“One of the reasons I’m proud of it is that blogging was created without the lock-in you see in systems like Twitter, Facebook and though they’ll argue for sure, Buzz. Even Posterous, Tumblr and Wordpress.com don’t give you easy ways off their servers. Blogging started without the concept of a single server, so there was no place to get off of. The whole point was to be as distributed as the web itself, to give people independence, to let billions of websites bloom. This is such an obvious feature of blogs that people don’t usually see it. But it’s there, and it’s hugely important.”

He is so right – Having your own blog is far better than been locked into the likes of Facebook.

So we made a quick ramble to Ely on the Fen Rivers Way  our walk of the day! It was 16 miles which we comfortably did in 5 hours at a moving pace of 3.5mph. Twas a gorgeous day with spring not to far away now – we didn’t even get our boots muddy!

Due to it been Mothering Sunday, Sally was treated to tea & scones at The Peacock in Ely, we avoided the queues by having ours outside The scones were almost as good as The Orchard at Grantchester (slightly less fruity I thought)

The route is much improved now with only a couple of stiles  the rest been replaced with the metal kissing gates. I can really recommend it for anyone who is wanting a nice easy day out.

Oh and we now have an additional 1.7miles tagged onto the end of the walk – from Cambridge Rail station to my new abode.

Here is the Everytrail:-

Fen River Way – Cambridge to Ely

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As you can see my vintage Davidsons Hexagonal Postcard Stand made £240 & what did I pay it for it? The answer is a big zero, I found it discarded with a load of rubbish in a skip 20 years ago!

It will be interesting to see what all the other stuff fetches next month My suspicion is probably, at best,  less than 50% what I paid for it!

The walk can be found on Everytrail and also Sally has a post on the walk too!:-

Haverhill to Kedlington circular walk

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“Thank you for your email dated 09/02/09 in regards to the broadband speed at your new property.
The initial test on your phone line you should be able to support a maximum broadband download speed of around 512 kbps. The actual speed you get could be lower and is dependent on several factors such as whether you have any internal home wiring, our network management policy and the number of people using the internet at the same time. Speeds are generally lower in the evening at peak times. You can find more information on all of these on BT.com.”

and where is this new property? you might ask – Well, its 1mile from the centre of Cambridge the so called heart of Europe’s Hi-Tecg Silicon Fen.

Thank goodness that Cambridge Cable (Comcast/Singapore Telecom) invested in all that fibre in 1991 (although sadly the fibre ends in the street rather than the house) so Virgin Media (who took over NTL who took over Cambridge Cable in the game of musical chairs that corporate UK loves) can offer 10MB, 20MB and 50MB speeds. Although amusingly they recommended I take on a Virgin telephone line as well because calls to their help desk would then be free!

22 Feb Update: @btcare on Twitter managed to sort it out. However, there is a £25 penalty to be paid for moving to Virgin and BT won’t let the house purchaser take over the telephone number!

Making for a very pleasurable start to Valentines day l

Here is the Everytrail route and pics:-

Lovely Valentines day walk

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Amazing what you find when you clear out the cupboards – Stephen’s old A team sticker album!

I was designated the back marker, which was interesting for me. I realised for the first time that the back marker actually sets the pace whereas the leader sets the direction. Also, a good lesson learnt is how crucial it is that the leader makes sure they can always see the back marker!

The pace was at 2.6mph compared to the A teams 3mph+ the other difference is the B team spend substanially longer in the pub at lunchtime. The overall result is that in the same time we did 18miles last week we did 10miles this week.

Given the leisurely pace and been on my own at the rear, I was able to play with the latest 3.1 release of Everytrail for the iPhone. It has to be said its a real corker! works exceptionally well, even handling incoming phone calls without crashing. Plus talking pictures and annotating them is a breeze. A really cool feature is that it continues to work with the screen off and in the breast pocket of my jacket. The uploaded trail is here:-

Snowdrop Walk

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I also plotted the trip using my conventional GPS and camera. These are up on Everytrail too. The morning walk around Meldreth is here . The afternoon walk with the twitchers at Fowlmere nature reserve is here.

We have mare for the sea eg Weston-super mare
We have mere for Lake eg Windermere
We have mire for water mixed with soil.
We have more (moor) for just earth
and OK
We have mure for bricking in a doorway according to OED……

Advantages

• The £10 a month unlimited internet and texts for life is a great deal for anyone, like me, who doesn’t make many voice calls.
• Since its pay as you go when you travel abroad you are no longer faced with a horrendous bill on your return. You can get one of their £5 roaming bundles easily by text whilst you are away.
• Topping up is a delight, they send a message when you are running low you can send a free text back with the last 4 digits of your previously registered credit card  the amount and three security digits, and away you go.
• The itemised billing is excellent, totally itemised bills to the last K of data transferred and instantly available on the web.
• 3G Coverage so far is awesome!

Disadvantages

• If your phone breaks and Apple replace it then according to the local Apple store it will be locked. Will O2 unlock a phone if you have no contract? When I asked at Apple they just said speak to O2 and yes O2 say speak to Apple. Maybe this issue will clear up as more iPhones get legally unlocked and Orange etc come to the market.
• At the moment  if I put the iPhone in Airplane mode the iPhone asks to be unlocked again by iTunes (to do this you have to remove the SIM, take it out of flight mode, reinsert SIM and then iTunes will unlock it).
• You get the silly Content Lock screen (in picture) if you access blogs
• The iPhone seems to eat the battery in 3G mode. I guess with O2 it never found a 3G mast!

Conclusion
Its great to have an always on internet, even in the depths of cafes and lecture theatres, so I’m sticking with T-Mobile until either I buy a Nexus or the latest toy from Apple.

With the excellent iPhone app Sleep Cycle I can now publish my sleep status:-

Which takes in 1/3 of my day
The other third can usually be found at Everytrail:

La Grande Odyssee in Les gets

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The other third I guess you need to pop over to Sally’s place