From BBC Radio 4’s The Now Show:
La Côte D’Arbroz
Little Red Riding Hood – the Techie Version
La Grande Ourse, Mont Chéry
There’s not much competition for the best restaurant on the slopes of Morzine and Les Gets. The pistes are littered with places that offer overpriced food and surly service. Having skied in the area since 1979 and this year since mid-February, we’ve had a chance to explore more places than usual and made it our daily mission to track down the best food!
Chez Nannon (Nyon) and La Paika (Les Gets) are very good, but ahead by a clear margin is La Grande Ourse (no, “The Big Bear”, not what you’re thinking).
La Grande Ourse is at the top of Mont Chéry, the ski area opposite Les Gets. Run by the Venning family, from Cornwall in South-West England, La Grande Ourse has been completely renovated in the last three years to a very high standard. The staff are attentive and knowledgable (and speak excellent English!) and the menu is a delight. On the menu when we visited was chicken, seafood tartiflette, lamb, salmon, Cornish sausages, duck and the inevitable hamburger. The menu of the day (15 Euro) was belly pork served with leek mash followed by sticky toffee pudding. My other half had the Cornish sausages. It was all delicious.
Although Mont Chéry isn’t the biggest ski area in the Portes du Soleil, La Grande Ourse is certainly good enough to justify a special trip to these slopes. We’ll be back soon!
To book go to the La Grande Ourse website or call 06 79 42 58 86
Powder Video
Vanity, I know, but what the heck!
My Powder Tracks!
I may be getting the hang of this!
Great fresh powder in Morzine/Les Gets today. It’s been snowing heavily since lunchtime so tomorrow is looking good as well!
Olympus E-30 Review on dpreview.com
dpreview.com has now published its full review of the new Olympus E-30.
Mini-Worlds
I’ve added a page of mini-worlds, panoramic images wrapped into a circle, that I’ve created in Photoshop and used on my Picture of the Day site.
More Skiing Pics
Some more skiing pics from the last few days. Lots more on my Flickr page.
It’s a Windows world according to the BBC
There’s something of a brouhaha over this report from the BBC.
No Mac advice as BBC team exposes…its Windows-centricity – Digital Lifestyle – Macworld UK
Sony PRS-505 Reader – A Short Review
I’m really enjoying my Sony Reader PRS-505. I got hold of it before Christmas with the aim of lightening my travel load, and it works a treat.
The screen is very clear – when I saw it on display in Waterstones I thought it was a mock-up with a piece of paper slapped over it. There’s no backlighting on the screen but you can always clip one of those little reading lights on the cover when you want to read in the dark.
The battery life is excellent because it only uses power when you turn the page. I ran it recently for seven days, using it everyday, and the battery indicator was still showing full when I got around to plugging it in. I’ve never seen it showing less than half charge.
Sony’s partner in the UK is Waterstones. Last time I looked they only had about 7,500 ebooks available and their prices aren’t low either. The good news is many ebooks can be downloaded free of charge, in fact the Reader includes a CD with 100 out-of-copyright classics to get you started. And the Gutenberg Project has thousands of free titles to download.
For purchased books I’ve been using mainly ebooks.com and Powells. Ebooks are available in a variety of formats, DRM’ed and DRM-free, and tools are available online to convert to and from various formats.
As a Mac user there is one ripple on the pond. Sony uses Adobe Digital Editions to authorise the Reader to display DRM-protected files and the Mac version of ADE doesn’t recognise the Reader. The solution is to authorise the Reader from the Windows version of ADE, either with a real PC or something like Parallels. Once the Reader has been authorised you can use the Mac version of ADE to put files on the Reader, or simply drag them to the Reader which shows up as a USB drive in the Finder.
An even better solution is Calibre by Kovid Goyal. Calibre (freeware) converts ebook formats, sends the files to the Reader, allows you to read the ebooks on your Mac as well, if you wish, and generally manages your ebook library.
Sony has recently released the PRS-700 with built-in backlighting, a touchscreen and a higher price, but it’s getting mixed reviews. The 700 isn’t designed to replace the 505 apparently, and both are likely to be on sale for the foreseeable future, but the PRS-505, at US$300/UK£200, is significantly cheaper and does the job well. Recommended.
