Geoff Jones

Inveterate dabbler in business, travel, gadgets & life

Tag: cambridge

Apple screws it up.

MacBook Oct 2008
MacBook Oct 2008

In the beautifully illustrated tear down of the new MacBook at iFixit there is the discovery that the new MacBook contains an astounding 96 screws of which 56 hold down the keyboard. It must be an assemblers / BOM nightmare with 13 different types of screw mentioned in the break down. Plus it must add to the machining costs all those blind tapped holes in the casing. Lets hope the poor Chinese women don’t strike for better wages 🙁

Just had a play with one in the Apple store here in Cambridge. I found the new mouse pad quite hard to use as the downwards force to activate the switch seems quite hard, obviously designed that way to stop inadverent pressing when using the glide pad.

The machine does look beautiful though. 🙂

A day in the country…

Vera from the Cambridge Rambling Club organised an excellent ‘A’ rated walk on Sunday for 13 of us keen ramblers, A 15 mile circular trip from Grantchester to Toft. Sally and I added on a 5mile trip to get there from Cambridge!

Here is the route with photos:-

Cambridge Ramblers – Toft Walk

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An unexpected bonus is that Vera had discovered a load of permissive paths from Comberton to Grantchester which are ideal to incorporate in my Scholars Way walk, thus replacing a tedious footpath walk from Barton to Comberton with a delightful meadow walk alongside Barton Brook. Many thanks to Lark Rise Farm and The Countryside Restoration Trust for opening up this area.

A great day thanks to Vera and a splendidly organised ramble and providing an excellent home made tea in her beautiful cottage garden – excelled The Orchard in every way 🙂 Also thanks to Ellee for suggesting that we went and unfortunately couldn’t make it herself.

Cambridge property going South….

Cheffins held a property auction in Cambridge yesterday (which i missed 🙁 ). This fine 3 bed semi in Lovell Road CB4 2QW was predicted, prior to the auction,  to make £180K to £200K in fact it didn’t reach £118K . Oops it made £179,500

Only 8 of the 15 lots were sold at the auction. So it looks as though the property crash has finally hit Cambridge (again). I wonder if it will take 15 years to recover this time.

Update:

From the excellent Estate angels website I found some historic prices for Lovell Road:

Lovell Road House Prices 2000 - 2007
Lovell Road House Prices 2000 - 2007

Yesterdays price of £118K £179,500 takes as back in time to 2000!  Eight two years of Cambridge property inflation wiped out in one month or so…

Making a splash..


Today at Noon was the official start to my swimming season here in Cambridge with the Jesus Green pool opening. The water was at a balmy 51°F a couple of degrees warmer than last year.

Geoff making a splash

I managed 2 lengths (Sally did 4). Jordan, the reporter was there from the Cambridge News and he reckons our pictures should hit the presses this Friday.

The cost for the season is £52.50 with my residents leisure card! Full set of pictures are on Flickr