August 2012 - A Visit to Cambridge

 

Our friends Norma and Tommy, good friends we had met in Spain via the U3A, invited us to their house near Cambridge for a couple of days. We have never visited this part of England so we were keen to visit and take the promised "open-top" tour of the City.

 

On arrival Tommy took us for a ride around the lovely countryside in the area and showed us the farm he used to own before retirement. After that I settled down to one of my usual (and favourite) jobs, that of bringing Norma's MP3 player up to date and loading it with more talking-books and radio-plays. Norma took up listening to an MP3 player only two years ago after hearing some of my stuff whilst I was working on their PC in Spain. I bet there aren't many ladies who venture into MP3 listening in their eighties. Since then she has acquired a Kindle and both items help her to continue enjoying the books she loves without eye strain.

After a lovely dinner and enjoyable evening we retired to bed ready for our next-day tour.

Cambridge have provided a huge Park and Ride car park just outside the city and from there we were also able to board the open-top bus to take us on our tour. We were so lucky in this horrible summer of 2012 to have such marvelous weather.

What a marvelous service. On boarding (£9.00 for wrinklies) we were given a set of headphones each (small in-the-ear type) and advised that we could alight and re-board as many times as we wished throughout the day.

The route took us into the heart of Cambridge and the commentary gave out interesting facts about the route and about the major buildings and colleges which we passed on the route. We alighted in the city centre to do some shopping followed by lunch in an Italian Restaurant in the market square. We had a short walking tour around some of the colleges and quirky shops and Norma charmed the gate keepers of King's College into letting us in to take a few photographs without paying the usual entry fee.

Norma and the Gatekeeper. The Teddy you can see on

his shoulder (Eduardo) was on tour from Spain

and his story will be reported on separately

 

 

All around were young people politely asking us if we wanted to be taken for a punt on the Cam. Sadly we did not have enough time but if we go again we will definitely give it a try.

We stopped to listen to two violinists busking on the street and they gave a fabulous rendition of Winter from The Four Seasons.

All around us were old buildings and famous Colleges and about (so it felt) about 10,000 bikes. The constant mode of transport. Road bikes, mountain bikes, shopping bikes, all were being put to use to get around.

We later heard on the bus commentary that students are not allowed cars within five miles of their colleges but as this was the close-season for University Life it appeared that more than just students chose this are their means of transport.

We then visited what has to be the best stocked sweet shop I have ever seen. I asked, but they would not lock me inside overnight.

There was one black note on the day and that was caused by the tour-bus driver who failed to stop for us at a designated bus stop when we wished to board to complete our tour. Kathie banged on the side of the bus and he then stopped but argued that he had already picked up his passengers some 50 metres short of the stop and did not see us. He was most rude and set off before we had time to take our seats thus endagering Norma and Tommy who are both disabled. We asked that he stopped again and he invited us to leave his bus but we declined and took our seats on the upper deck. Norma was to report him but I don't know if she did or not.

We continued with our tour and discovered more interesting facts. One of them was that Cambridge University used to employ people to stand in the Railway Station to stop students from boarding trains during term time and thus keeping them from the high-life of London etc. The car park at the station had the first double-decker bike rack I have ever seen and there must have been at least a thousand bikes parked there or chained to any immovable object.

Back to the house for drinks and dinner and to meet Norma and Tommy's daughter and son-in-law. Great company and a great evening. We left mid-morning on the next day (still sunny) after what had been a short but very enjoyable visit.

Our thanks to our new friends for making it so.

August 2012 - In praise of the iPad

Ever since the iPad was announced I have been telling people that it is not for me, it is just a large iPod Touch, it won’t run MS Office applications etc. etc. Add to that the number of colleagues who have bought iPads then spent the next weeks trying to turn it into a Windows mini-PC by buying apps to liaise with MS Office, apps to make it print, methods of adding storage, and any other thing you can think of to change the product from what it was designed to be.

I did however want a tablet PC for its size, portability, etc.

Whilst preparing for our seasonal migration to England I was looking for a better method of connecting to the Internet than the dongle we used in 2011. Living in the countryside, on a caravan park without our own telephone landline poses connectivity problems and our Internet connection has to be via a mobile phone network. Of the major networks we found Three to be the best for 3G in the area where we live in the Yorkshire Dales. O2's phone connection is good but they do not recommend using their network for the Internet.

Looking through the options on Three's website I found that they offer a laptop or iPad as a means of connecting to their 3G network. This gave me the push I needed and with a large chunk of mental rationalisation I went for the iPad-3, 32GB, 3G model. It costs me £25 per month and is like a mobile phone contract. I stay with Three for the two year contract, and included in the charge is 15GB of Internet traffic per month and no initial charge for the iPad itself. In Spain I have been paying 34 Euros per month for only 10GB of traffic from Vodafone and this does not include an iPad although it does include a wireless router. There are lots of pros and cons to argue about the cost of the contract in the UK but over 2 years I am happy to pay for this solution.

An so to the iPad itself. It is just a joy to use. I read all the pitfalls before I decided to buy it so was well prepared for the things it will not do. For instance it has only 32GB of on board storage which nets down to about 27GB after the operating system etc. This storage can not be increased neither can you insert a memory stick or card. By modern day standards this is not a lot but you have to remember what the iPad is for.

It is not a PC. It works extremely well as a supplementary PC as long as you have another one at home on which to store large amounts of data, films, music etc.

What it is though is a very stylish and easy-to-use portable device on which you can create documents and spreadsheets, receive emails, navigate using GPS, surf the net, take photographs and short videos, talk to people via Skype, play games (if you really want to, but not on mine whilst I breathe), read books in PDF, Kindle, or epub formats, read newspapers, and view your favourite photographs. It will act as a Wi-Fi hotspot so that you can connect other PCs to the Internet. It is instantly "on" when you open the case or slide the unlock icon on the screen and a full charge will give you up to 10 hours of use. The display is the best display you will ever see.

The new Operating System to be released in the autumn of 2012 promises even more features.

Applications for it are either free or are usually quite cheap. Apple produce their own version of a mobile Office Suite which produces files which may be saved as Microsoft compatible files. Compatibility is not 100% as some of the clever things which may be created in Pages (the word processor) will not work in MS Word. However the finished document can easily be saved direct from the iPad as a PDF document thereby keeping all that clever formatting. The spreadsheet application is called Numbers and to date I have not really given it a thorough workout but I expect great things from it. Both applications come with a huge supply of templates so that you can begin to easily create beautiful looking documents or spreadsheets from the off. Total cost for both apps is less than 14 quid.

Both of these major apps have their detractors but what doesn't. Some of the comments I have read are from people who have bought an iPad and are expecting it to act like a full blown desktop PC. Get real! If you want all the bells and whistles of MS Word then pay the price for MS Office (about £170) and there they will be. All of this extra functionality (and there is not really much extra you can do in Word) can then be used on a net book if you want portability.

Over the coming months I will be exploring the useful apps which are available for this device and seeing what more I can do with it.

From all this it may be gathered that I have been converted to being a fan of the iPad. I would like to become a fan of Apple overall as I also love the iPod and iPhone but alas their computers are outside my price range at present. Add to that the fact that my friends in Spain who I teach in our Computer Group are all on MS Windows then it becomes less of a viable move.

If the lottery comes up then blow it, I will have both.