Another great bash in the Brits with the SCUK. Almost got disapointed when I arrived as it was spring conditions and rather warm but it dumped in the next two days giving us almost 0 visibility again, on the plus site kept the skiers off all the red runs which where untracked so we had another couple of days of amazing fresh tracking and off pisting. Thanks to Dunx for finding that hill side off the La Siala lift!
This time I got the first flight in with ryanair and last flight out and they actually had no incidents. I also learned that ski luggage is not weighed and I did not need to book hold luggage as everything was in the board bag and it did not count as hold luggage.
Also the ski pass was valid from 3pm on the day of arrival, just about enough time to get ready and changed, perfect! I also had to buy an extra days ski pass for the last day but they only charged for half a day.
The Brits where great with great events in the evening, specially the rock night with the bands and the electronic night, likes specially Gentleman's Pistons and Kovak, which where a lot better this year!
Mind you did not manage to watch the competitions much, just sat down here and there to watch it as we where enjoying the riding more this year and the slopes on the flims side where almost empty!
So some pictures here.

I finally succumbed to Flickr.
I got to the point I realized I needed more exposure with my photography.
I uploaded my panoramas for now.

I just got a t.rice and been riding it all week on the bash.
Yes it is amazing, its is stiff so no shatter at high speeds, and its impossible to catch an edge on it because of the banana/magnetraction, when it catches an edge it corrects itself points straight again.
The magnetraction also helps quite well on hard pack and steep slopes, gets quite good grip.
Mine is the 157 blunt so i did not notice much difference riding on powder, also the banana camber is less accentuated on the t.rice than the banana.
Only thing I did not like about it is that the top sheet is plastic (bean or whatever they call it) so its very very easy to chip it. On my last board the top sheet was fiber glass so I did not have as many chips even if I did put it through a lot more.
Bear in mind that you have to change your riding style as you cannot put weight in the front and you cannot steer with the front foot. I noticed that it is better to have the weight in middle/back. It is a non issue if u carve properly as u put weight in the middle and lean on the appropriate direction.

Great boarding trip with great conditions and great resort!
This time got the Eurostar direct train from St. Pancras making travel from Cambridge really smooth. Just got the local bus from my house to the station, then a direct train to Kings Cross, all I had to do was cross the road to St. Pancras. Got there some 2h before just in case, considering that they advise you to check in 1h before departure. After security check and passport control you can board straight in the train. The waiting lounge only had an over priced coffe shop and an over priced shop, so its better to have dinner outside in St. Pancras as the main station hall is full of shops and restaurants. Managed to meed Martin and later Dunx at the station and the Jordies at the train. The bar in the train was a bit pricey but not anywhere as bad as I would find later on. Got to Bough station early in the morning and the driver from Dragon Lodge was waiting for us. Was snowing quite heavily and getting deap :-) The police was stopping all vehicles with snowchains at a checkpoint half way on the road. After an hour and half's drive we got to the resort at 8am, early enough to have breakfast in the loop bar, get changed in the Loop Bar and get our ski passes so we where up in the slopes by 10am! We met Nick, Rob, Paul etc. who where already at the resort for a few days and mentioned that the lifts where closed the day before because of the snow so it meant that we where riding on fresh untracked powder! The snow also kept coming down on and off for the next 3 days and then we had quite a few blue skay riding days :-) Considering that the temperature was between -9˚C and -3˚C the snow did not deteriorate much.
The resort was a rather expensive resort and with the weak exchange rate made it even more expensive. The usual €5 pint and €6 for a pie or chicken noodles for lunch on a stall beside the loop bar. This time we only ate out a couple of times and I had only a couple pints a night and still spent €250!
The return trip was also quite smooth, we had a great riding day and managed to get the transfer back without any further incidents.

Some pictures here.

Pics from the Open House event. Mostly from Foreign Office & India Office which had been redcorated back in 1997 and the last 3 pictures from the Royal Institute. We also saw the impressive Portcullis House and later the Freemasons' Hall but pictures where not allowed in those buildings.
The pictures are here.

Sat in Leicester Sq. Park to drink a juice and noticed a commotion outside the park. It was a prémiere on the side, by the Empire cinema. On the cinema's balcony managed to see Robert De Niro and Al Pacino. Good thing I had my camera with me and got a few shots :-)
The pictures are here.

Weekend with the SCUK in the summer bash. great bash, good weather when we got there on friday. Thanks for Gav for the lift :-) Great party, barbe, dj, fire pics, drinking till light et. Soggy on saturday thought. Thanks for the gas barbecue to save us for breakfast. Followed by rained over skating session which was then deferred to pub. The boarding session was good, 3 hours on Tamworth, with the SCUK discount is a no brainer. Found the piste a bit icy and kickers a bit too high to try but the quarter pipe was good enough for my age :-P
After finishing at 1:30 and back in the campsite I had to go to bed because I was no longer handling it. Woke up at 8 to find out everyone was up at 6 due to gales! Back home at 11! Did not get much that sunday as I had to recover :-)
Some pictures!

I bought that slightly before the iMac but using with it now.
It is a great "toy" for a good price, it works great with Google Earth and Google Sketch Up.
It does take a few hours to get used to and once you do it is second nature. It is the same idea as its predecessor, the SpaceBall, but it is a lot more ergonomic and therefore easier to operate.
On OSX it shows up as a joystick controller so you can use on games such as FlightGear.
I got the Space Navigator PE, which i cheaper than the Space Navigator SE. The only difference is the licensing, there is nothing to separate between them other than the sticker in the box. The SE has licence for commercial use and the PE desn't.

After so many years I upgraded my mac. My previous G4 machines where no longer coping with the processing needs of my RAW photography, specially as I needed to run Aperture.
The new iMacs where launched o monday and I checked when my local Apple store would open late, and they only did wednesday so I ran there after work on wednesday. They said they just packed the brand new iMacs that morning! Ah the advantages of having a local Apple store, no longer the month long wait for new models. The store only just opened few weeks earlier, on last week of march with the opening of the Cambridge Grand Arcade, latest and shiniest shopping mall extension here.
I got the second model up, the 2.6 GHz with the wireless keyboard and mouse option, which to my surprise came as a boxed standard model. I opted for the slightly better model because of increased 2Gb RAM and better graphics card required for Aperture. I also got Aperture, iWork, Final Cut Express and later Photoshop Elements 6 and Quake Wars.
I am impressed by the machine, the built in 20" cinema display in glass is the best monitor i have ever seen, shows every flaw in the photos without needing to zoom. Only problem is that watching TV via eyeTV is dreadful because you can see every macroblock! The speed is amazing, does any apps for breakfast! Does quake wars with all the settings up with no hitch! The fast HD is also great factor, real change compared to to my PowerBook 12" G4.
Aperture itself is amazing, several editing modes, I particularly like editing photos in browse mode, the white balance is amazing and batch editing is great and what I missed in iPhoto. On the iMac it also runs like a dream, can edit everything in realtime, no longer 10 minutes per photo like in iPhoto.
One note to Quake wars, I got found of it, its like a RTS where u play a single character like FPS and has all the modern games goodies like friends list, online ranking etc.