glastoq

Well after 3 days of setup, the festival opened. Our section, I have to admit, looks great and we’ve received a whole load of compliments on what we built. We had glorious sunshine until yesterday when the heavens didn’t so much open as just slowly empty. I stood in the rain at midnight, listening to the Levellers in the mud. A perfect glastonbury moment. Mind you, when did they get old? Last time I saw them was 17 years ago. We’re of an age and it was something of a surprise to see them all grown up and now one of the fathers of festival music.

They may have got older, but the invective is still there and bouncing away to the encore of There’s Only One Way was glorious. I retired to my bed and listened to the rain.

I’ve taken a few photos, not many though and only on my phone as I’ve not dragged the big camera out yet. lI forgot to set up a feed from flickr so you’ll have to visit directly to see them, address is in the previous post.

Right, the sun’s come out so I’m off exploring, catch you all later.

J

 

Photography and pushing boundaries.

Despite loving photography I’m actually very bad at taking pictures of people. I think it’s the shyness thing, I don’t like to intrude, so I’ve mainly done landscape and other things apart from a rare option to do portfolio shots for a couple of friends or snapshots at parties. When I picked up my dSLR last year, I made a promise to myself I’d start taking more pictures of people, and have a goal to start a project where I take a portrait of different person every day for a month and make sure some of them are strangers. It’ll force me to approach people and start practicing that.

In the meantime, I’ve been in spain for the past week as I said in my last post. It was a great week and I thoroughly enjoyed being part of the amazing team of people Inspa had put together for the retreat. I learned much and made some great friendships while I was there. When not working or sleeping, I took part in the hikes that were organised and took the camera along to record the places we walked as well as taking some photos of people. At the end of the week there was an ‘It’s a Knockout’ type event for fun and I spent a snap-happy hour photographing everyone there. I’m really pleased with how the shots have come out, and you can see the gallery on my flickr account here

It was good practice in shooting people, and I could relax knowing that no-one minded. In fact everyone was really pleased and asked to see the shots, hence the flickr set. Must try doing more of this.

Peace,
J.

 

The rain in spain….

Isn’t falling on me

I’m up in the hills about an hour outside Seville, at a wonderful retreat called Trasierra. I’m working for in-spa.co.uk as one of their massage therapists in the sunshine. It’s glorious weather here and doing me the power of good.

Just like the guests I’m detoxing, eating fabulous healthy food, going on hikes and doing some exercise. Unlike the guests I’m not lying in the sun relaxing in between all that, I’m working my, unworn, socks off giving rather a lot of deep tissue massages each day. The clients are a mixed bunch, mostly alpha females, all with good jobs and large disposable incomes. Over the last few days they’ve relaxed, refreshed and it’s been great fun getting to know them all.

The rest of the team are all first class, we were introduced to the guests as the very best of our kind in the business, which felt great. Apparently I’ve had nothing but good feedback from everyone and to be able to stand together in this sort of crowd of personal trainers, nutritionists, therapists etc is a quiet vindication of the years I’ve been working at this. I feel very humble here, but at the same time really quite proud.

I’ve managed to catch up on some sleep when not working and I’m looking forward to the long hike we’reall doing together tomorrow. A few more days then it’s back to the reality of London, but only for a few days then I head off to Glastonbury for a week helping friends build an art project in the green fields. I have another week out here in July and I’ve been asked if I’m available in August if they need someone for then. I said yes.

So much happening, it feels a bit strange after the last few months of treading water. Be interesting to see where it all leads over the next few months.

T’ra.

 

I am now a ‘professional’ blogger!

Ok, so I’m not getting paid for it (yet), but it’s proper writing for a real technology blog.

techwinter.com

Basically I get to write whatever I like that interests me on the subject of technology, with a focus on mobile technology, as long as it’s reasonably in depth and not just ‘ooh look, someone’s got a new shiny coming out’. I’m hoping to post every couple of weeks which should give me time to come up with interesting subjects and to write more than just a paragraph or two. I think it will be both challenging and interesting and will at least get me thinking more about my writing. Who knows where that might lead.

 

iGo Stowaway Ultra-slim Bluetooth Keyboard

At last an answer to texter’s thumb and a way to make my phone much more useful.

 

A big thumbs up to Vodafone customer service.

I’ve been meaning to post about Vodafone’s customer service, which has really impressed me.

Now, mobile phone companies don’t have the best of records for taking care of their customers, I’ve had some shocking customer service issues with T-mobile in the past, having to deal with Indian call centers not understanding me, being told one thing by one person, another by someone else and generally spending ages on hold paying for the priviledge.

So far though, Vodafone have been superb. Each time I’ve phoned with a query the call has been promptly answered and my problem resolved rapidly. For example, the other week I was having lunch with James Whatley and others and wanted to access my flickr account from my phone. Turned out I couldn’t, for some reason Vodafone deem flickr to have adult content and I’m not allowed on it until I prove I’m over 18. Switched to their website and there’s forms and credit card details needed etc. Can’t be arsed with that so I phone customer service.

Around me there are comments about ‘but we haven’t got that long to wait’, or ‘you’ll be lucky to get anything done about it this side of christmas’. Well, the call is answered inside of a minute, I give them my security details to prove who I am, explain the problem which is promptly followed by ‘one moment sir’, and then a moment later ‘that’s fine sir I’ve lifted the restriction, your phone should now let you access any content you require’. 5 seconds later a text arrives informing me of the same thing.

Colour me impressed.

Another example is that I don’t like having a phone that’s locked to one carrier. I used to travel a lot and had sim cards for half a dozen different countries that I would put in as the plane landed in whichever country I was travelling to, giving me a local phone number as I left the airport. Very convenient. Most phones sold through a contract in the UK are locked to the service provider and you have to pay to have them unlocked either by the phone company or by one of the shops on the high street.

Not with Vodafone any more. All new Vodafone handsets are being supplied unlocked and if you want your locked vodafone handset unlocked you only have to phone them and ask. I did this and they gave me the unlock code straight away, told me how to use it and then called me back 5 minutes later (exactly when they said they would) to check everything had worked. 

I believe that O2 also supply unlocked handsets as well. Hopefully this will be a continuing trend amongst the companies.

Vodafone’s network has been one hundred percent solid, never dropped a call or missed a data connection, gets me a line when other peoples phones can’t and so far has been a near perfect operator. The one mistake they made, which was a piece of incorrect information I was given when I first joined, was rectified as soon as I contacted them, and the charge refunded immediately.

Given that I’ve had a mobile phone for going on 17 years, I can safely say this is the best service I’ve had by miles. If they keep going at this rate, they’ll have a customer for the long haul.

 

How do you create the life you want.

As a great man once said, “I have a dream”. It’s a fairly simple dream, but it’s one that has set the direction for my life over recent years. It’s caused me to change many things about how I live and to make decisions that perhaps could have been better made in other ways.

My dream is to own my own house, somewhere in the mountains and to live a life the way I wish to, unencumbered by debt or mortgage, doing a job I enjoy and with the time and money to travel and do other things, such as voluntary work, when I choose to do so.

Sounds simple doesn’t it. It’s not.

 

RIP Sheldon Brown

Another of the people I looked up to passed away and I didn’t find out until a couple of weeks ago.

Sheldon Brown.

I’ve been wandering through Sheldon’s web sites since about ‘98, I swapped some emails with him when I was living in the US, and had planned to visit and meet him at the shop he managed in New England when we were going to go on a bike tour up there which we didn’t get time to do. I took part in several of the forums he was an active member of for several years, particularly while training up for the big triathlons

I can’t even find words to describe this wonderful, gentle and incredibly generous man, who was one of the world’s authorities on all things bicycle related. His personal, bicycle and business sites are one of the largest repositories of all things bicycle related. That he spent years putting this on-line for free, would answer any email or phone call and offer the benefit of his many years experience to anyone who asked was a reflection of his kindness and generosity.

After a couple of years away from bicycle communities I’m saddened not to have heard about this earlier but much more saddened that such a delightful man is no longer with us. Most of what I know about the technical side of cycling I learned on his sites and it made me a better, faster, safer and more knowledgeable rider.

RIP Sheldon, you’ll be greatly missed.

 

Obligatory hello world post

Here I am again, with a new blog and a few ideas for posts to put up. Eventually this will get transferred over to my main website, but until that’s sorted out I’ll leave it hosted here. Feel free to add comments to anything you see but please remember this is my blog, and my ideas, if you don’t like them, well, tough.