Saturday 31 January 2009

Reschedule

I had hoped to have the third of the monthly features published today but I had completed discharged my personal batteries this week and have been glad of rest today from running and the website.

The new feature will be added this week. As usual, no clues as to who it will be.

Entry update tomorrow.

Tuesday 27 January 2009

Entries pass significant barrier

Well entries have passed the 180 barrier (by one) today which is a quite emotional number for me with my past involvement in the event. I would like to explain now but I as near the end of another 18 hour day the story (like so many other yawns) will have to wait another day.

In the meantime, here are the latest entries:


Ben Harris
Christopher Brew
Claira Elliott
Georgie Dempsey-Moore
Julia Furner
Kayleigh Rogers
Kevin Costain
Mary Crellin
Rachele Quayle
Sweeney Trisha
Sylvia Harrison
Tommy Turtle Harrison
Voirrey Cain

Friday 23 January 2009

9 more entries

Adam Killip
Diane Motley
Ean Costain
George Michael Ratcliffe
James Bassett
Jenny Teare
Martin Crellin
Neil Measures
Shirley Boyde

Tuesday 20 January 2009

Not enough time

As always, there are 101 things I would like to spend my time doing when I can achieve far fewer so this blog has been a little quiet lately.

I'm planning to write the third of the monthly features next week although I don't want to commit this time until I have met some of my personal committments.

I'll try and find a few minutes here and there to keep this going though.

In the meantime, where are all the women?

Last year there were slightly more men than women. this year there are 3 men for every 2 women. The 159 entries consists of 95 men and 64 women.

159 entries

The latest entries are:

Anthony Ball
Anthony Prince
Craig Rogers
Dean Clayton
Gary Lewis
Joanne Isherwood
John Hotchkiss
Jonathan Crossley
Michaela Cowley
Nicholas Kelly
Peter Beighton
Philippa Jones
Sue Prince

Friday 16 January 2009

Five additional names to starters list

Derek Bond
John Kinrade
Karen Lancaster
Sarah Thornhill
Sharon Christian

Thursday 15 January 2009

3 more entries

Alex Penrose
Andrew Baxendale
Michael Oates

Tuesday 13 January 2009

Two women

Taking the entry list to 138 are:

Alison McMahon
Julie Oconnor

Sunday 11 January 2009

UK vet enters Parish

Among the three entries today is Edmund Shillabeer one of the most prolific walkers in the UK during the past thirty years. More about Ed another day. For now, as the hour strikes midnight, are the three new entries:


Edmund Shillabeer
James Walker
Michael Stephenson

Just one entry to add

Jackie Turley is the latest entrant while the total of 133 is made up of 77 men and 56 women.

Updated in Manchester.

Friday 9 January 2009

Another 7 entries confirmed

Charlene McGarry
Christine Breadner
Helen Ballinger-Wood
Kevin Cowin
Kingsley Lambert
Paul Soffe
Sue Cowin

That's 132 now.

Posted from Ronaldsway Airport!

Wednesday 7 January 2009

Don't try this without broadband

Last night, in an exercise which included most of the other newspaper cuttings of 2008, I scanned just about every report from the Manx Newspapers about the 2008 Clerical Medical Parish Walk.

You can access it here, but only if you have broadband as it is 28MB in size.

http://parishwalk.com/2008/PW2008News.pdf

Entries reach 125

The latest confirmed entries are:


Brian Langhorn
Dylan Evans
Gary Merrill
Janet Jenkins
Karen Galvin
Kim Duncan
Louise Hopkinson
Patricia Kissack
Ray Beattie
Rebecca Kissack
Stuart Mullan
Tara Mckernan
William Robb

Monday 5 January 2009

Photos are available again

If you tried to use the photo archive over the weekend you would have been disappointed.

My Parish Walk photo collection which contains thousands of photos, like the rest of my photos, is hosted by fotopic.net.

The fotopic site went down on Friday and was only available again mid morning today. I joined a user forum when I became aware of the problem yesterday and kept track with the rumours and a few facts.

Like so many things in life, you don't realise how much you rely on something until it goes missing. There were stories about the company having gone under which thankfully proved to be untrue - it was only a technical problem.

I pay £45 a year to fotopic to provide a part of the service to users of manxathletics.com and parishwalk.com although I also get benefits from the site for family and other social events. Unlike the free service, you can have more than one gallery (I have used 25 of my 100) and there are all sorts of other benefits. I registered for three different alternative sites yesterday but I have to say that none of them were a patch on fotopic, at least not unless I was prepared to pay hundreds of pounds a year.

I am going to consider a project that I have had on the shelf for a while and that is to host the photos directly from the manxathletics.com server but it may be a case of putting all eggs in one basket.

As I mentioned previously, the manxathletics.com and the parishwalk.com sites are hosted by different providers and together with the forum, photos and videos being in different places it does help to spread the risk of failure.

Here is the statement from the fotopic owners

STATEMENT FROM SNAPPY DESIGNS LTD, 5TH JANUARY 2009Dear Fotopic User,On Friday 2nd January 2008 photo sharing site Fotopic.net suffered a core equipment failure while upgrading the server and network capacity. As a result of this the Fotopic.net website was unavailable from approximately 9am on Friday 2nd January.Despite our best efforts to resolve the situation the gallery service remained unavailable until approximately 10:30am on Monday 5th January 2008.As a result of this outage we are examining our hosting capability and contingency plans, but wish to assure customers that Fotopic.net has not ceased trading and will be enhancing its services during 2009. No data or images have been lost during this time and all systems are back to normal.Additionally we will be extending Plus and Premium subscriptions by an extra 2 weeks as a goodwill gesture.We apologise for the situation which was ultimately out of our control, and would like to thank customers for bearing with us.Best regards,The DirectorsSnappy Designs Ltd trading as Fotopic.net

6 more entries lifts total to 112

Janine Stevens
Kenny Williams
Lucy Webster-Thompson
Sarah-Kate Kermode
Terry Kelly
Victoria Moore

Things are really moving now but do encourage your friends if their names are not on the list.

Saturday 3 January 2009

2 more men enter

Welcome to:

Duncan Firth
Ed Burn

who have added their names to the list of entrants for the Parish Walk. The list now totals 106.

Friday 2 January 2009

Entries pass 100

104 to be precise. Its really good to see another 9 names on the list:

Andrew Stephen Moore
Chris Brogan
Colin Stephen Moore
Donna Workman
Michelle Ince
Natalie Bush
Steve Curtis
Terri Salmon
Tony Okell

But don't stop - add yours today!