Route: Cheadle Woodford Bramhall Circuit
Activity: Cycle
Google Maps URL: http://maps.google.com/?q=http://share.abvio.com/565e/127b/4c54/9880/Cyclemeter-Cycle-20100801-1545.kml
Shortened Google Maps URL: http://j.mp/aRabKT
Started: 1 Aug 2010 15:45:50
Ride Time: 35:51
Stopped Time: 0:00
Distance: 7.16 miles
Average: 11.98 miles/h
Fastest Speed: 16.49 miles/h
Climb: 67 feet
Calories: 590

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As I mentioned on my last post I’ve ditched my previous app in favour of Cyclemeter and on an initial test it looks good. Performance feels great and its packed with features. I like how it can auto tweet my progress and the detail that can be reported on is quite granular. I need to try it out more but following the initial start of ride tweet it looks like people can view my progress (live? – hope so) on a Google map and even cooler they can reply to my tweet and the app will do a text to speech and read the @replies via my headphones. It even has Nike+ style voice feedback.

I’ve just put a new battery in my cycle computer and I’ve done a quick ride for calibration purposes to check that I’ve entered the right wheel size.

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I’ve been relatively quiet lately. Not only on this blog but quiet on Twitter too. Having taken a couple of weeks out recently to visit sunnier places of the world I opted to avoid roaming data and just use the occasional wifi. The result was a reduced level of communication that hasn’t seem to have recovered to previous level. I’m enjoying the break.

Returning from my hols I was in fine spirits and with a tan, and what I’m sure is a six pack behind my belly from all the holiday exercise, I accidentally volunteered to participate in “The Great Tour”. More specifically I am doing stage 49 – Porthmadog to Machynlleth, an outing of 92km with an ascent of 2061m (I thought Wales was flat).

Preparations have begun with digging the bike out of the garage. Its an old Diamond Back Topanga that has seen the best part of 20 years but it was well spec’d in its day and is still better than a load of the cheap bikes sold in Halfords so I trust it will carry me home.

I’ve just done a couple of rides to get into the swing of things. A quick trip via the stables takes me on a 5.5m ride which seems a nice distance to keep replication until I step things up (not that I have much time). I have been trying out some iPhone apps to update Twitter on my progress. I tried iMapMyRide but every time I got a push message the App dropped to the background and on starting it again there was no resume despite what their webpage said. I lost two rides. Very frustrating. I’m about to try http://www.abvio.com/cyclemeter/ which has no supporting website but can Tweet routes on Google maps. I’m interested to see if the auto update function works well as that would be good on the day of the ride.

I’ll update you on my progress (or lack of).

As if by magic, the shopkeeper appeared.

As if I don’t need anything else to get involved with and take up my time I’ve been bit with the old aviation bug again. That said its not as daft as I would have myself believe as it rolls up a number of interests of mine.

I have been a little obsessive after finding my old Yupiteru VT-125 II scanner. One of the benefits of living close to the airport is that I’m in the perfect spot to listen to all the ATC movements, arrivals and departures. In fact I find it almost therapeutic listening to the pilots silky voices. So before you know it I’ve bought a second, more comprehensive Yupiteru MVT-7100, dusted off the binoculars, joined The Aviation Society Manchester (TAS), bought a copy of Airliner World and a copy of Civil Aviation Markings 2010. Much to the amusement of the rest of the family.

I said it rolled up a number of interests of mine, with one of those being the ATC aspect of things. The other that’s come out of it is my photography. Suddenly I have a point of interest again that has sparked off some fresh enthusiasm. Again by virtue of my location I have bestowed on me Manchester Airports most excellent Aviation Viewing Park (complete with Concorde). I took a trip down to the park last week to get my bearings again and sat chilling for a while with a coffee. Today with the sun shining (for what feels like the first time this year) I spent a couple of hours taking a few pics. Unfortunately I’ve exposed an inadequacy in the zoom of my lens which would look the most likely candidate for a new purchase.

For now I’ll leave you with a shot of Lufthansa D-AIPP leaving this
morning.

My VPN problem has been resolved.

I came home yesterday to find my network dead and my DHCP pool missing. Amid a host of flashing lights and APIPA addresses I unravelled the problem and got everything back up and running. O2 had remotely applied firmware 7.4.20.5 to my router but still I had no VPN.

I did incorrectly state on a comment of my previous post that I believed I needed .4 but after a call from 2nd line support and a factory reset my VPN is working on .5

The only grey area I see is if they do future updates. The guy at O2 could only say that if they did another update and VPN was blocked then they would happily do the rollback again.

Spot they mistake there? ‘Happily’ Remember my original call where I couldn’t get them to even accept that the problem was theirs?