Category: Uncategorized

My saga of routers continued over the past month having gone through two more BT Infinity version 3 routers. Finally after another couple of days of ‘fault finding’ on my part BT finally agree to replace the router. Happily this one has a stronger wireless signal, it can now be used around the whole house and the wireless signal is now broadcasting constantly. However…

There now seems to be fall off in download speed! As can be seen fro other posts, previous months figures have been on average around the 33Mb speed mark, but I’ve noticed a drop of towards below 30Mb and at the time of writing, we are around 25MB! I have reported this to BT, but of course the usual responses have been given; Broadband Bandwidth, other people using the line etc. etc. I do wish BT would at least train their support staff to give out believable responses! I’ll what happens during October and send a copy into BT when I next report any further drop off.

I’ve received my letter from Wokingham Borough Council about the proposed additional Water Reservoir that Thames Water are proposing to build next to the existing reservoir.

All the relevant plans for the proposed development can be found on the Planning Application pages of Wokingham Borough Councils website. The planning application number to search for is F/2012/1824.

Comments are due in by 5th October 2012. Don’t miss the date to submit your comments.

An update from Thames Water’s point of view can be found on their main website.

Well it appears that it’s been while since I posted anything on this blog, must get better at that. One thing that I can post about is the past three months ISP figures. All seems to be quite on that front with pretty much the same performance download speed for June, July and August.

One thing that I am still disappointed about is that we are still not able to get anywhere towards the 70MB promised when the connection was upgraded to Infinity 2. I know that we will never get to a full 70MB speed, but it would be good to see it creeping up towards the 50MB mark.

One gripe I do currently have about the current BT Infinity 2 router is it’s weak wireless signal. Despite a number of calls to BT Broadband support they seem incapable of wanting to understand that this router is delivering a lower wireless power than my previous BT Infinity 1 router. Clearly if I can’t use a wireless device in the same place as I could with the previous router then it is not giving out the same wireless broadcast power.

Finally last Friday after making the usual tests for ‘them’, they have at finally acknowledged that there have been receiving calls from a number of BT users reporting the same weak wireless signal problem. I am told that once BT have collected more information they will make a decision and probably replace the unit. So I have a few more weeks to wait before I can get that one resolved. We will see what happens!

Anyway, here are the performance figures for the past three months.

Many of us were disappointed about the lack of visibility of the recent Venus transit due to the low cloud and early time of the event.

However I came across this interesting image of the transit and the International Space station in one shot.

I’ve also added the montage of images that I took of the last Venus Transit back in June of 2004 using a small telescope in my back garden.

We had a much better time frame then and obviously better weather that allowed me to get a near full transit recorded.


Not bad for the equipment I had at the time.

Now not only do you have to have your own twin pack of alcohol breathalysers with you, but it is now illegal to have the Speed Camera detection option active in your own SatNav. See this Telegraph article for more info about this and other motoring relating issues across the European countries.

Make sure the alcohol breathalyser test kit is an approved version by the French Authorities – as not everyone available in UK. You can find them at AlcoSense, Amazon and a number of other outlet if you search the Internet. These will be required to be carried by 1st July.

Make sure you know how to turn off the ‘Speed Camera’ detection in your SatNav before you get into France, I found two places in my SatNav that I had to un-tick’ to make sure that it was completely disabled. Check the documentation now as it better than getting as fine when in France.

Bonne journee!

More figures for April and May from my BT Infinity Broadband connection. All seems to be working well, with a slight drop in May, due I think to some engineering work going on around this location. But still very stable.

The March BT Infinity download figures maintained a steady count of around 29MB.

Keep it going.

Despite many local objections and a public enquiry (download see report here) ignoring them, a Communications Mast is finally to be erected inside of Redhatch Copse. In fact, according to a letter from Reading University’s Public Relations (there’s a joke) work is due to start this very week!

And so it begins!

Just received notification from Wokingham Borough Council of the date for the Public Enquiry concerning the erection of the Communications Mast associated with the Sibly Hall development. The opening public meeting is scheduled for 10am on 6th March 2012 at the Wokingham Borough Council offices in Wokingham.

You can also download a copy of it from here.

I’ve just received the February issue of the University of Reading’s Community newsletter, where the new Vice-Chancellor, Sir David Bell discusses his role at the University having moved there from the Department of Education.

I was interested in one of Sir David’s quotes…

“I take very seriously our responsibility to be a good neighbour and the need for us to work closely with other local agencies and organisations.”

I don’t think the residents living around the edge of the proposed development of Sibly Hall would think that the University is being a good neighbour, would you?

If you would like to contact the University of Reading’s Community Relations Manager, Ann Westgarth to pass on what you think about them being a good neighbour, you can do that by emailing her at a.westgarth[@]reading.ac.uk ([ ]’s inserted by me to stop spammers using the email address direct from this blog post).