The on-going farce of Potholes in Essex (UPDATED May 2013)

(If you have read the blog & want to see the updates, please scroll to the end of the blog)

Just over a year ago I started cycling again & one thing I have noticed is the piss poor conditions of some of the roads that are meant to be part of the National Cycle Network. But there is one road I use a lot & have done by bus & now cycling, for the past 18 or so months which I have reported for the dangerous condition of Potholes & for over a year all I've got was 'we are looking into it' automated emails.


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This road is Langton Ave, Chelmsford & is a prime example of the farce & wasted money by the Councils & Government. Read on & you will see what I mean.

I decided to start taking pictures of this road to make a diary to prove the incompetence of our road maintenance.

These are Pictures I took in July 2012:

Now, these Pot Holes were mainly in the middle of the road & when cars are parked on both sides, it is a bloody nightmare to navigate them. Especially in the wet, snow or dark conditions & made worse when cars try get pass.

At around this time Essex Council announced their new £11 million budget to fix potholes, yeah right we all heard that before….

Wasn't disappointed as by November they were still there but worse:

Yet at the same time I took those they had done the adjoining road West Avenue:

Despite they could've easily continued, tho from what I've seem Langton Ave has been forgotten before when West Ave was resurfaced some years back & probably is why its in such a bad condition.


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After a week from taking previous pictures, they finally decide to do Langton Ave, but decided to cut corners & made an absolute mess of it... They just filled it with gravel, no packing it down, no sealing it. No! Just filled it with gravel & nothing like the work done the week before in adjoining road!! How bloody stupid is that?

And as you can see the gravel is coming out from the passing of traffic, so it wont be no surprise that in less than a month it looks like this:

    

And today it now looks no different than 6 months ago:

Oh & now we have this mess to contend with on our bicycles & prime example of why we don't cycle right next to the kerb...

So now you can see the farce on this one road, there are many others like it in Essex & the rest of the country no doubt about that. But I can't check every one of them, so if you have a road near you then do the same as I've just done. Reporting isn't enough, post a blog of it online & make it publicly available for all to see & show a bigger picture of what is really going on!!

Now I've explained my complaint of the sheer waste of money on man hours & material for NOT doing the job properly, would the Government depts & Essex Council like to explain why & if the contractor are coming back to do it again FOC? Maybe even Sustrans like to have words as it's part of the National Cycle Network.

January 2013

Following my posting of this blog & posting it on Social Media sites, I didn't get any response from the parties concerned (no surprise). But what I did see it yet another attempt to patch the road's potholes (whether it was a result of my blog or just coincidence, I dunno) & again it's been done badly. Here are some photo's of the work & a video with my commentary words as I cycle in the video. I let you decide if you agree with me on the poor state of affairs on this road.

   

      

February 2013

Since January, I've been watching for any further repairs & of course there hasn't been any. But in February on Twitter Essex Chronicle was asking for pics on a piece they were going to do on Pot Holes so I pointed them to this blog as had plenty of pics & video. Next thing I know they wanted to do a piece on me & a photoshoot on the very road I am blogging about. And here is the news piece...

There were some editorial errors in the piece but it with other news piece the paper did that week & following week might have got Essex Council to do something as they've announce an increase in their Pothole maintenance budget (again) but if its like the repairs that have been done & redone in this road, its just more money down the drain...

UPDATE!!

This will be my final update on this blog, its been nearly 2 yrs since I first reported the potholes & still they are a mess and yet I have seen other roads that have developed potholes this year due to the Winter spell & they've been repaired within weeks of reporting. Essex Council obviously feel this road is not worth fixing as it has failed to do it in the time I've been in Chelmsford. But I am moving on now, so I won't be able to keep an eye on the road & hope those who have the same issues will find my blog & videos of help to back their case.

So as a parting gift on this blog, here's a video done this May to show the poor conditions of the road, cycle network & bus route that this road is used for...

A Newbie to Tablet PC’s

"Before you start readng my blog, I like to say Sorry for a lengthy blog. It wasn't my intention, but when you read on you will understand why"
 
Just over a year ago I decided after having I got a Decent PC & Windows 7, I needed something more portable when I am away so not to hog other people’s PC’s to check my Social Networks & emails online as my lil’ ol’ N95 was struggling with it all. After helping others to get Netbooks, I thought a Netbook would do me nicely as they were cheap & cheerful.

Well that was the plan, but the prices of Netbooks were escalating, gone were the days of the £100 unit which was the whole ethos of the netbook. Linux faded into the background as Netbooks went to XP & now Windows 7. So I decided I cant really afford it.

But I had started seeing reports & news on mobile phones with Android & then the rumours of a Tablet version. But all I saw about them was online & very vague. So when some freinds got Android mobiles, I had to have a play & I like what I saw. But still wasn't what I wanted, I wanted something like a Netbook. So I got a download version of Android & installed it onto my PC in Virtual Box so I can try it out. It definitely suited my need, if only I could get the right Tablet.

Then before Christmas I was starting to get emails from well known Computer shops offering Android Tablets for under £100 & this got my interest. It would be perfect for my needs, a portable PC with Wi-Fi capability. So I decided it was time to research on specs, prices, reviews & good suppliers. That is where my headaches started, if you go onto a site like eBay or Amazon you will find hundreds of them out there. Different sizes, specs & types of Android from 1.6 to 2.2. And with eBay, a lot of sellers are from abroad & with Electrical Goods I prefer to buy within the UK. One thing I had noticed was the lower the price, the lower the specs were & to be honest I don't think the lower spec ones would handle the modern web & social networking.

So, 1st thing to do was to see what's the oldest version of Android I be happy with? Ideally 2.2 is the best at the time, tho 2.3 is coming out & 3 is just around the corner. But for cheapness, 2.1 would be ok for what I needed. So next was to find a cheap good model & that was another minefield. You have Apads, Epads & many other cloned look alikes to the iPad, so I went thru & researched each that looked ok & at the same time taking notes of the companies as well as the reviews of the tablets & the Company who are selling them.

That’s when one UK Company caught my eye, as I saw them mentioned with reference to reviews of their stock in Webuser , Engadget & Gadget Show websites, what they were saying was pretty good tho nothing about tablets, so I went to www.sonix7.co.uk & had a look. They had exactly what I wanted, it was an Android 2.1 7” Tablet for £140 which wasn't to bad with all it came with.  

OS: Android 2.1

Processor: 800Mhz

Built-in flash memory: 2GB,

RAM: 256MB DDR2

Micro SD card slot up to 32GB

WiFi, G-Sensor

Camera , Microphone, Built in stereo speaker

USB 2.0 port

2.5-mm stereo earphone jack

HDMI TV out

Charge socket

Display: 7" TFT LCD touch screen, resolution 800x480

Support up to 1080P

Google Android Market access, YouTube video playback

Battery: Long time standby with low power consumption up to 6 hours

Built-in 1500mAh lithium

Multi formats supported include: MPEG1, MPEG2, WMV9, MPEG4-SP, ASF, DIVX, H.263, H.264, RMVB, Mov, Mkv, TS, FLV, WMA, MP3, WAV, OOG, AAC, EAAC

Weight: 0.5kg

So with Christmas coming up & me spending time away from my PC, I ordered one. It arrived late due to the Snow but in time for Christmas. This is what I got in the box, it even came with the HDMI cable to connect to TV.


 

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From initial inspection, definitely looked good & felt sturdy, but had to charge it for 6 hrs & wait which was a pain as I was itching to play with it….

Once fully charged, I turned it on & off I went. Setting up Wi-Fi was a doddle & you have to have a Google account to access the Android Marketplace as well as other parts of the Android Software, but I had one already so was easy to log in with my account details. Setting up to how I like it was pretty simple too.




Now the downfall, for some reason after a day the Marketplace wouldn't download apps to the Tablet. I tried different ways without success. But as it was Christmas I couldn't ask the supplier about it so I reset it & tried again. Reset to factory setting was painless & Marketplace worked ok, but stopped working again a day later. I eventually worked out that if I install all wanted apps as soon as Factory reset is done, that will do me until I contact the supplier about this glitch. So with that sorted for now I used it over Christmas, a lot! It was very handy, even fitted inside my coat pocket as I went visiting family & friends. Whilst I played with it, I found it didn't like Flash or Java but neither did my N95 & on researching more I found out only Android 2.2 or later does work with Flash.

The Tablet also came with a stylus that slips into the back of it when not in use, this came in handy as the touchscreen isn't too responsive, but a cautious warning if you do use the stylus you be best to sand down the edges of the tip as mine had a sharp edge & slightly scored the glass on the 1st use of it.

All in all, minus the glitch of the App Marketplace this is a worthwhile buy. And after the Christmas season, I contacted Sonix7 about my issues to see if they knew a way to resolve it. The reply I got was a surprising one. They apologised for the issues I had, this was due to a glitch in the firmware & then offered a replacement of a newer 8” model coming out in a few weeks if I can wait. So of course I agreed & a few weeks later the replacement 8” model arrived & I did some comparisons.
 
 



Apart from the obvious difference in size & version of Android as well as the specs, the main differences I found in the hardware was the new 8” model didn't have HDMI output or a camera. This wasn't an issue for me so I was happy with what I have. Specs are as the following: 

OS: Android 2.2

Processor: 1GHZ

RAM: DDR 512MB

Hard drive: 4GB NAND FLASH

Micro SD card slot

WiFi, G-Sensor, Built in stereo speaker

Flash 10, Standard 30pin dock connector & USB adapters

3.5-mm stereo earphone jack

8" TFT LCD touch screen, resolution 800x600

Support up to 1080P, YouTube video playback

Battery: Long-time standby with low power consumption up to 6 hours

Built-in 3900mAh lithium

Multi formats supported include: MPEG1, MPEG2, WMV9, MPEG4-SP, ASF, DIVX, H.263, H.264, RMVB, Mov, Mkv, TS, FLV, WMA, MP3, WAV, OOG, AAC, EAAC

Weight: 460g

 

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 Not only was it better in processing speed, RAM, Memory & screen size as well as its now Android 2.2, I also found the touchscreen was far more responsive. Downside was that it wasn't pocket size, but it still is portable as what I required as well as cheaper than a Netbook. Setting up from start was the same as the previous model with the Wi-Fi & Google account, etc. The updated Android is a lot better, Marketplace is working ok too with no issues of troublesome downloading as I had in the previous model. So I am totally happy with this model & the service I got from Sonix7, they definitely achieved higher than expected service & I would recommend them.

Are the 2 models worth it? I say yes! Even with the firmware glitches in the 7” model, it was still a good one to work with & eventually there would be an upgrade to it to take the kinks out of the glitch in the Android Marketplace, maybe even upgrade it to Android 2.2.

Both have their uses, it all depends on what you require. 7” Model is great for it size & 8” for its power. Both are below £200 mark, a lot less than the iPad & Samsung Tab as well as many other similar ones going for the £500 mark. I have played with a Samsung Tab & the best bit about it was the touchscreen, but £500 is a lot of money. These 2 models I have discussed about are sure worth what you pay for. And as for battery life of both models, I found that not to bad. I got around 3 hrs of use on a single full charge on both models, this isn't to bad. I know of mobile phones running down quicker when using all its services. They also met my requirements to what I wanted too, so I am happy.

I hope this review of my path to getting a tablet has been of help & hope you the best to getting a tablet suitable to your needs. Tho in a few months, these models will be outdated & other better ones will be available. But the Company will hopefully be there for you to go have a look at.