Sep/081
The Bloody Credit Crunch
I was on Radio 4 today. For real, I was! listen to it by downloading this and putting it in itunes
I was making a point about the Credit Crunch. And although only a tiny portion of my point can be relayed on the BBC worldwide (woohoo!), I can at least have a rant here on my blog. After all - it's my blog.
I'm sick of hearing about this now. This credit crunch. What difference will it make? None whatever. The financial services industry (which is fairly new anyway) restructures itself and people in the industry in 10 years time will look back at 'that big crash in '08' with relief in their eyes still. People will still own, buy, sell property and buisinesses. Taxes will go up and down and people will campaign for election. What's changed? Zero.
I was employed by the silly dotcom boom industry at the end of the 90's. High salaries, free bagels, no work to speak of. The industry restructured itself. We all got laid off, other people lost lots of money. Some people made money. The Internet is still here isn't it?
So, will Tescos, Lloyds Bank, The Bank Of England still be here? Will shares in all those companies still be here? Of course they will. Buy those shares now when they're low, and sell them when everyone shuts up and the prices go up again. Obviously no sane person should follow financial advice given by some fool who moved to the mountains years ago, but you could set up an account with this company and watch the market closely. When it starts it move back up, take a position on that and hold on for it for a bit, being careful not to get caught out in a cycle. Use stop-loss mechanisms to protect yourself against that.
The best way to understand spread betting is to go through an example. All our bets work in basically the same way, whether you are day trading or taking a more long-term view.
We make a quote for the price of a market at some date in the future, for example, the FTSE 100 in October 2008. You decide whether the market will be higher or lower than our quote by that time. You can also choose bets with a daily timeframe, for example on today's FTSE settlement. This is ideal for day traders who wish to capitalise on immediate volatility.
The smell of Thatcherite lingers in the room.
Sep/080
Thoughts turn to skiing
It's nearly October and the weather in Chamonix is turning wintry. There's still a long way to go before the first snows come in late November or early December, but it's in the post. I'm probably watching too much ski porn (Warren Miller films & Helly Hanson's Happy Happy mostly), but I can feel the old obsession coming back. I want to go skiing.
All Mountain Performance had some great news last week. The sponsorship deal with Voelkl has not only been renewed, but actually extended. That means more skis, more clothes, more everything. It also means that I'm included in the sponsorship to an extent. This season I'll be wearing Voelkl clothes and skiing on a pair of Voelkl Matras fitted with a pair of Duke Marker Bindings. The aim is to have just one pair of all mountain skis which I ski on exclusively. No more separate touring skis or different skis in different conditions.
And also it brings the number of pairs of skis I own to a ridiculous 6. I might think about buying a new pair of boots though. The old ones have done well for 4 seasons, but are starting to feel a little bit wellington boot-like. It's time to talk to Jonny and Kai of FallLine bootfitting.
Sep/081
The conclusion of a great road trip
I definitely need to expand on the coldplay gig. I'd gone to Prague to see Sarah for a few days, really. She was there with the coldplay tour for 3 days. 2 days off and then the show on the Monday. I wasn't as interested in coldplay as I was in seeing Sarah, so I was surprised when Monday evening rolled around and Mark and I were driving over to the O2 Arena in Prague in the scooby doo mobile, getting excited about going to a show. Here's what Mark the writer had to say about the evening. He says it better than I would, but I do want to say thanks. Thanks to Sarah and all the catering crew on the tour who went out their way to make Mark and I feel welcome. And go us brilliant seats too :)
So that was then end of my trip to Prague. At 6am the next morning I was on my way again. The concluding part of a brilliant road trip which took in 5 different countries, 2000km and about 5 days.
Sure enough, my VW transporter with its new blacked out windows , driven by a long haired hippy like me is a total rozzer magnet. Rozzers and Customs officials. Not only did I get a 2000 Kr fine in Prague for driving the wrong way down a 1 way street (GPS is all well & good, but sometimes you do have to pay attention to the road signs), but also got pulled over and searched at 2 borders on the way back too.
So out of Czech, turn left and down through Germany to Munchen and up into the German Alps. I was heading for Oberammergau . I'm not sure why. It just seemed like a good idea at the time. I last went there when I was around 12. My family used to go on walking holidays all round that area in the summers & it seemed to be on the way home.
Anyhoo - Oberammergau turns out to be one of the most christian places on the planet. Probably something to do with the famous 10 yearly Passion Play but it did make me wander what on earth my family were doing there 20 years ago. Turns out there's a NATO school there too. The plot thickens. I guess my Dad (who was in the air force at the time) was there on some kind of undercover secret squirrel mission to save us from ze Russians.
I arrived around 4pm, got a hotel, had some dinner, got a great night's sleep and was heading into Austria by 9am the following day. Down into Innsbruck, out the valley and across Switzerland back home to Chamonix. I love my van.
I did get the chance to take these pictures of the Oberammergau before I left.
Sep/080
Coldplay Viva La Vida Tour, Prague
Brilliant! Flickr have just added the ability to embed picture slideshows on external websites. Like this one:
Perhaps I'll do a part 2 of this post tomorrow to explain how cool the gig was. Maybe the photos will tell enough of the story?
Sep/080
Praha, Czech Republic
I've been enjoying taking a lot of photos here in Prague. It's such a photogenic place that every view is a winner. I've been trying out the iPhone's camera when I haven't got my big camera with me, and it's not so bad. It's different to use because there are no editing facilities between the camera shutter and it arriving on the internet. No crop. No colour correction. You just have to pick a view, hold the thing still and give it a wang. Here's a quiet little spot I found yesterday to watch the evening bustle of a main Prague square.
Staying at the Hilton was an unexpected bonus. I guess it's Coldplay's tab at the end of the day, but whosever tab it was it wasn't mins. Spend a great day with Sarah and my good friend Mark the writer who has been living and working here as a teacher for a while. The beer, music, architecture? all good. The food? Not so much. That's the new Czech Republic. But getting better. Kind of like English food ten years ago before it got good.
I'm leaving after seeing the Coldplay show tonight. Or maybe in the morning. I think I'll take a different route home. Perhaps through the Southern German Alps & Austria. Perhaps I'll visit Oberammergau again. Last time I was there was a family holiday when I was about 12.
Sep/080
Road tripping to Prague
As the summer season in Chamonix draws quickly to a close and the weather turns cold and autumnal, it's time to get out of town for a bit. I'm driving to Prague to meet Sarah who is there on tour with Coldplay.
Tia (who is recovering well from her broken pelvis) is safely set up at a friend's place for a few weeks. There are kids in the house, so she'll not want for affection.
I'm writing this in a cafe on my iPhone, and it's time to get on my way. There's still 900km to drive & I'm impatient to see my girlfriend.
Sep/080
New website for All Mountain Performance
When I moved to the valley a few years ago I made a decision not to get involved in building websites for local businesses. There are a lot of businesses here, and a lot of entrepreneurial people running them. But there's very little money. To live here and earn a living is hard and everyone is on tight margins. Jobs are not well paid and I felt that the risk of screwing up personal relationships by working at mates rates outweighed the benefits of competing with the other web developers here.
I still feel that way, but here is an exception. All Mountain Performance's new website went live yesterday. Several months in the making, I created this website for my friend and business associate Mark Gear. It's a fully featured drupal website designed to build a community behind what I feel is the outstanding ski coaching business not only here in Chamonix, but in the French alps as a whole. I'm proud to be involved with this company. I have been taking photos and making films for them for the past year and will continue to do so during the coming season.
Please help us - sign up for an account, write something in the forum, comment on a photo or video & if you're in the market for this kind of thing - book yourself a course or private lesson and come and ski with Mark and Simon this season.
But for me, and Listings Lab I've created a website here that is scalable and dynamic, perfectly SEO'd and ready to make a real impact on the businesses bottom line. I'll be adding ecommerce and other features in the coming year and I can finally start to move on from the role I've been occupying for the past few years - that of a web developer to the role I've chosen to move into in the next phase of my career - that of Marketing Director.
Sep/080
The time of my Chamonix office is coming to an end. I've rented this place from my landlord Mr Chevallier for just over 2 years and I've loved being here. The rent has been reasonable, the central Chamonix location is brilliant, the view out on the Aiguille Du Midi & the little garden out the back have been superb. The fact it's not a real flat - ie it hasn't got a kitchen has made it quite fun to live in this past while & all in all, the place doesn't owe me a thing.
My girlfriend and I decided to get a place together this winter. Somewhere big enough for me to have a good sized room to turn into a studio, whilst also giving us plenty of room to live comfortably was the plan. I've found & signed the lease on the perfect place.
It's a proper old alpine chalet in Le Tour - right out at the other end of the valley from Les Houches. Up where the skiing is and nearly on the border with Switzerland. It's a tiny little village with one of the valley's main ski areas coming into it. And no shops. Not even a bakery or tabac. Argentiere will be the closest place for that. We've got the whole ground floor of a chalet - all 65m2 of it. There's a bit of a garden and plenty of room. I can't wait. I've got it from the 5th November & I'll keep the office on until December to make the move as painless as possible. If I'm skiing up in Le Tour or Vallorcine, I can pretty much ski to the door.
So basically, you walk up this little path, past the church,
And then there's a little alley on the left, and up through that gap is our new place.
Sep/082
Shaving Fred
So we did it. Shaved Fred I mean. For cancer research. I think we even did it with a fair bit of style. Judge for yourself, watch the video here:
Lets Shave Fred from Chris D on Vimeo.