Trekking for Patagonians
Oct. 10th, 2010 08:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
peterbirksI went to bed at 10pm last night and didn't eventually get up for the final time until 9am, which just goes to show how exhausting everyday life is for me in London. Just getting up, going to work, and all the other shit that ordinary living entails, tires me out. It takes a day of my holiday just to get my head a bit straight.
I couldn't resist a bit of online poker this morning, but it appears that Party Poker and Full Tilt Poker are now out of bounds to anyone in France, even if they have a UK-based account. Full Tilt didn't bother to reply to my email, while Party said that, basically, "you are fucked". You can't play on Party Poker International because you are in France, and you can't play on Party Poker France because you aren't a French resident.
Pokerstars fired up okay, but one has to assume that the future is one of online poker retreating behind state boundaries, with taxes on turnover being introduced that will make playing the cash game pointless.
If I were serious about living in France for any length of time (which perhaps I am), then I would look at something like Ghost-Surf to throw a fake IP address at the poker sites. But the problem here is that the use of a proxy server usually means occasional time lags, which is a serious issue in online poker.
However, as I say, before to long it probably won't make any difference, because there will be a tax on turnover no matter what country you play in.
It's ironic that online poker and its boom will actually lead to less internationalism in the game rather than more. As the Youngster pointed out, in the old days people would travel a long way for a decent tournament. These days they don't need to bother, because there are enough people in all of the major cities to bring a good tournament to you. How many players in London bother going to Walsall any more? But a decade or so ago, some nights that would be the only tourney in town (or, more accurately, not in town). And now the very internationalism of online poker is under threat. Frenchmen can only play other Frenchmen. Italy is heading the same way.
It's all rather sad.
++++++++
I've managed to lose an hour's typing simply by speed typing CTRL+A rather than Shift+A, and then quickly typing an 'S'. Thus instead of typing the word "As" (as had been planned), I selected all of my writing for the previous hour, and replaced it with the single letter 'S'. Panicked typing of CTRL+'Z' was to no avail. It was gone. Bloody Netbooks. No smartarse comments on what could have been done to avoid disaster (e.g. "I don't use a Netbook, so it's never happened to me" would be one particularly unhelpful aside).
+++++++
Today, after faffing around, I got my act together by about 2pm and walked up to the toytown station (the one with a metre-gauge train to Digne Les Bains and another to Var) north of the "real" station.
To do so I had to pass underneath the "real" railway lines. This passage was illuminated by some odd blue fluorescent lights, perhaps part of the Nice tramway "installation art" (see later picture for an explanation of this).
I'm not sure what settings I used to get the above picture, but I know that it was 0.7sec.
Here's a more naturalistic light setting:
There wasn't much of interest in terms of pictures to take at either train station. I did find myself walking through an area called, I think, Tranche. This has a high percentage of North African and Central African inhabitants, and is really quite an attractive place, despite being uite literally on the wrong side of both tracks. One rule seems universal. The youth of the area will gather round the all-hours barber shops in any city, be it London, New York or Nice.
I caught the tram up to one of the termini -- Las Planas. It's quite a long way up, as can be seen from this picture:
However, the architecture is rather monotonous -- high-rises and not much else. And, despite, or perhaps because of, the open spaces, it was not a very attractive part of town. The road you can see is the main bypass, used by the express coach to Monaco from the airport, and by all cab drivers taking arrivals to points east of Nice.
The explanation of the tram line (apart from it being a tram line). Are the blue fluorescent lights the work of Gunda Forster? Or are they just blue fluorescent lights? As for the Michel Redolfi "Sonals", well, that explains why it sounds as if the public announcement system has gone mad every 10 minutes or so. It's meant to be that way.
The tram arrives at Las Planas. The station is probably the most interesting part of the area.
The inside of a tram.
I got off the tram near the bus station and decided to go for the "short" walk just to the east of the port. At the beginning I noticed an intersting picture of the port from around 1910, taken from the nort-east corner.
A short way along the walk I noticed a sign pointing to a "sentier littoral". I'm sure that this wasn't there in March. The routes down to the rocks close to the sea were "closed", but the barriers were little more than a half-hearted apology, so I didn't let that stop me.
I'll put in a couple of pictures out of chronological order here. Below is a picture I took on the way back, when I was high up the hill on the main road back into Nice. The three ant-like figures are at the start of the route.
And below is a map of the route. As you can see, there's a clear indication that this is a "work in progress". However, I made it as far as the "dead end". I didn't manage the second half of the route, but I intend so to do before the end of the week.
Note also that the yellow dashed line "north" of the "you are here" sign consists of about 250 very steep steps!
The beginning of the walk seemed friendly enough, and it certainly all seemed rather "new".
The sea looked a bit lively, but nothing to worry about.
Cap Ferrat comes into view. The obligatiry cruise ship in the bay of Villefranche-Sur-Mer.
Sea begins to get a bit lively.
This bit was fun.
The path was left rather wet and slippery from the spray.
This far, and no further.
On the way back the wind was picking up a bit and it was beginning to look like rain.
And here were the steps to be climbed.
But you do get a nice view at the end as a reward.
_________
I couldn't resist a bit of online poker this morning, but it appears that Party Poker and Full Tilt Poker are now out of bounds to anyone in France, even if they have a UK-based account. Full Tilt didn't bother to reply to my email, while Party said that, basically, "you are fucked". You can't play on Party Poker International because you are in France, and you can't play on Party Poker France because you aren't a French resident.
Pokerstars fired up okay, but one has to assume that the future is one of online poker retreating behind state boundaries, with taxes on turnover being introduced that will make playing the cash game pointless.
If I were serious about living in France for any length of time (which perhaps I am), then I would look at something like Ghost-Surf to throw a fake IP address at the poker sites. But the problem here is that the use of a proxy server usually means occasional time lags, which is a serious issue in online poker.
However, as I say, before to long it probably won't make any difference, because there will be a tax on turnover no matter what country you play in.
It's ironic that online poker and its boom will actually lead to less internationalism in the game rather than more. As the Youngster pointed out, in the old days people would travel a long way for a decent tournament. These days they don't need to bother, because there are enough people in all of the major cities to bring a good tournament to you. How many players in London bother going to Walsall any more? But a decade or so ago, some nights that would be the only tourney in town (or, more accurately, not in town). And now the very internationalism of online poker is under threat. Frenchmen can only play other Frenchmen. Italy is heading the same way.
It's all rather sad.
++++++++
I've managed to lose an hour's typing simply by speed typing CTRL+A rather than Shift+A, and then quickly typing an 'S'. Thus instead of typing the word "As" (as had been planned), I selected all of my writing for the previous hour, and replaced it with the single letter 'S'. Panicked typing of CTRL+'Z' was to no avail. It was gone. Bloody Netbooks. No smartarse comments on what could have been done to avoid disaster (e.g. "I don't use a Netbook, so it's never happened to me" would be one particularly unhelpful aside).
+++++++
Today, after faffing around, I got my act together by about 2pm and walked up to the toytown station (the one with a metre-gauge train to Digne Les Bains and another to Var) north of the "real" station.
To do so I had to pass underneath the "real" railway lines. This passage was illuminated by some odd blue fluorescent lights, perhaps part of the Nice tramway "installation art" (see later picture for an explanation of this).
I'm not sure what settings I used to get the above picture, but I know that it was 0.7sec.
Here's a more naturalistic light setting:
There wasn't much of interest in terms of pictures to take at either train station. I did find myself walking through an area called, I think, Tranche. This has a high percentage of North African and Central African inhabitants, and is really quite an attractive place, despite being uite literally on the wrong side of both tracks. One rule seems universal. The youth of the area will gather round the all-hours barber shops in any city, be it London, New York or Nice.
I caught the tram up to one of the termini -- Las Planas. It's quite a long way up, as can be seen from this picture:
However, the architecture is rather monotonous -- high-rises and not much else. And, despite, or perhaps because of, the open spaces, it was not a very attractive part of town. The road you can see is the main bypass, used by the express coach to Monaco from the airport, and by all cab drivers taking arrivals to points east of Nice.
The explanation of the tram line (apart from it being a tram line). Are the blue fluorescent lights the work of Gunda Forster? Or are they just blue fluorescent lights? As for the Michel Redolfi "Sonals", well, that explains why it sounds as if the public announcement system has gone mad every 10 minutes or so. It's meant to be that way.
The tram arrives at Las Planas. The station is probably the most interesting part of the area.
The inside of a tram.
I got off the tram near the bus station and decided to go for the "short" walk just to the east of the port. At the beginning I noticed an intersting picture of the port from around 1910, taken from the nort-east corner.
A short way along the walk I noticed a sign pointing to a "sentier littoral". I'm sure that this wasn't there in March. The routes down to the rocks close to the sea were "closed", but the barriers were little more than a half-hearted apology, so I didn't let that stop me.
I'll put in a couple of pictures out of chronological order here. Below is a picture I took on the way back, when I was high up the hill on the main road back into Nice. The three ant-like figures are at the start of the route.
And below is a map of the route. As you can see, there's a clear indication that this is a "work in progress". However, I made it as far as the "dead end". I didn't manage the second half of the route, but I intend so to do before the end of the week.
Note also that the yellow dashed line "north" of the "you are here" sign consists of about 250 very steep steps!
The beginning of the walk seemed friendly enough, and it certainly all seemed rather "new".
The sea looked a bit lively, but nothing to worry about.
Cap Ferrat comes into view. The obligatiry cruise ship in the bay of Villefranche-Sur-Mer.
Sea begins to get a bit lively.
This bit was fun.
The path was left rather wet and slippery from the spray.
This far, and no further.
On the way back the wind was picking up a bit and it was beginning to look like rain.
And here were the steps to be climbed.
But you do get a nice view at the end as a reward.
_________
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
The English Language, dont you love it ?
Date: 2010-10-10 10:02 pm (UTC)Entertaining, Pete. Hope the weather is good for the week. It looks ok here. Pissing down in Toulouse for the rugby today but that's a fair distance from you. I noted your pun at the end of your piece after the climb of 250 steps, but you missed the capital letter -
"But you do get a nice view at the end as a reward".
Reminds me of the Fast Show character whose catchphrase was "Which was nice" as he found hobgoblins in the garden, an original bible in the attic and discovered a cure for cancer. The crackerjack was when he bumped into Michael Caine who invited him down to his chateau in southern France. They flew to the nearest airport "which was Nice" inevitably. Simple pleasures....Enjoy your stay.
Re: The English Language, dont you love it ?
Date: 2010-10-11 05:56 am (UTC)Today, obv, the rain is falling, albeit lightly. Good excuse to chill out and read my book!
The trouble with Nice is avoiding puns. I'm so inured to it that I thought my unintentional pun was to do with view/Vue. Now, if I had got to the top of the walk and had come across a cinema complex, and had then written "but there was a Nice Vue at the end". Well, that would have been a cool pun! Unfortunately there wasn't -- only some rather nice houses tucked away that doubtless cost an arm and a leg whenever they come up for sale (which they don't).
Thanks for the kind wishes!
no subject
Date: 2010-10-11 10:44 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-10-11 10:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-10-11 01:15 pm (UTC)This AWB mode is MUCH better for night pictures, because it reduces the yellow/red balance considerably.
no subject
Date: 2010-10-11 04:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-10-11 05:26 pm (UTC)But now I can use my Dell Streak for email and stuff while travelling, so what I really need is something as good as a desktop, but transportable. The best way to do this would be to have a lightweight 23in screen, a lightweight full-size keyboard, a mouse, a motherboard and other bits in a small box with various USBs for screen, mouse, keyboard, power, etc, and, well, voila. You put the screen, keyboard and mouse in your suitcase, and the important stuff in your pocket, all to be glued back together when you arrive at your holiday destination. If your suitcase gets stolen, you buy the replacement interface bits and then claim on your insurance.
PJ
no subject
Date: 2010-10-11 05:54 pm (UTC)The two difficult bits are the screen -- I'm afraid you'll have to compromise on that until they come out with a graphene roll-up, circa 2020 -- and the processor unit. That's not really a problem, because you can fit it into a pocket-sized thing like a mobile phone; however, the chances of replacing it, unit for unit, in anywhere from Patagonia to Monte Carlo are absolutely zilch.
no subject
Date: 2010-10-11 06:08 pm (UTC)PJ