We regularly found ourselves cycling in temperatures in the high 30’s (around 100 for you fahrenheiters) and it occurred to us that on days like that at home we wouldn’t consider getting the bike out of the shed, let alone ride 70km.

We ended up setting the alarm for early in the morning so we could knock off as many kilometres as possible before about 10am, when the sun would start to fry us alive.

We’d spend the rest of the day on endless searches for water fountains. Gasping with the heat of it all, we’d fill our water bottles, wet our heads and soak our clothes.

I also wet a sarong and draped it over my head and arms, which lasted for about 5 minutes before it vaporised.

August is Holiday Season in Italy

It seemed that all of Europe was clustered on the beaches, which were not at all like the beaches we Australians are used to. You don’t just rock up with your bag of stuff and find a nice spot.

The beaches along the Mediterranean coast are covered in neat lines of umbrellas and you must pay to use them. We found one ‘free’ beach, a narrow section about 5 metres wide squeezed in between the commercial sections. It was mental.

Given the choice, we’d plan this tour in one of the months either side of August to avoid both the heat and the crowds.

Italy is old!

It’s a pretty big deal for us to meet people living in houses that were built many centuries ago. It puts things into perspective from a historical point of view.

Sprawling cities and busy freeways can make it feel like Australia has always been this way, but in fact it’s only a couple of hundred years since our country was first invaded by white man.

Italian villagers had been going about their daily business for many centuries by the time that happened.

Our Route

Como
Milan
Reggio Emilio
Bologna
Castel del Rio
Borgo San Lorenzo
Levane
Cortona
Orgia
Casole d’Elsa
Pontedera
Avenza
La Spezia, Cinque Terre
Genova
Carcare
Mondovi
Caraglio
Ventimiglia

We rested for a week in Cortona, housesitting in a fabulous old monastery. Apparently it was over a thousand years old.

This video exists because of Johnny

Cycling through Italy was part of a bigger adventure, and we’ve already made videos about the other segments:

Buying a secondhand bike in London

25 hours on a bus from London to Switzerland 

Cycling over the Swiss Alps damn near killed me

94 year old Granny – “I’m the most ungangsta person in all the world”

The Italy segment happened right after the Swiss Alps, before the housesit in France with the 94 year old gangsta granny.

Editing the Italy video had been on my ‘To Do’ list forever but I’d been too busy with work to get to it. Then one day, in the No Small Creator (#nosmallcreator) Facebook group, a guy named Johnny James Jamrock offered to edit videos for other creators. He wanted to improve his editing skills.

I jumped at the chance and sent him a choice of 5 videos from my ‘To Edit’ list. He chose the Italy adventure so I set about narrowing hundreds of clips to ‘just 119’, yielding 22GB of data that I had to somehow transfer to him.

We drew up an agreement which clarified our expectations and Johnny set to work.

I was rapt with the outcome. Johnny perfectly captured the essence of a great adventure – two Australians cycling through Italy in the height of summer, dealing with the heat but having a blast anyway – seeing the sights, camping in the wild and enjoying each other’s company.

Johnny and I enjoyed working together so much we’ve started talking about collaborating on some commercial projects, which would be a pretty great outcome from a whimsical offer in a Facebook group.

You can stalk Johnny here:

Johnny’s YouTube channel 
Johnny’s Facebook page
Johnny’s Instagram

Thank you to the people that put us up

Some of the best nights were when we stayed with hosts from the Warm Showers organisation. Two that particularly stood out were Marco in Castel del Rio, who had the keys to the town and gave us a private night time tour of all the attractions, and Enrico from Borgo San Lorenzo. The scene where Cam buys gelato was at Enrico’s local. You can hear him laughing when Cam tries to say ‘limone’.

We also stayed with our good friends Leslie, Piero and Sofia in Orgia. Piero is an amazing cook so we enjoyed wonderful Italian meals at their house.

We visited an old school friend, Elena, and her partner Domenico, in Caraglio. The ride away from the coast and up into the mountains was totally worth it because I swear the best food I have ever eaten was at their house. Domenico is a magician. That’s him in the final few seconds of the video, learning to say ‘salad’ in Australian by holding his nose to get the proper nasal inflection.

Fun times. 10/10 would do again.

When you visit Singapore you’ll notice a heap of little markets and fruit stalls full of amazing tropical fruits from Thailand and Malaysia.

There are fabulous fruits such as dragon fruit, rambutans and lychees.

Then there’s the one that assaults your nostrils as you approach.

The durian is a large fruit that smells dreadful. You’re not allowed to take it on the public transport system. Many buildings ban it.

And yet, many people swear it’s their favourite fruit in the world.

Durian Stalls

To get around the problem of not being able to transport durian home, people eat it (wearing gloves) at special durian stalls.

The first stall we found had big signs up saying ‘sold out’. There was some pre-ordered durian stored in a fridge, guarded by shopkeepers who were fighting off the people that wanted desperately to buy it.

The next time we came across durian was when our local shopkeeper said she’d have some on Thursday. I went at the end of the day but apparently it was all gone by lunchtime.

Finally, I came across a durian stall in Chinatown with several varieties to try.

Durian tastes pretty weird

I had trouble getting past the texture of durian. It had no structure; it was paste-like, as if it had gone bad.

I found it helped if I didn’t breathe while I was eating it, otherwise it really was like eating spew-flavoured custard.

It was kind of interesting and I’m glad I had it but I wouldn’t rush back to have it again.

Other people reckon it grows on you.

The best fruit of them all

By far my favourite fruit in Singapore was the langsat, also known as luku-langsat, duku-langsat, lanzones and longkong.

It’s a small fruit with a thin skin that needs to be removed. Inside are about 5 segments of differing sizes. The big segments contain a bitter tasting green seed. The taste is similar in some ways to grapefruit, but it’s very sweet so there’s a delightful sweet and sour thing going on.

The amazing thing about langsat is the texture. It’s jelly-like, similar to the confectionary we know as ‘jelly babies’.

I stuffed myself with bags and bags of this fruit.

If you visit Singapore, eat as many as you can. Instagram a photo and tag me in it!

@cathwood1000

I really wanted to go downtown to see Singapore’s National Day celebrations while I was housesitting there in August 2018, but I was anxious about the crowds, especially the idea of getting home with millions of other people trying to do the same thing.

In the event I needn’t have worried because Singapore is an incredibly efficient country when it comes to moving people around.

I didn’t know that beforehand. After fretting a bit I decided to drink some concrete, harden up and get out there and enjoy it.

Where is the best place to see Singapore’s National Day Celebrations?

I watched the celebrations from the area in front of the Art Science Museum, which was pretty good. There were a lot of people there but it wasn’t hard to find a place to squeeze in.

I had done some research before I left which had the effect of making me worry there would be no space anywhere.

I went down a couple of hours before the celebrations were due to start, mostly because I wanted to capture a good shot of the woodpecker parents feeding their babies in the nest I had previously found in the Gardens by the Bay area.

I got talking to a guy who suggested I position myself right next to the platform where all the performances were taking place. I could see from the map that it was easily reached by crossing the Helix Bridge, but it turned out that bridge was closed and the only way across was to catch the train. I decided to stay on the Marina Bay Sands side.

Really I don’t think it matters that much where you end up. You’ll see most of it from most places. Being part of the crowd is the main thing, it’s such a buzz.

Spectacular Displays

The aerial displays by the various defence forces were absolutely spectacular.

Planes and choppers flew over in stunning formations, parachutists wearing wing suits came down in a blaze of red smoke and combat divers free fell into the water. It was all thoroughly marvellous and the crowd loved it.

The evening concluded with an outstanding fireworks display.

It never rains on National Day

I met a fabulous woman named Audrey who kindly let me occupy her rug.

I couldn’t have chosen a better tour guide. Audrey shared interesting snippets about Singapore and the celebrations all through the event.

I was especially intrigued when she told me it never rains on National Day because they seed the clouds in the days beforehand to make it rain, leaving National Day itself to enjoy perfectly fine weather.

“Everybody gets to enjoy today,” she said. “Nobody gets drenched.”

Getting Home

Before the celebrations I noticed police and security staff everywhere. I also saw that systems had been put in place to manage the unusually large amount of people. Combined with the polite way in which the Singaporeans conducted themselves during the celebrations, I started to relax about getting home.

It turned out I was right – there was absolutely nothing to worry about. Staff at the train station were controlling traffic flow, opening and closing various gates to let people through. I waited for a short time before my section was allowed through.

We all beeped our way through the gates and made our way to the platforms. A train came along and people flooded on, but there was a staff member positioned at every door controlling the crowd as the train got full and doors were about to close.

A minute later another train came along and I got on, following a young European boy who was thoroughly delighted by the whole experience, laughing manically as he and his family boarded the train in a crush of people.

10/10 would do again. If you find yourself in Singapore on National Day (9th August) go to the downtown area. It’s a heap of fun and nowhere near as stressful as you might think.

Looking for things to do while visiting Singapore? You could always visit the Singapore Zoo but if it’s the monkeys you love most, why not see them in the wild?

I was so excited when I discovered that monkeys live in the wild in Singapore that I raced off to find them pretty much immediately. It just hadn’t occurred to me that such a populated place would have a wild population of primates.

You can find them in several places, all of which are easy to get to with Singapore’s fantastic public transport system, the MRT.

Bukit Timah Nature Reserve

Bukit Timah Nature Reserve is a lovely big park with heaps of walking and mountain bike trails. I had to search high and low for monkeys, so when I finally found a troop of Long Tailed Macaques it was very rewarding.

They were insanely cute. There were a lot of little ones leaping about the place and riding on the backs of bigger ones. I was watching their shenanigans when I noticed a big stream of piss coming out of the tree not too far away, so I decided to move up the road a bit. Before long the entire troop were over the top of my head…

They’re very curious about humans, apparently.

I had been so excited about seeing monkeys that I completely forgot to bring my new zoom lens so I was disappointed that my footage was a bit rubbish. Then I moved off the road and up into the jungle and things improved a little, so I persevered, thinking this was my one and only opportunity.

Tree Top Walk

I was just about finished editing the monkey video when I went downtown to watch the Singapore National Day Celebrations.

I met a lovely lady named Audrey, who you’ll meet in the next video.

She asked me if I’d been to the Tree Top Walk? I hadn’t because I’d made the assumption it would be $25 and I had enough free entertainment to keep me going. It turns out it’s a free attraction and boy, is it fabulous.

Audrey told me that if I wanted to see monkeys, this is where I should go.

MacRitchie Reservoir

The Tree Top Walk is located in the MacRitchie Reservoir park. If you look at a map of Singapore you’ll see a big green area right in the middle. This is the MacRitchie Reservoir to the east, and Bukit Timah Nature Reserve to the west.

Again I easily and inexpensively caught a bus, and set off on the walking trail.

Within a few minutes I came across a big troop of monkeys all lined up along the railings of a wooden walkway. It was highly entertaining to watch them go about their business. They were grooming each other, scratching their balls, rummaging about on the forest floor for things to eat, leaping dramatically from branch to railing and back again, and always, always watching for an opportunity to fleece the humans.

Monkey kicks woman

One lady positioned herself near the railing so her husband could take a photo. A monkey instantly came up behind her and started to undo the zip of her bag. The husband stepped forward and shooed the monkey away with his walking stick. The monkey retreated momentarily, then rushed forward, kicked the woman in the back and disappeared over the side of the railing.

She screamed. I caught it all on film.

It was completely marvellous.

Monkey grabs my tripod

After I’d published this video I went for ‘one last look’ at the monkeys before I flew out of Singapore.

I went back to MacRitchie Reservoir and found a troop hanging out on a path. I set up my camera – with the zoom lens – to capture their antics and was there for long enough that the troop took to ignoring me.

People came and went and I observed their different approaches. Some were relaxed, some were terrified. One guy was thoroughly obnoxious.

In one of the lulls a few little ‘teenage’ monkeys came over to investigate my equipment. I filmed the encounter on my phone because my main camera was on top of the tripod. One little guy approached only half warily, put his hand out, grabbed the tripod leg then backed off with a hiss when I moved slightly. It would have been quite entertaining to see what happened if I just let him go for it, but I didn’t fancy seeing my camera up a tree. It was bad enough when that horse made off with it in France.

You can see the footage on my Instagram feed, just near the sunflower. @cathwood1000

Exclude Older Search Results

You can easily ask Google to only show you results from the last 12 months.

Enter your search term into Google and hit Enter.

Underneath you’ll see the menu bar saying All, Videos, News, Images etc.

On the very right you’ll see Tools.

Click that to reveal another menu containing Any Country, Any Time, All Results.

Under Any Time, select Past Year.

Voila!

You are now seeing results from the past 12 months only.

I use this trick whenever I conduct a search that doesn’t yield good results.

I hope you find it as useful as I do. Let me know in the comments!

If you have any requests for future videos, please let me know.

Wherever you are, I hope you’re having a great day.

Change your H1’s, H2’s etc

If you don’t like the default heading sizes that come with Divi you can change them at module level. For example if you use a text module you can choose what size to make your H1’s, H2’s etc.

However, if you set your Heading sizes in the Divi theme customiser you’ll obtain a consistent look throughout your whole website.

Why use headings?

When writing content for your website it’s nearly always best practice to break it up into sections, and to give each section a heading.

The main title of the page will be the most important, so you’ll make it a Heading 1, or H1.

Subsections will be Heading 2’s, or H2’s.

Sections within those subsections might be H3’s or H4’s.

When logged into your WordPress dashboard, hover over Divi (bottom left) and choose Theme Customiser.

Select General Settings > Typography.

You’ll see a slider for Header Text Size.

Moving this left and right adjusts the size of the H1 heading.

If you want to individually set the H2, H3, H4, H5 and H6 headings you’ll need to do it via CSS.

I find this is generally unnecessary because the Header Text Size slider changes all the headings proportionally.

For example, I started with the following heading sizes:

H1 – 30 pixels
H2 – 26 pixels
H3 – 22 pixels
H4 – 18 pixels

I adjusted the H1 to 60 pixels and I ended up with:

H1 – 60 pixels
H2 – 51 pixels
H3 – 43 pixels
H4 – 36 pixels

Although I was specifically adjusting the H1, the others increased proportionally as well.

I hope you found this tutorial helpful. If so, please remember to subscribe to my YouTube channel, give the video a thumbs up and leave a comment.

If you have any requests for future videos, please let me know.

Wherever you are, I hope you’re having a great day.

CTRL + 0

Sometimes you’ll visit a website and find the text is too big, or too small.

You don’t have to put up with it, you can easily and quickly adjust it using the keys on your keyboard.

CTRL and the + key will make the text bigger.

CTRL and the – key will make it smaller.

CTRL and 0 will restore it to the default for that page.

It doesn’t matter which +, – and 0 keys you use.

You can use the keys across the top of your keyboard, or you can use the keys on the number pad to the right. In the video I demonstrate the keys across the top.

Hold down the CTRL key first, then tap the second key one step at a time. Don’t hold down the second key or everything will go crazy. Just one tap at a time.

I hope you found this tip helpful. If so, please remember to subscribe to my YouTube channel, give the video a thumbs up and leave a comment.

If you have any requests for future videos, please let me know.

Wherever you are, I hope you’re having a great day.

In July 2017 Cam and I hired a car and drove up the west coast of Ireland.

One of the highlights of the trip was the day we visited Slieve League Cliffs in county Donegal.

The cliffs are more than 600m high, among the highest sea cliffs in Europe, and they are absolutely breathtaking.

What struck us, and what we LOVED about Slieve League, was the complete absence of bureaucratic mollycoddling. There is nothing to blight the wild, wild landscape. No signs, no barriers, no trails. You go up there and actually get to be responsible for yourself. It’s refreshing and marvellous.

The other thing we loved was that we actually got to see the cliffs. A couple of days previously we had visited the Cliffs of Moher, but it was so foggy we couldn’t see more than a metre in front of us.

Irish Brothers

We met four Irish brothers who were on a kind of pilgrimage to their mother’s homeland.

The eldest, Declan, sung us a song.

It was one of those travel moments you just couldn’t plan. There we were, out in one of the wildest places on earth, being serenaded by an Irishman.

An Irish song, sung by an Irishman, in the wilds of Ireland.

It was perfect.

Unlike us, the brothers were fully organised with food and drinks. They were having a great time, full of laughs and stories and thoroughly enjoying each other’s company.

It was a privilege to stand on the edge of the world with the Molloy brothers.

Take Food and Drinks

We underestimated how long this hike would take, and didn’t take any food with us. We had water, of course.

We didn’t die of starvation or anything, especially as the Molloy brothers donated us each a banana, but I mention it here in case you’re thinking about visiting the Slieve League Cliffs.

Pack something to eat at the top.

It was a lovely sunny day towards the end of the Western Australian summer when Cam and I headed down to the beach for a quick dip.

Afterwards we were lying on the beach soaking up the warmth, as you do.

Unusually, we had our towels in an L shape, so Cam was looking along the beach. If we’d positioned our towels side by side, with feet towards the ocean and head towards the sand dunes, as per the usual custom, things would have turned out differently.

As it was, Cam noticed a small snake coming towards us from quite a long way away. We had time to whip out the camera and get some footage rather than being completely oblivious to what was happening.

It was rather alarming to see the snake make its way to exactly the spot where my feet had been about 30 seconds before.

The snake continued past our towel down to the water line. At one point we thought we were going to see it washed away by a wave, however it turned and headed back towards the sand dunes.

The fun wasn’t over though. A few seagulls arrived to see if lunch was being served, and we experienced the rather terrifying spectacle of a seagull attacking a snake.

We were torn about who to support. We didn’t want to watch the seagull being poisoned but we didn’t want to see the snake eaten either.

The seagull had a few goes but eventually gave it up as a bad idea, and the snake disappeared into the scrub.

It was an eye opener seeing how well disguised the snake was once it disappeared into the foliage.

“Keep your lamps open!” as my grandmother used to say.

Optimise images for your website

If you upload photos straight from your phone or camera you’ll make your website slow, which means your customers will click away before it even loads.

Search engines such as Google favour fast websites because they know that slow sites suck to use.

First, a quick reminder about copyright

Make sure you own or have permission to use all the photos on your website.

Google ‘Getty images letter’ to read more on this subject.

You can download and use high quality royalty-free photos from Unsplash.

You need a coffee table.

Thinking in terms of images on websites, what a lot of people do at this point is wrestle in a huge boardroom table. It’s big, it’s heavy, and it makes getting around the loungeroom slow and difficult.

Uploading an image straight from your camera to a website is the equivalent of dragging in a boardroom table when what you really need is a coffee table.

Optimising images is the process of turning the boardroom table into a coffee table.

The first is the rule of SSNAP:

Size
Size
Name
Alt Tag
Progressive

The second is the rule of 10%.

The weight is measured in kilobytes.

You can think of image measurements in exactly the same way as table measurements. Is it small and light or big and heavy?

That is, an image that’s 800 pixels wide should be an absolute maximum of 80kb, but probably less.

Size, Size

The first two parts of SSNAP are size – size in pixels and size in kilobytes.

If you’re uploading an image to use as a featured image on a blog post, it needs to be 795 pixels wide. It should be no more than 79 kb, but probably more like 60 or 70.

Name

Images come off your camera with meaningless names. Don’t upload these straight to your website. Rename the image with something meaningful to help search engines understand what they are.

You need to rename the image BEFORE you upload it to your website.

Alt Tag

The alt tag is the description of your photo.

It helps search engines such as Google know what your image is about. It’s also helpful for visually impaired people.

It should be a clear, concise, accurate description, not a string of 50 keywords.

Input the alt tag in the media library of WordPress.

Progressive

A progressive image loads gradually rather than from the top down.

Progressive images are considered better for users because you can tell what the image is from the start. The clarity improves as the page loads.

It’s a really simple and quick way to check if your images are progressive, which is handy if you’re not really sure if the tool you’re using is working.

I demonstrate RIOT from about 6:30 in the video.

Please be careful when downloading RIOT to your computer. The page contains an ad just under the download button. Sometimes that ad contains a very similar, deceptive download button. Make sure you click on the correct download button.

I’ve been using RIOT for many years and have introduced it to a lot of other people. It’s a great tool.

I always jump straight to RIOT because most of my clients and students don’t have Photoshop. They need a quick and easy tool to do the job efficiently.

If you’re a Mac user without Photoshop you’ll need to do your optimising in a couple of steps.

Use your native Mac image software to reduce the size in pixels. Then upload that image to tinypng and download it again. It will be both smaller and progressive. You’ll need to rename it on your computer.

Just remember:

SSNAP
The Rule of 10%

Please also visit my YouTube channel and like and comment on this video, and subscribe to my channel.

I hope you’re having a great day wherever you are.