Morrisons and a good way to waste 20 minutes of your life

I was in the queue in Morrisons lunch time and had a somewhat surreal experience.  You see the bloke in front of me in the queue miss-heard the checkout woman and gave her too much money.  He thought she said £12.58 and she'd actually said £7.58. 
She looked at the money, then the amount on the till, then back to the money, and did the double take a few times, she was totally baffled, then she said "it's £7.58", the chap went to get more money out of his pocket, twigged and said "sorry I thought you said £12.58", and waited for her to give him the difference back. 
She did the double take again and tried to work out how much to give him back, she looked at the till (that didn't help as she'd rung up £20 for some reason) She tried to count it on her fingers but ran out at 10 (I was hoping she'd take her shoes off to get to 20 but she didn't think of it)  this farce continued for about 10 minutes until the bloke loosing patience (and the will to live) shouted "For Christs sake it's a bloody fiver,  "I gave you five pounds too much!"  She gave him a fiver back and he stormed off muttering "why don't they hire staff who can count" 
So then it was my turn.  I have to admit I was sorely tempted to give her too much money just to watch the joke continue, but I couldn't do it to her (I'm not a bad person really) so I gave her the right money and left.

Great canals journeys tv series.

Great canals journeys.  The series with Timothy West and Prunella Scales has been fascinating to watch, the scenery is lovely and Prunella and Tim (husband and wife team) make the places come to life.
They clearly enjoy the canals and work well as presenters.
Well worth a watch.

Mobile phone sizes

I remember the first mobile telephones, they were boxes about the size of a video recorder with a great big aerial and a telephone handset.  The trend was to miniaturize things in those days, so mobile phones got smaller and smaller, until... well frankly it got silly, I had a nokia 8210, the thing was tiny, and I have big-ish fingers, fiddly to use or text wasn't the half of it, bloody nearly impossible was a better description..

Now we're going the other way, phones are getting bigger again, while this makes it easier for those with big hands it also creates another problem.  You see for a mobile phone to be useful it has to be mobile (the clues in the name really) now the mini tablet/phone are so big some people no longer carry them around all the time. 
They won't go in a shirt or trouser pocket, they bulge a small handbag (a heinous crime I'm led to believe) So unless the person has a laptop bag or something similar they can be tricky to lug around.

So where do we go from here.  Well I suspect beofre long we'll be back to the big box with an aerial on a backpack (like the old army radios)  Oh the camera will be great, and the picture on the 15 inch screen will be stunning, but a lot of people will end up with bad backs.... untill some clever bugger comes up with a smaller pocket size phone.....  Oh wait......

Photography RAW format is it better?

Well the simple answer is yes.  Theres a lot of debate about whether raw is better than jpeg, well the answers fairly simply yes, for a start it's 16 bit (or what passes for 16 bit in photoshop ) where jpeg is 8 bit, that means a lot more processing can be done before the image starts to break down, and it gives smoother gradients in the sky etc. 
But by far the biggest benefit if the more highlight/shadow detail they hold.  I did a simple test, I shot the reflections (highlights) on my car deliberately over exposed until the highlight clipping warning came on the camera. Next in photoshops camera raw I opened the jpeg and the raw file  (photoshop camera raw supports jpeg and tiff) then I edited the pics and tried to pull back the brightest highlights, in the jpeg file there was still a blown area, while the raw still had all the detail in the highlight to be pulled back.
From my test I 'd say theres about a good stop maybe a stop and half extra detail in the highlights in the raw thats simply lost in the jpeg.
 No big deal you say, well if your shooting weddings and want the detail in the dress in bright sun I'd go with raw every time.
Remember though that raw does need to be processed through photoshop or the software that came with your camera, while jpeg has the advantage of being quick (and to be fair good enough for non critical work) but if your after big prints or in tricky lighting raw may be your friend.  Personally I tend to shoot both, I have the jpegs for a quick preview and for web use and the raw for more critical use.

FREE PHOTOWALK

Free photowalk on Sunday 13 April Starting at Rhossili car park in the gower (near Swansea Wales UK) Starting at 11.00 am.

All abilites welcome, experienced photographers will be on hand to provide free photographic help and advice if required. Relaxed friendly walk along flat-ish headland with great views of the beach, cliffs and worms head island etc.

Toilets available at car park and local inn for refreshments also at car park
If you require any further information please ask.
Wayne

Some of my pet hates!

Speed bumps.  They don't work, the boy racers drive over them at 60mph (half the time they are in stolen cars anyway) and they damage cars that drive over them a lot, ask anybody who lives in an area with a lot and suspension and exhausts suffer the most.  The fact is modern cars were never designed to drive over the equivalent of a kerb every 2 minutes.

Corned beef cans with the key on the outside.  Lets face it we're in the 21st century now, there is a better way of opening a can than the stupid leathal corned beef key method.  How this is ok with all the health and safety we have these days baffles me!

Text messages.  I'm not anti text message, far from it they can be really useful.  The problem is they were never developed for having a conversation, they were for brief quick messages, if you want a conversation use the bloody telephone!

People who text/phone late at night.  Why in the name of all thats holy do some idiots have to text or phone at bloody midnight, just because they are up doesn't mean I am.  I have to get up early most days (and I don't sleep that great anyway) so I'm often in bed well before midnight, time after time I'll get some prat phone or text me, the worst ones are the ones who phone to tell me they can't get to sleep!
So let me get this right you couldn't sleep so you thought waking me up would help you? Selfish bastards, Maybe I should ring the silly fuckers at 3.30 AM and tell them I'm awake now fancy a chat? See how well that goes down.

Energy saving light bulbs, they don't last long, they give out a crap light and they use tones of energy to produce, far more than they save in their brief expensive life.

More survival bits

Heres a few more survival bits that may come in handy if your off into the wilderness.

Survival kit and bivi-bag

Mini flares

Day and night flare

Parachute flare

Basic survival kit

Over the years I've carried survival kits in various forms,and as I recently found one of my old kits I thought I'd share some of what I feel is useful.  Remember this is a basic kit and it's aimed at people in temperate climate as here in the uk..

Bivi bag, this is a thin orange plastic bag (sleeping bag size) which offers some shelter from the wind and rain, the one I have folds up to about the size of a packet of cigarettes.

Flint and steel for starting fires (and carry matches as well)

Blades, my kit has some of those one-sided razor blade things, but I don't know if you can still get those.  I also like to carry a proper knife or multi-tool (be aware of the local laws regarding carrying a knife)

Water purification tablets, handy if the only water supply is a bit 'iffy' check the date as they can go out of date.

Light source. Now where I live it's pretty dark so I always carry a torch (pertty much always have) it used to be a double a maglite, but in recent years I've found the led torches give a lot more light and use less batteries.  My standard now is a Refrakta (cree)  which gives a hell of light even if it is slightly bigger than the old double a maglite, I also have a small keyring light on my keys (where else?)  But whatever you carry it pays to have a spare light source, just in case....

Cord.  Now I know paracord is the standard, but it's also bulky to carry a lot,  I found years ago that picture hanning string (thin braided stuff) was pretty damm strong and you could carry about 50 foot of the stuff easily.
Compass.  Buy a decent one, not a crap one from a pound shop (dime store) because when you need a compass you need one that bloody works!  And if you don't know how to use a compass find out BEFORE you get lost in the woods, it's  a lot easier than trying to figure it out after.

Water.. I carry a water bottle on any walk.

So thats about it, yes theres a million and one other things you could carry, but theres a point at which it becomes akward to actually carry around always, and thats the problem with bug-out bags, great if your home or have access to your hous/car/whatever but your knackered if your 200 miles away when things go tit's up.

Work is dangerous

Yes it's true, work is dangerous.  Statistics show your more lightly to die in work than in a war (a relief for soldiers then.... or does that count as work, in which case...  Oh bugger!  )
Yes your around three times as lightly to die at work than be killed in a war, another curious fact is your four times as lightly to get shot as a salesperson than as a policeman/woman.

Green scream!

Well the climate change 'greenies' are at it again.    The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change meeting in Japan are in turmoil, it seems theres a disagreement about the new report, some of the scientists claim it's too alarmist, while the government people say it's not alarmist enough.
Lets face it whatever happens it's going to cost us money.  These climate change wallies are the people who confidently predicted that sea levels would have risen 30 feet by 2000. Couriously they haven't and it's now 14 years later, as far as I can see (and I live near a beach) it hasn't chainged sea level since I was a child in the 1950's.
Also remember these are the same people who tell us it's gobal warming, then tell us we're heading for another ice age when their ship gets trapped in the ice they tell us has vanished.
The whole point of this huge costly body is to make a lot of noise and hot air (global warming?) to jusify itself and the gravy train for the people involved.  Why do govenment let it happen? Well because they then use the findings  (findings =  guess) to justify green taxes.
If I hear green again I'm going to bloody SCREAM!!!!

British people won't stop to help says NSPCC

The NSPCC says it's shocking that British people won't stop to help.  Yesterday in an experiment two young children in London's Victoria place pretended to be lost and alone while hidden cameras watched, 616 people passed them by and only one 1 stopped to ask what was wrong.
As an experiment it fails on several grounds, firstly how many of the people who went past were actually British?  This is London remember with a large foreign tourist element, many of whom are used to seeing young children playing alone. 
Secondly I can't say I'm supprised by British people passing them by, sadly in this country (UK)  if you speak to a child your instantly branded a paedofile often with aggression from parents and onlookers, so people tend to avoid them    Not helped by heavy handed policing, recently a man who took pictures of children vandalising cars was arrested as a possible paedofile (remember it's not actually an offence in the uk to photograph children, it's only indecent photographs that are an offence, not that most of the police seem to know it)
And now if people see a child alone they won't think I wonder if he/she is lost, no they'll wonder who is running this experiment and just walk past.

Met police madness!

How many policemen does it take to change a lightbulb?    The answer is none, they pay £100 for someone else to do it. 
Bloody crazy or what?  Thats our public money they are wasting while closing police stations to save money.

Flight MH 370

Malaysia airlines flight MH370 vanished around two weeks ago and there is still no proper trace of the missing aircraft.

The situation isn't being helped by various newspapers making up stories and purporting them as fact.
'The disappearance is crew related says flight expert'  What flight expert? How the hell can he or the paper be so sure with no wreckage or communication to tell from.

'The cargo of mangosteens had a bomb in them' says another. Or they may not have had a bomb in them.

'The cargo contained lithium batteries and there's been 140 fires on aircraft caused by these this year'.  If it did have lithium batteries on board (and that seems questionable) then they may or may not be a cause.

'The aircraft was hijacked by the crew/passengers/others'  Rather vague and of course they can't possibly tell yet, and remember that the aircraft has a reinforced door on the cockpit to stop hijackers getting in (although there are people coming forward saying the crew invited them into the cockpit in breach of rules) and if it was hijacked why hasn't it landed or a claim made by a terror group?

'It was crew suicide'  This raises more questions than it answers.  If it was suicide why can't they find the wreckage? there's no real point in flying miles off course to hide the wreckage if your all dead anyway.

'The plane had structural faults'  While it's true a different model has been issued with a warning to check part of the skin, thats not actually as uncommon as you might think. The warnings are issued when possible issues are spotted, often a few a week and related to all sorts of things on different planes.  
The missing aircraft had damaged a wing in a previous accident (I'm told) and it is just possible that may be related, but then so could pretty much anything elese.

'The plane was seen in the water near the Andaman islands'  This comes from a passenger on another plane who reported it before MH370 went missing (or around the same time, theres some confusion) The problem here is pilots say the plane the passenger was on was to high for her to be able to see a plane on the water, that coupled with the area being well searched suggests she was wrong.

The simple fact is aircraft are lost for a lot of different reasons, in the majority of cases some sort of mechanical defect triggers the initial problem, this is then often exacerbated by the crew  and leads to the full blown accident.  The truth is without finding some of the wreckage and ideally the so called black boxes we'll never really know what went on with MH370.

Vintage cars 2

Vintage cars part 1

More bus travel hell

Yesterday evening I thought I'd pop over and visit a near bye friend, so I went to the bus stop, and that's when things started to go wrong (I really should know better than to use the bus by now)

The bus arrived on time, sadly it wasn't the bus that was supposed to arrive, my bus hadn't bothered to come through the area I live in so I had to catch the bus that did come.  First problems is that bus goes a different way so I have to walk the last mile or so.

Once on the bus the joy of bus travel really started.  The bus drove off and drove so slowly it was almost going backwards, I'm not joking an asthmatic ant could have gone faster, women with pushchairs were overtaking us on the inside.

To add to the pleasure at the back of the bus were Mr and Mrs Orangutan, who shouted at each other all the way to the stop I got off at.  Their conversation consisted almost totally of foul four letter words, (I use the word conversation loosely)  It went something like.... ' the F-ing barman told me to F*** off, so I F-ing told him I'd F-ing kick his F-ing head in the silly C***!'    Oh the joy of good conversation..........  !

Why is it morons always shout instead of talking?  These people really should be culled, lets face it the gene pools not going to lose anything, as for letting them bread.... God help the children, I doubt they'll be booking a place at Oxford for them.

The other odd part of the journey was that the driver kept one hand out of the drivers window and was waving most of the journey, at first I really thought he was having a stroke or something, then I figured the indicators had failed and it was some sort of weird hand signals.  I finally realised he was actually waving to the bus behind, the signal means 'swinging'  Not in the sense most people would think of.  In bus driver terms swinging means following the bus in front an letting it do all the work.  I'm not sure picking up 2 passengers and driving at 3 mph counts as work though.....

Ianto Jones ( Torchwood) shrine Cardiff

Ianto Jones was one of the crew of Torchwood  (Dr Who spin off),  the character was killed off in 2009 and this is a shrine to him in Cardiff.
The actor Gareth David Lloyd who played Ianto is very much alive and well.

Field Marshal William Joseph "Bill" Slim

Field Marshal William Joseph "Bill" Slim, 1st Viscount Slim KG, GCB, GCMG, GCVO, GBE, DSO, MC, KSt, one of the UK war heros has been accused of child abuse.  One slight problem, the poor man died in Dec 1970.
Why people would make allegations of child abuse now 44 years after the man died is baffling, the only logical reason I can think of is money. 
Lets be honest if you or I were abused we'd make a complaint at the time, if not at the time certainly when we were old enough to make the complaint on our own, I doubt any normal person would wait until they were in their 50's and the abuser had been dead for 44 years.  The only possible reason is cash, the issue is now the man accused isn't around to defend himself. 
It's time this sort of nonsense was stopped, in my opinion if people didn't report the crime at the time (or within a reasonable time after) it should now be ignored.  How can it possibly be investigated properly now? And in any event the man accused should have his side of the story told, and a chance to defend himself properly in court.  No chance of that now 44 years after his death

M.O.T. Tests

Here in the UK it's a legal requirement for all vehicles over 3 years old to have an annual MOT test (road worthiness test)  The problem is the whole system is fatally flawed.
First of all why 3 years?  What suddenly happens to car at it's third birthday?  Remember that some cars can stand for a year or two before even being registered, so your 3 year car might actually have been made 5 years ago.

Then theres how well a cars driven and looked after, a driver who really takes care of his car, has it serviced and drives it carefully might have a really good safe 10 year old car.. An idiot who drives like a maniac, goes off rroading in his car and does bugger all to it could well have a dangerous car after a few months.  This makes the 3 years bit pointless, maybe all cars should be tested annually. 

But by far the biggest flaw in the system is the way the cars are tested. 
Common sense would suggest that the ministry of transport would have their own test centers where you take your car, they then pass or fail it, if you fail you get a slip to take to any garage telling them what was wrong.so it could be repaired then back to the centre for a re-test.
No sadly thats not how it actually works.  You see the mot licence garages to test the cars themselves... remember the same garage is almost certainly going to get the repair work if it fails.  This gives garages the incentive to fail cars to get more work for themselves.  How bloody stupid is that! 

Now not far from me is a well known national tyre and exhaust place, now I was in there a while back having a tyre repaired ,and while I was there a nearly new car (6 months old) was on the ramps and the mechanic (conman is a better name for this guy) was telling the lady car owner it needed a full new set of brakes and disks all around.  On a 6 month old car?   It's still under warranty for gods sake! 
I told her to take it back to the dealer and have it checked, she'd only gone in to have a Tyre changed after a puncture, they shouldn't have even been checking the brakes.

Thats the trouble whit the system we have now, the MOT is a pointless joke. 

Wheeler Dealers tv series

I've watched this series for some time, and a few things are clear.  Ed China really knows what he's doing and it's great to watch him fixing up the cars.   Mike Brewer on the other hand is....  Well what can I say, they make hardly any profit because he lets the customer knock down his price, he buys the biggest pieces of crap he can find, even my dear old dad wouldn't buy some of the cars Mike buys and my dad was hopeless at buying a good car.

My brother works in the motor trade as a car dealer, he tells me Mikes a big joke as far as the real dealers go.  Apparently if someone buys a car for too much money they call it 'doing a mike' in the trade.

How to sell a car to Mike.   Offer 7p off the price and hold out your hand.

How to buy a car like Mike.  Find a wreck with no wheels, engine, suspension, or windows, thats been burnt out, preferably something thats pricey for parts as well.  Now offer £15.000 and hold out your hand.

I'm sorry Mike but you really need to try harder to make money, selling a car for a grand profit when it's taken 3 weeks to fix op is rubbish money for two blokeswages and running a workshop.

Bus travel hell

The Lib Dems want to ban all petrol and diesel cars by 2040, the trouble is theres no real alternative, battery cars are rubbish, ok they are fine if your going about 2 miles to the shops, but with a range of  40 - 50  miles, and most people have no way of recharging the cars (most homes here don't have either drives or garages and you can't run cables across the pavement)
Plus the factor that you never know when you might have to rush to say the hospital, or a stranded child somewhere.
Use buses they say, public transports wonderful!   Not where I bloody live it/s not!  In the last week my friend was left at the bus stop on her way home from work by a bus that didn't stop, despite her having her hand out.  The next day the driver became aggressive and wouldn't let her off the bus until he got out of his cab and tested the bell (which didn't work) saying she had to press the bell for the bus to stop.
Then yesterday her bus was late because the driver kept stopping to send text messages (she actually went up to see what he was doing), he apologised then.  While a bus I caught had the drivers friend standing next to him and chatting the whole 15 minute journey, the driver waving his hand about and leaning over the partition to chat, bloody unsafe.
Add that to the fact that buses are hopelessly unreliable (ours turn up if they feel like) theres more or less no service after about 6 o clock in the evening (just the odd bus) and very expensive.
And they really wan't us out of our cars!!!  Don't make me laugh!

The stuff you find....

I spent a few hours today searching for a box, it was actually the box an external hard drive enclosure came in, inside it is an adaptor for my sons laptop hard drive.
The thing is it's surprising what you find when you start looking, I found my old commando dagger, my old survival kit tin (with contents), an old Millbank bag (a sort of water purifying sock) and all sorts of other odd's and ends.  What I didn't find sadly is the bloody box I was looking for in the first place.  Bugger!

Last nighs sunsets

I went to the beach last night to watch the sunset, here are a few pics of it.

Motor racing circuit for Ebbw Vale

Developer are trying to raise £250 million to build a motor racing circuit near Ebbw Vale in south Wales, now from what I'm hearing all is not quite as clear as it should be behind the scenes.

Frankly I'm baffled by the location, putting a world class racing circuit at Ebbw Vale seems a strange choice.  Now don't get me wrong, Ebbw Vale could do with all the employment it can get, but it's being claimed that 7.000 jobs will be created.... WTF?   What racing circuit in the world has 7,000 staff?  the answer is none! A few hundred is more lightly, and even building the circuit..... 
Going back a bit the garden festival went to Ebbw Vale, I heard the same sort of rubbish mentioned then, I was working for a newspaper at the time and checked up on the figures, not only was there a lot less people thats initially claimed but worse, they were nearly all from outside Wales, the vast majority then were from Bristol.

Another point thats been overlooked is Wales already has several motor racing circuits, the thing they have in common is very little use, and not a hell of a lot of paying visitors.

But for me the biggest reasons for not building a circuit at Ebbw Vale are ,  A the road access, the heads of the valley road has got better, but it's still closed due to serious accidents all too often. it's also not very big and a good way to Ebbw Vale from the nearest Motorway.  You have the A465 from Neath or the A470 from more or less Cardiff, both a good distances from the motorway, and both suffer very heavy traffic at peak times (especially the A470).

The weather is another factor not considered, Ebbw Vale is quite high up, they got a fair bit of fog and rain compared to say Cardiff, Ebbw also gets a lot of snow/ice, they often have it when pretty much everything the other side of Hirwaun is free of it.

Like I said earlier, don't think I'm bashing the people of Ebbw Vale, on the contrary I had the pleasure of working there for several years, a nicer more welcoming friendly group of people would be hard to find.  The areas been depressed for a long time and any jobs would be welcome, sadly I suspect this project won't bing many jobs but will cost the local government/council a fortune that could be better spent than making someone pipe dream into a new white elephant.

Fine weather and dog madness

The few days of recent fine weather have brought out the dog walkers, however now there are hundreds of loose dogs on my local beach, the real problem is many of these poor dogs haven't been outside the house for weeks with all the wind and rain.   The dogs are now so excited they are going for each other and attacking pretty much anything going past. 
Now common sense would suggest the owners put the leads back on, but oh no!,  that's too easy.  No the moron owners just run and grab the collar and pull the dog away, wait about 3 seconds and let go... Yep you guessed it, the dogs are fighting again in about 4 seconds (great fun to watch the owners trying to catch their dogs) 
There is a serious issue here though, theres young children playing on the beach too, sooner or later someone going to get badly hurt.  I'm sorry but dogs really do need to be kept on proper leads all the time (not 3 miles of nearly invisible string either) so they are under control.
Talking of long silly string leads a few days ago I watched a young couple with a large dog being dragged along the pavement, unfortunately the dog on the end of about 30 foot of string was walking down the middle of a busy road.  The couple seemed unwilling or unable to get the dog back on the pavement (they were not trying when I watched them)  but even if they wanted to those thin leads are really hard to pull back in, the strings so thin you can't grip it properly.  Another good reason to ban the dangerous things.

Strange world we live in.

It's been fine here for 3 days and now we have grass fires, I'm expecting a hosepipe ban any minute, how the hell the crass can actually catch fire is baffling, I went for a walk yesterday evening and ground that's normally bone dry was soaking and flooded in places, in 60 years I've never seen it that wet..... maybe waters spontaneously combustion now.... ?

The Malaysian jets that's been missing for 4 days now is still missing. You would think in this digital age when everything is monitored that something the size of a passenger aircraft would be easy to find (especially as it's route is known) 
Now this plane was fairly close to land, how hard would it be if the plane had vanished over the middle of the Atlantic ocean?   Perhaps all aircraft should have some sort of self deploying beacon in case of crashing over water ( or land for that matter).  One thing that puzzled me is the so called 'black boxes' (actually bright orange) have a pinger so sonar can find them, it's supposed to last for around 30 days.  Now a half decent submarine can 'hear' another sub from miles and miles away, and they are trying to be really quiet, they should hear the pinger for a heck of a distance. 

Missing Malaysian jet a mystery

Missing Malaysian jet a mystery says Malaysia's civil aviation chief Mr Azharuddin Abdul Rahman.  You mean to say without finding the plane or wreckage you don't know what happened to it? 
What a stupid comment to make, he goes on to say we haven't ruled out a hijacking, of course you bloody haven't, you haven't the foggiest idea whats happened so you can't rule anything out.. 

Arty farty adverts

Recently theres been some very clever 'arty' adverts on telly, some would put a feature film to shame on special effects.   Sadly many suffer from what I call product-itus (they are so clever they forgot what they are trying to sell.
Theres one with a little girl singing with a singing cat in her bicycle basket, I've seen it a few times now, very cleverly done, the thing is I haven't a clue what it's trying to sell, so massive fail!
Theres another clever one that has absolutely bugger all to do with the product it's trying to sell (can't remember what it's supposed to be at the moment, so again it's just confusing the potential customer.
Another has little furry animals popping out of biscuit packets, great ad, but I don't know what it's trying to sell.
My favorite this week, is one for smoothies, the company is giving 10% of the price to an overseas charity.... So what they are saying really is we overcharge our customers so we can give the money away abroad and save tax, charming!  Maybe customers should have the option to op out, or better yet select their own charity.

Manhunt tv series

Manhunt is a series in which an ex-Navy SEAL Joel Lambert, has to evade various army units around the world.  
Kind of a cross from Bear Grylls and the fugitive the series is basically a remake of the far superior 2003 BBC tv series hunting Chris Ryan.
What can I say, Joel Lambert must be the most unfit ex seal ever, the only man I know who gets out of breath sleeping (ok I'm kidding a bit)  but watch the series and listen to him huff and puff, the guy has a serious health issue to be that out of breath all the time, the people chasing him are nothing like as out of breath.  And come on lighting fires on escape and evasion when the enemy are less that 300m away? WTF!  It's just not done, the guy leaves tracks everywhere, a sheep could track him.
Please, pretty please, get Bear Grylls to show you how it's really done.

A few pics.

Top gear cycling safety videos

This week the top gear team made their own irreverent style cycling safety videos, the trouble was they actually got some of it right, despite the fact it was meant as a mickey take.
You see many of the point they made were valid, lots of cycling accidents are caused by the cyclists themselves jumping red lights, having bikes in poor condition (bad brakes etc) but by far the  biggest cause isn't car drives at all, it's the heavy vehicles, buses and lorries. 
The fact is bus and lorry drivers simply don't care about other road uses (well a lot of them anyway) they are safe and insulated in big heavy vehicles, unless they hit another bus or lorry in most cases the other poor sods come off far worse in a collision.
Lorries are particularly bad they just pull out of junctions, roundabouts etc without a care, they know they have the weight and other motorists have no choice but to give way, even if they get hit they suffer little damage or injury.
The poor cyclist has no chance against these, I myself was run off the road some years back while cycling by a lorry being driven like a madman through a narrow country lane, insane! if I hadn't gone off road I'd be dead, there was no way he could stop, and he made no attempt to stop or slow down anyway, God help if it had been a car going the other way, they would have nowhere to go.
If the govenment really want to cut down cycling deaths maybe they should take a good look and buses and lorries, clamp down hard on bad driving, unmarked police on bikes filming what they do and car back-up should work. .

Cardiff bay pics

Well they are pics taken in cardiff bay anyway.

Cardiff film and comic-con march 2014

I went there yesterday and got those pics.  If your in any of them please feel free to coment or contact me.