Winter Walking

The weather has been pretty cold and snowy recently but I’ve tried to not let it get in the way of getting out and about. Yes – it’s another one of those self righteous “I’ve been out walking again while you’ve been sat on your ass” posts.

A couple of weeks ago there was a fresh snowfall in Glasgow so I walked down to Kelvingrove Park to take some winter pic’s before the thaw kicked in. I wasn’t the only one with that idea as the park had loads of people in it, mostly taking pictures. The one’s I’m most pleased with? First up is this robin. I was pre-occupied with the ducks struggling against the flow in the Kelvin, a far cry from their more sedate duck pond which was frozen over. I then turned round and the robin was 4 foot away on the handrail of the bridge. Very lucky.

Robin

I then walked up uni avenue just as the sun started to break through. Got some lovely snaps of the Glasgow skyline in winter which will always remind me of days in the tenement. Views all over the south side with many a winters day looking like this.

Glasgow Winter Skyline

Today was the first hill walk of the year, a nice stroll in the Kilpatricks up Duncolm. I expected the snow and ice to be clear but there was still some snow and ice even at this lower level. Loch Humphrey was still frozen over!

Loch Humphrey

Again we were very lucky with the weather as it was mostly dry and from our lofty perch we could see the rain over Glasgow. It was also clearer further north and we could see many of the Perthshire hills and had a great view of Loch Lomond later in the morning.

Loch Lomond

I must admit, I still love the walks. Fresh air, escape for a few hours and a chance to clear the head. Scenery is usually amazing too. Next up in a few weeks (leg permitting!) is a 13 miles stretch of the West Highland Way. Can’t wait.

Rob Jarvis Photography

Do a search for Rob Jarvis photography and you’ll turn up his website, which seems to be mainly a Facebook page, his Flickr stream, Twitter account etc etc etc. You’ll see a wide variety of great photographs. You’ll also find he’s copyrighted those photo’s which seems a sensible step. Protect his IP and all that malarky. Except, not all the photo’s are his. Some have been stolen from Flickr users. In fact, there’s nothing to prove that any of those photo’s are his.

Meg Pickard tweeted that Rob had copied one of her photo’s and copyrighted it as his on Facebook. Theft. I along with a few other left reviews on Facebook, comments and reported the page. Rob quickly took the reviews down, deleted comments and removed a couple of the photo’s that had been mentioned by commenters – some things you can’t remove though.

You can also find a copy of some of the comments made before they were deleted here – http://www.flickr.com/photos/version-3-point-1/4263212273/. Hopefully Facebook will look at the complaints people have made and act accordingly. Would be nice if Rob actually commented on his theft, owned up, apologised even. I doubt it. Meg followed up with a thoughtful post on copyright theft. Well worth a read. I never restrict anything on Flickr, thinking none of my images are worth anything anyway but then again, if they were used it would be nice to get the credit. Something to think about. Looking forward to that apology Rob.

Early Start

So, does this still work?

Now what?

Ah yes. Write. About me.

…sometime later…

…and I really do mean sometime later…

Happy New Year everyone. Hope 2010 is good to you all. So I’ve not blogged much recently. In fact I’ve not blogged much at all this year. I could blame Twitter as that’s where all my quick moans go now. I could also blame DigitalOutbox as that’s where my tech posts go now. I could blame the sciatica I’ve had for about the last 10 weeks which has curtailed my walks. In fact I could present a whole host of reasons that are all pretty valid and if truth be told that’s the real reason I haven’t blogged.

I’m not bored of blogging – I’m just scattered over the web instead of my focus being here on my site. Shame shame shame. I hope to change that over the next few weeks, either by actually writing more on iand.net or by making some changes to pull the content together again in amongst my infrequent blog posts. Not quite sure how yet but that’s all part of the fun, no?

So, look back and look forward. The done thing at this time of year. 2009 was an OK year I guess. Nothing stands out as being overly good or bad so things could have been worse and definitely a lot better.

Aim’s for 2009 were weight loss (another stone), start hill walking to get out and about and finally iPhone programming. Ummmmmm……………………………….shit.

Let’s get the fails out of the way. Weight loss didn’t happen. Well, it just happened. 1.5 kg over 12 months is very disappointing.

The weight loss is still good but the year has been fairly static and rising over the last 3-4 months, partly due to the aforementioned sciatica which has really got in the way of exercise. The good news is that after 6 or 7 weeks of not getting help I went to a physio who has really helped so despite my back still being very sore the pain has mostly gone from my left leg, although I’m still pretty inflexible compared to the right leg. Time is a healer hopefully alongside daily stretches to help with the problem. So no big weight loss predictions this year except to maintain if not lose a little. If that happens I’ll be a happy bunny. Saying that, I’m dreading stepping on those scales on Sunday morning.

Next fail was iPhone programming. I’ve done a little but that’s really it. Nothing to blame but me not prioritising. Will 2010 be any different. Hopefully.

Thankfully I did get one of my aim’s up and running. The hill walking has been a success although I would have liked to have done more than I managed. What was a surprise, as I had no intention to go so high so quickly, was I managed four munro’s this year. We were also pretty lucky with a couple of the walks in that the weather was superb which meant for some great photo’s. 2010 I’m aiming for at least a walk a month.

One surprise that I’ve been heavily involved in was DigitalOutbox, a tech podcast that I launched with Shakeel. We’re enjoying doing the podcasts and we’ve been joined by Chris and Henry. We are slowly growing our listener base and we’ve got some idea’s of how to take things forward in 2010. if you haven’t tried our podcast then visit the DigitalOutbox website or listen in via iTunes.

So, anything else for 2010 apart form weight, iPhone, walking and podcast? Photography. I want to get out and about and take some more photo’s over the next 12 months. A DSLR isn’t for me as it’s just too expensive and too big to carry around so I’ll make do with my little Panasonic for now. I also need to manage my time a lot better as well or else I’ll get hee-haw done this year. I’ll leave with a fav photo of mine from jut before Christmas. More like this over the next 12 months would do me nicely.

Winter Sunshine