The Adventures of Lorie and Brian Groth

This has nothing to do with my adventures, but it is inspiring enough that I wanted to share it with you. Eight minutes into this video is where Bill Gates talks about the problems of education in the US and what he and his foundation is trying to do about it. A big part of it is making the teacher great. The first 8 minutes of the video is about what they’re doing about malaria and you can see him release some mosquitoes on the crowd, so I suggest you watch all 20 minutes of the video.

Yes, a crowded tube can be good for something. This morning, my fellow zombies and I were busy ignoring each other as usual, even though we were all squeezed into the same small place. All of the sudden, a woman passes out. Thankfully, the people that were squished next to her were able to catch her before she even got close to the ground. Suddenly everyone came alive and started opening windows (yes, you can open windows on the underground), fanning her, and moving her to two seats that suddenly came available. I was too far away to help, plus too many other people between me and her, so I just watched the entire thing. She came to in about 10-20 seconds and someone quickly handed her a bottle of water as another helped her undo the top few buttons of her very large wool coat. By the time we arrived at the next stop, she was able to walk out on her own.

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Milo loves eating the snow, thankfully now where he also turns it yellow. We woke up to about 8 inches of snow today. Take a look at the roof above Cafe Nero, which is across the street from our front windows. The roof gives a good idea of the amount of snow. I posted a few other photos of our new flat here.

Yesterday I spent 6 hours doing mock-interviews with Chris Roycroft-Davis, who used to be the executive editor of The Sun among other PR-related roles throughout his career. I was able to do 3 TV interviews and 1 radio interview – all fake, but all focused on how I would discuss Windows Live in an interview. I’ve done print interviews before (Times, Guardian, etc.), but now I feel ready for TV and radio. 

I have no idea if I will ever end up doing a television interview, but it was fun to learn how to prepare for it and how to conduct myself during the interview.

With no ability to stay in one location very long, Lorie and I have found a new place in London to live. It is in the Fulham Broadway area in a building that has a set of plants and palm trees in the middle. Our door opens onto this treed area and even the Royal Mail refers to this set flats as “Fulham Island”. Click on the picture to see a map of the area. 

We have been living in London for over 2 years now, and I’m still amused by the term "mind". In the States, we would say "watch", but probably have tons of other warnings to go along with it too.

Alan’s recent blog entry reminded me that a little over a week ago, Milo and Daisy took Alan, Megan, and I on a 6 hour walk around Marlow, which is about a 45 minute drive from London. I already posted our photos the hike on the Chiltern Footpath; and yes, it was about 0c (freezing) the entire day. We got there in the MINI, which means it looked like this, but Milo instead of Elwood, plus me and my backpack. Yes, it was a little crowded, but not bad.

To anyone looking for an easy hike in England, walking along any part of the 180 mike Thames Path is a great option.

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We spent a cold morning/noon at Windsor Castle today, but it is a pretty impressive place so the cold was worth it. Other photos are here.

Some friends and family haven’t quite figured out how to easily post photos online yet, so here is a little tutorial.

Copy to your PC: The first step is to copy photos to your computer. There are all sorts of ways to do that, including importing via Windows Live Photo Gallery, but I always just pull the memory stick out of my camera and manually copy files from it to my PC. It is easiest if you copy them to your Pictures folder.

Start WL Photo Gallery: Once you have photos copied to your PC, go to your Start menu in Windows, click on All Programs, then Windows Live, then Windows Live Photo Gallery. This is what is pictured to the left.

View photos in WL Photo Gallery: In WL Photo Gallery, navigate on the left-hand-side to “All photos and videos", then Pictures, and down to wherever you copied your pictures.

Edit: You can now double-click on any photo and “auto-correct”, change the file name, and do whatever else you want to the photo. Use the Fix and Info menu items to do all of this. Click on “Back to gallery” to get back to your list of photos.

Publish: Click on each picture you want to publish to http://photos.live.com. When you hover over a photo, you will see a small check box that you can click, or you can hold the Ctrl key down when clicking on different pictures. Then on the menu bar, click Publish/Online Album.

This is when you will see the image to the left. Type in a name for your new online folder or select an existing one. Then click Publish. (tip: if you select the Upload size of “original”, then I can download your large file, which is nice for me)

Share: Once the files get uploaded, you can click the “View Album” button. Then when viewing them online, there is an option to “Send a link” right above your list of photos (circled in red in the picture to the left).

This year I wasn’t biking alone. It was a little cold, but since there was no rain, Char (Lorie’s mom) joined me for a ride around London on the only day of the year when no city buses run. During the day, the temperature dropped, but we never got rained on, so it ended up being a nice 3-hour ride. I made a rough map of our route, which included the following locations:

• Going past the Royal Albert Hall with a short stop at the Albert Memorial
• Through Hyde Park up to Speakers’ Corner, but nobody was speaking today
• Around Piccadilly Circus, which had more cars this year, probably because the weather was nice so people were out and about.
• A short break for coffee (not me) at Leicester Square then down through Trafalgar Square
• Down to the Thames River where we saw the Houses of Parliament, Westminster Abbey, and The London Eye.  
• Past Buckingham Palace and up to Hyde Park Corner
• Then back to the river across from the Battersea Power Station (used on Pink Floyd’s album Animals)
• Over the Chelsea Bridge, through Battersea Park, over the Albert Bridge and back home

I’ve posted some photos too.