It’s said a picture says more than a thousand words and I thought this picture says an awful lot about why the blog has been so quiet lately
I have a select few blogs that I keep up with religiously but recently the others have been left for when I have time to go back and read them (it’s ok though but there was a point I’d worry about missing something!)
A combination of a busy period, followed by some time off (during which I actually turned the mobile off for a whole day, ok an afternoon, shock horror!) and straight back in the deep end hasn’t helped with a bit of a general downturn in my blogging enthusiasm
I had an email conversation with someone recently who had lost their "mojo" and I pointed out that some people have peaks and troughs when it comes to blogging…I’ve never a trough this deep!
Anyway, yesterday I got to do a lot of thinking.
I’d been doing some work in Doncaster and left for the day. Turns out there had been a massive accident on the M1 between junction 24 and 25
I hit the queues at junction 29 so decided to jump into the first motorway services I could find (which ended up being Tibshelf)
I was pleasantly surprised to find that RoadChef were providing complimentary wireless access and their branch of Costa Coffee had a "business lounge" with lots of tables and power sockets to plug my gadgets into
From here I was then able to use various websites to help me make a decision on when to jump back into the traffic
The obvious one is the Highways Agency which has a map of the UK with data overlaid showing where the problems were, updates on the incident and how long it would be until they expected the road to be fully operational again
After that I used the BBC website (specifically the Nottingham regional site)
The regional BBC sites have had traffic information for some time. But what was especially useful was the fact I was able to view snapshots of the cameras that the highway’s agency uses to monitor the road network (Nottingham’s are here)
I couldn’t view all of them (I’m presuming they turned off any that showed pictures of the accident scene) but it meant I could see when the traffic was flowing well enough for me to get off at a junction that would take me home and I could have something to eat (really bad fish and chips for £10?The only bad part!), do some work and browse the web at my leisure as opposed to sitting in the queues getting frustrated
It was when I tried to download Live Writer for my laptop I realised I hadn’t blogged in some time!
I eventually arrived home at 9pm which made for a very long day and not the ideal way to celebrate your birthday – which was also yesterday, birthday’s naturally make me take stock of the previous year and what I’d like to do in the coming year hence all the thinking!
Hopefully my blogging will be back up on the up and I’m looking forward to the rest of the year
Latest posts by Andy Parkes (see all)
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I was starting to worry about you old man! You not blogging is the Digital equivalent of Milk Bottles piling up on your Doorstep and Newspapers rammed in your letterbox! (http://tinyurl.com/5psvlx)
Let’s hope by this time next Birthday you’ve got an Engineer who can do the trip to Doncaster for you. 🙂
Cheers Rich
The difference but between us two pensioners is that you must be the popular one and I’m the cranky old one no-one likes as i didn’t get emails asking if i was OK 🙂