A Return to Gecoaching in Aberystwyth

It has been ages since I’ve been geocaching. I’ve been out to repair or replace a few of my own caches now and then but hadn’t done any finding myself as I thought I’d have to travel to find any new ones.

How wrong I was. I had a look at the Geocaching website yesterday and there are loads of new caches in the area. Someone called ‘nitroglysarine’ has hidden an entire ‘Alphabet Series’ in the local neighbourhood, so that’s at least 26 geocaches that I haven’t found and there are lots of others too.

I had a few meetings in Aberystwyth yesterday so before I left I loaded a few cache locations onto my GPSr and stopped off on my way to my meetings for a few quick finds. All were really easy and accessible by car so they were quick ‘cache and dashes’ that took me no time at all. I even got an FTF (First to Find) on one of them.

I prefer the caches that are out in the middle of nowhere really, but those take quite a bit of time and effort to do and I don’t always have that time. So for now these local, easy caches will have to do and it’s good to see so many new ones in the area and new cachers out there hiding geocaches. It looks as though the number of Aber-cachers has been growing and will be keeping me busy for a while. I shall load up my GPSr with all of the new caches today so that I can find them whenever we are out and about.

My parents are here for a long weekend so we went out for Sunday lunch yesterday.

We had heard that the carvery at the Marine in Aberystwyth was good so after a walk along the prom to build up an apetite off we went for lunch.

All of the reports of it being good were indeed true! Just a starter could have been enough with a huge choice of melon, pate, prawn cocktail, samosa’s, salad, eggs, pasta and more. I didn’t go overboard as the main carvery looked good, but the desert table looked even more impressive!

So it was onto the main course. Not just a choice of one of two meats, but too much choice, Pork, Turkey, Beef, Lamb and Gammon, along with suasages, bacon, roast potatoes yorkshire puddings, stuffing and plenty of sauces. By the time we had chosen and been given hug portions of meat, the staff had stocked our table up with bowls containing a selection of vegetables and plenty of gravy.

All of the food was delicious and there was more than enough by a long way. The dessert table beckoned though. None of us really had room for a dessert but with such a huge selection of home made puddings on offer it would have been rude not to try some. Again, it’s a matter of helping yourself to as much as you can manage from every type of dessert imaginable. I only had a couple but they were nice too. if only I’d had more room to try a few more!

It’s definitely recommended and we’ll be back again fairly soon. I just think I need to go for a huge mountain bike ride beforehand so that I can make the most of it! The prices were good too at £15.95 for a 3 course meal.

OK, time for a moan about our Broadband Speeds again!

As part of my job as a freelance website designer I’m often being called on to help people with their computers, set up e-mail accounts, sort out their broadband connections and generally teach them how to do certain things on their computers. Living in rural West Wales, many of these people live outside of Aberystwyth in little villages or in houses miles from anywhere. Because of this, conversation often turns to the speed of the broadband connections in these area and the fact that it is the people who live ‘out in the stick’ that need a decent connection more so than the people living in bigger towns.

Broadband has become an essential commodity these days, just like water or electricity and some of us are getting left behind. Mind you, most of the places I go to, however remote seem to have a better connection than I do. 2-3Mb per second is common in most places, whereas the most I can get is a 1Mb per second connection.

Bits and Bytes

When I do a speedtest (I usually use this real world checker) I get a download speed of around 900-950kbps and an upload speed of 200-230kbps.

Now, connection speeds such as this are measured in kilobites (or megabits) per second as opposed to kilobytes (or megabytes). Note the lower case ‘kb’ and ‘mb’ which denotes bits rather than ‘KB’ or ‘MB’ which denotes bytes. There are 8 bits in a byte so in real terms, my 950kbps download speed enables me to download data at approximately 120KBps. Not exactly great so it can take me a while to download videos and such like and it does sometimes mean that streaming things such as BBC iPlayer isn’t that successful.

Upload Speeds

Upload speeds are usually much slower – The ‘A’ in ADSL stands for Asymmetric meaning that the data transfer into the house is faster than the data transfer out of the house. This is usually fine as most people download more than they upload. However, I do quite a lot of uploading and recently I’ve been really pushing my upload limits.

As part of my backup strategy I’ve started using Carbonite as an offsite backup. The first thing I needed to do in order to use this was to upload all of my files to their server. Obviously I didn’t back up everything, but by the time I added all of my documents (letters, e-mails, financial records, spreadsheets, databases etc.) and all of my photos my upload queue had hit around 50GB. I have yet to add my music, movies or even the websites I’ve built to the queue as that would add another 30GB. I started the upload of the 50GB of data of December 22nd 2009 and it has been running almost continuously night and day since then. It finally finished the upload on Monday, 6 weeks or thereabouts of uploading!…. Oh for a faster broadband connection.

The world is full of Apple rumours, we now know what the iPad actually is and what it can do, but I’ve come across a source of information regarding a Apple event in Aberystwyth.

Yep, the sleepy seaside town of Aberystwyth is to host an Apple roadshow!

According to a job description on the careers advisory service website:

1 student is required to distribute leaflets and promote Student Discounts on Apple products, and pre-promote a Apple Roadshow that will attend the University on 2nd February 2010.

Sounds interesting to me, but then I am an Apple Fanboy!

We went to see the pantomime at Aberystwyth Arts Centre yesterday. It was Jack and the Beanstalk and I was pleasantly surprised.

The pantomime is put on by The Wardens Dramatic Society who have been producing shows in Aberystwyth since Jack and the Beanstalk in 1983.  The productions are directed by Richard Cheshire, who also plays a leading role in them and this year played the Dame. You can find out more about The Wardens Dramatic Society here – although their website could do with some updating – maybe that could be a website design job for me!

It was pretty funny at times, the kids and adults all seemed to love it and it was a very professional show. Obviously as a pantomime it can’t be too serious or ‘too professional’ but it was slick, funny and the cast all seemed to be enjoying themselves. It was the last show of the season which may have helped matters and I’m sure the cast were playing a few tricks on each other as well which made it good fun.

Being Aberystwyth it could have been a very amateur affair, but it wasn’t and I’d highly recommend it. I’m sure we’ll be going next year.

There was finally a little break in the weather yesterday afternoon so we decided to go to the fair. (See here for Aberystwyth Fair opening times). We hadn’t made any definite plans so didn’t tell Morgan until we collected him from school and hadn’t made plans to meet anyone there either. However, as usual it turned into a social affair for Morgan.

Not long after getting there we were soon in a little group with me, Anna and Morgan, Jackie, Cameron, Eva, Mike, Rachael, Cameron, Jamie, Taniel and Taniel’s Mum, Kirsten and Bethany. The fair was pretty much the same as it always is and Morgan certainly had fun. It isn’t cheap of course, but it is only there once a year and its all pretty exciting for a 4-year old.

I’ve been trying to find out when the fair comes to Aberystwyth, and judging by the twitter comments and such like I’m not the only one. So, thanks to various people on Twitter (You know who you are), and as a public service for others trying to find when it will be in Aberystwyth:

It looks as though the fair will be in Aberystwyth on November 16th, 21st, 23rd, 28th and 30th.

All the fun of the fair!

The clocks have gone back, the evenings are darker and it feels as though Winter is properly on its way. A depressing time for many, but I really like it.

It isn’t very cold at the moment but there’s nothing nicer than snuggling up indoors in front of the fire whilst it’s cold and miserable outside. There are also lots of parties and celebrations to look forward to. There always seems to be lots of things happening at this time of year and Christmas isn’t far off too.

This weekend we have the annual Ynyslas Bonfire party to attend at Dave and Sarah’s house. Its a nice community get together with a bonfire, fireworks and of course lots of delicious food to devour. Then Saturday evening is the annual lantern procession and light display in Machynlleth. We went last year and had a good time, so shall be there again this year. Morgan wants to make a lantern too, so we might have to actually join in with the parade this time. Apparently if you have a lantern you get free admission to the light show after the parade which will be a bonus.

If that doesn’t take your fancy then you could brave a night in the woods with eerie sights and sounds and ghostly goings on at Nant yr Arian. Then head back to the visitor centre and indulge in some supernatural snacks.

There is also a firework display in Aberystwyth on Bonfire Night itself.

Don’t let the short days and dark nights get you down, get out there and enjpy them.

Well done to all those who competed in the Aberystwyth Twin Peaks Challenge today. It looked like a great event with good conditions. I hope you put in a time to be proud of. I was the photographer part way up Pendinas and then again on the prom and managed to get some good shots of almost everyone running.

The photos I took are now  online ready for all to see and buy: Aberystwyth Twin Peaks Challenge Photos 2009

Here are a few as a taster, but the link above takes you to the full album. They are ordered and titled by runner number so you should be able to find yourself fairly easily. There are a few here and there where I couldn’t see the number, these should be on the last page of the gallery. Feel free to use the images on your personal blogs or for non-commercial purposes, but please keep the copyright watermark in place. You can buy a full size, non-watermarked digital image from the Aberystwyth Twin Peaks Challenge 2009 Photo Album.

Click here for the full Aberystwyth Twin Peaks Photo Album ».

There are over 200 photos in the album so I have had to reduce the size and quality of them quite a bit for the web but the hi-res versions that you can buy are of course much better.

Sorry if I missed you, but I couldn’t get everyone, it’s nothing personal!

It’s the Aberystwyth Twin Peaks Challenge at the weekend. A challenging partly off-road running race covering two of Aberystwyth’s most famous landmarks: Constitution Hill (450ft) to the North of Aberystwyth  and The Duke of Wellington monument on Pen Dinas (413ft) to the South. The race is organised by Aberystwyth Athletics club and is about 7 miles long.

Following on from the success of my recent sports event photo assignments at the Forest of Dean Enduro, Lake Vyrnwy Half Marathon and the Snowdonia Enduro, I’m planning to pop into Aberystwyth and take some photos of the Aberystwyth Twin peaks Race. Hopefully it will go as well as the previous events I’ve covered, although the mountain biking events are a little easier to cover (and sell photos from) than the running events.

As always, if you’re competing, look out for me on course and give me your best smile, or if you prefer grimace!

Check back here soon after the race for the Aberystwyth Twin Peaks Photo Album.