I'm Philip Gamble, welcome to my blog. I am a Computer Science graduate from the University of Birmingham and currently live in Watford and work as a SEO Exec.
Philip Gamble on: Friends @ 6:16 pm September 3, 2011
On the recent bank holiday Monday I went for a nice long walk with some of my school friends.
Along a mixture of wood, country, field and tow-paths we avoided as much as we could of the towns and villages of Watford, Croxley Green, Rickmansworth, Chorleywood and Loudwater as we headed to Sarratt.
We were lucky with the weather. The day was forecast to be cloudy after several days of rain but the morning was rather too bright and sunny to be contemplating such a long walk. Thankfully when we set of in the afternoon the sun wasn’t so bright.
It was surprisingly quiet for a warm bank holiday in the middle of summer except for cyclists along the tow-path of the Grand Union Canal which we followed from Cassiobury Park.
We then headed past our old school and on to the Chess Valley Walk. As if on cue when we reached Loudwater Lane a large black Bentley slowly rolled past. Jon then started to count houses with Tennis Courts in their garden and bemoaned the lack of swimming pools.
After Loudwater we walked along the most scenic of paths between an industrial unit and the M25 before heading across the motorway. The Chorleywood House estate was pretty empty except for a dog walker until we reached the bridge crossing the Chess where lots of families with small children had taken it upon themselves to sit and play various sports right in the middle of the path and not be terribly helpful as we tried to cross the bridge. As you do.
Once we got close to Sarratt and headed up the steep hill to the village the footpaths got a lot busier after we passed a load of parked cars. We arrived at the Cricketers in Sarratt for some snacks and a couple of drinks before heading back to Watford some dinner.
The route was planned using an OS map and Google’s satellite imagery in an attempt to avoid as much as possible of the “normal” route to Sarratt I have taken on a few occasions previously. Not having navigated down most of the chosen paths before I was pleasantly surprised that everything connected up properly. We did take a couple of wrong turns but these can be blamed on a now-blank signpost near the Chorleywood House Estate and an OS map which had a petrol station marked on the wrong side of the road in Sarratt.
Jon had his shiny new HTC phone with GPS which helpfully told us that we were in the middle of nowhere for most of the time. I thought OpenStreetMap might be better than Google Maps for countryside mapping (after all what do Americans know about walking) but the “Street” bit of the name doesn’t exactly give me hope! A dedicated walking GPS or app that uses large scale Ordnance Survey maps would be better – I wonder if there are any?
I’d like to do some more of the Chess Valley walk at some time.
If you work in SEO the only time you can be a rockstar is in the evenings or at the weekends, unless you are Found’s SEO Manager who was playing his Ukulele in the office the other day. Still, not really rock is it.
When did you last see a rockstar or a ninja use Excel, worry about whether the now almost daily Firefox update would break their toolbar plugins or talk in a language of numbers as high as 301s, 302s and 404s. As for H1, well H isn’t even a note.
Advertising for an SEO ninja does not make you seem fun and quirky, it suggests you haven’t grown up. And you don’t even stand out from the crowd as lots of agencies and even big boring i’ll-hold-your-money-when-I-want-to corporates use these cringeworthy phrases.
SEO Ninja? No thanks. Consultant, Executive, Specialist. Yes Please.
22 out of every 100 new domains run WordPress. And so they should, quick to set up, easy to use, and a load of templates and plugins available to customise your site.
An upcoming “social issue of the week” on Waterloo Road will have to be how to cope with your school jumping 200 miles along the M62, M60, M61, M6, M74 and M8 as the school moves from Rochdale to Glasgow. Imagine that pretty much means the pupils will all change as well.
Philip Gamble on: Philip Gamble @ 9:18 pm August 16, 2011
I’ve had my PURE Tempus 1S Digital Radio for 2 or 3 years now and until recently experienced no problems.
A couple of weeks ago I woke up to find that the radio had died in its sleep – it was effectively frozen, stuck displaying a time from the early hours of the morning. Pressing the buttons on the front of the radio had no effect, to get it going again I had to pull out the power cable from the back.
The radio went through a brief restart phase and had to search for the time again – though thankfully it retained radio presets and alarm settings using the power from the internal battery. The radio would then be fully functional until the next time it decided to crash. There were seemingly random but regular intervals between freezes (multiple times a day) after which the power cable need to be disconnected and reinserted in order to force a restart.
Although the radio froze during the night and whilst I was out at work sometimes the radio would freeze when I was listening to it. This normally came when I was adjusting its volume, activating the sleep function or attempting to turn it off whilst laying in bed. The effect of the stoppage was the same – the cable needed to be removed, reinserted and then the desired operation selected again.
The fix
Using a Type A – Type B (I think?) USB cable I connected the radio to my laptop and went through the process described here. You must first select your operating system and then the radio model (in my case Tempus 1S, but there are other Tempus models so be careful!). You are then guided to download a program to your computer which takes you through the process of connecting the radio. The radios old firmware is then backed up to your computer and new firmware downloaded from the Internet and transferred via the USB to the radio.
The whole process took about 15 minutes once I had located the correct cable from my box of technology bits. And it worked – the radio is now fully functional and has not crashed since. No need to worry about the alarm not going off 6:30 tomorrow
Video
The first part of the video demonstrates the problem. Wrong time being displayed and the radio not turning on when the power button is pressed. The power wire is removed and placed back in and then the radio functions properly.
The long term fix is next: Inserting the USB cable to connect radio and computer, switch on the radio and follow the instructions from the download. Once I decided to see if the firmware could be upgraded it was all rather simple.
Philip Gamble on: London @ 12:00 pm August 15, 2011
These steel sculptures between St Paul’s and the formerly wobbly Millennium Bridge seem rather pointless. Corporate branding of what are effectively lumps of metal, whatever next? They don’t even restrict access to the area for vehicles, there are bollards for that.
Apparently HSBC donated some money towards the construction of the bridge.
