by james -

London to Paris Bike Ride May 2016

My brother-in-law Stephen and I spent 8 days cycling from London to Paris – catching the Eurostar back. Starting at Wimbledon(London), we cycled to New Haven, caught the ferry to Dieppe and then followed the L’Avenue Verte cycle path to Paris. We wanted to take it easy, enjoy the ride and scenary, but make it a bit of an adventure too, so only booked accommodation the first and last nights. It turned out to be a very pleasant trip and despite leaving later than expected on Day 1 and one night in France where we spent about 2 hours desperately searching for somewhere to stay, I’d totally recommend what we did. The furthest distance we cycled in a day was a bit over 55miles.

by james -

First Time Buyer – Steps to Buying a House / Buying a House Procedure

After last year’s experience, I found there were some great guides/pages out there for house buying, but nothing that covered all the steps I encountered – I felt lost sometimes, waiting for stuff to happen or receiving stuff, so decided to write this up.

Please note: I was a first time buyer, did my own removals (didn’t have that much stuff) and my dad was a surveyor, so he did the surveying. Your experience might be quite different.

by james -

Biblical Wealth Secrets – VTA Publications – Scam

The other week I received this letter through the post – I was wondering if this was a scam, so Googled “VTA publications and Biblical Wealth Secret”, but could only find one reference and that was here at MoreMoneyReview.com. I signed up to MoreMoneyReview to read the comments and apparently this Biblical Wealth Secret thing is pretty much the same as another scheme called Streetwise or the Fortune Files. From the reading those, it seems to largely promises the world YET somewhat unsurprisingly delivers very little.

Anyways, I found the letter is rather amusingly and well written – FULL of lures to bring in vulnerable people! So I scanned it and OCR’d it, here it is for your reading and to help Google know more about VTA Publications 🙂

by james -

Chicken, carrot, onion and gravy pie de Chef James

photo 4

I literally chucked this thing together and the result was a most top, tasty and delicate home-made pie!
try it out and impress your friends!

Serves about 2 people.

Ingredients:
1 x cooked chicken breast *
2 x carrots (peeled and sliced)
1 x large onion (diced)
1 packet of ready rolled filo pastry – or about 4-5 sheets!
Cooking oil – be it olive, sunflower, whatever, to brush over the pastry
2-3 tablespoons Bisto gravy granules
Optionally:
sprinkles of black pepper, Herbes de Provence
some thyme to garnish (if you have any spare)

by james -

Does going to Rutlish School put you in the “Cosy Club”?

rutlish_emblem
Rutlish School coat of arms

Apparently the UK is deeply elitist and you can’t get a ‘top job’ unless you are one of the ‘cosy club’ which mostly comprises of private school types.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-28953881

Now I went to Rutlish School, an ex-grammar in Merton Park, Wimbledon, SW19. So my real question is, are we #Rutlish School boys part of the ‘cosy club’? Let’s look at the facts – John Major PM is an old boy of ours, we have an Old boys club called The Old Ruts + we were all boys + we have a “Speech Night” whereby a famous old-Rutlish boy does a speech and presents prizes(John Major in 1991) + we had ‘houses’ + we have a ‘head boy’ + we used to play ‘fives'(a game generally only played at private schools) + we did had Latin lessons at GCSE and A-Level!

Inspired by this article, I’ve now made some art work! 🙂

Rutlish Elite

by james -

Free ways to copy files, video, photos and music directly to/from your iPhone without iTunes

The problem with iTunes is you simply cannot copy files, photos, images, videos directly to and from your iPhone or iPad. I wanted to copy some specific .MOV video files to my iPhone and copy some camera roll photos off it and found this became a bit of a nightmare. I really couldn’t be bothered with syncing and all that malarky, I just wanted to copy the files and go. Anyways, after several hours of playing around I’ve concluded the following, hope it helps somebody : I found I needed 3 programs to maintain my iPhone as I wanted…

by james -

My Royal Exchange over 2 years Youtube Video

[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvkrc-J-lEE[/embedyt]

My latest youtube video! London’s Royal Exchange filmed over 2 years – Nov 2010 – Jan 2013. On my way home from work each day/night I started taking pics of The Royal Exchange from outside Bank station. Eventually making this stop-motion movie from them – it’s a bit jerky at the start, but hope you like the video anyways. Watch out for the Olympics logos/barriers – taken during the men’s marathon and wheelchair marathons.