12th May 2008: Evening everyone. It’s Mike here. I’m writing this sitting on the slope at the end of platform 2 at Bath Spa railway station where I’m on an IT course for a week. The course isn’t actually on the slope at the end of platform 2, rather it’s on the 2nd floor of a large old building in the city centre. A 30-ish year old class 43 HST in its purple “First” livery is growling away next to me at the moment, presumably heading for stations towards Bristol. It’s 17:54, the sun is shining, the birds are tweeting, the concrete platform is nice and warm, there are soothing trains going by, I’m happy, and I might go and buy a can of freezing-cold cola in a minute. This morning I got a bit lost on my way between The Menzies Waterside Hotel where I’m staying and Bath city centre; my little GPS gadget doesn’t seem to know which direction I’m heading if I’m walking, and keeps telling me to go places where roads don’t actually exist. Into the river for instance. It took me about three-quarters of an hour to travel the half mile to my course. Not really much to report on site-updates although there are a few more pictures of VCRs in the VCR / VCR-LP / SVR gallery page. Click here if you want to see those. Several weeks ago my mate Tas and I went off to meet up with some other TV-collecting pals in Newcastle. We all met up at David Boynes’ TV shop, where he has a most impressive collection of old TVs. Much more impressive, interesting and valuable than anything in my collection, but Dave collects rather more exotic sets than me, including more than several pre-war TVs and a 405-line NTSC colour set. We all spent an excellent day milling around and scaring off Dave’s customers. Hmm. I’ve just been shooed off the end of the platform by the snotty stationmaster - The vicious swine - I’ve half a mind to take my cola-buying business elsewhere. If you visit Bath Spa railway station and you see an officious-looking master-of-ceremonies in a white uniform striding along the platform carrying a train-paddle, please give them a nasty glare and a few choice words from me. Later: Well, it’s an hour later and I’m back in the bar of the Menzies Waterside Hotel now after getting in a huff with the stationmaster at the railway station and storming off in a sulk. There is a musical-saw version of something-or-other playing loudly on the speakers; I think it might be “Smack My Bitch Up” by The Prodigy, although I could be wrong. People are moaning about it and having to shout to hear each other, although I think it’s quite good actually. Last week my neighbour Gangster-Neil (Not his real name, although it’s something similar) brought his dodgy Irish double-glazing-fitter gangster colleague Patrick O’doors round to my house with a posh-looking fold-out under-cupboard kitchen DVD / TV to fix. Apparently the set was brand new and on special-offer from a bloke down at the Drum-and-Monkey on Four Ashes Road in Dorridge who deals in such things. Oddly, for a brand new TV, the mounting lugs looked like they have been ripped off; perhaps the owner was keen to remove it from his kitchen quickly after it stopped working. Strange, too, that the remote control is missing; presumably lost with the guarantee card and receipt. Anyway, the DVD bit looks like it might be working but the LCD TV is showing no signs of life at all. I’m not really all that inclined to look at it but Gangster Neil’s mate Paddy looks like a gangster of an altogether higher order, and I don’t want to come home and find a horse’s head in my bed, so I think I’ll make it my next job. The Ekco 22” hybrid set (can’t remember the model number) that I got from an excellent chap called John in Ottery-St-Mary has moved on a little bit after a good few years sitting idly in my dining room. My mate Tas from London spurred me into doing something with it, so, after replacing the tripler, a large Callins coupling capacitor on the frame board, a 1.5M resistor at the bottom end of the green A1 control, and the 3 PCL84 valves on the CDA panel, a pretty good picture was displayed. I still need to replace the blue-lateral control, which has fallen to pieces, and there are a couple of other minor faults to fix, but it’s looking a lot healthier. I’ll put another picture of the set up on the site soon. These sets really can produce a wonderful picture when they’re set up properly and I love them. My much-loved Bush CVB100 is coming on quite well and, after replacing half-a-dozen components here and there (including 2 AF115 transistors in the R-Y and B-Y demodulators), I have a pretty good picture. There is still a bit to be done to get it in tip-top condition but I'm quite pleased with the results so far. Well, I’ve waffled on enough I think, so I’ll sign off now. Bye everyone and thanks for reading. From Mike. Good grief, that Prodigy tune has started up again.

30th October 2008: Hi everyone. I’m sorry it’s been so long since my last update. As always, so much has happened that I can hardly remember any of it. I’ve had so many emails from kind people and, as is par for the course, managed to reply to less than half of them. I do appreciate everyone sending me emails but I do get so many that a lot never get replied to. I’m sure I’ve done quite a lot of TV fixing etc. but I can’t remember much of it at all. I can’t remember whether I mentioned it before but I was given a little 19” Pye CT71, one of my “Most Wanted” TVs by a very kind chap called Malcolm from Newcastle-upon-Tyne. The cabinet finish was a bit ropey, having been in a garage for a good few years, but another friend of mine, a great chap called David Boynes, performed some quick magic on it with sandpaper and special polish and it looks much nicer now. I found a company in Birmingham to replicate a metal styling strip which had snapped off along the bottom front edge of the set, and I managed to get hold of the correct badges too. (Thanks Steve F. for the donor-radio.) My big old Invicta CT70 is playing up again, giving a very bluey-green picture for the first 5 minutes before the red slowly yawns into life. I must get round to fixing that set soon. I’ll report on what the problem was next time. I recently bought a big old prototype colour set an Ekco CT100M (or perhaps it’s a CT101M, I’m not sure) from an excellent chap called Danny in Norfolk - I have another page for the colour TV gallery nearly ready to put on the site, so I’ll show some shots of the insides etc. when I get the page loaded. I’m off on a 6-day Checkpoint Firewall-1 course in San Francisco tomorrow and I really should be packing. I’m mostly looking forward to it, but it’s going to be 6 long days of trying to squeeze in as much information as possible after 2 days of getting over the Jet-Lag. I’ve just finished listening to the audio book version of Eckhart Tolle’s “A new Earth” - It was fantastic – One of the best books I’ve ever read and I can highly recommend it if you’re into that sort of stuff. Anyway, the next entries will be in the form of a blog of my travels. Thanks everyone for reading all my dull nonsense. Bye everyone. From Mike.

Mike's Travel Blog - 31st October 2008

09:58. Hi everyone. I'm sitting in a bar at Heathrow Terminal 5, 4.5 hours before my flight to California and 1.5 hours before I can check in my luggage. I packed everything I thought I might need last night and this morning my neighbour Gangster-Neil gave me a lift down to Dorridge railway station where I caught the 07:09 Chiltern-Railways service to London Marylebone. The Chiltern service is always excellent and, true to form, left Dorridge bang on time. It was the fast service so the trip took only 1.5 hours. Once in London, I dashed from the train and onto the tube, a 1972 Metro-Cammel, and travelled the 2 stops on the Bakerloo line to London Paddington. From Paddington I caught the Heathrow Express service to Heathrow Terminal 5. And here I am, sat on a comfy settee in "The 5 Tuns Pub and Kitchen". Wow, a waitress has just brought my breakfast, Eggs Florentine. Yummy. :-) Well, it’s 5 minutes later and my Eggs Florentine hardly touched the sides. My mate Tas phoned mid-mouthful but I told him to clear off and phone back in 5 minutes. Well, that’s all for now. Bye everyone. From Mike. Later: Good grief. 20 minutes later and Tas still hasn’t phoned back. Tsk.

11:55. It’s now 11:55 and I’m sat in the departure lounge of Terminal 5. I’m really not sure what I’m supposed to do now. My flight BA287 is shown on the board but it has no number against it. I guess I have to worry about getting to the departure-bit when they’ve decided where the plane is going to take off from. I’m sat on the first floor near the Starbucks and for some reason the floor keeps shaking. I have a very good view of the aeroplanes landing and taking off. My ‘plane is a Boeing 747-400 (it’s not actually MY plane of course, but the plane I’m going to fly on). I am travelling British Airways cattle-class in seat 36E. I think they will come round with some food during the 11 hour flight but I don’t know what kind of food it will be. Possibly hay.

13:08. It’s 13:08 and my aeroplane departure-place number has been shown on the board. It is gate B42 which was miles away from the other bit of the terminal. The horizontal-lift that took us to the terminal was great fun – it accelerated to a high speed in next to no time and sent the people that weren’t sitting down reeling to the back of the cabin. I can see the Boeing 747-400 that I’m going to fly on (I think). It’s HUUGE. I have obviously never seen one up close as it’s much bigger than I thought. I have a middle seat (36E) unfortunately, so I’m not going to be able to see much out of the windows, and likely I’ll be sat next door to a fat smelly weirdo who won’t stop talking (as will the person who sits next door to me). :-) Oh well, apparently I just have to wait for the announcement now. Back to watching the planes I think. P.S. Wow - They're just calling the announcement for flights to Lesbos.

03:20. Well it’s 03:20 in the morning UK Time and 20:20 in the evening San Francisco time. After a roller-coaster taxi ride in a Chrysler Voyager driven by a chap who didn’t seem to speak much English, I finally made it to the Holiday Inn in Fisherman’s Wharf. I’m absolutely tired-out so I’m off to bed with no supper. Goodnight everyone. From Mike. Zzzzz.

Mike's Travel Blog - 1st November 2008

06:40 (San Francisco time). Morning everyone. It’s (unsurprisingly) Mike here again. Well, I was up very early this morning and I’m just about to tuck into my breakfast. It’s a thing that they call a “Skillet” which I guess really refers to the pan it’s cooked in, but it contains Chopped-up Grilled Sausage, Chopped Fried Onions, Diced Fried Potatoes and Green Peppers, all topped off with several Fried Eggs. It is huge and I’m going to struggle to finish it I think. 5 minutes later: That was delicious. I am very full though. Hmm. It’s tipping it down outside, I was going to go off to find some double-decker trains today but it looks a bit gloomy. Oh well, I think I’ll go anyway.

10:10. I’ve just come back from an excellent ride on a double-decker train. I only went a few stops up the road from Caltrain’s San Francisco depot to the San Francisco South station, and then straight back to San Francisco again. I also went into a local Safeway and bought some jars of Smucker’s Goober Peanut-Butter and Jelly (Jam). Hmm. I’ve just realised that perhaps I should have bought them later on in the day as they are heavy and now I have to cart the bloody things around all day. Ho hum. Right, I’m off to try and find out where I need to go to get to Alcatraz. Bye for now everyone.

12:15. Well, I’m just off the boat from my trip to Alcatraz island. Apparently “Alcatraz” means “Pelican”, and the island was named after the birds that live there. It was all very interesting, if a bit wet. I’m glad I’ve been there, even if it’s just to tick another box on my list of things to do before I die. It was so rainy and windy on the island that every time I went outside it blew my guided-tour-headphones off. My Smucker’s Goober came a cropper too when I put the paper grocery bag down in some water and the bottom fell out when I went to lift it back up again. The jars went everywhere but none got broken. The whole place was very very busy and it was a bit bamboozling during the visit, but I managed to escape in the end and got back onto the boat with my sanity intact.

14:13. Hi everyone. I’ve just arrived back at my hotel at 1300 Columbus Avenue after a very long walk, and I’m absolutely soaked through to the skin. After Alcatraz I decided to wander back to the hotel but after a few blocks down The Embarcadero (the street along the sea front) I suddenly realised I had no idea how to get back. I wandered around for quite some time, periodically asking passers-by, who were very enthusiastic to help a drenched and slightly scared foreigner in a nerdy-looking anorak, if not terribly helpful. I got sent in all different directions, I even phoned my always-knowledgeable mate Terry in the UK for directions before serendipitously stumbling upon my final resting place in a gesture contrived far more of luck than of any real judgement. 15 minutes later: Right, I’ve had a nice bath and I’m all dry and happy again - Marvellous. I’ve just had a quick look at the photos I took today and they all appear rather dull and gloomy, but that’s okay, they reflect the day perfectly and I’m sure the weather will cheer up soon. I’m thinking of going to the cinema to watch James Bond this afternoon, although I’m a bit reticent now after my adventure this afternoon. Perhaps if it stops raining later…

Mike's Travel Blog - 2nd November 2008

18:10. I’m afraid that after a day spent whizzing around San Francisco seeing all the stuff that I thought I needed to see (but probably didn’t), my brain has now gone on strike and I’m feeling uncommonly gloomy and pessimistic. It’s not been a good day for getting lost, banging into things, tripping over, losing tickets, money, receipts, tour-busses etc. I’m missing England, my house, and all my good pals very much too. I’ll write it all up tomorrow. I know it’s very early but I’m off to bed now, and I'll be much cheerier tomorrow. Goodnight everyone. From your mate Mike.

Mike's Travel Blog - 3rd November 2008

18:44. Evening everyone. Well, after a good day spent in the classroom I am feeling a fair bit better than yesterday. I think that now I have something interesting and meaningful to do I will feel better for the rest of the week. Yesterday was just a bit of a blur – I did loads of things but they really just went in one eye and straight out the other. I saw a very peaceful place called Muir Woods - at least I guess it would have been fairly peaceful but for all the screaming kids. Anyway, the trees there were very impressive, the oldest being over 1800 years old. Apparently there are some a bit further north which are getting on for 3000 years old – Wow – That’s really old. I also took an absurdly expensive sight-seeing bus trip and saw all the bits of San Francisco that, according to the sign in the booking-office, any self-respecting tourist couldn’t possibly leave without seeing. Hmmm. I saw loads of very steep hills, underground-cable driven trams, absurdly windy roads, colourful legs sticking out of house windows etc. etc. I walked briefly on the Golden Gate Bridge and took some photos of the bits which weren’t in mist, I paid 5 dollars to spend 20 minutes in a Japanese tea-garden (about 1 dollar for every 100 people crammed into this 0.25 acre area), I saw some slightly weird people taking a tabby cat for a walk, I even saw a policeman going into a doughnut shop - I think that bit was worth the 50 dollars tour-fee alone. Later on, in a vain effort to cheer myself up, I bought some Cadbury’s chocolate, but, upon tasting it, realised that it wasn’t really Cadbury’s chocolate at all – it was made in the US by a company called “Hershee” and it doesn’t taste as nice as the real thing. Anyway, the hotel that I have moved into is called “The Pickwick Hotel” on 5th Street. It’s quite a big hotel, joined onto a big department store called “Bloomingdales”. The bed is very comfortable, but the room is very dull and gloomy, and has been designed like a twee Old-English pastiche of some undetermined (and probably nonexistent) epoch. However, it is home for the next 5 nights and it’ll do just fine. The course is, without doubt, the best bit of the whole trip although it’s all been pretty easy-going so far. I have decided that it will be much safer for everyone if I confine myself to the hotel or the classroom until the 6 days are up. Then it will be time to come home and I’ll be able get back to a normal routine and also see all my pals and work mates that I am missing so much. Thanks everyone for reading, and thank you to the kind people who have sent me text messages etc. It is very much appreciated.

Mike's Travel Blog - 4th November 2008

06:47. Morning everyone. It’s Mike here again. Well, I’m up and bathed and ready to go off downstairs to my course. Since every meal I have had so far has been very fatty and extremely huge, I’ve decided to miss breakfast for the rest of the week. Yesterday the class of 4 (including me) went off to lunch with the instructor at 11:30, right across the street to a burger bar called The Brickhouse Cafe. The burger was delicious and, even though I ordered the smallest one there, the one that turned up was similar to the large one in the video below. There were biscuits and drinks on tap the whole day and by the time dinner came around at about 18:30-ish I was so full that I couldn’t even finish the Hummus and Pitta-Bread starter that I’d ordered as a main course. Luckily the instructor, an excellent chap called Barry Stiefel, was there to polish the rest of it off for me. Anyway, I’m off to the course now. Bye everyone. From your mate Mike.

21:38. Evening everyone. It's pretty late for me for typing up this blog but I've just come back from some very posh and strange restaurant where I had oysters (actually only one oyster because I didn't really like the first one I had very much) and some peculiar chicken-sausage with sauerkraut and grainy-mustard. During the meal we all watched Barack Obama get elected president of the USA. John McCain made a very good speech to concede defeat first and then Barack Obama made his excellent speech afterwards. Because of the result there is an awful lot of hooting, beeping, and rejoicing going on outside my window on the 4th floor of the hotel, and it's a bit too noisy to sleep for the moment. I guess it will calm down soon. I took my Checkpoint CCSA exam today and passed with 81%. It was a lot more difficult than I thought so I'm not really looking forward to the CCSE exam which I am going to take on Friday or Saturday. Well, that's it so I'm off to bed now. Thanks for reading and goodnight everyone. Zzzzz.

Mike's Travel Blog - 5th November 2008

20:13. Evening everyone. Sorry I don’t have much interesting news today, in fact it has been most uneventful really. We discussed the merits (or not) of Diffie-Hellman, RSA, SHA-1, AES-256 and other components necessary for successful encryption and VPN tunnels, a subject about as dry and uninteresting to most people as it could possibly be, but one that I find intensely fascinating. And speaking of dry, I’m afraid I broke my breakfast-fast and succumbed to the supposed delights of Biscuits and Gravy in The Brickhouse Cafe on Brannan Street this morning. Biscuits and Gravy, I was assured by mate Terry, was as close to being food of the gods as was humanly possible. The “Biscuit” bit wasn’t like a Custard-Cream or Hob-Nob or anything like that, think more of a stale plain English scone with all the remaining moisture and flavour sucked out and then left in the sun for a bit. The “Gravy” bit was like a very thick mid-grey lard sauce with extra pork scratchings added for flavour. The whole ensemble was finally augmented with half a dozen fried eggs liberally scattered on top. Mmmm. Apparently this gourmet dish is very popular in the southern states. Having said that, other than it being a bit dry, it didn’t taste too bad, although I’m not sure I’d choose it again. At lunch time the class went to a French restaurant in an area of San Francisco called “South Park”. It was very nice, and my choice of food (half a cabbage with a sausage poking out the top and some French mustard) was actually nicer than it sounds. I don’t think I’ll bother having any tea tonight lest I explode. Goodnight everyone. From your mate Mike.

Mike's Travel Blog - 7th November 2008

04:40. Good morning everyone. Yesterday my mate Carl said that I have talked too much about food in my random jottings here, although in my defence this place does seem to revolve around food; every other shop seems to be a food shop, and every portion is a jumbo sized one. However, in the interests of not boring everyone I shall not mention food any more in this entry. I really can’t remember what we did on the course yesterday, presumably something useful, but I have no idea what it was. We did set up some VPN tunnels between all our boxes but I’m sure there must have been more to it than that. In the evening, 2 of my course-mates took me along with them on a bicycle ride over the Golden Gate Bridge; the sun was going down and it was very picturesque. It was much a longer ride than I thought it would be and my legs feel very stiff from the ride this morning. We cycled all the way across to Vista Point and I took a few photos before turning back for the return journey. Right now I’m just swotting-up on Voice-over-IP (VoIP), which was largely glossed over by the teacher – I have to say that it is not the most interesting part of the course. Thanks for reading everyone. From Mike.

Mike's Travel Blog - 8th November 2008

19:33. Evening everyone. Well it’s been a pretty good day today. I got up very early to swot up on Voice over IP (VoIP), Quality of Service (QoS) and anything else that they were likely to ask on the CCSE exam. In the morning we had a lecture regarding QoS and then some revision up until lunch time. The food we had for lunch at 11:20 was excellent (if a little too early after breakfast) – it was Japanese Sushi and it was most enjoyable. I took the exam this afternoon and passed with a score of 80% although I was convinced all the way through that I was going to fail. Some of the questions were relatively easy but some were so esoteric that I thought I had no chance of answering them correctly. I had fish and chips and Scotch whiskey in a pub this evening, but I’m hoping that today is the last day of unhealthy stodge for a good long time. I’m not sure if I’ve had 5 portions of vegetables since I got here, and I feel very bloated and unhealthy. I’m not really sure what I will do tomorrow (Saturday); I think I have seen everything I wanted to see and I have spent way too much money on junk already so maybe I will have a lie-in and have a walk around the city when I do eventually get up. I have the TV on next door to my desk here, a Zenith H2014Y, and it is showing a repeat of a very old episode of "Friends". Everyone's faces look a bit red and the 525 line structure is quite noticeable, although generally speaking the picture quality is pretty reasonable - Not bad for a colour system that is 55 years old. Thanks everyone for reading. Goodnight everyone. From your mate Mike.

Mike's Travel Blog - 9th November 2008

17:39. Evening everyone. It’s been a day of travelling today. I set out from my hotel at about 09:30-ish this morning and wandered up to the San Francisco BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) underground train station on Powell Street. The trains look very peculiar from the outside – a bit like a one-eyed version of the “Eagle” from the TV series “Space 1999”. Inside, the trains are big and comfortable and amazingly clean, and much nicer that our London Transport ones. Anyway, I took a BART train to the random location of my choice, a place called Fremont, about 30 miles away. At Fremont I decided to go to San Jose for no other reason than it sounded moderately interesting, and I decided to take a bus to the road where the Amtrak railway station was located. I kind-of assumed that, as the bus that I took went to Fremont Boulevard and that the Amtrak station was also on Fremont Boulevard, I could just jump off the bus and the station would be right there. How wrong I was. I started to get a little bit worried when I spotted house numbers over 40,000, and, as I had no idea what number the railway station was, after about an hour of walking, I eventually decided to take the first bus I saw. A bus duly turned up (the 210) and the nice lady driver told me when the station was coming up. After thanking the driver and waving goodbye to the other passengers I bought a ticket from the automated Amtrak ticket dispenser. For some reason the machine refused both my debit and credit cards but luckily I had cash and the machine was fine with that. After about 15 minutes the biggest train I have ever seen pulled into the station – the platforms were at ground-level and the train was a HUGE double-decker monster in the grand style. The train was called an Amtrak Super-Liner and had all the facilities including a proper restaurant car. The coaches weren’t like the comfortable-but-spartan Caltrain ones that I’d been on earlier in the week, but very wide luxury affairs with enormous seats that reclined and had loads of leg-room. The coach that I picked was completely empty and I had an extremely pleasant trip down to San Jose. Again, I was quite taken by how clean everything was – there wasn’t a speck of dirt to be seen anywhere. At San Jose railway station I bought another railway ticket and, without stepping out of the railway station, swapped platforms for the journey back to San Francisco. This time it was my old friend the Caltrain commuter train; again, a comfortable and very clean double-decker, but not as posh as the Amtrak train. When I arrived back at the San Francisco Caltrain depot, I took the “Muni” tram along the Embarcadero until I arrived at Pier 39 and then I walked across to the junction of Mason Street and Columbus Avenue where I jumped on a cable-car. It was most exciting because it was very full and I had to stand on the running-board right at the front all the way to the terminus at Powell Street, the very place where I had started out from this morning. After a 5 minute walk back to my hotel on Fifth Street, here I am. Anyway, that’s it for now - It is my last full day today and I am very much looking forward to seeing England, my house, my family, and all my pals again. My flight isn’t until 16:30 tomorrow evening, and I will arrive back in England at 10:25 on Monday morning. Bye everyone. From your mate in the US, Mike.

Mike's Travel Blog - 10th November 2008

10:45 (San Francisco time). Hi everyone. I’ve had quite a good morning so far today, but now it’s gotten a bit boring. I’m sitting on a big squashy orange chair just outside a hamburger bar called “Burger Joint” in San Francisco International Airport. I arrived about an hour ago, nearly 7 hours before my flight so that I wouldn’t be late; in hindsight I think I could have set off a little bit later and still been okay. This morning I set off from my hotel on Fifth Street quite early and wandered through the financial district with its very impressive tall buildings all the way down to the Embarcadero. From there I ambled to Pier 39 and spent 10 minutes watching the sea lions hooting and fighting and sleeping on their special platforms. After that I walked to Columbus Street and caught the cable car back to my hotel, where I settled my bill and checked out. From my hotel I wandered up to the nearest BART station and caught the underground train to San Francisco International Airport. And here I am. I have one more case with me than I set out with last week because I bought so many jars of Smucker’s Goober that they wouldn’t go in my big suitcase. I have a feeling that I may be over my weight limit too, and then I will have to pay a surcharge; this could work out to be the most expensive peanut-butter and jam in the world. If the surcharge is too much I’ll probably throw all the Goobers away, but that’s okay, I will have had the pleasure of lumbering the bloody stuff all over the place the whole week for no purpose whatsoever, and that’s the main thing. Okay, I’m not sure if I’ll be able to upload this until I get back tomorrow morning, but I’ll give it a try. Thanks everyone for reading. From your pal Mike. PS. On searching around the VHF band with my little radio I managed to pick up a station broadcasting "A Prarie Home Companion" which was very exciting. I love listening to that show in England, but to hear it from the US was even better.

12:27 (United Kingdom time) (04:27 San Francisco Time). Hi everyone again. Well, I’m back in the UK and heading for Dorridge on the 12:20 Chiltern service out of London Marylebone. I’ve just re-read the blog that I posted this morning; I can hardly believe that it’s the same day and that I haven’t been to sleep since that time all those hours ago. It’s half past 12 here and I’m not feeling particularly tired; it does actually feel like the correct time to me. I don’t think I ever really adjusted properly to San Francisco time so perhaps it won’t be too difficult to change back to UK time again. The train is just passing Sudbury Hill Harrow railway station, and I think I have about another 1.5 hours before I arrive back at Dorridge station. The rain is tipping down outside the train, which, of course, is the best place for the rain to be. I have to go to work tomorrow but I’ll probably end up snoozing under my desk or in the computer room or somewhere like that. I certainly have enjoyed my trip to California but I’m so glad to be back home to normality and healthy-ish food again. Thanks for reading everyone. From your mate Mike.

18:02. It's now a good 29 hours that I have been awake without a wink of sleep. I think I have gotten past the tired stage now so I will try and go to bed at the normal time and see how it all works out tomorrow. My house was absolutely freezing when I got in so I have started a fire going in the lounge and that is where I am writing this. (In the lounge, that is, not in the fire.) Well, I guess that's it for this travel blog. Thanks for reading everyone. From your good pal Mike.

11th November 2008: At last, a proper upgrade to the site. Well, a fairly minor one anyway - I've added a Page 4 to the Colour TV Gallery with a few more interesting (or not) old TVs. The big difference is that the page is now dynamic and some of the pictures can change depending on where you click. The text of the page isn't quite finished yet, but I'll get that updated over the next few days.

20th November 2008: I've added some more text on page 4 of the Colour TV gallery, fixed a few dodgy links around the place, and added another link to the bottom of the "Links" page for an excellent company called "M.A. Lloyd" in Birmingham.

6th September 2009: Hi everyone. It's Mike here again. I'm sorry it's been a long time since the last update. Firstly, as usual, apologies to all those people that have emailed me and I've not replied to. I get an awful lot of emails and I find it very difficult to get round to answering everyone, but do just keep pestering me and I'll eventually get round to replying. :-) So much has happened since the last update (although not much to the web site) that I really couldn't fit it all in to this short jotting, so I won't even try. I've been parting company with a lot of my TVs recently in an effort to save my sanity - they were beginning to take over my brain as well as my house, and some of them had to go. Almost universally they have found good homes, but I still have more to part with and hopefully I'll be able to start to see a bit more of my house and I will be much less TV'd-out than I am now. I very briefly joined Facebook and then got scared and decided against it and "suspended" my account. It's a little bit unsettling that you can never actually "cancel" your Facebook account. I'm no longer taking any medicine for my fuzzy-head, so I'm back to my bumbling self again but I have no unpleasant side-effects which is probably for the best. As for the site, I've updated a bit of the text on page 4 of the colour TV gallery, but that's about it. I'm not really sure about the future of this web site (and my TV collection) at the moment, but I guess I'll feel better when I've reduced everything down to a more manageable level. Thanks everyone. From your mate Mike.

Click here for complete technical and site diary.

Click here to book a holiday in a fantastic peaceful Devon cottage.
Stay at the location of the forthcoming South West England Vintage TV Museum.
Don't forget to read the guestbook.

If you would like to use any photos from this site, you are more than welcome. All I would ask is that you put a small mention of www.oldtechnology.net somewhere on the page or in a credit section somewhere. A link would be nice too. :-)