Doodlecat.com

Things have not been going well with the changes necessitated by Blogger's withdrawal of FTP support. Creating a Wordpress theme that accurately mimics Doodlecat's existing design seems to be beyond my (limited) abilities. Thus I have a choice between these three options:

• Choose an existing Wordpress theme and modify it a bit. Trouble is, I cannot export the ftp Blogger posts directly into Wordpress, so I'd have to move it all over to Blogger first. And I'd need to work carefully on the CSS to make sure all the static pages worked properly. There's an awful lot of them!
• Create a new index page for the site and have just this page hosted by Blogger as the Doodlecat Blog or whatever. Clunky and possibly slow - but easy to do.
• Just stop blogging altogether - it was only ever embedded in the home page to allow multiple users to add content to Doodlecat. We no longer do that, so this is now just an amusing pastime. I could go and do something more useful instead.

Right now I feel a bit like this chap - and I have to confess that my initial reaction to the news was similar!

But so far – just the new boots! The old Asolos have hiked their last hike and will see out their twilight years in gentle retirement around the garden. Although the soles are worn almost flat (through to the spongy stuff underneath in places) and the fabric uppers are a bit ragged, amazingly they remain watertight and astonishingly comfortable.

But they won’t do another year, and this model is now looooong discontinued.

Anticipating the old Asolos’ demise, I tried a pair of AKUs a while back, but didn’t like them, and none of the current crop from Asolo seem to fit as well. Readers with long memories might recall that I have “issues” with boot fitting.

But not this time – no sir!

Bury St Edmunds, miles from the nearest hill, is strangely well provided with shops selling outdoor gear, but I always go first to the independent outdoor emporium. Outdoor shops come & go, but 'Stepping Out' keeps on adapting and surviving, diving into any niche not covered by the big boys. In the face of competition from the new Cotswold and Blacks stores they are currently re-inventing themselves again. I browsed the footwear. Nothing much that I fancied, but the Meindl Softline Ultra GTX looked pretty good. Despite knowing that the narrower Italian lasts suit me better, after a chat with the owner I was persuaded to give them a try. My size wasn’t in stock, but it was ordered straightaway and yesterday a phone call confirmed that they were in.

Absolute astonishment. They laced up easily to give a firm snug fit. A stroll up and down – no appreciable heel lift, and plenty of room in the toe box too (the Asolos tended to taper in a bit at the end). Either my feet have got wider, or the Meindl Softline is narrower than their traditional boots, or maybe the new design and lacing system is much more flexible. Whatever – the fit is excellent.

Even better, this is a fairly stiff boot with a high ankle cuff. OK, unlike some of the softer lightweight boots they will take a few miles to bed in. The benefit is that over rough, steep ground edging won’t be a problem and that higher cuff means that maybe there is less chance of water pouring over the top in the ultra boggy ground that Scotland promises after this winter.

To sum up. Not the lightest boot on the market, but light enough, and very well made apart from the usual rubbish insole, which I’ll replace with my Superfeet. I think I’ll get a lot of miles out of them. So if  you think that the regular Meindl boot is too wide or has too much volume, these are well worth a try.

There is one part of the TGO Challenge that I hate - getting there. Scotland is so inconveniently placed for those of us in the south.

This is the pre-chally Thursday routine. Up far too early, drive to Alan's place, take a ludicrously expensive taxi to the airport, and then suffer the mounting anxiety as the rucksack with all my worldly goods for the next two weeks is swallowed by the baggage handlers' dark satanic mechanism. Herded like cattle onto the plane by tired and fedup cabin staff. Then maybe, just maybe, we take off on time and arrive at the correct destination. We once ended up at Lossiemouth on a flight to Inverness owing to fog. For 'security reasons' we then had to wait sweating on an airless plane until a few scruffy coaches came to collect us. The cabin crew, who had already done Geneva and Paris wilted too. Easyjet? Queasyjet I'd say.

Then all this stress is followed by the mad rush to try to buy gas or meths ( forbidden on aircraft) and still be in time for the train or bus to our final destination. No wonder we're driven to drink by the time we stagger in.

This is meant to be a fun holiday. There has to be a better way...

On average the trip from home in East Anglia to the chosen start point  has worked out to around £85 each in the past, taking into account the air fare, taxi, and ancillary buses and trains etc. Can we have a more relaxed time for the same price?

Given a little forward planning, yes indeed!

In times gone by we used to nip up to Scotland using the sleeper service to Rannoch, Corrour, Blair Atholl or Kingussie on cheap Apex fares, but as these became scarcer than hens' teeth, this habit died away in recent years. Time for a little reappraisal  we thought - and we guessed that a midweek train near midnight would be more likely to have a bargain fare or two. The FirstScotrail website was monitored closely.

And we came up trumps! The three fenboys have secured two bargain berths and one Apex fare on the Caledonian sleeper from London Euston to Glasgow central - AND pre booked seats on the little rattly train to Lochailort all for total cost per head of £78.24 (plus a cheapo ticket down to London).The cheapest sleeper ticket was £49.00. Not bad for a 400 mile trip that includes bed & breakfast (if a cup of tea & a muffin counts as breakfast).

So for once we'll be able to stay in bed long after our compatriots have set off, and have loads of time when we arrive to amble across the platform to take a leisurely shave & shower before setting out to see a bit more of Glasgow than the run from Tiso's to Queen Street.

After a few years of despairing of getting affordable fares on the Caledonian Sleeper, it seems that the right route at the right time can still produce the odd bargain.

Fellow challengers will easily recognise us at Queen Street. We'll be the relaxed, clean shaven, fragrant chaps at the bar, casting a sardonic eye over frazzled latecomers. Ah ... sweet schadenfreude...
But now, with the real work done (planning the route!) however you choose to get there, here's to a great TGO Challenge 2010. After my forced withdrawal from last year's event, I'm looking forward to renewing old friendships and making new ones.

So to all challengers, old & new, have a great time, and I'll see you for a dram or several in Montrose!

Yes, and it hurts!

Most readers who have commented on the home page will know that this part uses Blogger for the posts and comments - and it works brilliantly. But not for much longer, simply because this is my site, hosted on server space that I pay for. It seems that this makes me persona non grata as far as Blogger/ Google are concerned. They are turning off their FTP service, which means that Doodlecat's home page will cease to function from March 26th.

No, I didn't think it was sufficent notice either.

Blogger say that they will have a "migration tool" available from 22nd February to allow me to move the blog section of Doodlecat to a so-called "custom domain" hosted on (you guessed it) their servers.

Is it a good idea to have all my eggs in Google's basket?

I think not. I pay for my domain, and my web space. Therefore it is mine, and no-one can interfere with or censor it.

And Blogger's hosting is pretty thin anyway - allowing just ten static pages. Doodlecat has, well, I don't know how many, but it's a lot! That means I would have this bit hosted with Blogger, leaving the rest where it is and cobble it together. And I'm no techy. I chose this system precisely because I wanted something simple.

Maybe it's churlish to complain about the withdrawal of a 'free' service, but the manner in which this has been done (announcement first - tools to deal with it following weeks later - virtually no notice) demonstrates a high handed and contemptuous attitude to the users that I find pretty repellent.

I would have willingly paid for this service to continue - and I suspect that most of the FTP users would too. But with only around 1¹/₂ million of us I guess that would be chicken feed to Google.

Free services are fine, but independence is more important. So, thanks, Google, Blogger or whoever you are these days, but no thanks. I'm off to have a look at Wordpress before I resort to a book on PHP scripts and try to write my own bloggy bit.

Now, that would be a disaster :)

Just caught up with this on John Manning's Blog. John was TGO's deputy editor (Deppity Dawg) and is a fine outdoors journalist.

John is giving a talk on his epic Pacific Crest Trail walk on March 26th in Stainforth - details below. And it's in the middle of stupendous walking country, so we'll be toddling along. Hope to see you there!

I received the little piece below in an email this morning. This is for every southerner who has been lured by the delights of living in the north :-)

THE DIARY OF A LONDONER LIVING IN SCOTLAND
 
'MY FIRST WINTER '
 
DEC 20th It's starting to snow. The first of the season and the first we've seen for years. The wife and I took out our hot toddies and sat on the porch watching the fluffy soft flakes drift gently down clinging to the trees and covering the ground. It's so beautiful and peaceful.
 
DEC 24th We awoke to a lovely blanket of crystal white glistening snow covering as far as the eye could see. What a fantastic sight, every tree and bush covered with a beautiful white mantle. I shovelled snow for the first time ever and loved it. I did both our driveway and the pavement. Later that day a snowplough came along and accidentally covered up our driveway with compacted snow from the street. The driver smiled and waved. I waved back and shovelled it away again. The children next door built a snowman with coal for eyes and a carrot for a nose, and had a snowball fight, a couple just missed me and hit the car so I threw a couple back and joined in their fun.
 
DEC 26th It snowed an additional 5 inches last night and the temperature dropped to around minus 8 degrees. Several branches on our trees and bushes snapped due to the weight of the snow. I shovelled our driveway again. Shortly afterwards the snowplough came by and did his trick again. Much of the snow is now a brownish - grey.
 
 JAN 1st Warmed up enough during the day to create some slush which soon became ice when the temperature dropped again. Bought  snow tyres for both our cars £500. Fell on my arse in the driveway. £100 to a physio but nothing was broken.
 
JAN 5th Still cold. Sold the wife's car and bought her a 4x4 to get  her to work. She slid into a wall and did considerable damage to the right wing - £200. Had another 8 inches of white shite last night.  Both vehicles are covered in salt and iced up slush - that bastard  snowplough came by twice today. Where's that bloody shovel.

JAN 9th More f####g snow. Not a tree or bush on our property that  hasn't been damaged. Power was off most of the night. Tried to keep from freezing to death with candles and a paraffin heater which  tipped over and nearly torched the house. I managed to put the flames out but suffered 2nd Degree burns on my hands. Lost all my eyebrows and eyelashes. Car hit a flipping deer on the way to casualty and was written off.

JAN 13th F****g bastard white shite just keeps on coming down. Have to put on every article of clothing just to go to the post box. The  little buggers next door ambushed me with snowballs on the way back - I'll shove that carrot so far up the little @#*#ks arse it'll take good surgeon 6 hours to find it. If I ever catch the arsehole that drives the snowplough I'll chew open his chest and rip out his heart with my teeth. I think the bastard hides around the corner and waits for me to finish shovelling and then he accelerates down the street
 like Michael 'f*****g' Schumacher and buries the f*****g driveway again.
 
 JAN 17th 16 more sodding inches of f****g snow and f*****g ice and f*****g sleet and god knows what other white shite fell last night. I am in court in 3 months time for assaulting the snowplough driver with an ice - pick. Can' t move my f******g toes. Haven't seen the sun for 5 weeks. Minus 20 and more f*****g snow forecast!!!
 
 F*** THIS, I'M MOVING BACK TO LONDON !!! 
(original author unknown)

In November Gordon Brown, our esteemed leader, announced that the Government wished to make some Ordnance Survey data and some products free to the end-user.

Following this announcement, in December last year a consultation document confirmed that the 1:50,000 ‘Landranger’ and 1:25,000 ‘Explorer’ maps would be included. The proposal is for these datasets to be released with few restrictions on re-use. Maybe none at all.

Why?

Well, the real objective has nothing at all to do with us, the outdoor enthusiasts. Our benefit is a welcome side effect. It is to make the mapping freely available to organisations that might use it for mapping crime statistics, house prices, recycling targets, flooding reports or any other of a multitude of uses.

Much of the OS revenue stream will remain, and may become more expensive to compensate. The proposal is for the withdrawal of the least detailed mapping, so the sort of large scale mapping for property registration, developers, builders, surveyors etc will remain as paid-for data. However, the so-called "low resolution" data happily includes the 1:50000 and the 1:25000 scales, which is about as detailed as we're ever likely to need outside a street map.

The digital mapping publishers must be quaking in their virtual boots, and one wonders how they will justify the cost of their software without the highly lucrative sales of OS licensed product. Paper map publishers, less so maybe. A Harveys map is still the bees knees.

Obviously, to preserve the excellent paper maps and fund future mapping, the OS will require a considerable subsidy from the government (i.e the taxpayers of this fair land) to compensate for the loss of revenue. That's you and me, but, wonderfully, everyone else and every business and banker in the land as well, so only pence per head.

It's not often that I find myself the recipient of government largesse - in fact most of my business life seems to have been spent funding folly after folly by our commercially inept politicos - so in this case I'm prepared to put my capitalist principles to one side. Bring it on!

So well done to Grough Route for being at the forefront of free digital mapping. Right now it's a bargain £1.50 per month for the whole of the UK at 1:50000 AND 1:25000. If the proposals for free access to this dataset go through, then it will be free.

What now for Anquet, Memory Map, Quo etc?