Foreign Perspectives

Archive for the ‘Development’ Category

As you know, we upped the ante with the camera a few months ago. Up until then the computer was doing fine as the image size was around the 600k mark but now each one is more like 5mb which obviously eats up the storage space somewhat faster.

In tandem with that, we’ve both been using the computer a whole lot more than we had in the past so a) we’re fighting over it and b) it’s filling up much faster than expected.

And that’s before you even consider the usual expansion into other websites that happens over the Winter. We’ve been plugging away with Whole Earth Guide as you know and today Cultured Views was born.

Finally, we have pencilled in a slide scanner so that we can mine the slide library that I have which will, of course, eat up the storage even faster.

Or, in short, we’re in the market for a new computer.

As usual, prices have dived and performance have soared since we bought this little guy last year. Whereas our £650 bought us 60GB, 1.5GHz, 256k cache and XP Pro, this year our £600 will buy 200GB, 1.86GHz, 2GB cache, DVD writer and Vista Business. It’s even possible to weigh in at the £350 mark for 120GB, 1.86GHz, 1Gb cache and Vista Home but somehow I suspect that 1GB cash and 120GB disc plus Vista probably isn’t a long term option.

One big plus this year is that the new member of our computer family is being paid for entirely out of our Internet income whereas last time it had to be paid for out of real-world income.

Not that I’m running out of photographs but I thought that it was time that I started on the regional guides for our Whole Earth Guide so after a little enhancement of the code for the site, the Languedoc-Roussillon guide made its debut this evening.

It mightn’t look terribly spectacular but that simple enhancement is the first step to let me start integrating the guide into the various B&B/self-catering listings sites though I’ll need to run up a few more regional guides to make that worth doing. Courtesy of the way which the software works, you’ll see at least one detailed article for each of the regions which I roll the guide out to.

Still haven’t made a bean on the guide as yet but hopefully that’ll begin to change over the next month or so as the various articles are coming pretty well on google searches.

Although we’ve been living in the Languedoc-Roussillon for getting on for four years now, we’ve only seen the Pont du Gard for the first time yesterday.

How come? Well, the Languedoc-Roussillon region is really strung out and the Pont looked a long, long way from us. In fact, Wendy didn’t believe that it would only take us a couple of hours to drive there yet, as usual, the Mappy was just about dead on.

The perfect time to arrive at the Pont is in the early afternoon as you can see. That has the light falling on the aqueduct just about perfectly.

As you’d expect there are loads of water based activities on offer around the area yet strangely it doesn’t seem overlly touristy as the relatively few tourist shops are confined to the visitor centre complex which isn’t visible from the aqueduct itself.

We’ll be running up a full article shortly for Whole Earth Guide but don’t wait around for that if you’re in the area: just go!

Now that we’re into the lull in bookings characteristic of weeks 2 & 3 of September every year, we’re resuming our weekend daytrips aimed at seeing the region properly and adding to our stock of photos for the guide.

Why the lull? Well, the French stop taking their holidays at the end of the third week of August more or less en mass which gives us a drop in bookings in the fourth week. That changes dramatically in the first week of September when Visa pour l’Image (the photojournalism festival) is on in Perpignan as it pulls in vast numbers of both tourists and photojournalists from around the world. For the 2nd and 3rd week of September most of the hotels around the beaches are still open but there aren’t so many tourists about so occupancy drops. By the end of the 3rd week they’ve pretty much all closed but the number of tourists hasn’t dropped much so we usually get a fair jump in bookings from then.

But what about the daytrips? Well, yesterday we were off to see Lastours which is a Cathar castle that you rarely hear about. It’s quite unique too as it’s the only one where construction was started by the Cathars and finished by the French (three of the four towers are Cathar). Along the way we managed to call in at Aquilar (the smallest of the Cathar castles), the abbey of Lagrasse and even Carcassonne not to mention fitting in a brief stop along the Canal du Midi. Quite a full day for sure but one which has let me add articles on Carcassonne and the Canal du Midi to Whole Earth Guide this morning.

We’re hoping to get to the other end of the Languedoc in the coming week to see the Pont du Gard, Aigues Mort and one or two other things around the Nimes area.

As we move out of the Summer, the number of opportunities available on the pay per post sites is increasing quite rapidly as indeed is the range to choose from.

Surprisingly, included among this increased number is a large number of tourist/travel related ones which is perfect for me as they’re by far the easiest ones to write and they fit well into the overall theme of this blog too. However, it gets better because a number of them are in areas which I’m developing for our Whole Earth Guide ie people are paying me to write stuff that I’d be writing anyway!

What would be really nice is if I could get some of these folk paying for individual posts to sponsor the guide but perhaps that’ll come in due course. After all, I’ve only just started the first phase of promotion for the guide.