DecAid – Honouring 10 Years In Afghanistan

I am uncertain of how much coverage this is getting in the press around the Isles but I feel I must give the boys and girls at DecAid a big shout.

DecAid is a national appeal set up to mark the tenth year of conflict in Afghanistan, raise awareness of the work and involvement of the Armed Forces in Afghanistan, remember those men and women who have lost their lives in Afghanistan and to raise as much money for three service charities that help ex-servicemen and their families.

I strongly believe in supporting our forces. I have had a strong connection with them since being in cadets as a youngster and have continued this through various organisations until rather recently. In addition a large percentage of my friends are employed by The Queen, of whom seven six (get well soon Tel!) are actively deployed on Forward Operating Bases in Afghanistan.

Most people can’t even imagine the hardships the guys out there are going through and every day dangers that they are exposed to. Who here would like to be eating boil and the bags every day for six months, never mind the ambush/IED threat, separation from family/friends, poor living conditions, heat, etc.

It’s an unenviable, unthankful job that should receive far greater attention from the media, for the positive stories as much attention as the negative. However we aren’t living in utopia and no one seems to want to hear about the positive impact the guys are having to work so hard out there to achieve.

Anyways, needless to say I support all the hard work the services charities do and feel DecAid warrants some support, as little as publishing it here will achieve.

 

Another reason for my interest in the appeal is a friends involvement, Tom O’Connell, who I went to university with. His involvement is enough for a a shout out, however it is the Munro Mission that he is helping lead that really piques my interest.

On 1^st August 2011 the team will begin their challenge to summit all 283 Scottish Munros (mountain over 3,000ft) in under 50 days. However, there is more to their challenge than just ‘Munro Bagging’. The team will dedicate every Munro they climb to servicemen and women who have lost their lives in Afghanistan over the past 10 years.

If this task was not already tough enough, the team will complete it without the use of motorised transport. They will cover the 1600 miles using bicycles and kayaks but mainly on foot. This will require them to cover around 36 miles and summit 6 Munros every day for 49 consecutive days.

More than 1600 miles on foot, bike and kayak; over 61 miles of vertical ascent; 283 peaks and all in just 49 days. This is a superhuman endeavour, and on its own will hopefully raise plenty of money and national attention for the appeal.

Its an event I would relish to have the chance to get involved in, however I will settle with wishing Tom and the rest of his team the best of luck on their epic journey.

Please look over the DecAid webpage, think about getting involved and save a thought for the servicemen out in Afghanistan.

I needs to get me a subscription

It's the most exciting and interesting piece of literature I've seen recently, I need to get me a subscription to make my life more complete! Maybe I should for the sake of clarification mention that I have always had a love for tweed suits, a rather old fashioned outlook on life, and have recently taken up smoking a pipe. The Chap looks like it will be a very entertaining read!

The Chap takes a wry look at the modern world through the steamed-up monocle of a more refined age, occasionally getting its sock suspenders into a twist at the unspeakable vulgarity of the twenty-first century.

Since 1999, the Chap has been championing the rights of that increasingly marginalised and discredited species of Englishman - the gentleman. The Chap believes that a society without courteous behaviour and proper headwear is a society on the brink of moral and sartorial collapse, and it seeks to reinstate such outmoded but indispensable gestures as hat doffing, giving up one's seat to a lady and regularly using a trouser press.

The Chap Manifesto

1. THOU SHALT ALWAYS WEAR TWEED. No other fabric says so defiantly: I am a man of panache, savoir-faire and devil-may-care, and I will not be served Continental lager beer under any circumstances.

2 THOU SHALT NEVER NOT SMOKE. Health and Safety "executives" and jobsworth medical practitioners keep trying to convince us that smoking is bad for the lungs/heart/skin/eyebrows, but we all know that smoking a bent apple billiard full of rich Cavendish tobacco raises one's general sense of well-being to levels unimaginable by the aforementioned spoilsports.

3 THOU SHALT ALWAYS BE COURTEOUS TO THE LADIES. A gentleman is never truly seated on an omnibus or railway carriage: he is merely keeping the seat warm for when a lady might need it. Those who take offence at being offered a seat are not really Ladies.

4 THOU SHALT NEVER, EVER, WEAR PANTALOONS DE NIMES. When you have progressed beyond fondling girls in the back seats of cinemas, you can stop wearing jeans. Wear fabrics appropriate to your age, and, who knows, you might even get a quick fumble in your box at the opera.

5 THOU SHALT ALWAYS DOFF ONE'S HAT. Alright, so you own a couple of trilbies. Good for you - but it's hardly going to change the world. Once you start actually lifting them off your head when greeting, departing or simply saluting passers-by, then the revolution will really begin.

6 THOU SHALT NEVER FASTEN THE LOWEST BUTTON ON THY WESKIT. Look, we don't make the rules, we simply try to keep them going. This one dates back to Edward VII, sufficient reason in itself to observe it.

7 THOU SHALT ALWAYS SPEAK PROPERLY. It's quite simple really. Instead of saying "Yo, wassup?", say "How do you do?"

8 THOU SHALT NEVER WEAR PLIMSOLLS WHEN NOT DOING SPORT. Nor even when doing sport. Which you shouldn't be doing anyway. Except cricket.

9 THOU SHALT ALWAYS WORSHIP AT THE TROUSER PRESS. At the end of each day, your trousers should be placed in one of Mr. Corby's magical contraptions, and by the next morning your creases will be so sharp that they will start a riot on the high street.

10 THOU SHALT ALWAYS CULTIVATE INTERESTING FACIAL HAIR. By interesting we mean moustaches, not beards

I feel it may be time to try and grow a moustache, as ludicrous as this will make me look.

Happy New Year!

Few and far between!

Its been over a month and a half since I've blogged anything, and even longer since anything remotely outdoors made it on t'interweb due to my doing! I must do better!

There are things that will pop up in the future for me to share, if there will be anyone on here to read it is another thing.

At the start of last year I hypothesised what I'd like to achieve for the year, and even though very little of it was achieved it seems sensible to make plans for the year that has already begun, if nothing else it will spur me on to achieve them.

I met up with Simon in early November to have a chat over a beer (which was more than pleasant and needs to be repeated.) He mentioned a walk he was planning to undertake and asked for my thoughts, it more than piqued my interest, however I saw it more as an ultra-esque fell run that would maybe compare to something like the Bob Graham Round. "The Mourne 500's" would visit all peaks in the Mournes mountain range that sits above 500 metres. This accounts for 39 peaks, 42 miles, 5,400 m's gain and 5,450 m's loss. Its an epic walk, one that would sit nicely over two or three days, but I see it's potential more as a fell run, and this is my main goal for the year is. Not only will this force me to stick with some sort of training program it will also get me on the hills more often for reconnoitering (I love that word) purposes, whether that involves walking or running or both. Since talking with Simon I have been pointed by a running friend to the Mourne 500 Challenge site (from where I've stolen some of the above stats) and this has just confirmed my desire to give it a bash. The 500's, or 1600's as I want to refer to them, will be my main nemesis for this year.

With the successful completion of the Mourne Way Marathon last year, I can't not return this year. With some sort of consistent training in motion I would like to think sub 4 hours in the marathon is attainable, and depending on how crazy I'm feeling, I'm flirting with the idea of the Ultra. I would be in good company as Craig has thrown his hat in for it.

All this epic running has an ultimate goal in that I would like to have a go at running the Ulster Way at some stage in the future, breaking it down into back to back marathons. There's no possibility of that happening this year, but something for next year maybe.

I will also be hoping to return to the Mourne Mountain Marathon this year and might give the B class a bash if I can find anyone that also wants to destroy their knees, get sweaty and dirty, and share some port and an undersized tent for the night.

Anything else is a bonus. Some climbing might fall into the schedule if my workmates can get me to the wall, and a jaunt down to Kerry for an ascent of Carrauntoohil and some of the surrounding peaks would also be pretty sweet.

That's enough dreaming, back to reality, or at least photo editing.

180° SOUTH and the environment

I mentioned this before and have finally got round to having a look a the entire film. It's definitely worth a gander, the scenery and journey are excellent and I think it epitomises the reasons why people that enjoy the outdoors are usually very much driven to protect it.

"It’s not an adventure until something goes wrong"

180° SOUTH from Mark Kalch on Vimeo.

Maybe my idea of travelling is more extreme than others, but I look upon this full on immersion in a journey as the way it should be done. I know many people many people that are going or have returned from travelling around South East Asia and Australia, and can't help but feel they didn't get all I think they could have out of it. In my eyes they appear to have taken essentially long holidays that involve taking in the sights abreast of a lot of drinking. There doesn't seem to be a lot of integration with the local populace, instead the majority of time is spent with other western travellers and indulging in activities that are mostly possible back home in some shape or form. Staying within you're comfort zone isn't really an adventure to me, but maybe my views are rather left-field.

"What are we going to call this route?"

"Nothing. It doesn't matter"

A lot of the sentiment shared throughout the film resonates with me, especially the conservation side of things. I feel we should all be trying to have a lower impact and live a more environmentally conscious life. Maybe that's why the Ditch Monkey and Hunter-Gatherer blog's were so interesting and inspiring for me, a stop gap until I am in the position to take my life in that direction.

It’s hard not to be attracted to self sufficiency; however I’m not so naïve to believe that it will make such a difference to the way the planet is exploited. Radical ways of looking at how we live are needed but large corporations and governments aren’t likely to let this happen easily as they both have far too much influence and money to lose. In the same way that exploitation of the working classes has been exported to developing countries, whether we want to believe this or not, it would appear the same will eventually happen with unpalatable high carbon and environmentally exploitive industries. Like many things it’s out of sight, out of mind, however as my current employer is trying to empress, it’s one planet living, thus shifting problems somewhere else doesn’t solve the problem.

Maybe we're all doomed.

Every bodies* talking about....

... the general election as if the result, whatever it may be, is going to have a major change on the country (-ies.) Lets pull a bit of perspective back into the view.

*read as news broadcasters

The Digital Economy Bill , what's yours is ours

So you're walking down the street minding your own, while blanking out the majority of the advertisements which cover any free flat surface, when out of the corner you see an image that looks very familiar. You do a double take, then stop and realise that the image being used is one of you’re personal photo’s that you posted on your blog/bookface for you’re friends to see and here it is up on the side of a building.

What do you do?

Well, as it stands you can dispute the misuse of copyright in the small claims court and as long as you can prove ownership, you’re probably quite likely to get a positive result as seen here.

However, getting recompense in the future might be a bit more difficult under new plans in the Digital Economy Bill. A well written article can be read here, however as I understand it after being "lucky" enough to see the misuse of you’re image, you’ll have to prove it's yours. The company that used it can claim that it is an orphan (one which had no identifiable data embedded) so how were they to know it was not free to use. You will then go through a, presumably, lengthy claims process where instead of getting to keep all the proceeds, you’ll settle for a percentage of it split with the government and whatever agency that is being created to deal with this sort of thing.

This seems so ridiculous on so many levels, least of all because the internet is not subdivided by country. Does this mean that abusing British images will be fine but others can’t be used or that the United Kingdom will become home to an orphan image making industry?

Could you imagine this happening to any other digital media industry? The photography industry, just like the music/films/software industry, is losing out to the data sharing that the internet enables but somehow is getting less protection from digital theft, probably because unlike the music industry, the photographic one is largely unrepresented in the public eye.

It seems professional photographers have more to lose from this bill, which is probably true, but amateurs are more likely to be abused, as most don’t think to watermark their images, won’t be looking for their unauthorised use and will be altogether easier targets. As far as I can see if this goes through, which I unfortunately don’t doubt, we can look forward to your family photo’s being used to advertise a Czech grocery stores, and photo’s of you’re son being used for articles that you’d rather not be associated with.