Month: August 2014

Brimham Rocks

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Brimham Rocks

Yesterday, we took advantage of the nice weather and went to Brimham Rocks, near Harrogate. The site is owned by the National Trust and features large millstone grit rock formations that visitors are free to climb on. It’s free to visit, but those who are not members of the National Trust have to pay £6 to use the car park.

I’ve been many times over the years. My parents have been National Trust members for as long as I can remember and have taken me there several times, but I also seem to remember going with my primary school class at one point in the 1990s, when marbles were the playground craze of the time. The last time was in 2007, with the university hiking club and as part of an unwieldy-sized group of 19 mixed-ability hikers. This time was with a smaller group of 10 – myself, Christine, and 8 other former members of the hiking club and plus-ones.

Christine isn’t so confident with walking so whilst most of the group did a nine mile walk around the wider Nidderdale area, we just did a stroll around the edge of the site and took photos. Some of the rocks are really impressive, rising up to 30 metres in height, and many have been given names. The Blacksmith looks like an anvil, and the Druid’s Writing Table looks like… well, a table. There’s also The Smartie Tube which has a tunnel that small people can fit through – I’m not sure if Nestlé has authorised the use of its trademark though.

Unfortunately I was an idiot and didn’t check the settings on my camera before taking the photos, so everything was taken at 1600 ISO. Thankfully I shoot in RAW so I was able to improve the photos somewhat, but they do look like they’ve been taken on a much older camera. An inadvertent retro filter, if you will. A small selection of these images are available to view on Flickr.

I doubt this will be the last time we go to Brimham Rocks. It’s a great place to bring kids – provided that you keep them under observation, they will love being able to climb the rocks. I’m sure we’ll be back when we have children of our own. And, if we pick a day like yesterday, we’ll be in plenty of company – by the time we left in the mid-afternoon, both carparks were full.

Shattered

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Elephant

I can very much not recommend working 10 days straight without a break. Especially if one of those days involves 14 hours at work with almost no breaks.

I was doing fine until today when my brain turned to mush at about 3pm. I was asked to calculate some weighted averages and I just couldn’t handle it. Thankfully there were enough mindless things to keep me going until I finished at 5pm.

And it’s only Tuesday – I still have another three days at work until I get a break. Admittedly Friday will only be a half day. And this weekend is a bank holiday so I’ll be off for three days.

What may surprise you is that I haven’t been resorting to coffee and energy drinks to keep going – I’ve had precisely two coffees in the past ten days and no energy drinks – just the odd diet cola or Irn Bru here and there. And plenty of early nights.

On the plus side, I’ve got plenty of work done during a really critical time for us and have accrued plenty of time off in lieu of overtime – around five days’ worth. So I’ll be able to take a well-earned rest when everything calms down.

Goodbye Delicious, hello Pinboard

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Yesterday’s links from Delicious post will be the last one, as from now on I’ll be using rival bookmarking service Pinboard.

I’ve been using Delicious for some time and for a time I was one of its featured users – I managed to amass several thousand followers on there, which is far more than on all of my other social media presences combined. But clearly people are not using Delicious anymore – nowadays, when I save a link, I’m invariably the first person to do so. And usually the only person. It used to be that any link would have had several other people saving it to their bookmarks as well, but not now. And these links are from the likes of BBC News and Lifehacker – not exactly small and niche sites.

Furthermore Delicious changed hands again recently. You may remember Yahoo! bought it years ago, and then more recently it was sold to AVOS Systems, a company owned by the original founders of YouTube. And then in May Delicious was bought again by Science Inc, which co-incidentally was the last thing posted to Delicious’ blog and Twitter account. Either its new owners have something big planned or it’s being neglected like it was in the Yahoo! days.

Meanwhile years ago I signed up for a Pinboard account. Pinboard doesn’t have free accounts; instead, everyone pays a one-time sign-up fee which increases over time. It was $9.40 then, now it’s $10.46. You can also upgrade to enable archiving, where a copy of every page you bookmark is saved, allowing you to search them. This is $25 per year, but your first year is discounted by your sign-up fee, so it would cost me $15.60 in year one.

Pinboard can do a lot more things than Delicious, and has plenty of options to set for your account. This is at the expense of design, however, and explains the main reason why I hadn’t switched sooner. As much as I prefer to pay for services I use regularly, Delicious – especially after its redesign – was a nicer experience. But I’m concerned about Delicious’ long-term future, and so I’ll go with Pinboard.

Switching over to Pinboard from Delicious was simple, as the apps I use the most for saving links – Reeder and Pocket – support both services, as does IFTTT which I use for sharing links to Twitter.

If you read this blog or follow me on Twitter, then the chances are that you won’t notice anything different. My Pinboard profile is public, so if you also use it, you can follow me on there.

Alestorm’s new album

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Over the years I’ve occasionally mentioned the music of the band Alestorm, a Scottish pirate metal band. Imagine heavy metal sea shanties, covering such subjects as piracy, drinking, and the acquisition of wenches. The above music video is a prime example, containing all of the aforementioned things, and it just happens to have come from their latest album. Other songs include ‘Surf Squid Warfare‘ about going into the future to defeat undead squid from space with beer. Yes.

I first came across Alestorm in 2009, when a friend recommended that I check them out on Spotify. I’ve since bought three of their four albums, went to see them play live in Leeds in 2012, and right now they’re the third highest-ranked band in my last.fm library. Their fourth album, Sunset on the Golden Age, was released recently and I got halfway through listening to it on Spotify before buying it. It’s one of their best.

Their first album, Captain Morgan’s Revenge, was okay, but I much preferred their second album Black Sails at Midnight – which I listed as my second-favourite album back in 2011 (it’s probably my third or fourth nowadays). Back Through Time, their third album, was okay – some good songs let down by rough and (in my view) poorer production quality. Sunset on the Golden Age, by contrast, has the production values of their second album and sounds much better for it. I also note that Alestorm’s lead singer Christopher Bowes has consigned his keytar to Davey Jones’ Locker – they’re actually playing real instruments instead of synthesising their sounds.

Though not very politically correct, Alestorm’s music has surprising staying power, considering that they’re arguably a novelty act. But, a novelty act that has released four albums and been on several world tours is not to be sniffed at. So crack upon a bottle of rum, fire your cannons and grab yourself a copy of their latest album – it’s on Amazon or iTunes. And they’re touring the UK again in the autumn. Plus, if you like Alestorm, you may also like Christopher Bowes’ other band Gloryhammer, who songs include the wonderful Unicorn Invasion of Dundee amongst others.