I’m sure that this is the feeling when you’ve run a marathon in a Pink Panther costume but its one of the most rewarding feelings. Its good that it should feel that way because it bloody hurts while you are doing it!

On the 49th day of the tour I woke to torrential rain and thunder. Perfect conditions for a bike ride. We met at the start in Porthmadog and after registration we set of on a gentle warm up pace for around 20 minutes. It was quite enjoyable and much of my initial nerves were dispelled. That was until we stopped on a small bridge to allow the group to catch up. We set off round a bend and the road set off skyward! Looking back at the stats I can see that we climbed an ascent that took us up a 33% gradient from 100ft to 1041ft. There was no way that anyone but hardcore riders were tackling that and pretty much all of us got off and pushed. That is not before I got my feet stuck in the cleats and took my first tumble leaving my knee on the road. I also had the further complication of wearing racing cleats. For every few steps I slid back as if I was walking on ice! But, after a Herculean struggle, I made it to the top only to find that I’d worn out my cleats and couldn’t get my feet in the pedals. Luckily the support car was behind us so the bike went on the rack and I hopped in to be taken for repairs. At the lunch stop my pedals were swapped replacing the clippy ones with the pedals from my old Diamondback.

The second half of day 49 was one of the more rewarding. They were supposed to be taking up up another ridiculous track so I revolted and said I’d go solo around the coast A road. A number of people liked the sound of that so with a number of supporters we officially split into two groups. The ride still had a number of long runs up hill but it was what I had trained for and what my bike was made for. We finally arrived in Machynlleth to a fantastic reception.

On day 50 we set off from Machynlleth and I was joined by John Talbot. A number of our riders had gone home after day 499 and John had boosted our ranks keeping the Collier’s team to a respectable level of four riders. The morning run was nice in the sunshine and we reached Borth for morning break. After the break things started to get ugly. Not only did the rain return but there were a few climbs that while I attempted them were beyond my ability and I had to have four wheeled assistance to the top. We made Aberystwyth for lunch and then the afternoon continued much the same. I tried my best but in the end after dropping way back I opted for a bit of assistance to catch up with the group and then cycled the final section into New Quay. I was happy that over the two days I had put in a shift. Not bad for a guy my size after only three weeks training.

Thanks to everyone who supported me. I will leave you with The Great Tour videos and my stats.

This is another view of yesterdays training route

I’ve just got back from a ride to get used to the gears and the pedal cleats. I nearly keeled over at the first junction but I think I’ve got the hang of getting my feet out now.

The difference though is amazing. Rather than slugging away at 13 mph I’m now easily cruising at 20 mph+ and hitting top speeds well over 30 mph (no major downhill runs experienced yet).

I think I look the part now and more important I feel like its a possibility. My brief ride described above was 10 miles and it was a breeze. I could have easily carried on and done the full stage distance tonight! Well, maybe if I wouldn’t be finishing in the dark. I didn’t buy any lights.

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?

If you’re wondering why I bring up such a morbid question its not that I’ve just been delivered some news of impending health problems or other notice of doom. I just found out that the father of the author (Daniel Jalkut) of the software (MarsEdit) I use to blog passed away and, in a timely correspondence, a user brought up the subject of wanting to blog as much as he can for his son before he dies.

In my case I don’t suppose anyone will think to check my hosting payments and that within a nominal amount of time after the next payment became due the blog would cease to exist along with myself. With so much being published onto the internet on a daily basis its a fact of life that the scenario will be played out many times.

Of course there are free alternatives such as Blogspot and even social networking sites but while I don’t know anything of their retention policies nothing can be classed as permanent as Geocites users will tell you.

Maybe its a question for future digital archaeologists to answer as they pick through old backups and long forgotten caches.

In the meantime I offer Daniel my condolences.

Then i can return to sitting in front of my computer screen grumbling about wasting the day.

Finally #virgilioanderson trends on twitter and I feel partly responsible which is very cool.

For a number of weeks Richard Herring has been trying to get his nemesis Virgilio Anderson to trend but what with people dying and the Iranians kicking off there was too much chaff to cut through and tweets had become too fragmented to make a difference however when I saw that Jonathan Ross had got #MrsSlocomesPussy trending at the drop of a tweet that was too much.

I alerted Richard to the fact and his resulting tweet hit the spot. As I type #virgilioanderson is climbing the trending charts. Even more popular than Iran now!

Will we finally find him?

I thought I may as well go the full hog and on seeing a tweet from @Herring1967 about a new Virg-An track I thought it would make an excellent ringtone.

Still feeling that I could go that one step further I knocked up a couple of Virg-An wallpapers for my iPhone and thought I’d share for any other iPhone owners desperately seeking Virgilio.

Preview

Wallpaper (right click to download)

A fetching building material alternative

“A critical network upgrade must be performed to ensure continued operation of Twitter. In coordination with Twitter, our network host had planned this upgrade for tonight. However, our network partners at NTT America recognize the role Twitter is currently playing as an important communication tool in Iran. Tonight’s planned maintenance has been rescheduled to tomorrow between 2-3p PST (1:30a in Iran).

Our partners are taking a huge risk not just for Twitter but also the other services they support worldwide—we commend them for being flexible in what is essentially an inflexible situation. We chose NTT America Enterprise Hosting Services early last year specifically because of their impeccable history of reliability and global perspective. Today’s decision and actions continue to prove why NTT America is such a powerful partner for Twitter.”

While I understand the importance of the Iranians having a voice in the light of their government blocking so many forms of communication, by this time Twitter had just become a mess of hysterical western retweets and misinformation as people got caught up in a moment that had already come and gone. 90 mins wouldn’t have mattered in the grand scheme of things other to deprive them of their Twitter fix which was on large a major world event and much better than “I’m in Starbucks having a coffee”.

The BBC made a correct and more measured statement.

“Some caution needs to be observed however – for example, “tweets” picked up outside Iran and then “re-tweeted” elsewhere can have the potential to turn unsubstantiated rumours into “facts”".

A quick peek at Twitterfall this morning seems to show things have calmed down, or is it that the Americans are asleep? So some form of normality returns. That is until we approach the re-scheduled maintenance period.

I have a mate who develops iPhone apps and I occasionally do some graphic design for him on icons, etc. I suppose because of that you could officially class me as part of his team and a developer also. Anyway this opened the door to the 3.0 beta and I’ve been living with it since March.

There are still a few features that I need third party support or account activation on such as Push notification, peer-to-peer, in app purchases, third party accessories and MMS but I can impart my experience and opinion on what I have seen.

The 3.0 for starters isn’t a groundbreaking update in the way 2.0 was. Its more polish and much has been made of how only Apple could make cut and paste a main feature. However it does fill many holes and improve of a number of features that keeps it ahead of the competition.

The cut and paste does actually work really well and I have used it a number of times. It is easy to take for granted after having it for a while. I’ve used it mostly where I want to chuck web page text back into a google search. Funnily enough i only found the shake to undo the other day by accident when I dropped my phone

The landscape keyboard has increased my texting speed on SMS and its nice to have that option consistent across more apps.

I’ve only used the spotlight search once to try it out. I tend to forget its there. You can browse to the left of the home screen with a swipe or from the home screen, press the home button which will take you to the search. I think its the nature of the phone in that the stuff I would search for is either notes or contacts so in each case I would tend to go direct. Its not like a computer where I have a load of documents to search.

Having just mentioned the notes, this is one of the biggest features for me. Note synching. I have loads of notes mainly because my memory is shit and to finally have them sync is a godsend. Its the little things with 3.0 that make the difference and its also nice to see public calendars sync also. However I would have liked tasks. As it is I’ve resorted to the Things App both on the iPhone and desktop. It was nice to see Things winning an Apple design award the other day as it is a great app.

What else deserves a mention? I turned shake to shuffle off as it shuffled my music once purely by putting the iPhone in my pocket a little more forcefully than usual. I don’t use the voice recorder much although I have tried it and its nice to see the voice notes sync with iTunes.

A final thing on 3.0 is the find my phone feature. YOu have to have a MobileMe sub for it to work and you then can enable it on your phone. It went live the other day so I tried it last night. I logged onto MobileMe on the web and withing a few moments it told me exactly where my phone was, on the desk next to me. I had the option to make my phone bleep (even if set to silent) and to send a message. I typed in “Give me my phone back, you bastard” and within a few minutes it was displayed on the phone with a beeping noise. What was also nice is that having confirmed that it had been displayed I then got an email.

“Dear MobileMe member,

The message sent at 6:02 PM on June 10, 2009 has been displayed on Martin’s iPhone at 6:06 PM on June 10, 2009:

Give me my phone back, you bastard”

That’s pretty much it. If you have any questions I’d be happy to answer them but you’ll know yourself by next Wednesday. Just in time for the next podcast no doubt.

It was interesting to see people agonising over the options. What they often fail to say is that most 3G owners who upgraded from the original iPhone are in an 18 month contract. I know that mine expires in Feb 2010 and I have seen that £35 customers only get the option for a 1 month early upgrade. Jan… f*cking fantastic.

The suggested option is to get a PAYG, but at that price?! I do have a further option as my wife uses a PAYG sim in my original iPhone and she is spending upto and in excess of £35 on credit so I plan to sign her up for a contract, put her sim in my 3G and have the 3GS for myself (its only fair.. I will have paid £270 odd).

I do however keep stepping out of the Apple “must have” hypnosis. What will the 3GS really give me?

Video. Nice but I rarely used video on my phone pre-iPhone

Compass. It may make Tom Tom more accurate, but isn’t Tom Tom still going to be available on 3G (even if slightly less accurate – my Go700 doesn’t have a compass does it?)

Battery life. Mines ok as it is. Its regularly on a cradle and having turned off pull mail every 15 mins my battery capacity has increased ten fold. Those who want me NOW! send mail to my MobileMe push account or SMS me.

Faster processor. Mines fast enough and I can’t think of a 3G app that suffers from speed to any great degree.

Better camera and auto focus. Happy with the one it has now. If I want a better shot I’ll break out the Nikon.

Tethering. On O2′s prices? Don’t take the piss!

I think I’ve just talked myself into keeping my money in my pocket. What else am I going to spend it on now?

Oh, and don’t forget to sign the Twitter petition

John’s been keeping a full blog of the trip as well as having live GPS tracking along the way. With his cycling partner in crime, Andrew, they are supporting Water Aid and Macmillan, two worthy causes in case you want to dip your hand in your pocket (links on his website).

He’s less than 10 miles off as I write. Get in there any take a look and maybe tweet @jochta a congratulatory message.

Don’t ye be forgetting that tomorrow be Talk Like A Pirate Day. And I notice that Cravendale has stuck up a free TLAPD iPhone app. Get it here.

lol.. just wait till he gets to the training ground and Tevez and Ronaldo aren’t there. He’ll then realise he signed for City not United.