Ben Lomond

My latest walk was last weekend and was up probably the most popular Munro in Scotland – Ben Lomond. With it’s proximity to Glasgow and a path all the way to the top it’s easy to see why so many people climb it. Unfortunately the weather last Sunday meant that the view’s all the way up, including at the top, were very poor.

Jim and Danny

The photo above show’s what a grey driech day it was. Ugghhh. Worse the little blacks dot’s you can see in the photo’s. Midges. The little bastards loved me and I ended up with around 100 midge bites. I’ve spent the last week trying not to scratch them as they are itchy as hell. I’ve been told to eat plenty of garlic before my next walk as that seemingly act’s as a deterrent. Time will tell although I’d appreciate any advice if someone know’s better!

The other issue with Lomond was just how busy the route was. We took the tourist path to the top and there were just too many scallies for our liking. You never felt you were in the great outdoors. After escaping the summit and grabbing some lunch away from midge hell we took the trickier route back down and we were rewarded with a far more interesting, trickier route which was quieter too – woo hoo. Even better, the clouds lifted slightly meaning we did get a couple of nicer pic’s.

Danny and Loch Lomond

I loved the walk down and next time I do Lomond I’ll be taking this route up and down as it really made the day for me. One other lesson was I need to drink more – I ended up with a migraine after the walk and feeling pretty dehydrated – not smart at all and something I’ll need to be careful with next time. Lot’s more liquid before and during the walk are required especially in the hotter weather.

Ben Lomond Runkeeper

This was the first walk with the iPhone 3GS and Runkeeper. Never let me down once and the battery life, I think, is better or the 3GS than the 3G but not by much. The full Flickr set is available here. Looking forward to the next walk already – here’s hoping for better weather.

What’s Occurring?

Quick updates….

  • Picked up an iPhone 3GS on Friday. Expensive but fast and I really like the new camera. I’ll put my thoughts down later in the week not here though but on DigitalOutbox.
  • Speaking of DigitalOutbox, we put up Episode 2 yesterday. Tried to keep it shorter this time. An iPhone special will be up mid-week. Me and Shak are actually enjoying doing it (so far) and we’ve got some idea’s on what we want to do next but we need to walk before we run. We also had a nice surprise seeing our podcast in the iTunes chart. No idea how it’s calculated or what it’s mean but it was a nice ego boost.
  • Another hill walk today. Ben Lomond – weather was a bit sucky but worse was the migraine once I got back. Yuck. Feeling better but dulled much like the clouds.
  • Wimbledon tomorrow. Looking forward to it and also seeing Andy Murray – just how far can he go? Not in the tennis but in the Andy Murrayometer. You couldn’t make this shit up.
  • While in the Apple store on Friday I got to play with the new Macbook pro’s. Gorgeous design. Current plan is to sell my Macbook Pro and iMac and replace with a new Macbook pro and a Mac Mini to act as a media server/always on machine. Need funds for that though. Help.
  • Starting to use FriendFeed a bit more. Impressive site but can be a bt overwhelming at times following ‘noisy’ posts.

With that I’ll end. Getting tired and it’s a school night. Later.

DigitalOutbox

I’ve been fairly quiet on the blog recently and for a change it’s not work or gaming taking up my time – it’s a new hobby. I’ve been cooking up something with Shakeel for a few weeks now and finally we got it launched this week. DigitalOutbox.

DigitalOutbox is a weekly podcast where myself, Shakeel and some weekly guests (eventually!) will discuss computing, gadgets and gaming. A mixture of news and topic discussion with a bit of humour thrown in while keeping it relevant to the UK. Our first episode is now out and available from iTunes or the website feed.

Over the coming weeks and months we want to expand into screencast and video download’s (and if you think I don’t have the face for video, wait until you hear the voice) but that is more dependant on time and also our own skills. This is all very new for us and is certainly out of our comfort zone but it’s something we’ve wanted to do for quite a while so it’s good to see it finally up and running. We’ll also be blogging our more tech related posts on DigitalOutbox rather than our personal blogs. Hopefully if you follow this site and/or the RSS feed you’ll want to do the same for DigitalOutbox. If you want to keep up to date on our goings on then follow us on Twitter.

We have a lot to learn and our first few attempts have been quite ropey but hopefully with time we’ll improve and build up quite a nice podcast series. I’d love to hear any comments, suggestions or feedback either on iand.net or the DigitalOutbox website. Wish us luck!