Sunday 1 January 1995

About Me

I'm an outdoors person when I'm not working at the IT business I run with my brother. At weekends if I'm not under canvas or on two wheels (or both!) I must be unwell (or in the winter blues).

Cycling mostly consists of riding around either Cambridge or any one of several areas in the UK where I have friends. Yorkshire, Leominster, Winchester, Oxfordshire, Berkshire, Cheshire, and many other places. I'm trying to write up those experiences here, although I'd rather be doing it than writing about it. I do map many of my rides on Bikely.

The big thing in camping is the main summer camp, where I look after 60 or so kids for a fortnight with a staff group of around 25. This is focussed on getting kids to work together and building self-reliance rather than particular activities, although we do havea lot of fun on the way. Then, I help out a few conservation areas (organic farms & perma-culture centres) over 4-5 weekends a year. This can be anything from building stiles to clearing pathways through woodland areas. Finally, I help out with the maintenance of the kit used for these camps on ten weekends throughout the year. This includes camping in the snow, but does include having a workshop with a stove in the waking hours.

To support some of these activities I do take an active part in helping setting up open source information about the landscapes we exist in. I find mapping with OpenStreetMap.org is a valuable way to gather and record ones surroundings, storing up data and passing on useful information to others. I've done work in Suffolk, Oxfordshire, and Cambridgeshire.

Finally, I'm not afraid of the odd picture. Usually this is nice views although some party pictures do appear every so often. I use Facebook mainly to show these, although am limited by their perculiar T&Cs. I use up the free allowance on Flickr as well, but I've no desire to pay for this. Because it's easy to link to twitter, both Twitpic and TwitVid get used extensively. Finally, for location-based photos, I've put things into Google Earth which end up in Panoramio. I do have a gallery of my favourites on this blog!
About Me