WARNING: In the current absence of my own working gallery, and a few things that have occurred, this features quite a few pictures. Sorry if they take a while.

Well, it’s been a while since I’ve written anything, and a fair few things have gone on that are worth writing about, so here goes. As to what the inspiration to write this is, the main reason is the simple fact that I’m on a train to London, anticipating much frolicking, and want to fill the time.

I have a feeling this could get quite lengthy, so here’s a quick summary of the main sections (in the order they will appear) so just head down to the appropriate heading if that’s what interests you:

• Diving
• Gadgets & Electronics
• Travel (Slovakia)
• Random Thoughts that aren’t worth the time of day

Diving

• Wastwater

  Last weekend (10th-11th) and the early part of the week saw me getting a good amount of diving in everyday, all of which was pleasure diving in every sense of the word, which was nice.

  On Sunday, myself, Rory, Jonathan Alder, and Sarah went down to Capernwray and got a couple of easy dives in practising some skills but generally just having a bimble. Most of those folks, for various reasons, hadn’t dived in a while and it was nice to get back in and dive with them all. The weather was nice (if cold) and I for one had a very fun day.

  On Monday, Jon, Sarah, my sister and I headed up to Wastwater for a couple of dives there, seeing as the weather was nice and Capernwray was closed. Actually, to say the weather was nice is a huge understatement. It was beautiful, as some of the attached pictures hopefully show. Myself and Jon did 2 dives, the first one in which Sarah came along whilst my sister was surface support, then they swapped roles for the second one.

  Being the only people there, and given the lack of rain, the water visibility was really good for Wastwater and made for two really enjoyable dives. I took a few photos, which eventually will be up in the gallery along with some of Jon’s.

  Tuesday just saw Jon and I get a couple of extra dives in Capernwray before he headed off back south. The weather every day was immense, cracking the flags yet still cold. Really nice.

  End of the Lake Shot When We Arrived.

  

  Sun Rising Over the Far Hill

  

  Me Taking Some Photos of the Gnome near the Pinnacles

  

  Pretending to Be Artistic

  

  Blatant Advertising

  

Gadgets & Electronics

• New Phone

  I’ve gone and got myself a new phone – a Motorola Razr V3i (not sure of the exact version number, but pretty sure it is a V3 – pictures below). I’ve wanted one of these things for a good while, as, basically, I always thought they looked the balls.

  Getting hold of one and actually playing with it helped strengthen this in my mind. Whilst I had to get used to the differences in button location between this and the Nokia, along with how the menus work, I’m pretty sure I’ve got comfortable with it now after a couple of days and certainly believe Motorola have come up with a much better user interface than the Nokia one. It’s intuitive, heavily customisable, and does things as it’s supposed to. Like using any new interface, it took me a while to get to grips with the different naming and terms used for odd functions, but by and large it works a breeze. I haven’t yet tried to Bluetooth or USB it to my Ubuntu installs, but if what I’ve read is correct, that shouldn’t be too difficult to sort out and get working.

  The camera, whilst I’ve not really used it, seems to be pretty decent (which, compared to the old, old Nokia I was using before, wouldn’t be difficult). Hopefully I’ll get chance to use it a little over the next few days, but at the end of the day I’m rarely going to use it except on nights out when I don’t have the digital with me. It also features a video, which gives me something else to waste time on. But, most importantly considering it’s a phone, it seems to have pretty decent noise-filtering and a solid mic on it so people can actually hear what you’re trying to say to them in a busy environment. Again, I haven’t been in a situation to really test this properly, but no doubt London will provide that opportunity.

  Overall, I’d have to say first impressions are a lot more impressive than I’d expected it to be, so well done Motorola, looks like I found a new mobile brand of choice for a while, seeing as I was getting tired of Nokia.

  

  

• Eve Online

  This last week saw T Dave head out as part of a small group of TGRADS under the leadership of Mark Weston in ‘Operation Teacake’ into the 0.0 systems of Geminate space for a prolonged 0.0 ratting session. The journey out was good and smooth, with some nice screengrabs I need to post. Once there, we headed out into the belts and went our separate ways. An hour in, TD gets ambushed and podded by members of The Arrow Project who are apparently trying to claim that region and clearly operate a NBSI policy. Fair play I guess, I should have watched local closer.

  So TD cloned back deep into empire and missioned for a day or so before getting the opportunity to jump back out (with the help of Mark) in to the region, where I’ve successfully managed to go ratting again over the last couple of days, personally favourite moment being my solo take-down of a 900k BS in my trusty Caracal. Considering I haven’t ever really flown the Caracal before, I’ve been impressed with what it can achieve on a cheap setup, but I can’t wait until I manage to bring my Dominix or similar out here to take on some of the bigger spawns. Had one or two close shaves with Pirates entering the systems, but largely it’s been pretty safe. It certainly is nice to be part of a larger organisation such as TGRADS and IVY.

• Borked Server

  I’ve somehow managed to break my home server’s ports access. The Apache server still runs, as I can access the webpages using http://localhost from the server itself, but external access to it seems to be borked, ever since I tried to install a Wildfire Jabber server on there. I’ve posted help thread to the Ubuntu Forums, but my thinking is I might well have to backup and go for a reinstall of the entire server to see if that solves it. That could take time, but I need to have it fixed before I go back to Egypt. I backed up the databases last night, all the filesystem comes when I get back from the Big Smoke. Not looking forward to seeing if my backups were correct…

  In the meantime, I guess I’ll have to do things in reverse and post this to Blogger and / or Facebook and transfer things when I get everything back online.

Travel (Slovakia)

I figured for this segment I would follow a similar line of though to my London posting of previous times, albeit with additions / subtractions from the original layout. See where we get to.

• Location

  Stunning scenery, particularly after the snow had come down. Very ‘local’ but nice. The house and accommodation is great, always nice and warm and with everything you could need for the week. Sledges were a welcome addition to the fun once the snow started to fall. Whilst there wasn’t any snow the night we arrived, by the next morning there was a good amount down and it continued to fall. We frolicked and walked around it was childish and… FUN. A lot of fun. Which is why I’m excited to now be heading south where the snow is falling!

• Skiing

  I hadn’t been skiing since the Second Year. That’s nearly 10 years ago. As such I wasn’t up for anything too adventurous anyway. Mike was in the same position as me, George had skiied about 5 years ago, I believe. Everyone else was new. So the first day, as the snow was all powder anyway, we didn’t even try to ski. We just played. Second day we went down to the local nursery slopes and the like to try and remember how to do it. I was amazed at how quick the basics come back. Then it was time for some impromptu teaching of the others, George taking the lead as the most experienced. Hopefully everyone had fun, because I know I did. Later on in the day things started to get a bit icy, which didn’t look good for the next day when we went up to the main resort in the area, which had some nice fun runs, although all quite short. I have a feeling there was at least one longer run but not enough snow had fallen to open it, but I could be wrong.

  Even so, as it was, the runs available were quite icy and hard work until I got used to working out where the icy patches were. After that it was easier, but not too easy. Still, it was fun

  As seems to be the pattern in the country, things at the ski resort were still pretty damn cheap.

• Transport

  Flights to Poland were easy, and the transfer to the house was good, although we didn’t know where it was. Still, we got there and it was entertaining. The journey back to the airport seemed rapid by comparison, but then it was light. It will be nice when the local airport accepts more flights though.

• Food

  Cheap, simple, solid, hearty. Pretty much as expected. With the exception of whatever Jo ordered being a tad strange by the time it arrived, everything I had was tasty and filled a gap. Salad is obviously not so important.

• Alcohol

  As with the food, dirt cheap. The St.Nicholas vodka was worth the extra pennies, although the vodka in general is quite harsh, certainly not smooth, and more like Absolut and some of the Swedish / Scandinavian stuff if comparing it to what I’ve tried before. As for beer, well, I had a slight revelation whilst there that I think deserves it’s own post. Fair to say, I thought that while Zlaty was okay, it wasn’t a proper beer-substitute Sorry, John. can’t argue with the price though.

  As it ties in – drinking games. I never played the ‘Who Am I’ game before, but it’s become a firm favourite. The rules are simple, the possibilities endless. Sorry again to Jo for giving you Hosni Mubarrak, that was tough, but if you hadn’t dropped and looked at John Cleese you would have been fine. And still, I had to guess Pee Wee Herman… Still remember Ewan McGregor….

• Music

  Not really applicable, seeing as it was just what we had on my laptop or folk’s digital music players. One piece of music of note is the weird, apparently Slovakian version of Nancy Sinatra’s ‘Bang Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)’ on the first morning. Alternative

• Overall

  Brilliant holiday, many thanks to Mike for organizing. Could have been longer, but it was nice to get a taste for the place. Nice group of people to spend the week with, good to see George again after way too long. It sucked to be a bit under the weather the first couple of days, but compared to others I think I got off lightly. All in all, a lot of fun. Can’t wait for the next one.

• Photos

  

  

  

  Random Thoughts

  Word of Warning: This is just a collection of thoughts and is likely to contain items that may cause offence / revulsion / indifference. Read on as you like.

  • John O’Gaunt

    The pub, not the man. I’ve just been in there for a few pre-train pints and wanted to mention just how much I like the place. It has atmosphere… and balls. I didn’t have time to get anything to eat, but the food looked and smelled good, the beer is brilliant and has a few constantly changing pumps; and the general atmosphere is just plain nice.

  • Train Toilets

    Having just visited the train toilet (a news item I’m sure you longed to hear) it struck me whilst looking down into it just how fucking small the output is. Judging by the heavy loads I’ve been dropping down this week, I really doubt I would dare to drop a turd down one of these things. All I’ll say is I’ve blocked bigger toilets before.

  • UK and Weather

    We’re really not very good at it are we?