Ai Weiwei
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Sunflower Seeds
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rantoutloud’s photostream
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Prudhoe station
New ticket machine at Prudhoe station, good you may think. #fail it only takes credit cards and takes minutes rather than seconds to issue tickets. You can’t collect pre-bought tickets either. So now you run the risk of a penalty fare for getting on the train in the morning without a ticket because the queue was too long.
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Yorkshire Three Peaks
Ingleborough the last of the Yorkshire Three Peaks
Going round again
This time we were better prepared and more than a bit determined to improve on our previous time. We started from Houghton this time, the ‘official’ start point the 3 Peaks Cafe and clocked in. Disappointingly the clock wasn’t actually working and a hand written note was shoved through a letter box with the time and date scribbled on it. The note paper and a pencil being borrowed from another couple also fortuitously doing the same thing at the same time.
Whernside
Pen-Y-Ghent
The start from Horton begins easily enough, crossing the road by the church and following the path around through the farm then joining the road at the old school house. The sunshine breaking through the early morning mist and the effort of walking shrugging off the chill. Turning left at the farm at Brakenbottom the climb to the first top, Pen-Y-Ghent, begins it’s relentless attack on the legs. The path’s attack on the iconic jagged profile of PYG is as steep as it looks in it’s final section and by the time the summit is reached, in almost exactly the hour, we know we have expended some real effort.
Whernside
The long trek down from PYG to Ribblehead is taken at run wherever we can, the rough ground and boggy terrain slowing us down too often. The stream, Hull Pot Beck, is crossed gingerly over the stepping stones, visible this time but slippery. We know from past experience that much time can be wasted trying to find a better crossing only to realise that this is as good as it gets and you’ll get wet feet whatever you do. Press on through the bog and minor detours around the worst bits, its no where near as bad as it has been but still over the ankle/knee/thigh in places. It’s a long way to Ribblehead and we join the road at Lodge Hall with no time to stop at the pub where we stayed on our last visit, pressing on to the direct route up Wherneside itself.
Ingleborough Trig
We’ve decided on the direct route as it cuts about 1.5 miles off the route but at the expense of the steepness of the approach. After a minor back-track, too eager to cut under the railway line, we find out just how steep the alternative is, damn steep but it’s agreed that its better this way rather than the never ending ‘usual route’.
There’s a brief, very brief stop at the summit for a handful of fruit nuts and other energy before the jog down to Chapel-le-Dale. Thats two down and one to go.
Ingleborough
The last top, Ingleborough, looks very far and very steep and high from here. The mist has cleared and the huge bulk of the mountain is exposed and fills the view in front of us. We agree that ‘this is going to hurt‘ and it does.
The final run back to the cafe from the station showing willing but we’d missed our unspoken target, or maybe targets, finally coming in at 7hr:42m.
BOGOF or not BOGOF
What exactly is BOGOF? Buy one get one free, right? Wrong, buy one and get another that looks almost the same as the first one but not quite oh and there’s another £125 charge to upgrade the second one so its nearly the same spec. as the first but not quite. Bloody marketing speak, its all lies I tell you.
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LWF 2010 136
At the Learing Without Frontiers conference at the Brewery / Barbican in London earlier this month. A stimulating and challenging conference covering technology and learning.
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Customer Service : Stark Contrasts
Amazon Amazing Customer Service
OK I admit it I’m a sucker and ended up buying some dodgy software from an on-line retailer but hey it was through Amazon Marketplace!
The software was a copy of Adobe Lightroom, a fantastic photo retouching / processing / editing system and it was a bit cheaper than anywhere else, well quite a bit cheaper. Feedback on the retailer was ..er well OK at least I seem to remember it being ok at the time. Software arrives and installs and I’ve been using it for some time but now I need to register it so that I can take advantage of an upgrade on offer from Adobe to their latest version.
What’s this? it won’t register, I keep getting errors “invalid serial number” or something similar. I raised a Query with Adobe support. Eventually, after about 30~40 mins on the support chat line, it appears that I have a possible pirate copy of the software. From that point on Adobe is completely disinterested.
I gather further information on the retailer and a copy of the order confirmation from Amazon to send to Adobe. At the same time I send a short note to Amazon in the vague hope that I might get some advice as to what to do. Raise call with Adobe again, get the same chat support call routine trying to get me to register the same information again, even though I had clearly stated at the beginning of the call that I know it wouldn’t work. All I’m after is a contact to seek some advice or get some acknowledgement that I’ve reported a piracy case or indeed if the truth be known an opportunity to beg or scrounge a discount voucher for use when buying the upgrade.
Eventually I get to raise a web support incident, it’s hard to do this on their site believe me, set out the case and ask politely what I can do. I copy the info from the purchase from Amazon. I get an email reply from the automaton then another shortly afterwards asking for proof of purchase, it has a link in the email for me to update the case. The link doesn’t work 404 Error and indeed for several hours Adobe’s support pages keep giving 404 errors. Sometime later I get a terse email from Adobe simply telling me I’d bought pirate software, that it was nothing to do with them, go try to get your money back, tuff shit we don’t care.
But wait what’s this an email from Amazon, We’re terribly sorry, we know it’s not our fault but we feel so bad that we’re going to refund your money, all of it including postage, and straight away, it should be back on your credit card within a couple of days. Thanks and so sorry we hope you haven’t been too upset, please come back..
You know what? which company would you feel good about? Which company would you feel like recommending to others? This is customer service! The only thing I’m still pissed about is the fact that I’m going to buy Lightroom 3 (from Amazon directly of course) thereby giving money to Adobe because it really is good software, shame about that but they were banking on that weren’t they? Adobe arrogant bastards.
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Canon 400D SLR – FOR SALE
Canon 400D 18-55 Kit
I’m selling my Canon SLR, it’s available on Amazon here Canon 400D 18-55 Kit. Offer includes 2Gb Kingston 133X Compact Flash Card.
This camera has done me well ver the years and is still a fantastic piece of kit, however I seem to have outgrown it and have been using my G10 Compact camera more often than not. So this has to go the money will no doubt be spent on more shiny things or actually to part fill the hole in my bank balance caused by the recent new shiny things.
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Boxing Day
Running off the excess
Embarking on a 7 mile run on Boxing Day morning from Steel Rigg car park on Hadrian’s Wall may just seem to be a bit mad but as someone said at the end of the morning, “I can’t think of a better place to spend Boxing Day, can you Rob?” Well actually I could, tucked up in bed, down the pub in front of a warm fire would be two at the top of the list. Actually I lie, while the blister that developed on my right heel did take the edge off it all the run was fantastic and the views of Crag Lough and the Roman Wall were spectacular.
Posted in northumberland, training, tynedale harriers, weather
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Ice and Snow
Skiing not Running
Well with all weather we’ve been having over the last month there’s not always been a great deal of running going on. By weather I mean a total of 16″ or so of snow and lots of ice, temperatures on average being well below freezing all day every day for the past two weeks. The lowest I saw recently was -11 °C on 20th Dec, the day I took the pictures of the lunar eclipse. Handling the camera in those kind of temperatures was challenging to say the least.
The snow conditions at the beginning of December were excellent for skiing and the boards were pulled out of retirement for a couple of weekends. Touring around the Hadrian’s Wall area just north from here was amazing with wildlife in abundance. The sight of hares running in deep snow was a site to behold as was the buzzard cruising the forests and hedgerows for those things that dared to venture out.
Training with the club (Tynedale Harriers) has been sporadic as work and the weather interrupted schedules and dampened enthusiasm but it all seemed to be made up buy the Christmas Night Out with Derek’s organisation and Dom’s Quiz the highlight to the run up to Christmas.
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INK361
Garmin
Marketwise Strategies
Mountain Circles
NFR
Tynedale Harriers
Dolphin Hotel
Galactic Teabag
Growing Old Disgracefully
Lucy Harris
Nothing Special
