Holidays 2013

This year is shaping up to be a good year in terms of holidays.

Fortunately, due to a number of changes with my contract in work, it's looking like I'll be getting an annual entitlement of 28 days for the leave year 2013 (which starts on 1st April 2013 and runs until 31st March 2014). This is in addition to rolling forward 8 days from 2012 which leaves me with 36 days for the year!

Earlier this year, my girlfriend surprised me with a trip to Dortmund for my birthday, incorporating a trip to see the mighty Borussia Dortmund at the Signal Iduna Park. So that's Germany already visited this year. Ironically, my last two trips abroad have been to Germany and the next will also be a visit to the Fatherland when I go on this stag do in May.



The 'yellow wall' - Borussia Dortmund

 We're hoping to pick up a cheap flight for a week away in June and at the moment, funds permitting, Croatia is the front-runner. I'd love to fly to Dubrovnik and do a little bit of island-hopping, perhaps going to visit Hvar. Thsi would be another stamp to the passport too ;)

Dubrovnik, Croatia.

Then comes the big one, the summer holiday. At the moment I'm busy planning a three week trip to Central America which should take in three countries - Mexico, Belize and Guatemala.

We'll be flying in to Cancun, Mexico and some of the highlights of the trip will include Chichen Itza, one of the New 7 Wonders of the World (which will take my tally up to four out of the seven), Caracol and Caye Caulker in Belize, Tikal, Semuc Champey and Lake Atitlan in Guatemala and then flying home from Guatemala City.

It's an optimistic schedule and there will be plenty of miles to cover in three weeks. Hopefully we'll manage to see it all!

This trip, combined with Germany, Croatia and Turkey will see me visit six countries in 2013, five of which I've never visited before. It promises to be an exciting year.

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Cloud Music

I've been a subscriber to iTunes Match, Apple's online music hosting/streaming service (for want of a better moniker) for a year now and my subscription is up for renewal a week or so before Christmas.

For anyone who has never heard of iTunes Match, the service essentially offers you the ability to listen to all your music from any Apple device regardless of whether that music is synced to the device. The only caveat being that you must have Internet access (WiFi or cellular) to download or stream the file.

When you first subscribe to the service, iTunes will scan your library and match and songs that you own with a corresponding copy that they hold in the "cloud". The main advantage of Apple's service is that they hold - if memory serves correct - over 60 million songs in their database. The chances are that a lot of your albums will also exist in the Apple catalogue and these songs will instantly become available to you to stream.

For any more obscure tunes that iTunes can't match, the software will upload them to the Cloud so you have a copy available.

The whole process can be a bit time-consuming to begin with but once all of your tracks have been matched or uploaded, any incremental changes should only result in a quick scan and match/upload.

The key word in the last sentence is 'should'. I find that iTunes Match causes iTunes to hang when scanning my library for new songs. My library consists of around 13,000 songs and at any one time there might be a new album or two. iTunes seems to take ages to identify these and upload or match them.

There are a couple of new kids on the block since I first bought my subscription to iTunes match - Amazon's Cloud Player and Good Music.

As far as I can tell, the pros and cons of each are as follows:

iTunes Match

Pros:

- Integrated with iTunes so no need to download a media scanning app.

- Integrates with the Music app on my iPad.

Cons:

- Slow to scan my iTunes library. Does it every time I load iTunes.
- I will soon no longer have an iPhone so no access on my phone when out and about.
- No web browser based access.

Amazon Cloud Player

Pros:
- Android app for my phone.
- Web browser based access for when I'm out and about.
- 200,000 track storage (not that I'll ever get close to that, mind).

Cons:
- No iPad app (yet).
- Not as big a catalogue of tunes to match against (so more tracks will be uploaded which takes a lot of time).

Google Music

Pros:

- Free!
- Available across all my devices and via the browser.

Cons:

- No matching feature. All music must be uploaded.







With Amazon Cloud Player being priced at the same level as iTunes Match, I think I'll be going with the former and hope that they release an iPad app sooner rather than later.

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Nexus 4

Decided to upgrade from my iPhone 4S to a Nexus 4 today. Estimated ship time of 1-2 weeks - I can't wait to get my grubby mitts on it!

 

 

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Holiday Idea #2

Burma. And more specifically Bagan.

 

 

 

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Species extinction

Since my last blog post, I've been thinking and reading more and more about different types of endangered species. It depresses me to think about the massive expansion of the human population across the planet and the complete disregard for any other species.

I stumbled across this article today and started to read more about the big cats; jaguars, leopards, tigers and lions. Perhaps my recent holiday to Tanzania has sparked a bit of an interest.

It should come as no surprise that every single one of the cats listed above are endangered to some extent. What did surprise me was the numbers of surviving animals.

Take the jaguar, the third largest cat on the planet (after the tiger and lion) and previously indigenous to a good proportion of North America and all of Central and South America.

It is now estimated that there are between eight to fifteen thousand animals left in the wild.

I've seen the human population rise from six to seven billion people in my lifetime and I find it an absolute disgrace that so few of these animals now survive. It doesn't sit well with me.

I read an article a couple of years ago which described how people who had recently watched the film Avatar felt a kind of depression that the world they had seen on screen didn't actually exist. If you've seen the film, you know the scene I mean - the one where the lead character first becomes an Avatar and runs in to the forest whereupon he stumbles across an incredible array of flora and fauna. Sooner rather than later, we will all be watching documentaries on TV showing what an amazing array of beautiful animals once roamed the planet and we'll all feel that same sense of disappointment that they're no longer with us.

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Tigers of India

I'm just watching a program on the BBC about the tigers of Ranthambore National Park, India, a place I visited around eighteen months ago.

It's sad to see how so few tigers survive in the wild. I'd imagine if you were to conduct a poll, few would know that there are less than 3,500 surviving in the world.

Take a look at the image below, yellow shows the historic roaming range of tigers, the green shows the current day range.

If something drastic isn't done sooner rather than later these magnificent creatures will become extinct. What a shame it will be for future generations to know that these animals which once flourished were wiped out on our watch.

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Central America 2013

Planning a trip to Central America next year. Top of the list of destinations to visit are the Mayan ruins at Chichen Itza, Mexico and Tikal, Guatemala. Is would mean I've chalked off four of the New Seven Wonders of The World.

I love planning future trips!

Chichen Itza

Tikal

Posted with Blogsy

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The Last Rites

Last weekend (on the way to the pub of all places!) my family and I found ourselves discussing the topic of the Last Rites and the benefits they may or may not bring to the recipient and the family of the recipient.

The discussion came about as my girlfriend's Grandma has recently fallen ill and is currently in hospital recovering. A few days ago, things weren't looking too good and my girlfriend's Mum arranged for the hospital chaplain to administer the Last Rites - just in case. She is an elderly Polish lady and is a devout Catholic.

              "The Last Rites - really a force for good?"


This story kind of closely mirrors a recent experience my family went through when, around a year ago, my Nan took a fall in her house and soon thereafter died from the ensuing complications. When she was in hospital and it became apparent that she may struggle to recover, my Mum and her sisters arranged for the Priest to visit and administer the Last Rites.

At this point, it might be useful to offer a little background about my Nan. Whilst not a devout Catholic herself, she raised her children to be so, perhaps recognising the role the the Church might play in raising "good" children. They (including my Mum) were encouraged to attend Sunday School and Church and were sent to a Catholic High School were prayers were said before and after lessons. The headmistress was a Nun. My Nan spoke fondly of the Church and knew the local Parish Priest personally, as the whole of our family do.

When she neared the end, she unfortunately began to suffer from incoherence and an inability to comprehend what was going on around her.

According to my Mum's own account of the situation, when the Priest began to administer the Last Rites, my Nan, far from being comforted by the process, became agitated and distressed at the situation.
To this day, my Mum is quite surprised at this as she thought that the process should have soothed and calmed my her but it actually had the opposite effect.

Before I offer my thoughts on the matter, I think it best at this point that I declare here that I'm an atheist. Further to this, I don't see the discussion of religion in a separate light to any other subject on which I have an opinion. I also believe that, as a non-believer, I am in no less of a position to comment on a religious matter than a believer. Whilst I don't believe in God, I am more than capable of understanding the impact that "He" has upon believers.

My own belief is that when we are close to death, the innate reaction within each one of us is to fight for survival. More than any other urge, emotion or feeling, we are all hard-wired to prolong our own lives. Lets call this the 'self-preservation instinct'. This is why stories of 'ultimate sacrifices' are so lauded in society - they are rare and completely contrary to how we are predisposed to behave in the light of danger.

In my opinion, the appearance of a Priest and the commencement of the Last Rites serves only to undermine the hope that the ill have in their eventual recovery (this is assuming that the person is relatively lucid/not comatose) and is contrary to a person's subconscious self-preservation instinct. Who wants someone to stand over you, acknowledging that death is close when every ounce of strength you have is trying to stave it off?

The logical counter-argument to this belief is that religion, like the self-preservation instinct, can become so ingrained in the psyche that, on one's deathbed, one is equally content to survive as to die.

I disagree with this as I believe that comparing the self-preservation instinct and the role of religion is like comparing the merits of nature versus nurture. One is genetically hard-wired in to every human and indeed every organism on the planet, the other comes through years of dogma and is 'learned'.

No doubt some good comes from the act of the Last Rites. Religious family members may be comforted in knowing that their loved one will be with God in Heaven. It would be very difficult for me to argue that this wouldn't offer some solace in their time of need.

My point is that, as the person receiving the prayers, I think that for many, this would be a stressful process.

My Dad argued that the whole process is generally considered to be a calming and tranquil act, designed to soothe and help but I question whether this is the case. Surely in order to define whether the act helped calm the recipient of the prayers, we'd have to ask them afterwards just how it made them feel?

There are, of course, a couple problems in measuring this. Firstly, many of the recipients will go on to die after receiving the prayers and so can't be asked. Secondly, I would hazard a guess that it would perhaps not be fair to ask someone on their deathbed whether the Last Rites helped them to come to terms with their impending death if they are lucid enough to be asked. Finally, even if someone recovers and is then asked how receiving the Last Rites made them feel, they are likely to respond in a biased manner since they have recovered and may attribute this to God.

Clearly it's actually quite difficult to quantify the benefit of giving/receiving the Last Rites and it's left to us to take the Church's word that it does. I'm in the habit of making decisions and forming opinions based on facts rather than superstition or custom so when my time comes, can someone please make sure that the guy in the robe isn't allowed in? Thanks.

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Macc. Forrest

After a relatively lazy lie-in yesterday, Gabi and I took a walk around town and then, in the the early evening, decided to go for an early evening walk through the countryside around Macclesfield.

                         Me - "walking."

It was beautiful up in the forest and the weather was perfect - clear blue skies and still some warmth left in the sun.

We left the car at the side of a country road and found a little path that lead in to the heart of the forest. Section of it were being cleared (for reasons unknown) and the Forestry Commission had laid a nice new path which we followed for half an hour or so. We were being bothered by horse-flies so decided to stick to the country roads to head back towards the car.

We stumbled across a field with loads of sheep in. Curiously, the sheep hadn't been sheered - I thought the summer is when sheep get sheered? Anyway, it was a nice place to sit and enjoy the end of the day.

     "Is that furry thing hanging underneath what I think it is?"

When we finally decided to head back to the car, we found ourselves upon an old chapel with an attached graveyard. Being the morbid folks we are, we decided to search for the oldest and the newest gravestones.

Evidently this chapel was pretty old as the first Dean was buried there in 1729. To put that in perspective, that's older than the United States. The newest gravestone was interred in 2011 - spookily on my birthday.

We headed back to the car and found that we'd parked it in the best of places - by a home of swarming horse-flies. These things do not mess about when they bite so we quickly got in to the car and headed home.

A curry was on the cards to finish the evening (tikka massala - adventurous) along with a film (Layer Cake - brilliant). All in all, it was a great day.

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Remember me?!

Nearly a year since my last post I'm going to try and start blogging again.

The problem I have is that the concept of blogging appeals to me (indeed I'll be sitting watching TV, reading a book or browsing the Internet and will think - I'd like to write something about that!) but then inevitably I lack the motivation or inclination to sit down and write about it.

Hopefully this will change from now on.

I've updated my blog with a nice new template (Horcrux, if you're interested) and added some links to my social stuff on the right-hand side. I'm on Facebook, Twitter and Google+ if you want to get in touch and have plenty of photos on my Flickr acount - feel free to have a browse.

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