It’s a proper bind not having a phone. Lost in on Saturday in a different country. Hope of having it returned is slipping. I’d had everything set up ‘just so’ on it and it was almost brand new (a Nokia N95 8GM less than 2 weeks old)
This is how it must of been in the olden days.
NB : I’ve lost my phone. If you need to contact me, email matt(at)dragondrop.org and I’ll get back to you – should be back up in a day or so.
I’m back in blighty now – drove from Dublin this morning. Missing my lovelies loads already (they are stopping over in the Emerald Isle till Friday)
Nice drive back. I do like my new car lots – even more so now that it’s been road tested on a proper journey.
Well – I’m off to try and do some constructive things to keep myself out of trouble whilst Eirene and co are away.
We’re over in Dublin. Popped over for a long weekend (Eirene is hanging around a bit longer). Just been into the city this morning with Eirene’s dad. Eirene’s dad is a great bloke to wander round Dublin with. A great font of local knowledge. A few stories that wouldn’t hit the standard tourist literature thrown in for good measure.
Bought an Ordinance Servay Ireland map of Dublin and the surrounding area. Since my last post I’ve got hooked on Geocache hunting. I’ve found 8 now. It’s fascinating. Some are REALLY hard. One in particular has totally stumped me – Stovold’s Revenge very near our house. The co ordinates get you close, then there’s a puzzle that seems very cryptic – loads of clues I just don’t get the references to. Other caches have been quite easy – each one is a proper buzz when you find the cache though. I’ve taken the boys out for a couple of hunts as well (just happened to be two quite tricky ones – one where we got eaten alive by midgies and mozzys!)
Just plotted out a few in Dublin that I’d like to try (mainly in Marley Park). There’s loads round here. I heart maps.
found my first GEOCACHE : http://snipurl.com/32284. Ingenious location! I’d heard the word ‘geocache’ before, but wasn’t that sure what it was. In a nutshell, it’s Hi tech treasure hunting. After hearing a bit about it from a chap at work, a bit of a dig around that internet revealed it was something I’d probably quite like. A further dig revealed that there’s some purpose built software available for my new N95 8GB. If you know the scene on Aliens when Ripley is finding closing in on the Aliens.. well it’s like that – it automatically plugs in the longitude and latitude and radars you in. AS well as that there’s a built in compass, you can access the logs (the one I found had already had 56+ visitors) Fantastic! Amazed I’ve not done it before. I’m hooked. Harrogate has wht looks like about 20 odd geocaches – some of which are ‘micro’ – often a 35 mm film canister, others are larger – with some actual treasure (that you swap for some treasure of your own that you leave behind.)
The official website is here
The free N95 geocache navigator software is available here which an be linked to you geocache account (so it tracks all your finds and hides etc.)
If you’ve not got a gps phone (I think some of f the portable sat nav units work to some degree) there’s some by this company that start from £100 : garmin
Good show.
Big Beach Sports for the wii gets an official two thumbs fresh. Since the wii came out I’ve been hankering after a cricket game for the wii. I’m not the olny one – there’s been forums and websites campaigning for cricket (wiiwantcricket are the most active campaigners) It’s got the best peripherals of any consol for this sport simulation. In summary, because America and Japan both ‘don’t get it’ with the cricket thing, (and them being the biggest wii marketplace) it’s not been taken up by anyone. BBS has 6 games – all pretty good, but I had bought this under the power of the cricket game. Admittedly, it’s a cartoonified, dumbed down version of the game, but that, plus a few friends and a few beers on Thursday night proved to be a proper good laugh. Still looking forward to something more serious though.. I’ve been tantilized with this. Something like Brian Lara’s cricket would port across beautifully (he said hintingly.. come on game producers, just look at the fan base for cricket in the UK, Australia, India etc – we’ve all got wii’s as well!)
Some of the other games are good on BBS – particularly like beach boules. Not a bad ‘party game’ – my kids didn’t massively get into it though. Anyway – well worth it’s budget title status.
Bottled water is rubbish!
A great man in the marketing world once told a chap I used to work for (also a great Marketeer) over dinner in New York that selling people water in bottles, is perhaps the most successful and brilliant pieces of marketing the world has ever seen. Who would have thought that something most of the western world can get for free at the twist of a tap would end up being branded and priced? He then backed up this story with a question – What’s evian spelt backwards… ? I’ll leave you to work out the rest.
I’m seriously loving what this bunch have just done (www.wewanttap.com) – twisted the whole bottled water thing on it’s head and they are selling Tap Water (or at least the brand collateral to make it sexy)
Seriously though, their main twist is about awareness. 2.7 million tons of plastic are used each year to bottle water (that’s 2.5% of the worlds oil consumption) Only 10% of plastic water bottles go to recycling – the rest to landfill. Terrible when you think that by almost half the worlds population will face severe water shortage by 2050.
1/4 of all bottled water is simply filtered tap water. Buying a kit from We Want Tap gives you stickers to re brand you existing bottles – genius. You also get a few other stickers and goodies – all for £6.50 inc postage of which 70% of the profit goes to funding water projects in the developing world. I’ve just coughed up. You should to! here’s the link : www.wewanttap.com
So we got a new set of wheels at the weekend. The Impreza had to go! I love this though. It’s a Volvo V40. Swede Speed. leather and woodness goodness inside, cruise control, air con, computer.. TOYS! I love it.
Here’s my Jaygo admiring the spoon man that Sophie made him for his birthday.
Here’s a timelapse video from our camp on Friday at Thornborough festival
I’ve uploaded a bunch of photo’s I took at Thornborough Festival 2008. Have a look see by clicking this
I’ve done a timelapse as well – having trouble uploading that.
Thornborough Festival 2008 was officially brilliant fun. Did it rain you ask? Yep – many differing types of rain which did scare a few off but it’s the busiest I’ve ever seen it and apart from a few bits and bobs, it all went swimmingly (If you’ll pardon the pun). I was secretly quite pleased about the rain as I had acquired but not used a 70′s Trawlerman’s suit. And some wellys. I confronted some fears by going for a walk in a very very heavy thunderstorm at one point. That was brilliant. We did have two gorgeous late afternoons / evenings – which is the time I took loads of photos (to be uploaded very soon)
The stages we’re all really cool. The biggest main stage I’ve seen at Thornborough – all in a marquee. I heard this was run/set up/or something by the chaps from the lovely Thimbleberry festival. The homegrown stage was very nice also – didn’t spend that much time down there myself but heard great reports from other folks of stuff I’d missed. Spent most of my time at the Acoustic stage (as we were camped close and friend was running it). Saw some lovely music action there. Got to play a few times on various jams and bits and bobs.
Eirene’s Kids Zone went really well. Key focus was on craft type activity. Loads of stuff was made and drawn and stuck and cut and coloured and proudly presented to parents around the site.
All in all a lovely time. Great camp, lovely people, great community spirit I found. Thornborough is a highlight of my year for a number of reasons non less so than catching up with friends of which we’re so lucky to have so many amazing version of.
Just to wrap up for now – I just wanted to extend big thanks from Eirene for all the people who helped out at the Kids Zone tent.
So for those of you sat at work counting down the hours till you can get up to the Thornborough Festival site at Lime Tree Farm (like me!) I can report that it is all looking great. I was up there last night for a few hours. We’re in Blakes field (yellow and white marquee field) with the Kids Zone. Didn’t go in the main stage last night – fully covered big, long marquee near the main entrance. There’s a tent in the valley that’s reportedly going to have two rigs – a live rig and a party rig (10k pa) that should be fun! Loads of other goodies on site – some new stuff as well. It looks really well thought out – logistics etc.
Eirene and Sophie are already on site.
Really looking forward to it. Should be a right tin bath.
