A Simple Life of Luxury

My parents were here for the weekend. On Friday afternoon they took Morgan up constitution hill and then on Saturday we had a family day out in Aberdovey. It always seems silly to drive for such a long time only to end up about a mile away from home, but it is a different world over the other side of the estuary and it allowed us to go crab fishing (or ‘cabbing’ as Morgan calls it).

I think my Mum and Dad were surprised at just how many crabs we caught, but it was all good fun and Morgan enjoyed it so we shall be back there soon for another go. We popped in for lunch whilst there and played on the beach for  bit before having the obligatory ice-cream and heading home.

It may only be just across the water and we may be able to see our house from the beach at Aberdovey, but it does make for a nice day out and it does feel completely different there so it is well worth the drive. Although I’m sure a little  passenger ferry across the estuary in the summer would be a good little business opportunity for me!

Sometimes I hate computers!

My broadband connection has been getting slower and slower over the past few days and eventually ground to a halt last night… Couldn’t do anything, not even retrieve e-mails. I’ve been on the phone to my ISP and submitting support tickets etc. but with no solution. In the end this morning I got an old computer, old router and loads of old cables out from the loft. Switched all my other computers, routers etc. off and decided to try with a completely different set of hardware, cables and even different BT outlet socket in the wall.

Connected it all up, switched on and would you believe it, it worked… I didn’t expect that, but now it seemed as though there was a problem with my hardware somewhere.

So, I connected the new (old) computer to the BT socket I was using before. That worked. Next step was to connect the new (old) hardware through the surge protector and splitter I was using before. That worked.

Next step in the chain was the cable between the splitter a the router. That worked. Could it be the router? I swapped the routers back and that worked OK… Now, the only difference between the initial (not working) set-up and the new set-up was the ethernet cable, the computer itself and the fact that the phone wasn’t connected… I connected the phone and all was well. Changed the ethernet cable back to the one I was using before. All fine. So, I connected the computer that were originally connected back to the router. Started them up and connected at a decent speed (Well, decent for this neck of the woods anyway… A crawl for most people!).

Basically everything was exactly the same as it had been before. Not one component has changed, but now it works and before it didn’t… Maybe it was just a fluke and my ISP fixed the problem whilst I was swapping hardware around? Maybe its just a temporary fix and I’ll be back to pulling my hair out again in 10 minutes. But at the moment, fingers crossed, touch wood an any other superstitious things I should do I seem to have an internet connection again and can get on with some work.

I’ve been meaning to play around with ‘MotionBased‘ for a while, but the fact that Brad (my little brother) now has a Forerunner 305 GPS unit and has been using motion based prompted me to give it a go and use it.

MotionBased is a ‘web application that translates GPS data into functional analysis and online mapping for endurance and outdoor athletes’. I’ve only started playing around so far but it seems to work well and integrates well with Firefox on my Mac. (It is unusual for things to works so well on a Mac as many things are PC only). Uploading the data from my Forerunner 305 has been easy and the routes are then there for all to see (they can be kept private if I’d prefer).

I won’t use Motion based in preference to Ascent (see my recent review of Mac based training software here) as I prefer having the data on my hard-drive rather than ‘in the cloud’ somewhere and without super-fast broadband browsing through such data on the web can be a little slow compared to using a standalone package on your own computer. Also, I don’t want the expense of paying for the Motion based subscription to unlock its full potential and store more than 10 routes. However as a way of sharing routes and analysing your data it is certainly good. It is full of features many of which I have yet to explore, it would be nice if you could embed a summary of an activity into a remote web page though so that I could include a summary of a route here, but as far as I can tell you can’t, so the next best thing is a link to a Mountain biking ride on Motion Based.

I knew it!… If I spent some money on some new toys something else would break requiring more expense.

I’ve been needing some new tyres for a while so I took the plunge and used my £5 voucher from Wiggle to buy some new Continental Mountain King tyres for my bike (a bargain at £15.99 each!). I’ve also been in ‘need’ of a new 5m sail and some other windsurfing equipment so I’ve order a 5m Gun Hammer, a new mast extension and some harness lines from Gun Sails and have arranged to send my broken booms back for replacement under warranty. Of course, with my ‘key rider’ discount and the usual good value from Gun these were bargains too.

I then went out for a ride on my mountain bike last night and returned needing a new spoke, a wheel re-alignment and some new brake pads… I shall take my bike in for repair tomorrow. Hopefully none of it will break the bank though and I’ll soon be back up and riding with a bike that feels like new and out windsurfing with some new kit… I like new toys!!

We thought we’d treat ourselves to dinner out last night and as the Wild Fowler is no longer doing the 2 for 1 offer we thought we’dgive the Rhydypennau Inn a go. We hadn’t been there fore a while and yet again it had changed hands since we were last there (or at least it appeared that way).

We waited a bit to order, but not too long and then ate our food which was nice. Nothing special, but there was nothing wrong with it either. We then sat there waiting for our plates to be cleared and to order pudding, but it took ages for anyone to come to us. We waited some more and eventually after an hour of waiting decided to give up and by some ice cream from the Spar instead!!

We therefore got up and went to the bar to pay, but were told to wait a second whilst they got the bill. 5 minutes and we were still waiting to pay. Another 5 minutes went by and we asked again, and eventually after standing at the bar for 15 minutes trying to pay we were served and able to give them some money… I’m sure most people would have walked out by now without paying!

To make matters worse when we paid, there was no change in the till so they had to go off searching for some and when they did give us our change they actually short-changed us as well… Only by 4p it has to be said and therefore I couldn’t be bothered to make a fuss as we would have looked pretty silly making a fuss over 4p, but after waiting for over an hour to be served and 15 minutes just to pay it was all a bit of a joke…

At least we saved some money on pudding as we got a vienetta and some ice cream from the Spar for the less than the price of one pudding in the Rhydypennau Inn.

Don’t think we’ll be going to the Rhydypennau Inn again too soon.

The first stage of the aber-cachers travel bug race ended yesterday. The idea was to see how far the travel bugs could travel by moving from geocache to geocache over the course of a year. Here are the final results:

The Little Welsh Cache 11907.9 Miles

Skateboarding Sarah Miles11744.2

Jennie.m’s AberCachers race TB 11158.5 Miles

Forces-of-Nature Al - Travel Bug Race 6174.6 Miles

~*Tinkerbell*~ 2792.8 Miles

Snowboarding Dave 2340.6 Miles

Samurai Vanya - Travel Bug Race 1759.1 Miles

Samurai Dan - Travel Bug Race 1046.8 Miles

Forces-of-Nature Morgan - Travel Bug Race 570.9 Miles

Tortoiseshell’s Aberystwyth race travelbug 550.1 Miles

Red Kites Abercachers Racer Bug 111.9 Miles

The second stage of the race now begins… A race back to a geocache in Aberystwyth.. May the best bug win!

I had a meeting with some potential web design clients today, so drove all the way to Llandysul. Unfortunately when I got there I discovered they had been trying to phone me as the person I was supposed to have the meeting with was off sick so the meeting was canceled.

Frustrating as traveling to such meetings eats into any profit I make from such a project, but if I want to get the project then I shall have to make the trip again sometime soon.

All was not lost though as I had my GPSr with me and there were geocaches nearby that I had yet to find so I decided to do some geocaching in the time I had spare.. The first was a short walk from the canceled meeting so I set off on a pleasant walk along the banks of the river Teifi. This part of the river is used by canoeists and there were lots of slalom gates hanging over the river. The cache ‘Canoe Find it‘ was found easily before I headed back to my car.

Geocache number two was Tristan’s Cache, a cache overlooking a village in the middle of nowhere! It seemed like a nice place to live though, ‘proper rural Wales’. Geocache 3 was one that has been on my to do list for ages ‘Of Gorse you can see the sea’, located on the coast path just south of Aberaeron. Again the cache was found easily and a travel bug I collected from Tristans cache was dropped off.

The wind was blowing and the sun was shining so after walking along the coast ath for a bit watching the waves and whitecaps, I couldn’t resist a windsurf session so I rushed home and went out for a quick sail from Borth.

Not a very productive day workwise, but at least it wasn’t a complete waste of a journey.