Carl G Thomas

I’ve fought through the jet lag to put together some of the 500-odd photos from my trip to Cuba. Enjoy!

Last October I travelled around Sicily and its volcanic Islands. I’ve finally finished selecting some of the thousand-odd photos I took and adding some hopefully useful captions. Enjoy!

Some photos from my recent Slovenia trip are now up. Enjoy!

I’ve just got back from a trip to Slovenia and am currently sifting through the hundreds of photos I took, picking out a few good ones for my travel section.

Slovenia’s a beautiful little country. The trip was a real holiday where I met a great bunch of people, walked in forested mountains, took a dip in a mountain lake, and wandered around pretty little villages (that looked suspiciously like film sets).

Check back on Sunday, when I should have found some time to finish putting something together.

I completed the Square Mile Run on Thursday evening, and have consequently raised well over one hundred pounds for Crisis, the charity for single, homeless people. A big thankyou to all of you who supported me with your sponsorship. Together with my colleagues at Rabobank, we’ve managed to raise over 2,500 pounds.

It was a pretty mad run, with the course set on public pavements and not cordoned off in any way, apart from some cones down the middle of the the Millennium Bridge. The poor members of the public looked like rabbits caught in car headlights as 2,700 runners stampeded along the embankment from St Paul’s to the London Eye and back again.

However, the big question is – did I manage to complete the 3.5 miles within my target of 30 minutes? Unfortunately, I can’t be sure! Yes, I timed myself, but – the course was rather longer than the advertised 3.5 miles. A fellow runner with a GPS watch clocked it as being around 4.25 miles. I calculated that I would have done 3.5 miles in around 31 minutes at best. A personal best, but still a minute over my target.

Looks like I’ll have to start running in the dark winter months instead of lazily staying in and drinking warm whisky toddies!

A quick note to give you a link to where you can download a detailed map of the route:

http://www.crisis.org.uk/page.builder/SMRRoute

Despite some protests from my legs and lungs, I’ve upped my normal summer running regime these past few weeks in order to post a decent (i.e. not too embarrassing) time in the Square Mile Run next month.

This evening I did 3.5 miles (the race distance) around the local woods in a little under 32 minutes (I know, not exactly Chariots of Fire, but it *is* rather hilly around here!)  so with a couple of weeks’ training time left before the race I reckon I’ll be able to achieve my aim of breaking the 30 minute barrier. Keep that encouragement coming!

On the fund-raising front, so far we’ve raised £660 and are well on the way to our goal. Many thanks to all those of you who have donated or pledged!

On Thursday 4th June I’ll be taking part in the 2009 Square Mile Run, a 3.5 mile charity run around the centre of London to raise money for Crisis, the national charity for single homeless people.

There are 22 of us from Rabobank taking part, with the aim to raise at least £100 each. Rabobank will match donations up to £750, and with an extra 25% from the government’s Gift Aid scheme we can raise even more money for this good cause.

We have set up a page on the JustGiving website where you can read more about us and the event, and where, if you are feeling generous, you can support us by safely making donations:

http://www.justgiving.com/isdcrisissquaremilerun

And if you’d like to leave a message when making a donation, a “Good luck, Carl” would be great!

Although it has been several months since this year’s trip to Jordan, I’ve finally found the time to pull together a few of the photos from and put some text on them. Enjoy.

London’s annual Lord Mayor’s Show ended with the usual spectacular Fireworks display on Saturday evening.

I took the opportunity to try out the Canon EOS 50D and the EFS 17-55mm f/2.8 IS USM in a low-light, night-time setting. The results were as expected: Superb images at the lower sub-400 ISOs, so-so at around 800 ISO, and noisy at 1600 ISO. The f/2.8 and the Image Stabilisation of the lens helped me get some very clean shots.