Very cool trail map, from a more useful perspective than the usual one:

https://mickwest.com/mammoth/

Back in 1993 I took a trip to Nepal with my ex-girlfriend Carol.    I took a lot of photos on that trip, and finally got around to scanning them in:

http://picasaweb.google.com/mickword/Nepal1993#

Six days of the trip were trekking near Pokara, in the Annapuran region.  This is approximately the route we took:

From Nepal 1993

It’s about the easiest trek you can do. We walked for about five hours a day, maybe a bit more, but were really only walking 5-8 miles. It was a lot of up and down though. The heights on the map are in meters.

This is how I got started programming, 20 years ago, 1988:

Actually I started a few years earlier, but this is probably where I really got into writing code, and writing games.  That’s a Sinclair ZX-Spectrum in a dK’tronics keyboard.  Microdrive on the left.  TV as a monitor.  Sound sampler plugged in the back, plotter on the right.  Cassette player (from before I got the microdrive).  I still have that pink folder under the calculator.  This is all on my desk in my room at Needham Hall, from when I was at UMIST (now Manchester University).

This is in Hebden Bridge, near to Bingley, where I grew up.    If my life had a taken a few different turns, this could have been me:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/8548110@N06/516706022/

Books I’ve read since Feb 4th 2008, on my Kindle, with a ranking out of five of how much I enjoyed reading them.

1984 by George Orwell. (4/5)
Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen (4/5)
Sabriel by Garth Nix (4/5)
Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett (4/5)
A Short History of Tractors in Ukranian, by Marina Lewycka (3.5/5)
What is the What, By Dave Eggars (4/5)
World War Z: An Oral History, by Max Brooks (4.5/5)
Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang (3/5)
Lirial by Garth Nix (4/5)
Abhorsen by Garth Nix (4/5)
13 Bullets by David Wellington (3/5)
American Gods by Neil Gaiman (4/5)
The Subtle Knife by Philip Pullman (3.5/5)
The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch (4/5)
Gate of Ivrel by C.J. Cherryh (3.5/5)
Eat the Document by Dana Spiotta (4/5)
The Professor and the Madman by Simon Winchester (4.5/5)
In the Woods by Tana French (4.5/5)
East of Eden by John Steinback (4/5)
The Likeness by Tana France (3.5/5)
Duma Key by Stephen King (4/5)

[Update June 2009] The following account might still be useful, but I don’t think the DPH548 is available any more.   I would now recommend the NetGear MCAB1001 Adapter kit, which Amazon is currently offering for $180 for two adapters.   It gets very good reviews.  Someone reported problems getting it working with FiOS, but according to a comment below: “I’m Chris Geiser, the Product Line Manager for the NETGEAR MoCA bridges. The MCAB1001 works fine on the Verizon FIOS network and has been extensively tested.”

Continue reading…

I must have read this book a thousand times when I was young.  Finally someone scanned it, and stuck it in an online museum:

http://www.pointlessmuseum.com/museum/usbornebookofthefutureindex.php

We could see Malibu burning across the bay for the past two days.  Here it is going up Malibu Canyon.  You can see some fire-fighting aircraft.

This is a few hours later, the fire has almost got to the top of the hill.

This is a closeup of the top of the hill in the above photo:

It seems all fairly clear now, although there are lots of fires burning elsewhere, filling the whole sky with hazy smoke.