Sometimes pictures are better than words!

I’ve driven about 280 miles roughly today and have stopped in Fort William. I’m staying the night in the Alexandra, decided to pop in and see how much it was (£59). I thought it was quite cheap but I can see why, it’s quite tatty but it’s better than the car. The bar is deserted except for me, will finish this pint then go for a walk.

Will have an early night Reading then be up early for Breakfast. Thinking about driving to Skye tomorrow, stopping at Loch Ness on the way. May continue further up though past Ullapool and look for a deserted beach.

That’s tomorrow though, will continue to post on Twitter rather than here.

I’ve been an enthusiastic user of Spotify ever since I first discovered it. I normally ignore adverts in any form but I’ve followed a few links from adverts on Spotify: Suitopia, sharemyplaylists and then about a week ago the Fiat 500C playlist advert.

Whoever came up with the Fiat idea is a genius, all they did was create a short audio advert on Spotify. The genius part was to get Spotify listeners to submit songs to be added to a playlist. Currently there are 1136 songs but its being added too daily, I’ve recommended it to others, who are also listening and have submitted tracks. You can win a years subscription to Spotify if you submit a track and win the competition.

This must of been an incredibly cheap advertising campaign but has kept the 500C in my mind for over a week and I still have hours of music to listen to, so it will remain in my mind for some time yet. Who needs to spend millions on some TV advert that everyone skips.

Photo: Genie’s lamp by Davic

“I’ve spent all my life making wishes and only just realised there is no genie” – Steven Horner July 2009

Photo: Sound of silence by Daniel Gasienica

I did an experiment for 5 days earlier this week, which was to cut out news and other sources of distractions such as Twitter, Facebook, Google Reader and a few similar sites. The surprising things were just how much free time I had and that I didn’t really miss them, maybe Twitter a little bit.

The main thing I realised was just how much time I waste doing nothing, sat waiting for someone to post something to Twitter or Facebook. I have started using them all again over the last couple of days and noticed how my spare time disappeared once again.

From tomorrow I am not going to cut them out, just limit to about an hour a day and generally avoid mainstream news.

I decided to do the little experiment while reading the Timothy Ferriss book “The 4-hour Work Week“, I am still reading the book and for the first time since I was 15 I’ve marked loads of things in a book to re-read, do or go into more detail on. I can’t recommend it enough.

I am following a 12 week half marathon training plan to get me prepared for 20th September and no it isn’t the Great North Run. The training so far has been very easy with “Easy” or “Steady” runs. Today was the first time I’ve felt tired, a 7m “steady” run. The lack of food and the alcohol the night before probably didn’t help.

View 7m Steady in a larger map

Above is my run today from Willington to Meadowfield and back. The pace isn’t fast at all but its the pace I have to run for my training schedule. For more details on the run click here.

I’ve disabled the “Fresh from FriendFeed and Twitter” Plugin on the site, too much noise was being posted on here. Everything can still be seen in the FriendFeed sidebar.

I will now have to actually start posting some stuff on here again and maybe get around to creating a template.

Photo: The Noise Within by Cayusa