Busy day today making final preparations for departure. Seems these days to take me longer to get ready to go away, I think I may just be more careful about not forgetting things than I used to be or maybe I just used to take less "stuff". No matter, in the end everything has come together and hopefully this trip will finally kickstart my training for the winter ahead.

Read earlier on that very heavy snow is predicted for this November so that will be something for us all to look forward to :-(

Got rid of some rubbish at the tip and bought a few things in Alnwick that I had been meaning to get for a little while. Arranged to send some flowers to an elderly relative of mine who is 90 years old on Thursday, imagine that, NINETY! I just hope I have some of the genes, lots of my family seem to live to ripe old ages and I just hope I get lucky.

Looking at the news these days I feel very very sad about the way things have gone and are going. The terrible developments in the Middle East I think are going to last for years, to spread and to get worse and worse. I can't see that there is a leader or leaders capable of pulling people together towards any kind of a peaceful solution.

The terrible atrocities that are being committed look set to continue and I think the nightmare scenario of people being snatched from previously "safe" places will I think become a reality before long. I think it is only a matter of time before tourists are snatched from areas such as Turkey and held as hostages for ransom and to try to change the thinking of western nations. I have no idea where it's all going to end but I can't see it ending well for anyone.

Did a bit of experimenting with the WarmCards earlier on today and was very impressed with them. I think they are going to be of real benefit and should enable me to take far better control of my video recordings. I reckon the biggest benefit is going to be largely removing the need for doing much colour correction in post processing and hopefully the results if my recordings will be a lot more consistent. We shall see!

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Facebook Updated: October 07, 2014 at 12:38PM BBC News - Alcohol abuse linked to number of licensed premises http://ift.tt/1uwu1Hu Scottish neighbourhoods with the most licensed premises have the highest rates of alcohol-related illness and deaths. No surprises there. Always going to be harder to resist something that is staring you in the face 24/7. This is very like the availability of fast food restaurants encouraging obesity, we human beings are fundamentally weak willed, we see it, we want it.