Wonderfully crafted, expertly executed.

(watch on YouTube)

As expected a few people messaged me on the blog, and via facebook to point out where I could make the public transport options cheaper, I’ve also spent some time this week finalising the costs of the motorbike. The main points made were that the working year is not 52 weeks, that a monthly pass would be cheaper, that combining my train and zones 1-2 travel card would be more economic and that I should include the depreciating value of the motorbike in my calculations. Fair enough, let’s recalculate with those suggestions. All worked out per week for comparison.

Public Transport

• Weekly train ticket with zones 1-2 travel card* – £90.24
• Bus daily return to station** – £15

Total = £105.24

Motorbike

• Weekly petrol*** – £51.74
• Weekly Insurance**** – £5.53
• Weekly Tax – £0.92
• Weekly Servicing***** – £7.69
• Depreciation****** – £9.61

Total = £75.49

That’s still £29.75 per week difference, or £1547 per year. It’s a much smaller difference, and if I were to calculate the motorbike figures JUST for using it for work (dividing yearly costs by 45 rather than 52) it’s only a difference of £3.69 per week (£79.18 per week).

So taking all of that on board, is sitting on the train reading / having a nap worth £29/25 per week? Not really, especially when you consider that I have the motorbike for use all of the time, and yes I’d need to pay petrol for those outings and yes servicing costs may increase, but that’s the same if I use the train to anywhere other than London.

My headline may be misleading, perhaps being green isn’t for the rich when it comes to transport – but until there’s a solid cost benefit to using public transport over my personal transport; I, and I suspect a large portion of the population will continue to head into the city using their own options. At least I’m not doing it in a cage! Next post… carbon footprint comparason on the journey.

As ever, your thoughts, comments  and correction of my maths most welcome.

* Monthly season ticket multiplied by 12 and divided by 45 (my working weeks per year) to get weekly figure.
** Includes 1 mile walk to and from the bus @ £3 return per day per week.
*** 462 miles per week to and from work, 10 miles per litre of petrol = 46.2 litres per week @ £1.12 – (((46.2 * 2)*5) / 10)* 1.12
**** Insurance = £287.69 per year / 52 (I get to use the bike all of the time so not a fair comparison to divide by 45)
***** 2 Major Services @ £200 each / 52
****** £3000 depreciated to £500 over 5 years = £2500/5 = £500 per year / 52 = £9.61 per week

I take a taxi home in the evening and Catherine takes me to the station in the morning – that’s £7 a day, or rather, the same amount it would cost me to get the bus (after a 1 mile walk to/from the stop) there and back… yes I know… evil…. cars.

But here’s the thing, I can’t make the numbers work. I like to think I’m doing my bit for the environment but how can I afford it? It’s a privilege for the rich. Work with me on these numbers.

Public Transport Costs

• Weekly Train Pass: £73
• Weekly cab/buss ticket: £35
• Weekly Oyster Ticket: £20

Total: £128

Motorcycle Costs

• Weekly petrol: (50 litres per week @ 10 miles / litre) £57
• Weekly insurance: (based on 12 months / 52 – fully comp most expensive quote) £9.61
• Weekly tax: £0.92
• Weekly servicing: (2 major services per year @ £300 each / 52) £11.53

Total: £79.06

I can bring down the public transport train pass price by about £7 per week if I buy a monthly pass – but then I don’t save if I don’t go in (unlike the bike) so I’m trying to compare like for like – and £7 per week just doesn’t cut it with these figures.

So that’s it folks. Public Transport it just too expensive for me to be able to afford it. I’m going to have to jump on the bike – and these figures are hardly cheap – two full major services, top notch most expensive insurance and worst case millage figures at an estimated 10 miles more per day than google maps suggests. I suspect in real life it’ll be even less.

I don’t mind the cold and the wet – I’ve commuted into London for years on the bike – I’m just disappointed that our public transport system is so expensive as to be out-of-reach. I’m sure the solution to this is to continue to stack tax on petrol until it’s so expensive as to make public transport seem cheap.

In the time I’ve been back I’ve moved house, rented out my own place, arranged for a motorbike to be shipped from one side of the planet to the other, re-aquainted myself with some dear friends, and more importantly re-discovered the love affair I obviously have with London.

Part of that love is the fact I don’t live in town, I think that helps a lot. I did live at one point in Muswell Hill, the nice quiet part of London that is home to Alexandra Palace. It was busy, noisy, dirty, alive. It was everything I love about London, and everything I’m very happy to leave behind at 6pm. It turns out I’m a much bigger fan of the bucolic lifestyle than I previously imagined.

That realisation has resulted in getting the best out of London town – enjoy the vibrancy, enjoy the energy and noise, enjoy the fact you can do anything you want, can find anything you want and can change the world from your office towards the east end of town. Unlike Melbourne, where I lived in the CBD for six months and loved every moment of it, London requires you to take a breath every now and again, some people swim these waters without ever needing to see the outside world – London isn’t England, but for some, you’d be excused for thinking it was.

My new gateway to the capital is Marylebone Station, that’s started a whole new love affair – both with the station and with the company that runs it, and the associated railway line all the way up to Birmingham – Chiltern Railways. There’s another post on the way about Chiltern so I’ll not wax lyrical right now about their punctuality, how nice the staff are, how clean the stations are, how well priced the tickets are, how pleasant a journey is from Buckinghamshire into the city is…. mmm I should stop now. They’re nice people, I’ll leave it there until the next post.

Back to the question at hand. Moving back to London – right or wrong? Right in every sense. I weighed in on a debate some time ago about England Vs Australia on lonelyplanet.com. I said then that I thought England won by a nose… I still hold that view and 16 months away has only re-enforced the fact that I love the green green grass of home – no matter if that’s Wales, or my adopted England. Let’s not mention the rugby.

Squash with Ken... even though he won the trophy he's still a pretty nice bloke.

Australia has been good to me – it’s helped me lose a not-insignificant amount of weight (4 Stone/26 Kg), it’s helped me discover an active lifestyle I didn’t really understand I had or could even make happen. It’s provided me with friends that I’m going to be exceptionally upset to leave behind…. it’s a culture and a life-style I’m reticent to say good-bye too. Working out of Australia has been a real experience – I’ve never really heard the phrase “drink a can of harden-the-fuck-up’ and get on with it” before – but I have to say I agree with the general principle… Melbourne is the arse-end of beyond as far as the rest of the world goes, but that doesn’t seem to matter when you’re here – only when you’re on a plane trying to get here.

I'm going to miss the ride-outs with Nigel - actually I'm just going to miss Nigel.

I land back in the UK on Thursday (17th) morning – I’ll be in the office from Friday (18th) and back to my old tricks – still working for Lonely Planet – just doing it from a slightly more ‘connected’ city… which should make my life a little easier… oh… and being in the same hemisphere as my wife may also be quite pleasant – scrub that – I can’t wait to get home to Catherine.

I shan’t miss a few things from Oz – the price of books for example, or the sad lack of any technology launched in the rest of the world in the last 12 months, or the customer service (seriously… I didn’t think it could get worse than London). But they’re trifling things and I don’t want to sound like I’m moaning. I am looking forward to being in London again – how well it’s connected to the rest of the world, the feeling that you can actually change the world and the ability to grab absolutely anything you need – ever – by jumping on the bike and finding the right part of town… then haggling for it! I’m also rather looking forward to being so near France and the rest of the continent again… I didn’t think I’d miss the ‘idea’ of being able to dash over the channel…  but there you go.

Here it is then – the final post from Oz, the final goodbye in the office and the final farewell to dear friends… but as the New Zealanders say… “you don’t lose a friend, you simply gain a place to stay in London.”

That is all.

Many of you will have noticed I’ve been growing a tache…. yes I think it looks good, and yes Mrs Cashmore will be waiting at Heathrow with a razor.

What many of you may not know is that I’ve been doing it for charity – in particualr I’ve been doing it to raise a little cash for male cancer charities here in Oz. You’ll remember about this time last year I was also raising money through sponsorship of the ride to Russia for male cancer charities in the UK… thank you to everyone that has donated.

In fact if you’ve not donated yet you can still do so over at my movember page. The Lonely Planet team has raised just over $3000 to date, I’ve raised $35 which is a bit embarrassing… so please do help.

I thought I’d leave you with a rare interview that I (and my tache) gave to LP Staffer Huw Fowles.

LP: Mr Tashmore – how is your mo going?
Mr T: Very well – although it refuses to grow in the middle – and I constantly think there’s something on my lip, before realising there is something on my lip.

LP: Does he/she have a name?
Mr T: Dear God man! What am I? A childrens’ TV presenter?

LP: Which celebrity have you modelled yourself on?
Mr T: My dad.

LP: (tears in eyes) What will you be doing with your mo at the end of the month?
Mr T: Keeping it until the wife demands that it’s removed – which should give me until Christmas to get a really good lip bush going.

LP: What are your plans for Decembeard and Januhairy?
Mr T: Please no more – seriously – no more……

And while Mr Tashmore has his back turned we managed to get a quiet word with Mr T’s mo.

LP: What is your real name?
Mr T’s mo: Trevor.

LP: Trev – how is life with Mr Tashmore going?
Trevor: Yeah it’s OK. Mr T treats me well. Though we seem to be spending way too much time watching classic cricket matches from the 80s and he seems totally obsessed with going around to people’s houses wanting to clean their pools. Weird.

LP: Mr T has modelled you on his dad – any truth to that rumour?
Trevor: Completely. Matt’s dad is Tom Selleck.

LP: We hear you’ll be on display until Christmas?
Trevor: Yeah – happy with that. I was expecting to be on e-Bay later this week. Do you have any idea how much Tom Selleck’s son’s mo would fetch? The mind boggles.

LP: What are your plans for Decembeard and Januhairy?
Trevor: I want to continue to grow as a moustache and I’m pushing for Mr T to allow Brian (the beard) to come play. But if Mr T invites that nerdlinger Graham (goatee), I’ll probably leave in protest. Plus if I leave, Mr T will look like a librarian or that dude from the Curiousity Show and that’d be a right laugh.

LP: Thanks for your time Trev.

Finally – but really most importantly….. please… go check your balls now, and then keep checking them regularly…. there’s even a handy YouTube video that shows you how

And relationship is the right word. Over the last couple of years it’s fair to say that both Mark and John have come in for a barrage of complaints and concerns from other media outlets. As Mark described the journey so far – a bit ‘bumpy’. But here’s the bit that made me happy. One of the first things John said, quite passionately, when he stood up in front of the whole company was “Lonely Planet is not for sale”. He emphatically stated he had no thoughts of selling Lonely Planet and that Lonely Planet was incredibly important to BBC WorldWide. That was a great boost to the gathered throng who’ve grown tired of the rumours and rumblings out of the UK that the BBC was being forced to get rid of LP. Then what topped it for us was Mark standing there saying exactly the same thing.

So am I confident about the future of LP? Damn right.

The thing that rocks most about the fact that Lonely Planet has a band, is that it has a really really good band – a band that can fill the Gershwin room at the Espy (a pretty funky and cool venue), sell $1200 worth of tickets on the door and still consider that a warm up gig for the ‘real’ one next week at the Christmas party.

The social aspect of the band is pretty cool too – there’s the head of HR, the head of IT, there’s the chap who makes the tea (me) and a lawyer, and an IT guy and a cartographer, and an ex-author now head of editorial for the website, there’s…. well you get the picture. I just like the fact that I’m a pretty naff singer, and an even worse drummer and I still get to play the drums on Lady Marmalade and sing Beat It… and because the rest of the band is quite so good – I manage to pull it off.

Now… to leave you with a video of us rehearsing for the next gig – I think you’ll like it.

(Watch on YouTube)

The big outback trip looks as though it wont happen – news on why at a later date – so I’m attempting to get some combination outback, off-road, on-road runs in over weekends. That essentially means no more than 500km at the most over two days with one night camping.

This is the first of that series of runs and is the famous Ballarat, Bendigo, Melbourne triangle. Bendigo and Ballarat are towns built on the history of Gold – and both are responsible for the early wealth of Melbourne. I’m expecting great sweeping vistas across the goldfields and majestic and dirty off-road sections that will challenge the road tyres on the XT660

Blogs posts and photos of course as and when I’m on the road this weekend – but no video as the camera is still in the UK.

Any suggestions or detours on this route? Anywhere I simply can’t miss? Stretch of road that will make me cry? Please do help…….

View Larger Map

I made it up to Canberra for GovHack and had an incredibly inspiring time – we heard from Dr Nicholas Gruen (chair Gov Internet 2.0 task force) on the reasons Government were engaging in this area, we heard from John Allsopp (organiser) about the reasons for running the event and how he’d managed to pull it all together in just 3 weeks – seriously amazing.

I was lucky enough to be asked to deliver the keynote – I preached – I used the words piffle and tosh and I said something about this being an important inflection point in history, where we, the geeks, had for the first time the power to actually change the world – and that we can do it without throwing stools through starbucks windows (however tempting that may be). I talked about the fact the government were in the room with us giving us the data – that they were positively encouraging us to take it and use it to better inform the electorate – how bloody impressive is that? So we mustn’t sit here and play, we need to change the world.

They did it – the winners were an amazing gang who’d not met before the event but got together and built one of the most disruptive ideas I’ve ever seen… image a world in which you could easily see and understand the links between lobbying companies, companies bidding for work and government departments…. it would make government types squirm right? It did. Lobby Clue took the main prize – there were some really impressive builds from the rest of the group that you can see over on the wiki.

Move on a week and we’re back in Melbourne at the joint Lonely Planet / GovHack hack day – called MelHack. Phew…. first external hack day I’ve run since Over The Air in London a few months ago and I’d already forgotten how much work is involved in keeping a group of about 30 people fed, watered, inspired and cool in a building that’s air-con is playing up.

Melbourne is a cool town. It’s full of the types of people that like to go to interesting events like Trampoline. But this was the first external event I’d run here, and whilst in London I’m confident enough to stick my neck out and say we’ll comfortably get 400+ people to a hack day given the budget and space – I really wasn’t sure how it was going to fly here. We didn’t have a mass of space – we ran the event at the Lonely Planet HQ in footscray – and we certainly didn’t have a massive budget – so I concentrated on quality rather than size…. and boy did we get that. Over 50 people came through the door over the weekend and 12 ideas were presented by both staff and external devs. The quality of the people and ideas was massive.

The winners built a day trip generator using Lonely Planet POI (Point of Information) data. The application is live and working – but it does tend to struggle at the moment as it’s using the anon LP API access which is heavily throttled…. but when that’s fixed it’s stunning…. all the other ideas are listed over on the wiki – and are well worth a read and a play. The presentations are also worth a watch and they’re up on YouTube now.

I’ve been asked a lot here in Oz how you organise one of these events and if it’s only certain companies that can run them – not true. Hack Days are a lot of work, but easy enough if you think about the logistics in advance and you remember one thing above all others…. it’s all about the developers. Ross Hill took a short video interview with me talking about this very point – and if you’re interested in gettting your own hack day off the ground it might be worth a watch.

The bad news. Weight. Well, yet again I’ve hit a bit of a sticky point – I’d blame doing two Hack Days two weekends in a row – one of which I ate a lot of biscuits at and the other I was very good at – the reality is that I’ve not been watching what I’m eating well enough and I’ve not done enough exercise and I’m one again faced with a third week at a static weight… but we’ll break through it – 113kg by December 16th so I can say I’ve lost 30kg (4.7 stone) before I come home to London.

The good news. Fitness. I’m going from strength to strength – really. I’m lifting twice as much as I started doing and my cardio tests are amazing – I can’t get over how much better I’m feeling – not only because I’m not carrying as much weight – but because my heart isn’t having to work so hard to move me around – compliment of the year remains, ‘you no longer run like a fat man’ – thanks Marcus.

So why is Starbucks making this complaint a PR disaster? If upheld it’ll show that the big SB has something to worry about – to be specific it shows that whilst they’re niggling over the small print of an advertising campaign they seem to have forgotten about the customer. Fight back, take Costa, improve your coffee, change your stores put a little of the zest that you seem to have in buckets with your off-brand stores and run your own survey. Simples.

However, what I have noticed is that for every person who discovers this simple fact, there’s an army of people who need a complicated diet to make things work. I understand that different people need different things to get motivated and to get the weight off and I applaud anyone who makes that effort – I know how tough it is. What does get my back up is ‘research’ that suggests that it’s ‘not your fault your fat’. It is. It’s not nice but it’s true.

So, here’s some research. Because we jog more in the western world, but we are all getting fatter it naturally follows that jogging makes you fat.

So here’s the deal – let’s use this page – leave comments and I’ll update this post – and use this flickr group I’ve created to upload your drawings – and we’ll see how far we get, then, if I can pull it off I’ll get the little black book out and see if we can’t get some feedback from one of the manufactures…. this is going to be fun.

This is my first stab at it

Technology: (updated)

• 8mp+ camera on back
• lq camera on front
• very loud speaker (possible use as a siren?)
• emergency aaa battery slot / multiple charge options – inc mini usb
  • 110/230v 50/60hz and unregulated 12v dc supplies
• whole back should be a solar panel
• should work all over the world on all networks
• dual sim?
• exceptionally long battery life (dual mode? good battery vs performance?)
• hq / medium sized screen to view maps – should be anti-glare for reading on – perhaps e-ink
• GPS / DGPS
• External GPS antena plug
• wi-fi and bluetooth – easy to manage in power settings / hardware?
• LED Torch
• Hard Drive
• Video playback & audio playback
• Sat phone compatibility (plug in external antenna)
• Pico Projector
• Projected keyboard?
• PLD/ Spot device (personal locator beacon)
• OS based mapping (not internet)
• 2x mini usb to attach peripherals
• normal sd card slot
• audio & video recording

Design: (updated)

• made from very hard, durable ‘flexable’ plastic – not metal – perhaps from a hard rubber?
• ‘grippy’ sides
• easy large buttons
• dust/wind/rain proof
• easy menu navigation, even in bright/low light
• screen / settings change in low power mode
• Light of some sort – flash? led torch?
• d-ring

OS: (new)

• Should be hackable
• Should allow access to an app-store
• Full PC OS / small cut down version?

Apps: (new)

• ZeOutdoor list here.
• Internet
• Email
• Skype
• Translation / phrasebook
• Guide
• iPhone navionics app

Okay over you… what else should it have – let’s start with building out the requirements and those of you with a design bent can use the flickr group to upload designs…..

The trip back was to organise Over The Air 2009 – a full post and round-up coming soon – but for the moment I think it’s enough to say it was a massive, massive success. The photos I managed to take in-between moving bean-bags and hugging Daleks are to be found here, and some video of my putting fires out after blowing things up have started to appear on YouTube.

The other news from London is that I joined the Travel Club. It’s a private members club based out of St James Square that caters to people who work in the Travel Industry. It’s been put together by a gentleman called Tom Nutley, who was the exhibition director for World Travel Market with Reed Exhibitions – he’s a very smart fellow who understood that the travel industry had no place to call ‘home’ in London – and his choice of the In & Out club was inspired. I spent a very happy month walking the halls and running meetings from there, a perfect base in central London. (they have the first privately built squash court in the country – which is single handily responsible for my conversion to the sport).

Talking of sport (see what I did there), and squash – sooooo much fun – and helpful with the weight loss too. I had a small blip in the week of Over The Air, and put on a little – but after some swimming and more games of squash with Frank Wales and Paola Kathuria I seem to have managed to pull it back on track… even if it’s only ‘just’ back on track. The new target is 110kg by Christmas…. 3kg below what I ’should’ be on the 16th December.

That’s about it from me for this long update. Look for more OTA stuff later this week, and also, some rather exciting news about a Lonely Planet Hack Day here in Melbourne that we’ll be announcing on Monday.

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMhQc8T7tqQ)

He was of course referring to the slightly dodgy weather forecast for the day. ‘Cloudy start with chances of isolated showers in the afternoon’. So I replied ‘Quite, I’m inclined to ride come what may… grew up in Wales – meet yours?’. You could argue this was tempting fate – but a quick check of BOM* radar that morning suggested a small windy front clearing for a good ride later in the morning.

We headed off and hit the Hume Freeway on time to meet up with Jamie… it was then Nigel realised we needed the Hume HIGHWAY, one junction back along the M80. ‘Shall we just go back?’ I meekly suggested…. ‘No! We’ll meet him down the road – call him’. Or something along those lines – suffice to say we missed Jamie and finally caught up with him a few miles up the road at the Craigieburn Servo (service station for my UK readers).

This was actually a fortuitous turn of events – the weather front was massing and again checking the radar we saw it was just a band of rain and we’d sit it out. An hour later I decided to check the radar from another source – and was rather amazed to discover the difference in radar images from two different iPhone apps… it appears that a radar station was down – and whilst my app (Oz Weather) reported this, Nigel’s didn’t (BOMradar) – but continued to show a small amount of rain. When the radar station came back online I saw what the weather was really doing – to which Nigel quietly stated, ’sod this for a game of soldiers’ and fled the scene.

So our 288km ride turned into 50km north of Melbourne and back again in the pouring rain. Ah well – can’t have it all.

*BOM – AAustralia Bureau of Meteorology

It did however result in a nice collection of photographs of a typical Australian Service Station – sorry Servo – in the rain.

Here’s the moment, caught on camera that the whole thing ‘just went wrong‘

The really simple recipe for this video comes from Alexlebrit, again on Horizonsunlimited.com

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-Mg_66ulk4)

Ingredients:

• 0.8kg/2lb mussels,
• 1 garlic clove, finely chopped,
• 1 shallots (or a small onion), finely chopped,
• 8g/¼oz butter,
• Parsley, thyme and bay leaves,
• 50ml/ 1½fl oz dry white wine or cider,
• 60ml/2fl oz double cream or crême fraiche,
• Crusty bread, to serve,

Method:

1. Wash the mussels under plenty of cold, running water. Discard any open ones that won’t close when lightly squeezed.
2. Pull out the tough, fibrous beards protruding from between the tightly closed shells and then knock off any barnacles with a large knife. Give the mussels another quick rinse to remove any little pieces of shell.
3. Soften the garlic and shallots in the butter with the herbs, in a large pan big enough to take all the mussels – it should only be half full.
4. Add the mussels and wine or cider, turn up the heat, then cover and steam them open in their own juices for 3-4 minutes. Give the pan a good shake every now and then.
5. Add the cream and more chopped parsley and remove from the heat.
6. Spoon into two large warmed bowls and serve with lots of crusty bread.

Alex, from Brittany, France.

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jI7M9dWSIIs)

Ingredients:

• sunflower oil
• 2 chickenbreast
• garlic
• green paprika
• sugar peas
• spring onion
• cabbage
• beancurd/light miso
• unsalted cashew nuts

Method:

Cut everything into thin slices,except the sugar peas and nuts. Stir fry in above order. I usually precut all ingredients at home,so this meal is best eaten on a weekend trip, also, buying so little quantity ingredients in the local market may be more trouble than it’s worth in our part of the world.

Is it worth the hassle? Yes, it is so much better than expensive dehydrated packets, though they have their time, and with a good pilsner beer you are satisfaction guaranteed.

Peter, in Oslo (GSPeter)

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4c5uk-fNUoo)

Ingredients:

• Chicken Breast
• Red / Green Pepper
• Packet Chinese Sauce

Method:

I brown off the cubed chicken an onion and some green or red peppers then chuck in one of those little packets of chinese sauce. If you can’t find fresh chicken then I’ve used frankfurters (Norway of course!), which are lovely. I’ve made a sauce from tomato puree when nothing else was available. Throw some rice in there and you’ve got a decent meal.
(Flyingdoctor)

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2qD0n4a8H0)

Ingredients

• Rice
• 3 times as much water as rice
• cup-a-soup

if available

• meat (salami works really well)
• vegetables (my favorite is peas)

Method:

Boil the rice for about 3/4 of the required time before adding your meat, at this stage also add your herbs and spices and your vegetables – mix well before adding the cup-a-soup straight from the packet. Stir in the powder for a few minutes and you’re done – simplicity itself and a hot, filling, energy packed meal in a little over 10 mins.

Your turn

Do you have a one pot recipe you wouldn’t be without on the road? Email me (or leave a comment below) and tell me how you make it and I’ll turn it into a video… credited to you of course.

The plan is to spend 12 months getting the weight off whilst gently increasing fitness, then once I’m down to the target weight (99kg) work really hard on the fitness. As part of that we’re tracking my Cardiovascular Fitness… I’ve never quite got the stats part of the whole exercise thing – what is the point of Nike+ ? But I think I’m starting to get it… here’s the chart of my first two tests.. it shows improvement, and bloody hell does it make me want to make it look better!

The easiest way for me to achieve things is to say in public I’m going to do it – so here’s that public statement – by early next year my weight will be in double digits.

Here’s the chart – blue line is target, red line is what I’m actually achieving.

I had the distinct pleasure of meeting Lois in London not long before I headed out to Australia, I already knew of her first book, Lois on the Loose, and it was amazing to tie the experiences I’d read about in the book to the real person, and for once, they where the same person. With the exception of Austin Vince and Ted Simon I’ve nearly always been disappointed when I’ve met the authors of books I’ve held dear.

This second book has demonstrated a maturity in her writing style that held the whole thing together with a constant narrative – a very difficult trick to pull off. So much so that it’s one of those rare breed of books that you simply can’t put down. I hadn’t noticed that Lois had a new book out until I happened across it in the Sydney Airport book store, I was about to board a 14 hour flight to San Francisco and was rather excited to see something I could devour and learn from, rather than endure the constant repeats of How I Met Your Mother I knew United would be serving.

From the first page, through to the photos and the last chapter it’s a journey of personal strength, determination and at times, heart pounding excitement and fear. I really felt I was with her, and that’s an exceptionally difficult thing to pull off as the mass of bad travel books demonstrate.

I was a little concerned that this would be a book about a small, timid (ha!) white girl working hard against all possible odds to get through Africa – but it’s not, it’s a book about a small, lion-hearted lady who overcame obstacles with good humor, humility and a depth of character I’d be proud to even have a tenth of.

If you’re planning your own journey on anything from a motocycle to a tuk tuk, this book will inspire you to go that little bit further, and perhaps push a little of your fear to one side and experience a journey for what it is, rather than a philosophical adventure or backed-up outing.

Red Tape and White Knuckles is available from the Sydney Airport Book Store or from Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk

UPDATE:

Thanks to Atlas Rider on Twitter here’s a video of Lois talking about her journey at an overland expo in the states.

Some of you have been really helpful with suggestions and routes for the trip – so I’ve created a public Google Map that we can all edit – both with places I should visit and to help me work out my route – I’ve made a start but please do dive in and add detail.

View First Australian Bike Trip in a larger map – help me edit this trip

I’ve once again just got back from the foggy and slightly damp city that I’m learning to love, and amazingly I’m not talking about London.

San Francisco is one of those cities that it’s so easy to enjoy. It’s small enough to easily get around, the public transport is cheap and easy to work out, and every corner has a coffee shop where you can meet your friends and colleagues alike.

I was in town for a little over a week this time, and even though our offices are over in Oakland I didn’t manage to make it there once. The city is just to darn alluring, and when it comes to meetings I’m much happier to natter in the back of a noisy Starbucks than a cold and difficult-to-get-to Oakland.

It was wonderful to meet up with the Offbeat Guides guys again, and to start to generate a genuine friendship with Eric ‘Put ‘em up’ Willis. Dale Larson once again took me in hand and even managed to smuggle me onto a boat for a sailing trip over the weekend – thanks Dale

So who knows…. SF is turning into a city that I’d rather like to live, and given I’m spending more and more of my time there…. what do you think? SF? Good place to live?

I’ve finally had a few weeks back in Australia and it’s all starting to feel more like home than a place I happen to be spending some time. Part of that is all the gear turning up for the bike, and the other bit is my brother coming to stay!

He’s moved in and has his feet well and truly under the table But I don’t mind (he’s a qualified chef, and a rather good one at that). Of course all of this would come as I’m starting to take this fitness lark seriously – I’m aiming to take part in the Austalasian Safari in two years time – that’s going to take 12 months to drop my weight to a sensible level and 12 months of serious enduro training.

Of course, all the best laid plans and all that… but we’ll see what happens, regardless of what I do I aim to be doing something ‘big’ in 2011/2012 depending on what hemisphere I’m in.

More videos on the way now I’ve found my way around the new Canon HG20 HD Camera, and I’m sure you’ve already seen some of the first photos appearing on flickr from the new Lumix G1.

If you enjoy this review, I have some others you may like

I made a little video about choosing a tent which you can watch at the bottom of this post, or over on YouTube.

1. How far from help are you?

Before you decide how much you want to spend, work out why you’re buying the tent and how far away from shelter you are. If for example you’re travelling in a Land Rover, then your tent – whilst being your primary shelter – is not as important as it is if you’re camping 10 miles from anything else on your own. Ask yourself, how near shelter am I if the tent fails? The further from help, the more you want to spend, and the more consideration needs to be taken.

2 . Materials

Simple enough, do some research on what materials work best in which senario. Are you going to be spending time in the desert? What about rain? A good tent for northern Europe, may not be the best bet for the hot climbs of central Afrrica. A swag bag works wonderfully in the dry conditions of Australia, but is simply not suited to a wet trip in Canada.

3. Size, weight and dimensions

Are you carrying the tent on your back, on the back of a motorcycle or in a car? If you’re carrying a tent you’ll need to explore high-tech options with suppliers like Exped and Tatonka. Both companies offer options with light-weight short poles and highly compressible materials – ideal for hiking and the motorbike.

If you’re in the car you have a greater range of options – consider a tent that goes up in seconds from Quecha or something designed to fold out from your vehicle in a few simple steps from people like Oz Tent.

4. Accessories

You’ll be amazed how many tents don’t come with the essentials. Make sure you have:

• Ground sheet / footprint
• Good quality pegs
• Strong poles / pole repair kit
• Material repair kit (for fixing holes)

The ground sheet will really help with keeping condensation to a minimum – they also act as a barrier between the cold ground and your butt, but most importantly they protect the material of your tents bottom from sharp stones on rough ground. A good ground sheet means you can keep your ventilation vents open in most weathers.

Pegs are so important – many tents ship with really weak simple pegs that will not drive into hard ground and have no grip in soft ground. Try a v shaped titanium peg from people like Alpine Kit – they don’t have to be expensive! Make sure you drive the peg in at a 45 degree angle.

5. Design

There are really three major tent designs. Geodysic, dome and tunnel. Depending on what type of camping your doing you’ll need to consider the different types.

Tunnel tents generally pack up very small, they also tend to have very short poles and are quite often very easy to erect. They do however require some thought when pitching – they can be badly affected by wind and you should try to pitch with the front or back facing into the wind – if you get caught side on in a gale it can not only end in a very noisy night- but can also bend the shape of the tent inwards, affecting it’s thermal capabilities and how much rain it can deal with. This is the type of tent that it is really important to buy the best of – money really does have an impact here and the more you spend generally gives you a very sturdy, tough option with all of the benefits.

Dome tents tend to be the cheapest option. You’ll see them in the supermarket for very little cash and for many applications are the ideal option. Their pack size is small, they generally only have two poles and can be purchased as an inside up first option or a fly up first option. In wetter climates the outer (fly) up first option is ideal, but in dryer hoter climbs you’ll find the option of being able to pitch the inner tent without the outer ideal – it keeps the bugs off, and lets the heat escape more efficiently.

Geodesic tents can be rather complicated to erect – but once you’ve worked out the knack they are without doubt the most stable shelters around. They tend to be more expensive and they’re what you’ll see the professional expeditions using as they head out into the great wilderness. They deal with very bad weather well, will see a gale through with hardly a twitter, these are the best options to ensure you’re safe and snug inside.

Finally I’ll  come back to that first tip when choosing your tent – remember that it’s your primary shelter – if you can sleep somewhere else if it flys away or gets soaked through then don’t stress it – if you HAVE to get a good, warm, dry nights sleep then spend some money.

The best place to start is with a reputable supplier – I recommend Travel Dri-Plus – call and ask for Les – he’s the most knowledgeable person I have ever talked to about tents – if he doesn’t know it – it’s not worth knowing about.

If you enjoy this review, I have some others you may like

I got in trouble for posting a photo of Oscar a few days ago when I was talking about missing the cats… well here you go… this is Kitty and I miss her too.

From here on in, only photos featuring both of my cats will appear here.

The time has come to replace this stalwart of my gadget armoury and I need your help. I’m totally stunned every month when Lonely Planet Images release the photos that have been added to the library over the past few weeks – and I want to take photos that make people go wow.

Some background – when I was in school I desperately wanted to be a Photo Journalist – I worked for the local paper for free and I badgered my Dad until he bought me an Olympus OM-10 from the local second hand stor

e – complete with ‘manual adaptor’. It had a light metre inside but other than that I was totally on my own. After months of paper-rounds and being paid to take my friends band photos I managed to scrape enough money to ‘upgrade’ the the Olympus OM-2n .

It made a big difference to my shots, as did the purchase of a 2x adaptor and, at great expense, a 75mm Olympus lens.  I held onto the dream of becoming a Photo Journalist right through my engineering apprenticeship (where the camera managed to earn me some money on the side in Caerphilly town centre of a Saturday morning) and right into University in Swansea, where finally, the dream died and I sold the camera for much needed rent money.

Since then I’ve had a succession of crap compact cameras that just didn’t cut the mustard. The Casio has rather re-ignited that old desire to take wonderful photographs and I find myself slipping it into manual as much as the fully automatic settings – I’ve even bought an old Konica Minolta 35mm SLR to mess around with (it’s been out of the bag once).

My composition needs a little work , I need to get my head out of snapshot mode, but I feel the old juices still flow and can’t wait to get back into thinking through a shot properly before I take it. So now the tough part – I need a new camera.

Requirements:

• Tough
• Light
• Compact
• Decent video mode
• Solid lens support
• Easy to charge (I’m running this from the motorbike / powermonkey)
• Easy to transfer images (no propritary connectors – worst case – SD cards are good)

Let’s ignore the money side of things for the moment and work the ‘perfect world senario’.

What do you suggest? I have a totally open mind and no legacy kit to support.

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The people who made Mashed08 happen

As you may have seen over on the backstage.bbc.co.uk blog Mashed isn’t happening this year. Ewan sums it up well

you put smart people in a room and great things happen. Put smart people in a room with their own DAB TV station and a red button service they can hack away with, and you get some gorgeous results.

Mashed will be missed this year – I’ll miss organising it again – it was one of the hardest things to leave behind when I left the BBC – but at least I get to run the Lonely Planet Travel Blogger Awards now – no crazy social flight sims – but still… loads of fun.

I think the beeb has made the right call on trying to concentrate on doing more smaller things all over the country but I do hope when things get a bit better out there that something like Mashed comes along again soon.

Heading to Russia I was going to take this little portable machine

but after testing in the field I decided it wasn’t strong enough to survive my riding style… then, out of the blue came a piece of French pornography that I simply couldn’t ignore. Watch this video

Now, if you still have your coffee in your mug and not all over the computer screen let me tell you a little more about the device. It’s called the Handspresso – have a look at their site – I highly recommend watching the videos.

Could this be the answer to my prayers? It’s small, looks really tough and seems to make the perfect espresso. It does have a couple of issues – mainly that you need the little coffee packs and I’ve not found anywhere that sells those in Oz yet. Can you help? I’m also not convinced that it’ll push the water through at a sensible rate and at the right temperature – but hey – I’m on the road, sometimes I just have to rough it.

EDIT – I’ve found some people that serve the pods

• coffeepods.com.au
• coffee-pods.com.au
• globalcafedirect.com
• brasilerocoffee.com.au
• coffeemachine.com.au

Thank you to everyone who’s been contacting me about Mashed for 2009 – as some of you may know I left the BBC late last year to come and work for Lonely Planet – and as such I’m not involved with the organisation any more… but should I hear anything I’ll be sure to pass it on.

I’m just remembering why Mashed was so bloody fantastic…. and then I saw this on Ewan’s blog this morning…

Social Flight Sim from Cristiano Betta on Vimeo.

Comments on this route greatly appreciated, thoughts on the towns I should visit, when I should ride – I need all the help I can get.

View Larger Map

I miss the cats. In fact I think the hardest thing about being all the way out here is the fact I had to leave the cats behind :-/

The thing is I find myself wondering if I should get another cat out here as a stand-in before my two come out in August… and then we’d have three cats… but would the stand-in cat always be the stand-in cat.

I can’t decide.

The biggest thing that’s hit me, is the things I thought would be important to me haven’t. When faced with a 25kg weight limited I tried to estimate what I HAD to have and what could be left behind – then when I had to work out what could go in my very small first shipment I tried to work out what I simply couldn’t be without. That boiled down to a bunch of electronics, my books, and my kitchen stuff. The only things that have come out of the packaging is the kitchen stuff – I’ve really enjoyed having decent pans, plates and tongs!

However, the electronics and books have, for the most part staid in the boxes since they arrived at the beginning of December, but as time has passed the things I’ve really missed I wouldn’t have expected at all. I regret not grabbing my camping gear, or my riding gear the first time around. Since I’ve bought the XT600 this month I’ve suddenly remembered what it was that enthralled me about discovering new places on two wheels. Not only the freedom that a motorcycle can give you but the complete ease at which you can throw your gear over the back wheel and stop where you please.

It’s fair to say that after the trip to Russia I felt slightly jaded about travelling. Actually that’s not fair, Russia, and the journey there are back was amazing. What didn’t sit well was the number of arguments that erupted between Patrick, Stace and I. It wasn’t my proudest moment, and seven months after the trip I’m only now starting to realise what it was that made it so amazing. It was Patrick and Stace, it was the arguments, it was the laughing, it was the tears and tantrums, it was the whole experience. I’d been concentrating on the negatives – but actually the positives far out-weight those – you only have to go back through the video updates, or look at the photos to see what I mean.

Last week I bought the entire Michael Palin travel collection on DVD. I’ve just finished re-watching Around the World in 80 days – I’ve not watched it since I was nine years old and sat, cuddled in blankets on my grandmothers leather sofa with tonsillitis. I think it was this programme more than anything else that gave me my taste for seeing the world as it really is – or rather seeing the world from the ground rather than a 747.

So back to the topic at hand, six months in Australia. I’ve got the house sorted. I’ve got the bike sorted, and I’ve got the panniers and other bits on order. When I get back from the states I’ll be bringing my camping gear with me from the UK. Autumn in Australia promises to be a season of exploration, both of the country, and of how I’m dealing with once more, looking after myself, and not Catherine and the cats. Or rather, how I’m surviving without Catherine and the cats.

Biddy biddy biddy

Anyway, one of the places that most conjures up dreams of adventure has to be Timbuktu – and I’d not really clicked it was quite as close to the UK as it is – well applying Australian values to distance rather than British. But it appears that it’s so close in fact, that you can fly there. And drive. And glide. Or to be more specific, you can drive, then fly over the water, glide back to earth, drive a little more then take-off again to avoid a natty little mountain range.

The gentleman responsible for this trip is an ex-SAS chap called Neil Laughton. He’s the classic British gent off on an adventure. He says, “Sadly the political situation in some areas on our route is not good and there are some unsavoury people about so we must be careful.” – I just love it.

The BBC have a good video complete with more details over on the News site, or you can read more about the trip on the expeditions own website.

I give you, Songsmith from Microsoft Research.

It’s that time again when we look back over the last 12 months and take stock of what we’ve done, and importantly, take a moment to think about what’s to come.

For my part, it’s been a massive year of change. Leaving the BBC, joining Lonely Planet, and moving half way around the globe to live in Melbourne. Last year’s New Years Eve saw Catherine and I on the Thames watching the fireworks in Central London. This year we’ll be at home in South Wales surrounded by family as we prepare to move our whole lives to Australia permanently.

It’s been a stunning 2008 – highlights include Mashed08 at Alexandra Palace, getting to St Petersburg on my motorbike with Patrick and Stace, and running the BBC Innovation Labs to great success.

2009 will be a brilliant year I have no doubt. Catherine will join me in Oz, I get to run a new event (Lonely Travel Bloggers Awards) in San Francisco, and with any luck I’ll get out to Alice Springs on a new motorbike.

Finally and most importantly. Happy New Year to you all. Thank you for your support, however offered, over 2008 and I look forward to spending more time with you all in 2009. Keep in touch

IN DESERT, originally uploaded by HORIZON.

Just stunning, stunning shot from HORIZON over on flickr of part of his 3000km trip to the central desert of Iran.

I find myself hankering after the desert again after my slightly ‘not quite there’ visit to Morocco last year. There’s something pure about the lines of the dunes, and the clean, simple peace that the desert brings you.

I could do with some of that peace right now, and I’ve found myself lost in the collections of photos from Iran that Horizon has published. At the moment my favourite is his set of Iran Workers – the faces are so expressive and detailed, an openness that you just don’t see anywhere else.

With any luck, in a few years, I’ll be doing the return leg to the UK overland from Australia, and if I’m lucky I’ll be coming through Iran after passing through India and Pakistan – it’s one of the highlights of my trip – and right now – I’ll just have to satisfy myself with these wonderful photographs.

I’ve finally got permission and kinda worked out a few things… so here’s the announcement via the lplabs.com blog:

With all this work going on for blogsherpa, it occurred to us that as well as paying people for their travel related blog posts, we should also do some awards for Travel Bloggers.

We thought that, being LP, we could probably come up with some pretty cool prizes, in a pretty cool place, and perhaps – if we push the boat out – some kind of trophy type thing. Maybe.

So, rather quietly (because I’ve not sorted the details yet) I’m announcing The Lonely Planet 2009 Travel Bloggers Awards – or the TLPTBAs – may have to work on that.

The idea, is to open nominations first thing in Jan in a few categories (suggestions? comment below), close them at the end of Feb – then set up a panel of rather cool people made up of brilliant bloggers, some of our authors and commissioning editors and let them vote BUT… their vote would only make up 50% of the overall socre – the other 50% would come from the public via online voting.

The winners would then be announced with rather grand fanfare in San Francisco in March 2009, at a party of some sort.

That’s it really – I’ll create a new tag (lpawards) here for the awards and as they develop I’ll update more here. Ideas, suggestions and thoughts most welcome.

Read the original post and comment over here

The TUC (Trades Union Congress) have called for the Lonely Planet Burma guide to be removed from the shelves. The theory being, that the guide encourages travel to Burma, and therefore, gives foreign currency to the Junta.

Let me get this straight. By constricting information about an entire nation and how to travel there, Lonely Planet supports the Junta?

The TUC has this to say

TUC General Secretary Brendan Barber said: ‘The very existence of a travel guide to Burma encourages people to visit a country they might not otherwise consider. We want to see the travel industry drop Burma from their list of destinations and taking the Lonely Planet guidebook off the shelves would help enormously. If enough people sign our petition and stop buying Lonely Planet guides, we hope we can encourage the BBC to think again.’

I couldn’t disagree more. Holly Cow are they actually serious? Well looking at the petition (which has been running since Feb 2008) it appears not – 454 people have signed it.

Travel, fundamentally changes the way you view the world. Through travel you gain an understanding of a people, a country, that you simply can not achieve in any other way. By visiting a country, by talking with people in that country, by traveling through that country you gain an empathy, a deeper connection, an understanding, that can’t be built by proxy. By talking to each other, we make the world a smaller place.

Travel, fundamentally changes the world around us.

The ethically corrupt argument of censorship of information about a country and how to travel to that country and around that country, is totally absurd.

Gadling has some good comments on this story that I think pretty much show how most people feel.

If you just want to subscribe to the updates head over to my YouTube channel.

It’s turning into a week of videos, but this one is good, puts things into perspective a little.

Let’s share the love people.

and

from David Reeves on flickr.com

It’s interesting that the two comments from Phil and Jonathan on my lat post are both from developers. People who’s very job is to ‘innovate’. We’re all told we must innovate, in everything that we do. If you develop you must write innovative code. If you’re creative (thanks Frank) you must create in an innovative way, and importantly if you’re a manager you must innovate your management.

It’s this last one that’s interesting. As developers and people who’s very essence of being is about doing new things, we’ve (developers & creatives) been hearing the innovation mantra for quite few years. But management, well that’s a bit more recent.

Whilst we think the principles of Research & Development are those of innovation, managers, finance and marketing don’t see it that way. What managers see when they hear R&D is 10% of their budget going away, to a team of people, disconnected from the organisation, who are working on stuff that will have an impact in the medium term (if they’re lucky) and the long term more probably.

So the term ‘innovation’ simply becomes (as my boss put it) the lens through which we view the basic tenants of R&D. R&D by it’s very nature is an osmotic process, ‘pure’ R&D (pure = academic?) could be something isolated in a lab – but the findings and work carried out in that lab are nothing, if they’re not shared and peer reviewed. Academics are used to working in this ‘pure’ form – but what about us? Our industry moves far to quickly for us to adopt a model that can take months to produce a finding, a finding which has been tested, reviewed, and tested again – before being published for peer review and replication.

So is innovation, simply a way to communicate that R&D in the ‘new world’ is a distributed medium, that carries out it’s peer review in an open, faster, forum than the traditional ‘pure’ science journals? Is ‘innovation’ simply a way to allow everyone, regardless of what they do in an organisation, a chance to carry out R&D?

I’m not sure there’s a tension between ‘pure’ R&D and innovation – but we should make an attempt to ensure that the very things that make R&D so vital to the future of a company are not lost in the clamor to make sure you ‘appear’ innovative. In other words. Let’s make sure innovation is a tool, or a lens, that we use to communicate our work; but does not become the petard we end up hoisting ourselves up.

From AussieGold on Flickr

I don’t even know why I’ve given it a capital. Innovation (had to there), is meaningless. It has been since marketeers started using it to describe anything that may be vaguely new or interesting, or ‘thinking’ that was vaguely new or interesting, or perhaps, just interesting. It could be thinking about the future, or thinking about the future in a new way. Or EVEN thinking about our thinking, on the thinking for the future.

Seriously. WTF? What is Innovation, that Research & Development isn’t?

I’m genuinely interested in if anyone else shares my growing hate of the word. Please tell me, what’s the difference? Why can’t we be Research & Development?

Answers on a post-card please.

This, unsurprisingly has resulted in rather a lot of air travel – particularly of the long-haul type – but today I get a treat. Lonely Planet doesn’t fly anyone business class, it’s economy all the way. But occasionally, just occasionally, there’s no choice. You book late, you have a meeting at a time you simply can’t move, and the extra few pounds is worth it to make it on time.

Getting up at 4am is never fun, but with the prospect of a two hour flight to Berlin in total comfort, as well as a settled wait at the new Terminal Five in the Club Lounge ahead of me, I had a slight spring in my step. Silly me.

Traffic on the M25 was non-existent, which simply meant I was here three and a half hours early. Ahh well, comfortable club lounge here I come. Automatic check-in failed (I must be too early) so I headed over to the flight desk, and was told, by a yawning clerk who couldn’t care less that the flight was over-booked and I probably would not get on it, go away come back later, when there may be a space on another flight perhaps (yawn again, no ‘I’m sorry’). But then the magic happens. There’s a ‘c’ on my ticket – that means club! It’s all different now (the yawning hasn’t stopped – but I spy a hope) – I can go through to the club lounge to wait, but probably still wont get on the flight. Yawn.

Joining the queue through security I was ‘fast tracked’ into a long line of slow moving people… ‘why can’t I go through the normal one? There’s no one there?’, ‘You have a club class ticket sir we can fast track you’. Ah. Little point in arguing. Fast track also means I have to remove my shoes. The other normal lines don’t seem to be doing that. Oh well. I’m then treated (because I’m special) to a good search by the rudest security person I have ever met. ‘Put your arms out straight’. ‘They are’, ‘no straighter’, ‘they don’t get any straighter’ (perhaps I am odd), ‘whatever’. Meh.

Now I sit in the club lounge and all is right with the world. I still don’t know if I’m going to get on my flight (and therefore make the exceptionally important meeting that could mean exceptionally important things for the company), or if I’m resigned to sitting next to the free food buffet. It’s a tough choice. There’s only one thing I know for certain. Neil Diamond rocks.

So I find myself in Kuala Lumpur for the second time in as many months, doing 28 hour jaunts to Australia and back. It’s worth it – but only if you can find some way to pass the time in KL.

First time here I discovered a bad cafe with bad beer, bad coffee, and even worse service. I wasn’t looking forward to my second visit. The comparason however is difficult to describe. I’ve discovered that they have an airport lounge (normally reserved for those lucky enough to be flying business class) that you can simply pay to use.

It’s called the Plaza Premium Lounge and costs just 120RM for five hours use. That’s about 20 GBP. Amazing. For this sum I got a cold shower (which here, just over the equator, was rather nice) free food, free diet coke, and most importantly one of the best massages I have ever had.

But unfortunately I’ve aslo had an experience with an aging British chap, who didn’t have anything on. Poor old love thought that the wash-room / shower complex thing was an exlusive deal. He was under the impression that he had paid his 20 quid for full use of both showers, the two toilets, and the two basins. How do you explain to a someone most definately your senior, that perhaps it’s not exclusive, and perhaps, if it’s okay with him, he could maybe put something on his bottom half.

All embarasment was saved however, when he walked out into the reception area (towel now drapped around his mid-rift) demanding to speak to the manager whilst I quickly tried to have a wee before I was thrown out. I’ve never been good at having a wee under pressure, and this was definately pressure. Never mind. I managed to squeeze out a small one, retire back to the lounge and hide behind one of the free PCs to write this.

I don’t think he can see me.

… inspired by something that’s banging around work at the moment I’m going to start posting images from flickr posted under the Creative Commons License on my blog each Friday that, well, Inspire me.

I’m going to start with this one, taken by slack12, of Table Mountain. I’m a big fan of reflections anyway, but the warmth and depth of detail in this shot just had me looking for ever more each time I look at it.

Do yourself a favor, click on it, go to flickr and view the original version in the ‘other sizes’ button.

I can’t work out what I love most. The fact that you need warning that these creatures try to kill themselves on the front of your vehicle, or that the sign has been shot.

Anyway – here I am on the road out to Wadong from Melbourne expecting to see roos, but in fact all we saw where these signs.

That’s a t-shirt slogan isn’t it?

Mmmm, oh yes, I should also point out that the hat is made of Kangaroo….

It’s a combined musical and slasher vid

Have discovered the Lonely Planet group on flickr after being introduced to Mark (the amazing chap who runs it – as well as the LP Library).

There are amazing photographs that just take your breath away. This is my favorite so far. There may be many more posts along this line.

Interactive Map

Really starting to settle in now. My Dad is still here with me, and the wonderful thing about that is that he does all the cooking, the cleaning and goes looking for places for me to live…. fantastic! So I now have a flat – I gave up looking for a nice big house until Catherine gets here – that way we’ll be able to spend more cash and I wont get in trouble for choosing somewhere stupid.

The flat is in a high-rise appartment building just down the road from my current (see the google map below) corporate appartment. It’s right by the station and right in the middle of the CBD (Central Business District) so I’m perfectly placed to explore the city before Catherine arrives.

I’m really missing Catherine now. With Dad here I’ve not had time to myself to really think about it, and we’re chatting at least twice a day, but I’m a bit worried that when Dad goes, I’ll be left to stew in my own thoughts… and generally that’s not a good place to be. I’ll have to find something to distract me… perhaps morning meditation from 5am and then rugby practice every night!

View Larger Map

So I’ve made it to Oz – in one piece – which was as big a surprise to me as it may be to you. After three weeks on the road to Russia and back and a short amount of time back in blightly before I had to dash out here I was a bit worried I’d miss something, but so far so good.

Melbourne is amazing – there’s a bunch of photos on my flickr stream – but wow what a city. I loved London so much – but this place, frankly is better. Well it is at the moment

I’ll spend some more time, when I’ve settled in, writing some more about the areas I’ve been to and what-not now the site is fixed.

If you want to get in touch with me – remember I’m 10 hours ahead – drop me a note or skype me on matthewcashmore

There’s lots that can get on your nerves about the BBC (generally it’s finance), but none of that stops it being one of the most amazing places to work in the world, it’s easily the best place to work in the UK – and therein is the problem.

There was frankly no-one in the UK that could have got me out of the beeb, not with buckets of cash and technology that would have made me cry… but then along came Lonely Planet and devised a role that I simply had to go for, and thankfully have got!

So from the start of October I’ll be the new Innovation Ecosystem Manager for Lonely Planet based out of Melbourne in Australia – it’s all rather cool

However, the whole skype thing is a bit of a red herring - I’ve been trying to make this work on and off for a few months, and as soon as I realised Skype wasn’t the way to go, it took me two days. In this post I’m hoping to demonstrate how you can podcast straight to your blog and iTunes from anywhere in the world using your mobile phone. Just like this – http://journeytorussia.co.uk/category/podcast

There are a couple of services that I’ve found that can make this work – unfortunately whilst both of them offer a free service to get the best you’ll need to pay a little cash.

The first is called Evoka - http://www.evoca.com/ - it’s a simple service that is essentially a bit like YouTube for audio. When you create an account you get a home page evoca.com/username and helpfully an RSS feed. Unfortunately there doesn’t appear to be a way to edit the MP3 tags, or to pull the content and RSS easily to your own domain – there’s certainly no way to edit what gets posted in the RSS feed.

The second service, and the one I’ve finally decided to use (and pay for) is called PhoneBlogz - http://www.phoneblogz.com/ - it offers a simple way to edit your MP3 tags, you can even (using the wordpress plugin) totally customise the posts that hit your blog, as well as pretty much everything in-between.

What I like most about PhoneBlogz though is that you can pretty much build everything using the free service then only pay if you want to create more than one, two minute audio recording each day. There are various levels of service - I’ve gone for the four, 15 minute messages each day package – costing a princely sum of $12.99 per month, the great thing of course is that for Russia we only need to pay this one and then drop to the free package again.

How to set up PhoneBlogz

It can be a little confusing, there’s no guide on the site and hopefully this will help. Whilst PhoneBlogz supports Drupal, Wordpress, Serendipity, Blogger,Livejournal, Typepad as well as FTP uploads, this guide concentrates on Wordpress.

Before you start on the below steps go to PhoneBlogz and register for a free account.

1. Download the plugins

You’ll need both the PhoneBlogz  and the Audio-Player plugins.

2. Upload and install the plugins

Upload to your plugins directory – normally found at www.yoursite.com/wp-content/plugins

3. Set up the plugins in your wordpress admin backend.

Click ‘Plugins’ and activate both of them.

Note… you’ll note find the PhoneBlogz plugin options in the normal ’setting’s section – it lives in the ‘plugins’ tab after you’ve activated it.

• PhoneBlogz settings – insert your access code and your WEBSITE password (not your account pin).
• Tick the ‘use Audio-Player’ box if you want the flash player to appear in your posts.
• Edit the posting text – this is the text that appears on your site every-time you send a recording.

I left the Audio-Player settings alone.

4. Edit the settings for posting on the PhoneBlogz configuration pages.

• Set the options for plugin posting
• Set the Audio Options – this is where you can dictate the MP3 tags etc
• Upload intro and out jingles – love this feature!

5. Set the category you want the audio to be posted to.

You’re supposed to be able to set this in the plugin – however it doesn’t work. There’s an easy way around this.

• Click on ’settings’ in your wordpress backend
• Click on ‘writing’
• Scroll down to ‘Post via email’
• Set the Default Mail Category to your choice.

I’ve discovered that the plugin uses this setting – if all works well you’ll have all your audio recordings posted in this category

For example

http://www.journeytorussia.co.uk/category/podcast/

this then of course provides you with an RSS feed of all your audio recordings

http://www.journeytorussia.co.uk/category/podcast/feed

You can find out how to work out your RSS settings / feeds over at Wordpress Codex.
That’s pretty much it. All I have to do now is create a new wordpress template page that will allow me to create a simple page at /podcast and includes all the posts in the category ‘Podcast’ beneath the text that currently appears there. Not being the biggest PHP head, I’m struggling with this bit at the moment – any helpful tips most appreciated!

(testing a way of creating a podcast via my mobile phone on the way to Russia)

In this case I’m certain I need this. It’s a bivi bag, or you could call it a waterproof sleeping bag cover. Whatever your syntax of choice – it’s lovely and warm, and importantly waterproof. No good for full on storms, or even a light shower – but combined with the Basha – it may well mean I get the swag off the bike less than I initially planned.

We should be able to revoke peoples Sky Subscriptions, remove their freeview boxes and ask politely for the return of their TV License.

Seriously folks. It was funny, it wasn’t dangerous, and it was editorially justified. Get over yourselves.

BBC Dylan – News 24 Revisited (Full Version) from James Adam on Vimeo.

So cool. So clever.

Stace came up with a good idea early on, a night manager, someone to take over from a sensible time late on Saturday to give the core organisation team a good break. This year I’ve split the main on-site organisation into four roles – the Senior Producer and three Production Assistants – it’s worked really well and meant we’ve kept everything very well in hand – but for some reason the shift pattern for overnight isn’t resulting in as much sleep as I could do with!

Ian Forrester is in his element, this is the middle of the day for him! Next year he can run the night shift I think.

Thoughts on the event so far:

• Having dedicated staff rather than volunteers has made things much easier and smoother.
• I wonder if the smooth running has some-how taken the ‘edge’ off the event a little?
• We have about 100 more people here at most times than we did last year.
• The screen is amazing, we can’t get a smaller one next year.
• I’m very excited about tomorrow’s (today’s) presentations.
• Kingswood Warren guys are awesome, I wish I had more time to give them.
• Hotel in Muswell Hill has been dreadful, the concept of a 10 room block booking seems quite alien to them.
• Very happy to read the virtually totally positive twitter and blog posts coming out.

I’m really on my knee right now, I can’t see how I can see the day out, and there’s still so much to do – I had the horrible two hour stretch in the middle of the night so I’ve not managed to get more than two hours sleep. I need some tips on keeping focused and awake. I think I may find a quiet corner and try some simple meditation.

It’s quite scary – 600 people have signed up now – there’s some more tickets available, but I just feel I’ve forgotten something.

The PR has started in earnest – I was on the Guardian Tech weekly podcast, and Pods and Blogs this week – it’s quite fun hearing myself on radio again – reminds me how much I miss it.

Right, bean bags need to be organised, and I need to deal with the hundreds of entries for Monster Mashed (read as ZERO entries to Monster Mashed).

http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/news/archives/2008/06/monster_mashed.html

Not just any monster mind you, but a full size, fully functional, kick-ass monster.

Basically between now and next Thursday you email me with your ideas, and I select the best two – we’ll then fund you to the tune of up to £500 to build the monster (you’ll get the cash after Mashed not before). Then at Mashed itself you actually build the things over 24 hours and show them off on the Sunday with the other presentations – the audience votes on a winner – we give you some lame gift as a prize (the prize is actually the £500 to build the thing in the first place) and you get to keep the monster… how cool!

Anyway – more news on the official backstage blog when I’ve sorted out the legal stuff… also so AMAZINGLY COOl…. NASA are coming… I so damn excited right now.

Fucking ROCKETS!

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Top Gear has the cool wall – I have the planning wall. It contains everything we need to know to just make the day happen. There are a couple of blurred spots as I confirm them before announcment, but other than that it’s all coming into place.

We’ve released another 100 tickets this morning via Microsoft developer lists, and I think we’ll be releasing another 100 on Friday. The only other bit of news is that I’m planning on running buses from Newcastle, Manchester and Cardiff – I’ll be down in Cardiff next week at the geek meet to talk about backstage and mashed. Right now the plan is to release special bus tickets on the sign up page next week – http://mashed08.eventbrite.com

We’re using backnetwork again this year – http://mashed08.backnetwork.com – fantastic site – I’ll be processing those who’ve signed up via eventbrite later this week – you should get your invites automatically.

Only other cool thing is the website badges – they went down well last year – and I’m loving this years logo – they should be up on backstage before the weekend… in theory!

First of all I wanted to play around with configurations to keep as much of the water off the bag as possible – that resulted in this set up:

A simple rip-stop nylon basha combined with a ground sheet and a couple of poles. A simple solution that for about six hours in moderate winds kept 99% of the rain off the canvas.

However, I then left the swag, and having not tied the ropes down properly, the basha came lose and exposed the swag to the full fury of a coastal South Wales storm. Got up this morning to a small water problem. I’ve called this the second ‘test’, when in fact it was my stupidity forcing one.

The canvas inside was dry, as was my sleeping bag and mat. I got in and gave the canvas a good prodding. Nothing got through. Must admit I was surprised and very impressed.

I then rolled the swag up, and left it in the back of the car for about six hours for the journey home. Just unrolled it and the water has started to seep inside. Not a great result, but proof if I needed it that I have to ensure that the bag just doesn’t get this wet – either by avoiding camping in the worst weather on the road – or by ensuring I get the basha set up properly and securely.

On a more successful note…. the poncho works!

Mashed – it’s Hack Day time again and this year we’ve got a corker of a weekend planned.

Arrive on the Saturday morning and listen to real people from the development world showing you how to build things and how to use the systems that will be available to you through-out the weekend – including a full broadcast TV station with the ability to build and hack your own interactive applications.

As the talks draw to a close the 24 hour hack begins – there’s plenty of food (no it’s not all pizza this year – think pie and mash) – distractions for when you need them and if all goes to plan a special event at midnight.

Sunday plods on to the live presentations at 2pm – hosted by a very very special guest star… if you thought last year was a great time – this year we’ll blow your socks off.

It’s all about you, if you want something let us know and we’ll organise it.

The first 100 tickets have gone live – you can sign up at -http://mashed08.eventbrite.com/ - I’d be quick though – last year the first 100 tickets went in a little over two hours… we’ll be releasing more tickets next week via the partners, but get in early if you want to guarantee your spot!

After we got back Michael dropped us a line and very kindly offered to send us some bits and pieces to help us get our kit ready. I must be honest I’ve never really believed in after-market waterproofing – we’ve all been there and bought the sprays and the liquids and everything in-between from the camping shop – so when I put the jacket in the wash this weekend I wasn’t holding out much hope.

My jacket is three years old, it’s never been washed and to be totally frank it was not really very waterproof around the tummy area. I’ve always put that down to the way my tummy pushes against the front and desperately tries to escape

So into the washing machine the jacket went, following the instructions on the tech wash bottle – 30 degree hand wash cycle – out it came dripping wet and not very much cleaner than before – but Michael had warned me – use the tech wash first otherwise the waterproof wont work.

Given the beautiful weather this weekend it was dry in a couple of hours, so went back in on a 40 degree wash, gentle cycle, slow spin with the waterproof liquid. To cut a long story short, it took six hours in total to wash the jacket, dry it, wash it again and leave it dry once more. It’s not a task I’d do in anything but the best of weather.

Allowing for British weather I didn’t have to wait long to test the application. This morning it was throwing it down, a perfect opportunity to see in action the wonder proofing that Michael had promised. I rode for an hour in the rain, constant but not heavy, fully expecting to have to change my top when I got into work.

Arriving in west London I noticed something very odd, the water, as it was hitting my jacket was beading, gathering in little balls before running off all together. It’s not 100% efficient but most of the water simply wasn’t staying on the fabric. Getting into the office I pulled the jacket off to discover no wet spot – nothing at all – bone dry underneath.

These two products form the basis of the Nikwax range, and frankly if everything else they produce works as well as these two, then it’s a name I’ll trust in the future.

Lots of exciting things to talk about and not very much time to get it all done!

If you enjoy this review, I have some others you may like

I know, slightly strange to be talking about forming some sort of bond with something as silly as a tent, but after all this small, insubstantial shelter is going to be your home for the next goodness knows how long, why not take some care in what you chose? Why not take into account how you feel about your home?

With that in mind may I introduce the first tent that has made me feel something about how it’s put together – the Coolabah swag bag from Burke and Wills – distributed in this country by www.theaussieshop.co.uk

It’s completely made of canvas, both it’s best and worst point. I remember when I was a kid camping with my dad, a massive six person tent that took up the entire rear of the car, and took about a week to put up. It smelt bad when it rained, if it rained for more than a couple of hours you’d get a fine mist working its way through the material. But it seems even with the oldest tent material in the world we can have a bit of an update.

I couldn’t tell you exactly what it is, but it’s more ‘waxy’ and even though I’m yet to test it in the wet I can quite believe the claim from Burke and Wills that once it’s been wet, the seams expand and it’ll deal with everything but the worst of the weather. They suggest before you use it you take it out and give it a good hosing. Makes sense.

It’s certainly a ‘choice’, once I’d decided that I didn’t want to take a tent that took a lot of time to put up, and decided that I didn’t need a tent that I could get changed in etc, then the one man options became more sensible, the problems as ever boiled down to how you get in and out when it’s raining and where do you sit if it rains.

I’ve looked at a lot of one and two man tents, but all the modern ones just seem to be far to complicated. I’ve been looking for something that I can pull off the back of the bike un-roll and get in – complete with sleeping mat and bag. With the Coolabah I’ve finally found it. It ships with a foam mattress that frankly I’d be comfortable with as my main bed, but practically it’s just too big and doesn’t roll to a sensible size. I’ve now replaced that with my Exped Downmat (from Traveldri-Plus) and my sleeping bag – it now rolls up to half the size but it’s still fairly wide. If you’re on a narrow bike with no panniers you may struggle to find a way to fit it on. My bike, just like me, is quite wide and with 54 litre panniers on either side this isn’t going to cause me a problem.

The attention to detail is superb. As you get into the tent through the very accessible top door and put your head on the pillow you notice immediately how well put together it is, how close all the stitching is and how good the material is. I was very impressed when I saw a handy little loop for my torch and a series of pockets just above my shoulder for those little things like phones and glasses. I was slightly concerned about storage for things like my camera, but actually there’s so much room down by your feet that I stowed both my stills and video camera there without noticing them during the night.

There’s enough space inside to comfortably move around during the night and even change your undies and put some trousers on, but putting a top on is a bit difficult and you’ll need to poke your head out to achieve the more space conscious dressing activities.

The design is perfect, rather than the usual crawling into your tent you use a door on the top of the tent, very coffin like. In reality this means you can lie down and look out at the stars, either directly or through the mosquito net before pulling the canvas door over your head for a totally dark night. There is a door at the very end you can crawl through – but frankly – I don’t fit – I do like the fact you can leave the canvas on the end open with the net down however.

In summary, a great tent, very well made and once you’ve pulled out the supplied foam mattress and replaced it with a more sensible version just right for putting up each night very quickly. The only issues are with the size once rolled up – if you can deal with that and can find a sensible way to cover yourself in the rain (think tarp and poles off your bike) then go for it.

If you enjoy this review, I have some others you may like

There’s been a massive amount of talk in the developer community about who should replace him – Ian points out the Tech Crunch article where Mike has written an open letter asking for us to open more of the data that the license fee payer has already paid for – I don’t want to have a go at Mike too much because he’s put me on a list of people (vote now!) who could replace Mr Highfield – Mr Cridland is leading the way right now.

However, it’s a wonderful thought, and Mr Forrester and I have been working really hard to make that happen for the last 18 months – the BBC actually has a department set up to make this happen – it’s called backstage.bbc.co.uk – but it’s not as effective as it could be. Lots more work to do on opening our stuff. But there’s a shift happening and it’s really cool. Developers inside the organisation feel as strongly about this as start-ups and developers outside do – we all want to make our stuff available, in the best format and easiest method for people to re-use.

For the first time since I’ve been back at the beeb there’s a real vibe about making that happen. Mr Highfield has supported that, in fact he’s actively encouraged it to happen, both in the broader ‘making things happen’ sense and in the more practical making money available to run things like Mashed. He has a massive amount of respect from me for doing just that, and I’m sad to see him leave.

As for his successor – that’s not for me to say – there will be a group of people vastly more qualified than me to make that decision – I’m always happy to comment and proffer my extensive (ha ha ha!) knowledge should I be asked – but I wont be doing that in public. Sorry.

—————————–

Okay so a quick update before the full review gets going – I’m using the ‘wee beastie’ as my primary machine whilst I’m away with work at the moment – so it’s getting heavily used each day.I’ve been scared about messing with the OS too much as I’m away from another machine that will help me fix it – but I have updated all the software and run the advanced mode – had a little explore of Xandros as a distro and played with it’s more esoteric features.

OS - Xandros is a bitch if you’re used to more power and flexibility in your OS, it’s perfect for the Eee, but it’s going as soon as I get a chance to flash to Ubuntu – YMMV depending on your computer know-how and it’s not something I’d recommend for the feint of heart. The boot time on Ubuntu if done properly is only 5 seconds longer than Xandros – worth the wait IMHO.

Build quality - fantastic, very sturdy little machine, been thrown in and out of my bag all week with no visible abuse – comes with a handy little neoprene bag to keep it’s beautiful baby blue cover nice and pristine – no use on the motorbike yet.

Keyboard - takes some getting used to, and even after a week (I’m a touch typist) there’s no illusion that I’ll be putting out 20 page documents – but I can type at about 80% of my usual speed and for blog posts, forums and email that’s sufficient.

Wi-Fi - works like a charm – in easy mode and advanced mode alike it finds and connects exactly like a windows machine, but perhaps not as simply as a Mac – easy to see what’s going wrong if it can’t connect and direct comparison between an IBM thinkpad and MacBook Pro show it sees the same number of connections, it is a little over-optimistic about signal strength though.

Web cam - what do you expect? It’s not as wonderfully clear as an iSight on the Mac, but then again it’s perfectly useable in everything except very strong back light – perfectly sufficient for Skype (once you’ve installed the Skype update).

Storage - I have the 4gb version and was left with a little over a gig after the OS instal – that’s a little tight but after using if for a week I’ve not had any problems – docs are quite small when saved in Open Office format (it ships with open office, but you can save the docs as MS Office should you wish), the video I download I’m dumping to my cameras 2gb SD card and I’m leaving my photos on the camera SD card, uploading directly to flickr. 

The built in SD card reader is well placed, it takes a while to soften up a little – I was slightly worried about how stiff if was when first using it – but no damage to the cameras SD card as it’s been in and out all week. If you’re going to run Windows I’d suggest you install it to a sep SD card or a USB memory stick.

I’m going to be buying an 8gb SD card from Amazon – £14.53 - to leave in there to store videos / photos etc if I really need them – but frankly I don’t think that’s going to be an issue.

Sound - the in-built speakers it ships with are not going to power your house party, but they’re perfectly useable if it’s quiet and you’re on your own – you’ll probably want to plug in some headphones though, and the volume from those if perfectly sufficient.

These are my initial thoughts and I’m sure they’ll shift as I play a little more – I’ll post here as I discover new stuff that may help others – my next step is too see if I can mess around with short AVIs I’ve shot on the stills camera to do video podcasting whilst on the road…..

It’s a rather strange set – dressed as it is to give the results in a mastermind style – very odd.

More here as it happens.

Photo’s as they go up over at - http://www.flickr.com/photos/mattcashmore/

So very strange so far – but by far the best way I’ve seen to present what can be a very boring set of awards – great for those involved (they get cash) but not for those of us in the audience.

It’s descended into even more strangeness here as we reach half time – a really funny way to give away prizes – throw your business card (I forgot mine!) at the stage and get a helicopter ride or a mobile phone… now back to the awards. (Photos on the flickr stream of this happening)

He he…. Ashley has just been pulled up on stage and described as Yoda

Just noticed that Ingrid – the able assistant on-stage keeps changing her tee-shirt – quite funny and slightly odd – wondering if there’s a reason behind it.

On-stage host is turning into a bit of a letch…. but to be fair… Jason DaPonte is a very attractive man

Winners (BBC only):

• Mass Participation – Poltergeist 360
• Advanced mobile interaction with TV Content – Coded Vision
• New forms of web-based audio and video aggregation – Microstations
• New IPTV Concepts – Interactive Programme Templates

That’s it from the BBC categories – I’ll sign off now as the new Asus is complaining that its battery is low

Great event, very well put together and lots of fun.

In fact, I’m learning stuff about our business that I didn’t even know we were exploring…. perhaps we should make this available internally?

In my haste to get this post up yesterday I forgot to mention that the big announcement that Erik made during the speech was that we’ve been working with Nintendo to make the iPlayer available on the Wii – I’ve known about this for a while but keep forgetting we’ve not told anyone publically!!!

You can read about it over on BBC News

Having run labs this year it’s interesting to see the ideas that are being pitched to the same briefs I’ve already spent two weeks working on with diverse companies in the UK – and I have another two weeks of working on them.

The same commissioners are here, broadly looking at the same ideas and I’m beginning to wonder how much of a pain it is for large organizations like the BBC to interact in a meaningful way with indies – the current models are unsustainable as we require more and more time from commissioners to look at ideas that at this early stage are very weak or simply just not for the BBC.

How can we pull all this together, or at the very least insert a filter further down the line without losing the gem of a fantastic idea.

I think there’s some lessons we can learn here – I’m just not sure what they are yet.

It’s really quite cute – first thoughts are that the keyboard is going to take some getting used to and I have to find a better way to upload photos to Flickr.

More as I play with it this week.

How cool is this guy? This is guitar two of five, each one costing less than 20 pesos. His name is Jonno and he’s a new chap on a forum I’m a member of called Horizons Unlimited – a few weeks ago there was a heated debate about taking a guitar on the road – many of the old hands pointing out that it simply couldn’t be done.

Now here’s this guy who’s never done this stuff before and he’s proved the old guard wrong – his reason for taking it? It breaks the ice with the locals and reduces stress after a long hard slog on the bike. To be frank if that beach and palm trees don’t reduce stress I don’t know what will – but as far as meeting the locals goes – what a  great idea.

Perhaps I should work out a way to take a piano?

So it’s with some satisfaction this morning that I’ve had  a quick look around and seen the people have made their voices heard, that demonstrations went ahead, and that despite a ‘ring of steel’ around the torch several attempts were made to take the torch and even put it out with a fire extinguisher. 

It’s made me proud to see that even whilst our ineffective prime minister is unwilling to raise the question of Tibet in any meaningful manner with the Chinese, the people of the UK and other countries feel able to make themselves heard in London. 

Read more about Tibet, and why we should put pressure on our Government to do something about it, rather than saying it’s okay to torture and take over someone else’s country with impunity.

 Everyday I head into work and see the Olympic flag flying proudly over the site of the last location in this country to hold the games, it makes me sick that the ideals it’s supposed to hold in the highest esteem don’t count if you have enough money or are enough of a threat to make them go away.

We spent most of the day filming a new short piece for Journey To Russia with Les at Travel Dri Plus about tents (we had to de-camp to the village hall), then set out for the moor. As we arrived a  Sea King was airlifting people off, there were amulances and police land rovers rescuing people… we thought we were touger than that and set out to find a shelterd place to camp.

Driving for an hour we found a location not already under-water and stepped out of the vehicle still full of the excitment of camping…. then we got back in the car and debated the relative costs of B&Bs before hauling ass back to South Wales and taking shelter from the 40mph winds.

Not the most constructive weekend and I’m now sat at a services on the M5 on my way to the North West Lab waiting for War of The Worlds to download from the iTunes music store.  

What I need now though is 10 runners willing to work two 12 hour shifts on the 4th and 5th April (not this weekend, the one after).

So if you’re interested or know someone who wants to earn some cash and have some fun at a BBC event (it’s going to be hard work) then drop me a note. 

So to my absolute delight I discovered that you can freeze-dry wine – no seriously – you can buy 200ml of wonderfully rich ‘rouge’ wine direct from Touratech, and in a tiny little silver packet. Perfect.

I was open minded about the wine, I’m not a snob and tend to drink bottles that are less than £5 a pop, but for £3.04 plus p&p even I was a little worried about the quality of the plonk delivered in a mere three weeks.

I prepared the equipment (a jug with 200ml of water, a long stirring thing, and a glass), opened the sachet and dropped in the rather lumpy, congealed powder – not confident at all it was going to dissolve. But to my surprise, the wine dissipated after only gentle encouragement. Five minutes dragged by and I was rewarded with a deep red jug of wine, ready for drinking at the fireside. What could be more perfect?

The only thing remaining was to actually taste it. This is where the dream of wine on-the-go falls to pieces. Dear Lord… holy cow… and some other non-printable expletives. I’m struggling to describe it without having to resort to blawah, but I can’t come close. It tasted of chemicals, with a hint of toilet cleaner, and and after taste not dissimilar to Sunny Delight.

This is a great idea, and I’m sure if somebody spends some time thinking how it actually tastes rather than trading on the idea of wonderful modern ease and travel, then it may succeed. Until then, drop into your local supermarket, buy the cheapest box of red - remove the outer packing – and be in rouge bliss.

Now of course I’ll watch with glee as the Lions side is chosen and not a single Welsh player is selected.

Watch the match, and ready about Wonderful Wales over at BBC Sport 

oh yes baby

From Crave

I mean… come on… 9 inch screen, £300, 1gb RAM, up to 12gb Flash based HD… get me one now!

In fact, Asus, I’ve pretty much sold an entire truck load of the 7inch versions for you, so just ship me the 9 inch now and then I’ll review it here.

Go on… you know you want to.

It may seem harmless, but my poor motorbike is getting a little sick of having everything taken off and messed with. I keep finding myself looking at sites that advocate building your own pannier systems.

I think it all stems back to that mech engineering apprenticeship I did when I left school, it still feels like only yesterday but as my father reminded me this weekend it was 12 years ago. The motorbike mechanics course at Merton also has a part to play, and Stace has just started a welding course at Hammersmith that I think I may sign up for next term.

The garage is pretty much complete now, the work bench is finally in, all that remains is to wire in the electrics (to the bech), pipe in the compressor and complete the shelving for the fridge and microwave….. oh my dear Lord… I am turning into my father.

The donations that have really struck me though are the little ones, the one that really made me smile and get a really warm fuzzy feeling was from a young chap on ebay who I bought a camping shovel from – when we completed the purchase he looked at our website and decided to donate the profit from the shovel purchase – how cool is that!?

So first off I want to say thank you to everyone that has donated, and secondly I want to point you in the direction of another justgiving page – that of Patrick’s latest adventure – The Longest Day – John O’ Groats to Lands End…non stop and in under 24hours!

There’s going to be a conference on the Friday, and then the hack event over the Saturday and Sunday as before… more details being arranged as I type this and I’ll try to keep you all up to date as more details emerge – I’m also going to blog here quite a lot about organising this thing – for me more than anyone else – as last years flew by so quickly I missed a lot of it!

Here are the rules:

1. Each player starts with eight random facts/habits about themselves.
2. People who are tagged need to write a post on their own blog (about their eight things) and post these rules.
3. At the end of your blog, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names.
4. Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.

So, trying to gather some pace with this thing here we go:

I was a nurse. Seriously I went to Swansea University and spent eighteen months learning how to look after quite ill people. I really really enjoyed it, and would still be there if my demo to the local radio station hadn’t resulted in a breakfast show. It has made me incredibly un-sympathetic to sick people though.

I was a commercial radio breakfast show presenter. Rather amazingly, off the back of one rather bad demo Bridge FM in South Wales made me their breakfast show presenter for six months before I had a massive falling out with the manager, luckily I already had a job at the BBC by then.

I’m a buddhist. Not random, but new.

I have a problem with tools. I spend any slow Sunday shopping in Machine Mart. I wish there was some kind of rehab.

I like nothing better than the sound of rain on canvass. I’m a big fan of camping and drag my poor suffering wife to damp fields in sub zero temperatures just so I can listen to the dew landing on the tent.

I have two cats, had a dog, but have a secret hankering for a family of goats.

I was a member of the New Labour Society in University, but then got thrown out for supporting an independent candidate in the student district of Swansea. At the count for the election I was punched in the face by a New Labour type who lost the election. I’ve not got involved in politics since then.

I secretly wish I was on the stage. Ever since school I’ve enjoyed acting – to the point where I actually believe I could be on the stage in the West End – I’ve even thought about going to auditions. Reality then kicks in and I discover how much talent you need to do that kind of thing and how far out of my depth I am.

Okay with that over with let’s think…. eight people to nominate.

Euan Semple – fantastic ex-BBC who taught me a lot
Frank Boyd - wonderful chap behind the Innovation Labs.
Tom Coates – totally awesome guy, ex-BBC now Yahoo!
Chad Dickerson – gentleman and a scholar, a true blue and genius to boot.
Robin Hamman – a fellow St Albans resident and blogging guru.
Jemima Kiss – very clever journo at the Guardian
Jag Singh – fellow guest once on blogger tv
Peter Cashmore – never me, never talked, but the surname is so rare and he keeps coming up in my google results.