Articles
Raspberry Pi - record uptime
17 February 2015 RaspberryPi
Well, i had pre-written a post celebrating a whole year of uptime for my RaspberryPi - guess I shouldn't have jinxed it! On Friday I came home to find the Pi unresponsive to web access, putty & vnc.
There was noting for it and I had to suck up the loss and kill the power, oh well I shouldn't be to disappointed, 345 days is a respectable more »
Ali goes viral
12 February 2015 Misc
Well almost.... After Ali's niece has been addicted to watching unwrapping videos on YouTube, she decided to blog her birthday presents opening. Turns out she's quite a good blogger, admittedly I'all have to up my camera skills but you can judge for yourself on more »
Bluetooth Selfie Remote button mapping (AB Shutter 3)
9 February 2015 Misc
So I've got myself a one of those bluetooth selfie buttons, but before you start slating me for being one of those plonkers - I am using it for other remote control purposes...
The off road satnav loaded with OS Maps which I use for navigation on my MTB sits in a waterproof case attached to my stem. The whole setup is great, I don't have to faff more »
Best place to sledge in Manchester
1 February 2015 Misc
The only real source of places to sledge I've found is this article from the Manchester Evening News. There's a couple of good spots there but there appears to be a glaring omission - there's nothing in the Peak District, but you are probably not going to find a great hill without a bit of local knowledge!
Lyme Park comes close to it obviously but more »
B&M Travel Mug review
16 January 2015 Misc
B&M Travel Mug
Reviewed by Martin Childs
B&M, £1.99
Much better tasting than your generic travel mug.
This is definately one product that bucks the old saying of "Light, strong and cheap: choose two" although we'd probably have to modify it slightly for travel mugs:
Easy drinking, taste free and cheap: choose two
The standard travel more »
Decathlon / B'Twin tyre lever review
31 October 2014 Cycle
Decathlon / B'Twin tyre lever
Reviewed by Martin Childs
Decathlon, £2.50 for three
Thin enough to get under the tightest bead but strong and cheap.
This is definately one product that bucks the old saying of:
Light, strong and cheap: choose two
These little strokes of genius from Decathlon are where tyre levers are at. My previous more »
Perfect Corn on the Cob
13 October 2014 Recipes
Corn on the Cob Recipe
By Martin Childs
A super easy and cheaper corn on the cob recipe.
If there is one con in the food retail business it is adding value to your product when you simply don't need to - sweetcorn is the prime example. It is almost impossible to find a corn on the cob in the supermarket with it's husk intact. Most more »
Excel function to list worksheet names
2 September 2014 Excel
Ever wanted to list all the tabs in a workbook or reference a specific sheet by its placing, look no further.....
This funky little custom VBA function can be used simply as a contents sheet, This is a particularily useful tool tool when used with the indirect function, it will allow you to soft-link to any cell within your worksheet.
There are a more »
Explode - the must have excel add in
11 August 2014 Excel
Excel's built in formula auditing tools is and always has been rubbish, sure you may have got used to how they work and feel quite competent/happy with it - but the Explode excel addin will blow your mind!
If you work with excel a lot and you don't use the add in Explode you're in one of two camps:
not a power user, or
both amazed at how you've more »
Lake Vyrnwy Kingfisher Spotting!
3 August 2014 Cycle
Spent a second fantastic weekend camping in Shropshire in mid June, having previously visited in 2011.
Marty opted for a day mountain biking around the Long Mynd area which I did enjoy thanks to the spectacular views of the Shropshire Hills. But the highlight of my weekend was a trip to RSPB Lake Vyrnwy on the Sunday. We packed more »
Roasted Monkey Nuts review
28 July 2014 Recipes
Roasted Monkey Nuts
Reviewed by Martin Childs
£1.00 per 250g
Nutrition per 25g as consumed: 155kcal; 12.0g fat (2.1g saturates); 7.1g protein; 2.6g carbs ;trace salt.
Quality snacking at a good price.
These roasted monkey nuts really are great, their roasted flavour really does make them much more tasty than their regular plain more »
Make a cell look like a button in Excel
22 July 2014 Excel
There a sometimes in excel where you want to create a button but you don't want to introduce VB into your workbook (there are many reasons not to) - heres how.
I'm a great advocate of not using VBA / macros when you don't have to - they are not widely understood, easy to break when you alter the workbook and introduce a plethora of security more »
How to check the calibration of your kitchen scales
14 July 2014 Misc
Want to quickly and easily check if your scales are accurate it's easy, read on....
Across the whole of the cycling world everybody is obsessed with weight, it is pretty rediculous really that people stress about grams and spend a disproportionate of money trying to save it on the things.
There is even a certain group of people who have it so bad more »
Continental GP4000S - correct install orientation/rotation direction
6 July 2014 Cycle
Want to know in which direction to install yor new Continental GP4000S tyres? read on....
Not that the sipings have any effect on performace (I did read an article somewhere in which the representative from Continental said that customers expect them so thats why they are on there), but it is nice to know you've installed them in the correct more »
How to shift the time in your GPX file
30 June 2014 Cycle
Here are the intructions to shift the time of you GPX file, especially useful if you have just bought an Aldi GPS watch:
Step one
Download and install GPS Babel.
Step two
In the folder where you store your gpx files create a new text document and rename it
GPX minus 1hr.bat
making sure you change the whole file name including the file more »
Aldi GPS watch review
29 June 2014 Cycle
Aldi GPS Watch
Reviewed by Martin Childs
Aldi, £64.99
Awesomly bargainous.
What can I say, picked one of these fellas up today, its really great for only £65.
I'll get a more thorough reveiw once I had it a while but heres some initial notes.
Features which set it apart from anything in its up to more than double its more »
Musing of the day 23-June-2014
23 June 2014 Misc
Well I'd never thought I'd say it but today I was greatly tickled by an anagram - surely a sign of getting older!
The amusement came as I was looking through the expenses of an operating unit at work, there was a bunch of costs to repair some damages to hire cars, each narrative had the reg. number of the car in question - one of them being:
FX13 more »
Giant P-R3 Tyre Review
22 June 2014 Cycle
Giant P-R3 Tyre
Reviewed by Martin Childs
Front weight 285g, £20
Rear weight 287g, £20
A solid performer, decent enough quality for a stock tyre.
These tyres originally came from Ali's 2012 Giant Defy 1. The bike arrived with a slow puncture which eventually gave way a couple of rides into ownership.
I had bought some more »
Wilko Performance Lubricant cycle oil review
16 June 2014 Cycle
Wilko Performance Lubricant
Reviewed by Martin Childs
Wilko, £2.49 (£25 per litre)
All the lubing you need at a lower price.
One thing that really winds me up is the commercialisation of cycling. This includes when companies take some generic product stick a label on it with the picture of a bike and charge many times the price. more »
Quick & Tasty Coleslaw
10 June 2014 Recipes
Coleslaw Recipe
By Martin Childs
A quick, easy and healthy alternative to shop bought coleslaw.
Once you've tasted homemade coleslaw and you see how easy it is to make your own, I'm telling you theres no way back. I certainly haven't, I now find the shop bought variety unnecessarily swimming in some white saucy stuff and if you look on the more »
My first run ever!
9 June 2014 Misc
After a couple of years of pestering (or as Ali would have it encouragement) I've taken up running. Having never been on a run voluntarily in my life (not sure you could class my activities during my school years as 'running') I decided to ease myself in steadily.
It's when I was perusing the running asile at Decathlon when the pace started to more »
Chorizo and Pepper Pasta
4 June 2014 Recipes
Chorizo & Red Pepper Pasta Recipe
By Martin Childs
Super tasty, super cheap and super easy - what else do you need for a dish!
I normally make a very similar-ish meal with sliced pepperoni, but having been seduced in sainsburys by a chorizo ring I don't think I'm going back! The texture it adds to the dish makes it for me plus I'm always a more »
Chilterns Red Kite road ride
27 May 2014 Cycle
Following a visit to Windsor castle we stopped off for a road ride in the Chilterns. We had read that you can see red kites in the area so I was particularly excited to combine a bicycle ride with wildlife watching!
I had hoped to see at least one red kite and I was not disappointed! We spied many red kites on the drive to Watlington and upon more »
Gower Peninsula Circular road ride
19 May 2014 Cycle
This was a landmark ride in a way for me as usually when we go camping I leap upon the opportunity to take the MTB somewhere new, but somehow I persuaded myself into taking the road bikes instead.
Maybe it was the lack of some really decent trails or the fact as we'd be in my sister's tent there'd be enough room to bring my retro roadie indoors to more »
philfish.co.uk is launched - Phil Cam is live!
11 May 2014 RaspberryPi
The momentous day for Phil has been reached, his tank hosted server has launched!
His Samsung Galaxy S2 server is live and pumping out his very own website.
Phil is said to be delighted with his web 2.0 upgrade and is looking forward share the images of the tank to the whole world. He says he's not finished yet and is working in the more »
Set up a Wireless IP Webcam for free
3 May 2014 RaspberryPi
This a hack for repurposing an old android handset as an ip webcam - all you need is your old unused android smartphone and the free app IP Webcam.
Heres a rundown own the steps you need to go through, I'll take you through more of the detail below.
Steps
Find the old android device you'll be using and connect it to your wireless more »
Hayfield figure of eight route - MTB ride
25 April 2014 Cycle
This route is a goto classic of mine, the north loop ridden clockwise, the climbing is pretty easy but there are some cracking descents.
The south section is ridden anti-clockwise - it is not so imperveous to being wet and sloppy in the winter months, but give it a bit of frost and it'll be good to go.
The highlight of the ride is the decent from more »
Setting up your own domain name with a dynamic IP address on Sky Broadband
17 April 2014 RaspberryPi
Most broadband connections will nowdays dynamically assign you with an IP address. This means that every few days or every time you restart your router you will be assigned a new IP address. Consequently if you want to host a website using your domain name then you are going to encounter a problem.
What you need to do is get a static IP address more »
Moel Famau Double - MTB route
11 April 2014 Cycle
The Clwydian Mountain range is and Area of Outstanding natural beauty. Once you gain a bit of height anywhere the views are stunning and on a clear day you can see over to Merseyside and Snowdon.
I seem to ride here a lot in winter as most of the going is on well engineered paths and fireroad so is enjoyable even through the roughest of more »
Hosting your own webserver on port 80 with Sky broadband
5 April 2014 RaspberryPi
One of the first things I needed to check before ordering my Raspberry Pi was if it was technically feasable to host my own webserver from my Sky Broadband. In the past its been known by ISPs to block certain ports which makes it difficult and usually adds extra cost.
One of the ways round the issue of your desired ports are blocked would be to more »
Alison and Martin's Carbonara
30 March 2014 Recipes
Pork & Mushroom Carbonara
By Alison Hardy & Martin Childs
A quick cheap and tasty twist on your traditional dish
I'm a fan of Carbonara but don't care so much for pancetta, it's more than double the price for what amounts to basically bacon. I don't like using regular bacon in the recipe either - I only buy thick cut rashers if you are more »
Peaks road quicky (aka the Sarah Storey ride)
24 March 2014 Cycle
For some reason given that I ride offroad way more than I do my road bike, my first ride post is fully on-road...
This route developed from the want of a ride encompassing some great climbs of the peaks without the boredom of the 30km journey there and 30km back! So the hunt was on for a place to park up - as usual for me it needed to be more »
New childs.be website launched
22 March 2014 RaspberryPi
The new website has now gone live. With the acquisition of my Raspberry Pi comes a whole host of possibilities.
My Pi is currently running as the server for this website. Unfortunately the Pi is not powerful engough to run Wordpress or Joomla (who'd of thought they were processor intensive) - it does run, but a four to six second delay in spitting more »
the Raspberry Pi is alive
4 March 2014 RaspberryPi
The new server has now gone live, the Rasberry Pi is sitting quietly in the corner of my living room serving up my website to the internet.
I know I've backdated this post, but it is to mark the moment in history - I'll give the Pi one final good luck reboot and it is ready to go with the aim of surviving a whole year of uptime.
For many years more »
Excel - Add comment directly into formulas
18 April 2009 Excel
Ever known anybody who hardcodes numbers into formulas? Does it drives you mad because they leave no explanation of why? Well this may be the function you should tell them about.
You can use the N() function to add a comment inline with a formula. What it actually is mean't for is to try to convert a string into a number, but if you just put words more »
Excel - Calculating Pi
31 October 2008 Excel
If you are finding the inbuilt excel function for =Pi() is just a bit too dull, there a handy function to calculate Pi on the fly.
You may want to use it sparingly though, too many times in one spreadsheet or to many decimal places and you'll grind to a halt as it is a bit processor hungry!:
Function myPi(places)
'Places is the number of decimal more »
Excel - Unhide all sheets
31 October 2008 Excel
This little sub quickly unhides all hidden sheets (including xlVeryHidden). I use it frequently as people tend to hide worksheets which are no longer needed rather than just delete them, also especially useful when trying to dissect other peoples creations.
It also has some sneaky uses, I regularily come across people who like to protect the more »
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