Geoff Jones

Inveterate dabbler in business, travel, gadgets & life

Author: Geoff

Valentines day walk

Today’s walk with the Cambridge Rambling Club’s ‘A’ Team led by Jill started at Royston then the delightful village of Reed with lunch by The Woodman Inn at Nuthamstead.
We covered 15.5miles (compared to the 10miles with the B team last week in the same time!).

Making for a very pleasurable start to Valentines day l

Here is the Everytrail route and pics:-

Lovely Valentines day walk

Map your trip with EveryTrail

Amazing what you find when you clear out the cupboards – Stephen’s old A team sticker album!

Bringing up the rear

Today’s walk was a very modest 10 miler with the B team of Cambridge Rambling Club. 22 of us departed from The Green Man PH , allegedly in Shepreth but actually just outside Melbourn. We had two outstanding  bloggers  Ellee & Sally with us as well 🙂

I was designated the back marker, which was interesting for me. I realised for the first time that the back marker actually sets the pace whereas the leader sets the direction. Also, a good lesson learnt is how crucial it is that the leader makes sure they can always see the back marker!

The pace was at 2.6mph compared to the A teams 3mph+ the other difference is the B team spend substanially longer in the pub at lunchtime. The overall result is that in the same time we did 18miles last week we did 10miles this week.

Given the leisurely pace and been on my own at the rear, I was able to play with the latest 3.1 release of Everytrail for the iPhone. It has to be said its a real corker! works exceptionally well, even handling incoming phone calls without crashing. Plus talking pictures and annotating them is a breeze. A really cool feature is that it continues to work with the screen off and in the breast pocket of my jacket. The uploaded trail is here:-

Snowdrop Walk

Map your trip with EveryTrail

I also plotted the trip using my conventional GPS and camera. These are up on Everytrail too. The morning walk around Meldreth is here . The afternoon walk with the twitchers at Fowlmere nature reserve is here.

iPhone on T-mobile in the UK

If your iPhone contract has run out (or about to) then you can ask O2 to ‘unlock’ your iPhone. Once unlocked you can get a PAC code and transfer your existing number to T-Mobile.

Advantages

  • The £10 a month unlimited internet and texts for life is a great deal for anyone, like me, who doesn’t make many voice calls.
  • Since its pay as you go when you travel abroad you are no longer faced with a horrendous bill on your return. You can get one of their £5 roaming bundles easily by text whilst you are away.
  • Topping up is a delight, they send a message when you are running low you can send a free text back with the last 4 digits of your previously registered credit card  the amount and three security digits, and away you go.
  • The itemised billing is excellent, totally itemised bills to the last K of data transferred and instantly available on the web.
  • 3G Coverage so far is awesome!

Disadvantages

  • If your phone breaks and Apple replace it then according to the local Apple store it will be locked. Will O2 unlock a phone if you have no contract? When I asked at Apple they just said speak to O2 and yes O2 say speak to Apple. Maybe this issue will clear up as more iPhones get legally unlocked and Orange etc come to the market.
  • At the moment  if I put the iPhone in Airplane mode the iPhone asks to be unlocked again by iTunes (to do this you have to remove the SIM, take it out of flight mode, reinsert SIM and then iTunes will unlock it).
  • You get the silly Content Lock screen (in picture) if you access blogs 🙁
  • The iPhone seems to eat the battery in 3G mode. I guess with O2 it never found a 3G mast!

Conclusion
Its great to have an always on internet, even in the depths of cafes and lecture theatres, so I’m sticking with T-Mobile until either I buy a Nexus or the latest toy from Apple.