Moving home

Dear very small readership

The long and short of this (well, the short of it) is that I'm going to move by blog away from Google's Blogger to WordPress in the near future. This will mean that:

• The URL will remain the same.
• EXCEPT...if you read a feed this will probably be at a new URL (probably http://blog.wintle.me.uk/feed/). As this is a new feed you may initially see posts that you've already seen.
  
• There will be a new look - which may change again in the near future. (I'm working on a Magic Roundabout, road-sign styled theme. But my graphic design skills aren't much good and I don't really have the time! We'll see).
• You may need a new login to submit comments. I'm reviewing how to play this one.
  

Apologies for the inconvenience. A detailed explanation (the long of it) is below.

I actually first started Blogging several years ago - I was an "early adopter" if you like. I made a few posts and then gave up - partly out of embarassment.

Last year my writing took off, partly as a form of therapy during a difficult time of life, partly as a way to track and report what was going on with me health wise, and it's just bumbled on since then. Regular readers will know that it's mostly notes to self that I hope will be informative/interesting to others, and I hope that my writing will continue in that form.

And alongside this I'm a big fan off Google's online services.  I know that some think they're evil, but things like GMail and Google Reader are so feature-rich and easy to use...and growing in features too...that I'm hooked.

The one service that, in my opinion, hasn't kept up and that suffers from being Google's, is Blogger - the software that publishes this blog.  Specific niggles would be:

• Pages are big and take long to download
• Templates are tricky to edit (even for a relative expert like me!)
• Photos from URLs are a nightmare to add and integration with Google's own Picasaweb and the competitor's Flickr is non-existent.

I've recently started hosting my own, private journal over at Wordpress.com and it's REALLY impressed me.  It's fast, it uses good, open standards, it's got a great dashboard (and an even better one with v2.7 which is awesome!) and it's being developed at quite a rate of knots.

So shifting "Magic Roundabouts..." is a no-brainer for me.  There's a little work to do, but Wordpress even imports from Blogger - comments, users and all.

There MAY in fact be two shifts.  I'm contemplating where to host but want to move quick.  In all cases, I'll keep you posted.

Thanks for reading and for bearing with us during non-essential maintenance.

Social Web - the good and the bad

Control Alt Delete

FIRST: A blatant plug for our favourite, not-very-well-known band (yes, we know someone in it) Iko. We don't like them because we know them - we like them because we think they do really good music!

They are on the verge of releasing their second album and have just released a freely downloadable EP. Take a look over at http://www.myspace.com/ikomusic. To get the EP you'll have to email ikoauto@ikomusic.com with your name in the subject line.

The Social Web

Web 2.0, the social web, networking, life streaming...whatever you choose to call it I'm quite interested in how people use web-based tools to interact, and I've occasionally posted about this in the past.

Lots of people remain skeptical. Facebook is popular but anything else seems to raise eyebrows and questions about what the point is and why it's so complicated. My wife is sometimes amongst these.

The Good - Ravelry

But for some there is this thing called the "Killer App". The one little website or program that gets you excited because it has a real use. And some of my female friends (including Sally) have been getting excited about Ravelry. Ravelry is online social-networking for knitters. You can:

• log what bits of wool you've got;
• log what projects you're working on and your progress with them - linking to the bits of wool you're using in that project;
• register who your contacts/friends are;
• see what your friends are making and what their progress is;
• view and download patterns.

And so on. There are lots of cool things you can do with the information on Ravelry too, such as, if you have some wool, you can look up what other people are making with that type/make/colour of wool and use it as inspiration.

I think it's brilliant site. A really good example of how the web can bring like-minded people together to share ideas and inspire and encourage one another. And the best thing is that it's NOT full of techie people and it's drawn in people who probably wouldn't normally use the web for this sort of interaction.

Well done Ravelry!

The Bad - Amazon.com

This is really an excuse for a website rant. I'm making a vague tie-in to the social-web theme by claiming that Amazon's expansion into social-networking-type activities is killing it.

Well, actually, maybe it was already dead.

Let's remind ourselves about Amazon. It was one of the first big online retailers, selling books, music, DVD's and so on to the masses across the world.

It has since expanded to sell all manner of things, not just from its own warehouses but from a large number of other "marketplace" retailers. It has a complex product reviewing system and, wish lists and customized recommendations.

It was brilliant, quick, easy to use, and sold lots of things that you just couldn't find elsewhere. And cheap too!

This is all well and good, but it's starting to go a little far and, as a result, Amazon's website is now complete information overload!!!

I'd love to paste screen shots but they're technically copyrighted to Amazon, so I won't. I will try to describe. There are some long lists here...for which I make no apology.

The homepage tells me about:

• delivery (and restrictions on delivery)
• VAT rates dropped
• link to personalised recommendations
• link to what to do if I'm a new customer
• "Your Amazon.co.uk"
• Deals of the Week
• Gift Certificates
• Gifts and Wish lists
• Search
• MP3 downloads
• Clearance shoes
• Gift certificates (Again)
• What other customers are looking at Right Now
• Festive streals
• New MP3 store
• Gift certificates (in case I didn't get it the first two times)
• Clothing
• Phillips Imageo candles (2 for £35)
• and all that before I scroll down at which point I get to see Amazon exclusives, email settings, selling and buying stuff on Amazon, more to explore (do I need any more?), web services for developers, perfect gifts for him, UnderArmour performance apparel, Acer notebooks, best sellers in knitwear, shop kickers shoes, powerballs, health and beauty deals of the week, what customers are wishing for in DVD, a Sky TV advert, find great gifts for all the family, featured stores, where's my stuff, delivery and returns, help pages, my recent history and a load of inter-site links.

Phew. Oh, and there's a list of different shop areas to browse, like Music, Books, Electronics, etc.

Most of this is not what I want to see at all. I just want to buy a book and then track the order.

First thing then. I want to buy a book I've seen called "Living Africa". A quick search for this is simple (hooray!) and results are shown in a nice clean search results page with little clutter. This is better. So I select the item I'm after.

One thing that bugs me about Amazon's marketplace is that it's not always clear if Amazon are going to ship you the item themselves or if it will come from a smaller retailer that hasn't yet gained my trust. A small note informs me that this will be dispatched by Amazon (and it's £15 than we saw it in the shops for...bargain!). While I'm hear, I think, I may as well check out the customer reviews, to see if it's any good.

And...AAARGRH! I then get information overload again! Customer reviews is now 4 pages down the screen. Here's what else I can see from the product page:

• Information about the Amazon Prime programme
• My shopping basket
• 2 lots of information on delivery
• Wish list, wedding list and tell a friend buttons
• More buying choices (new and used from other retailers)....twice!
• Details of other editions
• Details of which promotions this book is a part of
• Details of another book that is often bought together with this one
• List of other things that people who bought this book also bought
• Product details (a page and a half down) including more links to other editions and links to update product details and give feedback on images
• Sponsored links
• Product Description (now two and a half pages down)
• Other Africa-related products
• Tags (suggested by others and the ability to add tags)
  
• What customers buy after viewing this item
• Customer reviews (yay!)
• Customer discussions
• Listmania
• Look for similar items by category
• Look for similar items by subject
• Feedback on the details of this product
• Links to other Amazon "stores"
• Sky TV advert
• Where's my stuff, delivery and returns and help pages
• Your recent history

Flip! All I want to do is buy a book! Don't get me wrong. Some of this is really useful. But there's just too much on one page. I went back just now to look at the tags section and couldn't find it in the 8-screens full of information. What good is any nugget of information if it's drowned out by a forest of other text, links and graphics?

And why would I want to tag a product in a shop anyway? It's great that Amazon remember things that I've looked at recently so that I can find them again, but why would I want to assign keywords to something in a shop?

There's lots of duplicated information (mostly related products presented in a myriad of ways) and the basic information isn't prominent enough.

OK, so I placed an order (which I'm sure happened without a confirmation screen), and I later want to check the status of it. I've since logged out and navigated back to the front page.

Now, where's the login button. Go on - check my list of what's on the front page and see if you can see a log in link! There isn't one! I either have to scroll to the bottom of the page and click "where's my stuff" or, randomly, click on the text "personal recommendations". Admittedly, this text is part of the sentence "Sign in to get personal recommendations", but it's confused by the fact that the linked text is "personal recommendations", not "sign in". Where do I sign in if I don't want to see personal recommendations? It's like writing:

Sign in to get charged by an elephant.

Well, OK, it's only slightly like that. You get my point.

Having managed to log in, I find that Amazon have some old credit card details (for cards that have expired) and a load of old addresses that need cleaning out. Oh, and I can now add a user profile so that I can "Share information about myself" and "Connect with friends and other Amazon customers". Quite why I'd want to do this I don't know.

What I'm saying is that Amazon's site is now plagued by chaotic design, seemingly pointless features and information overload to the extent that I'm reluctant to use it.

Phew. That was a long rant. Sorry.

Christmas is coming. And for once I think I might be jumping in my car to head to the shops rather than doing everything online. Maybe a few hours browsing Borders would be nice. Grab a coffee and get lost in the aisles of books and CD's. Yes, that's a plan.

Now if Amazon could deliver me a mellow, fairly-traded milky coffee in the next ten minutes without me having to leave the comfort of my sofa. THAT would be good!

Crunch, Clank, Cough, etc

Both Fuzzy and I have been ill of late.  I've had the same cold (I think) three times now and still feel like I'm fighting it off.  There seems to be a lot of nasty bugs around this winter.

And Fuzzy - the poor bike - started, well, it started with the odd clank and crunch that I thought was coming from the bottom bracket (where the axle of the pedals go through the frame), but as time went on:

1. it seemed to get worse; and 
   
2. I worked out it was coming from the rear axle.

Bizarrely, it was worse when I applied the brakes and even made the noise when I was freewheeling (that's how I worked out it wasn't the bottom bracket).

Anyway, he's been to the shop now and they're replaced a cone and the bearings in the rear axle.  I've yet to take him out 'cos I've been driving, because I've wanted to rest and fight my bugs off.  But in the next few days I should get a ride and start building up the fitness again after three weeks off.

Software Updates and Progress Bars

A couple of IT annoyances.

Software Updates

It seems that whenever I turn my computer on at the moment, about half of the software needs to auto-update. Pidgin (IM client), Firefox (and extensions), Anti-Virus, Adobe Reader and Flash, Windows, iTunes...it's incessant! And it means that it's about half an hour from pushing the on button to being able to do anything useful.

Of course, I could disable all the auto-updates. What I'd really like is to be able to click a button that says "update all my software now" and run all the updates at once at a time that is convenient to me.

The auto-update problem is only made worse by my second annoyance.

Progress Bars

We did a module in my computer science degree about Human-Computer Interaction. In it we were told that a progress bar should tell you three things:

1. How much work has been done.
2. How much work is left.
3. How quickly the work is progressing.

Some status bars used to achieve this. Actually, the best ones were usually multi-progress bars that showed how far a job involving lots of smaller jobs had got. One bar showed overall progress and the other showed progress of the smaller sub-tasks. Linux installs were always pretty good for this sort of thing.

But I've not seen a progress bar that does any of the above three things for years now. I see progress bars that do all of the following:

• start again from zero once they reach 100%
• advance at unsteady rates
  
• stop for a long time at a certain percentage and then suddenly leap
• advance at a steady rate but then the work is not complete when they reach 100%

And what's really bad is that we now take this for granted. I mean, what if your car's petrol gague suddenly dropped from 3/4 full to 1/8 full? Or if your washing machine showed it was on the last rinse when really it was still doing the pre-wash? Would we accept that?

We should be telling our software installer vendors that this is unacceptable. I've wasted many hours staring at progress bars that are telling me a job is nearly done when it's really far from completion. I've been late home and I've been late to bed because of such things. I bet you could do analysis that shows that businesses are losing millions of man-hours while people wait for things to complete in this way.

We need progress on progress bars! Who will stand and join with me to reclaim our %-complete's and make them what they once were?

A Busy Time

It's been a busy time for the Wintles!

We've had numerous busy weekends, in Devon with my in-laws, on a Tour of the North (Leeds, Durham, and then back home via Cambridge and London), and we'll be in London this coming weekend too. So we've not been at home much. Weekday evenings have been busy as well.

Here's what's been going on:

Getting rid of the rats

We finally think we've tackled the rat problem. A while ago the man from the council came out again with his boss - the head of Pest Control - for a second opinion. He worked out that the rats were probably getting in from the old "Stink Pipe". The vent connected to the sewer. This isn't used as a vent any more, as a new pipe had been put on the side of the house, but the it hasn't been blocked up. This gives the rats a free run from the sewer up the wall cavity to our loft.

So, we hacked a hole in the side of the old back wall (which has been knocked through into the extension) and shoved a load of chicken wire into the cavity. I'm sure that we have heard the odd scratching since, but there's very little sign of rat activity anywhere and this has been the case for a while now.

Problem is that rats have now started to take refuge in our compost bin.

AARRGRGHHH!!!!

In the mean time the last one to die has stopped smelling and we now have a plague of flies again. Hopefully out last!

Ikea

We've also been having furniture fun. Try to follow this.

We're borrowing some furniture from my sister, who is waiting to sell a house so that she can buy a house. When she moves in to the new, bigger house we can give her "loaned" furniture back. At that point we'll need basically a whole bedroom suite, including a bed and wardrobes. We'd also promised a sofa to a friend of ours in Bristol. So whenever we were going to go to Ikea (in Bristol) to buy the bedroom furniture, we were going to hire a van and take the sofa on the same trip.

However, we found the ideal piece of furniture to replace the sofa in a sale. So we bought that and had to expedite the sofa-taking trip. As we had the van we figured we may as well pop to Ikea as well.

Now, our last experience of Ikea was not good. I mean NOT good. It was horrible and we got only about half of what we went for. So we were psyching ourselves up for this trip.

It turned out not so bad and we got about a 90% hit rate. Unfortunately this meant that the two main bits of furniture (bed and wardrobe) were incomplete. We had a head- and foot-board for the bed but no sides, and the wardrobe lacks some drawer fronts.

So on our trip round the country we stopped off at Ikea Leeds to pick up some bed sides (which were crammed into the car next to a gracious Sally for several hundred miles), but the drawer fronts aren't due in the country at all for about 6 weeks.

What we have learned along the way is that Ikea's phone service is pretty good. You can do automated stock checks and, if something's out of stock, you can get the store to text you when it comes back in stock! Rather clever really.

Getting Wii Fit

A Confession

Having finally, after many months, confessed to having a Wii and telling the world what I think about it. It's time for the next step of my "coming out".

We, after a long period of searching, also bought a Wii Fit!

If you have no idea what I'm talking about then take a look at the Nintendo Site about it. In short, it's a balance board. A small and sturdy (and quite heavy) plinth that you stand on and it works out how much you weight and tracks you as you shift your centre of balance.

They were, at the time, pretty hard to get hold of. Yet lots of my colleagues at work were raving about them, and the thought of an interactive way to keep fit in your front room sounded pretty good. And we figured that if the quality of the Wii itself was anything to go by, this should be another more-than-half-decent Nintendo product.

Balance Boards and Body Tests

The reality turned out to be pretty good too. The Balance Board is robust and accurate and easy to set up and get going. The Wii Fit game is good too, after telling it who you are, how old you and, and a few other things (you only do this setup once), you get to do a "Body Test", which weighs you and gives you some balance tests to do. At the end of the test you are presented (in quite humourous fashion, with your Wii Fit Age. This is a number between 20 and 99 that represents your 'fitness'. Sort of.

You're supposed to repeat the body test daily and the Wii Fit tracks your weight and Wii Fit Age, and you can set targets. The little animated version of the balance board that talks you through it all, also gives you fitness tips. These get quite dull after a while and I wish now that there was an option to turn them off.

The Wii Fit also tracks how long you spend on it and rewards you with unlocking extra features as you use it more.

Playing!

The game then allows you to start exercising. There are four different types of exercise:

• Yoga - an onscreen "instructor" shows you a pose and you follow. The Balance Board tracks how well you're balancing and the instructor gives you tips or encouragement in response. At the end you are scored on how well you balanced.
  
• Strength Exercises - again, the onscreen instructor shows and you follow, with appropriate feedback and scores at the end.
• Balance Games - skiing, snowboarding, riding a bubble, tightrope walking and a 'sitting still' game. All good ways to fine tune control of your centre of gravity. Thought some are much more fun than others. Again you are scored on how you perform.
  
• Aerobics - well, hardly. But you can do jogging on the spot, step classes and a kind of 'boxercise' type thing. Some of this is fun, some is pretty pointless in my opinion. As always, you are given scores for how well you do.
  

It's very easy to get into and the competetive element with scores and tables showing who's the best, is a great motivator. There are exercises in all categories that I don't like (the bubble game and the jogging on the spot being two in particular), but I'll happily do a bit of each.

So much potential

Now, I think this is a good product. BUT, what I really really wish is that it was a GREAT product. I'm really happy with the Wii Fit, but I have a load of criticisms that could be easily fixed that would make it SO much better.

1. It's annoying after a while. The talking instructor and animated balance board really need to go away after about 2 weeks. They're good for helping you in but once you know what you're doing there really needs to be an option to turn them off.
2. The competetive element is hampered by the fact that only one person can play at a time. Things like skiing and snowboarding would be much better if you could quickly change between players. As it is you have to navigate back out to the profile selection screen, and then back in (past the annoying talking balance board) as the next person. A simple "Play this as a different user" option would go far!
3. The Wii Fit Age is a bit pointless. There's one particular balance exercise that I'm no good at and which gives me an age of about 40. All the others give me an age between 25 and 35. But it varies so wildly that it's meaningless, and the program's critical comments each time I go up are...yes...annoying. This may be related to the fact that...
4. It doesn't cater well for people who are already fit. I expect if you're overweight and unfit then this is a great way to ease yourself into some exercise. But I'm about the right weight and I'm pretty healthy and fit. Yet it demands that I set a target (lose 2lbs this week to aim for your ideal BMI (Body Mass Index), which probably isn't really what I need. Plus it complains if I have a big dinner and put on a couple of lbs. Big deal. Now shut up!!!
5. It doesn't do programs of exercises. I'd like it to say Monday - Yoga and Strength work. Tuesday - some aerobics. Wednesday - Balance Games. Thursday Aerobics and Strength. And so on, and to have it guide me through a program of exercies. As it is you have to select an exercise - say, a yoga pose - do it, get scored on it, then go back to the menu and select the next thing. Occasionally it suggests that you do a yoga pose and a strength exercise together because they complement each other, but you still have to navigate back through the menus to get to the other exercise.

So, much as I like it, I'm looking forward to the rumoured other games that are coming out for the balance board.

I don't think it's made me much fitter, but the balance games are a lot of fun and the Yoga and strength work is great for my posture and core strength, which I need for cycling.

Sally doesn't really like the gym, has free time after work and a lower level of fitness and it's been a really good way for her to burn some calories and build some strength.

Those last two paragraphs are testimony to the universal appeal of the Wii Fit. We both get something from it. It's not a replacement for a gym, or for getting outdoors and doing some real exercise, but it's a fun way to do some mild exercise.

Let's hope there's a Wii Fit 2 that addresses some of my gripes and really brings the balance board into it's own.

Now where's my trainers and the TV remote?

Eek - I'm an evangelist!

I don't really like the word "Evangelist".  It conjurs up visions of shouty men in the middle of town telling people that they're all going to hell at the tops of their voices.  Either that or suit-wearing professional speakers who hold big Christian rallys in stadiums.  Not me at all, and, despite my strong Christian faith, I don't consider myself much of an evangelist.

However, the word originates in Greek and its original meaning is that of a "bringer of good news", and the word is also used to denote someone who is enthusiastic about a cause.  And that's what I was for a few weeks earlier this year!

A man called Tom launched a thing called the "Swindon Cycle Challenge".  This was a friendly competition, with lots of prizes, that got companies across Swindon trying to get their staff riding bicycles.  As a slight aside, I thought that this was a GREAT way to promote cycling.  The organisation provided lots of promotional material and incentives for people, as well as having a good webstie, updated often, with associated email updates too.  They did everything but provide the bikes!

Anyway, as a member of the little sports and social committee at work I took it upon myself to promote this within my office.  I truly became a cycling evangelist!

It was pretty hard work.  I had to do a lot of haggling and persuading.  Some people thought I was a bit weird and there were lots of excuses that people gave for not getting out and riding a mile or for 10 minutes on a bike, despite the offer of free cinema tickets, cycle accessories, and entry into prize draws for those that did!

I was even referred to as "Swindon's answer to Lance Armstrong".  Hah! I wish.

But I think that it's important to promote cycling, make people realise that you don't have to fire up your car to do that short journey.  I'm aware that not everyone can commute by bike like I can, and that if you have children or luggage then it's not really an available option.  But there are LOTS of journeys that could be done by bike, and there are lots of good reasons to do them by bike!

This process has been a real challenge to my faith.  Cycling isn't the only good news I believe I have to share.  I'm willing to become renowned in my workplace for being a cyclist?  Am I willing to become renowned for being a follower of Jesus?  That's a whole world more scary.

Somehow, talking about faith is awkward and embarassing.  Our culture isn't one where we talk much about beliefs, especially if they are controversial.  Talking about cycling, or what music you like, or what football team you support is OK.  But I wonder what would happen if I decided that I needed to be, not a Lance Armstrong, but a Billy Graham; telling people not about two-wheels, but about hope and joy and goodness.  What would the reaction be?  Would it even be acceptable?  Could I use my sports and social club to help promote a prayer group or to advertise church services and events?

I just don't know, and, at the moment, I don't really know how to start finding out.  But I should take courage (ah...that's where encouragement comes from); I've now been an evangelist, it wasn't that scary, it got mixed reactions, but the whole cycle challenge experience has given me a new confidence to talk, not just about cycling, but about my faith too.

Slug Catching

It's been a while since I wrote about the garden, and in particular about the slugs.

Slug activity seemed to heighten around June/July time, probably compounded by the fact that we had another wet and not overly hot summer.

We'd initially tried beer traps but these were time consuming and messy and, over time, seemed to lose their effectiveness (though this may have been due to our change from half-decent lager to cheap bitter).  We we looked at other methods of catching them.

• Slug Hunting: Trips to the garden at night to hunt and kill slugs proved even more time consuming and messy than beer traps.  But great fun!
• Growing Success Slug Stop: Growing Success is a company that make organic garden products.  We were desperately trying to be organic!  And especially with poison, as we don't want other animals consuming it and dying.  We saw that we could buy their slug defence products in two sizes, and that the bigger size was far cheaper.  So we bought that.  What we didn't realise was that we'd bought "Slug Stop" instead of "Slug Killer"!  You put this white substance around the plants in quite large quantities, the slugs don't like it and so they don't crawl over it to the plants.  Only it doesn't work at all.
• Growing Success Slug Killer: Having realised our mistake we bought some of the more expensive organic blue slug pellets, which are also safe for kids and pets.  These seemed to work better, though we weren't sure how effective they were because we put them down at the same time as...
• NemaSlug: This is a bit freaky but these people breed nematode worms, which are natural predators against slugs.  They swim around in the soil, find slugs, bury inside them, and kill them from the inside out, reproducing as they do so.  They are all-natural, do not interfere with other wildlife, and once they've run out of food (slugs) they die back down to natural levels.  The nemaslug product temporarily increases the level of nematodes in the soil helping kill off the slug population.
  
  We gave one treatment of this late on in the season and it did really seem to help.  It's expensive but seems to be highly effective.  Perhaps we'll try it again next year!

We've also heard that there are plenty of other natural predators for slugs.  Songbirds, frogs, hedgehogs.  We will be looking at ways to encourage these slug eaters into our garden to help us out a bit next year.

Proverbs for our Times

Here are some wise sayings that seem quite relevant given the current credit crunch:

• "Cast but a glance at riches, and they are gone, for they will surely sprout wings and fly off to the sky like an eagle."
• "The rich rule over the poor, and the borrower is servant to the lender."
• "Don't guarantee to pay someone else's debt.If you don't have the money,you might lose your bed."

And here is some ancient wisdom that would seem to apply to our current binge-drinking culture:

"Who has woe? Who has sorrow? Who has strife? Who has complaints? Who has needless bruises? Who has bloodshot eyes?

Those who linger over wine, who go to sample bowls of mixed wine.

Do not gaze at wine when it is red, when it sparkles in the cup, when it goes down smoothly! In the end it bites like a snake and poisons like a viper. Your eyes will see strange sights and your mind imagine confusing things. You will be like one sleeping on the high seas, lying on top of the rigging.

'They hit me,' you will say, 'but I'm not hurt! They beat me, but I don't feel it! When will I wake up so I can find another drink?"

This advice, all highly relevant in our world today, is straight from the Bible, from the book of Proverbs.

It's amazing, both that wisdom from thousands of years ago is still relevant today, and that human nature has moved on so little in that time.

The Wii

I'm sure a million people have reviewed the Nintendo Wii, so my comments on the latest addition to our household will be late and fairly insignificant. Still, having had the Wii for a while, I want to note what I think.

Gaming History and Philosophy in the Wintle Household

Sally and I aren't big gamers. We have PCs and we play silly online games like Stick Cricket (a personal favourite) and The Helicopter Game but in terms of gaming devices, until early June, the most advanced thing we owned was a cheap, 2nd-hand, Nintendo 64, and three games (only two of which were worth playing (GoldenEye and MarioKart).

The reason we own the N64 is for Multiplayer games. We use video games as a fun way to spend time with others.

So when I'd heard much good stuff said about the Wii from my colleagues and had had a go on one round at a friend's house, I...well...I know I shouldn't covet, but, let's say, I put buying one of the consoles on my to do list.

All I had to do was convince Sally. Which is a long story of it's own.

So, shortly before our birthdays in June, we treated ourselves and, after some hunting, found a Wii to buy and bought it.

Initial Thoughts

First reaction? It's a heavy little thing. A small, elegant white box, but solid-feeling and with quite some weight to it! But it seems well built, well packaged and it was simple enough to set up.

The basic package included a single wireless remote, and the "Wii Sports" game. It doesn't have co-axial output so you need a telly with SCART or RGB inputs (we still have a big CRT TV rather than a modern LCD or Plasma screen, but we had enough SCART sockets for this not to be a problem). The only thing that felt a bit flimsy was the remote sensor bar, which you sit on top of or below your telly.

The remote seems pretty robust and after the initial throwing-across-the-room accidents now comes with both a handy wrist strap (that the Wii constantly tells you to use!) and a silicon "jacket" which gives fairly thick padding to further prevent danger.

In fact, the whole health-and-safety thing is a bit overdone with pages and pages of the manual given over to RSI, the dangers of waving remotes around, and how to use your Wii without damaging anyone or anything. All done, presumably, so that Nintendo can say "we told you so" when common-sense-less people try to sue them for damages. What a sad world we live in. Still, I appreciate the wrist strap, which is a highly sensible addition.

Channels

On startup the Wii does a few uninteresting things, like asking you to give it a name, and then presents you with a selection of "channels". These are the different things that the Wii can do, and all the channels are stored in the small amount of flash memory that the Wii has (I think this is 512MB).

Channels are like little applications, and include a photo viewer (the Wii has an SD memory card slot for your camera or phone's memory card to go in), settings pages, news, weather and "Mii" channel where you design your own little character with which to appear onscreen.

You can add channels from some games and they are also downloadable if you set up a wireless internet connection.

The only channel not stored in the Wii's memory is the disc channel, which is where you access the games that come on DVD-like discs.

The only fiddly thing is that the Wii needs to be left on standby to keep the weather and news up to date, which, of course, doesn't appeal to our green sensibilities - yet they are very useful channels.

Design

The Wii is pretty family-centric, and the look and feel could be said to be childish. Yet it manages to accomplish this with some element of style. Yes, the Mii's are little cartoon characters, and everything has round edges and things float and bounce around. But things are smooth and clean, things scroll and zoom nicely, and there are certain whizzy little things that probably shouldn't be there but are - clever touches that grown ups appreciate.

Your first Game: Wii Sports

Wii Sports comes with the Wii and is one of the big lures.  It's simple but makes astoundingly good use of the Wii's remote.  Tennis is a perennial favourite.  Easy to pick up, but as you learn that you can use the remote with twist and flick to achieve subtly different shots, the pace picks up.

Bowling is a great game if you've got people round but only have a limited number of remotes.  Golf is great, but tricky and could do with more depth (only 9 holes which quickly go from being simple to outrageous).  Baseball divides the Wintle household, I love it, but Sally's not a fan.  The little nuances like waggling the bat while you're waiting at the plate are great.  Shame you don't have control over the outfielders though - the game is probably too much left to chance.

And then there's boxing.  I put of doing boxing for as long as I could because I thought I'd look really stupid doing it, but it's hugely energetic, and highly addictive.  Definitely a good way to get rid of some stress at the end of a difficult day.

Summary

We love our Wii and it's a big part of entertainment in our home now.  We've added Lego Star Wars, Mario Kart and a Wii Fit (and the barely-worth-mentioning Wii Play) to the collection and, at the moment, that's all that we need.  The download of a web-browser channel has made it useful as well as playful.  I'll maybe write about some of these (especially Wii Fit) in the near future.

I love the way that video games have moved on to be more interactive, and especially they way Nintendo are playing with how we interact with the small-screen.

Overall a clever, simple, addicitve, and highly entertaining toy that hasn't failed to disappoint.

Campaigning Success!

There are a number of situations in the world that I take very much to heart and try to do something about. Changing the world isn't easy, but organisations like Tearfund, Christian Aid, and Oxfam provide plenty of good resources to help us badger big businesses, and make our views known to our MPs.

Sometimes this feels futile. If lucky you get a standard letter or email back to your campaigning message and, though we see some token gestures to some of the issues that we raise, it's rare that the things that we ask for are actually implemented in full.

There's been a lot of campaigning going on lately regarding a piece of legislation called the climate change bill. This is going to commit our country to major reductions in carbon emissions. I've written to several members of parliament and sent postcards and emails about this issue because I really believe that it's something we need to do - and sooner rather than later.

So I was heartened today to read this Guardian article about how, not only has the government included the full emissions reductions in the bill, but it's decided to incorporate shipping and aviation emissions as well. This is exactly what I and many other people have been campaigning for.

I particularly like Thom Yorke's encouragement that "it came about simply because hundreds of thousands of people on the ground hassled their MP, who in turn hassled the government. Amazing."

So, if you care about something, find an organisation that can help you campaign about it, and get writing. Sometimes it really does work!

It's alive!!!

It's been a while since the garden got much attention (though I'll be writing about the harvest soon), but this is a little set of observations that's been bouncing around in my head for a while.

Despite, or including, the slugs and creeping cinquefoil (this is what we thought was creeping buttercup), our garden is so alive with nature. Masses of it. It's awesome! Everyday, English creatures that exist all around us that you start to notice once you get close to the ground.

Earthworms: There are masses of them in our garden. Hundreds...probably many thousands. They're brilliantly camouflaged (yes, really, they look like plant roots!), live underground, and help to break down our soil and compost. Brilliant.

Frogs: We don't have a pond but we do have lots of clay-y soil and it's moisture rich. There's also a large patch of our garden that hasn't been weeded and has a thick layer of grass and weeds on it. This provides ample cover for the little amphibians and there's lots of them around. Also brilliantly camouflaged, they give you a real fright when they unexpectedly hop out of the grass. You have to be careful not to step on them at night though!

Spiders: If you were reading last year you'll know I love a good spider or two! And though we've moved house, we have plenty of arachnids in the new neighbourhood. Amazing co-ordination and web building skills. Awesome creatures. And there's a surprisingly large amount of them that just scuttle around on the ground too.

Bees: I'm not a huge fan of wasps (of which we've not seen very many this year), but bees are more tolerable. They seem to defy physics by flying, elegantly drifting from one flower to the next. They seem to come from far and wide in little teams to visit our plants. And, of course, we wouldn't have our fruits without their pollinating. Sadly, bees are rumoured to be in decline. We may well be setting up a little log or something next year to encourage bees to nest in our garden.

Everything else: There's beetles, ants, slugs and snails, weevils, grubs, caterpillars, centipedes. Really a plethora of different tiny creatures who make up the eco-system that is our garden. Some of them we love, some of them we hate, but they're all important in keeping the ground workable and fertile.

Nature is truly an awesome thing and when you get close to it you start to realise that even more. We praise God for the amazing things that has made, the detail of each little creature and the incredibly complex way that it all works together to bring us our food.

Brain Dumping with wikidpad

Recently someone asked if there was a good tool for dumping lots of stuff that was in their head in a GTD (Getting Things Done) manner.

I use a tool called Wikidpad for this. It's a desktop Wiki, which enabled you to write short or long notes, and link them together in a variety of ways - in much the same way as a web-based Wiki. But it's not very well documented and there's not tutorial for using it. So here's my own little guide to how I use it.

I'm not going to cover the basics of Wikis - you can read about them elsewhere. Wikidpad uses simple CamelCase as WikiWords that automatically become links to other pages (though you can suppress this for specified words).

I'd recommend opening the help Wiki and looking at the pages TextFormatting, TodoItems and WikiDocumentAttributes as a starting point.

For me, what really makes Wikidpad useful is its auto-indexed attributes and todo-type tags. Not only do your pages appear in a tree showing their location within the Wiki (essentially creating folders of related information), but you can also create hierarchical attributes that are
indexed and then displayed as a tree in the "Views" section. This is essentially an index of information that you've "tagged" with attributes.

For example, I can have a "Customer" attribute. If I put the text "[Customer:New Technologies Inc]" on a page, this will create, in the index, a customer folder, containing a New Technologies Inc folder, containing all the pages with that attribute.

This is HUGELY useful because it means I can "tag" information in a whole multitude of different ways:

• By customer
• By any number of different references that may exist (e.g. a request for change reference).
• How's about atrtributes by date? I can effectively create a journal by using attributes like "[Diary.2008.10:07]" - then everything I did on that date is referenced from the index views under 2008 -> 10 -> 07.

Another example is meetings - I write up meeting notes in my wiki with
attributes for like:

[Diary.2008.18:15]
[Customer:Random Corp]
[Meetings.Present:Dave Smith]
[Meetings.Present:Joe Bloggs]

Thus helping me answer questions like "Wasn't that mentioned in a meeting with Dave back in November?" quickly and easily.

The todo's are good too. I can use keywords like "action", "todo", "done", "track" and "question" to gather items that need my attention. If I write "action: Send documentation to account manager", this will appear in the index under my actions. These can also be nested - so I can classify actions. e.g. "todo.Personal: Book next year's holiday", or "action.Objectives:Deliver storage improvement project".

I'm not entirely clear in on the GTD philosophy - I know a little - but this is great, it allows me to group all my meeting actions and todo's together, review them in one go, pick off the little ones that can be cleared down easily, and then focus on the bigger ones.

The only thing that this doesn't really allow is setting deadlines. But I'm sure you could use some combination of todo's and attributes to do this.

In fact, it's the combination of a page hierarchy (as in a standard Wiki), todos, and attributes, that make this tool powerful and flexible. You can really customise it to how you want to work!

Of course, these's a full search facililty, as well as the ability to produce lists of backlinks, rename pages while keeping WikiWords consistent, and you can do neat things like add little icons to your
hierarchy of pages.

It's a bit clunky at first but worth persevering with - it really has become my second brain (and it's backed up to a memory stick FREQUENTLY!). I also export all the pages to HTML every now and then so that Google Desktop can index them too.

Hopefully that's of use to someone. Enjoy! And if you've any other tips for productivity, let me know!

Magic Roundabout!!!

Sorry. I can't help it. This is simply a gratuitous link to a piece of 1972 news footage that I've discovered about my beloved Magic Roundabout. Great stuff!

Discipleship Academy and SoulSpace

I've had an inspiring evening with these two little events. They won't mean much to some so I'll try and explain.

"Discipleship" is lots of things. For me it's the process of being a disciple of Jesus Christ, learning his ways, following in his footsteps, trying to lead a godly life. What's a godly life you might ask? Well, part of the process is finding that out. There are general rules but it's worked out in different ways for each person, and each time.

We've just had a new youth minister start at our church and he's really interested in helping people on this journey and is exploring ways of doing this. Discipleship Academy and SoulSpace are two of these things.

Discipleship Academy is mostly for the young people of our church, but I'm tagging along as a "fellow journeyer". I'm hesitant to call myself a "leader" in this activity because I'm actually going through the process myself.

This is intended to be 12, monthly sessions looking at, and equipping us to do discipleship.

I missed the first session, but went along today and it was really inspiring. The youth minister has produced a set of what I would call "tools" (things like study, reading, finding space, journalling and attending church) which we're all discussing the use of and encouraging each other to actually do. It was really good and I'm sure that these tools and sessions will be useful for us all as we try to do "discipleship" together.

SoulSpace is the new minister giving our Sunday evening church service a bit of an overhaul. We won't be doing this every week, but it will happen 2 weekends every month.

The idea of this is that rather than do a typical church service (a "hymn sandwich" as he called it today), we'll be trying to do church things in different ways. Sometimes we'll sing, sometimes we wont. Sometimes there will be a talk from the front. Sometimes we'll have group discussions. Sometimes we'll have other creative forms of worship or prayer. We'll just try, as a community, to learn from God and respond to him in different ways.

And community is key in both of these activities. This is something we'll do together. But also something that is not confined to Sunday evenings - the things we learn, the things we're encouraged to do, will, hopefully, spill over into the rest of our lives.

So tonight we've looked at:

• using the Bible as a tool. How can we use it? How do we break it down into bite-sized chunks, read it, understand it, and apply it to our lives; and
  
• authenticity - being real. How do we carry all this church stuff with us in our daily lives. Are we honest with people about who we are, and what we believe in? Or do we hide for fear of being "found out" and embarassed about that key part of our lives: our faith?

These are both difficult things to grapple with - Jesus didn't promise us following him would be easy. But I've been really inspired tonight in both these things, and the fact that a little pocket of people around me are also grappling with them helps a LOT.

We also had a really good church service this morning. The speaker did lots of storytelling, which I always find a powerful way of communicating. The story was of Joseph and the key thing I got from it was that he wasn't called by God. He didn't have God speaking from a burning bush like Moses, or a revelation from angels or anything like that. He just did what he thought he should be doing and God lead him and worked through him. Some people have things that God clearly wants them to do, but the rest of us shouldn't feel left out - God can do great things through all of us who follow him, wherever we are!

It's weird writing publicly about my faith, but in the interests of taking a step in discipleship and being real, I feel I must be writing more about what God is doing and saying. My faith is more important than my cycling, gardening, housework, DIY, music and technology interests, but that probably doesn't come across here. I hope it will in future!

New Game....New Dangers

I need to write about this incredibly important subject to warn you of the dangers of a sport that I've recently taken up.

This sport requires:

• excellent balance;
• pin point precision;
• dedication and repeated practice of repetitive actions;
• a good head for numbers.

Yes, I'm not kidding. I've taken up darts!!!

We have a cultural change program going on at work and we have a glorified sports and social club in our office. One of the things this little committee (that I'm a part of) have done is install a darts board.

And I must confess, I've really rather taken to the game, but it's also caused me some problems. I should add the the squeamish can read on, there are no descriptions of gory holes in the head or feet coming up.

Darts Players and Culture

I'm slightly baffed by darts players and culture. Given the list of attributes above, you'd maybe expect the stereotypical darts player to be a geeky, thin, glasses-wearing mathematician type.

So it's slightly confusing that it's mostly played by hairy, overweight man who've spent too long in the pub.

And what's with all the women that are forced to follow it. IF you ever watch it on the telly there's always bikini-clad models walking around. At work, we ordered the board, surround, scoring machine and a few sets of darts from a company called Red Dragon Darts. When it arrived it came with a catalogue which was more soft-porn than precision sport. I don't link to their website for similar reasons - I almost couldn't condone them as supplier!

Bizarre.

The Game

The game is quite addictive you know. Having invested £12 (not much really) in my own darts (it's much better if you get used to a set that you always use) I not only play the odd game, but I'm practicing by playing solitaire "round-the-clock" - hit all the numbers from 1 to 20 in order.

You have to get worse before you get better too. When you start you could hit pretty much anything, but, aiming for twenty, as you do, you usually end up hitting anything from 12 through to 18. 12 and 18 give you pretty good scores. As you improve that range narrows, and you start hitting more 1's and 5's. These are NOT good scores. This is the stage I'm at.

As for hitting doubles...that's a different matter altogether.

Dangers!

I said it was dangerous. Shortly after I started playing my shoulder started to ache. I thought this was a general wearing-out type pain, but then Sally said "Maybe it's the darts?", and I think she's right. It puts a lot of tension on very specific parts of the arm, and the repetitive action can certainly take it's toll.

Also...you may remember my stomach pain from my long bike ride a couple of months back (see the bottom half of this post), well, I reckon this has actually turned out to be darts-related too. When I throw my arrows I tend to lean forward and put all my weight on my front (right) leg. I think my hip flexor was getting quite a lot of strain put on it by this with the result that cycling made it flare up and become painful.

Not kidding...you can really do yourself an injury playing darts. And not necessarily one that involves being hit with a pointy stick.

You have been warned!

Playing with Symfony

OK, here's where I kinda "come out" as a true geek. Most of this will probably mean nothing to any of you and for that I make absolutely no apology whatsoever.

This whole post is a bit of a brag, but it's writing up what's been an intriguing afternoon/evening for me too.

I have a pretty strong background in Software Engineering, but I'm a bit behind with the times. I don't really know much about how people go about developing applications these days. It's something I've been meaning to get to grips with for a while. Today I've been playing a bit with Symfony - a PHP-based web development framework, with the aim of re-writing the database using a LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) stack and Symfony. If you really care I'm using an installation of MoWes on a USB stick to keep this all portable so I can develop from work or home. Thanks must go to those on Twitter who have thrown some of these technologies my way.

Web-based applications seem to be the way of things at the moment (unless you're doing hard-core coding for things like OS's or embedded systems, which I'm not). And all the little projects I can either get my hands on, or dream up, are all web-apps that would benefit from a rapid-application development (RAD) type approach.

This has sort-of been happening a bit at work as I look after a database with a web-based front-end. This is currently written in PHP, outputting static HTML (i.e. no JavaScript) but when I wrote it I tried to:

• abstract the database operations;
• separate the data model and the presentation so that the code didn't need to be updated when new fields got added, deleted, etc.;
• create some generic code for those things that remained the same for all pages (cookies/authentication, standard menus, banners, etc).
  

It's a bit clunky but it works well and the time spent coding the abstractions has saved me a lot of time with subsequent modifications.

So it was a surprise to find that most of what I've done, or tried to do, fits with the principles on which application frameworks are based (see the Fundamental Concepts section of the Symfony book I'm reading). The terminology is all a bit much to take in in one go, but essentially I was doing things right.

Or is it a surprise? My computing teachers were always keen to teach us good principles like abstraction, and I've always held that my fundamentals are good. So maybe it shouldn't be a surprise.

That's not to say that learning to use Symfony is quick and easy. I'm working my way through the tutorial, but without a lot of time it could easily leak from my head.

Possibly more techie posts like this to come as I learn more. Or maybe I'll have rewritten the database before I get a chance to write again. That'll depend on how good all this new technolgoy really is!

2 Films: The Notebook & An Inconvenient Truth

Two films watched this week - most unlike us.

The Notebook

Recorded while we were on holiday, this charming love story didn't really impress me. It was a simple couple-meet, couple-torn-apart, couple-get-back together story, wrapped up as an old man reading the story to his wife who's suffering from dementia and amnesia. Touching and cute, but for me, ultimately lacking in a special something.

An Inconvenient Truth

We got this out of the library to watch now that Sally is involved in climate change projects.

It's a good documentary, mostly based around a lecture given by Al Gore. It's a well-made documentary film with good graphics explaining the science and facts, and Gore is a great speaker. An hour long lecture on climate change could easily be dull, but I was far from bored and found the whole thing informative and challenging.

In fact, I found it quite scary. It'll certainly get me rethinking my own impact on the climate.

Clapped Out

I'm a cyclist - you can probably tell that - and I love all sports of different kinds. But there's one that I've never got on with...running! It knackers my kness and every time I try to take it up I have to give up quite quickly because I'm in pain.

So instead, I tend to run by proxy. I know so many people who are really into running, and I engage with other runners by talking about...err...other runners. I'm a middle man in the running circles of Swindon.

So, with today being the Swindon Half Marathon, my duty was not as a runner, but as a supporter.

It was a beautiful day for it - if anything too hot - and Sally and I pedalled out on our bikes to a fine spot on the course where we would see people running out (at about 3 miles) and back in (at about 9 miles) from the same place.

But I'm not really sure what to do as a running-race supporter, or how to cheer people on. We clapped a lot. In fact, we clapped almost non-stop for about 3 hours! And we called people's names and shouted things like "Well done" and "Keep Going", but it all feels a bit lame.

The hard core runners seem to view this as a distraction, and they keep focussed on the road ahead, barely acknowledging your presence. The ones at the back seem to appreciate it more, and occasionally engage in some banter. When I told one friend "Keep going! You're doing well!" he shouted back "No I'm not!".

So, I hope we helped some people along.

It was quite inspiring too. This was a small race of only around 1500 people, but it seemed to be a LOT from where we were standing. My sister and her boyfriend are pretty quick but there were a surprisingly large number of people running at a similar pace. It all made me think that surely running 13 miles is something that I could do.

One friend of mine called back "Your turn next year Wintle!" as he ran past. Perhaps he's right. Perhaps I should try again, take it easy, build up slowly and have a go at running with the aim of running next year's Swindon Half.

Hmmm...

To finish, I pay my respect to those I know who ran. I'm hugley impressed by their commitment and effort. Sarah, Guy, Dave, Carol, James, Mike, Stevo, Ray...well done!

A week in Sicily - Pantalica and Home

Part...umm...well...the last part!

I'm probably on about part 74 of my holiday write up now.  You'll be glad to hear that it's (probably) the last one.

After climbing Etna on the Friday, Saturday was supposed to be a bit of a day off.  But the thought of just doing nothing somehow didn't appeal.  We had plenty of crosswords to try and get through, but we wanted to explire Sicily's interior a bit too.  Plus it was a little cool and cloudy and not necessarily day-by-the-pool weather.

Necropoli de Pantalica

So we embarked on a trip to Pantalica.

An hour or so's drive on some very steep and windy roads through the Sicilian countryside brought us to this beautiful place, listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.  A necropolis - a 'city of the dead'.  An unspoilt nature reserve full of cliff-side tombs dating back to around 1300BC.  A wild and eerie place.  All the tombs are empty now but you are left with a feeling of awe and reverence for the place, and the people that build it.  Who would be climbing sheer cliffs, risking life and limb cutting holes in the rock with primitive tools?  It leaves our puny burial ceremonies looking fairly shabby in comparison.

We spent a while exploring Pantalica.  There is a clear path marked all through the valley and "exploring" basically involves following the path in one direction, and then re-tracing your steps back to the car. We stopped off next to a shallow pool on the way, for some lunch.  This really could have been a film set or something, it was almost unreal in its purity and beauty.

On returning to the car we set out to find some other, less spectacular Necropoli nearby, which were also quite spectacular.  Tombs, dwellings and even churches carved out of the rock amongst breathtaking scenery.

This place is mentioned in the Rough Guide, and is even one of the listed top 30 things to see/do while there, but you could so easily pass it by.  "Who want's to go and see a load of tombs?", but this place is a true gem!

Palazzolo Acreide

Leaving the Pantalica area we checked the Rough Guide to see what else was nearby, and decided to call in at a place called Palazzolo Acreide.  This small town has a great Archaelogical park.  It's at the top of a fairly big hill, so we recommend taking the car up to the top if you can.

This place is mostly well-preserved Greek tombs, dwellings and temples.  But it brings things slightly more to life because it's all layed out as a small village.  You are almost transported back in time and you can imagine ancient people wandering around, meeting together and heading to worship.  It feels like a place with community, rather than just a random collection of ancient buildings and artifacts.

And the highlight of this place was the greek theatre.  Marvellously intact, with an entrace hallway, tunnels to walk through to your seats, and bits of the staging and set still on show.

Dinner back in Noto rounded off our day.  We found a reasonably good restaurant but the service was a bit brusque.  Never mind.

Sunday and Home

Sunday was a real day of rest as we packed and prepared to head home.  Mostly spent around the hotel it was a good chance to chill out.  We blew a load of money on a last meal in the hotel which was GREAT!  I mean, it was one of the best meals I've EVER had.  If you're in the area and not staying at the Masseria degli Ulivi, then at least go and eat there!

Monday was heading home day.  The SatNav took us on a VERY weird route to the airport and failed completely to find us a petrol station.  The small scratches to the car went unnoticed.  And we were amused by the presence of a large number of older English people on our plane, who'd obviously all booked with the same tour operator.  Hearing one of them ordering "Four cappucino americanos" made me feel that I'd done quite well with my Italian, and my order of "Due cappucini e una panina" felt quite authentic in comparison.

The English baggage collection was surprisingly swift and collecting the car from the car park was a doddle.  Re-learning driving on the left was interesting and my brain was well confused for a while, especially at junctions and when we hit the motorway.  But I quickly got back into it.

A great holiday, with a little stressful day surrounded by some amazing places and food.  Summing up the holiday was mostly done in my first post.  Check out the highlights there.

I leave you with one thing that confused and amused us.  Now, my Italian isn't great, by any means, but I can mostly get by with at least reading signs and notices.  This bottle baffled though, as the best translation I could do of "Con il suo gusto morbido e delicato..." was "With the delicate taste of death..."

Perhaps someone else knows better?

Note: Google claims that "morbido" means "delicate".  Hey - easy mistake to make!

A Week in Sicily: Mount Etna

We awoke on Friday feeling refreshed and healthy, had an big, early breakfast, and headed up the coast to Mt Etna.

Actually there was some packing in there too...we had lots of decisions to make about packing our day sacks and what to wear. In the end I think we both ended up with full-on walking gear, including hiking boots, several layers, hats, gloves and waterproofs. The Rough Guide said it could get pretty chilly up at 2500 metres, so we prepared for the worst.

The drive to Nicolosi, a large town in the southern foothills of the volcano, took about 2 hours. The Rough Guide had made this out to be a small town but it seemed pretty big. We'd punched the address of the Tourist Office into the SatNav but it lead us to a random back street with no shops or offices in sight.

Nicolosi is at 700m and already the temperature had dropped to about 14 degrees - but it was a fine day with great views up to the top of Etna.

Encouraged by the size of Nicolosi and the big road signs to "Etna Sud" we decided to skip the information office and head up the mountain.

The impression in my head, gleaded from both the Rough Guide and the Lonely Planet we'd borrowed, was of a narrow dirt track leading from Nicolosi to a tiny out post, "Refugia Sapienza". But the road, though steep and windy, was great and had fantastic views back over the Sicilian scenery. And Refugia Sapienza was a thriving toursit spot with lots of little gift shops, huge car parks, and several large hotels and restaurants. Oh, and quite importantly, a cable car station and lots of large 4x4 buses to take you higher up.

We parked up, and wrapped up. The temperature had dropped further to about 12 degrees and a chill wind was blowing. We were beginning to appreciate having brought fleeces with us.

We considered our options - a 4-hour-each-way hike, an "Excursion" with a load of old people on a bus, or the swift cable-car ascent. The cable car was expensive, but worth it. As the tracks and paths opened up beneath us we realised that it was actually a LONG way to the top, and not a hike that we had time for.

The whole place is set up for excursions and getting you to pay to have an easy ride. There are no maps, or directions or guides for walkers. The guide books are mostly photographic.

Having said that, we appreciated the facilites at the top of the cable car, with a good cafe and toilets.

We headed out into the now-very-cold air with the aim of following whoever else was walking. We got a little way and the wind picked up and blew some snow in! Yes, Sicily in September and it's snowing. Well, we were at quite an altitude at this point and very much in the clouds.

We retreat to the cafe to discuss our options over a cappucino. I was accosted at the bar by some hilarious Russian guys who'd obviously had a vodka too many and were buying more alcohol to warm them up. After escaping them, the weather had cleared slightly, so we decided to head back out and brave the elements with the aim of reaching a crater higher up.

We nervously started following the bus tracks. It would be easy to get lost in such a stark and barren landscape, but the bus tracks and the posts that marked their route up made it easy really.


It's a weird place. Quite lunar with just a vast expanse of black lava heading up into the distance for miles. It's bleak and barren. Disappointingly unspectacular and yet, intriguing and captivating.

The cold, mist and wind prevailed on our walk up. It occasionally cleared with views to the coast but not to the summit. We had no idea how far up we had to go and the scenery was, frankly, quite dull.

As the weather closed in again, we were getting cold and weary and decided to give up. It could have been several kilometres to the crater. It could have been 100yards, but we couldn't see, and we were cold and bored. Don't get me wrong - it was a great experience, but we were worn out and had a cable car to get back before closing time.

We headed back down and reached the cable-car station. It had turned from thriving to almost deserted in the couple of hours that we'd been gone so we chose not to hang around and went straight back down to the car.

It was an awesome place. I'd recommend going. I'd recommend starting earlier than we did and heading up the mountain in the morning to give you plenty of time. I'd recommend taking FAR MORE warm, outdoor clothes than you'd expect, and if you're up for a hike then go for it!


We fought our way past some CRAZY motorway driving and called in at Syracuse on the way back for an excellent pizza in an Ortigian restaurant, only ruined by the fact that we over-ordered and had to send half of it back because we were so full.

Anyone know how to say "The eyes are bigger than the stomach" in Italian?

A week in Sicily: Not a trip to Etna, no honking and definitely no Kangaroos!

[Note - a few photos have been added to other holiday entries, should anyone care]

After a my stressy day, and the lessons learned from it, and our prayers being answered, the Thursday was much easier.

The plan was to go to Etna, but this demanded all our energy for a long drive and some serious walking, so when we woke up feeling pretty exhausted and slightly unwell (nothing serious - just too much strong coffee we think!) we decided that we'd have a restful day, and head up Etna on the Friday.

So, with food and relaxation foremost in our mind we decided to go shopping and to the beach. We found a little grocers shop in Noto - amazingly OPEN - and bought sandwich-making stuff an a good old English newspaper.

With rations to hand we then made our way to the Vendicari Nature Reserve and the beach.

We made this journey via Eloro - an archaeological site. But this was sadly closed. In fact, it looked very closed, completely deserted and quite scruffy and litter-strewn. A shame really as their may otherwise have been some good history on show.

Vendicari was excellent. 3 Euros of parking got us a good quiet beach, and safe swimming.

Now, we sensed that Italians weren't very good with following rules, so the important rules for the nature reserve were made quite explicit on a number of large signs. One rule in particular caught our eye; we were warned that "E' vietato introdurre specie animali o vegetali estranee alla fauna e alla flora tipiche della zona." (Something along the lines of "It's forbidden to introduce foreign animal or plant species to the flora and fauna of the reserve")...complete with an amusing graphic showing us what might constitute breach of this rule:



We had a nice few hours on the beach, complete with home-made sandwiches. A bit of cloud and wind came and went and we left in the early afternoon. We headed to the nearby town of Lido di Noto (an uninteresting little place on the seafront) for a drink. We parked up, grabbed a couple of bottles of Coke (no cafe's sadly) and then...it absolutely chucked it down with rain.

Coke...in the car...on sea front. It could have been Bognor, or Scarborough, but it was Lido di Noto in Sicily. Just our luck! There was plenty more evidence of the previously-mentioned lack of road drainage, and we drove our poor little Micra through the floods back to the hotel.

Boy were we glad not to be up Etna!

We chilled at hotel a little before heading to a supermarket we'd spotted for a bit more shopping and then dinner in Noto.

A much better day!

More signs

As a slight side note on driving. We mostly understood the road signs but had a couple of favourites, for which I hope the following links still work.

First this one - or one very similar to it. Anyone have any idea what this means? If my car was on fire I'd probably get out, not carry on driving it.


We saw some of these too, which we came to refer to as "No Trumpets":



All seems to be explained at this site here - oh, and it's "No Honking" apparently!

Fortunately we weren't in China where you can get both of these at once?


Another blogger has some fun Sicilian road signs too.

A week in Sicily Part 5: Bored yet? I am.

Why am I even writing this? Ho hum.

Actually, that was pretty much what I thought of the Wednesday of the holiday..."why am I here?".

I'm not very good at holidays and day 2 or three is usually pretty stressful. This was no exception.

The day started well with sunshine, the usual fantastic breakfast, and chilling out by the pool. My crisis began when we headed to Avola (the lively town we passed through the day before) for lunch. Turns out that not only does everything in Sicily close from about 12 noon until about 4pm, but most of Avola is being rebuilt. We found somewhere to park, and had we wanted the usual combination of an espresso, cigarette, and some cake, we'd have been fine, but no sandwiches for sale in this thriving town at lunchtime!

We gave up and headed back to a signposted Trattoria near a beautiful gorge called Cava Grande. The gorge was closed due to bad weather making it unsafe, and we weren't sure if the trattoria was serving food and we didn't know how to ask.

So it was back to Noto where we picked up Pizza and ice cream and satisfied our appetites.

In the meantime we've scraped the hire car's hubcaps & scratched bumper.

Back at the hotel I'm fuming, angry and frustrated. All my reasons for not liking to holiday abroad have materialised.

Sally is hugely patient - bless her. It takes me a long time to chill out but after a light dinner at the hotel I'm mostly OK.

What did we learn? That Sicily shuts down between 12 and 4 and that Avola is a rubbish place for tourists.

We pray before we sleep that tomorrow - a planned trip up Mt Etna - will be easier.

A week in Sicily Part 4: Yummy, Historic, Crazy, Stressful, Amazing, Wet, Complicated and Incorrect

Tuesday - Historic Cities

We woke feeling great and well rested to some glorious Mediterranean sun.

Breakfast in the bright and welcoming breakfast room was a delight. A proper Italian cappuccino, pastries and cakes galore, fresh fruit and a selection of cereals. My perfect morning meal. Yummy!

After filling up we started exploring, starting with a drive to the nearby town of Noto. Again, the SatNav helped us out but didn't really get us to the centre of the city and we struggled to find somewhere to park. We eventually parked up in a place that turned out to be on the outskirts of the small city, and we walked down the hill towards the centre.

Part-way down the hill we came across a very provincial town square in front of a big church. This was a classic Italian sight: old Italian men gathering in the square in rough suits and flat caps, smoking their cigarettes in whatever shade they could find, whilst talking loudly and gesticulating wildly. Perfect!

Noto, despite being very small, has some fantastic buildings and there's plenty to see. The Baroque architecture is everywhere and captivates the imagination. Well worth a visit if you're in the area.

We spent some time wondering and taking photos before ambling back to the car and heading off to the bigger city of Syracuse (aka Siracusa).

Struggling with Sandwiches in Syracuse

The journey to Syracuse not only confused the Sat Nav (some bits of road were closed or being rebuilt), but gave us our first taste of proper Sicilian driving. Turns out they are a bit crazy after all. We saw some mad overtaking manoeuvres - even from big trucks! - and they drive right up close behind you. This all not helped by the fact that visibility in the Micra was awful.

After arriving at Syracuse and fighting our way through the equally-crazy city-centre mele of cars and scooters (are there any rules of the road?), we again had problems parking - not least because we didn't have any Euro coins to put in the parking ticket machines - we only had notes!

Eventually we found a free space in a fairly dodgy looking part of town, and walked back towards the historic centre of Ortigia.

By now it was definitely lunchtime, and we wanted to grab a sandwich. This was the start of several lunchtime stresses for us. It turns out that buying cakes, cigarettes and coffee is pretty easy at any time of day, but buying a sandwich is a bit hit and miss.

We eventually found a cafe selling the sort of thing we were after. It had seats outside for an al fresco dining experience. But what did we do? The food was on display in counters inside, so did we go in, see what we wanted, then sit outside and wait for someone to take an order? Or did we buy the food inside and then take it out to eat?

Most people sitting outside seemed quite happy that there were no menus, but we were a bit baffled.

We proceeded to the counter and asked for some panini (sandwiches), and as we were being served some other people came in and started paying. We decided that the system must be to pay first, then get the food. But we still weren't sure about sitting outside.

AAAARRRGGHH!!!! This is why I hate being abroad. Doing the simplest things becomes incredibly difficult when you don't know how things work and don't have a good enough grasp of the language to be able to ask.

Eventually, I think the cafe staff worked out what we were trying to do. Gave us our sandwiches, ushered us outside and took our money once we were finished.

Wandering the Back Streets of Ortigia

Full of good wholesome Italian lunch, we then picked up our Rough Guide and went for a walk around Ortigia. Wandering backstreets is something that Sally and I always seem to end up doing. We try to follow signs and directions but almost always end on off the beaten track in foreign cities. Why doesn't everyone else end up doing this? We always seem to be alone.

It's slightly fun, but becomes a drag after a while, especially when you're trying to see the sights and you can't find them.

The Cathedral - Reverence, but at what cost?

We eventually found the Duomo (Cathedral). An AMAZING building. It's a place that has been built and re-built over the centuries, but unlike most places, you can see how it's been built over. There columns of the old greek temple on which it was built are still there to see, and you can see how the new bits of building have been overlaid, and set within these. The fairly modern facade was added after an earthquake brought down an older entrance to the building. Inside, the building was dark and quiet, huge and expansive, allowing your mind to awe and wonder.

As a Christian I have conflicting views on the nature of big churches. A place like Ortigia's Duomo brings me to a place of great reverence. These places make God big. They cost lots and took lots of effort to build. These were probably the finest buildings of their times, and they were built for the purpose of worshipping God. I find it amazing, and it makes me wish that WE could do such amazing things for God.

But I also question what God would have us do? Giving our lives, out work, our money, as offerings to God is exactly what our faith requires. But is using that wealth and effort to build a place of worship, where Christians can lock themselves away and revere the Lord the right thing? The Bible makes it clear that our God would rather have us help the poor and needy, share all we have with those in need, and bring righteousness and justice to all, than hoard our wealth within the church.

I love the huge reverence that these people had for the LORD. But wouldn't their sacrifices have been better used for God's purposes?

Spooky Catacombs

A quick ice cream (I LOVE Italian ice cream!) and we headed back to the car and out of town. It had started raining again, and large puddles has started accumulating on the roads which, oddly, don't seem to have drains. This puzzled us because when it rains in Sicily, it really buckets down!

Our next destination was the catacombs. We found this easily using the Sat NAv, and we found some parking too. We even had Euro coins to put in the machine. But...where do we pay? There were no machines!

After some deliberation, we spotted a free space by the road and parked there.

Catacombs are fascinating places. When we went to Rome we made a long trip outside the city to visit some. They are underground networks of tunnels that form a burial site for Christians. Thousands of people were buried in tombs underground in these places and they are spooky, but intriguing places that again show the great lengths that people went to in reverence of God.

One thing tha I found in both Rome and Syracuse was that the guides that took you round the catacombs were incredibly knowledgable, multi-lingual, and very helpful. Catacombs are always well worth a visit if you're near them.

Dinner in Noto - Don't Trust your Rough Guide!

We headed back to Noto for dinner via the town of Avola, which looked like a cool and thriving place. Back in Noto we still couldn't find a place to park. We drove in circles for a bit with the SAt Nav bleating out "Recalculating....recalculating..." (seems they're not so good at finding parking) then eventually we found a free space.

Wondering round Noto earlier we'd seen plenty of places to eat, but on our return they all seemed to have disappeared. Where had all the restaurants gone?

The Rough Guide we had recommended a couple of places. The first was a restaurant just off the main square. It has a load of seats outside but no one was eating there, there were no menus on show and, frankly, the place smelled of wee. So we avoided that one. Next up was a restaurant described by the Rough Guide as "the best restaurant in Noto". This was not to be the case. They weren't serving Pizza, and the food we did get was cheap and pretty poor quality.

Perhaps Noto's not such a good place to eat after all? And we'd certainly recommend using your head rather then the guide to find a good place to eat. It's not hard to work out the good places, but it is made difficult when there's no menus or prices on display - which was often the case in Sicily.

Language Complications

Over dinner we were trying to learn a bit more Italian to get us through the week. We had some phrases in the Rough Guide and an Italian-English dictionary. I somehow got distracted looking at English pronunciation. How complicated is that? How is anyone supposed to learn a language where the following groups of letters sound the same:

• t, tt, ed and bt (tea, butter, walked, doubt)
• k, c, cc, ck, ch, que (key, cool, soccer, lock, school, cheque)
• ch, tch, tu, ti (cheer, match, nature, question)
• j, ge, dge, di, du (jump, age, edge, soldier, gradual)
• f, ff, gh, ph, lf (fat, coffee, cough, physics, half)
• s, c, ps, ss, sc, st (soon, city, psychology, mess, scene, listen)
• f, s, ti, si (fishing, sure, station, tension)
• m, mm, lm, mb (sum, hammer, calm, bomb)
• r, rr, wr, rh (red, marry, wriggle, rhubard)

And that's just the consonants! Note that some letter combinations have more than one sound (e.g. ti = question, station - subtly different!)

Vowels are even worse - check out these groups:

• augh, a, oa, aw, ou, oo (caught, ball, board, draw, four, floor)
• oo, o, oe, ou, ew, ue, u (boot, move, shoe, group, flew, blue, rude)
• i, ur, er, or, ear, our (bird, burn, fern, worm, earn, journal)
• oar, e, our, or, io, er (cupboard, the, colour, actor, nation, danger)

Even the letters y, i and u can all sound the same just on their own (yet, onion, use).

Our language is BONKERS, and I have a renewed respect for anyone that tries to learn it!

Less hungry, but not hugely satisfied, we headed back to hotel for some well earned rest. We certainly had a busy first day.