I’ve just noticed the parcel that the postman left this morning, and it looks like I can pass the winter evenings away happily. To aid the planning of the next two ‘proper’ trips (Erewash canal to Langley Mill & the Leicester Ring) I ordered the following from the IWA:

Pearson’s companions to The South Midlands & Warwickshire Ring, the Oxford & Grand Union Canal and the Four Counties Ring; the First Mate Guide to the Leicester Ring canals,’Gateway to the Erewash Canal (A Guide & History)’, a Collins Inland Waterways map of Great Britain and ‘The Nottingham Canal – Past & Present’.

That should keep me going, eh?

Here’s one of the little projects I’ve had on my mind. I reckon it would be a good thing to record a timelapse movie of a journey by re-purposing the old iMac I’ve got sitting in the kitchen looking forlorn & somehow mounting an iSight camera looking forward. I’ve already got Evocam software that can do it (which is so good I actually paid for it, btw) so the hardest bit should be doing the sums to get the timing right, or trusting trial & error.

I’ll start out by taking one frame every second, like this, which will give me (I think) about eight hours in 20 minutes.

I will, of course, let you know how I get on.

I liked the idea of jailbreaking the iPhone, but was a bit scared of the process. The last thing I wanted was to turn it into a brick but I do have an objection of being told what I can & can’t install, Netshare being an obvious example. Ultimately curiosity got the better of me and I went for it, like this. It was a bit scary when iTunes kept firing up and threatening to cause problems but I now have a jaibroken iPhone with many more opportunities for play, although the Superman theme had to go. I’ve discovered PDANet which promises to save me the £15 a month mobile broadband charge in the fullness of time, and also a new word – pwn.

L8r, dude.

If we can’t do as many journeys as we’d like then I think the next best thing will be to plan future ones. After the success of the FGLMT 2008 I think the next major expedition wil be the Leicester Ring for two weeks next summer. Before that there’s a smaller possibility closer to home; we live in Heanor and moor in Nottingham, so an obvious choice will be the length of the Erewash Canal, passing places like the Gallows Inn that we drive past every day while commuting to work.

At a relaxed pace it should take four days, and we can either do it in one chunk or park a car at Langley Mill on a Friday and drive the other one to Nottingham to do the outward leg over the weekend. We then moor the boat up and take the first car (‘here’s one I prepared earlier’) to pick up the one in Nottingham so that we can go to work during the week, and repeat in reverse the following weekend. Hardly ideal but potentially a lot of fun.

I’ll give it some thought & report back; there are a couple of mini-projects I’d like to build into this. Hmmm …

Obviously the two minutes spent reading a blog post is too long in these frantic times (not that anyone besides me reads these, though), so apparently the latest Big Thing is Twitter. This ‘microblogger’ limits posts to 140 characters and is ‘followed’ by ‘friends’ in all but real time; going to the shops? Tweet that & the world can be with you in spirit, or at least those members of the world following. I can see absolutely no point to this, but ever the sucker for installing & configuring new apps I’ve signed up & added the Twitter Tools widget to the sidebar. I’ve also installed Twinkle on the iPhone. What can I say, it’s free? Maybe during a trip I’ll Tweet along and configure the sidebar to roll the tweets into a weekly digest to enjoy (alone) in my old age, who knows?

Rather worryingly Twinkle uses the iPhone GPS to determine where you are & find Twitter members (Tweeters?) nearby and I’m not alone – there are two within a mile of me right now.

They’re probably twelve …

Work commitments seem to be keeping us away from the boat, which is another downside of not living on the thing as we intended. While we’re in this limbo I’m trying to at least do one odd job each weekend, and today it was routing TV cable across the boat now that I’ve got it repositioned & mounted on the wall. If I can get a full day here it will be time to start the painting, but winter is drawing on & pretty soon we’ll need to be battening down the hatches.

But I do fancy some early morning sails in the cold & mist …

A nice couple of days. Nottingham Goose Fair last night & I’m missing the little teacups already – the girls are growing up, I don’t think I’ll be on baby rides again until the grandkids come along. We managed to drop £75 between us, which is probably a record.

Stayed on the boat Friday night, and spent today doing a few little jobs that have been on the list for a while – hung the TV on the wall, fixed the toilet light, planned a route for the TV cabling.

Every little helps …