Something for the weekend?

Hello, and welcome to the weekend.

As a result of my interest in Japan, I follow quite a few Japan-related blogs. Today, kirainet has posted a couple of lovely pictures which I wanted to share.

They were taken in the North of Tokyo. The first image is matcha - green tea (you're probably not going to see a much better example (IMO) of complementary colours!?), the second, a parasol. Both images reflect my photographic preference to zoom in on objects to the point where the background disappears and the objects get cropped..

The full post is here. The whole flckr set is worth a browse tbh.

And one of our own...

Bon soir!

So this evening, at the end of a 6.1k row, I raised my arms in triumph - I'd made it.

According to my route from google maps, I have tonight successfully arrived in France and pulled together enough 'water based'* km to get me across the English Channel, from Dover to Boulogne Sur Mer.

My sense of achievement is marred only slightly by a niggling tenderness in my hamstring. I think it deserves a bit of a rest.

The last few days has given me an awful lot more respect for these guys...

* rowing and swimming.

updated route

You may notice I've amended the route recently - this is to stop me becoming too obsessive about doing everything just right... and avoiding having to swim / row 450k from France to Italy. The route also gets me 20k closer to the centre of Rome.

:-)

test post..

One of the things I wanted to get out of this exercise was a chance to play with and look at how technologies can be used, linked, and played with to achieve different things on the interwebs.

So, after a bruising 20k on the bike this evening, I settled down to try & put my route on 'my maps' in Google. It was surprisingly made a little difficult by Google's removal of the 'export KML' button which apparently used to exist. Thanks though to Frank Taylor's Google Earth Blog I was able to find a work round.

And, fingers crossed... I should now be able to plot my virtual location on a virtual map. Starting steadily, I'll try a link.

So the route appears... but not the placemarker... will sleep on it. (Canterbury if you're wondering)

Quite pleased with this

Bike, Level 13...

Compare and contrast.

Location update

This morning sees me on the outskirts of Strood, near Chatham. I seem to be hurtling towards the channel only slightly concerned as to the crossing ahead of me.

I think a little more time on the rowing machine and in the pool are in order. (gulps as he looks onwards towards the jump from France to Italy).

And a picture of a wild goat.

location update

So having covered 245km to date, I thought I would refresh my route to Rome. Looking at it, I had initially selected to travel largely by motorway, which as a swimmer/cyclist/runner/rower is probably not that practical... So I asked google to let me have a route which kept off them. The amended route looks a bit more wiggly, but much more interesting.

According to the notes, I should be around near Forest Hill in South London by now.

And google street view tells me it's a slightly cloudy day there today.