Inveterate dabbler in business, travel, gadgets & life

A Happy New Year

Finally got around to writing a new post (I attempted one earlier but the PC crashed and lost it!) As Ellee reminded me its now 5 weeks since I posted which is some sort of record in my 6 years of blogging.

I thought I would do a quick round up of the year.

 Here is the year according to my  Eatwatch chart ( A Program that made the transition from the Treo650 to the Treo680 nearly intact) . I’ve finally made it to my target of 78kg set 2 years ago. As you can see the oscillations in weight are getting less as my self control is beginning to improve. The worse peak in August is what happens when you stay on a small island with good food and precious little else to do! (Note that the graph is computed from daily weighing’s. The blue dots are Km walked.

A great year for my walking.

Firstly doing The Pennine Way in 15days at the end of April/May. taking just over half million steps compared to the million steps from St Jean Pierre Port to Santiago de Compostella.

Then in September for 23 days I crossed the Alps walking the GR5 around 356 miles.

and of cause just recently I’ve met Sally in Norfolk.   So in the last couple of months we have been doing many walks in East Anglia. Here is a rather neat map with all the GPS data from the walks superimposed on it.

Will be interesting to see what 2007 will bring. My guesstimate for 2006 is over 1000miles of walking.

Autumn in Cambridge

Autumn has finally arrived here in Cambridge. Here’s a couple of shots I took today between the rain. This one is outside Parkside pool. The new pool opened in May 1999 at a cost of about £12m the inside is now in a shockingly bad condition with the main internal support columns having heavy corrosion the tiling is discoloured and grimy. I can safely predict that it will soon be closed for refurbishment!

Here is a view down my street with the beautiful tree colours.

This is an autumnal scene from yesterdays walk in The Fens showing the rich black soil freshly ploughed.

Following in the wake of Hereward

The Wednesday Walk this week was from Ely to March on The Hereward Way (I now know why he was called Hereward The Wake – obviously because he had to wade or boat through all the fens leaving a wake behind him!). This also is part of the E2 connecting The Fen Rivers Way to The Nene Valley Way

Just look at this elevation profile. The first spot is near Ely cathedral  at 20 metres above sea level the next is Little Downham at 19 metres.

A good day we did 22.3 miles in 6 hour 12 min’s of walking plus I managed to get Sally to stop for 25mins (including a pint at the Lamb and Flag  in Welney  a delightful little village)

The worst bit was walking along the top of the dead straight 100ft drain bank. Otherwise a recommended walk for anyone in Cambridge with decent train links to March and Ely.

 

 

What ever you do don’t rely on seeing to many signposts. I guess the money must have run out so they are very sparse indeed.

 

 

The bridges also leave something to be desired, this one is near to the Nene at TL 46395 99483

 

 

 

 

 

 However, there is money for windmills here there is a small farm of 8 turbines on the other side of the Nene.

My Treo is in a RESET LOOP! How do I stop it?

Michael invited me to hear his boys play at the Man on the Moon with their band Rhythmic Thrust, unfortunately only got to hear their last few moments and I got charged 4 quid to get in! Sounded better than the last time but still not as good as at Michael’s 50th party.

However, the fun started afterwards. Michael and I both have Treo 650’s so we had a boys and their toys moment in the public bar when the next act was on. I shared my VolumeCare, FileZ and TrafficStat with him and all seemed fine. However, later that evening I received a desperate email from Michael “Help! I just tried to synch my Treo and it keeps restarting over and over again. I cant seem to get it out of the loop. Any ideas what to do? I’m beginning to panic.” after much soul searching and effort he managed to get it to accept a hard reset. Today he searched the Palm forums and came up with lots of comments like this (expresses my feelings too)  

User: JS84T
Rating: 1
November 1, 2005

I’ve recommended this app to so many people and now they’re all pissed at me. For some reason this app has taken to crashing all the Treo 650’s it’s installed on. My version works. All of there’s have crashed. Very poorly written code dood

I then went to the VolumeCare website and discovered this gem in their help forums:-

My Treo is in a RESET LOOP! How do I stop it?

If your Treo is continually resetting itself over an over again, this is how to recover from this condition without having to Hard reset your device!
1) Press and HOLD the 5-way UP navigation control
2) Press and release the reset button on the back of the Treo
3) Continue to hold the 5-way UP navigation until the Treo displays the Preferences screen or the Phone application
4) Release the 5-way UP navigation key
5) Press the Green Phone button to display the phone application
6) Enter this error code number into the phone application and then hit DIAL/SEND
SPRINT: ##377
Verizon: #*#377
GSM: #*377
7) If there is an application name listed that you are familiar with, remove that application or move that application to the SD Card then go to step 29
8) If going to the default application screen (Launcher) causes another reset loop, repeat steps 1-4 and then go to the next step
9) HotSync the application FileZ to your Treo (http://GoTreoSoftware.com/downloads/ota/3rdparty/filez.prc)
10) Press the GREEN phone button to enter the phone application
11) Press the menu key or tap on carrier name in the upper left corner of the phone application display to open the menu system
12) Select EDIT FAVORITES PAGES….
13) Tap on the first EMPTY Favorites entry
14) Wait for the Add Favorites screen to appear
15) For TYPE select APPLICATION
16) Tap on LABEL
17) Find and Select the application FILEZ from the list
18) Select OK
19) Select DONE
20) Press the 5-WAY DOWN to open the favorites area in the phone application
21) Find the new FILEZ entry in the favorites and TAP on it to run the FILEZ application
22) Wait for the FILEZ application to display its screen
23) Tap on VIEW AND EDIT FILES
24) Tap on the arrow ( |> ) next to the word INTERNAL
25) Scroll to the application you need to delete
26) Tap on the target application name. A small check mark will appear next to the application name
27) Tap on the name FILEZ in the upper left corner of the screen to open the menu screen
28) Select DELETE and say YES to the confirmation
29) Press and release the RESET button on the back of the Treo
30) If a reset loop continues return to step 1 until the reset loop stops.

Doesn?t say what you do if it finds their software is to blame!

So VolumeCare is great if it works on your Treo but please don’t ask me to beam to you 🙂