Geoff Jones

Back on the Les Gets slopes

Posted on January 7, 2009March 8, 2017

Today I managed to get my first 2009 ride on the slopes of Mont Chery.

I had to stop for my coffee at the La Grand Ourse restaurant to say Hi to Gary and Theresa. They reported that last week was the first time that the whole Les Gets lift system was running at full capacity! No wonder Kevin was complaining about the queues when they rented the apartment over the New Year. Although, it must be very good news for all the local shops like Nevada Sports who have had a couple of poor years.

I’m here for the next 24 days 🙂 Oh the joy of retirement & owning an apartment in the French Alps!

Sally and the boys are out with me next week followed by my long time friend George and his kids. If you are out here, or want to come over, please twitter or call me.

Spam and overnight success

Posted on January 5, 2009March 8, 2017

After reading the excellent post “Overnight success takes a long time” by Paul Buchheit on the history of gmail it stirred my memory into why I use gmail. The answer is this prominent button:

Before gmail came along. Spam was a real problem for me, as you can see from the last 10 MINUTES worth hitting the gmail spam filter.

and its totally relentless, a 10 minute snapshot any time day or night is the same!

So full marks to Google for letting me use gmail on all my email accounts and also to be able to access them by IMAP and POP so I can read them on my iPhone and Thunderbird.

Oh and I’m sure FriendFeed will eventually be a huge success! Follow me there as geofones.

Cambridge -Anglesey abbey circular walk

Posted on January 4, 2009March 8, 2017

Today’s walk was a 17 or so mile circular tour from Cambridge along the tow path to Baits Bite lock and then across to Horningsea. We then ventured across Quy Fen to Anglesey Abbey to see the Himalayan Siver Birch trees resplendent with their jet washed bark 🙂 We returned alongside the lovely mill stream to Quy had a pint & cuppa at the Quy Mill Hotel before going under the A14 to return home via Teversham and Cherry Hinton.

I was experimenting with the new iPhone GPS application called Trail, this worked very well even with the iPhone stuffed in the breast pocket of my jacket! Once completed you can email the gpx file or send it directly to Everytrail.

Problems are battery life – my estimate is 4 hours – although apparently you can trick it into shutting the screen down by having the music playing 🙂

The second problem is that you can lose significant bits of trail by the software automatically connecting broken tracks together. See the purple trail I’ve added in the image.

Definitely worth having the capability as my Garmin Etrex batteries ran out during the walk! Trail also allows you to view your Everytrail tracks. Overall pretty neat and impressive that it works with the iPhone in my pocket. Thanks Euan for the tip

Here is the completed trail with photographs :-

Cambridge to Anglesey abbey circular walk

Widget powered by EveryTrail: GPS Geotagging

Twitter facts

Posted on January 3, 2009April 8, 2021

Interesting wordle of all my twitters, compiled at tweetstats, over the past 26 months at the rate of 3.9 tweets per day 🙂

Thanks to Sally for the heads up!