My friend Dympna and her daughters are on holiday in Les Arcs this week. Unfortunately work commitments mean I haven’t quite got the time to go cycling or go on the chocolate train in Switzerland with her this week as I wanted to, but Sunday lunch over in Arcs was possible.

The drive over through France took a few hours, up and down through the most beautiful country on a lovely day. Dym had booked a table at a place called Belliou le fumée. It’s up at about 1800m above Bourg St Maurice, and I can’t think of a better place to have lunch. The food’s amazing and there’s a pool and plenty of room to stretch out and enjoy the sun.

Coming back in the evening, I decided to avoid the Albertville diversion to try to save some time. There is a mountain pass which is open in the summer which takes you through to the Aosta valley in Italy, and from there it’s only 20km back up to Mont Blanc, through the tunnel and back into Chamonix. But we didn’t have passports with us, so it was a little risky. Had we been turned away at either of the two borders we’d have faced a 6 hour drive round back the long way which would have been under-funny. We were lucky, though. And back in Houches before dark.

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Saturday, and Sib and I spent the day climbing. We started at the lake near my apartment – a little crag called Chavants to get a bit of practice in. Seeing as I’ve got almost no experience of climbing outdoors and Sib had never belayed before I think we did pretty well to get a top rope up and do a few climbs each without incident.

Caroline and Mike picked us up in the afternoon to go down to a much bigger crag down the valley in Servoz where we spend the rest of the afternoon doing some much harder stuff. I learned quite a bit about climbing on Saturday.

Firstly, making sure your rope is long enough to get you up AND abseil you down the climb before you start is a really good idea and also the concept of multi-pitch climbing. This is where the whole team climb up to a certain point on the rock face and makes themselves safe by tying on with slings. Then you start again from that point, and you can start to scale bloody great rock faces with the same kit you were using to much about on the 20m pitches.

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Balls. Too busy to think, let alone write a blog today. Tell you what – have a look at this cool optical illusion that Mike found instead.

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I was really disappointed when I bought my macbook. It’s got a really cool little camera built in to the frame and I was looking forward to using that for Skype. But Skype for the mac didn’t have video support. That is until yesterday. There’s a preview out for a beta of the Skype for macs that finally has video support.

http://www.skype.com/download/skype/macosx/videopreview.html?www.reghardware.co.uk

And because the macbook is so damn small and portable, with such a good mic and speaker set in, I can just carry the thing around and show off my office to my mum. Cool or wot.

I’m also pleased because there are suddenly a hell of a lot of these imacs and mac books out there with built in cameras. Even the new PC laptops are beginning to have them. When I start to develop the capability of flash communication server over the next few months, that’s going to be a vital ingredient to making it a success. There’s no point inventing cool little webcam applications if no bugger has a webcam is there?

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So we did get started in the office on Monday morning. And then – wouldn’t you know it – the internet crapped out right across town at lunchtime. So we all went for lunch. It’s bloody hot here at the moment, it’s easy to get stressed when it’s 30 degrees. I got stressed. There was an important deadline to achieve for my London client and I just couldn’t do it. It all got a bit wobbly for a while, but it’s Wednesday now, and connectivity is back. I’m back on the case again.

Tuesday afternoon was great, though. Some friends were having a BBQ down at the climbing crag at Gaillands lake in town, so Sib and I went down and did a bit of climmbing. Sib was impressive – shinned right up that rock like a proper monkey.

The weather closed in about 5pm though and we had one of the most spectacular storms of the summer so far. Total wash out, forcing retirement to the pub. Sweet.

So a stressful couple of days, but you’ve just got to be a bit French about these things. As I write I’m pouting and shrugging. What more can you do?

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It’s been a long time in the post, but the Chamonix Collective are finally in the office for the first time today. An 18 Meg connection, and a perfect, cloudless view of the Aguille du Midi and Mont Blanc to welcome us, at last the frustration of the last month is behind us and we can finally get down to some work.

After all – you’ve gotta make a fackin’ living innit?

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IF YOU’RE STUCK. AND THERE’S NO ONE ELSE TO CALL. AND YOU DON’T SPEAK MUCH FRENCH. AND YOU LIVE NEAR CHAMONIX. OR HAVE JUST BOUGHT A PLACE HERE. AND YOU WANT SOMETHING DONE.

CALL WOLF INC. HERE’S THE WEBSITE.

THE WOLF WILL BE WITH YOU DIRECTLY.

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A British secretary allegedly sacked from her job in Paris over an internet diary is the latest in a growing line to pay a heavy price for blogging.

Catherine – who blogged anonymously under the pseudonym “Petite Anglaise” about life, love and work – has now launched a test case under French employment law.

full article from the BBC

here’s the girl’s blog – http://www.petiteanglaise.com.nyud.net:8080/

Damn – I’ll give her a job!

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I’ve been listening to a lot of UK radio today. It’s hot, apparantly, and there’s a war in the middle east. Amazing how little you can know about what’s going on after listening to the news every hour. So I decided to look into it and see if I could find something more real.

http://lebanonlive.blogspot.com/ – This is a blog being written by some dude who seems a bit like me, except his country is getting the shit blown out of it.

and I guess, seeing as I’m finding my own news, rather than being spoon-fed sterilised tripe, I need to find a bit of balance.

Here we go….. http://www.israelblog.net/

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I saw a deer this evening. She was beautiful – not much more that a fawn, she came down from the hills behind my building and I watched her from the balcony as she threaded her way through human habitation, over the road an on up into the hills past the valley floor. She was scared of course – wouldn’t you be if you were walking through the centre of New York, through masses of hairless apes who are engrossed in something you could never understand?

Puts me in mind of the foxes in England. People argue about whether killing them is cruel. Is it right? Are they vermin? Yes. They are vermin, they kill livestock. If you had 10 chickens and some bastard fox kept killing them, you’d be right to defend your living. But if chickens cost £2.50 from tesco because we’ve raised them in horrific battery farmed conditions just so we can have nice meat with our ‘healthy’ stir fries, maybe we’re missing the point. Foxes eat chickens. We eat chickens. There are a lot of chickens. We don’t have to defend ourselves from these animals, we need to nurture them to make the world we live in nicer.

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