Monday 31 January 2005. A lovely sunset tonight. Pix Here

Sunday 30 January 2005. Had a pleasant trip to London over the last couple of days. The driver on the outward journey did not know that there was a stop at my picking up point, and he was driving past! Thanks to National Express for the £17 fare (rail £41.50) , and almost door to door. I am just a 20 minute walk from where the coach stops between Mansfield and Nottingham. And also to the very pleasant company on the return journey. Fancy us both knowing Dave Keward! Hope you take up more serious walking and hill walking!
I took in a play, The Anniversary, with Sheila Hancock. Very entertaining!

Sunday 23 January 2005. The Sherwood group of the LDWA had a walk today. For the photos, please click here

Friday 21 January 2005. Did an interesting little test to see where i am on the political/economic spectrum. See the result here
Musthavethatgadget asked a question about their website! See the answer here

Thursday 20 January 2005.At last the fiasco of the Cobra GPS100 is drawing to a conclusion. Initially it was ordered from musthavethatgadget.com in early December. There was no email confirmation of the order, the explanation being that there was an error in the email address at the time of ordering. This was not the case, as there is a screen print of the order taken at the time. It had not arrived within the usual couple of days, despite the credit card being charged immediately. I think that that is a trait not to be encouraged by retailers. My own opinion is that the seller waits until the goods are despatched before the card is charged. Then when it did not arrive, they had to be pestered, on their 0870-278382 number at national rates of 8p/min, until one was sent. Eventually that DID arrive, but it turned out, despite a thorough reading of the manual, help from others, and a knowledgable shop assistant, to be impossible to use. I contacted Cobra USA, and this was the email response I got within two hours of my enquiry : Unfortunately the GPS100 does not work properly with the British Grid position format . So the Cobra had to be returned, and a full refund, including postage, was made, thankfully. Only one thing remains to be done, and that is to get the GPS removed from sale on the company's website, on the grounds that it does not work on the OS system in the UK, or failing that, to have the description amended so that that point is explained. I cannot imagine anyone in the UK would want a GPS that cannot show the OS grid reference system. Lat/Long are not sufficient, as I have never met anyone who gives positions in the UK using them . Accordingly, trading standards officers are investigating the problem at this moment. Oh, and if you need to contact musthavethatgadget.com, try this number instead: 01945-430226. Its cheaper than the 0870 number!

Wednesday 19 January 2005. Credit cards are so convenient, enabling online ordering, saving the need to carry large amounts of cash, and delaying payment for up to two months. I changed from the free for life Coop Bank Gold Card to Egg when the latter introduced a card with 1% cashback. Evnetually that reduced to ½%, so I moved to the A & L card, again with 1%. Of course that changed to ½%, and then was sold to MNBA. Today I received a letter from them saying that theu were discontinuing cashback from 28 Feb. That gives me about six weeks to sort out a new credit card. There is still a selection of cashback cards around, and i am currently investigating the best deal. We will see what happens!

Monday 10 January 2005. Misty, the 16 week old lilac tabby Birman, was collected today. For the latest photos, click here.

Sunday 9 January 2005. Here is a picture of willow. She is on the right. Click Here
The walk today was with the Lincolnshire LDWA, starting from Edwinstowe, in the heart of Sherwood Forest. Met Roger, who is trying his first 100 this year. Maybe we can do some recceing a few days before the event itself? Meanwhile, click here for the pictures from the walk today.

Friday 7 January 2005. Sent off the entry form and the £12 fee for The Woldsman, a 50 mile walk from Beverley, East Yorkshire. As the form is not available elsewhere for downlaod, I have uploaded one here. Click and print!

Tuesday 4 January 2005. Ticked off two more Nuthall's yesterday, in the N. Pennines. When I have climbed all the 2000 ft hills in that region I will set up a website showing the various tops, in the same way as I did for the 214 Wainwright tops in the lake district.www.wainwrights.me.uk
Click HERE for a report on the gingersnaps contest in the Newcastle Journal.

Saturday 1 January 2005. A very happy new year to all my readers. I wish you the best of everything in 2005. So far the year has started well.
Fancy a wave. Try this one for size.It's even bigger than the Royal Wave! WAVE
My previous car, the Rover 200Vi, made 0-62 in 7.5 seconds, with a top sped of 126mph. It had been revamped since 1997 at various times, and now appears as the MG ZR 160 (that means bhp), and they boast about it 'racing to 62 mph in 7.4 seconds'. Hardly an improvemet on 1997. That's the problem facing MG Rover at the moment: no money to develop new cars: all that they can afford to do is revamp the exisitng range. And it's only the cheap prices that enable the company to sell any at all. Compared to the Honda Civic, the Rover is such old technology I am surprised anyone buys them at all! Of course, there is a considerable difference in price. But, like anything else, you get what you pay for. Pay cheap, get old technology. Pay more, get the Honda Civic R! Believe me, you will not regret it.

Friday 31 December 2004. Today saw me visiting the GCR at Loughborough, which was holding its xmas and new year gala, with a more intesive service of trains. Click here for the photos.

Tuesday 28 December 2004. A interesting letter in The Times today, complaining about how people 'spell' BRITAIN. Yet two of the errors are not spelling errors at all, but straightforward typos. Interchanging two letters is a consequence of typing with two fingers. I do that all the time! Read the letter HERE. Interestingly, I tried to email David Taylor directly, but my first attempt failed. Look at the domain. Is that a Times misprint? So I tried david@taylormarketing.co.uk, but that appeared to fail also! What was that about spelling errors? I note that that a whois check does find a record for that domain! Here., and a response a short while later showed that the email had succeeded in getting to its destination. Google also finds about 19,800 references for little britian, so it is a popular typo for website pages as well!

Monday 27 December 2004. I have several different websites that I set up, some for my own interest, such as this blog, some for a variety of organisations, and some because, well, just because they should exist. One such is the Hillwalker's Register, a list of the Wainwright completers maintained by the LDWA. It used to exist on the internet, because Google found a dead link. So I set up the list from data provided by the LDWA, and registed the name for it. Unfortunately the particular free host suddenly vanished, but luckily I had a mirror version, although a year out of date, elsewhere. Thus I was able to get the relevant coding but for more security I have set it up afresh using Geocities. You can see the result at Here It will be further updated in April 2005.

Saturday 25 December 2004. Happy Xmas everybody! Now take a minute to read about chavs and chavettes. Here

Friday 24 December 2004. Here's one lorry that did not make it for Xmas! Lorry

Wednesday 22 December 2004. Xmas will soon be over, as will the UCLES overseas Maths paper marking. Meanwhile I can enjoy the certificate from my Honda driving experience day. Click Here to view the certificate.

Monday 20 December 2004. Update on the Midland Main line fares. Checking again if I could book a seat to London in March (too early), I found that a £20 fare is now available. Too late now though, as I am travelling with National Express, which almost passes my door on its way to Nottingham from Mansfield.
Read my letter in the Ravenshead Newsletter. Here

Sunday 19 December 2004 No snow here today. Cool but very sunny. Here are a few pix taken a short time ago, from a bedroom window, using the sony 7.2 Mp camera. here

Saturday 18 December 2004. Asda has a policy that if they are out of stock of their cheap brand, Smart Price, then they will sell a similar item at the cheaper price. On Thursday, Asda in Arnold had no brown Smart Price loaves on the shelves, for the third week running. On enquiring, the reponse was, "it looks as if we haven't got any in then". So naturally, a request was made for a chit to present at the check out to allow purchase of the dearer item at the cheaper price. Ha: that produced some action. The assistant went straight away to check, and came back with six loaves! The difference in price: 20p against 71p. A good saving of £1.53 on three loaves. A little knowledge creates some useful savings.

Friday 17 December 2004. Click Here for pix and comments on the 250bhp Civic R, proposed for 2006. Just when I may want to change!

Thursday 16 December 2004. Here is an interesting link. Here

Wednesday 15 Dec 2004. I had the Honda R driver appreciation day with Dave yesterday. This comes free with new Honda Civic R's! Certainly an interesting day, discovering the habits formed by many years of driving. Now to remember them and to put them into practice.
The Royal Mail collection service in Ravenshead is a disgrace. The boxes are not emptied frequently enough at this time of year, with the result, it would seem, that mail is being removed from the boxes, opened, and discarded. This has happened on several occasions in the past few days. I hope a complaint will bring results.
Over a year ago, when I first started internet dealing on the London Stock Market, I bought and sold Corus shares on several occasions, making small profits ecah time. However, one holding of 3400 shares I held, until today. With the news that a large shareholder had sold, with suitable reasons, I thought it time to cash in. So for an investment of £286.01, I have today sold out at £1815.50, a profit of £1529.49, equivalent to 534%.

Monday 13 Dec 2004. The Sony digicam arrived today. At £250, it was reduced at Argos from £400! The Sony Cyber-shot has 7.2M pixels, and is only just a bit bigger than a credit card. Things have certainly miniturised since I bought the Fuji 6900. I still need to obtain a larger card for picture storage, and it came without a case.
Trying to book Midland Main Line for a journey to London next year I found that their cheapest fare is a Weekender, at £41.50. Previously I have paid £19 or £20, although earlier this month it had increased to £27 when I bought using a call centre in India. So this time I booked with National Express for £17: slower, yes, but time is not the essence these days! And there will be £1.70 off my next journey with them, probably London again if Midland Main Line is still attempting to charge £41.50.

Friday 10 Dec 2004. When teaching mathematics it is essential to get facts and symbols 100% correct. For example, people sometimes stupidly refer to 12 am and 12 pm, when in fact these times of day do not exist. The correct terminology is 12 noon and 12 midnight. Or you may prefer to use the 24 hour clock, which circumvents these problems. Another use of careless writing is related to the use of the metric prefixes. For example, dm means decimetre, that is one-tenth of a metre, whereas Dm is a decametre or ten metres. Similarly, mm means millimetre, where the m prefix stands for a thousandth of a metre. Further, ml is a thousandth of a litre. So we come to the point of my writings today: bandwidth, and the misuse of m instead of M. A download speed of 1 Mb means 1 million bits, or 1 megabit, while 1mb would refer to the minute amount of 1 millibit! I think that this misuse creeps in because of people not being bothered to use the caps key in their typing! As a matter of fact, even my bandwidth monitor has things slightly wrong, referring to downloads in MB, that is megabytes, when it means megabits! I look forward to ntl upgrading my download speed from the present 750Kb to 2 Mb at the same monthly cost of £24.99. This should take place early in 2005. However, unlike the upgrade from 56Kb dial up, the time savings are nowhere near as dramatic. For example, a music track that would download in 30 minutes with dial up takes just over 2 minutes with 750Kb. This will decrease to about 50 seconds with 2 Mb, a saving of 85 seconds. Is it worth getting excited about, I have to ask! Not unless we are getting into streaming films and TV, when the faster speeds are essential. But what about the 1Mb cap per day then?

Sunday 5 Dec 2004. I have added a new facility to this blog. If you would like to send me comments directly, instead of using the forum or the guestbook, please Click here

Saturday 4 Dec 2004. Click here for a picture of beautiful Abbie
Happy Birthday Jo, a childhood friend.
I completed the 23 mile walk Rudolph's Romp today in 6 hr 3 mins. Click Here for a few pix taken at the start. I had no time to take any more during the event!

Friday 3 Dec 2004. Hey. I found a photograph of me when I was aged 20! It's the one published in the Nottingham Evening Post when I obtianed my first class degree in Electronics.
Analysing the latest onetel phone bill, I see that out of calls costing £8.81, £4.54 came from calls to 087 or 0845 numbers. By Clicking Here, that should be reduced considerably next month.