Basic Orienteering Skills

• Folding the map
• Thumbing the map
• Orientating the map to north (with ground or compass)
• Reading features on the map
• Taking a compass bearing
• Following a compass bearing
• Pacing
• Judging Distance

Intermediate Orienteering Skills

• Route choice
• Aiming off
• Simplification
• Reading fine detail – map to ground (ie. ahead)
• Reading fine detail – ground to map (ie. present and ahead)
• Rough compass and relocate (deliberate)
• Attack point – choosing one
• Attack point – using one
• Traffic Lighting
• Visualisation of contours
• Visualisation of other features (ie. map to ground)
• Relocation (when contact has been lost)
• Disaster recovery in the circle

We are now offering web application development for the Iphone by working with the development team at Iformis. If you have an idea for a web application or are looking to port an existing web application to be Iphone compatible please get in touch.

Now that O2 will be offering free access to the Cloud Hotspots a lot of people will now be using their phone instead of their laptops. This has been a long time coming, but with the Iphone its reality.

Please get in touch for a demo of existing applications which are Iphone compatible.

I recently replaced my snowboard setup. I was very happy with my previous setup but it got nicked so I have had to put together something new.

Note: I am going to describe how I setup snowboarding bindings, this is opinionated and I will not cover all snowboarding styles and corresponding setups.

All-mountain Freestyle is how Nitro describe it and I quite like the term. Basically, it involves hitting all sorts all over the mountain. Its not just a freeride setup as your not just carving or powder riding and often want a bit of the fakie fun.

You qualify for this type of riding if you:

• Spend time in the park.
• Spend glorious hours riding in glistening, deep powder bowls.
• Look of anything which you can hit on the way down. Its a playground duuuude!
• Ride fast and straight.
• Turn sometimes; normally on steeps or to stop.

Elements of snowboard stance.

• Stance width
• Binding angles
• Placement (centered / back)
• Forward Lean
• Heel and Toe Drag

Stance Width

This is down to personal preference; but I recommend going as wide as you can. This gives great control in the air, looks sweet, is stable at speed and landings are easier. Dont take the piss like the pure freestyle boys and girls. A good guide is to start at a centered stance for the board (middle of each binding rail) and then increase as you ride more. A starting point of shoulder width then going a bit wider is a good plan. But do it slowly, dont start as a beginner with a massively wide super duck stance. Tone it down a bit if you are a beginner.

Binding Angles

Its all about the duck stance really, if you want to spend some time riding / landing fakie, or any time in the air. Slightly more in the direction of travel and a difference of about 30 degrees is good. I ride +21 -9 and might go up to +21, -11 this season but you have to make sure you knees can take it.

Placement

Set the bindings back if it snows? Dont bother unless you are spending a day of riding 30cm+ of fresh. If you are riding is shallower stuff or for not that long then centered is fine for most things. Often the centered stance of a board is designed such that it is set slightly back anyway. (Unless you have a twin)

Forward Lean

Dont go crazy with this one, but its good to ‘go mean and huv a bit o lean’ as it means that you:

• Have less downtime between edge switching and feel more connected to the board.
• Your legs are more bent, initially this is a bit tiring to get used to, especially on Peak to Creek at Whistler but after your legs get used to it, you wont go back. It feels natural, stable and powerful.

Heel and Toe Drag

This should be at a minimum and the drag should be equal on both sides. It is possible to sometimes be placed wrongly by wearing bindings that are too large or too small for your boots. Make sure that you are sized correctly for both your board and binding size.

In the worse case if you have a pair of binding that are not friends with you boots you can move the bindings forward and back by rotating the base places to make sure your boots are centered on the board.

Finally

Play about with your stance. Remember its your stance not what is hot and generally thought to be hip. Get your own setup dialled and your snowboarding will be much more enjoyable. Also remember what you stance is if you change boards etc!

Hope this helps anyone wondering, leave comments please.

This is more of an idea than something I have needed yet but I don’t see why it wouldn’t work.

• Open a twitter account if you haven’t already got one.
• Open another twitter account and call it something_notifier or something fun like that.
• Setup your mobile on the first account and set it up to follow the notifier account and receive SMS notifications when it updates.
• Test this.
• Now whenever the notifier twitter account it updated you will receive a text with the contents of the update.

For example, the next step could be to install a twitter API implementation on your servers then update twitter if something catastrophic happens. Remember to alter the privacy settings and set it so that only your followers can see your updates.

But I’m sure there are loads of uses for this; any ideas? Although SMS messaging from the internet is easy in the USA, its a lot more complicated in the UK and Europe.

Found a great article on life simplification.

10 Things you can do today to simply your life

What follows are some details of some sweet cycle routes I have found on the outskirts of Inverness in the last week. All the routes are primarily suited to road bikes and touring bikes although mountain bikes could no doubt handle it.

Route 1 – Around Cawdor

Route Info

Starts with a cruise around the roads from Culloden battlefield and off along a little detour along some minor roads through some nice forest.

Then across the Nairn valley. A nice descent down and a nice climb up the other side. Straight across the crossroads then round the circuit. These roads are all quiet and ex military apparently. Built after the Battle of Culloden to keep the local residents in order.

A chilled circuit which takes you back to the Nairn valley. Then across the Nairn valley and back to the Culloden Battlefield.

Route 2 – Culloden Battlefield to White Bridge (p2p)

Route Info

This is a point to point route which took me about 2hr 10min with a couple of stops. The route is undulating with not any big ascents or descents. It passes a few lochs and is very scenic. Mostly on single track roads.

Cant really say anything more about it other than its possible to extend easily and a great extension would be to go all the way to Fort Augustus.

There is a top hotel in White Bridge. You could stop there for a pint, or five.

Route 3 – Garbole Hill Climb

Culloden Battlefield – Farr – Garbole – Tomatin – Moy – Auchnahillin – Daviot – Culloden Battlefield

Route Info

This is another cycle in the 2.5 hour margin if done relatively hard with minor stops only. The highlight of the cycle is definitely the climb up the garbole road past Farr Loch and the phat descent down the other side. It is recommended that you have good beats in your ears for the descent so you go even faster.

Watch out for the road surface on the descent as the road is ageing.

There used to be a little chef in Tomatin but unfortunately this is now closed so you must take food with you! You could extend this route by cycling round Loch Duntelchaig before attempting the Garbole road.