Ralph’s Place

It would’ve been difficult to ask for a better day out today Great company, great location, great match, loads of fun!

It all started at 11:40 when we met up at Waterloo, then made our way straight to the Walkabout just across the bridge. A beer or 2, lunch and (believe it or not) some crosswords later, the place was nearing it’s 900+ capacity and kick off was looming for England’s last 16 match against Equador. The usual rollercoaster ride that is watching England play began, and after what I thought was a much more promising performance than in the group stages (although still not great by any means), 1-0 was enough to see us through to the quarter finals. The party for the next 40mins or so was great! I love this city I really do lol, some of the characters at the end were a scream!

That’s where I watched the match… where were you?

As if the day hadn’t been good enough already, we decided after a beer or 2 more to wander to Covent Garden for a pizza before making our way back to watch the game which decided who we would meet in the next round. All I can say about that is, fookin’ hilarious! The best way to describe the second half was “a mess”. It wasn’t a football pitch, it was a battlefield… and the man with the best weapons? The referee as it turned out! 16 yellow cards in the game, and each team finished with only 9 players on the field! 1-0 again the final score, and Portugal will be our opponents next Saturday, but thankfully missing at least 2 key players to suspensions… should be fun!

So I’d like to round things off by thanking my fellow football fans for a great day out, I’ll see you all again next week for another rollercoaster ride, with a bit of silliness, drunkenness and general stupidity thrown in too I’m sure

COME ON ENGLAND!

Not completely inspired by Mr Mayer’s going on at the world, but definitely fuelled by recent events:

Attention seekers really piss me off sometimes. If you want attention, cry or something. If you need someone to notice you because you feel you’re being ignored… fine, say something, in fact, do whatever! Just DON’T hit self destruct and go around drinking and smashing stuff up, whilst at the same time dragging everyone around you down through a shit storm they’ll wish they could forget. Get over it, put some effort in and sort your shit out, else fuck off and stop dragging others through the dirt.

Some people on the bus, specifically short, fat, “pushy” old ladies, should all be rounded up and banned from going out in public. A little extreme you say? Well if they can’t figure out that I’m not in fact “open space” when they try to walk through me and go nowhere, then I think a lack of exposure to the outside world is probably the least of their worries. If you want to get by, ask, or go around… it’s as simple as that.

Being different, yet dressing exactly the same as everybody else who wants to be different! I don’t get it, you all look the bloody same! In fact, in trying to diversify yourselves from the rest of society, you’ve actually become a group far less diverse than the one you left. Do you feel stupid yet?

Ahh, I feel better already…

In other news, I hope you like the new look of the site. The header image is a panorama (not a cut) taken from the top of Pen yr Ole Wen looking back at the first 8 peaks last weekend (see this post if you don’t know what I’m on about). The 4.5mb beast of a pic on my PC looks great! Need to try and get it printed off just to see what it looks like hehe.

Anyway, more (less offensive) rubbish tomorrow after the match!

Football is obviously the big talking point at the moment. It’s weird how if someone had told me 2 weeks ago that England would win the group with 7 points, I would’ve been over the moon! Yet now that’s a reality, I still find myself disappointed and convinced we’re not capable of winning the tournament. Sadly, it’s the performances not the results that have got to me. Ever the optimist though, I am prepared to go out on a limb and say that we can still pull something out of the bag! It’s all too easy to play down to an opponent’s standard, and England seem to be very good at that. We play poor teams, we play poorly. Play a good team and we can pull a performance together out of nowhere… we’ll see I guess. Bring on Sunday!

Work is tough right now (as people around me may just have gathered lol). Besides the usual random issues that arise and the occasional late evening, it’s always “fun” when you’re asked to do what you consider impossible. To coin a phrase I used earlier today, I’m trying to turn cheese into gold! Coming up with copper at the mo, but I’ll be dead chuffed if I pull it off!

The site hasn’t really changed much this week thanks to work/football, but I have just done a couple of things to the gallery, namely: added a ratings feature for photos, fixed the admin links formatting, and removed the footer so that only the main site footer is visible. Hoping to get image comments working soon, seems to be a problem with that module so more code hacking required I guess.

More as I think of it…

Where to start!? I guess the beginning would be a good idea… 4am on a warm summer’s morning in Snowdonia, Mark and I are stood at the base of Crib Goch. Ahead of us, a 52km walk, 4000m of cumulative ascent and 15 summits over 3000ft. The makings of a bad day at Lucifer’s pleasure? No, the beginning of a truly memorable day out in one of the most beautiful area’s the UK has to offer

On Saturday 17th June, Mark and I (known on the day as The Blisterpack) took part in The 15 Peaks Challenge to raise money for Eikon. It involved walking to the summit of all 15 of the 3000ft+ peaks in North Wales and is quite frankly one of the most challenging things I think I’ve ever undertaken.

As we set out at 0405 my only thoughts were that this was clearly a very silly idea! I knew it would hurt, yet at the same time a voice in the back of my head kept telling me it’d be worth it in the end, and if I didn’t give it my best shot I’d regret it. Turns out the voice was right! The satisfaction of finishing still hasn’t worn off (neither has the pain in my legs tho mind) and the fact that we have just about raised our £1000 target makes it even better! Our official time was 19hrs 35mins, which was good enough for 6th place out of the 17 teams that started, and that apparently translates to a “peak to peak” time of around 16 and a half hours which is awesome

I wish I could say more about the day, but putting it all into words is proving far too hard! Instead there are some photos up in the gallery which I hope can at least begin to explain what kind of a day it was.

The route:
Start: Pen-y-Pass Car Park
Mountain 1: Crib Goch (3026ft)
Mountain 2: Garnedd Ugain (3493ft)
Mountain 3: Snowdon (3560ft)
Mountain 4: Elidir Fawr (3029ft)
Mountain 5: Y Garn (3104ft)
Mountain 6: Glyder Fawr (3279ft)
Mountain 7: Glyder Fach (3262ft)
Mountain 8: Tryfan (3010ft)
Mountain 9: Pen yr Ole Wen (3210ft)
Mountain 10: Carnedd Dafydd (3426ft)
Mountain 11: Carnedd Llewelyn (3484ft)
Mountain 12: Yr Elen (3152ft)
Mountain 13: Foel Grach (3152ft)
Mountain 14: Garnedd Uchaf (3038ft)
Mountain 15: Foel-fras (3091ft)
Finish: End of a lane, nearest thing to civilisation!

A step here and there brings the site closer to what I’m looking for. The images on the sidebar took more work than expected but they’re there now. The gallery is also pretty much there, just the admin integration isn’t quite working yet, no idea why. I’ve got a workaround for now though and tbh that could turn into the way I admin the gallery anyway, as keeping it clear of “login” links isn’t really a bad thing! Early next week (when I’m too broken to go out anyway) I’ll get round to uploading more pics and structuring the gallery better… for now the 2 albums are only there to show me how it looks, there’s no thought behind it beyond that.

What’s next? 2 main things really… first of all is feedback. I want to know what people think! Does the gallery integrate well? Is the sidebar sensible? How’s the general look and feel? Should Eriksson have brought on Rooney today? … erm? There’s still a lot I plan to change (for example I’m not sure about the banner image at the top) but I’m settled on most of the “style”. Constructive criticisms only please (that or praise of course ), feel free to email/call/msn me or just use the contact page!

Then there’s the main page. I’d quite like to see more… perhaps the first bit of the latest post on each category, rather than just the latest posts. A space for “events”, by which I mean what I’m getting up to that I want to tell the world about Maybe a sort of daily random section like quote of the day, or something like that I dunno… again opinions please? Not sure how I would code this yet (and before anyone screams “you should’ve just used a CMS not WP” I can’t be bothered to change, and I like WP )

Enough technical rubbish for now anyway… more interesting stuff on the way soon!