Shady Goings On

This is a review of the peak district rock climbing guide book by Rockfax, Peak Gritstone: East.
This book was quite high on my list this Christmas, and I was lucky enough to get it too! The book is quite a thick one, the reason being it covers quite a vast area. From the title you can gather that there is a companion from Rockfax and you’d be right: Western Grit. So while this guide doesn’t cover the whole peak district it covers the half closest to me and to be honest covers more routes than I’ll ever climb in my life.
After a quick flick through you’ll see that the guide features some great information in the front, including an area map, climbing gear required, access and safety. It also has information on indoor climbing walls, shops and centres for those day when the weather isn’t all that good. In the back of the book is a route, crag and wall index, and a more detailed listing of the crags with such information as the number of (graded) routes and local conditions (e.g. northern aspect or sheltered).
Turning to the main part of the book there is a colour drawing of the crag area showing roads, paths, climbing crags and bouldering areas. Pages for each crag or wall section are then detailed with a colour drawing or (usually) a photo with the routes clearly colour coded. Underneath this each route is numbered and named, describing the route, grade and any other note worthy points.
This climbing guide book is certainly one worth having if you climb in the area, and I think this book is particulary suited to the beginner as everthing is very well laid out and clear, especially the route marking.

Links:
Peak Gritstone: East (Rockfax)
Peak Gritstone: East (Amazon)

I’ve been away for a few days over Christmas and have been busy wrapping presents etc so no posts for a while, but things will be back to normal soon.
We’re nearly there already in fact, just the new year to contend with! Which reminds me…

Happy New Year to you all!

Me and Alison spent Christmas eve at home and went up to Leeds on Christmas day morning after unwrapping a few presents each. We go up to Leeds because that’s where we’re both from and most our family still live there.
The Christmas holidays were great, not only a break from work but also all the excitement of presents! I was very lucky this year as I was given loads of gifts. On the list is Kill Bill (DVD), Peak Gritstone East (rock climbing guide book) and a Mountain Equipment Firewalker sleeping bag among others, I’ll review the more interesting ones on this blog.
I hope you had a great Christmas holiday too and got everything you asked Santa for.

Have a great New Year!

Since my last interview the other week I’ve not really been looking for jobs, mainly because I don’t have any holiday left. That will change in the new year because I’ll have a fresh allocation, and so I’ll be off job hunting again.
Over the Christmas break I’ll be going over my options, perhaps I can improve my CV or will have more success with slightly different roles. I’m seriously considering what courses I might be able to take to show off some of my abilities, learn something new, or even change direction.
One of these courses is called A+ and is certified by CompTIA (for international recognition). This A+ curriculum introduces basic hardware components and teaches about SCSI devices and how to configure Bus Architecture. It delves into the concepts of memory modules, mainboards, and bus architecture and presents students with both theoretical and practical instruction on the fundamentals of major Operating Systems.The course is well within my abilities and I don’t think there’ll be much that’s completely new, however this puts on paper quite a lot of what I picked up from my previous place of work. There are further courses available from CompTIA such as Network+, Security+ and Server+ (you can guess what they cover!), these all look like sensible follow-ups to A+ and if I go down this road I’d most likely do Network+.
The courses cost about £300 to £500 each and because I can do them as distance learning then I can get them done in a few months each, three to six months are the norm.
The main factors deciding whether I follow this road are how successful I am in the new year at getting interviews (and the feedback I get!), time (regular readers know how busy I am), and of course the financial side.
Assuming I do manage to secure myself something better in the new year then I might take them up on one of thier other offerings such as eBiz (internet commerce), or a similar course from the Open University.

Climbing as usual last night, did quite a bit of roped climbing this week, taking turns with Marcus belaying and climbing. I managed a few 5a routes that I didn’t think I’d get up, but with a few encouraging words and a bit of grit I somehow crawled my way to the top.
I’m sure you don’t want to hear about this but my climbing shoes have been getting worse lately, the aroma that is! It was recommended to me to try them with socks, something I wasn’t really very keen on as I thought that I’d have less control if my feet started skidding tround inside. My climbing shoes were quite a squeeze to get into and bit quite badly at first, but after a bit of adjustment they were not so bad. I have to say that the pain was worth it as they didn’t stink quite as bad as usual! I’m told that they will smell less and less as time passes, and with the help of some antibacterial climbing shoe spray.
For the climbers among you… Have you tried washing your climbing shoes? I’m tempted to try, but hear reports of shrunken shoes and lost grip.

I’ve been a bit slack this week with posting updates, partly because I’ve not done a lot, and partly because I’ve been very busy, make sense of that if you can! Anyway, here’s a summary.
On Monday I went rock climbing as usual at the indoor climbing wall at Nottingham. I was quite pleased with some of the climbs I managed to do, despite really aching the next day!
We put the Christmas tree up on Tuesday and decorated the tree with balls, figurines, tinsel and lights. The lights became a bit of a joke actually because we bought slightly more than we needed, and in fact we and to take them up round the ceiling to finish them off!
On Thursday and Friday nights we went out for various Christmas parties and we ate quite well on both those days! Believe me when I say we were both stuffed by the time we’d finished the last bite. All the occasions were very social and it was great to meet up with friends I’ve not seen for a while, and to meet some new faces. Despite what I say above, there was definitely more talking going on than eating!
Saturday was fun in many ways, I managed to do all my Christmas shopping (apart from one or two things). That is quite an achievement as I normally do it all at the last minute, having said that I did do quite a bit on Amazon like more and more people seem to be doing these days.
Sunday was a chill out day, we went out for a walk and talked about a great many things, and came home just before dark for a pork sunday roast. MMMmmmm!

I don’t normally post stuff like this, but I since this wallpaper is so good I had to let you in on it!

I’m sure you’ll agree this is a great scene to have on your computer.
Click here to view the image, and support the artist.

Maybe if you like this one I will share some more great wallpapers (only the best ones though).