check boots for scorpions

The iPhone picture of our current base will have to do for the moment. We're around Sedona, which is the scene of many American Western movies as well as (slightly surprisingly) Mad Men and (more surprisingly) Brideshead Revisited.

We're surrounded by the red stacked rocks, with the nearest to us being the chimney stack, but a pretty good view across to the many others. Its also one of the mystical spiritual vortexes around here. so we'll be soaking in the vibe along with the sunshine

Last night I was eating the fried cactus with (yep) cactus sauce, admittedly with a little chillie added for that extra spike.

I've found it fairly easy to remember to do the looking around the ground at night for scorpions. They are attracted to water and even the little ones can pack a pretty hefty sting. There's rattlesnakes too, but I suppose we are in cowboy country.

coffee anyone?

We may still be 100 miles north of the Mexican border, but the chance to try some 1921 tequila cream coffee, in a glass caramelised with rum at the local Mexican restaurant was too good to pass by.

We've spent part of today on trails through areas filled with cactus and palms, so not that far from civilisation, but we'd always planned today for acclimatization before we really get moving.

And then later this afternoon we witnessed one of the huge dust storms crossing the area, at a speed of 35 mph and temporarily plunging everything into darkness before giving way to rain and then back to sunshine, all the time maintaining more than 100 degrees Farenheit.

filtering the UK news

Only a short time away from the UK and I'm noticing the different emphasis to the intermittent news from our fair island. The distance and filtering makes it sound just that bit more bizarre. Almost 'Keystone Kops' in the way its being described.

The big UK story on American TV channels is still the News Corps allegations although the pieces here seem to add up differently (and use old footage).
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The extra stories are about Rebekah Brooke's husband's laptop computer being found in the underground carpark 'trash' in Chelsea Harbour. And then some stories about 'Scotland Yard' police resignations. And to top it all a story about the Sun's website being hacked and a fake story about the pollonium poisoning of Murdoch.

It reminds me about that old quote that if there's no news then make something up.

the coming attraction, the drop of a name

It's hot here in Arizona.

Yesterday evening was 43C/107F which meant carrying a backpack needed some special care. Our destination was also a little slippery and initially evaded us but only long enough for us to witness a spectacular melting sunset.

Then we cornered the palm strewn destination and found a place for the night. Amusingly it was playing Eagles on the FM.

But now, new day, at 4pm UK, maybe its time for some breakfast.

books for the beach

I've always read a fair amount, subject to the vagaries of work and travel. When I spent time commuting around London I'd read a newspaper and then switch to a compact format book as the train filled up.

My picture illustrates the dilemma of travel with books though. I don't always want to read the same book all of the time (I do sometimes) but there's a problem carrying multiple books around. The holiday season exemplifies this. American format paperbacks are usually the best because they are generally smaller than UK ones, although they seem to be printed on thicker paper than, say, a Penguin edition.

As for anything recently published - it means hardback although that's generally a no-no because of the bulk.

My visualisation graph in the picture illustrate the problem.

Column 1 is the lone book I plan to read which isn't available electronically. Column 2 shows some books I've been reading and want to finish, but would take up too much space in my back-pack. Column 3 is a representative sample of recent books I've read but haven't got around to filing away anywhere yet. Column 4 are a few example magazine type publications I might also dip into, but not necessarily read every item in each edition.

I've decided to take a Kindle instead - other than the not available titles, it could swallow all of this pile of 35 books. And a further 100 similar piles. Some might say that there's a different feel to a Kindle compared with paper. Yes, it's easier to turn the page and they don't flap back again at an awkward angle. Some might say there's a different smell. More free monomer than musty. I can handle that too. Some might say that they don't have the same feel as the book. Try carrying "Hackney, that Rose Red Empire" for very long...

If the idea of a book is to pour some thoughts and ideas into one's head then I'm actually less concerned about the physics of the delivery vehicle. After all, its supposed to 'disappear' if the writing is good, in any case.

So I'll be packing light.

But I will take a charger.

Oh, and my "on bargain special offer" Kindle best-seller The Triangle

my new friends on twitter?

I thought some more about the recent attentions from the attractive IT professionals following my new twitter account (not this one!)

I guess the people behind it have, say, 200-300 or 2000-3000 twitter accounts which each follow 300-400 people and have maybe 75-100 followers in return.

1) The pictures of the followers are mainly women. Many have suffered recent wardrobe malfunctions. No - I'm not showing those here. The ones in the pictures are some well intentioned fans of the novel, The Triangle.

2) In general these followers don't seem to be very chatty, offering an average of zero tweets.

3) Occasionally, a group of them will get very excited about a niche corporate news item and all mysteriously re-tweet it.

4) They appear to execute a "follow / unfollow / follow" behaviour if they don't get followed back. This means they stay at the top of peoples' follow list. So if someone else looks to see who has followed whom recently, there's an array of attractive ladies at the top of the list. Unsurprisingly, they get followed by people browsing the list.

5) A few of them (generally the less shy ones) are somewhat more 'demonstrative' of their city and hotel based hospitality offers.

6) Some of them seem to have different names but appear to be the same person.

7) Many of them have middle initials that reflect common keyboard partterns like "qwe" "cvf" "kjh".

8) Some of them seem to be ideal candidates to supplement those 'instant 1000 followers' lists that are advertised all over the internet.

I'm all for making new friends, but I think Claretha, Cheyenne, Tamie, Tabatha and -er- Frank may need to look elsewhere.

follow me, follow you?

I'm probably missing something, but I have been bemused by some of the recent followers on my twitter account. Not my @rashbre, but another account that is to do with the new company I've been setting up.

I'm pretty familiar with the usual activities associated with advertising 'offers you can't refuse', 'money making schemes often from Southern Africa' and 'pills and potions' but this one is leaving me intrigued.

The account concerned creates pretty earnest sounding chatter about cloud computing and similar yet there seems to be an unexpected interest from attractive female IT professionals who follow an average of 200-400 people, have an average of about 25% of this number following them back and have issued between 0 and 2 tweets in total. Intriguingly many, but not all, of them seemed to join twitter around 5-6th April this year.

My only clue came the other day when I noticed a new announcement from a very well known micro-processor supplier which was then re-tweeted, not by any of my new friends, but instead from another set of people with - er- very similar attributes.

There's probably an urban dictionary term for what is occurring, but I'm not sure whether asking meaghan (who seems to have forgotten her dress in the photo pose) will give me the answer I'm looking for.

johnny was a rockin, goin' round and round

An almost literal spin off from the recent tidying of the garage was the unearthing of an old record player that can be hooked up to a computer.

There were also some boxes of 45rpm vinyl singles, which look as if they are mainly still spinnable

I decided to try copying a few of the labels onto a camera and then uploading them against tracks in iTunes, to get the old style label to pop up when the track plays.

There’s some old gold amongst it with well known Beatles and Rolling Stones tracks nestling alongside the Captain Beefheart, Incredible String Band and Roy Harper.

Link to the progressively extending collection here.

London Bloggers' Meetup

I dropped in on the London Bloggers’ Meetup yesterday evening. It is the first one I’ve attended in ages but I’m glad I made the diversion to the Long Acre pub and found the gathering downstairs.

I’d estimate around 60 people attending so it is now at the level where most folk including me wore little handwritten badges with both real names and blognames.

A good mix of presentations and chatter and some interesting new contacts for me in the process.

Recommended to other London Bloggers to give the mainly monthly meetings a go. And thanks to excellent organiser Andy Bargery

in which the garage becomes a space freighter

The picture is before the upstairs landing started to look like the loading dock for a space freighter from an episode of Alien.

The technology those films don't explain quite so well is how people know what is in which pod. I suppose its all digitalised?

In my case the secret is to have slightly transparent crates, so you can see what is inside without needing to open them again. Some might say that once stuff reaches the 'crate' stage it is very much a one-way trip and the next appearance will be at a car-boot sale, on eBay or into the next arriving skip.

I've decided that it might be good to have some rules like they do with space ships. The current bulk cost to ship a kilo to geosynchronous orbit is around $20,000. Assuming it arrives safely of course.

My tariff for the trip to the garage could be a little less, but it would certainly focus the mind on what is really worth keeping.

wave theory

Thursday afternoon and I'd been driving through the rain on the M25. Part of my mission involved getting keys to a new destination, so they could be used to unlock a door at the weekend.

My sat nav was lit up with little yellow and red cars on most of the route I was taking, but close inspection showed most of them to be on the other side of the road.

As I traversed the Dartford Tunnel I could see a shimmer of blue hope to my right. The darkest clouds were over London and there was the merest hint of playful sunshine to the East.

So as I dropped the keys, there was a moment to consider the next option. Shall we stay or shall we go? We decided to point the car even further east and to head for some coastline. Just for a quick peek, to check that it was not raining everywhere.

The sun may have been shy, but it was in our hearts as we stood on the sand and watched the waves.

I add a wifi hot spot to the car

Let's face it, most of the time we all have pretty good access to wifi these days. The various cloud and free to air offerings around London keep a pretty good signal without needing to remember the warchalk inscriptions.

But what about that inconvenient moment when you are a passenger in a car and the only available iPad doesn't have 3G? Or the laptop doesn't have its own SIM card?

Shock horror.

But easily solved.

I recently switched the car's phone cradle from Blackberry to iPhone (that's part of another story).

Whilst arranging it so that the car's two separate bluetooth nodes don't compete, I thought I might as well add the hotspot facility. My car dealership tells me the official option for a wifi hotspot to be added is £1016.


Actually, it was easy to hang on to the cash and simply enable the iPhone hotspot. With it plugged into the cradle it has a good antenna and power.

Its quite a change from the days when cars came with instructions about not using the phone unless in a caddy, in case it messed with other car electronics or blew up the airbags.