On the train once again

I kind of miss my train rides that had become a regular part of my commute. With the nearest station now in the town where I work my only public transport option is the bus.

I have no complaints about the bus, (the take it as you find it mindset being a neccessity). Most days I have a whole single decker and maybe one or two fellow passengers on days when a double decker runs. It's almost like having a private driver.

While I waited for the train I availed myself of the facilities and purchased a hot chocolate drink. While the chocolate was dark and had a modicum of froth, that soon dissipated, it did not compare favourably with that from St. Austell Railway Station. There the hot chocolate is made with a steamer within your sight and it has a magnificent luxuriousness about it - the froth remaining all the way to the bottom of the chocolaty goodness. (Crikey, I must be keen - a bit advertisey that but I am writing while the train whisks me to Redruth and do not have the time to amend the above prose.

As I sit here and glance about I can see the strangest thing. Beneath a seat opposite and slightly ahead of me is a small clear bowl on the floor under the seat; it contains a small amount of liquid, that rolls about the interior in time to the motion of rhe train. Who could have left such a thing? What might it have contained when full? Much more liquid than I would expect to be left over from a salad.

We are leaving St. Erth station now and heading for Hayle. Everytime I travel this area I think about getting a map to pick out the features that we pass. the Towans, the harbour so much in need of restoration, an indicator of how the fortunes of this once prosperous town have fallen, alongside the collapse of the Cornish mining industry; the church with it's cemetary standing proud above it and earlier, between St. Erth and Penzance, that little church peeping over a ridge, suggesting a route of what might be an interesting detour.

Reason why I like working in Penzance part 1

Above is a view of the sort of perk that helps ease the pressure of work, part of my 2 minute walk to the seafront.

It really is that close.

Syncronisity

I was listening to a play on Radio 4 this afternoon, August Birthdays by Frances Byrnes, about a woman remembering things from her past . At one point there was music reminiscent of the time being remembered, it made me think of my dad's ice cream chimes. His tune was The Happy Wanderer but Greensleeves came into my head; a few minutes later they played it in the background.

Not major but syncronicity in a small way.

St. Erth Concert Band

Above is a shot of the band - I didn't like to get too close so this is a grab shot from where we sat.

Last night on the Prom

We are sitting on the Prom listening to St.Erth Concert Band. It has been a beautiful Greek day and the evening sun is warm on the back of my neck; the most gentle of breezes is passing across my arm and carrying the music across the bay.

More people are gathering as the evening passes, the different tunes drawing people for reasons known only to themselves. It's somehow comforting when amidst strange one can share a smile during a particular piece of music.

St.Erth Concert Band are different to what may be called a traditional brass band, as their name may suggest, they comprise of a mixture of brass and woodwind instruments.

We found out from our best friend W. that they were playing here on the Prom, loolcing out on Mounts Bay, St. Michael's Mount standing proud in the distance. Unfortunately this is the next to last concert they are holding here, for the foreseeable future, as I understand it.

All in all a beautiful experience.

Beating the airport blues

What do I do when stuck at the airport with only floorspace available? Why I carry on blogging of course. That's an ordinary rucksack you see because 1) it's less conspicuous for carrying all those precious gadgets 2) I knew it would definately meet the airline size guide for hand luggage 3) It doesn't matter as much if it gets a little scuffed.


It was so hot at the airport moving between terminals I could have jumped for joy when I saw the Starbucks sign. Here I have a shot of my life savers 1) My x51v that, when it wasn't online allowing me to blog, provided reading material as well as audiovisual 2) A vente Banana Caramel Frappaccino - I didn't think anything would come close to the frappes I had in Corfu Town until I had this coffee based version instead of the cream one. I got so caught up in enjoying my drink and pda-ing I almost missed the call to board. managed to get a great aisle seat near the front and had a relaxing run back listening to the latest TWIT.

Went the day well?

It was a good day. We have a great team, a range of responsibilities and everyone holding their own. I always have got a buzz from talking to clever people and today is no exception. If there's one thing the project I work for has given me it's scope to stretch myself.

My biggest concern was not being involved in an Investors in People review right on when Cathy and I are doing things and I manged to avoid that. My biggest concern now is probably staying awake until I am on the plane home. I finally got to sleep on top of the bedccovers around 2.30am, I was soooo glad of the fan in my room.

Now I hardly dare blog this bit but the journey was smooth to the station thanks to Paula wh organised a taxi that made Kings Cross in no time. I have come into the city as I felt it the safest option in case the rails had melted again. This way I felt confident that a bus would be laid on if the train didn't run. What I didn't want to experience was getting to Tottenham Hale, find that the Stansted Express wasn't running and be sent all the way to Liverpool Street before heading out again.

I just missed one train at the station but made the next. A kind lady guard came through the carriage I was on to say that there was airconditioning in the first 4 carriages. The train has left on time.

When I get to Stansted I will probably go through the rigmarole of having my rucksack emptied, owing to the large number of leads and accessories I carry. My travelling tip of the day is this: put all your gadgets, accessories and odds and ends into sealable plastic bags; when someone empties your bag there is no mess and packing/re-packing is real easy, it's good for preventing tangling with the leads This means it will be best to checkin near enough straight away and go through to where
I can sit with a wifi connection and surf till my plane. One thing I noticed while passing through Stansted was that having logged on to a Cloud hotspot and chosen to roam via BT my x51v was a bandwidth tart and jumped on a stronger service after I had moved 6 feet or so. I will have to tether it to one provider next time.

Arrived at last

We arrived at Liverpool Street underground at around 12.45am, the buses actually drove down onto the mainline concourse. It was so late the underground stopped running at that precise time. There was nothing for it, I had to book a taxi.

I finally got in my room at 1.10am and am having a Cup of tea to wind down. The room is extremely hot but, grace of graces, an electric fan has been made available.

Now if I can only sleep.

It was going so well....

Aaaaagggghhh!!!

I arrived at Stansted having hardly noticed the journey as I was writing a blog entry. The Stowaway keyboard proved it's value once again, fitting perfectly the little pull down tray.

The seat I got was exactly what I wanted, an aisle seat not too far from the loos and with space for my bag directly above me - Ryanair my carrier is a low cost airline, where you grab a seat when you get on board. (One thing I noticed was that the Ryanair website http://ryanair.com allows online checkin for passengers who meet certain conditions - such as only having hand luggage. The concept is one where having checked in you can print a boarding card and bypass the front desk, going straight to the security/departure lounge when it is opened and, by probably having the lowest of boarding card numbers, you can get to the plane in the first 90 batch to choose the better seats.

I had toyed with the idea of a window seat to take photos but l have had my fill of shots of tiny pinpricks of light and shade depicting towns l don't know the name of. I also considered one of those seats by the emergency exits, in the middle of the plane but reckoned they would be full by the time l headed up the aisle from the back of the plane - the normal Newquay Ryanair procedure is to load boarding tickets 1 - 90 first, I was 107.

So good seat and good flight.

All there was left to do was catch my train to Tottenham Hale - the only stop other than London Liverpool Street. From there it's one stop on the tube and then I am within 5/10 minutes of the work's accommodation where I'm staying.

I bought my ticket earlier in the day on the Ryanair site. I saved some money and, while it was more expensive than the bus, I didn't want to go right into London.

As I made my way to the station an announcement was made. Apparently the train tracks melted today and were under emergency repair - a bus had been kindly laid on for us, unkindly it was only going to Liverpool Street. I would have to spend an extra hour going into London and back out again to Arsenal. I would have paid the much smaller fare if I had chosen to go into the capital, not paid 3 or 4 times as much!

We are currently on the Muggles version of the Night Bus, (for any Harry Potter fans out there), going at a similar speed.

The Finest of Weekends

So what is it that makes the weekend one that will stay in memory for some time to come?

Getting your first phone call from a godsons - not a quick chat during a parent intiated call but a dialed it himself, first to speak sort of communication. I am not saying it was the easiest of conversations but, then again, that's part of what made it special. He really wanted to get his message across and this he did - once he had done so I was passed to mum but that didn't matter in the slightest, if anything it seemed very businesslike almost as if he was passing me to his assistant.

Joining said Godson on after he has taken part in an event and being personally invited to attend a concert he is part of.

Having the birthday present brought out unprompted to tell you about how he has been using it.

Getting to go for a stroll with him and his dad around the harbour and getting included in the adventure as one of the boys.

Discovering a cave that I never knew existed on our adventure and seeing places in a way I hadn't seen for more than 25 years.

Spending a day unexpectedly with best friends.

Laughing and relaxing as you only can with best friends, including getting to bounce about on a trampoline far later than was wise.

Enjoying the balmy evening air as you walk home with your beautiful wife on your arm.

I don't think I have done it full justice but these are some of the reasons why I can look back and say that is was the finest of weekends.

Zooomr envy

Zooomr launch delayed

People depress me sometimes. As you may have seen via the link, the launch of version 2 of Zooomr has had to be delayed because of a DOS.

This is a service that has given something to the community, big or small, rather than target a few of the more popular blogs; obviously envy abounds. Still, I for one will still be there for blogger for longer than the DOS.

Komboloi Museum in Nafplion

I just came across a nice piece about Aris museum in the Greek town of Nafplion (Modern Greece's first capital). It's definately somewhere I'd like to visit.

I have read Aris book on the history of Komboloi and found it fascinating.

Fine Day at the beach

Took a break this lunchtime with some of the folks at the office. We went to a place new to me, called Polkerris.

A small beach with a cafe, pub and shop looking down on it. Very few people on the beach, but I guess the schools "up country" have only just broken up and the local ones haven't. Also, there seemed to be an infestation of a form of sand fly and lady birds around. The took a particular liking to S, to the extent that she had to buy another t-shirt to replace the yellow sand-like one she came in.

A good break but the time went so quickly.

Polkerris, place worth coming back to in the future when the bugs are dormant.

Views of the beach at Loe Bar near Porthleven

Some more photos with the help of the excellent Diarist programme.

This would have been set back further once upon a time, fortunately never used.

I wanted to give the impression that you could see the curvature of the earth.

We are so fortunate to have views like these right on our doorstep. For many years family of mine have walked these cliffs from one village to another. My father would have walked this route when courting my mother.

Looking back to Loe Bar and the route back to my father's village when he was growing up.

Update: Zooomr is 3 and a bit hours from it's version 2 launch and is closed a the moment so I can't rotate the picture but will do so tomorrow.

Views along the walk

Diarist comes to the rescue without this it would have been a lot harder to post, as my email option seems to have broken.

Free Zooomr Account

Free Zooomr Pro Account

This is my picture from my Zooomr account

I caught a reference on Josh Bancrofts blog to Zooomr the photo sharing site offer of a free Pro account to bloggers who create an account , post a photo, blog it and link back to their blog.

Some early P2 shots from the sponsored walk in memory of Mary

For some reason they seem to be missing. I'll post when I've worked out what's happening.

Starbucks Taunton

Here I am again, beginning to love the location for our Regional Health & Safety meetings. We have tried a few actual venues, in a bid to match cost and convenience, but the town itself has attractions for me. (Before anyone starts having untoward thoughts, I merely refer to the fact that Taunton has the closest Starbucks to West Cornwall. OK it might be a 3 and-a-bit hours drive, at legal speeds, from where I am but it is a comfortable place to have coffee that has wifi.

Last time I tried using my meter to gauge the best place to sit but this time I asked; the answer I got was "The transmitter is above the doorway to the toilets, so I guess somewhere along that wall [the wall from toilet door to where spoons etc are] over there", sometimes you cannot beat that human interface. I sat down at the table nearest the entrance to the toilets (I am not sitting outside of a cubicle - I'm not that obsessive...after all if the best signal was in the toilets I'd make myself comfortable in a stall. Here I get 4 bars out of five on my Kensington Wifi locator and that's a Normal strength (-44/0) signal according to the x51v's WLan utility. (For some reason I am unable to just turn on the wifi from the settings-WLan option or with the side button; the transmitter symbol does not appear at the top of the screen even though the green transmitting light is flashing and the Axim is picking up a signal - detecting the T-Mobile Access point plus another weak, locked one, called Sienna).

Egress is crawlking when it comes to checking updates. I can't use my email programme to check as I now use Flexmail and this hogs memory or sulks and everything grinds to a halt. I will post this and then try out a download or two of podcasts plus check my emails - the Cloud's offer shopuld be on now of ?11.99 per month for all you can eat wifi.

In memory of Mary

In memory of Mary

Getting ready to set off on a sponsored walk in memory of Mary Davies.

It's sunny with a breeze and good walking weather, I've my Axim, P910i for connect, new Nikon P2 camera (unboxing report later) - let's go.

The day is fine, some cloud but not enough to bring the worry of rain, despite what the weather people presaged. There is a healthy number of people gathered for the walk, both younger and older, a few on bikes. We are on foot, though we could possibly have borrowed a couple of bikes I think it is fairer that we walk, I also really enjoy walking Penrose Woods; it is a National Trust property and was left to the Trust by the previous incumbant whose family still reside there. The property has a rather grand country house and, as a child, I went there on a once to have tea though I hardly remember it now.

Penrose Woods sweep from Helston down to the sea on either side of the sand bar that separates Loe Pool from the sea. It is a mixture of woods on the Porthleven side and meadows on the far side of this. I am only taking pictures of us walking today (approximately 2 hours) but will endeavour to walk the whole circuit at this summer and take some shots to do it justice. [One of the toughest parts of landscape photography has to be the extremely early starts that are needed to do full justice to many views].

Later: I have taken some photos now and need to look at how I am going to transfer them for blogging purposes. Obviously, having bought the P2 with wifi capabilities I don't want to take the simple option of putting the SD card in a reader or this PDA, neither do I want to resort to the USB cord. The way I figure it, I should get into the habit of downloading the photos, tagging them and then push them up to flickr. If I get into a routine it should be easier to make use of the shots, the only downside being that I have to make a note of each shot's address if I am to include them in a post via Diarist. I could email the shots but blogspot seems to have developed a few quirks, one is ignoring emailed posts that contain both pictures and body text and also of ignoring emails from my Orange account.

I think I will post this before the photos if I get to the point where it's late Sunday night and I haven't cracked the wifi camera to computer thing.

Waiting Time

I am in a rare lull between work and home. I have finished work for today early, a rarity for me. As came up in conversation with my main boss, I don't normally take up TOIL I build up gradually; this week I pulled a couple of extra 1.5 hour days so I don't feel too guilty. A calleague D was kind enough to drop me off in time for the next train - maximum of 1 per hour to West Cornwall during this part of the day. Unfortunately it isn't a Virgin, so no charge lead use, and it is starting to develop delays; fortunately, I am only going to go as far as Truro - where I should have time to catch a couple of shops and then meet Cathy for a lift home.

I am feeling soooo tired that I am starting to develop spontaneous headaches, never a good sign. Tonight I am helping to setup ready for our Panigiyeri - Greek for village festival. Every year a group of the village churches, originally only Methodist but now several denominations, gather for St. Peterstide. The routine is for a church service, followed by a procession around the village and culminating in a gathering over on a recereational area. Once at the field there are a range of community sports that the children take part in and a large marquee known as the Tea Tent; the tea tent involves tables and benches where people can sit and partake of staples such as saffron buns, yeast buns, fancy cakes and sandwiches.

I will take pictures and post them of the preparations and the day itself over the next few days.

Goonhilly good grief

It has been written in more prestigious places than this (where isn't), that "pride cometh before a fall", from experience I should have known but it still trips me up.

I have been patting myself on the back over the postings I made that jkOnTheRun have used. Hey, I thought, all these feeds I have been working through are worth it just for the recognition; a sneeky part of me was saying, you must be good at this to be able to beat people in the US to US-centric stories.

Yesterday morning I was in the office early, so decided to read a couple of rss threads in Egress, my PPC rss reader. The first thing I see is Kevin picking up on why hadn't I blogged about the new cybercafe setup at the Goonhilly Earth Satellite Station in Cornwall. Hey said a little voice I'm so great I pick up stories on in another country but I can't see a story that's 10 miles from my home! 10 miles, not in another part of Europe, not the other end of the country but, as near as darn it, in my backyard. Oh the pain, oh the humiliation.

I have read a bit on the setup there now and will blog it over the weekend, if not sooner. I intend making a visit in the near future to grab some photos and maybe even some audio or video.

Summer is broken

Well, I think I was just getting used to sleeping in hot weather, when the time came for the Wimbledon tennis tournament. As most British people will tell you, Wimbledon means liquid sunshine. If you can see the net it's about to rain, if you can't see the net it's already raining!

How is it that I can get accustomed to hot weather within the first day or so when we go to Corfu, yet in the UK it came be weeks. I get caught out every year guessing how long the fine spell will last. I continue carrying a fleece or waterproof for at least a week longer than I need, but better to be prepared - no, I was never a scout (from my teens I always thought I would have had more fun joining the guides - they wouldn't let me in). The waterproof was as much to protect my mobile gear as anything. I carry my x51v in my shirt's top pocket, if I don't think that I will be doing a lot of bending, or in my trousers pocket and the waterproofr, breathable jacket will just protect from excessive moisture. The other hazard I have noticed is that sweat can mist up the case when suited up on a warm but wet day; not a problem sbo far but worth keeping an eye on.

I am out of doors as I type this. I caught the bus home tonight and thought it was warm on board, when outside it was a little chilly. From how I felt when I got back to the village, I worked out that it was exhaust that was getting into the interior that was the cause of the warmth. I don't have a sense of smell and so endured the discomfort. I was puzzled by how the driver would stop the bus every so many stops and turn off the engine; buses I have travelled on previously would stop if early but they wouldn't turn off the engine. My head was splitting when I walked the short distance to the cottage from the bus stop, I also felt a little sick. I decided that exhaust must have been to blame. Fortunately for me, the weather holds the promise of rain but, so far, has held off. It's a little chilly but the fresh air is doing me a power of good. If I turn around to face away from the kitchen, I can see some blue sky between high cloud.

While I am writing I am circled by bumble bees of several different types; it's good to see them taking advantage of the cool air and the opening fuscias.

From here I can see the apple tree planted by an Uncle over 70 years ago. Every year the tree has produced a crop of apples in September but the apples are so well formed already I think they will be at least a month early, could this be one of those signs of the fltuctuations encouraged by global warming?

I have been typing for a while sitting at a bench table and my back is starting to get a little tired.. I will have to look into getting out my fairly substantial deckchair and bring out my lap tray on another day.

I just watched Warner Crocker's what's in my bag video and it made me think of my laptray. I prefer the bean bag base for getting settled on my lap and allowing me to use it on many more seat types. Of course, I am using a Pocket PC rather than tablet computer and need less room room for this Stowaway keyboard, although I have used the laptray with my old laptop that heats up so much; I put a metal tray, designed to speed up the defrosting process for things like meat, under the laptop so that part of it sticks out and rapidly transfers the heat from the base of the laptop to the part of the tray sticking out so it can be dissipated.

I am going to pop in now and spend a lit tle time with my dear wife, who cooked my tea and then suggested I spend time outside to get some fresh air - she's a gem, I have got so much done while out here. As per Scoble's comments on his blog, I was able to listen to podcasts\videocasts while eating, reading blogs I find a little ungainly on a small screen while trying to eat in a polite manner.

The seagulls begin to circle, definitely time to head indoors.

Tingles in my scalp

I was listening to part of a play today, while making a mad dash across the county from one office to another. It was part Arthurian and part reminiscences of the author. I felt sure that it was about TH White, as they had a male narrator.

The author talked about staying in Somerset and I was convinced I had the name sorted. At the end the name of the author crops up and it is John Steinbeck; there starts the tingle.

I have for years tried to read his work but all of the books I knew were of a depressing nature, based around the dust bowl depression era. One day I felt the urge to visit a second hand bookshop,the feeling I get that has always resulted in my finding a book that I really want. I came out with a journal written by Steinbeck alongside of his Grapes of Wrath, I managed halfway and put it to oneside; before I stopped reading I was intrigued to see that he speculated on the existence of extraterrestrials.

Response to Robert Scoble's Al Gore and Peter Davis opinion

Dear Al Gore: here's some inconvenient truths

Response to Robert Scoble

Robert

With regard to the your Al Gore post.

I don't know where I'd be without the various podcasts and streamed audio from the web; actually I do know, it'd be listening to what I still call a transistor radio, absorbing all manner of programmes from the BBC = Radio 4 especially. The trouble is it's shotgun listening, so much of it of no real interest to me that it drowns out the thought provoking other stuff. THe trouble with r adio listening has always been having to turn off, or losing reception and missing something. Don't tell me about taping programmes to listen to later, the nu mber of ways and means I employed to get the recording started on time when I couldn't be there to do it or would be asleep.

With my oh so easy to compile downloads I can listen whenever I want, often this is when commuting by bus, train or Shanksy's pony. If I am carrying chores without my wife around to talk to or shopping in town, I will catch up on a programme of my choosing, one that is on a topic of my choosing and that I can stop, start, even listen to again.

When at school I happen to have mastered the art of reading while I walk; I think people got so used to me weaving my way around obstacles, while my head was buried in a book, that the village just regarded me as a mostly harmless eccentric child. I did get a few looks when I did this while taking part in a 24 hour walk in aid of Cancer, it was really simple, all I had to do was walk circuits around a running track - they even had lines laid out that I could subconsciously follow, no lamposts, moving vehicles, parked vehicles, animals and their by products or stray persons to have to avoid. But enough about me.

In addition to lights being left on I see so many people leaving equipment unneccessarily on standby; items that they will not use till the next day are left to draw, in some cases, almost as much as when they are running.
/>http://scobleizer.wordpress.com/2006/06/25/peter-says-podcasting-is-inefficient/
/>More after my cup of tea.

http://scobleizer.wordpress.com/2006/06/25/dea.r-al-gore-heres-some-inconvenient-truths/

How about a deal...

I will admit now for anyone who swings by, courtesy of Kevin's kind pointer at JkontheRun from an item I passed on about the number of reported difficulties people are having with the Q (RSS - JkontheRun), I neglect this blog. I have been shamed into doing something about it by Kevin and I am grateful.

I have mentioned here how easy posting has been made by things such as: this Axim x51v, Stowaway Bluetooth Keyboard, Kevin Daly's marvellous little Diarist programme that enable me to make swift posts - particularly useful when working with my bluetooth phone (Kevin Daly RSS), my minimum 3 ways to charge my x51v and Sony Ericcson P910i and wifi hotspots that I now have access to thanks to a deal with BTOpenzone - though I am waiting for The Cloud's all you can use ?11.99 ($20) per month deal on UK wifi; I have failed to take advantage of it.

The deal is this, if you promise to pop back in say two weeks, or when I next get a plug courtesy of Kevin (hopefully not sooner than a fortnight), I promise to have increased my posting rate, added more tech stuff from a Cornish user's perspective, more reflections on Corfu and some observations on live in modern and not so modern Cornwall.

If you decide not to - well, thank you for coming by on this occasion. Have a poke around and you should find some of the topics I mention above or not as you wish - choice, one of those sweet tasting morsels that make the internet so delicious.

Shakespeare Country

After a successful trip to London we headed up to see our Godson and friends.

It's always good seeing them and we haven't seen all of the area around there. A first for me was a visit to Warwick Castle. I had heard much about the place but wasn't sure how "real" the experience would be, after all it was a major tourist attraction.

Somehow we got our dates slightly wrong and ended up on holiday in half term week Despite there being large numbers of families milling about, the castle was such a scale that it wasn't a problem. We saw the bits we wanted to see and had a snack in the restaurant without any problems finding seats.

Things I would recommend at the castle would be the knightly school for the young people ending in their taking part in a mock battle; the school bit was a very good way to enliven history lessons. The birds of prey are always fun and the bowman was brilliant - he really put feeling into something he must do hundreds of times over the year.

It's ?15 for adults to attend but I felt it was worthwhile as you can easily spend a day at the castle. Being to able to see the trebuchet loaded, primed and launched put into perspective the dimensions and impact this device must have had.

Today - a good day for this x51v re mobile software

While surfing in a break I stumbled across a mention of an update to my current Pocket PC RSS reader - Egress 2.4.2 came out around December but I must have missed it; well, not 'missed' exactly, I found that I had a copy on my memory stick but no recall of when I downloaded it.

Having installed the new version, it shows an immediate improvement in the notification given when updating threads. The thread currently being updated is named as well as the various compenents being downloaded.

The second item is Socket Comm's WiFi Companion. I really like the clear display re connection and am looking forward to trying the power saving feature.

Summer and Anniversary

pring and Anniversary

A little out of syn with the posts but I don't want to miss this.

After what seems an age since spring started, we have a consistent period of fine weather.

Yesterday was the 17th anniversary of our marriage. We celabrated by going for a meal with our maid of honour and one of our ushers, best friends from the village.

Having had lunch at Trevaskis Farm in April, we thought it would be a good venue to celebrate our 17th and their 21st anniversaries. A long story short - it was. The food was delicious and the portions generous.

Chinatown one Saturday

One minute I am posting multiple times a day and then silence. Without looking I would say that my last post was when we were outside of Chinatown.

We met up with our friend S, it was really good to see her and reassuring that she was looking so well. I've never known anyone who studies quite so hard, to the exclusion of much else; still, as she says soon it will be in the past and then there will be light again.

Eating in Chinatown is great, especially in a restaurant that is so busy. I neglected to get the name of the place but will have to ask our friend. The food was delicious and served in a traditional way, in the type and order of the dishes. I learnt that tapping the table means enough and it was interesting to make a connection with the games of dominoes and poker.

There's not a lot to say following that. After seeing our friend and having a great meal, we sadly separated at an underground station, our friend needed to get back to her revision.

We went from the station to the cinema in Leicester Square. It was raining so we reckoned it would be a chance to chill and wait out the worst of the weather. We got in a que for the cinema to see X-Men III - I was surprised that Cathy suggested this over the DaVinci Code, as films in the comics, science fiction and fantasy genre are generally not to her taste. When I asked she said that she had heard others say that the film was difficult to follow if you have not read the book; I later heard Anna say, on The Delta Park Project, that she had read the book and found it frustrating when explanations were given for people who had not read the book. If it's still around in a few weeks maybe we'll try it down our way.

Havivng been in the que for a while and only 10 minutes from the start of the film we asked for two tickets. The chap printed them and then asked for ?23 ($40US)!! In Cornwall we pay ?11 ($20) - half price with the Orange mobile sponsored Orange Wednesdays scheme. ?23 is a lot for the cachet of Leicester Square but it was the price of my embarassment I paid rather than have people watch us walk away.

The rest of our day, or so in the city consisted of our chilling out. It was a great stay. Stephenson Hall is so big and to have it virtually to yourself was such a luxury. E the Admin was very welcoming when we arrived and helpful, as was R who works there too and supplied us with fantastic driving in London directions.

We are certainly going back to Stephenson Hall, to see a show, meetup with S and things we haven't thought of yet. We got so comfy we didn't even get to the Mucky Pup just up the road a ways. I had scouted out free wifi locations and hit upon it as the nearest to where we were staying.

I need to go back and revise my Starbucks entries for London. One of the things I noticed was a distinct problem in downloading larger files. I could not seem to download any podcasts, the whole thing would go from trotting along nicely to a snails pace and downloads eventually efffectively timing out the became so slow. Normal surfing was fine and I couldn't see anyone else surfing and I had scouted around about this. E verything started off fine and then took a nosedive but I had already written up the wifi part and it was only when it came near time to leave did I notice the problem.

More later.?

Chinatown

No photos for a moment, until I get a battery based recharger for this P910i I am conserving power.

We are excitedly waiting to meet up with a colleague of Cathy's who is now in London.

For the first time in 15 years or so we are going to eat lunch here.

I fibbed, attached is a picture.

Views of London

Travel to London

The trip up to London, as far as the M25 , was remarkably smooth. We stopped off to make a surprise visit to a friend on the way up, unfortunately she was working on an emergency so we left a message and headed off.

Reaching the M25 we found that traffic was very slow but bearable and we only had a few juctions anticlockwise then got onto the M40\A40. I had planned to reach Arsenal from the North as it seemed to be the most direct route but, thankfully, I had an excellent set of directions from Rachel at the accomodation we were heading to. Never having driven inside the M25, things like "Head past King's Cross", "head along Pentonville Road", were quite daunting - I worried over nothing. We sailed into the car park at NCH HQ as easily as anywhere we had been outside of Cornwall.

Stephenson Hall where we are staying is an excellent location. Arsenal itself is a typical London suburb, built up and with little respite from traffic, or so I thought. The Hall is at the rear of the main building and quiet away from the traffic's roar. The dominating sound in the vicinity of the buildings is birdsong from the garden and mature trees that are on the site.

Stonehenge part 2

Without a gprs connection I am reluctant to go online just to check my previous blog post, so zi shall continue from here.

Once we entered the subway via the ticket booth, we crossed under the road that passes within 500 metres of the stones; it is not the main A303 but a smaller but still quite busy road. Worth stopping for, after the booth, is a stand that allows you to pick up a complementary wand that gives an audio tour of the site. As first time visitors it was well worth carrying the wand and activating it when we saw numbered discs; it acted as a reminder about things we had forgotten about the site.

My first impression once we crossed to the site was how small the stones seemed. Second was the number of different nationalities that were around us, but this would be because of the relatively tight circle that the visitor path takes around the stones.

From the approach to the 1/2 metre high token rope barrier around the stones the site takes on a different impression. The day was fine, a slight breeze and a blue sky with a scattering of cumulo nimbus clouds. As I moved along the path the weight of history pressed heavy on me. I thought about the massive numbers of people who must have laboured for so long to create the site, along with it's sister site known as Woodhenge; a people who would have laboured hard to sustain themselves but devoted time and valuable energy to creating something that did not,in itself produce food or shelter or warmth. I know, you say that in a religious context the site is likely to have been central to the existence of all these things, the belief structure around cycle of life and death; in this as in other ways there is a direct link between the now and then.

But back to the corporeal. Apparently the stones would have stood higher originally but even now, at something like two or three times my height, it is impressive. The transporting of the stones alone makes one stop and think; I have felt for years that the common man failed to appreciate the sophistication of pre-hitoric people, I still carry misconceptions from what I learnt from textbooks when at school over 25 years ago. Ancient peoples the world over laboured with the materials available at the time and pushed the envelope of what could be done with it. From the stone built homes such as at Skarra Brae in the Shetlands to Matchu Pichu in Peru, the materials were used in all sorts of ways to make life more than just bearable. Stonework is a good example of where the skills of ancient peoples surpass those of this age. Part of the march to our current age involves a shift from an individuals reliance on their own abilities to those of the community. Survival of people, in the Western hemisphere, relies on the work of massively dispersed communities; also, as we have increased what people can achieve in a given space of time we have moved the responsibility for the achievement more onto the tools than the man. I am not saying that the production of tools was not specialised even in prehistory, there are lots of examples of sites whose reason for existence seem to be as tool factories, but a person's ability to survive lay more in their own and the family unit's abilities, than a wider community. Enough on my speculations, (I have no qualifications in this field, as you could probably tell), but I have all these thoughts buzzing through my head and a desperate need to set them down somewhere. It's just an example of how the site fired up my brain.

In a nutshell, as people say, Stonehenge is well worth a viisit. The site has a few seats that you can use to extend your stay and fully contemplate this world heritage site. If one cannot or is not willing to part with the entry fee, lower prices available for children and pensioners, you can get a view of the stones by walking around the outside of the site but through a 2.5 metre high wire fence.

Views of Stonehenge

The calm before the storm?

I may be gone sometime

Stonehenge Ancient and Impressive - Part 1

I have seen this place countless times on television and film, acknowledged it's iconic status but I didn't believe it would have an effect on me. (You just know from the title of this and the paragraph above that I'm going to tell you it did don't you?)

It did. (One of my issues is I so dislike disappointing people, even if makes me predictable).

We hadn't even intended anywhere near here; we set off intending to head up the M5 and M4 like we always did. On a whim we decided to give the A303 another try. (20 years ago our first trip was a nightmare, with 5 metre visibility from Porthleven to London - [yeah right, like I meant I could stand in Porthleven and instead of seeing London, as I normally would, I could only see 5 metres ahead of me]. From when we left to when we arrived in London we had complete fog cover, which made for a horrible trip as the road was mainly single lane and windy.

Today we travelled from a damp and misty West Cornwall to blue skies and white clouds over Salisbury plain - marvellous.

Back to our arrival.

When we arrived at the English heritage car park, we could see the henge (hanging or gallows stone) and opted to cross the road and walk along the fence to get to a gateway into the site. Let me tell you now, you can only get close to the stones, ie the other side of the 2 metre high fence, via the subway - this will cost you ?5.90 ($11).

Stonehenge coralling the sky

Kudos to PC World

Having discovered that we had a router instead of modem\router meant another trip to PC World.

I got there in daylight, fortunately, as they actually have a parking meter - I don't believe I have ever seen one in a retail park before. I did not expect it to be easy.

I was very pleasantly surprised. For 45 minutes, an extremely helpful young lady called Dee scoured the store, looking for the one modem\router the computer said was there. Unfortunately, the cupboard was bare but I got a different make. The store was PC World in Farnborough, I recommend it to the house.

Setup for the wifi turned out to be fairly straightforward, I just followed the "quick" guide. The problem came with the Dell AIO 924 printer, there was no way that I could get it to install. An hour after I could not believe I might have to resort to phoning the Dell helpline. It had been a long day for me too and I could feel my vision blurring as I typed my way through Google.

I eventually landed on a Dell help page where it stepped me thyough uminstalling the drivers - the strange thing being an absence of printer name after running the install cd. The steps eventually, after turning off the powersaving mode on each USB socket, led me to a selective boot-up configuration - this did the trick. As soon as I booted the install process ran smoothly; it did have strange phrases that were displayed during instalation, such as ''Human USB interface installing" but the main thing was that the printer now appeared in the installed printers list.

Wireless Trials and Tribulations

I don't take all the blame for the problem I am about to describe, it really started with Tiscali. My friend called them and explained that he wanted the equipment to be able to connect wirelessly to the internet; he was told that they would supply the wireless kit needed - they did not. A small thing to their credit, Tiscali admitted immediately when I phoned that their kit would need
to be ditched and a wireless set bought.

In a rush last night I dashed with my friend to pickup a modem\router for his broadband connection.

As for many people he has a phone connection that is in a hallway and not at all convenient fir connecting to his computer. He has also elected, rightly in my opinion to purchase a laptop rather than desktop computer; it's a very nice Dell Inspiron 6400. To enable easy connection, while avoiding loads of trailing wires, he is going wireless, hence the dash to PC World.

We had an advert from a national newspaper for wireless equipment at a very good price, better than the sale I got mine in last November. We got back and I immediately set about installing the kit. It was when I had unpacked everything that I realised the reason I could not get it to work - I had picked up a Router rather than Modem.

A walk in Godolphin Woods

Today we are getting much needed exercise by walking with Porthleven Old Cornwall Society, in the woods adjacent to Godolphin House.

The walk is being led, by Stephen Polglase who has written a book about the history of Breage and Germoe, (The Book of Breage and Germoe - the Heart of the Godolphin Tin Dynasty is by Stephen Polglase. It's published by Halsgrove. ISBN 1 84114 243 3), so I'm looking forward to learning some new things.

The Godolphin family made a fortune in mining so there will be tin mining references.

Things I have learnt today.

First documented mention of the Godolphin family was around 1200 in a dispute over a common at Tresowes, not far from the woods here.

There is a phrase along the lines of "Copper rides a good horse". Copper is traditionally found on the edge of granite outcrops - in the vicinity of tin streams. At Godolphin the copper was mined but not the high quality tin beneath it, 600ft below.

We saw the Counthouse built in the 1840s. A tradition I wasn't aware of was that shareholders would meet monthly for a meal; for which it would have it's own marked dinner service.

We viewed a shaft down which an 80" beam engine & house disappeared overnight.

It was great to see woodland with maturing trees.

Below are pictures of Cathy who went with me on the walk. Now Cathy is very attractive and it's at times like this, I realise that the camera quality of my phone isn't enough. On a related note, the 'log' behind Cathy, the collapsed workings/shaft, is actually the trunk of a large tree.

Also there is a place tucked away that caught our eye, not sure how practical re things like broadband access but appealing all the same.

Places we'd like to live if our lottery came up 1.

Cathy by collapsed shaft & mine workings

Cathy in bluebells, Godolphin Woods

The Joy Luck Club

We caught the start of a film last night and thought it worth recording.

We started watching it over breakfast and have watched the whole of it, we just couldn't stop. Based on the Amy Tan novel, it has made me want to search out some of her other work.

"The Joy Luck Club" I thoroughly recommend it to the house.

Very wise words

I have been catching up on RSS feeds and came across the following on Dorkotech's blog:
Appreciating connection access.

Living in an area where wireless access can be a hit or miss affair, though things are gradually improving, I cannot agree more.

Blooming marvellous

Hal-an-Tow St.Michael & the Devil

Helston Bowling Club founded 1796 Castle Green Helston

Life is full of little surprises

I don't expect my humble efforts at blogging to be of any great interest to anyone, I write it as much for myself as anyone.

It comes as a pleasant surprise when I meet a reader and they are someone special in my life. No names no packdrill as they say, but I was chuffed when I found out.

A little on the recently posted photos

Travel Inn

This was on a site referred to as the Island, not sure if it was reclaimed land or land that jutted into a watercourse that is no more; the entrance to the hotel is a floor lower than the car park. There was a pool outside of the hotel and I was lucky as my room looked out over it, a plus in feng shui terms I am sure.

The room was a twin and was spacious with plenty of room for two people although I was on my own it was handy to have a second bed to spread clothes on and the 'dressing table' had plenty of room to plug in equipment and spread out.

Nottingham railway station

This was a fine old building, in need of a good clean up. The red brick entrance and high roofed interior certainly left a better impression than platforms such as those I waited in recently.

Trams

The most innocuous thing I saw when I arrived in Nottingham was a sign for Trams. It's the first time I had seen such a thing and it just struck me as odd, something I only ever thought about as a piece of the past being an everyday event for others. (OK I haven't travelled enough). I missed the opportunity to catch an earlier tram and didn't want to miss this one, so took it as soon as I saw it.

I am quite pleased with the quality of the pictures that my current phone (Sony Ericsson P910i) takes. They do not blowup very well but on a blog site they give enough of an impression - except for the one of Cathy with Cousin Gill, for some reason it's a complete blur. The next version of the phone the P990i[b/] will have a 2MB camera, this one's 0.3MB, it'll be awesome - wifi too!

Travel Inn London Road Nottingham

Example of Nottingham train station entrance

Civic building and tram Nottingham

What's in my gadget bag?

I spotted the suggestion to record jkOnTheRun What's in Your Bag? post on the jkOnTheRun site. As my response is a little long I am putting it here and leaving a link on their site.

Gadget Bag

A four compartment very large Belkin laptop rucksak. I can't quote the model as it was given to me by our IT guy when he saw the amount of kit I packed. (I'll produce photos over the weekend as it's getting too dark, natural light is best and I only have the P910i). The rucksack format is invaluable and I use it when travelling to and from the office and my recent travels to different parts of the country for work.

Always on my person

Dell Axim x51v
Stowaway Bluetooth Universal Keyboard
Emergency battery charger (runs on rechargeable batteries)
Sennheiser PX200 Headphones
Sony Ericsson P910i
Victorinox Swisscard
512MB Memory stick

Always carried in my rucksack

Combined USB\Mains Charging lead
USB lead and set of tips
2 memory sticks
Rapid battery charger
Bluetooth dongle
USB phone charging lead
8-in-1 card reader
Collapsible cup

Often carried in my rucksack

Laptop - very old Samsung 600Mhz Celeron - but reliable (mains lead)
Wifi dongle

That's pretty much it, I have not emptied the bag out so I will edit this post if I've made a glaring omission.

I have not mentioned the other bits and pieces such as highlighters, glitter pens for paper mindmapping, notebook, fountain pens & ink, etc. as they aren't really in the spirit of the post.

Deja vue - travel complications

It's happened again.

A couple of trips to London ago I decided to save time and fly to Stanstead. It made a lot of sense to land at that airport and be able to get to Arsenal without going through the centre of London. The trip up was a dream and I was at the accomodation at head office within 2 hours of leaving Newquay. Then it came time to return home.

I flew up the day before as the morning flight would not get me in early enough; travelling back I was catching the evening flight, as I could then go into work the next day. The checkin was smooth, there was wifi to keep me busy and I even got a decent seat in the grab what you can when you get onboard system of the low cost carrier.

Halfway through the flight came the dreaded announcement, fog at Newquay - diverting to Bristol. To begin with people thought that this meant we would wait there then fly down when it had cleared but the Captain soon put us straight. We would land at Bristol and the company would look into coaching us back to Cornwall. In the end, instead of getting in at 22.00 hours and home at 23.00 I got to Newquay airport by coach at 01.45 the next morning and home around 03.00 (slight detour on the way to drop off an elderly lady visiting family in the Redruth area).

I have already written about the delays a colleague suffered and then myself on the way up, now we have a delay on the way back into Cornwall. Being in Nottingham I was unaware that there were severe electrical storms in Cornwall, not the strength of thunder and lightning we've experienced in Corfu I feel certain but enough to cause chaos.

We are stuck at St Germans and have been told that the train signalling was knocked out across the county for a while today. We had a report, via the guard an hour ago, to say that staff were giving signals along the single line stretch of line near Trago and that there were trains at every signal between St Germans and Truro. It is 21.09 now and we have begun moving now the Bristol train has come up past us.

I am so thankful that we are on a Virgin Train. I have radio powered by the train and, most importantly, electrical power points to run this computer while charging my phone. The train is that quiet, four people in a carriage of 28 or so seats, I could plug in my battery charger to charge the batteries for my emergency Axim charger and fire up the laptop I am carrying too. In fact I have only fired up the laptop once this trip and that was to extract a couple of files from exe files to install on the Axim.

I am hoping that it is not raining when I get to penzance but I think I will treat myself to a taxi ride to the office, where I can get the work's car to get me home. Cathy is feeling very rough and, given the reported weather conditions, I am not going to ask anyone else to come out to collect me.

I just need a signal now so I can post this via the phone. I have used Diarist as it is definitely faster than my email client for posting to my blog and email posts have been a little patchy.

21.43 we are waiting for the Pilot to board us - yes I did say pilot. It seems that where there are no signals on siingle line track a signaler comes aboard a train and only then can it go through; there's only one pilot so only one train gets to go through, he shuttles backwards and forwards changing trains when he gets to the dual track. It was only last year that a second portion of single track was upgraded to two lines.

Latest estimate is that we are 1.5 hours behind.

More on the train types, having checked out the train magazine the trains that head up the West Coast e.g. Penzance to Glasgow, and that I am travelling on, is a Voyager train.

The radio stations on the Voyager trains, known as Voyager FM, are: Red Hot presented by Heart FM's Emma B, Over Easy presented by Radio 2's Ken Bruce, Kidz presented by Dick & Dom and Radio 4. I'd swear that we had Classic FM on the way up and no Radio 4.

Waiting at the station Nottingham

I thought I would experiment with the Letter Recogniser handwriting option on here while I had time to spare.

I find that I am quicker writing on my P910i's screen, setting out each letter individualy, than when I write cursively. As I do this I am finding I like writing on this apportioned screen and am helped by the predictive text that comes up as I type a word, something the P910i does not do.

Starbucks

As promised an update.

Connecting was a piece of cake, Chocolate Indulgence to be specific, (once again, please do not tell my wife). The one thing that I would like to stress, when you get the screen saying that you are connected please bookmark it. If you don't properly logoff it can be 15 minutes at least before the system logs you off through inactivity. .I have managed to close the whole browser 3 times to date. (There is a setting to set the x to just close the window open on top and I am going to investigate that.

Here is a might be a good example of where ActiveWords could be used to go to the bookmarked logoff page and disconnect or at least close just the open window not all of them.

The platform is filling up so I will write more later.

Starbucks Leicester Gate Nottingham

Getting here, in a roundabout way

Meeting over, time for some 'real' input.

I arrived here by heading from the Train station towards town, I don't have exact instruction but a map will show a road directly away from the entrance that opens up into a street full of shops; when I arrived at the station last night I walked down Station Road, heading away form town, heading in the opposite direction and straight across the T-junction is what I did today to get to the start of the shopping area. I was heading, under the guidance of a colleague who had been here a previously, towards the main square - a lot of which was closed off for some sort of construction works where a fountain and chillout area used to be.

Starbucks loomed out at me on the right as I headed up the Leicester Gate (I had the street shouted at me over the sound of coffee making, background music and chatting customers. If I had continued on past, which I did actually do and then came back to here, I would have reached what I call the square; this has a magnificent and imposing building with a collonaded entrance, it must have been at least equivalent to a three or four storey office block, it also had the first actual tram tracks I had seen since leaving the station.

Starbucks

The premises are much like any Starbucks, the cash desk is directly opposite the entrance and noise levels there are quite high, with the coffee machines, music, etc. But the staff are very polite and smile, (smiling gets past a lot of inconveniences in my book).

I am seated opposite the disabled toilet, just around the corner from the cash desk and within sight of the counter where customers collect their drinks. While waiting for my drink I fired up the Axim and picked up two signals that held, both reading poor strength, a third disappeared when I refreshed.

Starbucks in the UK operate in conjunction with T-mobile and I could see a T-Mobile signal and a Wifi-zone - which is part of the cloud network. Once seated the T-mobile network went to normal strength, which is what I would expect as this is a seating area for customers. I cannot speak for the table furthest two closer to the outside window and above the stairs, nor for the signal strength in the additional seating area downstairs.

Signal strength on the built in WLAN facility on this Axim x51v reads on average -49 in the normal range and, on the bar that shows signal strength that is 3/4 of the maximum or 4/5 of the columns on the today screen. I have not yet connected but will report in a separate post of any problems I might have.

I have learnt to not log on and then spend 15 - 20 minutes hardly using the connection. I will write a few posts\emails and then connect.

Refreshments

Today I had the banana caramel frappaccuino (?spelling) that is being promoted. I was asked if I wanted it coffee or cream based but misunderstood, thinking they ment did I want whipped cream on the top. Mine is made without the coffee and is very tasty, (I will talk another time about tastebuds - mine in particular), and very refreshing. (In Corfu I have to ask for my frappe to be 'dthen me gala' (without milk) as it becomes cloying if made with loads of milk as Corfiots expect visitors to like it).

All in all a pleasant visit. Now to connect.

Thursday 10 May 2006 13.20

This is also a second posting as the email version has not appeared on the site - another point scored for Kevin Daly's Diarist blogging tool.

It's late and still I blog

I never sleep that well when I'm away on my own, I'll probably sleep most of the way back to Cornwall.

Maybe it's because I haven't done a lot of this. I enjoy the travelling, meeting people and doing a good job, it's just the sleeping. Oh well, there's plenty worse that could happen, I could hate the travel for a start and living in COrnwall there's always plenty of travel.

I don't understand what the people next door are doing, it sounds like moving furniture or some other less than pleasurable experience - mind you who am I to judge, each to their own.

I found the other day that emailing photos with no body text and only some in the subject line worked; tonight this does not seem to be the case. Why is it so intermittent? First I lose the ability to send a blog entry at the same time as the photos and now this. Most frustrating.

Time now to hit the sack and see if I can get to sleep.

Thursday 10 May 2006 13.18

I am posting this via Diarist as it seems to have been lost in the ether when I emailed earlier and checked just now.

Nottingham Part 2

I was worried I would lose the connection, so I posted the last piece rather than lose it.

Having had the bad news on wifi at the hotel I knew I'd have to venture into town, even if I was tired. I showered and fired up the location spreadsheet I had downloaded from The Cloud site. Filtering the spreadsheet to show relevant postcodes I found a couple of possibilities near me. Setting off I passed a Hooters but guessed that, as they were not on the list of wifi locatoions I should give them a miss. (My wife would probably call them broad-banned as far as I was concerned).

Icame to the street I thought was correct to find that it was 'Road' not 'Way' so I decided to stroll with wifi turned on and see what came up. In a short while I was passing a bar and glancing at the screen saw that a wifi Zone was present with a poor signal. On entering I asked the barman if the had a wifi connection, he said no, I looked and the signal was normal strength so it would do me, whatever he said. I ordered a J2O and he served me with a pint of some lager and a J2O, OK ,maybe my Cornish accent coupled with the loud muzak was to blame. Not being one to argue I paid for both, found a seat and promptly went on line. I have been surfing for a while now, I'm at a bar called Via on, what I think is, Queen Street. The bar has large couches scattered around and seems to have a restaurant upstairs. There were menus scattered on all the tables that said order food from the bar. I went up with the menu and ordered food, only to be told by the barman that "they don't serve food anymore", now the first time I wrote off but this seemed odd to say the least. I have taken it that they don't serve food in the evenings, hard work this language barrier.

The connection has been great, helped by there being very few people on the premises. The barman is helpful and I am quite comfortable.

Being quiet here has helped me, I would rather not have a lot of people watching me with two drinkls and looking like I had been stood up, I haven't but how else do you explain a chap sitting there tapping away on a keyboard with a pint and a non-alcoholic drink in front of him? Adventures in the life of a geek I guess.

Time to move on soon. I need to get back at a reasonable hour as I feel tired, helped by the unexpected pint of lager - maybe it's the law up t'North to have to have at least one alcoholic drink when buying a non-alcoholic one. I have caught up on RSS feeds, emails and posted a couple of blog entries so I can return to the hotel with my head held high.

I may make a couple more entries when I get back, I can post via the phone and I'll upload the couple of photos I have grabbed.

More anon.

Ah well

Travel Inn, London Road, Nottingham

What a swiz!

Hang on, let me start from the beginning.

Having arrived too late at Birmingham New Street station to make my connection I go up to the main concourse, only to find that the next Nottingham train was arriving at the platform I just left; still no need to hunt for the platform and it wasn't that far away, in fact the Virgin train I got off was still at the platform I was so quick.

The trip to Nottingham was fine. There was only a small table in the section I was sitting in and a chap hogged it with his laptop but I checked out alternatives and this keyboard and Axim setup fitted fine on the flat back of my little backpack, (a present from my wife, who knows of my tendency to go kitted up, it folds into it's own pocket for carrying discretely when I don't need it).

Getting into Nottingham station, a fine red bricked building, I'll post a picture of the entrance later, the first of two streets on the route to my hotel was clearly sign posted along the Way Out route.

Something that really caught my eye, apart from the plethora of red brick buildings seen through various windows, was a sign for Trams. That is something novel for a chap from West Cornwall. You hear about these things but it's only when they crop up in the context of what is normal for the locals that they really register.

Anyway, finding the hotel was made even easier when I passed a building under construction that had an aerial photograph of the area mounted on one of it's screens along the street. I turned a corner, crossed the road and could see the Travel Inn, right next to Nottingham's BBC station (this only has significance as it made me think of Rebecca, a BBC reporter whom I'm related to - in that convoluted Cornish method of reckoning).

I went in to the hotel and was dealt with by a very helpful young lady, from her badge it said in training and I could see that she was new enough not to be jaded unlike her colleague. I asked if they had wifi, as their website said all their hotels would have it by end of July. What he said rang faint alarm bells but I put it down to tiredness or a lack of understanding on his part - I was wrong.

When I got into my room and fired up this Axim the alarm bells rang loud and clear. I have been dipping into the world of roaming and making use of the monthly deal I have to get onto T-Mobile and The Cloud hotspots. Travel Inns have their own setup in partnership with a company called Spectrum. The deal is you select the amount of time you want to pay for and then give your credit card info; no roaming option, just ?4 for 30 minutes, ?6 for 1 hour, ?qw for a day, ?24 for a week and I forget what the other offer was.

The moral of the above is, if you are hoping to roam on a hotel's wifi, it will not always be possible. Maybe Travel Inns are an exeception but I know I will take more care in future. Research, research, research will be my watchwords. (I realised after that last November I stayed in a Travelodge, where they had a Swisscom hotspot that had roaming partners).

wifi at Starbucks Taunton and Little Chef Chiverton Cross

Starbucks
I parked in the 5 storey carpark above the library and shopping centre in town, Starbucks is on Fore Street (part of the centre that is on the street), so no problems finding it.

I know generally that Starbucks has wifi but did not know there was one as close to home, (hah! 3.5 hours' drive away), until I used the Cloud's search option, the night before my trip, to pin down the various hotspots available in the town.

The provider was T-Mobile and all I had to do to make the connection was choose the roaming partner I was with and enter my login details.

I managed to find a comfy chair tucked out of the way and free as a family occupied the other two plus floorspace for their child. I got comfortable and, as mentioned in my briefest post before this one, got connected with only the slightest of hiccups.
Bandwidth was reasonable, ie not as fast as home but I do have hotspotvpn switched on. I did not notice anyone else using the facility so I guess I had the best of the speed. Connection strength was good on this Dell Axim x51v.

Little Chef
Sits on a roundabout on the A30 at a junction with the St.Agnes, Newquay, Bodmin and Truro roads.

The supplier is The Cloud and I had a choice of clicking on the symbol for my service provider or choosing from a pull down list. Connection was smooth and would have been quick, but for a couple of false starts when my browser (Opera) insisted on resetting itself. Signal strength was the full five bars and again I seemed to be the only one using the bandwidth; there was a small degredation in speed but less so than Starbucks, maybe someone was using it there - there were 25 or so people whereas here there are 8.

I have not pulled up stats from my connections manager for now as I want to be heading home soon and have finished my food. It has been a long day today, up at 5am and while tomorrow is a later start it will still need to be by 6am. It is 7.15 now and time I sent this from diarist and got on my way; another 30 minutes drive till home and packing my bag for tomorrow.

Starbucks Taunton

Just time after my meeting to grab a quick coffee, cake (hope my wife doesn't read this) and wifi session.

I was worried at first that the Hotspotvpn was playing up, I hadn't gotten a login screen so assumed (for some coffee induced reason - this is my second today) that my login to t-mobile yesterday was recognised and let me in, [hotspot newbie that I am].

Once I opened Opera instead of PIE and logged in all became well.

Flora Day ups and downs

Ups

Spent the day with our best friends and Cornish Godson.

Met up with cousin visiting from the US and saw some old friends, particularly my big sis - a sort of adopted big sister, from when we were at school together.

Having pasties handmade by one of the best friends we spent the day with.

The good weather, with only the lightest of splashes of moisture.

Downs

The speed with which my phone battery drained with no backup mobile charger with me.

Not going near any of the buildings recorded as having wifi.

The time with our friends going so quickly.

Not seeing some people I hardly ever see except Flora Day and not always even then.

More Flora Day 2006

Flora Day 5 May 2006

Cross Street

Well we have arrived and, true to form, forgot to turn a corner, walk 500 yards and see the 7 o'clock dancers 20
minutes earlier than we will now.

I can just hear the band approaching.

Just below Nettles Hill

That was a close run thing. There was the recovery of a van blocking the route until the very last second. The lorry secured it's load and pulled back when the band were with a couple of metres.

Decorated Doorway Flora Day Helston 2006

Things only get better

Posting to my blog by email, from my Pocket PC, started to get flaky. First I had to post pictures and texts separately, then not all posts appeared, coupled with an absence of notices about it, I was definitely getting frustrated.

Following a period of Googling I found a programme that resolved all issues. Kevin Daly's Diarist allows me to create posts, include links and pictures and post with immediate confirmation of success; at one point I made a mistake about the size of pictures I included, the post button had immediately changed to an Update one, all I had to do was edit the post and click Update.

When I first looked at how images were added, I was disappointed to see it meant having to use URLs. When I thought about it and looked at Flickr my worries evaporated. Posting pictures to Flickr could be done by email, posting pictures as part of a Diarist post needed three clicks.

Diarist is efficient, it does exactly what I need it to, is only 109k, it continues to be supported (the new version - 1.2 - out Tuesday 2 May 2006) and is freeware. What more could one ask?

This is one occasion when things only get better.

An interesting week

I have been having a fun week. Not only did I get a nod from Kevin Tofel on James Kendrick's jkontherun, but I have had exchanges with people at the heart of things I am very interested in. If you asked me to pick up a pen and drop a line to someone leading in a particular area, I would not hold out much hope of a personal reply; the beauty of email, out in the morning and courteously replied to by the afternoon.

It's the access to people I might never get the opportunity to meet that makes me love email.

Godolphin House day out

diarist link

I just realised that I should set a link to Kevin Daly's Diarist, since I find it so useful.

He has a presence on the net Kevin Daly non-blog presence and is found, for the more technically minded, at Dotnetjunkies presence.

I am going to have to get in touch as there does not seem to be a way to donate something for using the programme; it has helped me that much, I would really like to do something to show my appreciation.

A day out at Godolphin House

Godolphin House is a historic country house just 6 miles from us. It is a classic position I guess, I have lived here all of my life (so far) more than 40 years and I had never visited the house and grounds.

I am embarassed and amazed when I think about this, especially now I have looked over the property. The previous link gives the lowdown on the house and stands in for the photos I have to work out how to post from my phone. (More on this later). The best bit has to be how the house was in a "natural" state. What I mean by this is more how you'd expect it to have appeared to people hundreds of years before, not in it's heyday but a generation or two after it's height.

The tour does not take that long; at ?6 it might seem expensive for the relatively short viewing but it's the closeness to the fabric and the intimate feel that compensates. We've been "spoilt" as members of the National Trust, not having to pay out of our pocket at the door for a multitude of magnificant properties.

There was a food market at the House today and this was the bait that drew us . We will now return there in the future to picnic and walk the grounds. The estate once had a deer park based across a hill, the second highest in the area, now an open area with public access. We have walked over Godolphin Hill to look across the fields to the towns of Camborne and Redruth and surrounding countryside and to the neighbouring Tregonning Hill. In the area there have been people living for an age, the National Trust site refers to evidence of occupation in the Bronze Age.

I would reckon Godolphin House to be worth a visit and you could plan a day there if you are into picnics and country walks.

The food available at the market held there, over the last couple of days, was extensive. The emphasis was on Cornish produce and that we sampled was of a high quality, in our opinion. One thing that saddens me slightly is the fact that local produce has to be quite so expensive. Then again, these products were often specialist and you always have to pay more for someone to prepare it for you. If I was to try to live on the local products I saw there today I would have to be on a non-local salary. Or maybe that's unfair, after all, it's not about living off specialist products everyday, what makes them special is the occasional treat.

Anyhow, that's enough on our day out this Bank Holiday Monday.

Fantastic - I love Diarist

I didn't think it would matter that much if I couldn't post for a day or two; I didn't bank on the fact that investing the time in writing changed my point of view.

This is such a straightforward programme but aren't the best ones just that?

I downloaded the cab in about 2 minutes from finding the website, after Googling for posting problems from PPC to a blogger account. The installation took under 1 minute and I had a post up 3 minutes later. The programme even reports whether the post was successful a couple of seconds after posting - at least it does while I am connected to my wifi connection as is the case right now.

That's all I can ask for. When it comes to keeping a blog alive one needs to be able to post easily and this is aided in the first part by mobile blogger and second by the programme or method of getting the post out.

Photos need attaching from a URL, by the looks of it, but that's not too difficult as I now have a flickr account. I may be able to work out the coding to use to attach pictures from the PPC when posting, we'll see. I managed to close the browser that was on Kevin Daly's latest site but I'll dig it out again in the morning.

I just wanted to blog something as I am chuffed to be able to get posts out there again and also use my keyboard.

Diarist and Keyboard

I have a couple of minutes before going to bed and wanted to make an update on my progress with the keyboard.

But first here's a saviour programme of the old school. 34k in size yet fulfilling a vital purpose. I am posting this using the Diarist programme produced by Kevin Daly.

For some reason, none of my posts from either of my accounts, that I normally post from, have made it to the account. Neither picture nor text has shown up from today but nor have I had the "did not get through" message. More on Diarist later but I have to say how refreshing to find a compact programme.

Things are still going swimmingly. The keyboard makes surfing using the Axim a much more comfortable experience over longer periods. I have spent around 3 hours this evening with the Axim in it's cradle on the arm of the settee, while I had the keyboard in my lap, I shall refer to this in future as my favoured position. I have surfed, updated my contacts and sent email. With no strain or real difficulties.

I believe the one thing I do could do to speed data entry even more is to work out how to accept the predictive text that pops up by using the keyboard.

Stowaway Universal Bluetooth Keyboard & Dell Axim x51v

Stowaway Keyboard

Well it took a little effort to collect the keyboard.

Ordering was no problem, once I Froogled and found a set of sources I decided on the most rerasonable and ordered it.

As it was a Friday afternoon it didn't seem worth getting it next day delivery so, showing admirable restraint I opted to use Royal Mail delivery. I mistakenly put my main office of residence for the delivery address, forgetting that I would be away for the day at the county HQ. The postman had to leave a card requesting that I collect the parcel from the local sorting office, as there was no-one to sign for it.

So, a day later than it might have been I turn up at the office. I glanced at the card and noted the opening of the sorting office was 8am and closing was 6pm. I couldn't leave until lunchtime but then I dashed off to collect the parcel - to find that it had closed 45 minutes earlier and would not open till 4.10pm!! Imagine my disappointment.

Eventually I got a lift to the office and collected the parcel with no hassles; I even caught an early bus and got home 40 minutes early. I got tired today, can't shift this sore throat, so it took nearly e hours before I dug the package out of my rucksack.

Setup was amazingly simple. Having unpacked the keyboard I realised I had not got a computer to run the setup cd. I decided to see if I could go online and download the drivers - it was amazing. As the Stowaway site opened it had already determined the type of driver I needed. I didn't trust it so went through the mnanual selection process and came up with the same driver.

I downloaded the driver and it detected that a built in driver was running and gave me the option to turn it off. I turned off the generic driver and was up and away.

The keyboard feels very natural and I am already typing at near full speed. The action of the keys is responsive and I love all the built in functions. The key board has functions marked in blue to match a corresponding function key and a set of similar green marked function keys. There are functions for launching things like email, for opening a new email and sending it, appointments, calendars and a bunch of other of things.

I have already produced this email in a quarter of the time I reckon it would take me with a stylus - even if I inked it. This should make interacting with websites easier on the Dell, even if the site is a little tight to see.

It should certainly be easier to add items to this blog. Now to test the Send function button.

Porthleven Old Cornwall Society AGM night

If only more AGMs could work this way

Normally I dread things like AGMs - unless I want to catch up on sleep but this one is different.

Arranged around the room are books of cuttings gathered by Recorders of Porthleven Old Cornwall Society. There is so much information contained within them from hundreds and hundreds of newspapers.

Having looked through the books l was in a much better mood for the meetlng

Shout it from the rooftops

I think it must be "Rarely Heard About Day".

Please read the following with this in mind: I live in the UK, where we are quite used to paying prices for IT items by replacing the dollar sign with that of the British pound - straight swap. Even with this in mind, there are some things that seem to be even more out of kilter.

For quite some time, a big bugbear of mine has been the huge costs involved
with Wifi hotspot access in the UK.

So many sites seem to want to charge premium rates of £6 [$9 - 10] per hour!
While surfing through the wifi related website (BT Openzone) of my IP (BT
Openworld) I find that they offer their customers like myself 500 minutes
per month for the same amount!

So where is the publicity material for this? Where is the advertising? When were they shouting it from the rooftops?

Is it only me who wants to spend the odd 10 minutes or so grabbing emails, topping up on podcasts and maybe the occasional Skype? This useage pattern ensures the monthly or daily subscriptions available are not financiably viable; that leaves the 1 hour voucher, even if I can spread out the use, it means a minimum of 10 minutes per connection will be used up at 10p a minute.

Now I can go online for the briefest of periods without severe dents to my wallet. If I only had a laptop I might not be sure I would use the minutes up, (they do not roll over), but I have this Dell Axim x51v.

It was the same when they upgraded me for free, from 512k to 2GB (yeh I know
there's plenty of people with faster), no big splash but it's worth a lot to
me.

So I doff my hat to BT, an oft maligned organisation but maybe, just maybe, a diamond in the rough.

A definition of success

I felt I had to pass the following quote along:

He has achieved Success who has lived long, laughed often, and loved much.
Who has gained the trust of pure women, the respect of intelligent men,
and the love of little children.
Who has filled his niche and accomplished his task.
Who has left the world better than he found it,
whether [it be through a lovelier poppy, a perfect poem, or a rescued soul].
Who has always appreciated the earth’s beauty and never failed to express it.
Who has always looked for the best in others, and given the best he had.
Whose life was an inspiration; whose memory a benediction.

--This definition of success was written by the wife of the Superintendent of Instruction in Lincoln County, Kansas, which won the prize offered by a newspaper for the best definition of Success written in one hundred words.

Posted by: Victor Panlilio | Apr 18, 2006 12:57:10 PM


I  came across this in the comments on the Creating Passionate Users blog http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/; in it's own words: ( http://headrush.typepad.com/about.html )

The Creating Passionate Users bloggers are all authors of bestseller Head First books (http://www.wickedlysmart.com)--a new brain-friendly series from O'Reilly.

They're all passionate about the brain and metacognition, most especially--how the brain works and how to exploit it for better learning and memory. Oh yeah, and how to recognize when someone else (including one of us) is applying brain-based techniques to get you to do something.

Not a bad thing to aim for.

FW: Fwd: A visit from Celtic Cousins

For some reason a picture & subject text plus body text is being rejected as "application/octect stream is not accepted" but the picture and subject text below got through, as did my Where is post earlier. Strange. Here is the text that should hhave come with it.

Just my luck isn't it! The email client says it's sent but it didn't arrive. Here's attempt two.

Visiting Falmouth with friends and had a great surprise - a French market. Even better there were Breton dancers and musicia's.

I love to hear ethnic music and Celtic music has a special appeal.

Above is a grabbed picture of the event as it happens. Thanks to GPRS it's on the way to this blog while they are still dancing.

Handcrafted on a Sony Ericsson P910i

My mobile blog - lowjib7.blogspot.com

Breton dancing in Falmouth

Where's my post gone?

On Saturday I came across a dancing exhibition by a group of Breton dancers visiting Falmouth.

I thought it an ideal opportunity to capture the event live for this blog. I used the 910i, as the camera and handwriting recognition make it very easy to compose and send an entry.

I had an initial problem with rogue characters in the smtp setting, from earlier experimentation due to problems with Orange's email handling. Once I corrected the smtp anomaly the photo and text went from the Outbox to the Sent. The strange thing is, over the following hours that day, I saw no response in my inbox to say the post had reached Blogger; I checked the blog itself and there was no sign there either.

Yesterday I resent the entry and still there is no sign. I will now transfer it from my phone and see if sending from here has any effect.

First though, I will send this entry to check that something can get through.

Register of birth, marriages & deaths

I need to get to grips with Phatnotes on this Pocket PC; there are lots of bits and pieces I want to record for future reference.

I need something like Evernote or Onenote, though I suspect Phatnotes could work if I just knuckle down.

For the moment I am going to use this blog to record items, here's the first.

The whole of the UK National Birth, Marriage & Death indexes, from the official start in 1837 to 1983, can be accessed free at www.ancestry.co.uk. On the homepage of that site you click on the England & Wales, BMD Index (Beta) - (just below the box marked Exact Search) - underneath More Collections, then follow the provided instructions.

Holiday weekend starts here

Well, that's it for work today.

Here in the UK it's the start of the Easter weekend. Friday and Monday are days off work for the majority of office staff. On Sunday that very rare event occurs , where even superstores shut for a whole day!

We are meeting up with friends and seeing family but staying pretty much locally. I always feel that we should have booked a holiday somewhere more exotic, to take advantage of the two days leave we are given - we never do. There was a report on the BBC news today, highlighting the high prices involved with vacationing at this time of year, that eases my concerns. Go later, stay longer, pay less has been our method when visiting Corfu over the last few years and I can see the merits of sticking with it.

Test from orange account via bt

Orange email trials and tribulations

OK I normally only have praise for Orange - both the mobile phone service and internet account.

That was until the email I received advising me that I would need to change my username from the word or combination of aphanumeric characters I currently used.  The email instructed me to replace the original username for my phonenumber@orange.net.  Quite straightforward one would think - but therein lay my downfall!

Once I had changed my login I could not access my orange email.  I ran tests using the feature in my Outlook and it reported that it could find both pop (incoming) and smtp (outgoing) servers but that the incoming did not respond.  [I could check ie download emails if I connected via GPRS on my phone but not on the computer - laptop nor pocket pc].

So where does one go for help?  From hunting around I found the choice of phone call at 50p per minute or email form.  I chose the email form and got an automated response the next day to say that I needed to phone the 50p a minute number to solve my email problem.  This grated with me and I was spurred into trying things not instructed in the email, in hindsight maybe I should have been pessimistic and started with this.

1/2 hour of frustrated attempts and I came up with the solution but that's not my gripe.  Why should I have to have come up with the answer - why was there no recognition on the Orange site about this problem?  I cannot believe I am the only one to follow the email and have problems.

So what was the answer?  For username ONLY put your phone number.  Since I did this Outlook reports that the Incoming Server responds!  I have put the settings into my Pocket PC and seen all the Outlook test emails and some of my own come flooding in.

If you came here by googling for Orange email problems or orange incoming server error or pop server 2006 not responding I hope that this has helped you.

Pocket Blogger Test 2

That was actually far easier than I expected. I just need the programme to remember the login, so I don't have to re-enter all the time.

Pocket Blogger Test Post

This is the test of pocket blogger. The blog already has a really straightforward way to post mobile blogs so I will take some convincing.

One fine day

OK I might feel like something the cat brought in, but one a day like this how could I not walk down to the harbour?

The shy is dear blue, the tide might be out but the sun still clears the hill on my right. It is warm ansi am loding out on a Cornish fishing village in spring - I am fortunate.

Oxford to win to the 2006 boat race

Just wanted to log my opinion before the race is run.

I'm tempted to go further and say by 1/2 length but, with a significantly lighter Oxford crew and only one rower from last year, I think it will be tight.