Donations from photo sales

I am pleased to say that I have tonight posted two further cheques to charities from the sale of photos.

Manx Wildlife Trust - £300
Victim Support Isle of Man £300

In addition to those previously given to Hospice Isle of Man and the Cystic Fibrosis Trust, the total is now £1,200 and hopefully I will have another one of the same amount soon.

Ironically, the zenfolio site where the photos are published (and to where the isleofman.in domain is directed, is down tonight!Oh good, it is back again now.

Thanks to everyone who has bought photos in the last 18 months.

Time to tidy up

I felt a bit like someone who had taken exams today. You want to enjoy your freedom after studying (designing and publishing websites) but you also have the urge not to waste the time.

I was really pleased to finally re-publish our holiday business website two days  ago - www.murrayandmarie.com

And even more relieved to complete www.parishwalk.com last night.

I'm going to tidy up the www.manxathletics.com site tonight whilst resisting the urge to redesign that too.   There are lots of other things with higher priorities.

One of which is following the first batch of entries tonight for the Manx Telecom Parish Walk.

http://parishwalk2013.blogspot.com/

www

I could easily have spent the week on the Syd Quirk Half Marathon as I have so many resources with photos, videos and stats but it is only one of the three websites where I am under pressure this week.

Late last night I finished the draft of our cottage site - the first major update for six years.

Today I have taken the day off to work on the Parish Walk website. I'm also meeting with the first of the featured walkers tomorrow evening.

But first I will do some more work on the manxathletics.com site and update the Syd Quirk Half Marathon.

Web; web; web.

Nil nil draw

I had the opportunity to produce my best coverage of the Haldane Fisher Syd Quirk Half Marathon yesterday as I have acquired an extra couple of second hand video cameras since I last featured it on the website two years ago (I ran in it last year).

But I was on the defensive from the start as the poor light at the start put paid to any decent photos of the walkers in the early stages. I rushed between Ronaldsway and my  office in Ballasalla on two occasions and by being careless with the video camera  I damaged it and lost the initial footage. So the only video I have used is from a second camera (I do have a little of the walkers but I'm not sure when I will get the chance to edit it).

So I guess , by the time I finished my main coverage, it was no better and no worse than previous versions. But then I had to make a big clearance off the line at home when I was much later getting back than planned. I had to spend the next few hours on the defensive before I got over the half way line with a nice walk in the afternoon.

Then I returned to watch a nil-nil draw! And missed an exciting Formula 1 race.

I wish I had left myself on the bench today. It was a horrible morning to go for a run and when I reached a big pool of water by the entrance to to the Water Authority, I thought about the wimps who skirted the little puddle near the start of the Parish Walk this year and went straight in. The quality of the play got worse after that and I definitely wish I had been substituted. Needless to say, Coldplay were on Radio 2 when I got in from my cold (and wet) play.

All at sea

I'm just getting my cameras ready for the "Syd Quirk" and I found some photos I took last Sunday afternoon which I had not copied to my computer. The Marine Drive is pretty stunning. In fact this one will find its way onto the new cottage website that I have been working on again tonight.

First photos (of the walkers) should be online at about 9 am tomorrow.

Listen to this

We had a three course dinner for £6.95 each at the Sefton last night. The price was like something from 30 years ago and so were the politics.

We went to listen to veteran politician Tony Benn at the Gaiety Theatre. It was £15 to get in but the Sefton were selling tickets for £21.95 including a lovely meal.

One of the things that has always interested me about the man is that, although most of his politics are pretty left wing, he listens to other people and in fact he respects many of the people with opposing views - even Margaret Thatcher. He describes politicians as signposts or weather vanes. In other words, they either lead or follow.

He admires anyone who leads the way. And at 87 he says he is still learning from his mistakes. Listen  and you will learn. Having said all of that, I haven't got much to offer today other than I've just checked the weather vane and I'm not looking forward to going outside.

When I realised recently that it was six years since I had produced a redraft of our cottage website I made up my mind that I should have a new one published by the time I do the Parish Walk one. That one is due in 8 days time so I am busy on both. I did a chunk last night when we got in so the manxathletics site today is largely a rehash of the stats for the Syd Quirk Half Marathon which I shall be covering in full on Sunday.

 

Fully employed

Yesterday's "night out" was an employment law seminar at which I sat next to one of the people featured on the home page, Ed Gumbley.

Ed was fresh from  his Island Games qualifying half marathon at Gosport on Sunday and is going to be fully employed during the next 12 months. He is running in the Brass Monkeys Half Marathon near York in the Spring, he hopes to (yet  again) be a member of the Island Games team in Bermuda in July and, if all goes well, he'll run a marathon in the autumn.

I've been lucky enough to be employed all my life, well since the age of 13 anyway. From the age of 14 I had two weekend jobs, one on a milk round from 5.45 until about 11 am and the other on a petrol forecourt between 12 and 6. On a few occasions I used to cut somebody's grass in the time between. I always managed to find work for my placements during my business studies degree and during the only summer that I had a normal student vacation. I even found work in the unlikely role as a builder's labourer in the summer of 1979 before I found a permanent role.

And it struck me last night that I had seen employment law from every angle too. At one stage it was one of the nearest things I had to being a specialist subject and had to deal with a few delicate matters whilst earning my salary. On another occasion I was on the other side when I was in dispute with a former employer. Not that uncommon but I wonder how many people have sacked themselves?

That was what I did a few months ago when as part of the winding down of one business I prepared the documentation to dismiss myself. It was one way of ensuring that you reach a satisfactory outcome when you reach agreement with yourself.

Its nice when you get the result that you want as I had a new appointment, working from the same building and with the same people lined up. Such a contrast to last night when there was a technical problem with my television and it kept showing the ball going in the net at the wrong end.

Rolled joints

I'm still only half way through Pete Townshend's autobiography and there have been plenty of references to joints.

I was up early this morning to respond to a few emails and update the website, using David Griffiths' report of the Gosport Half Marathon, before a 10km run around Douglas. My joints were not enjoying the role I asked them to perform as I completed the course more than 2 minutes slower than I could once upon a time walk the distance.

It probably didn't help that the wine was flowing at a dinner at the Regency Hotel last night in a week where the sight of me in a bar or a restaurant is taking over from the working on my sites.

I have got a late start for work, however, as I am picking someone up at 9 am.

Saddle Up

I joined St Ninians High School Head Teacher Andy Fox on his birthday bash in a few Douglas pubs last night and had a pint of Okells in the Saddle Inn. I think the last time I was in there was when I was still attending St Ninians as a pupil - about 38 years ago!

I made it to the start of the Isle of Man Bank Winter Hill League yesterday with just a few minutes to spare and was about to position a video camera on the hill I thought they were about to climb when I learnt that the course had been changed since last year. I thought the light would be good enough for photos in the Glen through which they ran at the start but my camera's limitations, or more likely my technical incompetence, meant that they were very blurred.

My best photo of the day was a casual one I took on the way back down the Glen of the little waterfall on the other side of the river. 

Earlier in the day I continued my current tour of mountain summits with Robbie and we went up Snaefell. The rain stayed away this week and it was pretty clear. That followed the longest run I had done for 11 weeks - 10km on the prom in a dreadfully slow time.

I am continuing to spend hours a day on websites, particularly the parishwalk.com and that will be my main focus today. 12 days until launch.  

Websites coming out of my ears

I was late leaving the office last night when I got into the design of a website for work and after my meeting with Manx Telecom Parish Walk Race Director, Raymond Cox, I felt inspired to work late on the design side of the parishwalk.com site.

Barely time this morning to update the manxathletics.com site as promised. In the absence of Paul Jackson at the moment, the SCS Relay forms have been published for the Boxing Day event.

10% extra

I really enjoyed taking part in the Microgaming Cross Country on Sunday. There were so much support around the six laps of the course that I had no excuse for dropping out when I went outside my comfort zone at half way - most of my  running has been restricted to 20 minutes and it took me more than 40 on Sunday.

The problem was  I have never been any good at running downhill, I wasn't fit enough to run fast uphill and the effort on the uphill left me too tired to run fast on the flat! But I still enjoyed the competition of all around me - more than the two falls!

I managed to clear a few more emails last night, particularly those that I had retained from Parish Walk queries. A few people contacted me in July when I had switched off from the Parish. So I got the mega data base republished quite early in the evening and moved onto the Manx Telecom Parish Walk website.

I have replicated last year's pre-race site as a test site to get me started and started editing the links etc. I've signed up one of the three bloggers, I'm trying to contact number two and have a third one in mind. The plan has been to feature a different walker ever one but the number of features has been 7, 7, 5 3 & 2 for each of the last five years.

I was 10% slower in the cross country than last year but hopefully I'll have at least 100% more features on the Parish Walk website this year. More work tonight as well as publicity for another event on the manxathletics.com site.

The dangerous bit

I've got the number of emails still awaiting a reply down below 100 tonight (93) for the first time for a while but I never seem to get much further than that. The oldest one goes back to April 2004 - I must have been  so flattered by the comments!

If I don't go to bed tonight maybe a could clear the whole lot once and for all! Just had second thoughts!

From: Andy Milroy [mailto:AndyMilroy@blueyonder.co.uk]
Sent: 27 April 2004 19:50
To: manxathletics.com
Subject: Re: Peel to Douglas running race

Hi Murray,

I have taken this list of winners from the ranking list on your website. I think it is correct.   You only show results back to 1965 - were there earlier races? I have seen articles which say the race goes back to the 19 century...

See attached list.

Many thanks for all your efforts - you are a great example to the rest of Britain, and indeed the world, in terms of commitment and organisation - and that is meant honestly!

Best,

Andy

Time to jump in

One of my pressure points every year is to launch the www.parishwalk.com website on 1 December. I need to refresh the whole site, update all the text from the previous year to ensure that the correct years are showing, incorporate new rules and include a new feature.And of course word on the statistics and index te photos and videos.

The last date that I updated the website was 7 July and I never got all of the stuff completed that I intended to despite putting in a vast number of hours. So apologies that I have not even shown the date of the 2013 event until now.

I have been working on a new website at work today and I thought it would be the ideal time to start the Manx Telecom Parish Walk site when I had a few creative ideas. On the other hand did I really want to be doing more of what I had been doing all day. I think the latter view prevailed although I do also feel better for clearing some of the emails tonight - even though responding to loads of emails starts the next wave!

Does anyone remember how wet it was the day before the Parish Walk? Here is one of the photos that I took at 6 am - just 2 hours before the walk started.

Backup going well

I mentioned recently that the online backup site I have been using for several years www.diino.com was to close and that after initially choosing a very bad site as a replacement I thought I had a good one.

During the past week I have uploaded 67 GB of files to www.varsitycloud.co and I have had great help from their support - even when I asked a stupid question. And they are cheap.

Recommended.

Classic case of where did the evening go to

I had something fairly big to start tonight but starting tackling a few emails that had been hanging around and that took me to a tidy up of the front page.

These bits and pieces have been archived.

Up & Running Winter League Walk
Ramsey Bakery Fireman's runs
1989 track & field championships
Haldane Fisher Syd Quirk Half Marathon statistics
Road Race calendar for 2013

Not such a bad analogy after all

Looking back on the scene I find it hilarious. 13 days ago, I was on the phone to Manx Metals to arrange for  our 14 year old Clio to be collected from where it had seized a couple of days earlier and expecting it to be crushed once they had removed whatever was worthwhile to them.

At the same time Peter Kaneen, from Union Mills Garage, was trying to contact me on my mobile phone to arrange to collect it and try and save its life again. He succeeded (thanks Peter) and it has been back on the road for the past week.

And so the analogy with my running career continues. I won't be taking the car on a motorway any more than I will be asking my legs to run a marathon. But I did manage to run for 32 minutes a week ago and there will be a few more than that today when I take part in my first race for three and half months - the Microgaming Cross Country at Glen Lough.

The car is great for days like this as it doesn't matter if I cover it in mud. I'll take my camera though and try and get a few shocks of the earlier races.

For those not on the Isle of Man reading this, the weather is good for this time of year and a turnout of 200 or so athletes is expected.

Peering into Ramsey

When Marie and I had some time together this afternoon the obvious place to go, after be raving about its merits this week, was Ramsey.

We duly visited the Northern Lights for lunch followed by a trip round the town and one or two of its shops. We even stopped  for a few minutes to watch the motor cycle sand racing on the beach.

Showers have never been far away today and Robbie and I got soaked, with some hail in our faces for good measure, when we ventured to the top of North Barrule this morning.

So not so much time in front of the computer today unless you count the half hour I've just spent slumped on the desk when I suspect there were a few snores disturbing the peace and quiet.

Ramsey regeneration

You'll see from the front page that I popped up to Ramsey last night to take photos of the Ramsey Firemans runs. I had not been to Ramsey for almost four months (since the week of the marathon!).

It took me about 20 years ever to see the Firemans runs. After one visit, a watched nearly all of them for a couple of years only to miss them all again last year. And I've still never competed in them.

My recollection of them though is that they are usually held in cold and windy weather so last night's mild and calm was a bit of shock. In fact the whole scene was a bit of a shock.

You sometimes read in the paper about shops closing in Ramsey or other negative things but having spent the previous Thursday in Stoke-on-Trent I realised just how good Ramsey is. There are an amazing number of pubs for such a small town and there are loads of takeaways, convenience stores and two supermarkets. The paving of the main street looks like it should be good too.

In the Potteries, Newcastle-under-Lyme was considered one of the posher towns and, although I was never a night club person, I used to stagger home the three miles from the student union bar in Stoke to my digs for most of my first two years there. I'd pass a couple of night clubs. The photos below show their current state.

Some contrast to going up to Ramsey last night. Or was it down to Ramsey? The debate continues but either way its a thriving town.

In good hands

Most athletes, perhaps throwers would be an exception, would say that their feet were their most important limbs. But at the Manx Harriers Annual General Meeting last night I realised just how important it is to have good hands in the sport.

Someone sitting behind me, who is eleven years older than me even, said that he had never seen the club in better management. I'd second that. And its not just that the way that the club is well structured its the fact that during the meeting the only references to the other clubs on the Isle of Man, or to the IOMAA, were positive ones, that gives me hope that track and field athletics will be much better structured in the years ahead.

We have so many young athletes on the Isle of Man, and a lot of old ones, but if we can keep people involved during the years when they should be at their peak then the best of Manx athletics is in the future and not the past.

Back to back of backups

For the past few years I have uploaded gigabyte after gigabyte of files to the site https://www.diino.com/ somewhere in Sweden. Its been a reasonably cheap form of online backup.

When my luck was against me the other other week it didn't even enter the top six of misofortunes when Diino sent an email to announce that their site was to close (although they do say that they are in talks with interested parties but remember fotopic?).

I foolishly rushed into a subscription with My Backup PC who appeared to be the highest rated backup site  alongside ZipCloud - well they would be (both same thing) when they appear to post loads of positive reviews themselves whilst slagging off the opposition. Avoid like the plague. They have all sorts of tricks like slowing down the uploads unless you pay a premium or just not being able to sign into your  account.

So I have started again with the (almost too good to be true) service at www.varsitycloud.com  I've uploaded 1.44GB so far which is like running the first 100 yards of a marathon. Its busy uploading Word files and that sort of thing at the moment - the photos are still in Greenwich Park waiting to cross the start line. I've not even considered online backups for video - we'll be into ultra marathons if I get that far.

As always, after a couple of days break from work and the website I have come back vowing not to become a slave to it again and tried to do a few things with Marie tonight including watching the excellent programme on Channel Four fronted by Guy Martin. But by heck I've still managed to recycle some of the Syd Quirk Half Marathon statistics.

Until last year, the Haldane Fisher Syd Quirk would have been held yesterday (if you know what I mean). We have to wait for the end of November now but at least we don't have to wait for the train!

Kevin Loundes waiting for the train to pass Ballasalla in 2008

Bitter pill to swallow

I'm back on the island reflecting on a few days away.

One of the biggest shocks was to find that the Norfolk Inn was one of many pubs in Stoke-on-Trent to have closed since my last visit. It was only fifty yards away from the house lived in from October 1978 until June 1979 (yes students used to study after Easter in those days!).

They've built, what looks like, a wonderful medical centre on the other side of the road and converted the pub into a pharmacy. So instead of putting a few pints of  Marstons down your neck you go to put a few pills down your neck.

I have to admit it looks a lot posher than when I used to visit. I spent my lunchtime in there on my 21st birthday and after buckets of fun in the afternoon, failed to make it to my other planned celebration in the evening.

It is the only pub I have every been thrown out of. On the day that Stoke City won promotion to the top division in 1979 I travelled back from the match at Notts County and was persuaded to go the Norfolk without eating. After behaving like a football fan the law abiding publican refused to serve me any more. I was up to Norfolk and good.

Feeling young

If I thought the age profile was older than mine on Friday evening, then yesterday was more extreme. The clue was that next to the tables there was a rail for walking sticks!

I went with Mike and Doreen to a concert near their home in Droitwich in aid of the hospice in Worcester featuring Black Country humour and song. It had to finish before 10 pm so that we could all take our medication!

I'm leaving Droitwich in an hour or so bound for Birmingham Airport and I'll be back in the Isle of Man before 7 pm.

Website coverage will return to normal soon with another busy month of events and the Parish Walk website  to launch before the end of it.

A rare day (and a rare night)

I didn't update a single website page or blog yesterday. I continued to walk around the Potteries before heading towards Birmingham and Droitwich where I am staying with my brother Mike and his wife Doreen.

I didn't leave Stoke without the other Potteries delicacy of Staffordshire oatcake. And I didn't leave Stoke without a surprise when Mike and his grandson Alex appeared at the railway station.

Mike and I went to a gig at Birmingham Town Hall last night. It was to celebrate the 65th birthday of Dave Pegg who has performed in three guises in the Isle of Man, as a duo with PJ Wright, as a member of the Dyland project and three times with the band he has been with for the past 41 years, Fairport Convention.

The photo was when Dylan Project frontman Steve Gibbins, who has probably played in the Isle Of Man with his old band thirty or more times, joined Fairport for the finale - Like a Rolling Stone.

With the Rolling Stones touring again, former Jethro Tull man Pegg (who specialises in being in more than one band at a time) reaching 65 and his old Birmingham mate Steve Gibbins rocking at 71, it was one night I felt quite young!

I planned this weekend after cancelling my trip to the Amsterdam Marathon which I had to time to adjust to pulling out of. I'm sorry for those people who have travellled to the New York Marathon only for the event to be cancelled.

Wrights pie for lunch

Only a few people would know that to have a Wrights pie for lunch means that I am spending the first of three nights away from home in Stoke-on-Trent.

I am staying at what was called the Grand Hotel in Hanley before it was renamed the Quality Hotel. I often complain when football commentators say "the team lacks quality" that they are are getting it wrong - every team has some quality or other, its just that some of them have better qualities than others.

Certainly if they called this hotel the High Quality Hotel (second photo) they would get a slating. But I have one of the "posh" rooms and its pretty good apart from the lack of water in the washbasin. But it least its ensuite.

The house that I suffered for my first four weeks in the Potteries as a student in 1975 didn't even have an inside toilet. My landlord was an alcoholic and the house (which I walked past today - top photo) was in a dreadful state. If I had known that it was going to take four weeks to get something better I would not have been able to stay. I mastered the art of making sandwiches from sliced bread and slices of processed cheese and ate at the Polytechnic the rest of the time. I also took showers there or visited the public baths in Newcastle on a Saturday morning (and I mean baths not just the swimming pool - local authorities used to provide public baths for people who didn't have them at home.

I walked about 12 miles this afternoon taking photos and clocked up about 14 today altogether - and some mild blisters.

Most of the pubs I remember seem to have closed but I have got to have a pint of Marstons or Banks before I move on tomorrow.

The second of my two homes in the Potteries was with a landlord and landlady in a council house in Newcastle-under-Lyme (above). It was luxury compared to my first home which looks a lot better now than it did then.