A quick search in my iTunes library reveals four tracks with ‘California’ in the title:

1. California – Gomez
2. California Girls – The Beach Boys
3. California Waiting – Kings of Leon
4. Going To California – Led Zeppelin

The last of these I listened to three years ago, back in the days when I had a CD player, on my way over to California for the first time to see Megan. This doesn’t have anything in particular to do with anything except that I’m at the airport waiting for my flight to go and see her, now my eighth trip to San Francisco.

This week has been really hectic, I’ve wanted to blog some things but I haven’t had the time or energy. So now that I’m relaxing a wee bit (it’s always good to be as relaxed as possible when flying) here is one of those things I wanted to talk about, coffee.

This week I saw an advert for ‘Kenco Pure’. Instant coffee sourced from single countries. The Telegraph have a big thing about this on their website, and call me suspicious by nature but Kenco Pure also happens to be on their banner ads right now – coincidence? So what’s my beef? Well it’s this. Kenco is owned by Kraft, which was recently spun off from Phillip Morris, who among other things produce most of the worlds cigarettes. As many will know smoking inhibits your taste buds, perhaps a reason many smokers like strong coffee and lots of salt.

Anyway, Kenco as a brand in Kraft Foods portfolio only serves one purpose – to make money. If they don’t they’ll be folded or sold. The reason this is important is their primary motives. You see, Kenco has slapped on some Rainforest Alliance Certified™ badge that looks a whole lot similar to Fair Trade. But it’s not. Don’t get me wrong, sustainable development is a good and important thing, but how much does it do for the people growing the coffee? Well in Kenco’s case it offers them 20% above markets rates, around 63¢¹ per pound. That’s nice, but it pales into insignificance against Fair Trades flat rate of $1.21 per pound.

But are Kenco even claiming they’re being ethical? I think the answer is yes. Go back to the almost certainly sponsored Telegraph article. Look at that heading ‘ethical sourcing’ What does it actually say about ethical sourcing? Nothing at all, it just talks about how coffee tastes.

Kenco want a piece of the “ethical consumer” market, at the minimum cost to themselves. Being certified by the Rainforest Alliance is a great thing, but it’s not enough. Those consumers who really are ethical should send out a strong message by not purchasing these products and encouraging friends to buy Fair Trade instead.

¹ Prices come from an article in the Guardian, November 2004.

18.04.07 Originally uploaded by Hubmedia.I think the last time I came to the Big Smoke on the train was for the future of web design, or web apps last year. I was initially skeptical that they had tried to squeeze in so many speakers giving some only 20 minutes. However the conference was definitely improved. Which is just as well as since I last came South West Trains have resorted to day light robbery to keep in the black. Here is a transcript of my paying for my ticket on the train from Bitterne (Near Southampton Central) with interpretation in italics:

Guard: Ticket please. Your money or your life?

Me: Can I have a return to Waterloo. Take my money!

Guard: Do you need to use the tube? Speed it up, your jewelry too.

Me: Yes. Okay.

Guard: That’s £58.60. That’s £58.60.

Me: – At this point I hand over my card – I hope some kindly person will look on me in my destitution and lend me 20p for the phone.

Guard: Thank you. If I see you again i’ll kill you.

Me: Thanks. You won’t see me again.

Griping over and back to the conference, the shorter time slots allowed speakers who perhaps weren’t so used to doing presentations to say what they wanted to say really well. For example Denise Wilton from Moo spoke for 15 or 20 minutes on the personality or persona of online apps and that was excellent. It didn’t need to be longer, it was great as it was.

Most importantly the sponsoring and freebies were greatly improved. Microsoft had a setup a lounge with lots of bean bags, x boxes, chairs, free water etc and were giving away copies of Expression, the new DreamWeaver esque web development tool. It was gratifying to see the Microsoft Expression lounge chock full of MacBook Pros and MacBooks. I’m pretty sure there isn’t a mac version of Expression.

The highlight speakers for me were Andy Clarke (Stuff and Nonsense) talking on designing for developers. Basically he explored, among other things, if comping every page in photoshop to show to the client then producing HTML is the most sensible way of working. The client can’t see, for example, what resizing text looks like in photoshop, the developer doesn’t necessarily see the intentions of interactions from a PSD unless lots of other diagrams are produced. He advocated prototyping in HTML and showing that to customers as well as being a better way for designers, develpers and others to talk about all aspects of the site as it’s in the final medium.

Rei Inamoto (AKQA) talked about on Branding and Identity. He just made five points about branding for yourself or your customers.

Finally right at the end Steve Pearce (Poke) did a talk entitled “15 things in 15 minutes” Lots of cool stuff I hadn’t seen before along with lots of stuff about being responsible in terms of environment and welfare of others which I like. Does anyone have a list of the sites he mentioned, i’ve lost some.

During the day I bumped into Mark Wubben, or rather he bumped into me and introduced himself. I had no idea who he was and I took his card. I was just thinking – novemberborn.. novemberborn… flip, that’s the developer of sIFR! So I texted him right away and asked him if I could get him lunch. Which I did, although there were some more of us around so I got to chat to some other people more than Mark really. No problem, all good.

All in all I had an enjoyable long and tiring day, thumbs up to Carson Systems for improving the conference so much since last year. Thumbs down to South West Trains for charging £51.40 for a standard day return to London.

Mmmm Manuals Originally uploaded by mattyturner. This week i’ve made a new friend at Church, Compton the organ. While I was away in Nepal my Dad was on Ebay and picked one up, had it installed, serviced and David (our resident organist) kitted it out with some new sound making capabilities! (A 25w Cyrus amp, Jamo bass speaker and a pair of Bang & Olufson speakers). David – who has this stuff lying around in their house?

So for the first time this Sunday morning, I played the hymns on the organ, which is about the third time i’ve ever played an organ. What can I say? The organ, as an instrument, is a lot of fun! I got the train into Winchester yesterday afternoon in order to have a bash at the first movement of Bach’s Organ Concerto I in G Major. I also have a book of eight short preludes and fugues (Bach again) so there is plenty to keep me busy and get me more acquainted with organ playing.

Coming from the piano, having a lack of touch response or a sustaining pedal feels very foreign. The first soon becomes liberating as you can concentrate on just hitting the notes! However the articulation becomes more important, whether you play notes legato (smoothly) or staccato (distinctly), as altering the gap between notes is the prime (maybe sole?) means of adding emphasis and phrasing to the music. Not having a sustaining pedal along with an instant cessation of sound when you lift your fingers means you play very differently to a piano. No touch response also means you have no volume control at your finger tips as it were. There is a swell pedal, which is one way of controlling the volume. What’s much more fun though is to adjust the stops which adds or subtracts the instruments being ‘played’ as you press each note. (On a real pipe organ this literally adjusts which pipes are having air pushed through them.) By doing this you not only add to the volume but you can completely change the sound being produced. I played the hymn ‘Immortal, Invisible, God only wise’ and only used the same registration (how the stops are arranged for a manual) twice, so almost every verse was a bit different.

For those that are interested, I played verse one with the Diapson, Rohr flute and something that was a 2’ on the great manual for the first verse, up to the swell for verses two and three (Diapson, Flute and Flageolet), the great manual with the addition of the IV mixture for the fourth and full organ on the great for the final verse (repetition of the first if you’re wondering what the fifth verse is).

I should probably quickly explain what the ‘great’ and the ‘swell’ are. These are the names of the manuals (keyboards) on the organ. Our organ has two. Great is on the bottom and swell on the top. Organs that have three manuals typically have a great, swell, and choir. Then organs that have more, well I don’t really know what the manuals are called after that. Up to five are common though on pipe organ, though some have even more! If you’re interested in how pipe organs work there is an excellent article on Wikipedia.

In other news I met up with Jamie in between all my organ practice. It was such a great day he was determined to get a proper ice cream. Well, it was the smallest scoop of ice cream i’ve ever seen, i’m surprised they had the nerve. So to you people at Presto underneath the Butter Cross in Winchester who think it’s okay to sell a single, miniscule, scoop of ice cream in a cone for £1.55 —here’s a picture of the offending, at the time of photographing unlicked ice cream.

The holiday is done, the Annapurna Circuit complete. I’m busy organising myself with regards to work and processing the photos I took. Over the next couple of weeks I will be updating this site with excerpts from my journal and photos.

I had a great time, Nepal is a fantastic place, somewhat under developed but with largely content people. It’s a shame so many of the good people that are able to are leaving because of the ongoing Maoist situation. For those that are thinking of doing the Annapurna Circuit trip at this time of year (early spring season) I just wanted to share some tips on what to take. If I went again I would definitely pack a little more differently so here are my observations.

Foot Care: Naturally you need good boots and socks, I recommend leather plus Gore-tex considering the amount of mud and snow experienced. However, one super essential thing that I suspect many people don’t include is foot powder. I liberally applied Scholl athletes foot powder every day and only got one small blister during the entire trip. Also bring nail clippers and keep your toe nails trimmed. I found moleskin very helpful for applying to areas that felt sore before any blisters occurred.

Outerware: I did pack with layers in mind but my waterproof coat was far too heavy and warm. Rather than a heavy jacket I recommend a good quality light weight water proof along with an extra fleece or down jacket. The reason being is that for many days the weather will likely be fine or too warm for it, and if you’re not wearing it then it’s better to have a light weight water proof that a heavier jacket to carry.

Sleeping Bag: If you don’t have one, buy a down sleeping bag with at least 600 fill. The coldest places provide blankets but I personally never needed one with an entry level 4 season sleeping bag (North Face Blue Kazoo)

Sun Screen: Don’t mess around, get a good high factor sun screen and apply liberally. I got caught out one day because I was fully covered but the back of my left hand was burnt.

Energy and Supplements: Take along glucose tablets such as Lucozade or Dextrose but stock up on chocolate bars lower down while the prices are cheaper and eat these if you feel them necessary. The reason for this is that if you get any kind of illness (out of a group of 12 everyone was ill at least once) then it’s better just take the pure sugar than anything containing dairy. You can also take these plus water for an energy boost instead of coke or sprite when you get higher and the prices rise.

I also recommend taking a few sachets of oral re-hydration salts that you can stomach, blackcurrant flavour worked for me. These take up little weight and handy for taking after unexpected diarrhea or sickness. (You may be starting to guess how some of my trip went by now.)

Torch: Head torches seemed to work well. I took a small high powered LED torch (Inova X5). This was especially good for the couple of times we started in the dark but I would have preferred a head torch for the toilet. The key here is to choose something that will accept lithium batteries. You can get most standard size batteries such as AA in lithium. These cost two to three times more than regular batteries but last longer (so you can take less) and hold their charge better in cold conditions.

Drugs: Take the basics such as aspirin and pain killers but buy the rest in Nepal. Diamox for example is about Rs 10 (approximately 7 pence) per tablet. Two drugs I would recommend are:
Diamox (Acetazolamide). At altitude there is less oxygen in the air so you breathe faster than normal in order to provide your body with the oxygen it requires. This hyperventilation increases the amount of bicarbonate in your body. This results in the symptoms of Acute Mountain Sickness. Diamox makes your kidneys process it faster, speeding up the acclimatization process. (This is why it’s essential to drink so much water too.)
Ciprofloxacin. This is a general antibiotic for getting rid of diarrhea – induced by funny food and if untreated water your body isn’t used to.

General Advice: Enjoy yourself, stop and admire the view, take a photo. As our leader Lalit liked to say “Stop and play with the nature”. Sometimes it is hard going but your experience and memories should be that of the landscape and people, not of the hard slogging.