This blog is now very rarely updated – you can find my articles and posts on LinkedIn here.
I also like to post my photography (rather than selfies you’ll be pleased to hear!) on Instagram, [Update 2025] although I have recently deleted the app in the spirit of reducing my usage.
Very rare twitter/X user @cronky (mostly to keep an eye on what is now being posted there) dabbling with Mastodon at https://infosec.exchange/@cronky and other platforms but LinkedIn is your safest bet.
I’ve been very lucky in securing a place on Deloitte RAB (Ride Across Britain) which is a 9 day, 969 mile cycling challenge from Lands end to John o’ Groats!
As this means I now have a charity fundraising target of £900 I thought I’d better make a start on my campaign and put out a plea for help!
I am supporting Launchpad; a charity to prevent homelessness in the Reading area and my fundraising page is:
https://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/OliverCronk
I often feel guilty when passing homeless people but it turns out that in many cases simply giving hand-outs doesn’t help instead supporting charities such as Launchpad is far more effective.
I’d really appreciate your support in helping raising funds for this worthy cause. Even if its just a couple of quid it all adds up!
Whilst I am a keen cyclist I’ve been training all through the winter (which has been pretty cold at times as per the picture above!) as this kind of endurance event requires proper prep!
Thanks for reading and any support!
Oliver
Just realised I have been blogging for 10 years this month! Including a post about AI that is really pertinent today. Particularly when you think about how elections are have recently been influenced by AI and social media meta data.
I’ve mostly moved to using LinkedIn and Medium – write a lot less than when I was a hard core geek as I have less time these days.
I really need to update the look and feel of this site (as it is based on a 10 year old template it is not responsive or HTML5 based). But it is not exactly at the top of my to do list!
We raised £2,249.23 for The Royal Marsden Cancer Charity which we are really pleased about – thank you so much for your generous support. http://www.justgiving.com/oxed
Annoyingly the distance we covered was half a mile short of 400 miles!!! Here is a nice overview map of the route generated by VeloViewer.com
So the 2016 charity cycling challenge is Oxford to Edinburgh – 400 miles over 3 days! Originally we (Anthony and I) were going to attempt to do it over 2 but we looked at the route and decided that was too crazy – doing it over 3 days will still be very hard – day 3 will be particularly hilly.
We are raising money for the Royal Marsden Cancer Charity (who we fundraised for in 2014 when we did Lands End to John O’Groats) – who are particularly close to my heart at the moment as my dad recently had an operation there to remove a rare GIST tumour.
Here is the plan – in late May we set off:
Day 1 Oxford to Worksop just north of Sherwood Forest
https://www.strava.com/routes/4419428
The longest day at 138 miles (222KM) and 1,900m climbing
Day 2 is Sherwood Forest to Stanhope
https://www.strava.com/routes/4409732
132 miles (214KM) and also 1900m climbing
Day 3 is Stanhope to Edinburgh!
https://www.strava.com/routes/4409855
Shortest day but more hills 123 miles (199KM) and 3071m of climbing
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Really enjoyed riding around Garda earlier in the month. Mata Cycles near Salo are very friendly and helpful and I rented one of their bikes for 3 days. 
Here is my .gpx file from last years RideLondon 100 in case anyone wants the route for their Garmin. Can’t guarantee it will be the same as this year but it looks like it will be.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/55541537/RL2013.gpx
Looking forward to this years event, although the weather forecast looks somewhat interesting at the moment!
Rather pleased with a few of these achievements gained during LEJOGON:
This is quite a cool way of seeing our route, created by veloviewer.com which does great things with your Strava data.
I think photos and videos are pretty much complete now – on the Google Photos Album here:
Real mix of crazy ones, landscapes and lovely MAMIL shots!!!