Just arrived in Victoria for a couple of weeks to visit friends and family. It was fantastically clear weather on the flight so I actually managed to take a few pictures from the plane that looked like something. Man! This is a big empty country.
The route took us over Greenland and down through the north of Canada near Rankin Inlet and over Fort McMurray to a refueling stop in Edmonton before continuing over the Rockies to Vancouver. From there we caught a ferry to Victoria.
My friend James, despite sponsoring me a cupcake a km for my recent charity bike ride to Southend, has paid me in cash instead. It's a disappointment, frankly. Still, I suppose the British Heart Foundation may not have looked too kindly on a donation of several dozen obesity-inducing dainties.
According to his suspect financial figuring, one cupcake is worth 10p. The man has obviously never eaten at Starbucks. Still, it was a generous gesture and I shouldn't quibble. All told I managed to raise £106.63. Wha-hey!
Here are some pics of the adventure.
The above link lets you measure the distance between any two points on the globe using a number of different references, such as place names or latitude and longitude (which you can get from sites like http://www.streetmap.co.uk/). I suppose it isn't much of a surprise such a service is available on the web. But what is cool is that it's hosted in Bali 7770 miles from London.
Another interesting tidbit… If you accidentally type http://www.streemap.co.uk instead of http://www.streetmap.co.uk you get "Hanky Panky College" which is surprisingly different from StreetMap and seems to have nothing to do with cartography.
I'm turning 40 next March and am thinking about what kind of humdinger of an event I should have. I was thinking a weekend in a castle might be cool.
Belle Isle Castle in Northern Ireland looks nice. It's £1100 self-catering for a weekend (3 nights) or £1500 for a week, sleeping 14 people. It's got a tennis court, boats, etc. Catering charges are £10, £15, £25 for breakfast lunch and dinner respectively. But it's got a big kitchen with an Aga and might be fun (and way cheaper) to do our own cooking.
Otoh, Northern Ireland in March might not be the most salubrious of locations.
So maybe we should go to France...
Chateau Des Senechaux looks nice.
Le Chateau de Bijou
Some other Castle Links:
Web France - Castles
Lloyd and Townsend-Rose
Castles for Rent
Scott's Castle Holidays
Holiday Rentals
The Chateau de la Guillonniere
Thought I'd start listing cafés and other places with wireless access points as I come across them. Maybe my googling skills aren't that great but I couldn't really find a list like this anywhere. Anyway, here's number One...
Alphabyte Café in the Shepherd's Bush Shopping Center, W12 London. It's a coffeeshop, newstand, internet café with four screens, and mobile phone store with free wireless access. Not particularly luxurious but functional and not too crowded. And free access.
Torrefazione at 1234 Government Street, Victoria, B.C., Canada. Found it through FatPort. It's a commercial service though. $4.95 CDN for an hour (unused time cached for 90 days). $6.95 for 4 hours (but expires immediately afterwards). $9.95 for 24 hours (but again immediately expires 24 hours later). etc.
NodeDB.com Not a physical site just a link to a wireless node database listing open nodes around the world. Have to check out Benugo's Sandwich shop in Clerkenwell.
BT phone boxes BT now has a number of phone boxes that are wireless nodes near motorway service stations, airports, conference centres, hotels and cafes around the country. Pricing is £6/hour or £15 for 24 hours, plus various other schemes you can see at http://www.btopenzone.com/Openzone/buying.jsp
Hee! Hee! I made it. James owes me at least 92.26 cupcakes. Or, rather, he owes them to the British Heart Foundation. Upon arrival we were greeted by these cheerful folks. The British can be extremely odd.
Now to find a seaside pub serving the biggest Sunday Lunch in Christiandom.
Crisis averted. John found his contact lens. A couple of ants had knicked it and were using it as a beach umbrella. Damn Essex Ants. Fortunately, John was able to get it back due to the magnifying effect of the lens rather reversing the umbrella effect. The Essex Ants are no more.
Crisis! John has lost a contact lens at km 77. He'll have to do the last 16km completely blind.
Just arrived Mountnessing at the 39 km mark. It's interesting to note that the typical cyclist's body on this ride is the inverse of that of the typical Tour rider's. There is a great preponderance of large-bellied men with little scrawny legs. How the Hell did they make it up to summit of fearsome Mountnessing?
I'm off on a charity bike ride tomorrow: London to Southend for the British Heart Foundation. It's 58 miles (93km) in the broiling sun -- a bit like doing the Tour de France, except compacting it all into just one day (as well as making it slightly shorter and not quite so hilly and maybe, just maybe, a tad slower).
I put out a call amongst friends and colleagues for sponsorship and have so far received:
£5 in cash
promises of about another £20
a pledge of 31p per km
a pledge of one cupcake per km
It strikes me as a bit perverse to donate a bunch of sugary dessert items to the British Heart Foundation but I suppose it's the thought that counts.
You too can sponsor me if you wish. Use the button below to donate via PayPal. I promise to pass on any money raised thereby to the BHF.
Or contact me directly and arrange some other form of payment. This might be a particularly good approach if you are planning to sponsor me with foodstuffs or other non-currency items.
Please note that that the more money (and cupcakes) I get in sponsorship, the less I'll look like a friendless tightwad to the organisers of this event.
I realise that, as always, this plea may seem to come a bit late and to a very tiny audience, but, hey, at least I can fool myself that I tried and sleep better because of it.
I've licked the butt of death many a time.
Today the Commons' Foreign Affairs Committee came back with their report on "The Decision to go to War in Iraq". This report was sparked at least in part by a Radio 4 story about how the Goverment asked a WMD dossier to be "sexed up". I put a couple of links to some of the ensuing war of words in The Beeb v the Government. So far, this has all been a bit interesting, but not really very scary.
But then I saw this report in the Guardian which took an objective look at the government's accusation that the BBC had an anti-war agenda during and in the months leading up to the Iraq conflict. This study suggests that the BBC's coverage was the least anti-war of the four main UK Broadcasters. That, in fact, it was the most likely to support the government's views.
This I do find a bit spooky. And the reason is that it made me realise that the government's accusation of bias against the BBC had actually affected me somewhat. Before the accusation, I didn't think about what stance the Beeb had on the war at all. When the accusation was made, I regarded it as a pretty spurious attack but, at the same time, some secret part of my brain went, well, yes, perhaps they were a bit anti-war. It wasn't something I necessarily believed but it was something I could believe.
And now, this report reveals it to be an extremely misinformed and spurious attack.
I should be relieved, I suppose, to find the BBC is as impartial and fair as I believed it to be. On the other hand, I have to admit that the Government's attack did succeed in affecting my opinion of that impartiality, which really pisses me off. it is the one aspect of this saga which has caused me to lose the most faith in the Government. They (in particular Alastair Campbell) have absolutely lost my trust with this attack. And I sincerely worry what other nefarious influence they may have had on myself and the British public which I haven't had the chance to notice.
