Author: Hugh

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olc: words for Pyrenees

Descending from Refuge Sarradets, I’m reminded once again why I do this; the magnificent views, the dirt under my feet, the feeling of being amongst friends but at the same time remote. I love being able to drift in and out of conversations; I love that a thread can last for days and even weeks. I love the wilderness, in a strange way it’s the only time I feel spiritual. I love the enthusiasm, I love that we’re doing something that scares us the odd time. I love the air, the elements and the company.

Passing down from La Brèche de Roland and on into France, I contemplate the mountains we’ve just left: Le Casque, Mont Perdu, the slog up through the shale, three steps forward, two steps back. I remember the energy-sapping slope up to the top, I remember thinking of my late brother there, like Mont Perdu he’s not lost, he’s just out of sight.

Pain has a short memory and the discomfort of the refuges and the blisters will soon be forgotten. Except for maybe the noises of the night!

We’ll be back.

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cautionary tale: This device isn’t eligible for the requested build

So in a rush of excitement today, I plugged my iPad into the lapper to update to IOS5 for a bit of post-Jobsian Apple-ness and to be the hippest hipster on my block when lo and behold, I was presented with the message you see above. My inner nerd sank and I was overcome with sadness and despair. I couldn’t figure out for the life of me what I was doing wrong. I tried again to update the ‘Pad to its rightful 5-ness but again, no joy. This was really really vexing because I’d never done anything untoward with the iPad, it was and is a vanilla tablet.

Aha! I thought to myself, perhaps it’s something to do with my use of a 3rd party dns provider which I use to limit certain parts of the internet from my children at certain times of the day, I headed off to my dashboard and switched these off to null. Tried again, no joy, the same sorrowful message on iTunes. Next logical step for me was to reset the modem to look at the default dns settings from my internet supplier. Nope. Same again. Checked and turned off all firewall activity in the modem and on the computer. Again, no dice.

I was out of inspiration at this stage, so I headed off to google and looked for some enlightenment. I came across a discussion on the Apple about the possibility of some 3rd party software having made a small change to the hosts file in an attempt to stop communication with a particular apple server. This struck a chord with me as many months ago, I’d tried to jailbreak a spare iphone unlock 3G that was knocking around and I’d used tiny umbrella in this pursuit.

Sure enough, when I looked at my hosts file, there was something in there that shouldn’t have been, so I removed it and restarted the crate. Lo and behold this time the update is in the process of succeeding and I’ll have a shiny new 5-device in a while.

Be advised that mucking round with the hosts file requires intrepid use of the terminal and a spot of vi (or pico if you prefer).

The moral of the story is that after 6 restarts (either modem and/or computer) and a lot of head scratching, I found a solution. Perhaps I should exercise more cation installing stuff  (tu for example) on a production machine.

Lesson learnt for the time being.

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marinated butterflied leg of lamb

Butterflied leg of lamb was on special in the local butcher today (€13.95/kg) so we decided we’d have some if that …

Ingredients:
1.5 kg leg of lamb, butterflied
1/2 a medium onion
4 cloves garlic
2 tbsp fresh rosemary
2 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp cider vinegar
zest of a lemon

Method:
Put all the ingredients bar the lamb in a blender and whizz till smooth. It’ll be a great colour and smell wonderful. Stick the lamb in a bag and pour in the marinade. Squish it round a bit, mostly on the non-fat side if you can.

Leave for an hour or two and when you’re about 100 minutes off eating, remove the lamb from the marinade and scrape off the excess into a bowl. Heat a skillet till smoking and sear the lamb on both sides for a couple of minutes. Place on top of a rack and spread the remaining marinade in top. Season well. Cook in a medium oven till about 10 minutes before eating, remove and relax. Slice really thinly.

This tastes amazing and will feed 6 or 7

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photo: Indian summer wind

Went wandering in the hills again, this is becoming a habit, but it was such a beautiful afternoon I just felt I had no choice. My work was done, the meal prepared, the kids accounted for and the dog at my heel in a manner of speaking. It has been one of those beautiful, end of summer days, warm, susurrus wind, moving the grasses in the high bog, waving to the vagaries of the breeze. I am completely alone up here apart from the dog. But he is tooling around, chasing scents real or imaginary, who knows what goes on in that young head. It’s as though we’re having a parallel wander, aware but independent of each other. I get a feeling I’ve had before, maybe twenty five years ago when I wandered up from Glenmacnass, to find the unknown and unseen Ouler, bog cotton swaying, bending. I am immersed in the warm wind, transported to other times. I think it’s the noise of the breeze in the grasses, that peculiar brown noise which sends me off into a world of my invention, shivers down my spine not fear, not cold, not spooky. It’s something I search out a lot, escapist.

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Carrauntoohil

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On Saturday, ten of us from the Pyrenean group set off at the crack of dawn to drive to Killorglin and onwards to Carrauntoohil to attempt The Horseshoe which takes in Ireland’s three highest peaks – Caher, Carrauntoohil and Beenkeragh. An awesome eight hour trek in some pretty changeable weather. It was amazing up there.

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olc: Dog walkers

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Dog-walkers’ equivalent of pub-smokers’ smirting has to be dirting.

That’s a sheload of apostrophes in one sentence. I’m an apostrophist, it’s apostastic 🙂