

 

 

 

 

Here is a pretty cool feature - drop a map into your blog.

Birds Eye view of my house

Ze Frank sums up the situation..

An excellent show by Ze Frank summing up fear and terror and the latest wave of idiocy sweeping the UK government.

Write to your MP (Hard copy only) please.

Yesterday I visited tthe inner sanctum of the British political system, otherwise known as Portcullis House, this is where the most fortunate MP's work in a modern office block with armed guards (Yep, like at Heathrow, we are all terrorists now) and a computer system that is so locked down even the poor MP's struggle to access it. As for free or paid WiFi - You are kidding right. However, you can get an excellent lunch for just £1.65!

As for this the tale on the BBC today :-

"Roger Kay, president of computer consultancy firm Endpoint, said the impact of the PC on all aspects our lives cannot be over-stated:-

"I have for example an archive of correspondence from people that I diligently wrote letters to and all of a sudden that just stops," he said. "I don't think I've got a personal letter for five years."

All I can say is that he has had no contact with his MP. The MP I visited proudly said that all her mails just got deleted and that the best way to contact her was by letter, Oh, did I say that she is on theScience and Technology Committee committee and just visited Budapest.

Well she had at least heard of blogging but obviously far far to busy to do it herself (Its writing all those letters and hanging about in the endless corridors waiting for a division bell to ring and pounding up and down the M1) What a tremendous waste, just like the £46,000 spent on postage and stationary (constituency approx 66,000 folks) compared to the £1,800 spent on computers by her last year.

Question is, do I get involved and set up a blog with feeds from They work for you and a pubsub feed for her name etc and make it easy for her helpers to post up PR releases blah blah etc. Or do I stick with people like Ellee who are passionate about blogging.

Unfair bank charges - how to reclaim

What to do when your bank zaps you for penalty charges (click on post title for full story).

"The Defendant has imposed charges of £30 each time the Claimant has exceeded his overdraft limit. These charges represent a penalty and do not accurately reflect the defendant's administration costs. Further, they are contrary to the Unfair (Contract) Terms Act 1977 s.4 and the Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts Regulations 1999. para. 8 and sch. 2(1)(e). Further or alternatively, they are unreasonable within the meaning of the Supply of Goods and Services Act 1982 s.15. The charges the Claimant claims are £30 on 01/06/06, £90 on 02/05/06, £60 on 01/12/05. The total charges he is claiming are £180. The claimant claims interest under section 69 of the County Courts Act 1984 at the rate of 8% a year from the dates that each of the charges were made, a total of £6.01 up until 08/08/06 and continuing interest at a daily rate of £0.39. AND THE CLAIMANT CLAIMS £180, interest, costs."

Reuters Photo Fraud

Reuters Photo Fraud: "
The recent discovery that the Reuters news agency released a digitally manipulated photograph as an authentic image of the bombing in Beirut has drawn attention to the important topic of bias in the media. But lost in the frenzy over one particular image is an even more devastating fact: that over the last week Reuters has been caught red-handed in an astonishing variety of journalistic frauds in the photo coverage of the war in Lebanon"

My bet is on theory D:-
Reuters photographers and editors are intimidated by Hezbollah, and publish Hezbollah's propaganda out of fear for their lives.

We all know the first victim of war is truth.

Ellee's New Blog

Well after a lot of graft and steep learning curve (and a 23km walk to her house) I managed to get Ellee's new wordpress blog up and running today. Really cool to be able to import her old blog with its over 200 posts and amazingly over 700 comments , all imported without a glitch (apart from small problem with wrapping around images).

For the technical out there I used:-
Tiga 1.0.1 theme as Ellee wanted three columns.
FlickrRSS plugin to get the rather smart random array of piccies along the top of the posts.
Giraffe AJAX calendar for fast moving between posts by date.
Akismet comment checking system to kill SPAM and pingbacks without moderation.
Role Manager for allowing different users to have different roles.
Subscribe Me to give all those rather neat RSS buttons etc
Ultimate Tag warrior so Ellee can tag her posts easily.
Sidebar Widgets to make it so easy to move the content of the sidebars around.
del.icio.us widget - doesnt seem to be working :-(
Google search widget.

We also enabled the option to create posts directly from flickr. Which given elle's passion for super large photographs should be really cool.