Last weekend I was lucky, for the first time this year I had the chance to head up the Coquet Valley, here in Northumberland.
The morning dawned grey ‘norrid so the plans of taking the camera with me were put on hold… no point in taking it just in case because the forecast was for poor all day, and they’re always right!
True to form the sun broke through the gloom and, doing a quick rethink on the hoof I decided to use the camera in my iPhone 4. I’m not a fanboi but, since I’m writing this as much to pass a few comments about the camera as well as blog about the trip out, it would be daft not to name-names.
This post is quite a long one, apols! It’s covering two bases; using the iPhone’s camera and apps, and a bit of a raod trip. Fear ye not, it’ll soon be over!
I am interested in photography so my iPhone has a few apps on there just to help me along. I usually take photos with a view to tweaking them later on my PC, so I grabbed a few apps as soon as I could to do that same tweaking while on the move. It would be daft not to, yeah? After all smartphones these days are all fully equipped publishing platforms. And I like the thought of having an adventure, publishing on the move ;) At the moment I’ve got half a dozen or so apps and they’re roughly split into; filters, panorama, slightly enhanced camera functionality and fun.
The apps that I do have are: Photogene, Filterstorm, ColorSplash, Autostitch, Panoramic and Gorillacam. This trip I pretty much thought that I’d maybe be using, given the pics I was looking for, were a mix of Photogene, Filterstorm and Panoramic.
Back to the driving. Going up the valley I chose to avoid the main roads, partly to avoid the touroids but also for a better view, particularly looking for snowdrops on the roadside or in the copses I knew I’d be driving past.
True enough I found them, as you can see in my first photo (all the photos are “shadowbox-ed”, which means if you click on them you’ll see a larger version of the same image).
When I took that photo I also muttered and grumbled a bit as well and decided to download an app I’d been thinking about for a while; Camera+. The main reason because I knew it has a “focus here and expose for here” function which none of the other apps I have offer.
Taking the pic of the snowdrops highlighted one of the flaws with the standard iPhone camera app/software. It doesn’t do the “focus here and expose for here”. I do that a lot with my normal camera so the download made sense.
That was a laugh.
I don’t know exactly how long it took to download but it took ages; partly because the rural mobile network coverage ain’t so great – with no coverage at all in some of the places I was going to, but also because the geography was sometimes challenging! Aw, bless the poor mobile network having trouble with hills and valleys.
THE POST VAN!!
Single-track roads lead to single-track road issues and I came across one as I pootled along, sunroof open, heating on (we are still talking February here :). The Post Van.
No drama, despite me capitalising the headline! Both the postie and I knew the score, slow down to a crawl and look for a passing place in the space between us both.
A little further on… wups!! Off the edge and down… down… down…
Down the steep, twisting and turning road down to the ford across the Maglin Burn. This is one of the places I like the most in the part of the County, and is one of the reasons I use this road out of preference.
Luckily, just across the ford, there’s a place where you can pull over in the car, not a parking place but its OK to use to stop while you jump out and take a few photos. There is room for cars travelling in either direction, first of all to see you in plenty of time and also to get past without a problem.
Here the whizz-bang camera on the iPhone showed another of its flaws; shooting anything like *into* sunlight and you’re stuffed and the pics I took, the pics you can see here, needed tweaking on my PC later. Mind you I was expect nothing less, so its not really a disappointment; full-sized cameras come with a lense hood for a reason doncha know?
At the ford there were a few spits and spots of rain and I went for the ambitious shot; see if the camera could take a pic of the pool while facing into the sun, more or less, -and- capture the ripples caused by the drops of rain on the still water.
And it did a very good job of it. Click on that photo and in the bigger version you can see them clearly. I was impressed and a happy bunny all rolled into one when I got to look at the photos when I got home!
The lense flare and wash-out (can’t remember the proper name for the white, washed out look at the top of the pic) is clearly shown in that pic. For me it actually adds to the image in this case. (In fairness in some of the others I took at the same time it didn’t; they have now been “filed” ;)
Onwards. Singing To Myself.
Well, fortunately for me I didn’t really have to sing just listen; by this time the Fairport Convention song “Matty Groves” was firmly on a loop
“A holiday, a holiday, and the first one of the year”.
Well, it wasn’t a holiday but it was “the first one of the year”. If you know the song those were the lyrics that brought it to mind because that’s what that day was to me. I wasn’t looking to re-enact the song in full :)
The roads were clear, the air clean, the traffic sparse and I soaked it up.
Rothbury was quiet, for Rothbury ~ its a beautiful market town and usually there are no parking spaces and I did spot one!
Farne Island
No, not the place, the beer.
A little while later I pulled in Alwinton, a place which prolly qualifies as “hamlet”, too small to be a village. But it has a cracking pub, the Rose and Thistle. That does a canny pint of Farne Island on draught.
Sadly the tables outside in the garden where still in winter quarters so I had to make do with sitting inside; no big deal but I had been looking forward to sitting outside.
Rothbury
Back in Rothbury this time and I’d missed my favourite Pie Shop and my favourite pie; a Steak and Black Pudding from the Rothbury Bakery.
Fact of life in rural areas; don’t bake stock you can’t sell and don’t don’t stay open when you’ve no stock left.
Bumma. I had to make do with a definitely-second-best from further down the road.
In Rothbury I took the only two shots I’ve put up here that I’ve done no post-processing on; the Turk’s Head and the Rooks. And to my mind they implicitly indicate the iPhone’s camera’s strength; shot’s taken in good light (great in this instance) and no shooting into the sun. I did take a shot of the town square with the hills and sky beyond using the inbuilt HDR option but the results were pant.
Rubbish results on the HDR partly because of the colour of the light (yes, really!) but also because the ambient light was throwing up so much contrast that I couldn’t see the results on the ‘phones screen. Another flaw, but not one that larger cameras are immune from either. Perhaps just a victim of “publishing on the move”.
The last shot I took produced one that I particularly like. The shot of the Coquet Valley east of Rothbury needed work on the PC to get the finished image I’ve shown here.
But! The second version of the same shot, the one named “Stylised view of the Coquet Valley east of Rothbury” was a welcome gem! It was produced in-phone from one of the filter/tweaks available in Camera+ and it stands, as I’ve already called it, as a welcome gem and result I can’t achieve on the PC :)
In preparing and posting the blog/journal posts for the 5 or 6 explorers currently on Race For The Pole I am reading a lot of material; all of it; for every one of them!
And I consider myself lucky for that.
What I am finding is that the content of the journals reveals a very human side to every member of the expedition ~ at the moment I’m having to concentrate on the British Antarctic Expedition team and its members ~ and there’s a real “human” feeling to the people involved.
That shouldn’t be the least bit surprising but I think it tends to be very much over-looked, partly because the events happened so long ago and partly because they have never before been published in such a comprehensive and “integrated” way.
Yesterday, for instance, Scott (Captain Robert F. Scott) started adding what he called “Impressions” into his journal entries. These are nothing less than poetical snippets of his thoughts; not a raw, matter-of-fact view of things but a poetical review of things as they make their impressions on him.
Today I am writing up another entry for another expedition member, Apsley Cherry-Garrard, who has come up with a very lyrical, atmospheric and, to me a “Zen” (pls forgive the vernacular) way to describe the blizzards they experience at the start of their expedition.
These are his words:
By 4 p.m. it was blowing our first Barrier blizzard. We were to find out afterwards that a Corner Camp blizzard blows nearly as often as a Hut Point wind. The Bluff seems to be the breeding-place for these disturbances, which pour out towards the sea by way of Cape Crozier. Corner Camp is in the direct line between the two.
One summer blizzard is much like another. The temperature, never very low, rises, and you are not cold in the tent. Sometimes a blizzard is a very welcome rest: after weeks of hard pulling, dragging yourself awake each morning, feeling as though you had only just gone to sleep, with the mental strain perhaps which work among crevasses entails, it is most pleasant to be put to bed for two or three days.
You may sleep dreamlessly nearly all the time, rousing out for meals, or waking occasionally to hear from the soft warmth of your reindeer bag the deep boom of the tent flapping in the wind, or drowsily you may visit other parts of the world, while the drifting snow purrs against the green tent at your head.
But outside there is raging chaos. It is blowing a full gale: the air is full of falling snow, and the wind drives this along and adds to it the loose snow which is lying on the surface of the Barrier. Fight your way a few steps away from the tent, and it will be gone. Lose your sense of direction and there is nothing to guide you back. Expose your face and hands to the wind, and they will very soon be frost-bitten. And this at midsummer. Imagine the added cold of spring and autumn: the cold and darkness of winter.
That’s it, I’m there, for me its real.
Blogs come in two flavours, it seems to me; active and dormant. A conclusion reached after no research at all so I might be wrong.
Its true that my perception of my blog would put it firmly in the “dormant” camp arena, except this time I have a reason for that:
I’ve been moonlighting, blogging for 5 or 6 other people! *shocking*. A personal project I’ve been working on for about 18 months actually started needing real attention back in October/November.
Its a historical project with a modern twist, putting “journal” (diary) entries from 100 years ago into a blog. The journal (blog) posts are historical but the events they relate to are also historical; the British Antarctic Expedition of 1910. The site is Race For The Pole
What does the name Capt Scott make you think of?
Quite a few people will be able to answer along the lines of “South Pole explorer” and “Didn’t he die?”. Fewer people will be able to name the other explorer in the same story, Roald Amundsen.
The premise of the project is simple:
From October 1910 until January 1913, far from the eyes of all but a very, very few, a drama of extreme courage and testing the limits of human endurance unfolded on the continent of Anarctica.
The players in this drama comprised small groups of British and Norwegian polar explorers. The objectives of each group varied in their scope but both had a common, ultimate objective: the be the first to stand at the geographical south pole!
This objective of this site is to publish articles 100 years after it happened. So journal (diary) entries of the expedition members will be posted here 100 years to the day of their original publication. The same with newspaper archive entries.
The expeditions set off a little over 100 years ago, in the summer of 1910.
Right now the British and Norwegian teams are busily setting up their respective bases on Antarctica. For both teams there is almost two years to go before there is any sort of a conclusion for either team – that is the level of effort such expeditions required at that time.
But back to this site:
I do have a couple of articles “behind the scenes” in draft format… plus I have some book reviews to write up… luckily I’ve been keeping note, otherwise, well, lets just say I have to write it down to remember it ;-)
I’m not sure what to do about the drafts, etc., in terms of “when” to publish them. I’d like to publish them around the time I read the book but that would mean filling in [a lot of] gaps before “today”. So I’m not sure. I guess it will come out in the wash!
Laterz!
This is a strange one. I’ve even debated with myself whether or not I should write this review. The reason being that I did not read the book.
Tim Etchells, The Broken World
I did start to read it but, to be honest, I wasn’t in the right frame of mind, I recognised that before I started, which meant that the book was already on something of a losing wicket.
Although I recognised that wasn’t in the right frame of mind when I started, it being a borrowed book from my local library meant I either had to read it or return it.
I’d picked it up with the best of intentions and, indeed, the story’s premise struck a bit of a chord;
Writing an on-line ‘walk-through’ to a complex computer game can take up a lot of time. But when things turn sour in the real world… As our narrator grapples with his players’ guide, life starts to intrude in troublesome ways.
Computer games are something I enjoy playing every now and then so I thought I’d give the book a go.
What stopped me in my tracks, apart from not being in the right frame of mind, was the writing style. I wouldn’t call it quirky but stylised and I just couldn’t get by with it long enough to get into the novel itself.
Interestingly, reviewers on Amazon express opinions across the board; five reviews, with scores at 5, 4, 3, 2, and 1 star.
5 Star: “An excellent and thought provoking read”
1 star: “Very Boring”
Writing yesterday set me thinking. Recently over-coming my hiatus in the types of books I read ..yeah, you didn’t know I had one of those did you?.. has opened my eyes onto different genre from those I usually find myself reading. So, why not write about it here as well?
The nub of my hiatus was that I would find it very difficult to start a book that was outside the genres that I most frequently read. The library, unbeknownst to them, has helped me over-come that. They have started displaying some books, a random selection I suspect, more prominently. The aesthetic appeal of the covers and the titles themselves was what first caught my eye. I then decided that I would choose such a book without thinking too hard about it, without analysing whether or not I might enjoy it. Pick it up. Get it stamped. Take it home. Read.
And so it was with Celia Walden’s Harm’s Way. In fact it was put back on the shelf twice before my new-found aethos won the day.
The quote from Grazia reprinted on the front cover, “A subtle, sensual, absorbing tale”, is confusing. Or at least it confused me. It was this, also, that made me question whether I should take the book on loan at all, my new-found eclectic tastes in literature have not yet taken me into the realms of chick lit.
I found the book an easy read and, although I almost regretted starting to read it more than once, by the end I found myself believing in the story and being carried along as the conclusion to the story unfolded.
What I did not like about the writing was that, to my way of thinking, the timelines and the life-experience of the principal character as developed early in the book did not come across as believable.
What I did like was the way the main character was written as the story progressed. By and large Anna was believable, although sometimes she was given more life-experience than I thought she could carry off. As the story drew to its conclusion I found it absorbing enough to carry me along. When I’d finished I was happy enough that I’d picked it up.
To offer the opinions of two others (from Amazon reviews):
It’s an original story, well-paced and the dreamy, intensely romantic backdrop of Paris is evoked with some very classy writing. If you like emotion, atmosphere and passion, read it.
It’s not exactly a page turner, but has enough in it for me to want to know the outcome which luckily is very satisfying. Finally Anna has grown up a bit and understood something about herself and life. Both the prologue where Anna meets Beth in London, years after the Paris experience, and the epilogue where they have a final word with each other work very well.
I like reading, its something I’ve always enjoyed. As a child it was particularly encouraged by both of my parents although my Mam was the most proactive in her encouragement. I read a lot when I was a bairn, enjoying novels with a wildlife theme the most; Kavik The Wolf Dog still comes to mind.
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Lately it seems to be books about stuff; factual stuff, history stuff, people stuff. Stuff like that.
About 18 months ago I picked up a copy of a biography of Genghis Khan by John Man (great book, very well written), just after I’d read the first of the “Conqueror” series by Conn Iggulden. This series is a collection, now, of four historical novels with Genghis Khan as it’s central subject. Book three in the series was published this time last year (Sept ’09) and I read it as quickly as I could.
During this summer I stumbled on the fact that book four in the series was due out this September. That was interesting in itself because the death of the Great Khan closed the last book.
I knew that the legacy and Empire that Genghis created continued to flourish and grow after his death but I’d no idea whether Mr Iggulden was going continue his series. No reason why not, Genghis’ successors had some remarkable achievements in their own right after all, but you never know, do you?
Quite excited with my find, I asked the library if they were likely to be holding a copy.
“Yes,” they said, “would you like to reserve the book for collection?”
Would I?? Does a bear …etc., etc..
And so I left the library that day with a big smile on my face and the knowledge that I was fourth on the list.
Fast-Forward
To earlier today and, as I returned a book, out of nothing more than curiosity I thought I’d ask when they expected to have the book in and when it would roughly be my turn to borrow the book.
Bated breath doesn’t come across well when you write about it. I was expecting, hoping that they’d say perhaps the middle of next month.
I was so wrong.
As I chatted with the assistant she clicked around her terminal screen and gave me updates; yes its been published – 10 copies – on their way from stockist – no wait – yes – tomorrow.
“Tomorrow?”
“Yes, we’ll be receiving our copies tomorrow. And you’re top of our list”
w00t!
…only thing is the library is closed on Thursdays!!
Still, it gives me something to look forward to for Friday.
#awyeah!
Or, Confessions of a Geek Pt I
OK, its time for me to come out. Time for to accept what my friends and fambly have known for a long time, but I was blind to the truth. Now its time to accept the truth: I am a techno geek.
For me, an essential part of my all-new Great Cycle Experience involves knowing where I’ve gone and sometimes what I’ve achieved. I still find that looking at a GPS trace on a map is a great buzz! Knowing what you’ve achieved, in a repetitive physical activity, is something else I get a buzz from. If I’m doing something physical and doing it repetitively then, in some way, shape or form, I’m training.
Training is never altruistic, it is always of its very essence a self-centered activity and for me the focus is on enjoyment; enjoying the activity for its own sake, enjoying the sense of well-being it engenders and enjoying the feeling of achievement.
From that, it goes without saying that if I’m training then I like to know how I’m doing. (Have I mentioned I’m a bit geeky?) I can, more often than not, feel when I’m getting better; coping more easily with a physical challenge you’ve tried before is always a good feeling.
Sometimes its more quantifiable.
Hence the iGPS I’ve invested in. And I have to say I’m impressed with the GPS apps for cycling that independent developers have come up with for it. I’ll prolly blog about those at a later date but for now this entry is about a spin-off from these.
None of the apps I use, run three simultaneously, does exactly what I want (that’s a given, right? ;) so I my thoughts set themselves off thinking about how to combine the GPS data (GPX format) I’m amassing and churning out a collation of the info; nerdy info about things like a cumulative total distance traveled, and such, appeals to me.
My options for tools are limited; Ms Access and Excel are pretty much it but I do have the raw data. What I needed was a way to import the raw GPX data into either of the above.
And I’ve come across two tools that will help me with that:
Convert GPX to CSV With GPS Babel
GPS Babel will convert GPX to CSV which I can easily load into a spreadsheet and work out some jiggery pokeryTM to deal with it once imported into a database.
Excellent stuff!!
Doing that produced a heeowdge table of, er, raw data… whoda thunk!
Part of that data is a long list of tiny changes in lat./long. co-ordinates; the basis for working out the distance I’ve covered. Huzzah!
Erm. But how do I convert the lat/long changes to information I can use? A spreadsheet formula was the way to go and, confident that I’m not unique in my geekness I was sure that someone else would have not only have derived such a formula but would have published same on the interwebz. Search Engine skills to the fore gave me a few links, of which
Excel formula to calculate distance between 2 latitude, longitude (lat/lon) points (GPS positions)
Found Here gave me this snippet of gold:
=ACOS(COS(RADIANS(90-A2)) *COS(RADIANS(90-A3)) +SIN(RADIANS(90-A2)) *SIN(RADIANS(90-A3)) *COS(RADIANS(B2-B3))) *6371
I’m on my way!
OK, let’s be open and honest, life itself is a perk. Being realistic it’s also appropriate to acknowledge that life is a bitch ~ at every opportunity it will try and turn around and bite you in the arse, good and proper, taking as big a chunk as it’s jaws will allow.
On the other hand, life will also hand you jewels. Not semi-precious, but full, I am, gemstones of incalculable worth. Right now, I am sitting in one of such gems. Yes, it’s that big, I am surrounded by it.
Coquetdale from the Rose and Thistle, Alwinton
If I were to hint at a name for this jewel I’d whisper Coquetdale, after which the conversation might remain muted for a while, or perhaps a topic of another flavour altogether might suddenly start up… can’t be shouting it from the roof-tops now can we, else everyone will want to go there!
Right now, I have dashed indoors for the shower hinted at in the clouds, has come. The clouds were true to their word and the shower was heavy enough for someone using a piece of kit such as this, I’m composing this on my iGps, to need shelter.
A slight digression, but that’s the way it sometimes turns out.
But it’s not just “Coquetdale” that is the only precious element to this jewel of a moment. Fused into it at the molecular level is friendship, mixed with a couple of hours or so’s graft, and a short 35 mile drive.
The friendship is perhaps the most precious element in the composition of this gemstone. Most certainly it is the essential element. Of course Coquetdale would still exist without my present jewel of a moment, but in this context, of this moment, it is the essential element.
And I am blessed to have such a friend, thank you John, your kindness and friendship, and Helen’s too, means a lot to me.
Life’s like that.
Look what I’ve just unearthed!
A whole 28.8Kbps at my finger tips! Cost an arm and a leg too, ISTR.
The “audio track” you heard as you dialled up is the stuff of history.
Time marches on, time flies, tempus fugit. On the other hand, and the way that I tend to look at it, is that time moves to its own steady, slow cadence. Much the same as water as it slowly erodes the bedrock over which it flows. Not so much a case of blink and you will miss it but rather look away for a while and when you turn back things have moved on. Regardless.
This website, this blog, is in some respects exactly like the bedrock I described above. On the other hand, it’s nothing so dramatic or poetic it is simply an illustration of the way things are. It’s rare that when you are working on a project that the project itself is made with one single element.
What I’m trying to say, is that this website, this blog, has been a long time in the making and if I don’t get something down here soon, then I’m going to be an old man. Such is time.
It’s quite simple really, the elements that have come together to get this project off the ground have simply been a bicycle and the GPS system. Easy, eh? Well, yes, my only excuse is that it’s a part-time project.
So, here we are! Or rather, if I’m being lees presumptuous and much more realistic, here I am ;-)
The image I have attached here serves several purposes really, on the one hand it relates to my time metaphor, on the other hand it represents a “wow moment” for me. The GPS that I talked about is in fact an iPhone and the image attached here is a screen grab from an app, one of the first apps I installed, showing the stars in the sky. I was looking out of the window one night, south, and I could see the moon and to it’s right, as I look at it, there was what I imagined was Venus. I am used to seeing Venus as a bright star in the sky, in the night sky and since I am absolutely hopeless and recognising other stars or the planets, I stuck with the safe option.
I couldn’t have been more wrong. Looking at the sky and then down at my little handheld device and then back up at the sky, I could see as clear as the nose on my face that I was looking at the moon and Jupiter. Well, at least I got the moon right!
It was amazing. I get a buzz from looking at the night sky on a clear night just, simply, by looking around. To look on this night and see something as clearly as it could ever be and to see some thing that I had never knowingly recognised before, blew me away.
And so this is a journey begins… I had the best get pedalling!
PS and yes this was posted from my “iGPS”. And why not? It is, after all, and essential part of this whole story. More later!