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One of my facebook buddies posted his typical Southern commute which is pretty much like mine. First your train gets delayed for no reason, then cancelled, then the next service does a platform dance, so you don’t know where its going with the Customer Information System (known as DARWIN for some reason). One really interesting one that might interest anyone is when I was at Guildford on the 9th June 2016, heavy rain and thunderstorms were forecast and while going through one train, I heard this:

“We are sorry to announce that the 18:13 Southern service from London Victoria has been delayed due to the condition of the platform surface. We are very sorry for the delay to your journey.”

And the return working was:

“We are sorry to announce that the 18:22 Southern service to London Victoria has been delayed due to flooding. We are very sorry for the delay to your journey.”

And you thought you heard it all!

Its that time of year and now I’m upgrading my phone (again) to a newer model which makes me wonder what can I do with it? The purpose of this blog is to think of the unusual and more obvious ways to dispose of your old phone. iPhones are slightly different due to their limitations, but no doubt you might find this blog useful. I use Android phones so lets look at them.

The obvious!

• Flog it! – So you got your shiny new phone for way over the odds you should of paid for it, your old one is quivering and upset. So you decide now is the time to part company. Besides, that eBay buyer may pay over the odds for it or may decided to offer a cut price. Ether way, you are looking at recouperating your costs. A big tip, do your research first on your make and model of phone as putting in a random price may mean you will be stick with it for a while.
• Keeping it as a spare – It sits in a drawer gathering dust for a few years and brought out when you need it, its great when that brand new LG G5 you had (like I have now) gets nicked on the railway station when you aren’t looking.
• Give it away – Someone is going to like it one way or another, perhaps a friend or a relative, but maybe they have phones and don’t like it either.
• Recycle it – the screens cracked, its been dropped 14 million times (because you didn’t think about putting it in a case – let alone a drop proof one.) and you listed it, no one wants it, but Mazuma (other recycling sites are available!) offered a decent price, so your phone is better off as scrap due to its value, end of the matter.

 

But, did you know that an iPhone or even android phone can have a lot of uses? What about other projects? You’d be surprised about their power. With a bit of software tweaking, phones can do a lot more than you think. Better still, you don’t need a sim card to operate a phone, most of which you can do already but with the addition of having a phone with a spare battery, you won’t have to worry about running out of battery power.

• GPS companion – Your new phone you prefer to keep its battery fresh as you don’t have a charger yet, not an issue, your old phone makes a great GPS device and with software updates, you can use it to navigate everywhere, plus your new phone doesn’t drain its battery as quickly. It’s particularly problematic when you have a newer phone with a USB type C connector. Free maps are available if you didn’t know already and can help you go everywhere.
• Remote Desktop Client – On some phones, you can buy a USB keyboard for the job and this turns it into a rather good Remote Desktop Connection client which means you can use the phone to connect to a computer somewhere else, you will need to do a few tweaks however to get it to work, but the joys are endless and certaintly allows you to leave the laptop at home. I did this with an old HTC touch Diamond pro 2.
• FTP Server – So you have a lot of files and you want a device that you can store your data on and not have to worry about it. Phones are good at this because they have a battery, so when the power goes out, the downtime is minimised. Soon as the power is restored, you should have your FTP server on in minutes.
• Web server – see above but someone once did this on a Compaq iPAQ and the results were interesting, but again, always on and back up UPS.
• DVR camera or any sort of camera –  Most android phones have cameras, so why not use it as a way of recording evidence in a court of law? You’ve had a smash, you have a DVR camera in your car to tell you who the culprits were. Most also have 2 cameras which also does both front and back which should help the courts and insurance companies give a bigger picture of the accident.
• Fully fledged desktop computer – Again, the phones have the capability and with the right sim card, you can even use it as a networked computer to browse the internet if you haven’t got one already. A few cables (MHL cable for example), the right monitor (with HDMI ports) and a bluetooth keyboard and mouse, you actually have a fully fledged desktop. When Superbook comes out, which is a laptop shell for a phone (others are available), you even can use the same old phone as a permanent laptop.
• Music player – One I never thought of, but its possible to use a phone as an iPod like device and one person I met did indeed use her old phone as a music player, the battery life should be pretty good because you won’t have a sim or wifi to worry about.
• MID or Mobile Internet Device – Great for walking around surfing the web on wifi if you are very cautious about not wanting to use your data, you won’t need much as the software is already on the phone.
• Spare parts – Very useful if you have a job lot of phones with different faults, if you know how to take a phone apart and put it back together, you can use your old phone to put together several new ones.

So, upgrading your phone? Here is 9 unusual ways to use a phone for a different purpose. Notice that I’ve not put tutorials in, because tutorials A) would take a lot of time and B) would take up a lot of space. The idea is to give you an idea of flexibility. There are many more ways you can use a phone and a lot I’ve mentioned you can already do on your own phone with or without a sim card, but the idea is to use the old phone instead of the new phone. There are many many more ways as well, like a dedicated 3G modem for your laptop,  a phone for dodgy people, etc. If you think out the box, you can think of different ideas.

 

 

NO ITS NOT. I’ll explain in detail about my take on it and I’ll give my responses and some better and I believe more cost effective ideas.

(Awaiting image)

I got this through sometime this week, where I live (Fishbourne Village – on the outskirts of Chichester) are planning a 20mph zone which sounds like a good idea. Now, I’m a pedestrian, train user (I LOVE to use my free travel pass), cyclist and car driver and I’m apposing to the 20mph scheme. Now the very nature  of having traffic suddenly slow down to 20mph sounds appealing you would think, especially when I walk or cycle around. Firstly, lets point out a few things, firstly, who keeps to speed limits anyway? Secondly, why does everyone prefer to park in side roads or on pavements in Salt Hill Road rather than on Salt Hill Road? The answer relates to the first question, traffic is going way too fast already! I hear it all the time, I see it all the time and a 20mph is not going to fix that. In fact, it will probably make matters far worse.

Even so, has anyone actually driven in a 20mph zone? I don’t suppose those that support the campaign have and it comes down to one big problem and that is your concerntration will drift. At slow speed, drifting concerntration because you are going soo slow your mind can’t cope with it is one point because its bored at travelling at that speed as nothing is happening. Therefore, you may end up taking risks and that increases the likelyhood of an accident and in my non academic self (shame on me – but really, I don’t know where to start for this argument) because of figures that are distorted by various factors, here is one small snippet of an argument that seems to support my view that accidents DO increase on 20mph road.

https://www.goldsmithwilliams.co.uk/news/accidents-increase-on-20mph-roads

Another search on a less crediable website shows this article from the “The Press” based in York and it seems to match some of my arguments:

http://www.yorkpress.co.uk/news/9874263.Accidents____may_be_more_likely____on_20mph_zones/ (Which was posted in August 2012, I looked at this in August 2016)

One key point to highlight:

“The reduced limits could be lulling pedestrians into a false sense of security, so they take less care” (Quote from the article above).

But if a driver is alert, then yes, the idea of a 20(mph) zone then works. That just requires education. Then if we educate drivers properly, we wouldn’t need a 20mph zone in the first place.

Besides, it WON’T fix a big problem, I can see 20 zones working on side streets where they are 30, however, the fact they lead to a dead end and has more obstacles than the CBT test course, you are most likely doing 20mph in the first place, so whats the point? To force that driver going too fast for the conditions? Well the law is against that, its called “driving without due care and attention”. No matter how much you try to slow that driver down, no matter how much you restrict the speed limit, they will not listen.

 

For the amount of money put into a scheme of reducing the speed limit by putting up signs that say 20, lets look into other traffic calming measures that work, lets look at stopping Salt Hill Road becoming a rat run first – that is happening because Chichester is soo badly clogged with traffic and Fishbourne roundabout is soo dangerous, lets look at that first. Once we looked into that and fixed that problem, the issue then might go away. A good start would be chicanes and where would be a good idea to add a chicane? How about outside Fishbourne station? How about a few parking spots to encourage more train usage? Instant obstacle guaranteed to slow down the traffic, add a meter and you might even make money from it. Create a box junction beside the parking bays and done. You can sort out a traffic problem by forcing the traffic to slow down, all this without adding a speed limit. What about creating pinch points? Short cycle lanes? Or how about even more interesting, SPECS? Not only would these slow motorists down, but for those that don’t, you make money from them. Therefore offsetting their installation costs.