Coastwalk , South West Coast Path

Mousehole → Penzance

Distance: 3.75 miles
Ascent: 50 metres
Duration: 1 hour 25 minutes

At sea level
« Land's End | Porthleven »

The Saturday before we got married, Emma and I visited Greenwich. It's somewhere I've been many times before but a new place for Em. There on top of the hill in the park stands the Royal Observatory and outside a brass line marks the Meridian - the line of zero latitude.

A further twelve years back I stood with my family at another line: on the equator - the line of zero longitude - on our last holiday together. A sign by the roadside proudly declared the location while locals offered demonstrations of the clockwise/anticlockwise plughole myth.

With two dimensions covered off I was looking forward to seeing how the line of zero altitude was celebrated at its point of definitive measurement on our island: the Tidal Observatory on the South Pier at Newlyn Harbour.

I was disappointed.

There was nothing: no public access to the pier, no footnote on the town signs, not even a plaque that could be seen by the public.

The closest we got was the landward end of the pier where - hidden by the side of a track - Ordnance Survey Benchmark Faceplate 1502 serves the purpose of being an auxiliary benchmark to the tidal gauge.

The remainder of the short walk was uneventful, with a little drizzle. It matched my mood perfectly.

Coastwalk , South West Coast Path

Porthleven → Lizard Lighthouse

Distance: 14.9 miles
Ascent: 759 metres
Duration: 6 hours 1 minute

To the south
« Penzance | Coverack »

Today we have mostly been walking south: as far south as we'll ever go on this coastwalk. There's little to see or talk about at Lizard; it makes a great destination for a walk, but those arriving by car must be hugely disappointed. The village is one tat shop after another and the end of the road has... nothing.

Back to the start then. The harbour at Porthleven was bathed in sunlight this morning, a far cry from the previous two days' stormy weather. Once we turned the corner to walk above the sands, the weather for the rest of the day was clear: sea fog was rolling in over the clifftops, with the bright sunlight giving the day an eerie feel.

This walk is full of interesting sights. Above Loe Bar stands a monument identical in structure to one we saw yesterday on the other side of Porthleven. It was erected by the same councillor: Frank E. Strike. Who was he, and how many other monuments did he fund?

The most astonishing sight was the Church of the Storms a mile an a half south of Gunwalloe. It's been leaning against a rock right by the waves for seven hundred years now and on a day like today its warmth and peace is difficult to walk away from. The interior is stunningly beautiful, both in architecture and decoration. If you're ever nearby, don't miss it.

Above the next cove to the south at Poldhu stands a momument to commemorate the first wireless transatlantic communication, but before we reached it we were greeted by an elderly woman in a wheelchair outside a care centre. (How communication must have changed in her lifetime!) She told wonderfully flamboyant stories of her encounters with Errol Flynn, her eyes lighting up as she reminisced with total strangers. A few metres away the monument has become almost a place of pilgrimage for those interested in modern telecommunications and yet here was the more compelling interaction: face-to-face, human-to-human.

Notes for walkers following in our steps:
South of the Loe Bar, follow the footpath up to the cross, not the obvious track on the left.
As you approach the valley at Kynance Cove, the path keeps right and drops down steeply out of view rather than following the valley inland. This was very poorly signed.

Coastwalk , South West Coast Path

Penzance → Porthleven

Distance: 14.0 miles
Ascent: 475 metres
Duration: 5 hours 43 minutes

Around Mount's Bay
« Mousehole | Lizard Lighthouse »

We've been in Cornwall for four days so far, but a heavy cold has meant we've failed to walk yet. Time to rectify that! The revised plan is to walk round Mount's Bay before the week ends.

Setting off early today, we took the bus from Portleven to the start of our walk in Penzance. The view across Mount's Bay was dominated by St Michael's Mount and its Victorian Gothic castle; cut off for most of the day by the tide, a selection of boats ferry visitors to and from the Mount. With a brisk breeze just keeping the low clouds off, we could clearly see the lush private garden planted on the slopes of the Mount.

Further east, we came across another iconic Cornish image: large chimneys and the remains of old mine buildings stood perilously close to the edge of the steep, crumbling cliffs. Looking at the now silent shells of the huge engine houses, it was hard to imagine that this was once a thriving industry that supported the marginal villages and hamlets that we passed on the way into Porthleven.

Tech

The all-seeing eye

How would you feel about a piece of software that watches all your web browsing and builds a profile of your interests so that the adverts you are shown are more relevant than the generic ones you see today?

There was a lot of fuss earlier this year about a service which proposed to do just that. Initially picked up by the tech press, the furore migrated into mainstream media and eventually those involved appeared to have lost interest in the UK market. Yesterday the OFT began to make noises about a related idea.

Chalk one up for the people, right?

I'm puzzled that the privacy activists who were most vocal in the campaign didn't notice when another company quietly stepped up to the plate. And you know that company. Its name is Google.

Have a look at Google Ads Preferences.

According to Google I'm interested in Activism & Social Issues as well as Winter Sports. They decided this by tagging my Google ID (a number stored in my browser at their request) with interest categories based on the websites I recently visited.

Their trick is that rather than watching users' activity by from the ISP's network, Google can see web pages each time a website includes a reference to JavaScript hosted by one of their servers. So every time a browser loads a page that embeds a Google advert, Google gets a chance to examine the displayed page, find frequent keywords, associate an interest category and hook it into the user's ID.

Google claim to do this only on YouTube and pages that show Google Ads, but why should they stop there? There are many more opportunities for Google to review what a user's browsing. Any page that shows a Google map, embeds FriendConnect, uses Google Analytics - or indeed any of Google's products - does so by instructing the browser application to download a piece of software which has free run of the page being shown.

Did you ever wonder why Google offer so many webmaster-friendly tools for free? Google's opportunity is massive - they have hooks everywhere.

Of course the same could be done by any of the other big players. What does the Twitter profile widget do behind the scenes? Or AddToAny and friends? Or the various hosted comments service such as the one I currently use on this blog?

The root of the problem is twofold. Web page authors have got used to including scripts from third parties without thinking, and the security model of the scripting technology is very limited. Authors are essentially inviting persons unknown to do anything they like to pages served from their sites. But they're too busy "monetizing" to stop and think about the implications.

Am I being unkind? Maybe webmasters do think. Maybe they think Google can be trusted. After all "don't be evil" is Google's unofficial motto. (If only they defined what "evil" is.) But is that trust well placed?

Those with a long memory may recall a similar storm about behavioural advertising ten years ago. Back then the bête noire was a company called DoubleClick. Although defeated after a time, they didn't go away. They were bought by Google last year. Guess what powers Google's latest Ad Preferences technology?

So I won't be adding any new third-party scripts to this website, and I'll be working to remove the one which I currently use: it's the only way to safeguard the privacy of visitors to this site.

Targeted advertising is remarkably good at reviving itself. It's not dead yet and will continue to fight back until there's a wider public debate about privacy and the proliferation of our digital shadow.

Personal , Tech

We have tweed

Is this the best iPhone case yet? Not only was the fabric woven in the Western Isles, but the item itself was stitched together in Scotland too. It's not quite as big as a full-length jacket, but we've found a genuine Harris Tweed item to fit our electric southern lives.

For those similarly inspired, you can buy them from Advanced MP3 Players in Leith.

Arts

Goodbye to the Plinthers

For the first time in many years I spent a few hours on my own ambling round London today. It's something I used to do a lot as a student.

And with Antony Gormley's One and Other project wrapping up in a couple of days I had to drop by the fourth plinth. I've seen about a dozen or so of the "plinthers", but this evening's was probably the best, a woman in bright blue robes spent the entire hour doing graceful Tai Chi in the gathering dusk. It looks strange on the recording, but was perfect in the setting of Trafalgar Square.

For me it's what the project should have been about all along - moving statues, people doing "their thing" rather than the talent show it had frequently become.

Angels

Soap

Lush's one redeeming feature: an opportunity to photograph yet another angelic product.