2023 on Ricky Moorhouse

Iona

Wed, 02 Aug 2023 00:00:00 +0000

We took the ferry to Iona from Fionnphort which is a short 10 minute crossing - mostly passengers and a few vehicles delivering supplies to the island. First we visited the Abbey which is looked after by Historic Environment Scotland and they provide audio tours.

The monastry on Iona was founded by Colomba and his 12 companions in 563. We started the tour by going up Tòrr an Aba (Abbot's mound) - the site where it is understood Colomba's writing hut originally stood overlooking the Abbey.

Ulva

Wed, 02 Aug 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Ulva is a community owned island with a current population of 6 people. The first experience visiting Ulva is the ferry which you summon using by sliding the indicator on the ferry board to show red. I didn't initially spot this, but Kai and Laura did and managed to summon the ferry for us - otherwise we'd have been waiting a long time! This ferry is for passengers only and is a very short crossing across from Mull.

Staffa and Lunga boat trip

Tue, 01 Aug 2023 00:00:00 +0000

We headed up to Tobermory early on Tuesday morning for the StaffaTours Staffa & Treshnish Isles wildlife tour which is only available during the summer until the Puffins leave Treshnish. We were fortunate to catch them as the guide told us it would likely only be a few more days before the pufflings fledged.

After we'd headed out from Tobermory the crew were alerted to a pod of dolphins a little off our route, so we took a slight detour to see them. It was amazing seeing them so close to the boat. We also saw a lot of sea birds and an otter bobbing along beside us.

Central Mull

Sun, 30 Jul 2023 00:00:00 +0000

For our first day on Mull we decided we'd head out and explore the central loop of the island in the car following a route described in the brochure in the farmhouse. This gave us our first real insight to driving in Mull as most of the roads are single track with passing places - although the passing places are very frequent so you can almost always see one ahead of you. The route took us along between the mountains through forests and by lochs as we wound around the hilly landscape of central Mull.

Scotland 2023

Sun, 30 Jul 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Scotland 2023

28 Jul - Glasgow
29 Jul - 5 Aug - Isle of Mull
- 30 Jul - Central Mull
- 31 Jul - Aros park
- 1 Aug - Staffa & Lunga tour
- 2 Aug - Iona
- 3 Aug - Ulva
- 4 Aug - Lochbuie
Loch Lomond - 5 - 8 Aug
- 6 Aug - Inversnaid

Avebury

Sat, 24 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0000

We met my parents at Avebury and spent the day exploring the ancient landscape around the area. Avebury is one of the best preserved Neolithic monuments in Europe and is believed to have been constructed between 3100 BC - 2000 BC. The site consists of a large henge, or circular ditch, surrounded by a stone circle, two inner circles and two additional semi-circles outside the main ring.

From there we walked along the West Kennet Avenue and up over the fields. As we reached the top, we started to see a glimpse of Silbury Hill - the largest artificial mound in Europe. We then headed down towards Silbury Hill and across to the West Kennet Long Barrow which is a really impressive structure. As we took in the sights of the long barrow and the views all around the landscape we watched the swallows flying into the barrow to catch flies.

Lambda Integration in IBM API Connect on AWS

Thu, 23 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0000

This blog post will provide you an overview of our Lambda integration in API Connect on AWS, what you could use it for and a simple worked example of setting this up. If you’d prefer you can watch me demonstrate this in our video on YouTube.

Lambda is serverless computing platform provided by Amazon Web Services (AWS) which lets you build and deploy your code in a number of different programming languages with easy integrations to AWS services without having to manage infrastructure or servers. This makes it an ideal place to build out your API implementation and when you combine this with our API Connect on AWS SaaS offering you can quickly build, manage and socialise your APIs without worrying about the infrastructure behind them.

Using our Lambda policy in the SaaS service makes this simple and straight forward to integrate these so you can build out your apis around numerous different AWS services then manage them centrally through API Connect, sharing them with consumers through our customisable developer portal.

Extending our sample API with conditionals and mocking

Wed, 08 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Video demo showing how you can use conditional logic and mocking in API Connect on AWS using our sample order tracking API as an example.

IBM Tech 2023 - Dubai

Sun, 19 Feb 2023 00:00:00 +0000

IBM Tech 2023 was a celebration event in Dubai