Virgin Trains WiFi

On Wednesday I took the train from Kendal to Lytham so I could have a drink at the Xmas lunch, normally I do it by car taking around an hour, by train it's an example of why public transport isn't an alternative for alot of people, I caught the 7:05 from Kendal, 20 minute wait at Oxenholme for a connection then another 45 minute in Preston for the Lytham train, getting me into work for 9:30, two and a half hours later.

That aside the reason for this post, Virgin Trains are offering free WiFi access on it's trains until 28 February 2011 after doing a deal with Google, so for the first time I tried it out with my iPod touch.  Have to say I'm not all that impressed, on the way down, it worked, was easy to connect to (although a little slow), but in my 30 minute journey I only used it for 5 minutes to check my mail, facebook, twitter.

On the journey back my iPod could see Virgin's WiFi hotspot but try as I might it wouldn't connect to their network - disappointed.

I've concluded that I would pay for this service, not reliable and I would use it as much as I thought I would.

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Automatically download BBC Listen Again Programming to your iPod

I like to listen to a lot of speak based radio, but I tend to never have the time to listen when they are broadcast and while the majority of these programme are available on BBC Listen Again this is no good when you want to listen to them in your car on a long commute to/from work.

For the last year or so I've been using Radio Downloader from http://www.nerdoftheherd.com/tools/radiodld/

which has solved all my problems, it will automatically download my favourite BBC Listen Again programmes  to my PC with iTunes will automatically pick-up for sync'ing to my iPod touch to listen in my car.

I've produced a short walk through on how it all works, below press the right button to watch full screen (esc button to return to browser)  

I've also put a longer version (quality lower) on YouTube,