Redwood Telecoms Director of pre-sales engineering Terry Bowers is very fond of steak tartare though he doesn’t like gherkins. This educational video shows you how to make it (without the gherkins of course).
Category: End User
End User
You get roughly 3000kgs (3Tonnes) of wheat per acre. An 800g loaf of bread has around 600g of wheat giving us 5,000 loaves-worth an acre.
I learned via @JRainy on Twitter that it takes a combine harvester 3 hours to harvest 8 acres of wheat which in my book makes it 0.044 acres or 222 loaves of bread a minute.
This year’s wheat crop is only 10million or so acres of which 15% is milling wheat suitable for breadmaking. We obviously eat a lot of bread – work it out!
Interesting eh?
Check out the Lincolnshire wheat harvest in action here – thanks to John Rainsforth 🙂
You heard it first on trefor.net…
It’s been a busy month on the mobile internet usage, what with the Olympics and being on holiday. So far this month, and it is pretty much over, I have consumed just shy of 20GB of internet bandwidth using my Samsung Galaxy S3. That’s 2.40GB of 3G/mobile data and 17.13GB using WiFi.
My hard drive tells me I have taken 9.38GB of photos and videos and I’m sure there are a few sound files on top of that though they won’t contribute much towards the total.
The first screenshot shows the applications that were the heaviest mobile data users.
Note that Gallery is the number one user by far. I like the way that Android pulls down albums from my online Google+ store but clearly there is a price to pay for this with the data usage.
At number two Tweetdeck comes as no surprise and I’m thinking OS Services must mean operating system upgrades and / or general system management though I’m not totally sure about this. I’d normally save any major OS upgrades for WiFi.
During the month I did a lot of speed testing which shows up in the stats as that app came in fourth.
Straight internet access/web browsing was only the 6th most popular activity! In total 56 apps used the mobile data connection to some extent in August!
The next screenshot is of the WiFi usage from the phone.
Obviously it was used a lot more when in range of WiFi.
You can see that the amount of photographs taken is reflected in the usage of Google+.
I also took advantage whenever I had good WiFi, as I did in a number of places around London, to upload videos to YouTube. This way I could easily embed a video in a blog post at a later date whilst on the hoof.
In all 55 apps used the wifi connection in August.
The next screenshot is somewhat revealing and in some respects tells me I need to get a life.
I spent nearly 26 hours in the month using Tweetdeck wtf?! That’s almost an hour a day.
16 and a half hours using chrome. Interesting to note that the times spent on specific applications haven’t resulted in those apps beign the heaviest users of mobile data. Shows how light Twitter traffic in particular is.
Then it was nearly 14 hours using TouchWiz which is the Samsung user interface. All that time spent prodding the phone. I’ don’t know how much time is allocated per prod but this seems to be a lot.
Maps I can understand – that four hours is probably a couple of car journeys.
I’m not sure I know what to do with all this information but it is certainly food for thought.
You can see from the pics that the app I used to gather all this data is My Data Manager. It’s great. Go get it and let me know about your own usage.
You probably don’t know but when I was 16 I worked as a projectionist at the cinema in Summerland in Douglas Isle of Man. It was a great summer job – I saw the James Bond movie Spy Who Loved Me 50 times in the space of a fortnight 🙂
In Lincolnshire last weekend was the 90th anniversary of another
cinema, The Kinema in the Woods in Woodhall Spa. I went along for the open day and got to see places where the public weren’t normally allowed – in particular the organ room and the projection room.
We used to play vinyl records during the interval – you know cowboy theme tunes and other tracks suitable for cinema listening. The Kinema has a restored Compton organ, a magnificent beast with a huge array of pipes backstage and which runs on a 28volt supply. Nothing was
standard in those days.
Things have moved on since I was in the trade, even at the Kinema which prides itself on its olde worlde quaintness.
The old Peerless projector has been replaced with a new digital job that cost £50k including server. Instead of shipping 6 reels of movie film the studios now just send a hard drive with the digital movie on it. The latest Batman movie – Dark Knight was 304GB I noted. This is a
massive cost saving for the studios as each film cost knocking on a couple of thousand pounds to print.
I got to use a film splicer which took me back – same one I used in Summerland. I’ve still got a few frames of The Spy Who Loved Me somewhere at mams and dads after I had to do some emergency repair work mid movie.
Some big names had turned out to support the open day. It was the
least they could do after all the Kinema had done for them. I’m pictured here with Humphrey Bogart who you will remember from Casablanca and the African Queen. Classics both. He’s wearing well.
All in all we spent a very pleasant couple of hours there being entertained by the organist and watching old shorts such as Laurel and Hardy and the Road Runner and Wylie E Coyote.
Finally the embedded video is of the organ in action including the bit at the end where it sinks back into the stage. Enjoy…
PS Summerland got demolished a few years back. The remnants of my childhood gradually being erased.
Regular readers will know that this is a very glamorous job. Hard work though so when I have a free day as was the case last August Bank Holiday weekend I like to pack the family off somewhere exotic where we can all relax and enjoy each other’s company without being distracted by work and the internet.
This video was taken at Jubilee Park campsite in Woodhall Spa at the height of the British summer. Why go abroad eh? There was calm after the storm as the header photo shows – click to see more.
There’s a definite change in the air. The short British summer is coming to a close, people are squeezing in their last bits of holiday before school starts again and my kids are getting ready to set off for university, in one case, for the first time (yes I am excited).
It feels as if this is the last week before the rush. Traffic will get heavier and business get serious again. It’s not that it isn’t serious in August but not much gets done as half the world is out of the office – staff, suppliers and customers.
Next week all the shops will have their Christmas decorations out! There’s a lot going on in the world before you need to
I’ve been in London a fair bit over the Olympic fortnight. It has by and large seemed fairly quiet but finished with a bang with the Marathon in the centre of town and the Blur gig in Hyde Park, of which more later.
The two pics on the right show Covent Garden piazza a couple of days apart. The first is a photo taken at 11am of where the buskers usually do their stuff. Pretty empty.
The second is at lunchtime on the next day. Huge difference. Maybe it’s the couple of hours that made the difference or that everyone was at the games on Friday and they
then came into London to watch the Marathon on Saturday.
We shall probably never find out and actually I doubt anyone cares.
I gave the busker we watched the previous week a fiver. Seemed reasonable. He gave us a long show and we enjoyed it.
Thanks to KCom I was sat on the front row at the Hungary v Sweden mens handball semi finals – very interesting considering I’d not even heard of the game before – or at least never seen a match.
We were just above some disabled positions. A lady in a wheelchair asked one of the Games Makers to take a photo of her using her iPad. I whipped out my phone and took this photo. I wanted to catch him in the act of taking the pic but wasn’t quite fast enough. This is a good one though – they are both reviewing the photo and she seems very happy with the outcome 🙂
Nice surprise to bump in to Powernet CEO Tony Tugulu at the KCOM bash at the Olympics. We did the touristy bits en route to the handball and had our photo taken with a couple of the boys in uniform. Being regular readers of the blog they were just as pleased to be photographed with us as we were with them 🙂
Don’t know about you but I don’t think I”ve ever seen so many beer barrels. Maybe its because I’m a small town boy with a lot to learn about the ways of the world.
They were at the back of the Heineken beer garden which was just outside the Cisco House. The next pic is a wider view of the garden taken from the top floor balcony of the Cisco House. Didn’t go there myself as were were well catered for with teas and coffees etc provided by Cisco.
There was a lot of publicity over the fact that the McDonalds in the Olympic Park was the world’s biggest. In actual fact there were two McDonalds inside the Park, one of which is the subject of the photo below. I don’t know whether they were both the same size or not – didn’t venture in having had a lovely lunch with my excellent Friday hosts KCOM. Just assume you are looking at the biggest one.
The second photo is a panoramic view taken inside the basketball arena – kitted out for the mens handball semi final. Iwas supporting Hungary (ria, ria Hungaria, ria ria Hungaria as the chant goes) out of allegiance to my mate Erv the Hungarian concert pianist – more on him when he is back from his summer break in Budapest. Unfortunaltey we lost but there you go…
If you click on the photo of the arena to get a bigger size pic you will notice that the press area covers the whole of one side of the court – a reflection presumably of the level of interest in basketball.
Having only just mentioned the Beatles here is another photo depicting one of their songs. At least I assume that’s what it is.
It’s either a helter skelter or the mangled wreckage of a train crash dumped in the middle of a waste ground without realising it was the spot they had chosen for the Olympic Park! Doh!
I didn’t get to find out – no time plus I bet it takes ages to walk up to the top and you’re bound to get dizzy coming down.
If I were them I’d stop using it as a slide on medical/health and safety grounds and turn it into an iconic metal sculpture which would be a far better use.
I’m on holiday though I’ve had to fit in the odd day’s work in my busy Olympic schedule. There are going to be so many enduring images from these games. I’m probably not in any of them.
I was going to do one big post just containing lots of pics from my Olympic watching but on reflection am going to do it as a series of shorts.
This one was taken outside the Aquatic Centre. I was there as a guest of Cisco who are one of the sponsors of the games. The police in the pic had been drafted in from Scotland and were staying in Hatfield for the duration of their stint.
Not sure the cap fits mind you.
I learned to play the guitar when I was a kid instead of swotting for my A Levels. My mam and dad almost certainly got fed up to listening to renditions from the “Beatles Songbook”.
One of my early masterpieces was Norwegian Wood. Last night we had some friends round for a barbeque. Our bbq is also a firepit and when the eating is done we throw on some sticks, toast marshmallows, chat and maybe even strum the geetar.
On this occasion I was reminded of a line in Norwegian Wood – “I sat by the fire, biding my time, drinking her wine”. Knowing it would be of huge interest to all Beatles fans out there I took a photo illustrating the moment.
PS I am available for parties. I’m not particularly good but as long as everyone has had plenty of wine I sound fine:)
Posted using WordPress for android on my Samsung galaxy S3
Telling it like it is in real (ish) time. From left to right Dr Henry Kissinger, Trefor Davies and Calum Malcolm at the Cisco House at the Olympic Park.
Life is for living.
Posted from my Samsung Galaxy S3 courtesy of Cisco WiFi.
Nuff said.
Posted from my Samsung Galaxy S3 over Cisco’s 50Mbps WiFi
It’s been interesting to hear the observations of expert commenters that athletes perform better when the are relaxed. If they are not in the right frame of mind their chances of success are greatly reduced.
When you think about it this applies in many areas. In cricket, for example, your mind has to be totally in the right space to win. The same team can win one game but lose another against the same opposition just by not having their minds in the right space.
Watching the beach volleyball last night it was clear that the Brazilian pair did not gell and they were thrashed by the Chinese.
These are lessons we should take onboard in our business lives.
I also hear the mantra “it’s the taking part that is important”. Well of course taking part is important but so is winning. You try telling Victoria Pendleton or Christine Ohurogu that silver is ok when for the last 4 years their mind has been totally focussed on winning gold.
Taking part is nice but it is better to be a winner. Again it’s all about attitude. Mental strength.
What a difference 6 months makes. Went to Skeggy today with son Joe. It was packed with tourists enjoying the 26 degrees heat of the British summer. Can’t say it was bracing at all. There was a gentle offshore breeze which made it very pleasant.
Interesting to compare the scene with February when I presented the RNLI with their £6k cheque following the world record attempt for most comments on a blog post.
The pic on the left is 
the scene in February and the one on the right was today.
If you’ve never been you should go to Skegness – in August obviously. It’s a great British family seaside day out – beer ice creams, fish and chips, deckchairs, amusements etc etc.
Make sure you take plenty of sunscreen 🙂
Drove four 18 year old girls to Derby yesterday morning. They, along with three other pals were catching the train to Newquay for a week on the lash a week of post A Levels recuperation. They deserve it.
We had originally booked them on a low cost flight from East Midlands but the operator cancelled it and a hasty change to rail was needed. The best route was Lincoln – Kings Cross – Paddington – Newquay. £65 all told in second class. I did suggest they treated themselves to first as it was still cheaper than the costs of the flights but that didn’t get universal approval.
What’s more amid the pre-Olympics hype about London transport congestion the party grew nervous about going anywhere near the capital and opted for the Derby route which was £20 more expensive but perhaps a safer bet. They had a date with a cocktail in Newquay they didn’t want to miss.
With hindsight there have been no transport problems in London, due mainly to the hype that has scared anyone not going to the Olympics away from the place. So the girls could have gone in more comfort for less money!
As a footnote, I have a big jeep. The girls had a lot of luggage. It all fitted, just, into my car. I think the parents might collectively have to review the return travel arrangements as the person lined up to pick them up next Monday night was doing so in an Alpha Romeo!
Also it’s a good job they didn’t fly. The excess baggage charges would have paid for a limo to take them all down in luxury. They even took a laptop with them!
After the Global Business Summit at Lancaster House on Friday I went to Tower Bridge to look at the Olympic rings – lit up at night. Here are a number of pics from the evening:
You can’t see the rings in this first pic as they don’t turn them on until after the light show.
Pretty impressive setting I’m sure you’ll agree.
We caught the Canadian news readers doing their stuff in front of Boris’ office.
Then finally I took this photo of the inside of a nearby pub – not because I went in for a drink – just because it was so bright and colourful as I was passing.
London can be a wonderful place to visit.
If you are the single person in the UK not caught up with Olympic fever you need therapy. This is big time excitement. There is no way you should be doing anything other than sitting in front of that box taking in cycling/yachting/rowing/running/long jumping/kayaking/swimming/tennis/ano etc.
That said I played golf this afternoon when Murray was whopping Federer. Parental duties you know. However I have also just returned from the Olympic city where on Thursday at the Lee Valley kayak slalom venue we watched Britain’s Tim Baillie and Etienne Stott paddle to gold with team mates David Florence and Richard Hounslow taking silver in second.
One of the major features of these Olympics has been the support of the home crowd. I’ve got to tell you the TV doesn’t do it justice – you just don’t get a sense of the noise. Fear not dear reader for I have recorded it for your entertainment, education and general edification.
I herewith present to you a number of short videos that should give you a taste of the atmosphere at Lee Valley on Thursday.
Firstly the start of the British gold medal run:
Then a little later in the run – perhaps even louder:
The crowd doing a Mexican wave:
Flags of nations rippling in the strong breeze:
John and I are wending our way back from Cardiff to London in First Class with First Great Western. I like to teach my kids the right way to travel.
FGW doesn’t have WiFi like Eastcoast does but actually I’m finding that power is more important. 3G is good enough and having a fully charged phone for this afternoon’s Olympic kayak slaloms at Lee Valley is more important. I think 24 hours of battery life at flat out use needs to be the benchmark – 2 days for contingency. We aren’t there yet.
The lad is dozing whilst listening to some sounds on his phone. His copy of the Times newspaper made him nod off:)
I’m feeling a little rebellious. Last night we took a vuvuzela type horn into the GB v Uruguay match. It was on the list of prohibited items but if the Uruguayan supporters could take an entire drum kit into the ground it would have been entirely unfair to confiscate our modest source of atmosphere and excitement.
Today I am wearing my HP branded Commons and Lords Lions tour polo shirt and we have a Nike day bag. Totally against he rules laid down by the Locog heavIes. We also have a packed lunch which is apparently ok provided we don’t take too much – presumably in case we start selling food inside the venue. We could undercut the concessions and make a fortune, our only overheads being a modest Waitrose bill and the cost of the tickets. The latter has been covered by the mortgage so repayments will hardly be noticed over the 4 years between Olympic games.
I read somewhere yesterday that some politician (I can’t remember his name, which will obviously be a disappointment to the individual concerned) has said that the food prices are in line with other major events and that a family should be able to feed themselves for forty quid. That’s as may be but for most people forty pounds is a lot of dosh and I bet his family only consists of four people. Being a highly virile couple we have four kids which by my reckoning works out at sixty notes for lunch or roughly twelve pints of lager if you live in London as many readers of this blog do.
What a choice. Feed the kids or drink lots of lager. I suppose I could drink slightly fewer lagers and save some cash for a curry or a kebab afterwards (the hidden costs of a night out on the town). No no no only joking. Honest :).
Look out for me In the kayakIng crowd in my red HP polo shirt. Hasta la vista baby.
More later on my OlympIc holiday, from the WordPress dashboard of the Samsung Galaxy S3…
The mobile data service turned out great.I suspect if you weren’t on o2 it might have been a different story though I have no evidence of that.
The upload capacity did come under a bit of strain. It started at round 1.6 megs and dropped to 0.85 megs at half time but that is still good going.
I only really had 2 problems. One was with WordPress for android – it didn’t like the panoramic photo I included in the post.
The second was battery life. I hit the s3 hard with a lot of internet use and photographic activity. I was at the millennium stadium for two matches. By the second half of the second match the battery was running low so I switched off as I needed to make phone calls afterwards. This still wasn’t bed. After roughly 4 hours of pretty solid use I was down to 24% battery power remaining.
The catering at the ground was a different story – It was sIxquId for a sandwIch! My son queued for 45 minutes for a pizza only to find they had run out when he got to the front of the queue. This was during the first match! Whoever the caterer was I don’t have anything good to say about them.
It dIdn’t spoil the overall enjoyment of the evening which was a super family affair. The caterers could have taken a lesson from McDonald’s where I fed my son afterwards. It seemed as if the whole of the 70, 000 present at the ground went there. The queue went down quickly and it felt that those burgers were being served at speeds Usein Bolt would have been proud of 🙂
Posted using Samsung Galaxy S3.
The game hasn’t started yet but the atmosphere is building up.this is a great family event but be warned. Queues are horrendous for the catering concessions and not a McDonald’s in sight – so much for the exclusive sponsorship. Maybe they only care about the London venues.
The mobile data connectivity is superb though I’ve not been able to figure out how to register for WiFi. I’m not a customer of BT broadband (I am but via BT Wholesale) and though I have a KeZone account with an Openzone roaming agreement I can’t see how to use it.
This actually doesn’t matter because much O2 SIM is giving me a fantastically reliable 7.5Megs down and 1.5 Megs up.
I have 3 pics for you. 1st is a panoramic shot of inside the stadium – just worked out how to do it properly.
The second shot is a screenshot of the speeders for the mobile data.
Finally there’s a photo of the 3g small cell antenna deployed in the stadium.
Enjoy:
WordPress for android via s3
Am at the footy at the millennium stadium & trying to upload a post with pics. WordPress for android keeps crashing when I try to publish. This is to see if it uploads without photos.
Categories
50 mighty quadtracs all in a row
The gathering of the mighty quadtracs was foreseen. 50 of these giants of the agricultural world formed the biggest ever congregation of their kind at Hemswell in Lincolnshire last Saturday.
5 minutes at 3.5kph (speed set so as not to run out of field in the regulated time) saw a new world record set for the most number of quadtracs simultaneously working a field.
Before harvest:
After harvest:
The event raised thousands for cancer charity in memory of John Rainthorpe with over a thousand cars worth of spectators in attendance – amazing.
The quadtracs came from far and wide with two of them travelling 433 miles from Scotland (on the back of a lorry – they would still be on their way otherwise).
For more see here.
Posted using WordPress for android.
Camp fire at Woodall Spa
Posted using WordPress for android.
This morning I found that one of my blog posts had the word “bookmark” inserted at the beginning. Weird I thought. This afternoon I did another post and lo and behold it was there too. In fact it was on every post I’d ever written. Very weird.
So I went down to see Ian Ward, one of our resident web design gurus and we both started fishing about to see what the problem might be. Perusing through the plug ins we noticed that “Social Sharing Toolkit” had an upgrade available. This was to fix a problem where the plug in was “inserting words” into blog posts.
We clicked “upgrade” and hey presto, problem over. I must have subliminally upgraded the plug in first thing this morning. The watchful eyes of the wordpress community spotted the problem and now it is fixed.
End of story. Interesting eh? Eh??
It’s the hottest day of the year so far. People are frying eggs on car bonnets and the homeless have left London for cooler climes – it’s too hot underneath the arches for a comfortable kip.
The suits are sweating buckets and wishing it was acceptable to turn up for work in shorts. The ladies are looking lovely in the summer sun.
Most people are complaining about the heat. Those that aren’t are taking the mickey out of friends just packing for their annual holiday in Marbella or Benidorm or Lanzarote or Torremolinos – you know – places less warm than London.
School’s out. Urchins run wild in the radiatingly hot city streets, shrieking under plumes of water escaping from broken fire hydrants. Their parents, sapped of care, languish in the little shade afforded by the concrete tenements they call home. There is no breeze. There is no letup from the infernal heat.
In fact neither is there any air conditioning on this train – the 18.30 Eastcoast from Kings Cross to Edinburgh stopping briefly to let me off at Newark to get my connection to Lincoln. I’m on my second can of diet Coke and second bottle of sparkling water with ice!
This must be what it is like on the Chennai to Bangalore Express (dep 13.00 arr 14.45 daily). At least those in steerage can catch a little breeze sat on top of the carriage
Ah well.
Yes please love – another bottle of mineral water with plenty of ice. Thanks…
PS I realise there are no fire hydrants in London. These are images more typical of New York in summer. Also the choice of Indian train service was purely random. However they both made the cut for artistic effect. Final answer.
If it’s Tuesday it must be London. Not if you’re a tourist. I’m down here for meetings but the place is remarkably calm. No queues at the taxi rank at Kings Cross Station, not many people around.
The taxi driver told me it has been one of the quietest summer he has ever seen. The regular tourists have stayed away. I’ve even been able to get a great last minute deal on 5 star hotel at a rock bottom price – only a few quid more than the Kings Cross Travelodge that is my usual haunt.
The London2012 games will soon be upon us and excited I am. I’m confident that they will be a huge success and the PR failures of Locog will fade from the national memory (not mine though – i don’t forget these things:).
I’m taking a chunk of the Olympic fortnight off. Not all of it – I’m off to a British Business Embassy meeting with Dave, George and Vince (apparently) on Friday 3rd August. If you’re going I’ll be the one wearing a suit! (I know – WTF do I hear you say?).
I’ll be with son number 3 (kid4) at the Team GB versus Uruguay clash of Titans at the Millenium stadium and with sons 1,2 and 3 (there are no more as far as I am aware) at the Kayak Slalom finals at Lee Valley wild water rapids fun centre.
Then the following week I’m at the ladies high diving final with Cisco, the men’s handball semi finals with KCom (yea I know – I’ll tell you what handball is when I get back from holidays if I remember) and then finally I’m with BT Wholesale at the closing concert in Hyde Park on the Sunday.
Thanks for all the invites for what are very important relationship building networking occasions.
I did um and ah a little about revealing all these tidbits but what the heck. Life is for living. The Olympics will not be here again in my lifetime and it is a useful way of building up to saying if anyone wants to invite me to the athletics at the Olympic Stadium itself then there is a fair chance they will become my new best pal. Preferably Mens 100m or 200m finals or any other blue riband event.
Catch you later, maybe…