Haven't visited Wales for a mountain bike ride through the winter months. Just couldn't summon any enthusiasm due to the pouring rain and dark nights (play the video to see an example of how the rampant global warming phenomenon impacts the Peaks in April).
However, went and rode the Cli-machx trail on Sunday and was thoroughly impressed. Reminded me how good it can be and prevented me sticking the Orange 5 on ebay. Like Penmachno it's a very short trail (perfect for me - I hate long cross country rides) at only 9 miles but flows beautifully and includes Wales longest downhill. We tried to do the longer version featured on this site but there is a lot of tree felling going on until the end of June 2008 so suffered a few detours. If you like fast flowing rides without too many rocky drops, Cli-Machx is well worth a visit. The nearest postcode for the trail start is SY20 9HB.

Labels: Cli-machx, Mountain Biking

Back in this post I talked about the need for indoor football trainers that provided a decent level of cushioning from the hard impacts of indoor surfaces.
Since then I have tried a few different makes, more specifically Lotto, Uhlsport, Puma and Joma. The models I tried were all their indoor specific models. None of them enjoyed anything like the kind of shock absorption I have been used to in the Nike 'Nine Zero Max' (my two pairs of these now have split air cushions and they aren't available any more).
Which lead me to Asics, a brand famous for running/shock absorption shoes. Sadly, they don't yet produce a shoe for indoor football, a point I raised with them in an email. However, kudos to Asics UK as they replied within the day with the following information:

"Hi Ben

Thank you for your enquiry regarding Asics Footwear.

Unfortunately we do not stock an indoor football boot in the UK and as far
as I am aware there are no immediate plans to introduce a shoe of this
nature to the collection, however I have forwarded your enquiry to our
Product Manager for her information.

The Gel Sensei may prove suitable, these shoes are intended for use whilst
playing Squash/Badminton, however I cannot think of any reason why you
cannot use them for indoor football. The Sensei is designed for a multi
directional sport and therefore the support features should not cause a
problem, also the upper of this particular shoe is light weight and well
fitted, so it should not prove to bulky around the toe box, finally this
shoe should provide plenty of cushioning both in the heel and forefoot.

I hope this information proves helpful and if I can be of any further
assistance please do not hesitate to contact me.

Regards

Jamie Homer
Asics UK"

On their advice I tracked a pair down and I have to say they are superb. There are a few minor modifications that could be done to make them more suitable for football e.g. a fold over tongue to cover the laces or side mounted laces, lower grip at the inner toe box etc. but in terms of comfort and stability they are far better than any of the 'indoor football' specific models I tried from other manufacturers. Anyone looking for an indoor shoe that provides a little more comfort than the usual offerings might do well to consider a pair. They are bright blue though, so expect a ribbing when you first turn up in them...

Labels: Asics, Football, Indoor trainers, Nike, Soccer

What an absolute shower of bastards Ebay and Paypal are. I'm all for capitalism but their greed almost beggars belief ($7 billion in profits for 2007). When you look at their sellers fees it's not hard to see how they are pocketing so much...

For starters, take a look at their listing fees:

If your item is £0.01 - £0.99, it'll cost £0.10

If your item is £1.00 - £4.99, it's £0.15

For items between £5.00 - £14.99, it's £0.25

£15.00 - £29.99, it's £0.50

£30.00 - £99.99, it's £1.00

£100.00 or more - £1.30

Not too bad, right? Well, no, until you add the final value fee:

Item not sold - No Fee

If it sold for £0.01 - £29.99, 7.5% of the amount of the high bid (at the listing close for auction-style listings) up to £29.99

If you item sold for between £30.00 - £599.99 7.5%of the initial £29.99 (£2.25), plus 4.5%of the remaining balance of the final selling price.

That's upto £27.90 they're taking!

If your item sold for £600.00 or more - 7.5%of the initial £29.99 (£2.25), plus 4.5% of the initial £30.00 - £599.99 (£25.65), plus 1.9% of the remaining balance of the final selling price.

Well, sky's the limit here! And I haven't even got to the best bit yet... Ebay are now insisting that every listing on their site has Paypal as a payment option. That's right, you can't even list on Ebay any more unless you offer Paypal on your auction. *cough* monopoly, anti competition *cough*.

So not only do they £27.90 off your £599.99 sale through Ebay fees, you then have to give Paypal another 3.4% (+ £0.20). In our £599.99 scenario, that's another £20.60!

So a total of £49.50 in fees from Ebay/Paypal, almost 10% of the sale value!

Of course, Ebay/Paypal will argue it offers their customers security but that's basically a lie, as anyone who has ever fallen foul of a dodgy Ebay transaction, and funded it through Paypal will tell you.
In case you didn't know: if you pay for an Ebay item via Paypal and you don't receive it, Paypal never give you back what you paid out, regardless of the 'guaranteed upto £150/£500' signs they show on the auction (the key word in their misleading statement being 'upto'). The only sure fire way off insuring you won't lose money when using Paypal is to fund the transaction through your credit card. At least that way you can make your card company issue a chargeback on the transaction (Banks can do this upto 120 days after a transaction) when Paypal simply can't be arsed to help...

Labels: Ebay, Paypal

As the 'consensus' of 'experts' in the field are reported to have conclusive proof of man-made global warming I cast my mind back to middle school when we taught that the world was cooling and that the next ice age was coming. When I mention this factor, few seem to recollect this fact, especially the brain-washed masses that have swallowed Auntie Beeb's agenda based reporting.
However, my brother found this little nugget from a 1975 issue of Newsweek (it's a 300K PDF file) which talks all about how scientists are concerned about the cooling of the earth. Back then these people (presumably a similar 'consensus' of 'experts' that we are listening to now) were proposing ideas such as 'melting the Arctic ice cap by covering it with black soot' - in a bid to heat the earth up!
Why are people so readily convinced by the bad science being pedalled today that they are happy to roll on their backs and accept any manner of taxes our government introduces under the guise of caring for the planet?
I'm also shocked by the complete lack of reporting in the general media of the 'Manhattan Declaration'. Chances are, you won't have heard a peep about this (because the BBC and the rest of the European media are too lazy/stupid to report it or it doesn't suit their agenda) so here it is in full:

Manhattan Declaration on Climate Change

"Global warming" is not a global crisis

We, the scientists and researchers in climate and related fields, economists, policymakers, and business leaders, assembled at Times Square, New York City, participating in the 2008 International Conference on Climate Change,

Resolving that scientific questions should be evaluated solely by the scientific method;

Affirming that global climate has always changed and always will, independent of the actions of humans, and that carbon dioxide (CO2) is not a pollutant but rather a necessity for all life;

Recognising that the causes and extent of recently observed climatic change are the subject of intense debates in the climate science community and that oft-repeated assertions of a supposed 'consensus' among climate experts are false;

Affirming that attempts by governments to legislate costly regulations on industry and individual citizens to encourage CO2 emission reduction will slow development while having no appreciable impact on the future trajectory of global climate change. Such policies will markedly diminish future prosperity and so reduce the ability of societies to adapt to inevitable climate change, thereby increasing, not decreasing, human suffering;

Noting that warmer weather is generally less harmful to life on Earth than colder:

Hereby declare:

That current plans to restrict anthropogenic CO2 emissions are a dangerous misallocation of intellectual capital and resources that should be dedicated to solving humanity's real and serious problems.

That there is no convincing evidence that CO2 emissions from modern industrial activity has in the past, is now, or will in the future cause catastrophic climate change.

That attempts by governments to inflict taxes and costly regulations on industry and individual citizens with the aim of reducing emissions of CO2 will pointlessly curtail the prosperity of the West and progress of developing nations without affecting climate.

That adaptation as needed is massively more cost-effective than any attempted mitigation and that a focus on such mitigation will divert the attention and resources of governments away from addressing the real problems of their peoples.

That human-caused climate change is not a global crisis.

Now, therefore, we recommend --

That world leaders reject the views expressed by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change as well as popular, but misguided works such as "An Inconvenient Truth."

That all taxes, regulations, and other interventions intended to reduce emissions of CO2 be abandoned forthwith.

Agreed at New York, 4 March 2008

Anyone else find it a little worrying the other side of this argument isn't even being considered this side of the pond? I do, so if I see Cameron Diaz banging on about unplugging my sodding phone charger one more time I'm going to leave every light in my house on all night just to spite her.

Labels: Global warming

Why is the BBC so intent on spending every single news bulletin of late telling us how many plastic bags are on the planet? And how much it's harming the planet and how we are all going to burn in hell unless we take our plastic bags with us to the supermarket. What the hell do they want from me?
It's really simple - if the supermarkets used paper bags instead we'll all use them instead. End of problem. Except then we'll be mentally flogged for destroying the rain forests...

Labels: BBC, Plastic bags

I know battery issues with N95 & N95 8GB handsets have been done to death in the blogosphere but having searched about I was still sure my N95 8GB battery life wasn't up to scratch. My daily use after a full charge:

1. Every other day I download a podcast (20MB tops) over Wifi
2. I use my music player (in offline mode) each morning for around 30 mins
3. Each day I send about 5 texts (if that)
4. I make 5-10 mins of calls
5. I browse 5 mins (tops) on the net
6. I turn the phone off for around an hour in the middle of the day whilst I drive
7. I don't have any app running in the background.
8. Handy Weather updates every 8 hours for 2 cities over GPRS
9. Bluetooth is not on, nor is wireless scanning.
10. I am usually in either a full 5 bar 3G signal or full GPRS signal area.

My battery was always depleted before I get chance to turn the phone off in the evening. A few posts on various forums and it turned out this just wasn't normal and I was directed to install Nokia Power Profiler, a handy little app that tells you how much power your device is using at any given time. Running it on my handset in standby gave a reading of 0.31w. I had been told anything higher than 0.15-0.18 during standby was 'unusual'. Tried re-flashing firmware but it didn't change.

Then I stumbled on this post and thought about the fact that my N95 8GB was in a silicon case.

Long story short, the silicon case was pushing the camera button of the N95 8GB in constantly - creating a constant drain on the battery. One swift operation with a stanley knife and the offending piece of silicon is no more and my battery drain is a mere fraction of the previous levels (0.09 - 0.13).

Bottom line - if you have shoddy battery life and your device is in a tight case - try testing power usage without it. The case could be the problem...

Labels: Battery, N95 8GB, Power

After spending a little more time with the Nokia N95 8GB I'm enjoying more and more of its virtues and discovering workarounds for some of its more annoying quirks. Here's a few tricks and tips I have picked up along the way and some recommended applications I've enjoyed using.

1. Nokia start up chime. You know the annoying handshake and music every time you turn on the phone? Turn it off in Menu > Tools > Settings > General > Personalisation > Tones > Warning Tone (set to 'OFF')

2. Make Nokia Maps quicker. Using the Nokia PC Suite 2 (get it at http://www.nokia.com/A4544040), download Map Loader and transfer the UK (or applicable area) map to your phone memory. This means each time you start the application, it doesn't have to download the info to the handset over the air.

3. Sky Plus from your mobile. It's a bit of a pain to set up, but head over to Sky and download the Remote Record application for Symbian. Once you've set-up your details with Sky you can browse the 7 day Sky planner on your handset and set programs to record. There's occasionally a delay (upto 30 minutes) but it's a great tool if you're out and have forgotten to record Match Of The Day.

4. Download podcasts direct to the handset. This is a big bonus for me. Rather than download podcasts to iTunes and then transfer to the N95 8GB via USB, you can just download over the air (WI-FI or 3G) direct to the phone. I do this most mornings. Once you've entered the feed address for the podcast, just pick the desired show from the feed list and within a few minutes: voilà!

5. Weather screensaver - there are a few decent weather applications for the N95/Symbian. Sadly, the best ones are payable (unlike iPhone that includes a great weather application for free). The best ones also allow the user to set the powersaver screensaver to weather - meaning instead of the usual time/date bar, you get a nice two day weather summary. Both the weather applications can be updated manually or at pre-defined intervals (it happens invisibly in the background and uses very little data - about 2K per city so using GPRS for connection is fine). The first recommendation is Handy Weather which is payable yearly, whilst the second, Micro Weather needs only a single payment. Both programs have trial versions you can try.

However, whilst the N95 is endearing is some ways, there are still some unanswered questions:

1. On the active standby desktop, the calendar reminder takes you straight to the detail of the entry - is there any way of making it go to a month view of the month in question instead?

2. I'd like another row of active standby applications. The limit seems to be 7. I'd like to see another row of user selectable applications below.

3. Occasionally my back light stays on after using the phone. I mess with the slider a little and eventually it goes to sleep - I'd like to know what causes this or if it's a known bug?

4. The camera quality is dreadful. It might be a 5 Mega pixel camera but don't let that convince you it is on a par with even a an average compact digital camera of 3 Mega pixel. It simply isn't. There also seems to be a lot of compression taking place on the images. Shots at the 5MB setting often weigh in around the 600k mark. Way too small for a decent quality snap of this size. It's hard to know whether the optics are fine and the compression is ruining the pictures or the optics just aren't up to par. Either way, the quality of the camera given it's specification is a disappointment. I hope a future firmware finds some way to address this problem.

Labels: Handy Weather, Micro Weather, N95 8GB, Symbian