Sunday, March 20, 2011

A Few bits and pieces from the news

When I Posted yesterdays bit on “From the Cambridge Science park…” I had also meant to add a few mentions of either cycle or cycling news-related items that have appeared over the last few days and are stacking up as Tabs on my desktop browser.  However now I am using Windows Live Writer I am using  both my Desktop and Laptop computers to write the blogs.  Previously, when using Zoundry I kept all of the information backed up on my desktop. Now the Blog is only stored in the cloud – although every now and then I do an archive from Blogger.

This means that I now can start a post and publish it in draft and then download it on my laptop and finish it off. This was always possible before but it would have been trickier keeping the desktop copy up to date.  Let’s hope that Blogger retains its excellent record for uptime and data consistency.

So on with the snippets. It is difficult to precisely remember when the flowers start coming out each year, although I suppose I could check my digital pictures which go back to 1999, not that I took quite as many in those days. I was interested to see that Jersey Royal potatoes will be earlier than ever, this year.  Mind you this is not so much a global warming story as they have a warm January and February, unlike us in the flatlands.

I also noticed when checking out the Cambridge Science Park website that there is the Travel Plan Plus (TP+)  organisation which aims to help companies and organisation implement travel plans to “deliver and promote sustainable and healthy travel to work”. “On yor bike” is what I say, although I live close enough which makes it easier.  I was a little surprised to see that that last bicycle item on their news page was about Bike Week in June 2010. Slightly more reassuringly on the diary and events page there is mention of the Cambridge Cycle Challenge – 14th – 3rd April 2011. Here is a pdf called Get Pedalling from Cambridge County Council with a map of the various cycle route improvements carried out in Cambridge between 2008 and 2001. It shows Milton to Impington as a route, although I didn’t think that had been started – I must check it out.

In need of a bicycle – well why not print one. There is an impressive demonstration of what 3D printers are now capable off – with the production of a “printed” nylon bike. It does have metal bearings and things and the tyres don’t look printed – but still pretty neat.

I sometimes cycle to Kings Lynn and catch the train back to Cambridge again. It makes for a very pleasant cycle ride of around 110Km or thereabouts so it was good to see a positive piece in the Lynn News – well positive about cycling not White Van Man. They also have a new £1.5m Bus route (also open to cyclists) unfortunately it is so narrow in one place that the bus drivers will require special training to negotiate it so it isn’t used at the moment.

The perigee cam and went and certainly the moon looked pretty bright.  There have also been some spectacular moon pictures published. I really liked the second one showing Glastonbury Tor silhouetted by the moon.

The only thing the pictures have in common is that they are all dated March – sorry.

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