25 May, 2018

Working in East Grinstead...

400 Bus
...and so begins the next chapter in my commuting life, no more Dorking (fun as it was), new destination - East Grinstead!

There has always been something slightly broken in my mind which made me think that East Grinstead was just past Three Bridges on the Brighton (railway) line - probably the fact that they are quite near to one another as the crow files - I've stupidly boarded East Grinstead trains at East Croydon a few times mistakenly thinking I'd be able to figure out a quicker way back home during disruption (and then catching trains back again). When the prospect of a job came up working here I immediately made the same mistake again - "Oh that will be easy to get to" - but no. Also this move co-incided with the biggest restructuring of timetables in British railway history - and the inevitable associated cancellations and delays (4 cancelled trains so far this morning from East Grinstead) the *only* way to get here on the train is via East Croydon.

I've had enough of London commuters.

Thankfully, after a quick bit of Googling, I discovered that (and this is a miracle) there is a number 400 bus that goes from East Surrey hospital (practically on our doorstep) to the fire station 500 yards from my new office. So far they have been reliable and (pretty much) on time - and they are also used by a lot of kids to get to School (meaning they are highly unlikely to be casually cancelled). The only problem is there isn't a lot in the way of alternatives leaving me really only one direct bus in and one direct bus out meaning there is potential for a bit of waiting around at Crawley bus station (but that isn't the end of the world).

I'm one week in and so far it's worked very well - the cherry on the top? It only costs £22 per week for my bus ticket. I think that has to be one of the cheapest commutes on the planet (unless one walks to work)!

15 January, 2018

Rainy Redhill

Rainy Redhill
...oh man...I am wet and cold...didn't help that I couldn't really get off to sleep last night either (being tired always makes me feel colder)...for some weird reason my brain was just locked in a loop of saying "Hey Google" and getting back unsatisfactory responses, finally gave up trying to sleep at about half past four - no idea how I'm going to get through today - with lots and lots of tea most probably...

11 January, 2018

Ceefax is dead...

Radofin TAD 100 Teletext Adaptor
Wow, and just like that, Ceefax is dead...

I had thought that this had all come to an end with terrestrial switch off back in 2012, but actually a couple of little bits kept on pinging out content - it's still not (quite) the end...

Back in the day, when teletext (with a small "t") launched, you needed a set-top box to decode it from the terrestrial signal waving around over our heads - I remember hopping into (probably) our Renault 4 with my Dad, with it's lovely creaky campsite style seats and heading somewhere into suburban London to find an independent retailer who actually had one of these strange new decoder boxes (you could also buy a decoder box for the BBC A I seem to remember)...

Anyway, even though this was in the days before tape-based video recorders became established in the mainstream (so I couldn't at the time have drawn the comparison) it was roughly the size of a VHS player. The RF/Coax cable went in the back from the aerial on the roof and another one hooked you up to the TV.  The "remote" control was on a 2 or 3 meter wire that plugged in at the back, so it almost reached all the way to the sofa.  Press a combination of 2 magic buttons and slide a big buff slider or two into "teletext mode" and suddenly words appeared out of thin air...!

I can only really liken it to a very, very early version of the internet (but all done with UDGs in migraine inducing primary colours held in a rigid format)...you could interact with the content in two marvellous ways - either type in a new page number, or hit "Reveal" to make invisible content appear. Amazing! There was one very nice feature though, pick a channel, invoke the decoder, then going to page 888 would "minimise" the "browser" window and display subtitles (where available)...

Even back then though I remember finding it such a pain to browse, if you wanted to go and visit, say, page 800 on Teletext to get some funny jokes or hidden pictures behind a riddle you had to wait while it ticked through *every* *other* *page* of the 999 available on the way before it would (hopefully) load...

Anyway, as I mentioned earlier, it's not quite the end...a few cable channels are still (apparently) keeping up text pages (Channel 5, Nickelodian, Syfy channel to name but a couple), and some bright spark has figured out that the teletext signals got recorded on VHS tapes and has worked out how to decode them from old recordings of It Ain't Half Hot Mum and Benny Hill. There is also the teletext archive here...if you are feeling particularly sentimental...bye bye teletext, gone, but not forgotten...  ;)

09 January, 2018

Rescued a Piplup...

Rescue Piplup
...very early this morning, abandoned and slightly run over (in the darkness and rain) in the car park of East Surrey Hospital (so this is definitely a rescue Piplup)...Luckily Piplups have a thick coat of fur and (a bit like penguins) are very happy in the cold weather, so it was really only the "being hit by cars" bit that was bothering him. He is sat happily on my desk at the moment, and I'll be making a snug nest of paper towels to bring him home to be looked after by the kids from now on...just hope he gets on with Litten Mittens and Beatrice!

07 January, 2018

Virgin Superhub - unable to connect - solution

Google Wifi
It's fair to say that we've been struggling with a few problems with our Wifi recently. Actually, when I sat down to think about it, I realised that we've got into a routine of re-booting the router probably once per day for the past year. It all began when 3 new devices arrived in the house last Christmas (and they just keep on coming) - it seems to have turned into a bit of a conveyor belt of one device kicking another off or stealing all the bandwith until the poor old Virgin Superhub just can't cope any more and collapses in a heap (requiring the off/on treatment).

The solution - a shiny new router from Google - it comes with everything you need in the box, you plug it in (power-wise), use the included bit of Cat5 to go out from the "Modem mode" slot on the back of the Virgin hub (it's the bottom one - clearly labelled) and plug it into the little hole on the Google router with a picture of a globe.

Next it's installing a small app on your telephone, choose a google account, give the new Wifi network a name and a password - and that's it! Connect your devices up (this took by far the longest) and - fingers crossed - the wifi has been super stable ever since (and reaches effortlessly all over the house, as a nice side-benefit).

So if you are, like many people on the Virgin Broadband forums, struggling with their (not quite up to the job of running a modern home) hardware, give it a try! It also auto tunes to the quietest frequencies to give you maximum bandwith over the air and allows you to turn on safesearch just for certain devices (I set up a "Kids tablets" group) plus I was able to switch off all internet to the kids devices after 7pm on School nights. Next thing is to set up a guest logon (which you can throttle down so it doesn't eat into the family's performance).

Overall very impressed.

03 January, 2018

Redhill Platform zero is open!

Redhill platform 0Redhill platform 0
...and it only cost fifty million pounds!  Are we still wondering why the rail fares have gone up again?  Actually, in my neck of the woods we don't actually have a fare increase this year, but this is only because we have been bearing the brunt of the increases for the last decade or so while everyone else got off lightly (comparatively) - so at least someone thought of Reigate and Redhill residents for a change... ;)

Anyway, I have already noticed a tangible difference to my journey, from now on we won't have to wait for the service that precedes my train (from Tonbridge) to pull in to platform 1 first, it now terminates on platform 0.  Although as a result the Reading train now goes a lot further up platform 1, so I will have to change the place where I sit!