SOTA trip to the West Pyrenees

In August 2017, I spent a few days doing some of the Summits on the Air summits in the Pyrenees. Monday 31st July Trône du Roi (F/PO-187): Attempt 1 After flying into Toulouse and getting a hire car (which took an unexpectedly long time), I drove to the Trône du Roi (King’s Throne) to operate,…

Rescuing a hacked computer

It’s the call every IT-savvy child of elderly parents dreads: ‘I got a message on the screen saying my computer had a problem and I had to call Microsoft. I rang them and they took control of the computer, then said it would cost several hundred pounds to put right…’. Oh, oh. So, having told…

My first six months in a new role

As those of you who know may will recall, I was made redundant from my job as a Scrum Master at Redgate back at the end of May 2016. Luckily, I wasn’t out of work for too long and since July I’ve been working at a major multinational ecommerce player in the travel and tourism…

Pain with decimals in Alexa Development

I don’t typically write a blog post like this, but I’ve had an infuriating day messing around writing an Alexa skill, and wanted to explain the issues I’ve faced for anyone else trying to do something similar. First though, an important note: because of the problem I haven’t submitted the skill to Amazon, so only…

Postscript: Reflections on 40 days in Chile

So my trip’s over; what did I learn? Well before I get to that, a little about my trip home: Coming home The journey back from Santiago was tiring, of course, but quite pleasant. We flew in EC-LEU, a much more modern A346 than the one we went out on. It had in-seat touchscreen entertainment,…

13th & 15th December: Santiago

Getting here I flew from Punta Arenas to Santiago in CC-BEH, another of LAN’s Airbus A321s, but this one fitted with rather more seats than the flights to/from Iquique and Temuco, leading to much reduced leg room for the 3 hour flight. It looked quite a new aircraft, and checking since the flight, I discovered…

14th December: Valparaíso

I think I first heard of Valparaiso, bizarrely, in a CD of French sea-shanties I was once given. I never thought I’d get to go there: Puis nous irons à Valparaiso, «Haul away», hé houlà-t’chalez Où d’autres laisseront leurs os, «Haul» matelot, hé ho hisse et ho !  Getting there Valparaíso is easy to reach…

11th December: Tierra del Fuego

I had been planning to just pay a simple visit to Tierra del Fuego to play radio from there. However, the ferry schedules (which were only published while I was in Chile) turned out to be such that I’d only have had a couple of hours on the island. Given how far from anywhere it…

9th/10th December: Punta Arenas

Before I start this post, a bit of counter-intuitive trivia: Today, the 10th December, sunrise in Punta Arenas (where we have long summer days) was at 08:12 UTC. In Plymouth, UK (where the days are shorter), it was at 08:05 UTC. That is, on the Pacific coast of southern Chile, sunrise today was at almost…