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Snowboarding
I really am trying to write more often; it’s just that I keep getting distracted by going out and doing things….
Last weekend I got back from a week of learning to snowboard in Les Arcs 1800, in the French Alps. Really good fun, although pretty painful - the first few days were just warm enough for everything to go slushy during the day, and then freeze solid at night. It snowed heavily on the Wednesday and then stayed between -5°C and -18°C for the rest of the week - but by that time the damage was done, and I had to pull out of our final day’s expedition to La Plagne since I was in agony every time I sat down…
Everyone there (and people like Hickman who went elsewhere) can only talk about one thing - the growing problem of a lack of snow in Europe. It’s getting pretty noticeable, and there were grand plans in Les Arcs to vastly expand their artificial snow making capacity (including building a big reservoir) - it’s ironic, of course, how much power gets consumed trying to paper over the effects of climate change.
Apart from that, the resort was great, especially the Double Mountain burgers in the Tex Mex place we (eventually) found - I might have had them two or three times during the week. The instructors were cool too - François and especially Hervey, who pranced around on his board looking like a ballerina, distinguishable from kilometres away as he leaned back and forth with his arms outstretched (“I go to the pylon, I go to the chalet. I go to the pylon…”). Both were on that verge of making things look exasperatingly easy, but I was getting there by the end of the week and it was fun, even if I did suck a bit!
I haven’t got any photos of the group of us snowboarding, since I didn’t really fancy taking an SLR on the slopes - but Paul Stark had his camera, so you can see his photos instead. I especially like the group photo - now all we need is an album, and that can be the cover!
This post was posted on 4 February 2007 and tagged Photography, TravelOSM on my GPS
The picture says it all, or rather says most of it at least. I’ve bought a microSD memory card for my GPS, and now it can take extra maps on it. And of course, what map would I want on it, other than OpenStreetMap? Dave and I have spent ages cycling round, doing our local area, and now I get to put the results on my GPS and make up for the terrible basemap that comes with it.
For the technical amongst you, I used JOSM to download and save a .osm of the local area, and then converted that into a Garmin .img file using mkgmap. I can then transfer it to the microSD card using a card reader (thereby avoiding the non-opensource cGPSMapper and sendmap, which doesn’t work on linux for my GPS anyway). It’s interesting that the area bounded by Richmond (W), Hammersmith (N), Clapham (E) and Wimbledon (S) takes up 35K, and my 1Gb card cost £25. There plenty of room for more where that came from.
Ant, can I interest you in the .img file?
This post was posted on 7 January 2007 and tagged Life, OpenStreetMap, PhotographyLet's Map!
I’ve got a new toy, and a new hobby. The toy is a Garmin Venture Cx GPS, and the hobby is using it to make maps, as part of the Open Street Map project - free maps under a Creative Commons license. My flatmate Dave has also bought a GPS, and together we’ve been wandering and cycling around Putney, gathering tracklogs to make the map.
On the map above, we lay claim for the bit around Putney only so far- click on the picture to see which bit is ours. We’ve been doing it comprehensively, rather than just riding around randomly, which makes the maps look really good - I’ll post a closeup of Putney sometime. One of the trickiest bits is when someone watches me cycle down an obvious dead-end, all the way to the end, and cycle back up, while Dave takes a photo of the streetsign - the way they look at you makes you feel what we’re doing is illegal! I haven’t (yet) explained to any bystanders what we’re up to, but I don’t think it would help much anyway. It’s just a pity that everyone, everywhere is so hostile to passers by…
As you can see from the map, there’s a way to go yet, so this will probably keep me occupied for a few millennia! Let me know if you want to help out - next up is Richmond Park, Wimbledon Common, and probably around Barnes too.
This post was posted on 19 October 2006 and tagged Life, OpenStreetMapsubscribe via RSS