The wind and rain were both making a typical winter appearance today, but I’ve never seen such an amount of umbrella death. Every bin, every pavement seemed to be littered with the debris.
Richard and I made an effort of recording some of the carnage with camera phones.
I blogged about Geni a few months ago and had quite a few email conversations with the guys from Geni off the back of that blog.
Since then Richard’s family have really taken to Geni, and have added a couple of generations to their tree. They’ve found it really usable and seem to have enjoyed adding photos etc. Still no GEDCOM import yet for me though 🙁
Today, a box of goodies arrived from Geni for me, thanks Geni!
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Whilst we were on our recent holiday, we took the opportunity to try out the built-in Route 66 navigation software.
The main observations are as follows:
In summary, I’ll probably still print out google maps, and I’ll still have a road atlas in the car, but I’ll also let Route 66 guide me in and out of cities and towns.
Cross posted to Jane’s Technical Stuff.
We recently had a week off and spent it exploring more of the UK. We started and ended our trip with visits to snowboard shows – the first at Tamworth Snowdome, the second at Milton Keynes Xscape. We figured it was time to explore more of the West/North West/Midlands and so based ourselves around there for the week.
We took the opportunity to stop off at Chatsworth and spent a very pleasant afternoon strolling around the grounds and the house. (More photos) . The “Beyond Limits” exhibition was a really interesting addition to the beautiful gardens, and Damien Hirst’s Virgin Mary was really impressive. As a Girl Guide I visited the extended grounds of Chatsworth many times, camping on the grounds, staying in stone barns, but this was the first time I’d visited the house and gardens. It was a really lovely afternoon, and the cake in the cafe was wonderful too.
Our next stop was a couple of nights in Liverpool, a city I’d only visited once before for a University open day, and which Richard hadn’t visited at all. As Liverpool is to be the City of Culture next year, we thought now might be an interesting to visit as it prepares itself. It is definitely a work in progress at the moment, and the number of cranes on the skyline is quite impressive. We felt obliged to visit the Beatles story exhibition, which entertained us for quite a few hours. We also visited the Tate which unfortunately for us was having a swap around to make room for the Turner Prize exhibitons. We were both surprised at how small a city it is, being really walkable and not requiring public transport to get around the major attractions. I found the architecture amazing, and it reminded me quite a bit of Hull, my home town. Both cities are ports, both were heavily bombed during the 2nd world war, both have some amazing maritime buildings. More photos.
Then a fun few days in Wales staying at Cae Gwyn Farm an organic bed and breakfast found via the Organic Holiday directory. We attempted to do some mountain biking, but couldn’t find an open rental shop. As usual, wherever we go, things are closed. Maybe we should go “in season” sometime :-). Still we managed to get some walks in, one around the visitor centre, a longer one around the forest and one in Barmouth on the beach at low tide. and a trip on the Snowdon Mountain railway.
A great trip, and a great opportunity to unwind.
We were in the new look Sainsbury’s in West Hove yesterday, browsing along the cereal aisle, and then we spotted it – “Adult Cereals”. This isn’t really a term I’ve ever come across before, I’d considered Cereals as a whole category, or maybe with sub-categories, such as muesli or cornflakes or whatever. So, does this mean that to differentiate the regular, every-day kind of cereal they need to be rebranded as adult cereal?
For the interested, the cereal offered in “Adult Cereals” were things like Fruit and Fibre and All Bran. Definitely NOT more interesting than frosties, cocoa pops or rice crispies.
We headed off for a quick bike ride today, and ended up getting home 4 hours later after a catalogue of missed turns and optimism that resulted in a 24.5 mile ride. Our first obstacle was getting through the cyclists and spectactors watching the Triathlon, from then on we were aiming to do a route we used to do quite often, but somewhere along the way we missed our turn and so ended up heading along the South Downs Way for a while. We took a look on the OS map and decided to head towards Southease railway station and catch a train back to Brighton – we even used the power of mobile internet to check that they run on a Sunday. We rolled up at the station (after heading off down the wrong road to Piddinghoe for a mile or so) about 5 minutes before the train was due only to discover that there were maintenance works on the line and they were running a replacement bus service. We didn’t think the bus would like us and our bikes very much and so turned around and headed via Telscombe and back to Brighton stopping at Ovingdean for a slice of cake and a can of fizzy pop.
We tracked our route using the GPS unit on my Nokia 6110 navigator, and have added it to our collection of GPS routes.
On Saturday, the World Beard and Moustache Championships were held at the Brighton Centre.
The event started, for the public (and for us thanks to a tip off from Andy) with a parade from the town hall, through the lanes to the Brighton Centre before starting for proper an hour or so later. Prior to the event starting, I thought it would all be a bit of a joke, but I hadn’t been prepared for the sheer amount of effort that people had gone to, especially their costumes. As if growing a large amount of facial fur wasn’t enough, at least one guy had painted himself silver for the occasion.
We met up with friends and headed off and the girls watched the ‘tache competition whilst the boys spend an hour (yes really) queueing for beer at the bar (which had 5 members of staff serving for 2,300 people – nice). After finally getting our beer we sat down in comfort for the freestyle moustache and the partial beard categories. Jeremy, Kirsty and Rory headed home mid way through partial beards, and we spotted Dom, Fiona and Amelia and so went and watched a few more rounds with them before deciding we were all bearded out and needed to head home.
There are, of course, more photos to be perused. The next championships is in 2 years time in Alaska, somehow I don’t expect we’ll be attending.
Many thanks to Andy for telling us about Waves in Hove. They are a Dosa Diner, and carry dosas as well as idli, pooris and other indian “street food”.
We headed out there this evening and gave them a try, and we’ll be back having had a most satisfying eat on dhai poori, masala dosa for me and a spring dosa for Richard. All washed down with a glass of red for Richard, and a couple of sweet lassis for me.
Further to my blog after our Performance course, I’ve since learnt about The Snowboard Show being held at the Tamworth snowdome in September. Amongst the demos and talks there are also some free coaching sessions, 2 of which are Freeride technique with the instructor from the Performance course, Ash Newnes. All you have to do to get on one of the sessions is to register by sending an email to the address at the bottom of this page. We’ve booked on to the Rail Technique session to see what we can learn.
In other news we’re looking at places to go for snowboarding over New Year. In recent years we’ve been to Avoriaz, Meribel and Utah. Ideally we want somewhere reasonably high up to make sure that there is some chance of snow, somewhere an hour or two from the airport, and most importantly somewhere that hasn’t got a minimum stay of less than 4 nights. Any suggestions? Or do you know of someone with an appartment to rent? Leave us a comment
We’ve also started planning our big trip for next year – a month long snowboarding adventure. At the moment it is looking like being based around Montana, Idaho and Portland, and making use of the Alaska Airlines schedule to get around, but all that could change. I’m hoping that the Off the Beaten Path USA trip report will offer some more insights as the guy who wrote that had some good suggestions for our Utah trip. Again, any suggestions? leave us a comment.
On Thursday Richard and I headed off into London with a load of other Brighton geeks to Moo’s Hot and Sticky Party. Richard managed to attend another moo party earlier in the year in San Francisco and after hearing about that there was no way I was missing out on this one. This party was to launch another new product – sticker books and we got to take away samples (as well as stick them on each other, moo employees etc etc).
We met some new faces, put faces to names (especially Will and Tom who I’ve known of for years but weirdly never met) as well as catching up with someone I haven’t seen in over 5 years.
A great party put on by a company who obviously know how to celebrate! I even got 2 photos included in the moo blog post about the evening. More photos.
