Firemonkeyphoto

Rum!1
Kate posted in Travel, Kate & Dave on September 30th, 2006

Greetings in the name of Haille Sellasie I……(sorry, they keep playing Bob Marley in the bar)

So the beach is amazing, the cabina is bug free and the rum is very tasty. We are currently in Dominical, a little surfer village on the pacific coast of costa rica. The place is so small it has dirt roads, all two and a half of them. The road working going on outside right now consists of a bulldozer pushing earth into the pot holes and driving over it to flatten it. It makes much mroe sense, i think we should try it in edinburgh. We arrived last night after 8 hours on buses, 3 of them. But it was worth it. From the bar where we are staying, you can see through the palm trees down to the ocean, where the surfers keep getting beaten by the waves. And did we mention the rum! The best Ive had, I had several to make sure…(pending more research - they have 8 or 9 different types)

The other parts of the country we have seen so far have been muy bonito, we have stood on the edge of a steaming volcano, horse ridden up the side of another, walked in its crater, wandered past coffee plantations and drunk orange juice that was squeezed from the fruit grown in the garden where we stayed. The country is amazing and everyone should visit…i decree it!

How to create Ruth’s heart-attack special0
neil posted in Uncategorized, Neil on September 30th, 2006

Cookery time!

Did’nt get round to posting this recipe over the summer. Now things have calmed down its time to pile on the pounds with this incredible recipe.

Ruth, a civil engineer, invented this for parties and general population control. It is simplicity itself, you merely combine the least healthy ingredients you can find in any corner-shop and melt them all down and place into a rice-krispie matrix.

Ingredients (Rice Krispies not pictured)

Step 1) Melt butter in large saucepan

Step 2) Melt toffee into same large saucepan

Step 3) Melt flumps/marshmallows into same large saucepan

Step 4) Introduce rice krispies

Step 5) Prepare tray with more butter and greaseproof paper

Step 6) Pour from saucepan onto tray

Step 7) Flatten and let sit until bored

This is’nt a healthy or nutritious foodstuff, it is bad for you and it is very very good at parties.

Evil medical system2
Kate posted in Travel, Kate & Dave on September 22nd, 2006

So, the problem with using a doctor who knows what they are talking about is that they then charge you fantastic sums of money. The final bill for Kates ankle looks like something in the region on $1100. $775 of that was for a plastic ankle brace (which retails for about $80 on the internet). The reason for the crazy price difference is to do with the way that the insurance companies handle hospital bills. If you have private insurance, it works as follows: You go to see the doctor, and he does whatever he does. They send you the bill, which you promptly pass on to your insurance company. The company phoes up the doctors office and refuses to pay the quoted sum. The insurance company and the doctors office between them negitiate a sum that both parties are happy with, and then the insurance company pays. Better insurance companies will be able to negotiate better deals with doctors. This works fine, except that it means that the doctors office know that they will have to bargain hard for their money, so they set the initial prices absurdly high. Unfortunately, as a private individual, you have no bargaining power with the doctors office, so you are stuck with silly prices…

Living on a coffee plantation2
Kate posted in Travel, Kate & Dave on September 21st, 2006

We have finally discovered that Kates foot is not actually broken, just very badly sprained. (It helps to talk to doctors who have a clue what they are doing….) So we are heading off to Costa Rica for 2 weeks. We leave on monday. Flights are booked…beaches and jungle await. More info (and photos) will follow.

Links of the week VI: Adventure, Romance, Mad SCIENCE!0
neil posted in Travel on September 18th, 2006

Girl Genius has been lowering my productivity this week. Superb gas-lamp fantasy webcomic about a female engineer!! Giant robots, airships, engines, frankenmen and invading aliens!
www.girlgeniusonline.com

Back in reality: Cambridge University Sapceflight society sends a balloon and 800g payload to 32km as part of a longer term project to balloon launch rockets into space. It has a 5 MP camera on board and happily snapped up and down. The budget approach to spaceflight! Good work!
Photos from the balloon flight are here. Launch report is here.

Leica are realeasing that camera you’ve always wanted, the beautiful, digital M8. A 1.33 crop factor (less than average ) and all round rangefinder goodness. Coming on the market at above £2500. My wallet weeps in hatred of your extreme shinyness.

Dpreview have their hands on it here.

Islay again!0
neil posted in Travel on September 15th, 2006

This week I’ve been on the Scottish Island of Islay working on the wave power plant there. The plant currently is the UK’s only grid connected wave power plant (when the OPD Pelamis went off to Portugal) and has been going since the year 2000. More details can be found here. The weather was’nt great all week, but on thursday the atlantic provided us with some of the biggest waves I’ve seen. They were breaking on the collector front and splashing clear over the roof and onto the turbine halls behind. Work that day was punctuated by the dull boom when one of the huge waves broke on itself.

Today, as we left, the weather changed completely. I managed sleep/sunbathe on the open ferry deck under a beautiful sun. Met an interesting Aussie PhD student on the way home and the time flew.
The photos are here.

Also met up with Simon, John, Farmer John, Ros, Adam and Rab at Farmer Johns birthday party. Good times and expensive beer for all! Some snaps here.

Links of the week V: Medical advice strikes back0
neil posted in Travel, Links of the week on September 7th, 2006

If you’ve not seen this guys pics before, try out:

http://michaelnicknichols.com/

Shots of rare wildlife, remote peoples and several pages of advice. He has a interesting style, reminds me of Weegie with his use of flash!
Medical advice and thoughts for travelling from a photographers (not a medical professional) point of view
http://digitalmedia.oreilly.com/2006/06/14/travel-advice-for-photographers.html

Apologies to A Photo A Day for yet again stealing a link, but this one is worth it.

A slight change of plan7
Kate posted in Travel, Kate & Dave on September 5th, 2006

So tonight we were supposed to be on a plane flying from New York to Lima. Instead we are sitting on a sofa at the George Mason University in northern Virginia. Why? Because Kate has broken her foot. Or she may have just sprained it. The doctors dont seem to be able to make up their minds. In either case, she is on crutches and is supposed to rest her foot for the next 10 days at least. Most likely 4-6 weeks. Therefore, no Peru. No Inca trail.

We are off to Nashville on thursday (using the free flight vouchers that Southwest airlines gave us - we like them) because it will be much more comfortable to sit on sofas there than in my dads wee apartment in Washington. After that, Im not too sure what our plans will be. I think Kate will spend some of her time working for her dad. Im going to have to think of things to do in Nashville. Anyone got any ideas?

Tales from the Frozen North2
Kate posted in Travel, Kate & Dave on September 5th, 2006

After being well looked after by Kates uncle Niall and his wife Marianne in Tsawwassen, and being taken out all over the place by our wonderful tourguide/taxi driver John (and his assistant: Puddles), we finally headed out on our own! Vancouver Island… You already heard a little bit about Victoria and meeting Niki and all that, and you know that we were heading off to the west coast, and that we got back OK, so Im just going to fill in a few details about what happened in between.

We stayed in a hostel in Ucluelet (C and N backpackers - I would reccomend this place) and spent the first day up there exploring Long Beach and hiking around through the rainforest around there. Long Beach is beautiful, but pretty self-explanatory. (Theres even a picture in the photo section for those of you struggling to picture what I am talking about ;-p)

The jungle was much more interesting. That area gets so much annual rainfall that it is actually classed as a rainforest, its just a temperate one. That means huge trees, lots of moss and lichens hanging from them, and the forest floor is often buried under layers of fallen trees, new shrubs etc. There are also some areas where the ground is so boggy that the trees grow all stunted and look wierdly like large broccoli stumps.

Then we moved from land to water and the sea kayaking began. The trip was probably the best thing we have done so far. Kate said she had never felt so comfortable on water…and she doesnt like the stuff. We saw the most amazing things and places and ate (always important) the most amazing food. Fresh brewed coffee as you step out of your tent anyone? 4 days of living on water and the world did begin to feel like it was bobing up and down a bit though. As you can see from the pictures, we spent some time close to sea lions on the shore. What I didnt capture on camera is the look of sheer terror on both Kates and the sea lions face that popped up 2 feet from her boat as we floated along side. It made an odd barking sort of noise and headed for safety back under water. Thankfully the whales we saw didnt come that close.

On to the hiking……here is Kates opinion: “if I could have thrown my self off a cliff, broken my ankle and had the coast guard come to get me, I would have!” (Turns out that wish was almost granted a couple of weeks later, but that is another story). I had a rather better time of it. Its a beautiful area, and the trail is fantastic, but it is quite hard work. Maybe not the best place to start off if you have never hiked before. One of the best things about it is how empty it is. Most days we passed only a few people on the trails, and at night we shared the beaches we camped on with only a handful of other people. The thing to remember is no matter how much you think its not worth it, bring tea bags. A cup of tea goes a long way when you’re tired and cold.

And as Neil says, we have not been eaten by bears…