Comparing sausages

Bee Pollen (which is apparently meant to be good for you. The Portuguese seemed to think so anyway. We came across quite a number of vendors selling it at the market)

Old Man Withers

Beaches of Balaia

(iphone4s, camera+ app)

viewthroughmysoul:

Because it made me laugh so hard when I really needed it

cbdamasco:

“Oh, crap. Was that today?”

that would have been me…

I am continually amazed at the quality of the short films being made on mobile devices.  Checkout this short film by Mael Sevestre. It was shot entirely on the iPhone4s and edited in Final Cut Pro.

Is creative writing better with a pen?  

I have this debate with myself all the time.  I like the tactile feel of the pen in my hand and I feel free to make mistakes and let the pen flow across the page.  Whereas, on the computer I feel all analytical and the compter is constantly letting me know I’ve made either a spelling mistake or a grammatical error.  I try to fight the urge to make the correction, but those red squiggly lines are like splinters in my mind’s eye.  

The thing the computer has going for it is cutting and pasting and moving sentences and paragraphs around is easy.  Plus I don’t have to write and then retype what I wrote. Writing in the notebook adds a step in the process.  And although I have the best intentions to type my notes up, I find it easy to put the task off and off again until eventually the notebook ends up buried beneath a pile of books and forgotten.

Lee Rourke gives his thoughts on the matter in this Guardian article here.

What’s your thoughts on the matter?

Enjoying a drink in Oxford.

these are my stats.

where do you sit in the 7 billion?

you can get yours here:

I reduced my life expectancy by 43.6 minutes last night by watching 2 hours of The Walking Dead, episodes one and two which I Sky +’d to watch after I came back from Portugal.  It’s awesome show, if you haven’t watched it yet, I do recommend it.  The show is spooky in places, but that’s not what has shaved minutes off of my life.  What has is the new statistic from the British Journal of Sports Medicine website that says if you’re over 25 then on average every hour of TV watched reduces your life expectancy by 21.8 minutes.  Those folks who watch six hours of TV a day live 4.8 hours less than those folks who watch none.  So while I recommend the show, if you are concerned about your life expectancy dropping, then read the graphic novel instead.  It’s just as good.

I’m back from my trip to the Algarve region of Portugal. I’ve topped up my tan and am now ready for the UK winter to roll on. But to be fair, it has been fairly mild weather in the UK this October. We enjoyed some of the hottest days of the year during the first two weeks of October. Gore Vidal was my travel companion for this trip. I read his memoir, Palimpsest. I enjoyed the trip through history as seen through Gore Vidal’s eyes. It seems like every person mentioned in the book was in some way shape or form into or into the idea of same sex sexuality. I’m talking from President Kennedy down to Vidal’s father Eugene.

Early morning start to Faro.

Americano, please!

Rainbow treat this morning on my way to the gym.

(source photo)

I just received my copy of Lin Yutang’s book, The Importance of Living. Lin Yutang was a Chinese philosopher of the early 20th century who became an apostle of loafing.  The Importance of Living was his opus.  He described it as an:

Idle philosophy born of an idle life.

I’m looking forward to reading and digesting it.

Here are a few Yutang quotes that I like:

A good traveller is one who does not know where he is going to, and a perfect traveller does not know where he came from.

If you can spend a perfectly useless afternoon in a perfectly useless manner, you have learned how to live.

The wise man reads both books and life itself.

- clay

Just to a little taste of the conditions on Sunday’s hill-walk.  The wind was incredible. At times, it was hard to breathe.  If I went up the mountain blocked up, I certainly came back down with my head completely cleared.

I went hill-walking today in Wales in an area known as Carneddau.  Apparently this is the only place in the UK that has wild horses (not re-introduce wild horses), and I was fortunate enough to see three of them.  Unfortunately, I didn’t have my Lumix GF2 with me so I couldn’t zoom in on them or get close enough to take a decent shot.

The reason I didn’t have my Lumix with me is because the weather man had predicted pretty foul weather in the North Welsh mountains! I brought my Kodak PlaySport instead, which is waterproof and shockproof, the perfect companion for the moutains under rainy conditions.

The above photos were all taken with the Kodak PlaySport, which wactually bills itself as an handheld HD camcorder.  Today I used it primarily as a camera, although I did take a few video clips which I’ll share a little later on.

We climbed:

• Pen yr Ole Wen (978 m)
• Carnedd Dafydd (1044 m)
• Carnedd Llewelyn (1064 m)

By the way, I didn’t get many shots for several reason, one of which is the visibility was poor, I mean there were times when fog and the mist were so thick that it was hard to maintain group contact.

The second reason I didn’t take many photos is because the wind was strong, a couple of times knocking me off me feet.

I had a day off today.  After some heavy reading, I strolled into Leamington Spa for a little walk around.