Dolphins

So in the previous post I blogged about a wonderful weekend in Inverness at a family wedding. Now driving to Inverness, or anywhere else in the north of Scotland, takes quite a while. It's made worse by the fact that I don't drive so Bryony did all the driving; approximately ten hours each way. You would think this would rather limit our trips to Scotland, and it does, yet just two weeks after the weeding we were in the car heading north, this time to stay with friends on Skye. Fortunately my mother-in-law was joining us as well so there were two people to do the driving. There will probably be a number of posts about the holiday as we had a great time, but I thought I'd start with the dolphins.

Ever since we first visited Skye back in 2009 (you can see all my previous Skye posts here) our friends have suggested we take a boat trip from Elgol to Loch Coruisk which is right in the heart of the Cuillins. Unfortunately either the weather hasn't been great or we've visited too late in the year and the boat trips haven't been running. This year we were there at the right time and had glorious weather (for the first three days anyway) and so over dinner on the first night while planning the week the boat trip finally made it onto the schedule.

There are a number of companies that run boat trips from Elgol but we went with Misty Isle Boat Trips; this is the company our friends always use when taking visitors out to Loch Coruisk and as everyone involved is so friendly they've never seen any reason to try any of the others. One of the reasons for the trip, other than to see Loch Coruisk, is that you can be pretty much guaranteed a close up encounter with seals which bask on the rocks on the entry to the harbour where you disembark for the short walk to the loch. Of course it is likely that you will get to see other wildlife as well (we got a golden eagle soaring over our heads as we re-boarded the boat) but there is obviously no guarantee. Fortunately we were lucky and had a pod of dolphins playing around the boat on the way out.

Apologies for the quality of the video. Firstly this is straight from the camera with no sensible editing and secondly for some reason it looks horribly blocky once uploaded to YouTube. I'm not sure what the problem is but I'm guessing it's down to a reduction in file size to make the streaming possible on "normal" internet connections. Anyway... this should at least give you an idea of the experience we had which was best described as magical, and that was before we got to the seals or to see Loch Coruisk, which will be the subject of future posts.

Last Year's Loose Ends

So the world has moved on into 2014, and yet since August I've managed just a single post on this blog. It isn't that I haven't done anything interesting since August, but for some reason I've just never got around to blogging about what I have done. I suppose at least part of the problem is having multiple blogs, and now a twitter account as well, which means that when I do have something to share this blog isn't always the most appropriate place. So to make up for the lack of posts I'm going to do one long(ish) post that will hopefully bring me up to date.

After my trip to Gent in August the rest of the summer was fairly quiet; no work or personal trips and nothing particularly interesting to report from the garden either. Things started to pick up in mid-September when we had visitors to stay for the weekend of the Penistone agricultural show, for which the weather behaved. If the summer had been quite though, I made up for that in October.

First up was a trip to Thessaloniki in Greece for a ForgetIT project meeting. This was my first trip to Greece and it was definitely an interesting place to visit even if I did keep getting mixed up with the different alphabets (note to self: write things down for taxi drivers in the local alphabet). Half the fun of these work trips is the socializing with other participants and this time was no different; the photo shows some of us watching the fish in an unbelievably clear ocean on the first evening before dinner (thanks to Søren Schaffstein for the photo, especially as I didn't take any of any interest). As usual I didn't have that much time in which to explore, but I did experience a magnitude 4.5 earthquake on the final morning; I was in a rather decrepit lift at the time which certainly added to the experience!

Given my schedlue for October it was unfortunate that I managed to pick up some form of throat infection while in Greece that left me barely able to talk. I was fine when I boarded the place home in Thessaloniki but by the time I arrived in Munich I could hardly talk at all, even copious volumes of weissbier while waiting for the plane to Manchester failed to improve things.

Five days after getting back from Greece, and with a throat that still didn't want me to speak, I headed to London to take part in the BBC #newsHACK event at Shoreditch Town Hall. I've already blogged about this event over on one of my other blogs, so I won't bore you with the technical details, but I will point you at our hack/demo and possibly more interestingly show you the video of the pitch session: If you don't want to watch all 27 demos, you can skip to around 55 minutes to see our presentation; including hearing how bad my voice was when I tried to answer a question.

I ended October with a visit to the National Railway Museum in York for a one in a lifetime chance to see the six remaining A4 steam locomotives together (two of them are usually to be found in North America). As with the #newsHACK event I blogged about this trip elsewhere, so I'll just include the obligatory photo at this point.

October also saw me being paid for the very first time for the 3D models I have on sale via Shapeways; my first sale was back in January 2013, but they only pay out when you've made at least $30. I won't claim this as profit, as I spent more than I've made on test prints, but it's a very good start! In fact someone ordered another model this morning so hopefully 2014 will be profitable.

November was again mostly taken up with work, but we did take a few days off to have a long weekend in Warwickshire so we could attend both days of the National Poultry Show at Stoneleigh Park. I always thought that it was interesting looking at marque worth of chickens at the Penistone show, but I think I was all poultried out by around lunchtime on the first day. I'm not entirely sure how many chickens, ducks, geese, and turkeys we looked at but according to the programme there were nearly 7000 entires plus 500 sale pens, and as some of those will have contained more than one bird you can begin to imagine just how much there was to see. The hope was that by the end of the weekend we would have a much better idea of which breed(s) of chickens we would like to keep once we have sorted out the garden, but if anything I think it just gave us more options! Still it was a fun weekend.

December mostly saw us getting ready for Christmas and visiting relatives, and strangely I haven't taken many (if any) photos so there isn't really much to show for our travels. Anyway that brings the blog nicely up to date ready for whatever 2014 may throw at me. I hope you've all had a great holiday and wish you all the best for the new year!

Air Drums... Way Cooler Than Air Guitar!

A Foldable Plug

Whilst I try and keep up with the latest technology ideas I don't tend to actually buy a lot of new "must have" gadgets. For example, my mobile phone is still just that: it's mobile and it makes phone calls, but it doesn't do much else. Now and again, however, I see a new piece of technology that I know I must have. Over the last decade that has probably happened just three times. The first was when I knew I had to get a Nintendo Wii (and I did spend a few cold mornings waiting for the shops to open to see if they had any new stock). I've also pre-ordered a Raspberry Pi having followed it's development over the last few years (I ordered one within about 40 minutes of them going on sale at 6am, although I don't know how long I'll have to wait for it to actually arrive). But this post is about the second time this has happened, and it all started a couple of years ago when I saw this video.

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When I travel I get really annoyed by UK plugs. They are really bulky and if I'm trying to get away with just cabin luggage when flying I've often ended up damaging books when trying to cram everything into a small bag. One of the things I try and do is avoid buying anything that I would want to travel with that can't be charged from a USB socket. This way I take my netbook (which is tiny), it's charger (which is basically an over sized plug) and a few USB cables so that I can then charge my phone, my iPod, GPS track logger, and Bryony's Kindle as well as being able to access the photos on my cameras whilst only packing a single UK plug. Whilst this works well it does mean that I have to have my computer on to charge anything. So I'd be quite happy to add a small flat plug to my luggage if it meant I could charge my devices easier when traveling.

So when I saw that the designer had finally turned the concept into a saleable product I pre-ordered what is now called the Mu USB Adapter. They went on sale last Tuesday and mine turned up on Thursday. The packaging is very Apple like (white and well designed) as you can see from this nice unboxing sequence.

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The design has changed slightly since the original concept (most notable the foldable sections now fold forwards in the opposite direction) but as you can see from this short, badly shot, video, it still works well and most importantly folds down really small.

I haven't had the chance to use it in anger yet (I was actually away with work when it arrived), but I'm already convinced that it's going to make my life so much easier when I'm trying to travel light. If you travel a lot and have a number of USB powered devices (I'm sure most of us do) then I'd certainly recommend you think about buying one.

Fotoshop by Adobé

Some of you might have seen this already, but if not enjoy what is probably one of the best parody adverts ever: Jesse Rosten's Fotoshop by Adobé.

Back For The Future

Well if I had more money than sense I know what I'd be spending some of it on!

Under Steam

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So once the driving lessons were over we were ready to depart on the 8.5 mile journey from Llanfair Caereinion to Welshpool.

The carriages we pulled along the line are interesting as they have an open balcony at each end. This meant that Bryony was able to stand just inches from the locomotive throughout the journey. So unlike many photos taken from a train, where you have to wait for a curve to get a good shot of the engine, Bryony had a perfect view, which explains the unusual angle you will see in this and the following few posts.

As well as taking lots of photos Bryony took a couple of short videos. As half the fun of steam engines is the noise I thought I'd show the video of us in motion along the open line rather than a whole bunch of still photos.

Tiny (8 Bit) Alien

On Good Friday we went out to a concert at City Hall in Sheffield. Given the date I'd forgive you for expecting us to have been listening to some form of religious classical music but that wasn't the case. In fact we spent a wonderful evening listening to Katie Melua.

The concert had originally been scheduled for late December but for some reason the whole tour was rescheduled and the Sheffield date was moved to Good Friday. It was a really good concert, but by far me favourite song of the evening was Tiny Alien. I didn't blog about this before in case any of the numerous cameras in use that night had been used to record the track and then post it to YouTube. So far nothing from the Sheffield concert has turned up on YouTube so you'll have to make do with a rendition from the same tour recorded in Toulouse on the 20th of March.

I am wondering if part of the reason it was my favourite song of the evening was the video backdrop.

Iced Bees

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Some of you may remember that back in 2009 I baked a beehive shaped cake for Bryony's birthday and had problems getting the bees to set. The runny bees were not the only problem though; I had issues with the instructions and converting from American to English units. Added to that the fact that without the cake tin you couldn't really re-produce the cake I didn't include the recipe in the post. Well I've now played around with the recipe a little more and have a solution to all the problems!

The main problem was the bees. In this new incarnation I've switched from using royal icing to make large bees, to using writing icing to make small bees. After a fair amount of practice I've figured out the easiest way of making the bees which you can see in the accompanying video (I won't be directing movies anytime soon).

As for the lack of a suitable cake tin, well I've solved that by making individual cakes using a muffin tin instead. Of course the smaller cakes means the smaller bees work perfectly.

For the full recipe and to see exactly what the finished cakes look like, head on over to the cookbook.

You Muppet!

If you like the Muppets and you liked this post then you are going to love this!

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Chopping Up A Courgette

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There are two obvious ways to cut up a courgette: slice and dice. Unfortunately depending on what you are cooking both of these methods can be somewhat lacking.

For example, if you are making ratatouille, then dicing the courgette probably isn't a great idea as it just turns to mush in the sauce. On the other hand slicing the courgette tends to result in the middle turning to mush leaving you with polo mint like rings of skin. Surely there must be a better way?

When we were on Skye courgettes featured in one of the meals and I learnt a new and brilliant way of chopping them up. Basically you cut at 45 degrees to the courgette and between each chop you turn the courgette by 90 degrees. If that didn't make any sense then try the video which shows me cutting up a courgette for dinner earlier this week.

This method leaves you with chunks of courgette that have just about the right ratio of skin to middle and tend to hold their shape when cooked.

Weird Pit Exit

This years Formula 1 championship ends in just over two weeks at the new Yas Marina Circuit in Abu Dhabi. As it's a new track no one knows exactly how the cars will perform around it but this video of Bruno Senna driving a two seater F1 car around it should give us some idea.

That has to be the longest straight in F1 and I assume the KERS cars will have fun, but isn't that the weirdest pit exit ever? Who though putting a dark tunnel in the pit lane was a good idea? Maybe it will work just fine but I can envision an accident there completely closing the pit lane and needing the race to be red flagged so that everyone doesn't run out of fuel and grip.

Silverstone, Day 3: The 2009 Forumla 1 British Grand Prix

On race day rather than being able to go into any stand or enclosure we had assigned seats in the Luffied A stand -- seats S212 and S213 to be precise. These were actually on the very back row of the stand and with the extra height gave a fantastic view of the complex of corners at the end of the circuit leading into the pit straight. We took an awful lot of photos during the race so I though that instead of just showing some of the photos I'd turn them into a short highlights programme of the race. Turn up the volume, sit back and enjoy the 2009 Formula 1 Santander British Grand Prix as seen from Luffield A, seats S212 and S213.

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Silverstone, Day 2: F1 Third Practice Session

On the second day of our trip to Silverstone we ended up arriving at the entrance by Club corner. As we had very little time before the cars appeared on track we went straight into the Club B stand and found a seat.

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The view from the stand at Club is actually really good and in the end we stayed in the same stand (although we changed seats as we came in and out for food etc.) all day.

The first session of the day was the final F1 practice session before the qualifying hour at lunch time. Rather than more photos I thought I'd share this brief video clip we took which nicely shows the speed and sound of the F1 cars.