That which is unique, walking Scotland's hidden roads, and defending Microsoft Word to the death | The Pinnacle
This week's links
That which is unique, breaks – this is a thoughtful essay on commoditisation, meaning, humanity, and craft by Simon Sarris. ‘I think today we do not know how to go about building a water fountain. What we know is how to build one thousand water fountains. But not how to build one.’
The Cape Wrath trail: walking Scotland’s hidden roads – in pictures – David Lintern writes about the Cape Wrath Trail, seeking to listen and give a voice to many of the people he met along the way north.
Summer 2021 – a splendid and coherent set of landscape images here from James Lane.
Landscape Photography/Wild Camping in the lake District – these images are from Daron Linney. The first portrait-format one really works for me!
Book Review: A second look at Andrew Terrill’s The Earth Beneath My Feet – the full review from Chris Townsend.
Country diary: reward awaits the hiker who makes it here – Merryn Glover: ‘Everywhere, these astonishing flowers rise like small flags of triumph, testament to the survival of delicacy in a harsh terrain, to the power of new life from ancient ground.’
Finally The Cape Wrath Trail (in 15 days) – Robin Wallace’s account of hiking the Cape Wrath Trail.
MBA Bothies reopen in Scotland and Wales – welcome news.
I Will Defend Microsoft Word to the Death – this is a bit tongue in cheek, but it also resonated with me. I hate working in Google Docs, yet it’s everywhere now. My personal view is that Markdown+Pandoc > Microsoft Word > Google Docs. ‘I’m not saying Google Docs is completely useless, just mostly so. There are some good use cases – in particular, planning documents. I use it for grocery lists, packing lists, to track expenses. But when it comes to the thing I most need a word processor for … Google Docs utterly fails.’
Recently published
The End of Winter – my TGO magazine feature about hiking the Cape Wrath Trail in February 2019, now available to read on my blog.
I have a bunch of features in the September 2021 issue of TGO, which is on sale now.
Don’t forget, The Farthest Shore, is still available to pre-order with Vertebrate Publishing. I’m heading to Vertebrate HQ on Tuesday to sign copies. I’m hoping that by this time next week I’ll be able to share details of the book launch.
Until next time,
Alex
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