Fitness Report

Out of the blue I update the blog……..

So fitness, it’s been something I’ve mentioned a few times over the years – but this time it might actually be happening. Really it should read fitness and diet as I’ve made significant (for me) changes to the latter. Fitness actually wasn’t a problem, despite being nearly 16 stone. This is due to the hour a day of cycling I do getting to and from work. Diet on the other was rubbish, I was a strong believer in the eat what you want and cycle diet – which has some merit, except when all you eat is crap. So since before Christmas I’ve slowly cut out the rubbish.

Biscuits are the worst source of my problem. For me it was like crack (although freely available in the shops makes not at all like crack – so ignore the analogy), anyway biscuits – the simple truth is I ate too many. I’d have some after breakfast, then have some at break (in the office) then more later after tea – and probably some later as well. I’ve cut them out completely and it seems to have done the trick.

Also I’ve started to get up early, cut out other rubbish and now I’m looking at portion sizes. It’s making a difference. Weight is now 15.025 stone (yeah, I know mixing the imperial with decimalisation – but it’s my blog and no one is here to correct me), goal this year is getting down to 13 stone (not specified an actual target yet could be 13.5 or a fraction under 14!). Once there I’ll make the decision what to do then.

I did start running as well, but that’s problematic at the moment – first my calf went, now my back is playing up again – still it’s a long term aim to do more running as well. Current health issue are just a momentary blip.

So there you go, a bit of positive me for a change. Goals set in other things as well. No need to announce them, I may mention them when I reach them.

Oh, by the way – who’s it for? Well the answer is me.

Pondering

I ponder a little too much sometimes, at this moment in time this my current state.

Don’t worry about me. I’m just chilling, attempting to keep fit and watching what I eat.

Even started to get up early.

Update, mainly cos I’ve not posted anything for over a month

Storage:

It didn’t change much from my plan – I ended up with a Lacie D2 Thunderbolt Drive (3tb) – Seems to be all o.k.

Storage 2:

Now I didn’t see this one coming nor was it planned – no nothing broke, but I found out iFixit now ship from Germany – so a 2nd HDD cable for the Mac Mini was ordered along with a Crucial M500 120gb SSD – My Mac Mini now flies.

Fibre:

Still lacking in both diet and internet – The councillors replied – they got the same rubbish from Openreach – so back to square one.

Not sure if there’s anything else to update.

Lack of fibre part 2

Strictly speaking there wasn’t a part one, but it’s late and 2/3’s of a bottle of white later I’ve decided to blog. Not the best idea I had, but what the hell.

Anyway, the previous post bemoaned a lack of fibre options from BT (yes I can get Virgin – but i’d rather not do business with them again).

So, a campaign – a localism type website (oh noes) and this blog post. So the campaign, well the plan is to leaflet approximately 250 homes that are connected to the BT cabinet of woe that is Number 50 (Stechford Exchange) – I’m currently researching costs of leaflets – though will probably print them on my own laser as it’s likely to be cheaper, plus i’ve got a few spare reams of paper left over from an ancient purchase.

Localism type website – it’s fibreyardley.info – don’t worry, I’m not going to bang on about localism -it’s there to serve a purpose – it doesn’t need google to pimp it out as my leaflet should do that – once it achieves its aim then it’ll join the endless list of dead blogs out there. Yes it’s a blog – a wordpress one, hosted on WordPress.com mainly cos hosting it locally would’ve have been rubbish (due to slow upload speeds).

So there you go, my contribution to localism – I promise not to do it again.

Open, sorry closedreach

Fibre broadband is the future. All the adverts tell us how lives will be improved by the installation of super fast Fibre. Though the reality for most is it’s not actually Fibre coming into our houses. Most implementations of ‘Fibre’ is in fact Fibre to the Cabinet (FTTC) – this is nothing new, V*rgin have used this method for years (Fibre to Cab, then Coaxial to home – not too dissimilar to the BT cable from the pole).

So living in Birmingham you have thought getting Fibre would be an easy task, well for some in the B26 area it is. However, for those on Cab 50 (and other small cabs) – chances are you’re not getting it.

Why? Well I asked Openreach and they replied:

Exchange Stechford
Cabinet 50
Postcode B26

Thank you for your interest in our Fibre Broadband deployment. We are deploying one of the fastest and largest commercial deployments in the world. Our commercial deployment will have extended to 66% of the UK by the end of Spring 2014. We aim extend this to 90% of the UK, in partnership with other sources of funding, e.g. local and National government.

Our deployment is based on the commercial criteria for each cabinet and your cabinet fails to meet the commercial criteria. This is because the cabinet has too few premise connected to it, rendering it too small to provide a return on the investment based on the costs for the construction and on-going running costs of providing a new FTTC cabinet.

So there you go, I can understand their argument – it would be nice if all the Fibre adverts would go away. I guess I’m fairly lucky as I know others would love the 5-6mb download speed I currently get. However if this house was 200metres or so in each direction I’d be on a bigger cab and able to get Fibre.

So no options available (BDUK isn’t an option as I’m potentially served by V*rgin M*dia) – I might consider writing to my MP – Maybe Mr Hemming might be able to do something.

Cab 50 (image © Google Maps - Street View)

So got a cab like this? Chances are you wont be getting Fibre as the Cab Capacity doesn’t justify the investment in this current tranche. So next time anyone in the B26 area walks past it, please be nice – don’t let dogs wee up it as it’s all we’ve got.

You can check your Cab number and availability with the BT DSL Checker website (you can check either phone number, postcode or address).

Oh, by the way I host this site at home on my current ADSL2 connect – it’s a bit slow at loading, hence why I’d like Fibre. 🙂

/update:

I dropped an email to my MP (John Hemming) who’s replied (via email and letter from the House of Commons!) to say his team will contact Openreach/BT for an explanation. Not sure if anything will happen, but we’ll see. To remind me how bad things are, downloading a couple of 3 minute movies trailers on my Apple TV tonight took a few minutes each to load.

/update2:

Had contact back from John Hemmings office – sadly they got the same albeit longer reply.

Sadly looks as if V*rgin are the only speedy option – I’m not overly pleased with their 18 month contract, nor their traffic management.