Photography | Design | Technology | Business
Back in July I happened to be in Tokyo at the same time as Adam was due to give a talk at Keio University on his recently published book, ‘Everyware‘. Anyway, Andreas has put together a video of the whole event (and very good it was too) for anyone to download and enjoy by using an Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 Creative Commons licence.
Technorati Tags: adamgreenfield, everyware, Tokyo, travel
So, I seem to be having some issues receiving email to my main address. I don’t know how long this has been going on but I think it’s been a few weeks at least. There is also no set pattern to what’s happening – some mail gets through, some doesn’t – weird.
Anyway, if you’ve sent me mail in the past few weeks and haven’t had a reply then that might be the cause. Apologies if so…
Technorati Tags: email
I’m always a little bit wary of cross-over bike branding – that’s to say bikes that have branding from other ‘rugged’ or exclusive companies on them. Land Rover were a prime example of bike sellers that you really would want to stay away from for instance.
This sweet looking Ducati might be a different thing altogether though. The frame design is pretty interesting (and cool-looking) and the spec isn’t too bad either.
Made by Bianchi, there’s a mountain and road bike range too. Still, check out this street version first 
Great article on the San Francisco Chronicle’s website about the Yosemite Rock Rats – people who follow the nomadic, climber lifestyle – and how they’re disappearing to find less popular places to climb now.
This is really sad, but I guess this is what happens over time – it’s what makes legends legends in the first place. Years ago, I was first inspired to climb by tales of the mystical ‘Camp 4‘ in Yosemite, a place that a lot of the local climbing community called home. It was this very place and the people that inhabited it that inspired me to start climbing.
Personally, I’m hoping for a resurgence at Fontainebleau where the forest and sandstone make for a similar ‘vibe’.
Technorati Tags: climbing, San Francisco
So, Virgin have banned the use of Apple laptops with batteries in place. This now makes my years of miles building with them worthless because until this is resolved I won’t be flying with them again.
Who’s fault is this? Well, to be honest I blame Apple. They clearly knew about this problem a fair while back but chose to do the normal ‘deny it’s an issue’ until the public evidence became overwhelming. They also still have a flagship portable machine in the form of the intel Macbook Pro that DOES NOT have an ‘eMpower’ adapter for in-plane power available. So, now you can’t use your machine with a battery installed nor can you use it plugged in either. Some flagship business machine that huh?
And I used to be such an Apple fan-boy…
I’m old enough to remember when airlines used to issue tickets for all travel. I also remember when they moved to a ticket-less system that became known as ‘e-tickets’ which was met with mass confusion by everyone involved including the airlines themselves.
The biggest benefit, we were told, was that we didn’t require any actual tickets so everything would run much more smoothly. And it did, for a while.
In the past few weeks I’ve had to travel internationally a couple of times and both times I’ve been asked for my ‘itinerary’. On both occasions I’ve not had one of them and been made to go to another desk in order to get one. Also, on both occasions I’ve been told off for not printing out my itinerary at home. I’ve tried to argue that this was never made a condition of travel before and that surely, isn’t this the very reason they stopped actually issuing tickets in the first place? But, to no avail and so it seems that a ‘ticket of sorts’ is once again required for airline travel.
Only this time round, it’s our paper and ink that is being used. And if you don’t have a printer? Then go to a ticketing desk first, before you queue up for 2 hours to check in only to find you don’t have the right paperwork.
(One last niggle: why does checking in for an international flight in the UK take so fucking long when they can do it in a fraction of the time in the US? Just because we’re British, doesn’t mean we actually like queuing!)
Technorati Tags: travel
I can’t re-post any pictures here unfortunately, due to copyright issues (but, if you click through to have a look you’ll understand why they’re not freely available – they’re awesome basically…) but Xeni’s India, China and Tibet blog is amazing.
Earlier this year Xeni and her adoptive father Dr. M. X. Quetzalkanbalam travelled through the region documenting their travels in a very (Xeni) detailed way. This is really well worth a read. As someone who has just embarked on a period of studying meditation (yes me!) this was fascinating and inspirational.
Xeni: Notes from the road: India, China and Tibet, 2006
Technorati Tags: xenijardin, Tibet
Inspired by this month’s Outside Magazine, I thought I’d try to compile a list of the best places, in the UK, to live, or indeed visit, based on the opportunity to maximise your leisure time. Outside does this kind of thing a lot but I’ve never seen such a thing for our small group of islands, so here goes with the first one…
If you’re into any or all of the following:
Then you could do a lot worse than live in Sheffield or surrounding areas. Now, this is where it all tends to go wrong for people who know the UK a bit because Sheffield isn’t known for it’s amazing city, blooming economy and amazing architecture. Most people would know it as a little bit of a dump to be honest. Well, there are many reasons for this, but as someone who’s spent rather a lot of time up there in the past ten years or so, I can say that despite all this, Sheffield is a great place. Why is this? One main thing really, The Peak District is just a few miles down the road and offers the single best National Park for outdoor activity the UK has to offer if judged on access, variety of activity available (and allowed) and facilities for visitors. Of course, it’s a big place with many towns around it’s edge so you don’t have to live in Sheffield itself. Matlock, Bakewell and Hope are all pretty nice places with great access to the park too, especially if you like the quieter nature of a smaller town.
Some Peak links:
Some suggestions:
Excluding the lack of altitude, The Peak reminds me very much of some areas of Colorado in the US for the access and diversity of activity on offer. The Peak District has to be one of my favourite places…
All of the posts in this series will be in the ‘UK Outdoors’ category for easy filtering/linking.
Technorati Tags: peakdistrict, Sheffield
Dan Schwartz has created a very sweet looking OSX theme for series 40 Nokia’s (and some SE handsets too). No Series 60 version yet, but he has promised one in time…
I just happened across this video of Dan Osman speed free climbing a 400+ foot wall in the US.
Back when I used to climb a lot, I’d watch videos of Osman (and others) like this and know that I’d never get close to that standard. The Peak District was enough for me with it’s one or two pitch <slow> routes where there was a flask of coffee waiting at the bottom
Dan Osman, maybe predictably, died climbing back in 1998 (more on Wikipedia – link above).
