Richard Hobbs » General Life

I’ve reached 1 million YouTube video views!

fishsponge — Sat, 25 Feb 2012 23:59:03 +0000

I never even imagined it would happen, but my YouTube videos have had over 1 million views!

My first ever video (uploaded on 29 March 2008) was a terrible time-lapse of some family members trying to get a loaf of bread out of my terrible bread maker! This obviously had almost no views.

My second video was another rather boring video of my classic motorcycle engine running.

It was from here I decided I should start filming some of the events I go to, and this is where it started to take off!

My most popular video as of today is the Pratt & Whitney 50 litre 18 cylinder Radial Airplane Engine which has had 507,249 views. This one doesn’t seem to be very popular any more though. Perhaps a bit old and everyone’s already seen it!

In the last 30 days, my videos have received an average of 4109 total views per day, which I am very pleased about!

My most popular videos at the moment seem to be the Paxman V12YHA Diesel 60-litre 450bhp/1000bhp Ship Engine from HMS Rhyl…

…and How Diff Lock Works and When To Use It.

Regarding time and effort that has gone into all this, the answer is, of course, a lot!

I shoot roughly 20 minutes of footage each day at any event in a series of short clips each around 20 seconds long. This adds up to around 1 hour of footage across 150 clips for the whole event.

I then spend roughly 5 hours editing and producing this footage into it’s final form and then upload it to YouTube.

Across 119 of the 120 videos I have uploaded (with a total duration of 12 hours), I have shot roughly 50 hours of footage and probably spent a total of 250 hours editing and producing.

I then came up with my “Best of” video… this involved re-editing every video I have ever produced (all 12 hours of footage) into a short 8 minute video. This took roughly 50 hours of further editing and the end result is here!

If you cannot see the video above, you can watch the video on YouTube here: Best of “fishsponge” – Steam Engines, Land Rovers, Motorcycles, Off-Roading & lots more!

Over 4 years I have put 350 hours of my time into shooting and editing videos, and have had over 1 million views in return. That’s an average of 14 minutes per day editing and 685 views per day. Not too bad, in my opinion!

Overall, however, my views have only really started picking up recently. Here’s a graph of the last 4 years (since I joined) of the daily video views:

Let’s hope this trend continues!

Anyway, if you like the videos above and want to see more, why not:

Enjoy this post? Why not
Get Updates by Email
or
Subscribe to RSS
?

Related posts:

My best video clips ever in one short video!

fishsponge — Sat, 05 Nov 2011 01:03:13 +0000

Just a quick post to let you all know about an EXCITING new video I’ve produced!!

Over the last couple of years I have uploaded 115 videos to YouTube. Some of the early ones are quite short and low quality (when I was recording on my old Nokia), but the more recent videos (March 2010 onwards) are almost all high definition (720p) and I’ve spent lots of time editing the footage to ensure only the best bits end up in the uploaded videos.

Amazingly (to me, anyway), my most popular video has had 484,073 views (as of Fri 4 Nov 2011) and all my videos combined have had 869,635 views, which I think is astonishing! Thank you viewers! I’ve also managed to gain 118 subscribers, so thank you subscribers as well!

I have uploaded a total of 12 hours, 11 minutes, 19 seconds of footage to YouTube, which has been edited down from around 50 hours of original raw footage. As you can imagine, not only have I had to watch all 50 hours of footage to produce these video, but lots of extra time has been spent editing the footage, rearranging it, adding titles, fades, transitions etc… so I cannot imagine how many hours it has actually taken to get to where things are now!

Anyway… I have recently taken the 12 hours of edited YouTube footage and cut it down further into a short video containing 3-4 second clips showing all the best stuff I have ever shot! The variety of stuff in this video, I think, is amazing, and I have done my best to make it as interesting and unpredictable as possible so you never know what’s coming next, so please watch the video below!!

If you can’t see the video above, click here to watch it directly on YouTube: YouTube – Best of “fishsponge” – Steam Engines, Land Rovers, Motorcycles, Off-Roading & lots more!

Also, if you liked the video you can either:

(this will keep you notified of all new videos I upload)

Enjoy this post? Why not
Get Updates by Email
or
Subscribe to RSS
?

Related posts:

Steam rallies, bike shows, iPhone 4, wedding, punctured air bed, caravan and “Ada”!

fishsponge — Sun, 15 Aug 2010 22:40:35 +0000

As the title implies, there’s rather a lot to talk about this time around, so I’ll try to keep each subject relatively short!

In summary, Sarah and I have been to several more steam rallies, I have been to a bike show, I queued up at 5:30am for an iPhone 4 on launch day, I was official photographer at a wedding(!), I’ve spent 2 nights sleeping on a punctured air bed, we’ve bought a caravan and “done it up” and I’m now involved with “Ada”!

First of all, Meldreth Manor Bike Show

Held at Meldreth Manor School, this is a charity event organised by the Royston and District Motorcycle Club. It’s actually the “Royston and District Motorcycle Club Annual Show”, but is known as the “Meldreth Manor Bike Show” to most people.

I wasn’t planning on going to this, mainly because it’s held on a Wednesday evening, but decided to at the last minute. I have to say, I’m very glad I did! Over 3,200 bikes turned up for those 4 hours and it was spectacular!

Photos of Meldreth Manor Bike Show 2010

Here’s a video of Meldreth Manor Bike Show too…

Somersham Carnival

Sarah and I travelled to Somersham Carnival again this year on the back of the Matchless. The carnival was as enjoyable as ever, with a Mardi Gras theme, and guess what? I won “Best Motorcycle” again!

Photos of Somersham Carnival

iPhone 4

Some of you are going to think I’m crazy, some of you may not, but I queued up outside Lion Yard Shopping Centre (now called the Grand Arcade, I believe!) in Cambridge at 5:30am on iPhone 4 Launch Day to attempt to swap my perfectly good 32GB iPhone 3GS for a brand new 32GB iPhone 4! I was 8th in line.

Did I get my iPhone 4? Yes!

Was it worth paying out my contract with 1 year remaining? Was it worth getting up at 4:30am? Was it worth spending that day with no mobile phone because I had to activate the new one in iTunes before I could use it?

Yes! Well, I think so anyway.

Many people have spoken of reception issues, dropped calls etc… but although I can successfully make the reception indicator bars drop off by holding the phone in the wrong place, I have never suffered a single reception-based issue with the iPhone 4 whatsoever. I do have a case now because I keep dropping it, but I never had an issue for the 2 months before I got the case!

The “Retina” display is amazing, the LED camera flash is excellent as a torch, the speed increase is gratefully received, the camera is of much better quality and the 720p video recording is very good indeed! In summary, I can definitely recommend the iPhone 4 above all other iPhones! There is *no* reason not to upgrade in my opinion!

Classic & Vintage Bike Day, Cambridge Museum of Technology

Once again, at the Cambridge Museum of Technology, there was a classic and vintage bike day. It unfortunately clashed with the “World Cup” (something to do with a game called “football” apparently), but there was a very good turnout considering!

There were a few people out the back working on the main steam engine too (unrelated to the bike show, of course), trying to find which one of the boiler tubes was leaking. I must admit, I spent most of my time with the steam engine people discussing the best way to find the leaky tube! Every idea I came up with, though, had either already been attempted or was actually useless! I guess we live and learn!

Photos of Classic & Vintage Bike Day, Cambridge Museum of Technology

Here’s a video of the Classic & Vintage Bike Day…

Hollowell Steam Rally & Heavy Horse Show

The Hollowell rally is always one of the best rallies of the year in my opinion, with a great variety of exhibits, ranging from giant insects, through Titan the Robot, to the “Dancing Digger” (a JCB with a very skilled driver!). Needless to say, we took the motorbike again and had a thoroughly great time for the entire 3 days! If I remember correctly, the temperature outside was very warm indeed (high 20s, anyway) and helped make the weekend great!

Photos of Hollowell Steam Rally & Heavy Horse Show

Here’s a video of Hollowell Steam Rally & Heavy Horse Show

Photographing a wedding!

Another thing I’ve done since the last blog post is be official photographer at some good friends’ wedding! Now, there’s a rather large learning curve to go from photographing stationary steam engines to photographing a wedding, but now that I’ve edited all 1,840 or so photos down to the final set (after a number of weeks!) I think I pulled it off! The photos are far from “professional”, but I’ve learned a lot from the experience and, of course, thoroughly enjoyed the day, as did everyone!

And the main thing? The bride and groom like the photos, so in a way, nothing else matters! The lack of professionalism, the overexposed whites, the underexposed blacks and the bad composition mean nothing now because the people that matter like the photos!

Cambridgeshire Steam Rally

A week or two after Hollowell, the Cambridgeshire Steam Rally at Swavesey happened. This was only the second year for this rally, but with double the number of exhibits from the first year, the event was the best yet! The weather was roasting hot too, which helped bring the crowds in.

Photos of Cambridgeshire Steam Rally, Swavesey

Here’s a video of Cambridgeshire Steam Rally…

Thurlow Steam Rally

The latest rally was the Thurlow rally. This year it clashed with the AJS & Matchless Owners Club Jampot Rally (due to the Jampot rally having been moved forward a few weeks) and although the decision of which one to attend was a difficult one, I’m very glad we decided to go to Thurlow this year! More on that later.

One thing I’d like to say about the Thurlow rally is about the atmosphere. This rally is one of the most relaxing rallies of the entire year and for that reason it is one of my favourites. The larger rallies have to be very organised, with scouts running the car park, army cadets acting as wardens to ensure safe passage of vehicles in and out of the arena, people in yellow jackets everywhere keeping the rally running smoothly, etc… but somehow Thurlow manages to operate pretty much on time, perfectly safely and everything just happens on-site with seemingly no stress whatsoever!

Don’t get me wrong though – i’m sure lots of stress goes into the organisation of the rally each year, but the impression of a lack of stress and panic during the weekend certainly makes for one of my favourite rallies of the year, so thank you for a great rally again Michael!

Photos of Thurlow Steam Rally

Here’s a video of Thurlow Steam Rally…

Caravan

While at the Cambridgeshire Steam Rally, there was a problem. Our air bed developed a slow puncture. On my side. During the first night. On a very rough field.

This wasn’t the end of the world, as I can somehow survive on very little sleep if I have to(!), but I could not find the puncture anywhere! If I pumped up the mattress in the morning, by 10pm it would still be up, but 3 hours after I started laying on it, it’d be out of air completely.

At this same rally we were informed by a couple of fellow rally-goers who we know quite well now, that there was a caravan for sale near them for £200. So, the day after we got back from the rally, we headed up there to pop in for a cup of tea and to take a look at the caravan down the road. Needless to say, we drove home with the caravan in tow!

Since we bought it, we’ve actually spent more money on it than it’s worth, but in doing so we’ve made it our own, and in the 1.5 weeks that followed the initial purchase we have completely re-foamed and re-covered the seats, washed the curtains, cleaned and sterilised the inside, washed the outside, re-carpeted it and put all the hinges and door-stops on that weren’t quite screwed in properly! Our aim was to have it read for the Thurlow rally, and that we did!

I have to say, having spent a year going to rallies in a tent, upgrading to a caravan is an infinitely large step up (not literally). For a start, there’s no risk the air bed will go down leaving you sleeping on the grass! When it’s raining, you can still have a cup of tea. You don’t have to sit on a chair leaning forward cooking or boiling the kettle on a stove on the grass. You don’t have to sit in awkward folding camping chairs. The list goes on and on! In summary, upgrading to a caravan was one of the most sensible things we’ve done in relation to rallies and other multi-day events! The only disadvantage is having to do one trip to take the caravan and another to take the motorbike, but I’ll buy a van one day to solve that problem!

Finally, I’ll mention “Ada” (seen below).

As far as I know (at this early stage) Ada is a 105 year old (built in 1905) 10-ton 7 nominal horse power Fowler general purpose steam traction engine. It is owned by David and family, who were after some help with the engine. David currently looks after the maintenance and running of the engine mostly on his own and while I know very little about the mechanical side of steam engines at this stage, I’ve been wanting to get involved with a full-size steam engine for many, many years. This year, at the Thurlow rally, that opportunity came up and I took it!

My involvement with the engine will begin this winter when I’ll start meeting David at the workshop to begin the winter maintenance cycle and will then hopefully continue on through next year’s rally season and beyond! To be honest, it’s a bit of a dream come true, so thank you David for the opportunity and thank you Hugh for introducing me to David and finding me the opportunity!

Photos of “Ada” on Steam Scenes

Enjoy this post? Why not
Get Updates by Email
or
Subscribe to RSS
?

Related posts:

The Events of 2010!

fishsponge — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 23:50:59 +0000

This post is theoretically going to act as nothing more than a list of events I plan to be at this summer. This will be a way of making you all aware of the existence of such events in case you wish to attend! I’m not going to list everything I’m going to, because not everything I’m going to is for the general public, but the events that the public can attend or have some involvement with I will list!

April

Easter Opening, Cambridge Museum of Technology (Sun 4 & Mon 5 April 2010)
Click here for photos of last year’s event.
Click here for videos of Cambridge Museum of Technology.

Cottenham Yesteryear Road Run (Sun 25 April 2010)
Click here for photos of last year’s event.
Click here for videos of last year’s event.
Click here for blog post of last year’s event.

May

Rushden Cavalcade of Transport & Country Show (Sat 1 – Mon 3 May 2010)

Jampot Spares Limited (JSL) Open Day (Sat 29 May 2010)
Click here for photos of last year’s event.
Click here for videos of last year’s event.
Click here for blog post of last year’s event.

Classic Bike Club Show, Stanford Hall (Sun 30 May 2010)
Click here for photos of last year’s event.
Click here for blog post of last year’s event.

May Steaming, Cambridge Museum of Technology (Sun 30 & Mon 31 May 2010)
Click here for videos of Cambridge Museum of Technology.

June

Classic Bike Show, Knebworth (Sun 6 June 2010)

Meldreth Manor Bike Show (Wed 16 June 2010)

VMCC Banbury Run (Sun 20 June 2010)

Classic & Vintage Motorbikes Day, Cambridge Museum of Technology (27 June 2010)
Click here for photos of last year’s event.
Click here for videos of Cambridge Museum of Technology.
Click here for blog post of last year’s event.

July

Hollowell Steam & Heavy Horse Show (Sat 3 – Sun 4 July 2010)
Click here for photos of last year’s event.
Click here for videos of last year’s event.
Click here for blog post of last year’s event.

AJS Anniversary Run, Wolverhampton to Woolwich (Sat 3 July 2010)

Founders Day, Stanford Hall (Sun 18 July 2010)

Cambridgeshire Steam Rally, Swavesey (Sat 24 – Sun 25 July 2010)
Click here for photos of last year’s event.
Click here for videos of last year’s event.
Click here for blog post of last year’s event.

August

Thurlow and Haverhill Steam and Country Show (Sat 7 – Sun 8 August 2010)
Click here for photos of last year’s event.
Click here for videos of last year’s event.
Click here for blog post of last year’s event.

AJS & Matchless Owners Club Jampot Rally (Fri 6 – Sun 8 August 2010)
Click here for photos of last year’s event.
Click here for videos of last year’s event.
Click here for blog post of last year’s event.

August Bank Holiday Steaming, Cambridge Museum of Technology (Sun 29 & Mon 30 August 2010)
Click here for videos of Cambridge Museum of Technology.
Click here for blog post of last year’s event.

Little Gransden Air & Classic Vehicle Show (Sun 29 August 2010)

Wimbotsham Classic Bike Show (Mon 30 August 2010)

September

Haddenham Steam Rally (Sat 11 – Sun 12 September 2010)
Click here for photos of last year’s event.
Click here for videos of last year’s event.
Click here for blog post of last year’s event.

Bedfordshire Steam and Country Show (Sat 18 – Sun 19 September 2010)
Click here for photos of last year’s event.
Click here for videos of last year’s event.
Click here for blog post of last year’s event.

Kettering Vintage Rally and Steam Fair (Sat 25 – Sun 26 September 2010)
Click here for photos of last year’s event.
Click here for videos of last year’s event.
Click here for blog post of last year’s event.

October

Great Chesterford Steam-Up (Sat 2 October 2010)
Click here for photos of last year’s event.
Click here for videos of last year’s event.
Click here for blog post of last year’s event.

Copdock Bike Show, Suffolk (Sun 3 October 2010)

October Steaming, Cambridge Museum of Technology (Sat 30 & Sun 31 October 2010)
Click here for videos of Cambridge Museum of Technology.

November

Classic Bike & Car Show, NEC, Birmingham (Fri 12 – Sun 14 November 2010)
Click here for photos of 2008′s event.

You will notice that on some dates there is a clash of events. In some of these instances, I’m not sure which events I plan on attending yet, and in the others I have already decided. In all instances, however, I have listed all of the events so you can decide which ones you want to attend, if any!

Needless to say, as Summer progresses, I’ll do my best to get photos, videos and blog posts online covering as many events as I can!

To be sure of receiving notification when blog posts are published, feel free to subscribe to my blog’s RSS Feed.

Enjoy this post? Why not
Get Updates by Email
or
Subscribe to RSS
?

Related posts:

Strawberry Fair 2010 Cancelled – Good luck to the organisers though!

fishsponge — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 21:55:03 +0000

UPDATE: Strawberry Fair 2011 is ON!!! See http://www.strawberry-fair.org.uk/ for more info.

So, it turns out that for the first time since 1974 (I think), the Strawberry Fair in Cambridge has been cancelled. This is not good, but there is hope.

Some of my facts may be wrong in the following text, but I will attempt to paint as accurate a picture as I can. Please leave a comment if you’d like to correct or comment on anything you read here!

Anyway… for those of you who don’t know, the so called “Strawberry Fair” is held on Midsummer Common in Cambridge, UK every June. It is a one day festival of music, entertainments, arts and crafts which is organised and run by volunteers and free of charge for all who wish to attend. It has become a something which I, and many others, look forward to each and every year.

I like the fact that Sarah and I can turn up at lunchtime, bump into lots of my old school friends who I wouldn’t otherwise see and spend the entire day sitting on the grass listening to great music!

However, every year, the police campaign to stop the Strawberry Fair going ahead. I believe their reason for doing so is primarily the cost and effort involved in policing the event. The Strawberry Fair does have a reputation for various drugs being taken although I’m sure it’s almost exclusively marijuana, and even that isn’t being smoked visibly (not often, anyway). And we all know marijuana is far less anti-social than alcohol, don’t we?

There are a lot of drunk people too, but the worst I’ve ever seen any of them doing is wanting random hugs from people! I’ve never seen any violence, and never heard of any really bad stuff going on at all. Having said that, I’ve always left by 7 or 8pm due to either the onset of heat stroke of sheer tiredness from being in the sun for 8 hours! Who knows what goes on later in the evening. Probably more of the same though, in my opinion!

Overall, the Strawberry Fair is a friendly, family environment suitable for everyone (and I mean everyone – all ages, all types, everyone!).

Anyway – this year (and previous years too) the police attempted to get the event called off once again. The Strawberry Fair committee appealed, and the fair was granted a license! We hear this same story every year. What makes this year different, though, is that the police have appealed against the decision to give the fair a license, and the resulting procedings mean that by the time the Fair committee find out whether they have a license or not, it’ll be too late to organise this year’s fair.

The decision to cancel this years fair has been taken by the organisers to allow them to concentrate on appealing against the appeal in order to secure the fair’s license for the years to come, and while the fact that the fair has been cancelled is very disappointing, I fully support the organiser’s decision to do so. I’d much rather see the fair go ahead for the foreseeable future and miss one year, than to have a fair this year, but never again.

So… other than raising awareness of this issue, the other reason for this blog post is to suggest to you, my readers, to have a browse around the Strawberry Fair web site and if you feel you might be able to help out (either with the procedings or by volunteering at future events [hopefully!]) feel free to get in touch with the organisers! Failing that, why not join the Strawberry Fair facebook group and post a comment to show your support!

For any organisers reading this post, great decision on cancelling this year’s show to concentrate on the appeal, and I wish you the best of luck securing a license for future years! This fair has become a major part of many people’s lives and it would be terrible to see it disappear after 36 years as I’m sure you agree!

Long live the Strawberry Fair!

Enjoy this post? Why not
Get Updates by Email
or
Subscribe to RSS
?

Related posts:

Steam Rallies and the Rest of Summer

fishsponge — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 12:56:10 +0000

British Legion Bike Show

The first event since the AJS & Matchless Owners Club Annual Jampot Rally was the Histon British Legion Bike Show. The day began with a few Fenrunners meeting up in Tesco’s car park for a scenic country ride, ending at the British Legion Club. Other than a really bad sore throat (which became much worse by the time I got home!), the day was great!

Photos of British Legion Bike Show, Histon

Haddenham Steam Rally

Our fourth camping experience was at Haddenham Steam Rally (a rally which my Grandad used to visit with the Matchless regularly). This was another enjoyable and relaxing steam rally!

Photos of Haddenham Steam Rally 2009

Videos of Haddenham Steam Rally 2009

Bedfordshire Steam Rally

This was the largest steam rally I have ever been to, by quite a margin. There were roughly 150 steam engines present on the Sunday, I believe, including almost every single crane engine in the UK!

We didn’t take the Matchless to this one, unfortunately, because I didn’t find out about the rally until it was too late to book in, so we turned up as paying visitors (although camping for 3 days as well). It’s not the cheapest rally in the world (weekend camping tickets being £70 per pitch), but it was money well spent in my opinion. Needless to say, I will try and get the bike booked in for next year though, to save paying and to exhibit it to the world, of course!

Other than the sheer size of the rally, the other reasons it’s worth paying £70 for a weekend camping ticket is that you gain free entry to The Shuttleworth Collection, Birds of Prey Centre and Swiss Garden, all of which are excellent. Well… the swiss garden is actually really quite dull, but then I’m not into plants/green things anyway.

The planes, on the other hand, are great, and if the weather’s nice, a lot of them are regularly flying throughout the weekend!

Photos of Bedfordshire Steam Rally 2009

Videos of Bedfordshire Steam Rally 2009

Kettering Vintage Steam Fayre

Our final camping expedition of the year was at the Kettering Steam Rally at Cranford. The weather was wonderful during the day, but freezing cold at night. We bought a chimenea for use at this, and other, rallies and it was great at (a) keeping us warm at night, and (b) cooking a full-english breakfast each morning!

Photos of Kettering Vintage Steam Rally 2009, Cranford

Videos of Kettering Vintage Steam Rally 2009, Cranford

Great Chesterford Steam-Up

The Great Chesterford Steam-Up is a one-day event at the beginning of October, and it’s another great day, completely free of charge, to relax with the bike and see other old vehicles and chat to lots of people.

Photos of Great Chesterford Steam-Up 2009

Remembrance Sunday at Imperial War Museum, Duxford

Possibly the last place I will be riding the Matchless to with others this year; Imperial War Museum, Duxford. You get get in free-of-charge at Duxford on a few days each year, one of them being Remembrance Sunday. The main reason for opening up for free, of course, is to allow people in to remember the fallen over the years by having a large ceremony and site-wide 2 minute’s silence.

Photos of Imperial War Museum, Duxford

Enjoy this post? Why not
Get Updates by Email
or
Subscribe to RSS
?

Related posts:

The AJS & Matchless Owners Club Jampot Rally 2009

fishsponge — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 09:02:07 +0000

Having joined the AJS & Matchless Owners Club just over a year ago, I have been waiting for the club’s annual Jampot Rally to occur so Sarah and I could experience what it’s like to attend such an event.

I have to say, it was amazing! Admittedly, this was, apparently, the best Jampot Rally yet, in terms of facilities, catering, camp site size etc… so it did have everything going for it, but I think Sarah and I would have loved it anyway! Thank you very much, Heart of England section, for organising this year’s rally!

This year’s rally was held very close to home, at Kimbolton Castle. There were 3 main bike runs, with 2 green-laning trips for those who wanted something a little different.

Friday’s run took participants from Kimbolton to Jampot Spares Limited (JSL)/Kettering Classic Motorcycles. Sarah and I have been there many times, as we live locally, so decided to relax at the camp site during this run. Lots of people were still arriving when this run took place, and it was good to see the camp site gradually fill up as Friday afternoon/evening progressed.

The Saturday run (seen assembling above) took us to Oundle. Over 160 bikes took part, by my count, and a couple of hours spent in Oundle were certainly enjoyed!

We all arrived at the wrong car park when we got there because, despite the excellent Marshalling of the run, the school who were kind enough to open up the gates for our arrival, opened them a day early, then closed them on the day we needed them! This was a very minor issue, however, and caused little more than 5 minutes confusion!

We left Oundle at around 2pm to ride back to the camp site, where I had a long wander round looking at the bikes and saying “Hello” to people I knew, and later that evening most of the Fenrunners section had fish and chips next to our tents.

I should also point out that on Friday, Saturday and Sunday evenings and Saturday, Sunday and Monday mornings, Kimbolton School caterers prepared excellent meals for us all, which were truly good value for money and not like stereotypical “school dinners” at all!

The Sunday run took us through a nice country route, involving a ford(!), to The Shuttleworth Collection at Old Warden. 260 bikes took part on Sunday, which was a truly spectacular collection of classic and vintage machinery!

The Shuttleworth Collection itself was also fantastic. A truly unique collection of some of the earliest aircraft ever made, right up to World War 2. I may be mistaken, but I believe they are all in flying condition too, which is even more amazing!

The Shuttleworth Collection also has a Swiss Garden and Birds of Prey centre, although I didn’t visit those while I was there. I’ll hopefully be back there in a couple of weeks anyway, at the Bedfordshire Steam & Country Fayre, so perhaps I’ll visit them then!

When we got back to the camp site, some of the Fenrunners got together for a photograph (seen above) and then booked a team into the Tug-of-War at 4pm!

Sadly, we lost.

After the Tug-of-War, however, was a guided tour of Kimbolton Castle.

The tour lasted about 2 hours and was very interesting indeed. I can highly recommend it to anyone, if you are in the area and able to find out when the tours are occurring.

That evening was the last one of the rally and we spent a short while in the bar/disco area watching the presentations for best bike, furthest distance travelled etc… and then awaited the raffle! We didn’t wait until the raffle happened in the end, but did learn the day after that Sarah and I won a bottle of wine, which was a pleasant surprise.

The following morning, we ate breakfast, packed up the car, put the bike back on the trailer, helped clear up the rally site for a few hours and headed home thoroughly worn out and wishing the rally hadn’t ended!

A 10 minute video of the Saturday and Sunday bike runs can be seen below for those of you who are interested.

There are also more photos of the event here:

Photos of the AMOC Jampot Rally 2009

Enjoy this post? Why not
Get Updates by Email
or
Subscribe to RSS
?

Related posts:

My new 32GB iPhone 3GS!

fishsponge — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 15:27:04 +0000

I’ll start this post by saying, in order to do the iPhone justice, all screenshots will be shown in this post full-size! I could shrink them to save some screen space, but screen space costs nothing, so why not?

The phone screen is probably a little smaller than the size of the screenshots you are seeing on your screen, but nevertheless, they do show the quality of the various apps!

So, first of all, above is the desktop of my iPhone right now. The only non-standard iPhone applications are Google and “UK – Ireland”, one of which which I’ll come to later.

Just so you know at this stage, the main reasons for writing this post are (a) I think such a revolutionary device deserves to be written about and (b) to tell you about some of my favourite apps in case you have an iPhone and want to hear about potentially cool and useful apps!

So… onto my favourite features & apps!

Above you can see the iPod feature. I have spent a great deal of time copying every single CD I own onto my computer, then into the iTunes software and then onto my iPhone, including information for each song such as Artist, Album, Title, Genre, Year and album art! Right now, I have just over 2,500 songs on the iPhone and yes – I do try to listen to them all as time goes on! The main advantage of having so much music at your disposal is that you never know what’s coming next!

The nice feature of the iPod app on the iPhone (and any iPod with a screen, I understand), which admittedly I don’t use a great deal, is the way of flicking the album collection from left to right to find the album you want. I generally use the voice activation instead of this as it works kinda well and is much quicker than scrolling through over 200 albums!

Anyway, it’s a nice feature and, for those who don’t know about it, worth pointing out!

The next feature, as you can see above, that’s worth a mention is the Youtube application. This is built into the iPhone, and with an unlimited data download limit it works amazingly well!

The phone must be tilted horizontally to view the videos, as the aspect ratio suits better that way, and it seems to download a suitable size/quality of video depending on the quality of your Internet link at the time.

At work, for example, on the WiFi, it shows good quality full-screen videos. Elsewhere, however, where 3G is the only connection method available, it shows slightly worse quality and slightly smaller videos. This is a good feature though – I’d rather see a video after 30 seconds or less and put up with low quality than wait 5 minutes for a high quality version!

Above, you can see the video-watching screen layout. Pretty intuitive really! After a couple of seconds of not touching the screen, or when you touch the center of the screen, the bars disappear leaving the video to play with nothing in front of it.

Above you can see the Google Maps application. This is a remarkably useful app – it has aerial photos of most of the world, including accurate map data. It has points of interest, businesses, directions, traffic info and almost everything else Google Maps online has to offer! The Maps application on the iPhone has one major advantage though – use of the GPS and compass. At a press of button, you can see within a few seconds your exact location on earth and in which direction your iPhone is pointing. Very useful indeed.

Now, what with my addiction to Facebook, I’m very glad there is a Facebook app for the iPhone. On the above screenshot, I have, of course, blurred out the information that is particular to my own news feed, but I’m sure Facebook users will recognise the classic News Feed.

The current version of the Facebook application lets you view your News Feed, user profiles, friend lists and photos. It also lets you deal with requests, chat, messages, events, photos, notes and other things too. If you are on Facebook, this is the app for you!

While we’re on the subject of Facebook, I’ll also talk about Twitter. There are various apps which allow you to interact with Twitter. My favourite is “Twitterrific” (seen above). It is a simply interface which allows you to search, post, filter and many other things. I use the Free version and put up with the advert right at the top of the page, but there is also a paid for version which has no ads (as far as I’m aware) and possibly other features too. The free version is perfectly good enough for me though!

If you are a keen eBay buyer or seller, then the eBay and PayPal apps are for you. I haven’t pictured the PayPal app here, but you can see the eBay app above. I’m not too sure which features are available in the eBay app, but I believe you can at least place bids on things and keep track of the items you are selling. To be honest, I’ve not used it too much yet, but I’m sure time will tell.

Above and below is the “Photogene” application.

The “Photogene” app. costs £1.79 at the time of writing, but if you are into Photography and often end up taking photos with your iPhone for one reason or another, this app is definitely worth having.

It allows you to brighten, darken, increase/decrease contrast, saturation, white balance, black balance, apply effects, sharpen, soften etc… and as you can see from the two screenshots above – it’s very capable of making an original photo look significantly better!

If you have Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro, or some other software on your PC, then that may do a better job, but as far as the iPhone camera goes, this app is very good indeed.

The “Decibel” app, shown above, has had a series of very good reviews, apparently, and on that basis I paid the £0.59 to download it to find out that it was a simple, but accurate, decibel meter! I had to calibrate mine slightly (fortunately I had access to a professional calibrated decibel meter), but once calibrated it was pretty accurate! If you have a need for a decibel meter, this is probably the best and cheapest one out there!

I’m now going to talk about games…

Above, you can see “Blowfish”. This is a very addictive game. The idea is that the red sea urchins float around the screen and you have to inflate the blowfish to fill the screen without a sea urchin hitting the blowfish while it is being inflated. Very simple, but high addictive!

I am also a big fan of racing games on any platform, and above you will see “Fast & Furious” on the iPhone. The handing is a little strange – left and right turns are made by tilting the iPhone left or right, respectively. The accelerometers do a fairly decent job, but by the end of a race I often find the accelerometers have skewed one way of another and I end up holding the phone tilted to the left in order to maintain a straight line! Regardless of that, however, the game is very good and worth the couple of quid I paid for it!

Finally, I’ll talk about the TomTom turn-by-turn satellite navigation software.

There are now lots of turn-by-turn navigation apps available for the iPhone, and I think TomTom is one of the most expensive ones at £59.99. Navigon sells for £52.99 and CoPilot Live sells for £24.99 at the time of writing, but regardless of this, I think TomTom is still the best!

All iPhone satnav users complain of dropped signals (due to the low power GPS unit inside the iPhone itself), CoPilot has mixed reviews but is generally regarded as a very good value for money satnav solution, but I personally don’t like the way it looks. For me, it was down to the two main players – Navigon and TomTom. Navigon has “Lane assist” and “RealityView Pro” to help you get into the correct lane when entering or leaving a main road, but it only has 5 character postcode searches. TomTom, on the other hand, has full 7 character postcode searches, but doesn’t have “Lane Assist” or “RealityView Pro”. What TomTom does have, however, is IQ Routes which make routing much more intelligent and take general traffic trends into account.

For me, 7 character postcode search is a very useful feature, and I can work around Lane Assist etc… by simply reading the signs on the road. What I can’t do, however, is know the traffic trends and incorporate them into my route plan, and this, in my book, makes TomTom a winner!

Anyway, with that all said – the iPhone does have one major limitation, in my view. You cannot transfer files between devices via Bluetooth. You have to plug your iPhone into your iTunes install to get your photos/videos from it. You could email them, but that can take a very long time depending on your Internet connection.

That aside though, I think the iPhone has revolutionised the mobile phone market and is hopefully here to stay for a very long time!

Enjoy this post? Why not
Get Updates by Email
or
Subscribe to RSS
?

Related posts:

Cambridgeshire Steam Rally, Thurlow Steam Rally, "Gigantic" and my new phone!

fishsponge — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 16:08:45 +0000

Since my last blog post I have, as you might expect, been relatively busy!

The first event since winning “Best Motorcycle” at Somersham Carnival was the Classic & Vintage Bikes Day at Cambridge Museum of Technology.

This was a fun day, as usual! There were lots of bikes, as you can see, and lots of good people to talk to and get advice on my carburettor, which is still running rich for some reason!

Photos of Classic & Vintage Bike Day, Cambridge Museum of Technology

The weekend after this was the Hollowell Steam Rally.

I had booked the Matchless into this rally as an exhibit, but hadn’t realise quite how far away it was – just over 60 miles. As a result, I begrudgingly went by car! I could have ridden, but 60 miles would take at least an hour and a half by bike, and to get there before 10am and not to leave before 5pm would mean it would be quite a long day, which this particular weekend I didn’t fancy.

Nevertheless, it was a great day, and having had a towbar fitted and ordered a bike trailer, there should be nothing stopping us going next year!

Photos of Hollowell Steam Rally 2009

3 weeks later, it was Cambridgeshire Steam Rally. Sarah and I decided to use this rally as a test of our new camping equipment before the AJS & Matchless Owners Club Jampot Rally at the end of August and also to find out whether Sarah and I both like camping or not!

As it turns out, we love it!

Above you can see our tent with the bike parked next to it. We parked up next to Des and his Trantor, who we learned was possibly the most fun person to camp next to on the entire camp site, so thank you for helping to make our first rally great, Des! I think I still have your lighter too if you’re reading this!

I should also suggest, at this point, that everyone visits the Cambridgeshire Steam Rally web site! I noticed, a couple of weeks before the rally, as the rally is quite new at its current location (this rally was previously known as the Wood Green Steam Rally and was located at the Wood Green Animal Shelter, as you may have guessed) it had no web site!

I therefore contacted the organisers and offered to create a web site for the rally. They agreed, and the site was made! Needless to say, at the moment, the entire design and all the photos and videos are my own. Whether this will change over time I’m not sure, but for the moment at least, it’s true.

The other amazing thing that happened this weekend is that I finally, after 13 years or so, found Tony Warwick and his steam engine “Gigantic” (engine pictured below)!

As a child, I frequently visited my Grandparents’ house and also attended various local steam rallies on the back of my Grandad’s Matchless. At various rallies, and sometimes parked out the back of my Grandparents’ house, I went to have a look at “Tony’s engine” – “Gigantic”. It is a 1912 McLaren road locomotive which Tony has owned for as long as I can remember. I’ve had several rides on the footplate of “Gigantic” as a child and remember the engine like it was yesterday.

However, when I went to university and my Grandparent’s sadly passed away, I never went over there any more and consequently never saw the engine. Tony also had the engine off the road for a very long time as he was rebuilding most, or all, of it. As a result, I’ve been hoping to find “Gigantic” again and after 13 years or so, at the Cambridgeshire Steam Rally I finally did!

For old times’ sake, I also managed to get on board again – once on Saturday evening, and again on Sunday for a trip around the arena. Videos below…

Photos of Cambridgeshire Steam Rally 2009

The weekend after the Cambridgeshire Steam Rally, it was the Thurlow Steam Rally at Horseheath Racecourse near Linton, Cambs.

We weren’t originally going to camp at this rally, but having had such a good time at the Cambridgeshire rally, we decided to camp after all! For this rally, however, I bought a tow bar for the car and borrowed a bike trailer!

The problem at the Cambridgeshire rally was that I had to drive to the rally site with Sarah and the camping gear, drop off both, drive home, get the bike out the garage and ride back to the rally site. Then, when the rally had finished I had to do the opposite! This wasn’t too bad at the Cambridgeshire rally because it was only 15 miles from home, but the Thurlow rally was much further. This is why I bought a tow bar and borrowed a trailer (my own trailer is on order)!

So, again, the rally was excellent and we will make every effort to go again next year! A video summarising at least some of the rally is below:

Photos of Thurlow Steam Rally 2009

Now, onto my new iPhone!

In summary, I have a new mobile phone – the 32GB iPhone 3GS and it’s excellent in almost every way!

On the left you will see my current desktop. In case you somehow haven’t managed to learn this fact yet, the iPhone is a touch-screen phone by the way!

For those of you who don’t know, most of the applications on the left are available as standard on all iPhones. The only non-standard icons are the Google “g” icon and the “UK – Ireland” TomTom satnav icon.

To be honest, most of the applications are available in slightly different implementations on other phones too, but the iPhone’s apps are typically much nicer to use than on other devices due to the touch screen and the way the menus etc. are all structured.

I know other phones have similar functionality now, but I’ve never tested any of those, so for the moment, in my opinion, the iPhone is amazing!

Anyway, I will talk about my new phone more in a separate post – there’s too much to talk about here!

Enjoy this post? Why not
Get Updates by Email
or
Subscribe to RSS
?

Related posts:

The last few eventful months

fishsponge — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 13:16:34 +0000

I haven’t managed to write a blog post for quite some time. This is mainly because during weekends I’ve been busy and during evenings I’ve not been able to motivate myself! Anyway, I have a few moments now, and a lot to summarise, so here goes!

Sarah and I have had several enjoyable days (and an evening) out since the last blog post on 29 March 2009! Most of these occasions are summarised below.

AJS & Matchless Owners Club North Weald Section Meet

Every so often, the AJS & Matchless Owners Club has a meeting where various sections of the club meet up to say “Hi” and discuss all things motorcycle-related. This particular one was at North Weald Airfield where we met up with another section or two. I forget which ones though, I’m afraid!

As you can see from the above photo, there were quite a few bikes there – perhaps 80 in total; they’re not all visible in this particular photo though.

All in all, a very enjoyable day! I got to meet lots of new people and was able to sit within feet of the taxiway to the runway in use for that day. I even saw a Spitfire power itself down the taxiway to the end of the runway just before throttling up its wonderful Rolls Royce Merlin Engine and taking off into the distance!

Photos of the North Weald Section Meet can be found here.

Sandringham Arts and Crafts Fair

I don’t really have a general photo to summarise this event, so here’s a rather specific one:

This event was exactly what you would expect from an Arts and Crafts Fair. It had honey, jams, wood turning, wood carving (shown above!), cookery and various other things. We also spent a few hours in Hunstanton after visiting the fair to have Fish and Chips by the sea, which was also quite enjoyable and relaxing!

Photos of Sandringham and Hunstanton can be found here.

Cambridge Museum of Technology Steam-Up Day

For Sarah, I think this day was decidedly average. For me, however, it was great!

I’ve been to the Cambridge Museum of Technology many times, and I can highly recommend it to anyone interested in pumping engines, steam engines, big single-cylinder gas engines and all things industrial. On this particular day, they had the main big boiler fired up and most of the servicable engines running. They also had a model tank club visiting with very accurate scale models of various military vehicles (mostly tanks, of course!) which they were remotely controlling around the site.

Photos of our day at Cambridge Museum of Technology can be found here.

Videos of our day at Cambridge Museum of Technology can be found here.

Cottenham Yesteryear Road Run

On 19 April 2009 the Cottenham Yesteryear Road Run took place. This is a charity event raising money for MAGPAS. 400 or so classic and vintage cars, motorcycles, tractors, trucks and military vehicles took place in the road run which went from village to village showing residents and visitors all the vehicles and also collecting money for MAGPAS, as mentioned above.

As of 20 June 2009, this year’s Road Run had collected £12,000 for MAGPAS, and I’m glad to have contributed at least slightly to something contributing to such a good cause!

Photos of the 2009 Cottenham Yesteryear Road Run can be found here.

Videos of the 2009 Cottenham Yesteryear Road Run can be found here.

FBHVC Old Vehicle Drive It/Ride It Day

The FBHVC Drive it/Ride It Day is not an organised event as such. It’s a day where the Federation of British Historic Vehicle Clubs (FBHVC) request that as many historic vehicle owners get their vehicles out on the road for the day to show to the nation that these vehicles exist and are still driveable/rideable!

Sarah and I decided to ride to a pub in a nearby village to have lunch by the river and to then ride home, and I must say, it was another great day!

AJS & Matchless Owners Club Motorcycle Run

Throughout the year, various members of the Fenrunners section of the AJS & Matchless Owners Club organise motorcycle rides around the county (and beyond!), and this ride was no exception. We met at The Chequers Inn at Wrestlingworth before setting off on a 75 mile route, finishing back at the Chequers Inn again! These 75 miles were ridden in one continuous stretch, which, despite being the longest non-stop ride I’ve ever done, was very enjoyable!

6 of us turned up at the pub in the first place, but within 500 yards or so, 2 people had broken down, leaving only 4 of us to take part in the run. Luckily enough, though, despite 2 bikes breaking down within that short distance, they were both up and running again by the time we got back and were both ridden home later that day with no problems!

I have no photos of this event, I’m afraid, but I do have the route as recorded by my GPS if you are interested!

The Nesting Blackbird

This wasn’t an event at all, but it is worth mentioning!

At the beginning of April, Sarah noticed that a blackbird was nesting on top of our water butt, 5 feet off the ground, in the corner between the fence and trellis running down the front edge of the canopy in our back garden, and around 12 feet from out back door, which is used all day every day!

The blackbird didn’t seem to care about Sarah and I going in and out of the back door and using the garden for BBQs etc… or even hanging washing out on the line which was around 4 feet away from her nest! I was also able to setup my tripod and camera behind the trellis pointing into the nest, about 12 inches away, zoomed right in to take some quite impressive photos.

The blackbird then laid 5 eggs!

At this point, Sarah and I looked up various facts about the blackbird and learned that these eggs were going to hatch in around 2 weeks. Before that time, however, roughly 3 weeks after the blackbird started nesting and 1 week after the eggs were laid, the blackbird appeared to have deserted the nest entirely!

After 24 hours of staying away to give her a chance to come back, we realised she wasn’t coming back and upon looking into the nest again, we realised that there were now only 2 eggs remaining.

I would like to add that we really don’t think it was us that scared the blackbird away as we had never attempted to touch the nest or disturb the plants growing around it – the gap in the plants through which the photos were taken was there naturally, and the blackbird had never been bothered by us in the past at all!

A couple of days later, there was only 1 egg left, and it was slightly cracked from the outside, so we figured something had found the nest and taken the eggs, sadly.

Anyway, we do seem to have either the same blackbird, or a different one, nesting in a new spot in the garden now, and this time we’re not going near it, just in case. I guess we’ll see what happens in due course!

More photos of the blackbird, the nest, the eggs and a few other birds in our garden can be found here.

Jampot Spares Limited Open Day

Although this was a very enjoyable day, it did start off badly!

The Open Day at JSL is an event often visited by lots of club members. A lot of these members I know from the club web site as they have helped me get the bike on the road over the last year or so, but I’ve never actually met them. This event was going to be a perfect opportunity for Sarah and I to not only meet these great people, but to turn up on the motorbike so they can actually see the bike they’ve hearing and talking about so much.

However, that, sadly, was not to be. Having wheeled the bike out into the open, started it up and got kitted up, I rolled it off the stand, pulled in the clutch, put it into first gear, and the engine stopped. The exhaust valve had jammed open again, like it did early last year.

We therefore attended the JSL Open Day by car. As I said, it did turn out to be a very enjoyable day, but for the first half an hour or so, before we arrived, I did feel rather annoyed, to say the least!

Photos of the JSL Open Day can be found here.

Videos of the JSL Open Day can be found here.

Classic Bike Show, Stanford Hall

I attended this show by car, as it would have been rather a long and tedious journey by bike! It was another good day with perhaps a hundred or two classic bikes on show, plus another 1,000 or so in the car park field, ranging from vintage pre-war bikes to modern Hondas and Kawasakis.

The Photo above shows the AJS & Matchless Owners Club stand which, as ever, was nicely presented!

I didn’t buy anything other than a mug, pin badge, cleaning cloths and a tube of Autosol on this particular trip, but there were an awful lot of things to buy, ranging from almost complete motorcycles to individual nuts and bolts. I highly recommend it to anyone wanting to admire some old bikes and to also spend a couple of hours trawling through the autojumble stalls!

Photos of the Classic Bike Show can be found here.

The Sidestand Spring and The Hurt Finger!

I have known for a very long time that the spring holding the sidestand up on the Matchless was both stretched slightly, and hooked onto the wrong place on the frame.

A fellow club member (thank you, Peter!) kindly donated a new sidestand spring to me and showed me, on his bike, where the holes in the frame should be to hook the spring into, so armed with that information I headed into the garage to fit the spring!

I won’t go into too much detail here, but in summary, the spring is quite tough. Having hooked one end into the frame underneath the bike, I began to pull the spring towards the side stand to hook on the other end. In doing so, the spring slippped out of my grip and the hooked end went into the skin on the bottom of my finger and pulled my hand back under the bike. Having looked under the bike to see what on earth I’d just done, I saw the end of the spring trying to push through the skin on the top of my finger!

I quickly removed the end of the spring (which had gone roughly 15mm into my finger!) and made my way into the kitchen whereupon I cleaned it up and sat down on the sofa for Sarah to kindly bring me a cold glass of water!

Needless to say, I felt rather ill for the next 20 minutes, but there was actually very little pain, almost no bleeding, and 7 days later it was as if it never happened. Very strange…

Souldrop Open Evening & BBQ

A new motorcycle workshop has opened up in Souldrop recently and they decided to have an Open Evening and BBQ, which Sarah and I, of course, attended!

It was a great evening! Roughly 20 people turned up, most of them on two wheels, there was plenty of food, all barbequed by myself ( ) and it was a late, but very enjoyable evening!

Photos of the Souldrop Open Evening & BBQ can be found here.

AJS & Matchless Owners Club Crosskeys Pub Inter-Section Meet

Similar to the North Weald Section Meet mentioned earlier in this post, this event took place at The Cross Keys in Norfolk.

It was an incredibly sunny, and rather warm, day and in total I rode 134 miles! We met some more new people, spent a few hours chatting about motorcycles, had a great pub lunch and then rode home!

I must say though, 134 miles in one day, with the last 65 of them being non-stop, is quite tiring, especially at an average speed of 30 mph with a top speed of 45-50 mph! The last 65 miles, for example, took 1 hour, 54 minutes!

It was thoroughly enjoyable though, so I’m not complaining!

Photos of the Crosskeys Section Meet can be found here.

Somersham Carnival

As of the day this blog post was published, the last event we’d been to was Somersham Carnival.

I’ve been to Somersham Carnival nearly every year of my life, which isn’t so strange considering I grew up in the village!

There’s not a lot to say about the carnival really. It’s exactly what you would expect from a village carnival; classic cars, floats, a parade around the village, Somersham Town Band, an arena in the field in which various displays occur and a generally good day out for adults and children alike!

This year, however, I took along the motorbike for the first time ever. The bike itself has been in the parade and displayed in the field before, perhaps 15 or so years ago, when my Grandad still owned it, but this time it was my turn.

The other thing to mention is that I won the “Best Motorcycle” award, as shown below!

It is important to note, however, that my motorcycle was the only one there, so you could argue that my bike was also the worst bike!

Anyway, as a few people have already said, an award is an award, regardless of how it was won!

Photos of Somersham Carnival can be found here.

Enjoy this post? Why not
Get Updates by Email
or
Subscribe to RSS
?

Related posts: