Start them young....

Here is my granddaughter Isla having her first piano moments with Auntie Em and my friend Hilary, the piano teacher. She took to it well with very precise movements and followed Hilary's instructions :-)

Cambridge Travel times mapped

Here is an excellent map showing the one hour isochrones if travelling by rail from Cambridge. Its taken from the MySociety website. Other maps show the bus and rail times in Edinburgh, London and within Cambridge itself. There is also a very useful map for the likes of me that shows which parts of the country are better reached with a rented car than by train.

A very interesting site more so because the OS didnt get their pound of flesh from them because "This work was funded by the Department for Transport, who also made it possible for us to use Ordnance Survey maps and data through their licence"

Many thanks to Cory at Boing Boing for the link.

Trial of Origin beat 600 bands

My nephew Sam, lead guitar in the band Trial of Origin, messaged me earlier today with the fantastic news that they had beat more than 600 school bands to reach joint first place in the BBC Midlands Today School of Rock competiton. This means they will get time in a professional recording studio. You can watch an excerpt of them playing here afterwards they may even get some needle time on Radio1.

The BBC site still shows second place but according to Sam "its cos of this BBC thing. have u heard one of the bands got a computer or something (maybe skype) to block vote for them. so they got loads and loads votes, so they won. HOWEVER the BBC knew they hadnt really won, and wen they took away the false votes, it was us who actually won. so even though we were classed as the runners up, theyr still giving us the winners prize"

Robert Scoble featured them on his blog last year (Scoble ahead of the pack as always) afterwards Ewan Spence picked up on them and featured the band in his rock podcast #14. Maybe I can get Fred to feature them over at his A VC blog.

Really excellent news and they get to play a gig at the Birmingham NEC

When It's Time Leave the (Home) Office

Great article on when to give up working from home:-

My favourite is#3: "No, the baby doesn't go in the playpen...Important papers go in there so the baby can't get at them."
If you find yourself picking Cheerios out of your laptop, chasing the kids around the kitchen while conference-calling Japan and wiping peanut butter off your client's proposal, you are a good candidate to escape your home office.

Thanks to Dane at the Business Opportunities blog for the link.

Whats in a name?

Also from Paul is this analysis of my names:-

There are 28 letters in your name.
Those 28 letters total to 136
There are 11 vowels and 17 consonants in your name.

Your number is: 1

The characteristics of #1 are: Initiating action, pioneering, leading, independent, attaining, individual.

The expression or destiny for #1:
A number 1 Expression denotes the skilled executive with keen administrative capabilities. You must develop the capacity to be a fine leader, sales executive, or promoter. You have the tools to become an original person with a creative approach to problem solving, and a penchant for initiating action. Someone may have to follow behind you to handle the details, but you know how to get things going and make things happen. You have a good mind and the ability to use it for your advancement. Because of these factors, you have much potential for achievement and financial rewards. Frequently, this expression belongs to one running a business or striving to achieve a level of accomplishment on ones talents and efforts. You have little need for much supervision, preferring to act on your own with little restraint. You are both ambitious and determined. Self-confident and self-reliant must be yours, as you develop a strong unyielding will and the courage of your convictions.

Although you fear loneliness, you want to be left alone. You fear routine and being in a rut. You often jump the gun because you are afraid of being left behind.

The negative attributes of the 1 Expression are egotism and a self-centered approach to life. This is an aggressive number and if it is over-emphasized it is very hard to live with. You do not have to be overly aggressive to fulfill your destiny. The 1 has a natural instinct to dominate and to be the boss; adhering to the concept of being number One. Again, you do not have to dominate and destroy in order to lead and manage.

Your Soul Urge number is: 3

A Soul Urge number of 3 means:
With the Soul Urge number 3 your desire in life is personal expression, and generally enjoying life to its fullest. You want to participate in an active social life and enjoy a large circle of friends. You want to be in the limelight, expressing your artistic or intellectual talents. Word skills may be your thing; speaking, writing, acting, singing. In a positive sense, the 3 energy is friendly, outgoing and always very social.

You have a decidedly upbeat attitude that is rarely discouraged; a good mental and emotional balance.

The 3 Soul Urge gives intuitive insight, thus, very high creative and inspirational tendencies. The truly outstanding trait shown by the 3 Soul Urge is that of self-expression, regardless of the field of endeavor.

On the negative side, you may at times become too easygoing and too optimistic, tending to scatter forces and accomplish very little. Often, the excessive 3 energy produces non-stop talkers. Everyone has faults, but the 3 soul urge doesn't appreciate having these pointed out.

Your Inner Dream number is: 7

An Inner Dream number of 7 means:
You dream of having the opportunity to read, study, and shut yourself off from worldly distractions. You can see yourself as a teacher, mystic, or ecclesiastic, spending your life in the pursuit of knowledge and learning.

Birthday Calculator

From Pauls birthday calculator:-

Your date of conception was on or about 4 November 1946 which was a Monday.

You were born on a Monday
under the astrological sign Leo.
Your Life path number is 11.

Life Path Compatibility:
You are most compatible with those with the Life Path numbers 2, 4, 8, 11 & 22.
You should get along well with those with the Life Path numbers 3 & 6.
You may or may not get along well with those with the Life Path number 9.
You are least compatible with those with the Life Path numbers 1, 5 & 7.

The Julian calendar date of your birth is 2432394.5.
The golden number for 1947 is 10.
The epact number for 1947 is 8.
The year 1947 was not a leap year.

Your birthday falls into the Chinese year beginning 1/22/1947 and ending 2/9/1948.
You were born in the Chinese year of the Pig.

The date of Easter on your birth year was Sunday, 6 April 1947.
The date of Orthodox Easter on your birth year was Sunday, 13 April 1947.
The date of Ash Wednesday (the first day of Lent) on your birth year was Wednesday 19 February 1947.
The date of Whitsun (Pentecost Sunday) in the year of your birth was Sunday 25 May 1947.
The date of Whisuntide in the year of your birth was Sunday 1 June 1947.
The date of Rosh Hashanah in the year of your birth was Monday, 15 September 1947.
The date of Passover in the year of your birth was Saturday, 5 April 1947.
The date of Mardi Gras on your birth year was Tuesday 18 February 1947.

As of 5/23/2006 6:47:39 PM EDT
You are 58 years old.
You are 706 months old.
You are 3,069 weeks old.
You are 21,484 days old.
You are 515,634 hours old.
You are 30,938,087 minutes old.
You are 1,856,285,259 seconds old.

Your age is the equivalent of a dog that is 8.40861056751468 years old. (You old hound dog, you!)

There are 66 days till your next birthday
on which your cake will have 59 candles.

Those 59 candles produce 59 BTUs,
or 14,868 calories of heat (that's only 14.8680 food Calories!) .
You can boil 6.74 US ounces of water with that many candles.

In 1947 there were approximately 2.8 million births in the US.
In 1947 the US population was approximately 131,669,275 people, 44.2 persons per square mile.
In 1947 in the US there were approximately 1,595,879 marriages (12.1%) and 264,000 divorces (2%)
In 1947 in the US there were approximately 1,417,000 deaths (10.8 per 1000)
In the US a new person is born approximately every 8 seconds.
In the US one person dies approximately every 12 seconds.


Your birthstone is Ruby
The Mystical properties of Ruby

Ruby is said to open one's heart to love.

Some lists consider these stones to be your birthstone. (Birthstone lists come from Jewelers, Tibet, Ayurvedic Indian medicine, and other sources)

Carnelian

Your birth tree is

Cypress, the Faithfulness

Strong, muscular, adaptable, takes what life has to give, happy,content,optimistic, needs enough money and acknowledgment, hates loneliness, passionate lover which cannot be satisfied, faithful, quick-tempered,unruly, pedantic and careless.

There are 216 days till Christmas 2006!
There are 229 days till Orthodox Christmas!

The moon's phase on the day you were
born was waxing gibbous.

Thanks to Lifehacker for the link

Searching your desktop with your mobile phone..

Thanks to Silicon Valley Watcher I came across this really cool application by Soonr It enables you to a) Get Skype to call you back on your mobile phone thus giving you access to very low cost international phone calls.
b) Access to your desktop PC enabling you to search your desktop files etc
c) Use your desktop Outlook to check emails on your desktop computer from your mobile phone.

It all installed pretty smoothly and seems to work fine with my Treo650 see thescreenshot.

A toast to the Apple of discord

Tonight I excelled myself by winning the Apple of Discord award at Cambridge Cogers. The Cogers are one, if not the oldest, debating society in the world. Founded in Fleet St. London in 1755
The Cambridge group only started a few months ago.

My talk was on the difference in the morality of a farmer in East Anglia making gallows for executions in Africa and Narus, the company that makes internet equipment that governments use for censorship eg China for blocking VoIP or illegal tapping eg USA
Both folks use the argument that they have no control over what their equipment is used for.

I also mentioned the two canvas's (A drawing canvas and a boxing ring canvas) used in the prison film I saw some time ago. In response to the speaker who mentioned that something like 60% of the UK prison population is illiterate

David from Toastmaster was the only person I knew there. Toastmaster obviously must have its roots in Cogers, I suspect. Pity Ellee couldnt make it.

The latest blogger...

Thanks to Ellee we can now welcome another blogger to the sphere. Its Liza from Tempting Fate an introduction agency based here in Cambridge. Her blog can be found at http://www.tempting-fate.com/blog I've set her up with a standard blogger account that posts her entries onto Tempting Fate's server rather than onto Blogger. The original problems I had on Friday were due to her ftp password having a o not a 0 in it!

It will be interesting to see if Liza takes to blogging with as much enthuasism as Ellee.

Top Ten Social Networking Sites (NWS, GOOG, MSFT)

The Internet Stock Blog » Top Ten Social Networking Sites (NWS, GOOG, MSFT)

Interesting table showing growth in social websites. Amazingly YouTube has gone from zero to 12 million unique views in a year - the power of video! Even good old Blogger has grown 80% in a year.

The best music in the world?

It has to be said one of the things I miss the most when I'm away (apart from feeddemon) is listening to the di.fm trance channel. They play the most awesome sets. Currently its Rez I Dent - World (cor fijneman remix).

I notice the premium version has now dropped to a more decent $4.95 a month so may rejoin so as to remove the ads.

Oxfam Cambridge Walk 2006

Today Caroline convinced me to do the Oxfam walk with her today. After starting off at 8.30 we decided to go for the 21mile version rather than the full on one of 26miles. I didnt mind as still recovering from The Pennine Way.

We did the 39,922 steps in a respectable 5.9 hrs (3.6mph) plus 36mins of tea and cake breaks (best cakes and food by far at Horseheath!) giving an overall speed of 3.2mph. We where overtaken by three people - Oh the shame of it :-(

Afterwards we had complimentary massages by The Hills Road Clinic and a trainee foot masseur.

The walk was well organised except I notice the Co-Op are no longer sponsoring free water etc also the numbers seemed somewhat less than previous years. All in all an excellent day complete with a great stir fry cooked by Caroline :-)

Share Your RSS feeds

Dave Winer has released a natty little tool that enables you to share your RSS feeds with others and at the same time compile a list of the most popular feeds. Off the 600+ blog feeds I added around 200 were new to his database. Share Your OPML » Top 100 Feeds

Pennine Way finished

Chris andI wandered into the The Border Hotel in Kirk Yetholm at 5.50pm, parched and hungry after a final day of over 29miles across The Cheviots in blazing sunshine for most of the day.

All the pictures of the trip can be found on this site here. Hopefully, I will annotate them all, currently they are in date and time order starting from Edale on 27th April.

The final barebone statistics of the trip are:-

Day 1 (27 April) - Edale to Crowden 37,606 steps in just under 8 hours.
Day 2 (28 April - Crowden to Torside 29,029 steps in just over 6 hours.
Day 3 (29 April) - Torside to Colden 35,763 steps in 6.5 hours.
Day 4 (30 April) - Colden to Cowling 28,385 steps in just under 6 hours.
Day 5 (1 May) - Cowling to Malham 31,186 steps in 7 hours 20 mins.
Day 6 (2 May) - Malham to Horton ) 33,293 steps in 6 hours
Day 7 (3 May) - Horton to Hawes 24,679 steps in 5 hours
Day 8 (4 May) - Hawes to Keld 25,793 steps in 5 hours
Day 9 (5 May) - Keld to Middleton 35.514 steps in 8hrs 30 mins
Day 10 (6 May) - Middleton to Dufton 42,703 steps in 9 hours
Day 11 (7 May) - Dufton to Alston 38,602 steps in 9 hours
Day 12 (8 May) - Alston to Greenhead 37,457 steps in about 7 hours 30 mins
Day 13 (9 May) - Greenhead to Bellingham 42,943 steps in 9 hours
Day 14 (10 May) - Bellingham to Bryness 29,340 steps in under 6 hours
Day 15 (11 May) - Bryness to Kirk Yetholm 58,120 steps in 11 hours 20mins

Making a total of 530,414 steps in 15 days or about 264 miles at a speed of 2.4mph including stops (3.1mph excluding breaks)

M62 behind bars

A Geoff special photoshot of the M62 motorway taken from the Pennine Way bridge. The motorway comes as a bit of a shock after wamdering across lonely moors for several days. 

Ladbrokes or Sadblokes

Amusing defacement of the Ladbrokes betting shop frontage in Hebden Bridge, Yorkshire, UK

Apparently there was resistance to them opening up a bookies there hence the more apt title of Sadblokes 

Pennine Way - First 100 miles

Today I passed the 100mile mark whilst dropping down into Hawes. I now only 155 miles to go. George appeared at the cafe and whisked me off to Kendal and some fine cooking and shoulder massage. His wife Jacqui (A professional podiatrist) also introduced me to to the wonders of Hapla Fleecy Web (made by Cuxson & Gerrard but don't bother clicking it) for fixing blisters, hopefully that should cure the small blister that appeared on my right heel a couple of days ago.

Tomorrow is a short day to Keld, where I will meet up with Chris again and then its several days of 20+ miles culminating in the grand finale next Wednesday with a 25mile dash across the Cheviots.

The story so far is:-
Day 1 - Edale to Crowden 13.2 miles (5%) 37,606 steps in just under 8 hours. Fine clear
Day 2 - Crowden to Torside 11 miles (9%) 29,029 steps in just over 6 hours. Fine clear
Day 3 - Torside to Colden 16.6 miles (16%) 35,763 steps in 6.5 hours. Fine sunny
Day 4 - Colden to Cowling 15.2 miles (22%) 28,385 steps in just under 6 hours. Fine
Day 5 - Cowling to Malham 17.7 miles (29%) 31,186 steps in 7 hours 20 mins. Showers
Day 6 - Malham to Horton 13.3 miles (34%) 33,293 steps in 6 hours Windy Showers
Day 7 - Horton to Hawes 14 miles (40%) 24,679 steps in 5 hours Fine to sunny

I've been taking pictures with the Treo every hour but cannot p[ut them up yet :-(

The Pennine Way first couple of days

Made it to Malham and many thanks to Simon the owner of Beck Hall B&B who has loaned me this laptop so I can do an entry.

Wed 26 April 2006
Caught train from Cambridge to Edale a pretty good service leaving at 15.10 and arriving at 19.47. Stayed at The Rambler Country House Hotel not very impressive but OKish (but do avoid in the summer seeing the vast armada of tables in the garden). However their inepitude at breakfast worked to my advantage, see below.

Thurs 27th April
Went down to breakfast for 8am to find a fellow walker bemoaning the fact that the staff were still asleep and that someone was trying to rowse them. Turned out that he was a fellow Pennine Way traveller called Chris Lloyd. We got chatting and decided to set of together once the staff had sorted out breakfast (mainly as Chris wanted his picture taken at the start). We got under way at 9.30. We both seemed to go at a similar pace and discovered we had both booked into the same b&b the next night too, so we stayed together crossing Kinder and Bleaklow. At Bleaklow Head I did my usual trick of taking a wrong path :-( However, Chris's old GPS quickly sorted us out!)
We arrived at The Old House, Torside at 5pm having walked 13.5 miles of the PW plus a mile or so extra. The weather was good with the going mainly dry the paved sections really helping compared to the bogs 41 years ago. Having washed and changed, Joanna drove us to The Peel Arms in Padfield for an excellent dinner and beer with gorgeous sticky toffee pudding. Padtax (01457862321) took as back for a fiver. The Old House was good and Joanne is a very friendly hostess.



Friday 28th April