Update: Caller ID

In response to a request for the nasty VB app code to interface to the CD50 Caller-display, here it is if you want to get the unit outputting phone numbers of incoming calls into your applications or Media Center (using the details in my previous post below) , the VB app shells a batch file with any name known or number from the incoming call, from which point you can integrate easily into anything else you can do from the command line:

Download the CID VB app and VB6 source here (warning, terrible VB code)

Living in Harmony (688)

I dont know about you, but our living room had 7 Remote controls on the armchair, and frankly watching anything other than just the TV involved switching stuff on, selecting inputs, and finally changing channels. -- and dont get the wife started on why we need 'em all!

Most people who have a home cinema system suffer from this I imagine, and if you have a significant other, they probably suffer more than you do and say 'I just want to watch my tv shows', or other similar protests.

Well, if you can get another gadget into the house, this might just help out. Last Christmas I got santa to send me a Harmony 688 remote control:

There are several models to choose from, some of which have support for more activites, and better screens. Prices on the net range from £50-£200 depending on the model, the top-of-the-range one is rechargeable.

I must say, it's not actually the most attractive of the available remotes, but there are quite a few to choose from, this model, the 688, is detailed here: http://www.logitech.com/index.cfm/products/detailsharmony/US/EN,CRID=2084,CONTENTID=8747

Harmony were bought by Logitec a little while back, and have continued to produce a line of very clever, and intelligent remote controls. The entire idea is that controlling your devices in the living room (or wherever) becomes simple and straightforward, and becomes task orientated, rather than 'device' orientated.

The idea is that before you had:

To Watch a DVD: Turn on the TV with the tv remote. Select AV, Select Component, Turn on the DVD player with the dvd remote, Turn on the Amp with the amp remote, Select DVD , turn up the volume, pless play on the DVD remote..

After Harmony, this becomes

Sit down, press 'Watch DVD', sit down and watch it.

But that's not new! - loads of remotes can do that!

No it isnt new, I've been through no less than 4 other programmable remote controls that support 'macros', to allow you to send commands to the TV and other devices at the press of a single button. But, these remotes were all 'stateless' , they didnt 'remember' what they just asked your appliances to do. So if you pressed 'Movie' again, by accident, everything got messed up! - Additionally, many dont manage to cope with the 'delay' required between commands..

The Harmony remotes, remember the state that everything is in , and send only the commands that are 'needed' to the devices - so if the TV is already on, its doesnt try to turn it on again for example. If I switch between MediaCenter, and DVD player, then it 'knows' just to tell the TV to go from AV1 to Component.

So, Living in Harmony, what is it like?

To begin with. Painful. You see, the remote is 'blank' when it comes out the box, and rather than teach it everything, by pointing the other remotes at it and doing some sort of dance, with them pressing buttons everywhere, you go to the harmony web-site, and create an account, then tell the site about your devices.

This has the advantage that they already knew about all your devices, including my UK made Cambridge Audio AV amplifier, so the first part of the setup was easy. Then came the flood of dissapointment, when devices didnt act like they should, missed commands, and generally went mad...and the TV... lets not talk about the TV...

Still, once you figure out what your 'tasks' are, you are half way there. I set up:

• Watch TV - Just the TV
• Watch DVD - The TV , with the DVD player selected
• Watch Media Center - The TV ,and Media Center selected
• Listen to MP3 - The Roku M1000 and AV Amp
• Cinema - The TV, DVD and AV Amp for 5.1 audio.

Next I figured out what exactly was going wrong, mainly it was the delays and lengths of the commands, this is all easily adjustable in the web-site, and made some improvements.

The TV however, a Panasonic TX26LXD52 was a nightmare! - Panasonic TV's (the 3 I've owned), have a soft-menu system for selecting AV inputs and while quite 'intuitive' to the end-user, they do present issues for the harmony.

This is where an otherwise partial rant about the remote, turns into a testament to the fantastic support provided by Harmony's support people..... 8-)

Initially, I sent an email to their support people, specifically asking for assistance with the TV, and recieved a very helpful response, asking me to call them later and discuss it. One evening I called their US team on their international free-number, and spent nearly 2 hours working through the issues with some very helpful people.

The downfall of the Harmony remote is not the remote itself, but the devices that it is controlling. Anything that has a 'toggle' function - say ON/OFF, TV/AV or other buttons that perform multiple functions from a series of presses cause issues, this is because the remote has to 'remember' exactly what state the device is in. In the TX26's case, this was the issue with the AV inputs. If I ever had the opportunity to go bang on the table at a panasonic design meeting I would say this:

"stop designing your TV's so that they 'default' to 'tuner' every time they are switched on from standby. If I'm the owner, and I turned the TV off while watching AV1 (say sattelite TV for example), then when I turn it on again , its reasonable to expect that I'd like it to be back at AV1 - Not the tuner - which I might not even have set up!-- at least make it an option in the setup!"

So, back at Harmony towers they worked on the Panasonic TX26 profile on the site- adding code so the remote could remember which input it last selected, and made loads of changes to it, as a result of the tests we did on my TV, after a week of work on, I downloaded the settings again, and hey-presto - working just fine.

Problems?

Don't leave the original remotes out as well - if someone picks them up, and uses them the harmony will be out of sync with the devices and you'll have to use the 'help' key. - the help key is good for solving input problems, but my family got fed up answering the questions!

Teach your family about 'fixing' the sync issues if it happens - e.g turn everything off, and hold your hand over the remote transmitter, and press 'off', or use the 'help' key - or press the 'activity' button that the system is actually in.

Keep working on the timings, some of the default settings are very 'slow', because the devices will definatley work, you can pretty much tinker with the remote continuously, reducing the delays etc until it's as fast as the original remote - this is especially important with things like 'volume up/down', and the navigation keys in Media Center - which if running slow make MCE feel like it's running really slow when its' not.

You can tweak the amp say anytime, by pressing 'Devices' and selecting AV Amp, making the adjustment, and then press DVD again to put all the remote settings back in line with what is happening.

In conclusion

• Its a great concept, and quite intuitive, though my family needed some training to begin with.
• Smart-State remotes need smart-state devices - come on manufacturers, how about it?, how about replying back to your remote with a 'yep, got that' or a 'no, that button doesnt do anything right now' - when this happens, task-based remotes will be just great.
• Hide all the other remotes once its working

Going more geeky..

You may have noticed in your local B&Q that they sell little touch-sensitive dimmer switches with a little 'Infra-Red' eye in the middle.

To add the 2 I had in the living room, I just got an old remote that I dont have the device for any more - programmed the 2 dimmers to respond to different buttons on the remote, then used the remote to teach the harmony the two key-presses required . Now we have 2 menu options on the LCD for controlling the lights...

Ring Ring!

Ok. Not content with Media Center, and distributing it to all the TV's in the house, it was time to add some gadgetry to the telephone.

Caller ID to Media Center

There are a number of caller-id interfaces for the British telephone system, which present the callers number to a serial port interface while the phone is ringing. Apparently UK Phones use a different system to most of the rest of the word, which renders many 'worldwide' modem cards no use to us for caller-id data.

Automated Home (www.automatedhome.co.uk), had a number of posts where people had figured out that many of the stand-alone caller-id display units available actually presented the number data in serial format, and it just needed interfacing to the PC. So armed with Google, I found this : http://www.amarok.demon.co.uk/dl/cd50_mod/ which documents a *very* simple circuit to interface a CD50, or other similar caller-display unit to provide a serial output to your PC. ... Step one .. I built this.

Next was the software side of things. This hacky little circuit is not TAPI compatible , which is the standard that the internal Caller-ID support in Media Center uses, so its back to the home workshop for this also.

I ended up building a small Visual Basic application ,that runs on the machine with the Caller-ID connected, and monitors the serial port for incoming calls. This then takes the number, looks it up in a file, and, if the 'name' of the caller is in the file then the name is used in stead of the number.

I have a number of devices in my house, that (predictably) are completely incompatible, and I wanted to build something that was 'extensible' for future displays and things to allow me to put the caller info up on the TV etc.

Interfacing to MediaCenter 2005

Firstly, I needed a way of displaying messages on the MediaCenter TV screen, in the nice 10 foot interface. I found MCE-YAC (yet another callerid) at http://www.byz.org/~ethanz/mce-yac which is essentially a media-centre network client application for MediaCenter, which can take messages from the popular YAC application (www.sunflowerhead.com/software/yac), which is a fully featured Caller-ID program.

Now this seemed like it would all work nicely, but I then discovered that MCE-YAC acts as a network listener, using a TCP Socket 10629, so I wrote a quick .NET app which can send on TCP ports, and called that from a command script.

I then modified my VB caller-id app which listens to the caller-id unit, to call out to a command script which then notifies all my devices - this allows easy addition of other devices and stuff via a command script. The script below also sends the caller info to my Roku Soundbridge M1000.

The vb app calls this script, with 2 parameters, a message and a name, but you could modify this to say anything, and it will appear on the MCE screen, as well as the Roku Soundbridge M1000.

Sample script:

@echo off
if exist c:\cid\ locked.flg goto end
echo locked > c:\cid\locked.flg
c:\cid\socketsend (mce-ipaddress) 5150 pause
c:\cid\socketsend (mce-ipaddress) 10629 %1 %2
c:\cid\rocku-display (roku-ipaddress) scroll pause %1 %2
del c:\cid\locked.flg

You can download my nasty hacked-together utilities: socketsend, or roku-display, I make no claim to quality coding with these, nor originality, as most of the code is sample stuff available on the internet. It took a little while to get the Roku to behave, and sometimes it doesnt quite work properly - make of it what you will.

I will post the VB Caller-ID app if there is demand, but it will need re-writing slightly, as I use a 3rd party socket OCX in there which is not distributable - and you wont be able to build it.- post a comment if you are interested and I'll do something with it if anyone is interested....

Going further...

It also seemed logical that if the phone rang, the MCE 2005 machine should 'pause' whatever it is doing and let you answer the phone. This was fairly easy once I discovered the excellent
MCE Controller app (www.kindel.com/products/mcecontroller). this allows you to send any supported remote-control command to MCE via the network.. and seeing as I already had a nice little TCP sender program, that was easy:

c:\cid\socketsend 5150 pause

Now the MCE machine pauses when the phone rings, and displays the caller ID info if there is any. The only slight issue with this is that 'pause' is a toggle, so if you're 'paused' when the phone rings, it will play again! - this is not an issue for me, as I've never suffered from it, but you could work around it with sending repeated vol- commands to turn it down I suppose.

Skype

Finally, it was time to join the VOIP revolution. Some time ago I concluded that the best WAF would be achieved if I could integrate the Skype with the home phones, and hey presto, this is exactly what the 'Yamamoto EasyBlue' USB interface does. http://www.yamamoto-group.co.uk/index.php?page=easyblue - available on Ebay, and lots of other places.

So, to summarise the way I set it up:



This makes all the house phones ring when there is a skype call , and they still work normally for standard phone calls. The incoming ring is slightly different (it's longer), when skype calls are received, so you can tell the difference.

To make a call, you just lift a handset, and dial normally, for a skype call, lift the handset and dial * followed by the short-dial for the skype contact you want (1-99) and then #.

Clearly, the PC has to be 'ON' for this to work, with SKYPE running, and the little 'callme' application that comes with the easyblue.

the solution works really well, the call quality to a friend in Australia recently was excellent.

I also added 'MCEPhone for Skype' to the Media Center, http://www.cbuenger.com/mcephone/ - as it's an excellent way to manage your skype from MCE, though with the EasyBlue connected you should really initiate phone calls with the phone handset and dial-pad to avoid calling people and have no way of hearing or speaking to them!

There's only one thing missing from Skype- the ability to 'sign-in' and 'sign-out' at specific times. Now if you have a PC and a headset with skype, I guess this isnt important, because you turn off the PC, or sign out of skype at night etc. But! - if all your phones are hooked up to it, it's quite important, because sooner or later someone will skype you at 2am in the morning, and all your phones will wake you up!

Enter 3rd nasty .NET utility: SkypeCommand. I'm too ashamed of the quality of the code in this to post it right now, I'll clean it up and post it soon. 8-o

This allows a really primative command-line interface to Skype. I only needed to be able to send
'SET USERSTATUS INVISIBLE' and 'SET USERSTATUS ONLINE', but there are many comamnds supported by the Skype Messaging API that probably work. This app is run from a scheduled task in Windows, and at the appropriate time I send the 'online' or 'invisible' command to skype, and I drop off the map when I want to get a peaceful nights sleep. Probably the only other recommendation is that you only allow skype calls from your contacts, but then if you've used skype you've probably learned that one already - unless you like random calls from people you dont know 8-)

More another time... Probably my experiences with the Harmony remote control....

The Media Centre of the universe...

I have some friends who are *deeply* into home automation, and have motorised curtains, talking bookcases and all that, but somehow, I just couldnt face routing out all those cabling runs all over again and laying more cables 8-)

My PVR Setup

For about 2 1/2 years, I've kicked myself for not buying a Tivo - that you could get in the UK, for a while, and as the supply of 'display' ones dried up in Coment and Dixons a few years ago, I yearned for something similar.... and started searching the net... I found Myth TV

MythTV

So, first for me, there was Linux and MythTV... WOW! - I spent much time with this, bought a hauppage DVB-T tuner card and compiled away. I tried it 3 years ago with an analog card, and got *no-where*, because it was just too hard - even being a Linux head for 4 years beforehand had not prepared me for the challenges ahead to get all this to work.

I enlisted the assistance of a Danish pal to get it up and running, and eventually we were there.

The beauty of open-source is that you're not bound by marketing departments, strategic plans and all that stuff, and people just 'do stuff' because it's cool - Myth can do all sorts of stuff, and actually (now I've lived with Media Center 2005 since it was released) it in some ways more feature-packed than MCE 2005.

There are a number of linux 'distributions' that make it VERY easy to set up mythtv, so long as you have supported hardware, but in some ways, this list of hardware is longer than MCE's, and Myth will run on more modest hardware, due to it's split architecture, known as a 'front end' and a 'back end'.

Check out http://www.mysettopbox.tv/ for more info on the last one I used, and of course , the free download of the CD image(s) for it.

I eventually got knoppmyth (see above) working on a PIII 700mhz, with 256 mb ram and one DVB-T PCI card - it was functional, but had stability issues, but this was MythTV 0.14 at the time, and I'm sure it has improved since then. I toyed for months with Myth, obsessed by it's capabilities, these included many plug-ins, DVD-ripping to hard-disk, and music libraries as well as a very powerful architecture.

The split MythTV stack allows you to split the playback (front-end or user interface component) from the 'server' or back-end, essentially allowing multiples of both, and streaming TV and the native UI on the front-end, leaving the back-end free to 'record stuff' and do the other bits. I managed to get the front-end running from a bootable CD, on a cheap Celeron PC, with no hard disk, and only 128mb of RAM, this resulted in a silent box under the TV to drive the system, connected via 100mbit lan to the back-end, which was a PIII 700MHZ box, that was much more ugly and noisy than the front end.

This is something that Microsoft now support with Extenders as we all know, but it's refreshing to see it in an open-source product. Naturally, there are many open-source and freeware media center type applications for Windows, Linux that can do this also.

As many a married man knows, there is only one crucial factor in any of this... will the setup pass the WAF (Wife Acceptance Factor) Sadly, in my case the answer was 'no' due to several issues surrounding my choice of remote-control, and the stability of the setup, which I have recently discovered was mainly due to the older builds of MythTV being unable to handle poor DVB-T reception from my antenna.

Media Center 2005

Having created the demand for this, I had to deliver, and searched for another platform. My MCE2005 machine has been in place since MCE2005 was released, and I would say is more critical to my household than my employers email server! I've rebuilt it a couple of times, once to change PC motherboard, and once to swap the system disk to SATA.

Here is some detail on it:



Hardware

• ASUS Pundit-R with 1.8ghz P4 processor
• 512MB RAM
• 200GB SATA disk (OS and TV Recordings)
• 120GB external USB-2 drive (Music)
• Hauppage Nova-T PCI DVB-T card (the oldest model, bought ages ago)
• Packard-Bell DVB-T PCI Card (Connexant 2388x based, from ebay!)
• Microsoft Media Centre USB Remote reciever

Main Issues:

• Stuttering recordings (video freezes for a seconds or two, but audio carries on)
• Low 'virtual memory' sometimes
• 'slow response' (PC seems to swap to disk excessivley, if you leave it be for a few hours and pick up the remote and press 'down', the machines goes mad - perhaps loading up stuff that is paged to disk, then responds) - probably needs more RAM, but I keep telling the wife I need an Athlon 64 to fix it, so lets keep telling her that shall we 8-)

I dont think any of these issues have gone away fully after the application of Rollup2 for MCE2005, but my dual-tuners have started working properly so it's not too bad.

OI PUNDIT! - SHUT UP!

By far the biggest issue I encountered with both MythTV and MCE2005, was that of NOISE from the machine - clearly, this has bothered many people on the forums, but I decided to take a more budget approach to quietening my MCE machine due to the fact that the ASUS Pundit has hardly any room inside to tinker, and it didnt look that easy to replace the cooler on the CPU for example. I've read about replacing the PSU fan (which is the main source of noise), but currently, the machine hums away in the spare room, and is not overheard from the living room!

Distributing Video / Audio to the TV(s)

*WARNING WARNING* Wiring, soldering, please dont attempt this sort of stuff unless you are confident soldering plugs and running cables etc - incorrect connections might fry your remote extender, or your TV, or YOU!! You do this at your own risk! **

I have 2 TV's in my house, one in the lounge and another in the kitchen, I wanted to have multi-room MCE, but couldnt really think why I needed to have anything more than the same feed from the MCE machine to both TV's , so rather than spend a fortune on 2nd MCE machine, or extenders, or (gasp an Xbox360!), I bought a cheap video amp from Maplins (labelled sb 3714 4-way AV splitter) and used it to pump the Composite feed from the Pundit to the two TVs.

A Flat-screen TV in the living room, and a cheap little LCD in the kitchen:



The feed to both these TV's is just shielded AV twin core cable from Maplin. the length to the Lounge TV is about 10M and if you site it away from other cables, e.g mains, speakers etc, the picture is pretty good. My future plan is to invest in a KAT5 TV Transmitter/Reciever (see www.kat5.tv), which balances the video and audio to send along Cat5 cabling, and will result in better quality pictures.

So, that part is easy, just wire up the cabling with SCART plugs on one end wired to feed composite video and audio, and some appropriate phono's on the other end to take the Audio from the back of the AV amp.

Interestingly there is enough signal from ONE of the AV amp outputs, that I actually split the feed at the Panasonic TV, and fed it thru to the kitchen, and both of them are fine with this, if I could run a dedicated kitchen feed I would , but the carpet is now down, and I'm not taking it up AGAIN! (insert disclaimer about carpets disintegrating round the edges when you pull them up to run cables down the edge of the room between the gripper strip and the wall)

There is a 'little' bit of FIZZ to the picture, probably due to the fairly low quality AV amp I'm using, and if you can I'd recommend using the DVI or VGA feed from a PC to feed a screen if it has the inputs - Sadly my Panasonic TV has only HDMI (only? what am I saying!), which after some research, I learn cannot be extended to my knowledge beyond about 10m max, you cant make your own HDMI cables (too many solder joints too close together), and to go further than 10m you have to shell out for fibre-optic DVI extenders which are about £500. - so, the av amp and the slightly fizzy picture will do me, as i can only see the fizz up close.

The DVI-HDMI route is definatley worth it if you can stand your MCE box near the TV, as the picture is great on there, but remember a bit of blur and fizz actually disguises that nasty freeview picture quality on these tvs which are now able to show it in all its mpeg blockyness that you never saw on that CRT TV. 8-)

What about the IR remote?

Well, totally, you need that to drive the MediaCenter! - I tried (unsuccessfully) to use wireless remote-extender/repeater devices from several manufacturers, I always found that they either put a huge delay in or single keypresses resulted in multiple ones being recieved, rendering it fairly hellish to use the controller in the EPG etc. In the end, even after reading up on several 3rd party remote-control 'repeater' products that are very good, as they can resolve 'collisions' on multiple recievers (e.g 2 people pressing a different key in 2 rooms), but due to my luddite attitude to multi-room media-centre, I settled on these:

This is the OmniLink IR Extender, designed for SKY boxes. You can pick em up in B&Q and probably other places like Argos etc for under £30. They work by using the TV Antenna cable to pass the IR signals along to the back of the sky box , which 'understands' the signals on the wire it's feeding your TV with, and responds - no IR spiders/transmitters needed. Luckily, they also supply the reciever in this pack, with a brick PSU, and those handy spiders. - the device works well for all the IR devices I've tried - including the Microsoft remote that is used with MCE 2005.

I installed 2 of these one in the kitchen (you can see it sticking out under the TV), and one in the living room. Now for the wiring:

I tried co-ax between the TV's via my Antenna amp in the attic (this is also by the way an OmniLink item), as the AMP also supplies the 9v feed down all the co-ax feeds to run these suckers without the powerbrick. But, enter the world of Media Centre, and you soon learn that the PCI tuner cards (I have anyway) seem to 'short this 9v out' or eat it , such that when you hook the IR reciever and spiders up to the antenna feed at the back of the MCE, you get no LED which means no power and no IR signals! - so, rather than run MORE CO-AX everywhere, I just used that nasty bell-wire you get in the DIY store to connect them together. I run a length of this down beside the shielded twin-core cable carrying the audio and video, and bingo! - Just one point: The 9v DC supply to the reciever pod is polarised! - so when wiring this use a multimeter/tester to connect the centre pin to the centre-pin otherwise it wont work!

I also, pushed my luck and wired them like this:



This actually seems to work quite well, I've not had any issues with it, and the bell-wire is easier to route under carpets etc if you dont want to drill the place apart again having decorated. You could probably use a pair in a cat-5 cable.

Note: I've also used one of the omnilink sets to 'forward' IR signals into my TV / AV cabinet - you dont need any bell wire for that- just plug the Transmitter and Reciever in to each other back-to-back and place the IR spiders inside the cabinet. I even managed to get most of the devices in the cabinet to respond to one spider, because its 'dark' in there I guess its easier for the IR emitter to light the inside of the cabinet up!

Ultimatley, my Pundit is getting on my nerves even here, next to me in another room, so another look at the KAT5 sender reveals that it can also do IR forwarding via the same single CAT5 cable that it sends video and audio down, so I will upgrade to a one-stop solution when I finally figure out where to banish the noisy MCE machine to -ether the attic, near the antenna!, or the garage.

Thats all for now, Next time, SKYPE, Telephones , Media Centre and CallerID, and after that probably my experiences with the Logitec Harmony 688 Remote if I ever get it to work properly 8-(.....

Please feel free to post comments here, questions etc, hope this is all of use to someone 8-)

friday wrote mrs kipling

there are downsides to being on holiday and not having a clue what is going on in the world - not that weather reports are generally that accurate but if I had known it was going to pee down with rain I may not have chosen flip flops and a long floaty skirt on my shopping yesterday.

still, at least we got to use our ponchos ! (we're not proud).

did my shopping penance today - tottenham court road ! mutually agreed that being as it was raining and we couldn't be bothered to go far the best place was hamleys ! yay.

currently drying out in last hotel. Lion King soon so more later.

...Time passes....(much) rain falls..

Fantastic! - Lion King is a high energy, cleverly adapted show with amazing costumes, including a giant elephant with 4 people inside. A must see, brought tears to our eyes.
what a way to finish.

its been fun - hope you've enjoyed it too.

we'll leave this up for a bit and then no doubt will find some other exploits to enthrall....... probably uganda next year if martyns idea for a portable solar charger works out.....fun year ahead then !

M&K

Thursday wrote mr kipling..... Visited Madame Tussauds for the first time in about ten years... and then remembered why this was. All the people there were completely different from last time as you'd expect, but then came the clincher... Remember the London Planetarium you might have visited as a kid? those fantastic stars and photographs of planetary landscapes?.. that projection contraption that looked like a giant ant, and those comfy seats? well remember it well Anakin, for it is no longer. Yes that's right, what once was at least an hour of stunning photography and an educational experience is now (in my opinion) A 10minuite 1/2 an imax film (the top 180 degrees) that is hard to watch sitting on the new high tech - low comfort benches.. I couldn't even see it that well.. I'm gutted and so is kay, last time we visited one of these she fell asleep!, It would appear that its been subsumed into the waxworks as well, as it doesn't look like its a separate venue in its own right any longer.

that lot, and the fact that having found our way along 180 miles of the thames path (admittedly very well signposted) we got lost trying to find it did not make for a happy martyn as you can probably tell !
still, looking on the bright side, it was cooler in there than it was outside - and I stayed awake !

what may well have provided additional stress and made mart even more miffed with the wax works is the fact that it didn't take us that long to get round so there was more time for shopping ! which actually was more important than you may think if the whole of the lyceum theatre is to be able to sit in close quarters with us (we don't smell so bad but our clothes ......)

never mind marty - hopefully the half a cow you ate for dinner helped a bit ! (kay ate the other half).

M&K

day - whatever plus umm two.....

guess where we ended up today !



we made it - yahoo and other suitably cheerful phrases.

of course - having managed to meet brother for lunch we cheated for the very last time and got on a boat to grenwich pier - well, we thought we should finish in the style to which we have become accustomed !

its still quite a way from the pier to the barrier though as we were good and walked all around the peninsula bit instead of cutting the corner off - which I told martyn was cheating (boats of course do not count !)

anyway, we made it in time to discover that the visitor centre etc was closed - great but never mind , feeling very proud and with suddenly very tired legs we headed off to the bus stop.

what do you call the driver of the 177 bus as he drives straight past you without even slowing down whe you are frantically waving at him ? I know the answer but its not printable.

so we set off to walk to the hotel. which seemed like a very long way even thoug it was probably just a mile.

this last opportunity gave us the chance to ponder some of those deep and meaningful questions that have plagued us as we've trudged the last 180 ish miles......things like...
1) are mute swans called that because they can't make sounds ?
2) at night when swans sleep on the river do they float downstream and end up lost and confused ?
3) why do cows always congregate across a footpath or around a stile or gate ?
4) what is the difference between a red, blue, and white police car?
5) why are the last two miles of the day so much further than the previous ten?
6) if kay has shorter legs than martyn and has therefore taken more steps has she walked further than him?
7) how do they build and install the huge concrete pillars that support the bridges - why don't they sink into the sludgy bottom of the river ? (that one was martyns)
8) why do gadgets batteries always need recharging and crucial points ?
9) why do people always manage to bash into kays rucksack nearly knocking her over but seem to take a wide berth around martyn
10)what was the man doing carrying a portion of chips around in a handbag and last but not least.......

how cool would it be to win an award for outstanding use of concrete from the concrete society (as witnessed today at the barrier)



well anyway, that's it, we're done. 2 days left to be tacky tourists in london - not sure if we'll blog anymore or not.

better try and post this now - hope the battery holds out......



M&K

Day whatever + 1: Hammersmith to Pimlico

A slightly delayed start today, we overslept! Breakfast was 'inc' this morning, so we donned our boots yet again (eugh!) and marched on..

As we observed the other day, the river is much wider, and there are far less boats.

We spent much of the day at the 'London Wetlands Centre', an amazing wildlife centre built from the remains of a redundant resevoir in the london suburbs. Well worth a visit, with many rare and beautiful birds in a natural habitat.



had lunch with three lovely ladies in an area for water voles. they said we looked like we had been walking for a long time - we didn't think we smelt that bad but ..........

after lunch we realised it was so warm my poncho had melted - not much but enough.
we were going to meet my brother for dinner but couldn't quite walk fast enough so scrapped that idea. instead we made it to our room for the night - feet went on strike so for only the second time this holiday we rang for room service and for the first time this holiday we watched tv.

kind of reassuring that not much has changed in two and a bit weeks - still nothing on tv !!

tomorrow should with a bit of luck see the thames barrier.

M&K

day - whatever

well, breakfast was not inc this morning so we packed up and headed off for a breakfast bagel at maccy d's. perfect for curing our sake hangovers - one shot between the pair of us so that we could say we'd tried it - didn't know it was served hot. I don't think the waitress knew what to make of my gurning attempts as I tried frantically to swallow.

breakfast done we wandered along side our favourite river for three hours until we came to kew gardens. We're noticing a pattern this holiday - eat , walk, eat, walk, nurse feet , eat ,sleep. What will we do with ourselves when we get home ?

anyway, river is now distinctly less prettty and the tide was out as well so much crud along the banks but we did see numerous squirrels, more heron, cormorants and a water vole / rat thing. Oh and martyn spent 5 mins watching a cool james bond style bridge with barriers that got lowered down to stop the river flow - to keep water in the upper part of the thames whilst the tide was out.



.....and kew was great as always. Interstingly there was some glass sculpture art on disply by david chihuly. Uh oh thought mart and I as we are not hugely good with modern art but this was really impressive and integrated well with the planting - made kew even more interesting.



we tried out a talking tree too - they are piloting this new thing where you walk up to a tree, dial a phone number and get lots of info on the tree - quite cool but we think an audio guide might be better- although my ears are only just returning to normal having worn one of those around hampton court yesterday.

after lunch and much meandering through the gardens it was on to hammersmith bridge and our hotel - it seemed like a long way to get here - I'd forgotten to include wandering around the gardens in my mileage count so feet ache even more than usual today ! so in order to rest them we've sat down for dinner and guess what - its pub quiz night. We haven't entered just as well really as we're rubbish (especially the sports round and mart was really upset as he couldn't get a single music round one!)

but I've just heard that I got my film quote round question right - impressed martyn with the knowledge that 'frankly my dear I don't give a damn' was rhett butler in Gone with the Wind and martyn got 'i feel the need,the need for speed' as maverick and goose from top gun so on that high note we're off......but also because they are now playing some really cheesy music !!!!




M&K

Day 16 - I think but who cares!.

If there was a title for todays entry it would be 'Sushi and the man with chips in his handbag'

Spent a day roaming Hampton court Palace today, much walking but mostly under instructions from one of those talking tourguide things round your neck. Hampton court truly is huge, and (with many of my waking hours thinking about food) I noted that the kitchens they had back in Henry VIIIl's time were fantastic- about the size of a football pitch to be precise. I also noticed that if you type in the wrong room number into the audio tour gizmo 9 times out of 10 you don't notice - that was until it said 'go up the stairs to your left' - there were no stairs, but the random selection of commentary matched the room I was in quite nicely.

We also demonstrated why I always drive the car but don't try to navigate today - HC has a pretty 'maze' built into the gardens. The starting notice even has a map of it which I expertly stored in my photographic memory, and then promptly steered us into a dead end. K however just sneered, and guided us with only one more wrong turn straight to the middle, then lost all the cool-points she had scored by then asking where the exit was, having passed it not 10 seconds previously. ha ha!

Later on our way to the cafe we did indeed pass a more mature japanese man carrying a leather handbag, with a 'go-large' portion of mc donalds best fries neatly placed within it. Whether this was a carefully planned carbohydrate tipple for his walk round the estate, or a joke by his family we can only speculate...



We completed the tour of all the rooms, apartments etc and continued back to kingston for dinner via a pretty walk through the gardens and estate meadows.

Stopped off in kingston to see a screening of 'The Island' at the cinema, with wait for it... allocated seats.. wow. The film wasn't too bad either, plenty to keep me occupied and some trace of a plot, though no budget left for a twist in the tail after they paid for all the cars, trains and helicopters they wrecked. Not such a hit in the US for some reason, shame.

Finished today off with an entertaining dinner in the local sushi bar... yet more conveyor belts, but this time with food dishes on, and too small to ride on.



We resume our treck tomorrow, our destination Hammersmith (we think!?) via kew gardens.

M&K

day - we've lost count and I think I got it wrong yesterday - martyn thinks 14 so we'll go with that.

only a little walk today - 6 and a bit miles through sunbury and molesy to hampton court. Highlights of the day include viewing sunbury regatta from the opposite bank and walking through the concrete bollards of the old ww2 anti tank defenses. We did find a cool sundial in hurst park though - you had to stand on it and use your own shadow to work out the time. We reckon it was half an hour out.

Have realised I missed some things off my wildlife list yesterday - have also seen cormorants, red kites and fish (lots of little ones and three big ones - they must be the ones that got away.)

made it to hampton court palace for lunch and found our hotel about ten mins before the rain came on. A dry patch saw us dash to kingston for dinner. Hopefully it will not be too wet tomorrow - one feels ones distinctly tatty and a little tacky plastic peruvian poncho will not blend well with the posh umbrellas here !

no photos today - martyn thinks this is a good thing as he doesn't know how much they cost to upload. He neglected to tell me this before now - holiday relatively cheap but bankrupted by a gadget (story of my married life ! gotta love it).

Anyway - soggy pictures of hampton court palace tomorrow so more then. As we said as we passed under walton bridge today - g'night jim bob.

PS had to go on a boat again today but it doesn't count as cheating - decided to get ferry across the thames but the guide book said it was an option (I'm sounding very defensive now aren't I ?! .........)

M&K

day 14 - windsor to shepperton.

last day of cheating today - we got the boat to runnymede. Made up for this by walking four miles around the site and also walking to america ! - those of you in the know will remember that the queen donated the acre of land the jfk memorial is on to america - we were okay though - apparently they are good enough to assume we were pilgrims and so didn't require a retinal eye scan.

Of course we also saw the american bar association magna carta memorial but perhaps the most memorable part of the day was the air force memorial at the top of Coopers Hill - dedicated to 20 000 airforce servicemen who died in ww2 and have no known grave. We had a quiet contemplative few moments there. Anyone thinking of visiting runnymede should definately make the effort to walk there.

All in all the area is an interesting place with many important and poignant reminders of the importance and cost of freedom.

To lighter things though (or not as the case may be) Martyn has until now refused to concede any comment relating to him being in any way a 'wide load' unfortunately he had to admit defeat with this 'gate'. Apparently it was his shoulders that caused the problem !



Kay needs to remember all the wildlife seen so far so here's a list
himalayan balsam (the pink flower isabel !), yellow frilled lily, stoat, heron, rabbits, deer, wagtails, great crested grebe, coots, moorhen, mallards, canada geese, cows (lots, some with horns), bulls (big ones), mute swans, banded demoiselle ( a type of damselfly), common blue butterfly and an orange butterfly I can't remember the name of oh, and a parakeet - they were bought over from asia and apparently like the area of the thames around windsor (no i'm not joking - we saw one in windsor great park) also seen many caterpillars and slugs and an albino slug - not kidding it was white (couldn't see its eyes though)- have photo as proof jon..
There was some delay to our walk today as Kay found a nature board and had to identify everything.

Slight sadness tinged our walk today. We passed under the M25 and the M3 and passed a coal post and stone indicating we have reached the old upstream boundary of london. We also passed through our last bit of thameside meadow today so from here on in civilisation returns.

Also Martyn is upset as he has realised shepperton studios are nearby but they don't seem to do tours so he will have to spend the extra time tomorrow enjoying my circular walk around hampton court !

Good news though - apparently our building work is done.

Well we are now ensconced in tonights accomodation - the anchor in shepperton - apparently another favourite haunt of dick turpin (he also liked the olde bell in hurley it seems) anyway, full tummies and sore feet so off to recover. More tomorrow from hampton court.

M&K