Time for another update on the OpenReach ‘Uber Complex Chief Engineer’ fail. I have now worked out why I am not getting emails from them: their email system is not compliant with email addressing standard, as set out by RFC 5332!

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A couple of weeks ago I stumbled on a reflection on the Caorach air crash site that I wrote the day after running the Assynt Traverse nine years ago.

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Yesterday a blog by Peter Saint-Andre took me to his much older (2015) post on self-patronage that touches on the subject of an ‘artist as an entrepreneur’. This struck a chord with me.

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I have a handful of ‘current’ OS maps of Scotland, but most of my paper maps come from the ’90s, and the electronic versions I am currently using are an edition from 2016. There is lot to be said for that, as I was reminded on our walk yesterday.

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Last week I mentioned our FTTP case was now handled by OpenReach’s Uber Complex Chief Engineer – I can now report back that it’s about as much bullshit as it sounds. On Tuesday I received the following text from OpenReach:

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This is a continuation of a comments thread on the linked Alex Roddie’s post; I decided it’s too long to dump on someone else’s blog (and also too important, to burry in a comment).

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The 80mm lens arrived several days earlier than expected (these days it’s far quicker to buy second had stuff from Japan than the EU; another unsang Brexit benefit), so I had a chance to get a roll through in the house to test it and the impressions are also very good.

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As far as bullshit titles go, OpenReach’s Uber Complex Chief Engineer has to be right up there with the best of them. Not making this up, this from my most excellent ISP, A&A:

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Why am I only getting this camera now? The first impressions are very good indeed.

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For a number of years now I have been on a quest for the perfect hiking camera. There have been one or two candidates over that time that started promising but ultimately didn’t entirely meet the expectations.

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The Cape Wrath Trail has been on my ‘One Day’ list for around a decade now. Originally thinking of a self-supported run, but that isn’t going to happen; my distance running days are long over. Also, as the years pass, I am increasingly interested in being in a place, even of a place, rather than simply passing through a place; speed has lost its appeal.

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I think some progress is being made around the modern CT airport scanners, as I have not run into any problems with getting my film hand inspected on my recent trip that included passing through EDI, STN and TIA (in contrast when I flew about a year ago, EDI was still repeating the ‘safe up to ISO800’ mantra).

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Perhaps I don’t know where to look, but I am struggling to find any contemporary writing from the outdoors that would stir me, produce some sort of a meaningful emotional reaction in me. What I come across these days are gear reviews, more great reviews, some route descriptions, and accounts of pseudo-heroic deeds (that is, the artificial challenges we create for ourselves to break out of the day-today boredom and greyness). There is, of course, a place for all of this in sensible doses, but, on the basic level, heading outdoors has not really been about that for me.

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Yesterday I emptied the chest freezer in the garage, to check whether there is any 35mm film at the bottom of it; I thought there might be and turns out I was right about that. Thing is, I find myself in a bit of a bind just now. I have a mountain trip coming up later this spring, and can’t decide on what camera to take!

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‘People are utterly stupid, just look at them,’ says the oldest, as the six of them lie in the lush grass, relishing the rare winter sunshine.

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A rather pretty sight, the velvet shank is one of the mushrooms that fruit in the winter and is most commonly found on dead elm trees (it can also be found in a supermarket, under the Japanese name ‘Enoki’, though the commercially grown specimen look nothing like the ‘real thing’ due to being grown in darkness and in bottles). The English name comes from the dense, velvet-like, hair covering the stem; it turns dark as the mushroom ages, in a lovely contrast to the orange cap.

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