soapyfrog

Five and 2011

2012-01-06T06:21:00.000Z

I do believe this blog is now 5 years old. Happy birthday blog. Though you already seem to be getting a bit long in the tooth.

It's also traditional to summarise the year that has passed, so here's a super quick summary:

New Year in the Maldives. Very nice time, although it did rain on New Year's Eve
Las Vegas and San Diego in March
Great road trip by myself in Rosie around the perimeter of Scotland
Started running, built up to around 16km with a 28 minute 5k pace. Very pleased.
Another drive up to Scotland with wife.
Picked up stress fractures from too much running. Displeased.
Muscat, Oman in October.
Maintained weight, just about, even though I couldn't run or even walk much through to the end of the year.
Got my broken crown (from evil NHS dentist) fixed and generally got my dental health sorted out.
Said goodbye to Rosie and hello to Florence.
Still working at Barcap, though looking at options in 2012

Death of personal blogging?

2012-01-01T22:15:00.000Z

A personal blog seems to be more and more outdated these days, what with Facebook introducing the timeline feature and Twitter getting more and more popular.

Blogging is still good for people with journalistic aspirations, or perhaps wanting to keep an online record of a particular subject, but for most other things, they seem to be dead.

In fact, I'm finding Google Reader for my RSS feeds less and less useful. I get most of my news first from Twitter these days and when something does show up in an RSS feed, it's old news.

I'll certainly keep this blog alive as it goes back quite far and I like to look things up from time to time, but I doubt I'll be posting here much any more.

For personal stuff (with a restricted audience) there's Facebook.

For random thoughts there's Twitter.

For health stuff, there's my blog at MyFitnessPal.

Another Health Update

2011-10-27T23:02:00.000+01:00

Bah, not much to report really except, I've been seeing Wilna the physio for about a month and George the podiatrist a few times too.

No running and even walking is seriously frowned upon, until things are sorted out.

The "things" are:

Stress fractures (I can't be bothered to remember the fancy medical terms) in both legs, top of fib on left leg, bottom of femur on right.
Stiffness in must of the muscles in my legs. This is where Wilna is doing miracles.
Hips that rotate out unnaturally, and therefore feet too. This causes unusual stress in all sorts of places. This is where George is doing his stuff.

To date, I'm generally pointing in the right direction, have inserts in my shoes to balance out the stresses and on the whole W & G seem pleased with progress.

It'll be late November, at the earliest, before I'm even thinking of running. Right now, I'm not even allowed to walk to work - "no more than 10 mins, 2 or 3 times a week."

All this was quite difficult at the beginning as I'd got a bit addicted to running, then I tried P90X, but had to stop a lot of that - especially the plyometrics - so I joined a local gym so I can swim.

I'm getting used to the lack of exercise, especially the cardio, and this worries me as I don't want to get used to not exercising. At least I'm not gaining weight. A month ago, I was around 92.5kg and today I'm 93. This in spite of raising my daily calorie intake by 300.

More detail on this on my fitness blog at http://www.myfitnesspal.com/blog/goron59

Health update

2011-09-13T07:05:00.000+01:00

An update on my last post.

MRI scans on my legs show some "stress damage" under the knee and my doc has told me to cease any impact exercise and minimise walking as much as possible too, including walking to work.

This also buggers up my P90X ambitions as Plyo is basically jumping up and down... even with soft landings, it's going to be an issue. Also, the leg work on Friday made my shins really sore, so that's out too.

I'll just have to see what I can do. In the mean time, I've got physio and podiatrist appointments to sort out, then a follow up with doc in a few weeks.

Bah :(

Slow here

2011-09-06T23:02:00.000+01:00

Very little posted here this year.

Much of my activity has been centred around health and fitness - which is a bit of a change for me - and as such, I write things in a fitness blog and also semi-privately on MyFitnessPal.

I've been there for 420 days now, lost 51 pounds, got into running, regularly doing 5-10 km and peaking at over 15km.

I've picked up some injuries, and right now I'm getting some diagnostic work on a problematic left shin/lower leg. Not being able to run frustrates me, so I've taking up P90X. It's only day 2 (of 90) but it's hard work.

It occurs to me that little else has happened for me this summer apart from all the above, but I'm happy, have made many new friends and generally feel pleased.

Let's see if all this continues through out the autumn/winter.

Back to work

2011-05-03T22:37:00.000+01:00

Back to work after 11 days off for the price of 3. Thanks Wills and Kate!

Not so great being back at work, re-experiencing the horrors of Windows XP and Office 2003.

It's like being in the stone age.

Decision

2011-05-02T09:33:00.000+01:00

I've deleted the one at blog.soapyfrog.com (it's all imported here anyway) and visiting blog.soapyfrog.com will redirect here.

I still won't be putting much here, preferring Momento and Facebook, but at least this will require no maintenance :-)

Indecision

2011-05-02T09:13:00.000+01:00

For a long while I thought I'd stop blogging. I use Momento on the iPhone to keep track of things for my benefit, and that's really what my blog is all about - to help me remember stuff.

I created this blog on blogger and imported my old blog.... didn't really like it and deleted. Not I've undeleted it to write this.

It would be nice to have something that I can point others too, but don't want to have to maintain it. But then I can do that on Facebook as it's easy to make a Note or a Post public whilst keeping everything else private.

Dunno really.

Maldives pics

2011-02-15T07:46:00.000Z

I finally got around to posting some pics from our recent holiday to the Maldives.

Moved?

2011-02-15T05:28:00.000Z

I used http://wordpress2blogger.appspot.com/ to convert my wordpress blog to blogger and then imported everything here.

Seems to have worked ok. I just need to decide if I really want to use blogger instead of wordpress. I can have blog.soapyfrog.com point to blogger without problems, well, with few problems. There are all the permalinks that will be broken and anyone using an aggregator will need to be repointed too.

New?

2011-02-11T06:47:00.000Z

I'm a bit bored with WordPress, and even more bored with having to run my own instance of it.

Now, can I export my old WordPress blogs to a format that Blogger can import?

Four

2011-01-06T07:34:00.000Z

This blog is four years old. Happy birthday blog :-)

2010

2011-01-06T07:33:00.000Z

About this time last year (well OK, a few days earlier), I wrote this, a review of 2009, so I might as well do one for 2010 too.

2009 ended a little shakily but fortunately, things were looking up in 2010. The weather was rubbish, something that seems to have been repeated at the end of 2010, but my wintery trip up to Scotland in Herman didn't dampen my enthusiasm for motoring.

So much so, that we waved goodbye to Herman and said hello to Rosie. She too had a shaky start, but soon settled in and we generally had a very good first year together, though ironically, she's currently having a new arse fitted after a rather silly incident with a pillar in my garage :(

Work-wise, things started moving at Barclays after a sloooow start from October 2009, speeded up a bit in the middle of the year, slumped a bit, then picked up again. Overall, not too satisfactory a year, but things can only improve from now on.

2010 is the year I met The Stig (when he was still just The Stig). That was a brilliant day out at the Top Gear Test Track. Unfortunately it also saw my first health knock of the year. I pulled a calf muscle during one of the driving exercises and ended up hobbling and generally not being able to walk properly for three months.

This led me on to the next health event. I put on some weight, peaking, if I recall, at 117kg. I decided that I wanted to get my weight under control, set about counting calories and tracking exercise and joined MyFitnessPal, a kind of food diary meets Facebook.

I also wanted to save some money, so thought, as it was summer and generally very pleasant to be out and about, to take up running and dump the gym membership. Sadly, this did my back in and I've been in physiotherapy ever since, unable to do anything high impact, but generally managing the pain. Hopefully this will get properly fixed in 2011.

So instead of quitting the gym, I ended up going even more, avoiding high impact and generally working on my core. That with the motivation gained from MFP, I got my weight down to 101kg by December 22, got out of the BMI 'obese' category and generally things are looking good.

Of course, 2010 was also a year of travel.

London weekend minibreak in February for wife's birthday

Las Vegas in March for our 9th anniversary

Peak District and North Wales, first proper Rosie road trip in June.

St Petersburg minibreak in July

Euro Road Trip II in August - two weeks hurtling around the Italian Lakes, Alps and Austria - a fantastic run out for Rosie.

Wye, Kent minibreak in November - a very pleasing and peaceful place.

Maldives at Christmas/New Year.

2010 hasn't been a great year for blogging. Blogging just doesn't seem that relevant any more in this modern age of instant and disposable publication via Twitter and Facebook. I tried Twitter, and it doesn't suite me at all, but Facebook is where I bore people the most these days. MyFitnessPal has also been a useful social network for me - probably more so than Facebook, and I expect this to continue into 2011.

So, outlook for 2011?

Well I have a March goal of 90kg (close to my ideal weight) and I'll then switch to a maintenance mode for the rest of the year. Diets never work, but lifestyle changes do, so that's my aim.

It's our tenth anniversary this year and we plan to go back to Las Vegas in March.

We plan another family holiday with the in-laws in October (ish). It was Turkey in 2009... probably somewhere similar this year.

I have no plans to change Rosie. She's a complex beast and I'm still learning, so I expect some smaller domestic road trips might feature and maybe some track time. There will be no Euro Road Trip III this year.

There will definitely be change in my work this year. Either where I am or somewhere else; maybe something else?

I really want to leave London, but how far? Do I cross water? Well, maybe not in 2011, but getting out of the cramped, expensive, dirty city, where nothing works properly, is now a short-to-medium term goal and not the long-term goal it always was.

Light

2010-11-11T07:00:00.000Z

I've been fairly seriously trying to lose weight, and secondarily, get fitter since the summer.

I don't do diets - I don't believe they work long term - so I've stuck to the principle burning more calories than I consume.

To aid this, I signed up to MyFitnessPal to count calories and track exercise, and it's been very successful so far.

Since starting with MFP, I've lost, on average, 1/3 kg every week, which is a healthy rate of loss. I'm now simply "overweight" according to the BMI calculation.

More importantly, because this isn't a diet, as such, I've become used to a new lifestyle and I'm comfortable with it. Once I've reached my target weight, I'm very likely to stay there.

I've even become used to a regular exercise program, despite suffering a couple of injuries during this time.

A big part of MFP is the community. It's very supportive, but equally, if you have some success, you become supportive to others.

If I have a bad curry/beer/cake day, it will be public in my food diary, everyone will know, and I'll feel like I've let more than myself down. So I don't do it (much).

So I'm currently 102.5kg, 2.5001kg off my Christmas target of breaking into double digits. Then another 10 (ish) and I'll be done.

Rosie vs Kate (final judgement)

2010-09-06T21:50:00.000+01:00

OK, so after an original view and a mid-trip update, I've made my decision on the best route planning and navigation device.

Rosie (built-in RNS-E) wins, New Kate (TomTom 950 Live) loses.

Really, New Kate's only real purpose for the last trip was showing speed (in KM), speed limits, and highlight locations of 'safety' cameras. She was fine for the former (except in tunnels), OK-ish for limits, and utterly useless for the cameras. She didn't spot one.

On planning, New Kate is hopeless for avoiding toll roads in countries where practically all roads are toll roads (thanks for Mark for helping to point this out).

The final straw was when I tried to use her to navigate through the Austrian lake district. She seemed to have this slightly brain dead view that all roads with 100km/h limit are equal so dragged us through some very rural, single track roads. Rosie, on the return trip, seemed to know this and took us along some sensible roads.

New Kate is going on eBay (or similar).

I do still need something that'll tell me how fast I'm going in km/h, but I think I have an free iPhone app for that.

Rosie vs New Kate (update)

2010-08-29T07:16:00.000+01:00

Six months or so ago, I wrote a comparison piece between New Kate (TomTom) and Rosie's built-in satnav (RNS-E).

At that time, and since, I've generally settled for Rosie over Kate, but thought that perhaps, on a longer trip around Europe, I'd go with Kate.

Well, I'm mid way through our second Euro road trip, and thought I post a few new findings. Both Rosie and Kate have maps current as of Spring 2010.

First of all, I decided from the outset to use Rosie for all navigation needs yet still have Kate on the windscreen to show a 2D overview map and to list current speed and limit in km/h (Rosie doesn't show speed limits).

As a test (and a backup) I'd plan my routes in Kate first, then keep her passive whilst in the car.

Amazingly, though, Kate didn't know the first three addresses we wanted to go to - Reims, Aix-les-Bains (France) and Stresa (Italy). Not only did Rosie understand the addresses, but she also knew the hotels.

Rosie also wins when planning a more interesting route.

With Kate, you tell her to use a particular waypoint - a small town, intersection or to avoid something... all a bit fiddly.

With Rosie, I tried this initially, but gave up and just said: take me to xxx. But pleasingly, Kate will offer a few variations on the route that, so far, has including the interesting things I wanted to do.

So Kate is very techie, very algo-oriented and Rosie just seems to know the best way to get places.

An aside to this is the way Kate deals with toll roads. You either have them or not. With Rosie, she shows a selection of routes with the amount of time on toll roads shown for each (they're much harder to avoid in mainland Europe, and in Switzerland, all motorways are toll roads).

Well, we're only half way though this trip so plenty of time for navigation disasters, but so far for France, Italy and Switzerland, Rosie definitely wins.

Survived

2010-08-16T21:21:00.000+01:00

We had family over for a long weekend, and usually this means eating and drinking too much. This time was no exception :-)

Being on a diet, however, I was a lot more conscious of what I was doing, did a lot more exercise (walking mostly) and ended the weekend with no gain (and no loss) of weight.

I call this a good result.

Now I'm back in stricter mode and hope to lose a kg by the end of the week.

Four

2010-08-14T01:33:00.000+01:00

After much deliberation, testing alternatives, sampling various sub-cultures, and generally trying to avoid fanboi-ism, I purchased an iPhone 4.

I rejected Android, because most people I know who use Android spend half their time finding the latest ROM, much of their time bitching about how various things don't work properly, and the rest sneering at iPhone users.

Not a crowed I wanted to be associated with.

I also rejected buying an iPhone unlocked from Apple, because that required begging Apple to let you have one (well, registering and waiting for weeks).

In the end I procured one on Vodafone from the Carphone Whorehouse with 18 month contract (I tend to keep phones for 18-24 months anyway).

This was good. It arrived the next day. It cost me £260, with £60 cashback from Quidco and £156 back for old phone from Mazuma. I paid for it on a card with 0% for 12 months so there's a little bit of saving there too.

Keeping with non-fanboi-ism, I can confirm that it does dramatically lose signal when holding it in a certain way (though no dropped calls yet) and the dickie proximity sensor is a bit annoying.

Overall, though, I'm pleased.

And that's all that matters really.

Holiday Planning

2010-08-03T22:03:00.000+01:00

It's that time of year when we plan our summer holiday, and this year we're off on Euro Road Trip II.

Two weeks zooming around Europe, although fewer stops this time and therefore more time at each place.

The Italian lakes, the Alps and Austria will feature highly.

This will be the first long trip for Rosie so really looking forward to the Alps and some derestricted bits in Germany on the way there/back :-)

But more, I'm looking forward to three separate relaxing minibreaks.

Emissions

2010-08-03T09:31:00.000+01:00

These days, if you have a completely electric car (in UK, London specifically), you pay no road tax, pay no congestion charge and gain the respect of eco hippies everywhere.

Of course, the electricity has to come from somewhere, so why not get a wheezy, dirty old diesel generator? And put it in the boot.

It's fantastic. You get to show off your green credentials, save a load of money, yet still have the convenience of filling up at the pump :-)

Fat

2010-08-02T22:12:00.000+01:00

So it's now post-Beer and Curry (tm) weekend and I've not yet weighed myself to see how much damage was done.

The weekend was great. I caught up with brother and his family, including little George who is now two weeks old.

Then up to darkest Oxfordshire for the chilling, chatting and the aforementioned Beer and Curry(tm) with chums.

After trawling through the nutritional database, I can safely say that I blew my daily intake quota by more than a factor of two on Saturday evening :)

Sunday was better, although I did have a choccy biscuit.

Overall, though, things are not too bad. Today, I'm back on the wagon, about 600 kcals under my daily quota, and not too peckish.

Tomorrow morning, I may risk a weigh-in, so keep an eye on the weight widget over on the right :-)

Fit

2010-07-31T08:47:00.000+01:00

It's been six weeks since my injury and I'm only just getting back to normal. I even managed to shuffle quickly across a road yesterday without pain!

Over that period, however, I've been walking less, and less quickly, lifting less and generally doing even less cardio and resistance work than usual. As a result my weight crept up higher, and wasn't stopping.

So I needed a plan.

Since last Sunday, I've been calorie counting, and according to the website I use for tracking, I've lost 3kg in six days. I've put a live banner on the right of this blog (should you be reading it manually).

It's not been too bad, trying to hit around 1600 kcals a day, and in all but one day, I finished under.

This weekend will be a challenge though.

Visiting my brother this morning for some pre-birthday jolity, then off to Oxfordshire for Beer And Curry (tm).

I'll probably be well off the wagon by Sunday afternoon :)

Top Gear

2010-06-16T21:25:00.000+01:00

Two weeks ago, I received an email entitled "CONGRATULATIONS... you are a winner!" and so on.

Usually, this are spam/scams and the get ignored, however this one claimed to be from the BBC and Nissan, didn't appear to be asking for any money, and was offering to "spend an entire day learning to drive like the Stig, at Dunsfold Park where Top Gear is filmed!"

Well, scam or no, I wasn't going to pass this up, so I checked the existence of person sending the email, replied and it all seemed valid.

Moving forward, yesterday morning, I find myself rolling up at the Top Gear studios in Rosie, spotted the hanger, that 747 that's always parked out on the runway, and getting a bit of tingle up the spine.

I ventured into the plush (ie, a shed) production office where I was immediately not killed or robbed, but asked to sign waivers and other things, then given a grey (Clarkson Team) hat and offered breakfast.

There were 20 winners in total plus half a dozen Nissan people, so quite crowded, and a little noisy with chatting and eating, then, The Sting came among us. He (it?) stood there in his characteristic folded arms pose, then one of his handlers asked, "so who'd like a photo with The Stig?"

So off we went to the hanger (where TG audiences go) and we queued. Some people tried to look cool, make jokes, do the rabbit ears thing, one even tried to hug him. I thought I'd go for The Stig pose, but mostly looked awkward and not a picture I wan't to share... but here we go anyway :-)

The day was split up into a series of events.

Track time in the Nissan 370Z (with GT pack), an "old style Le Mans" auto test, some time with a Batak machine and Gran Turismo 5, then a drive out into the local countryside in 370Z roadsters.

As it would turn out, I was lucky enough to be in Clarkson team that went out on track first, then Le Mans, Batak and road test.

So, donning a hard hat, jumping in the 370Z near the start/finish line I had two familiarisation laps with the instructor driving. I had done some preparation for this: watching all the TG re-runs on Dave and studying the satellite imagery of the track, but nothing quite prepares you for the awesomeness of actually being on that track. More spine tingling, and perhaps not enough listening to the instructor, as I then had two practise laps for myself.

The Crooner Curves don't really count as a corner, but the turn in to Wilson is hard to spot, and I had forgotten the lines, but picked up pace, past the tyres and right into Chicago, again not really getting an appreciation of the space.

Then zooming down to the Hammer Head, more or less getting the entry right, but fairly slow out. I knew the corner opens up, but until you're there, you don't really get how wide a runway is.

Flat out then, and in to The Follow Through - "did you lift?" as Clarkson always asks, well in the Z you break a bit before entry then.... I got lost. My greatest fear for the day. The problem is that the track is a figure of eight, so I'd been here before and thought I needed to go around again :-S A bit of correction, then past the tyres and to the left into Bentley Bend and onto my favourite part of the track. Again, hard to spot the turn-in, but traveling quite quickly here, break then turn hard into the Second To Last Bend. If you get it right, it's brilliant. Brief jab on the brakes, then into Gambon and across the line.

( A good track guide is here )

My second practise lap was not much better, but my three timed laps were showing a little improvement. I'm sure after another ten laps or so, I'd get the hang of it, but that was that.

A note on the Z. It's quite sporty, very grippy and seems to turn in well (very well), but for 328PS, seems a little underpowered. It's quite civilised in low gears, has really nice syncro rev match, and at no point did I feel it was going to kill me. Rosie, in contrast is a veritable rocket, fidgety around 2500-3000 rpm and demands a lot more attention, so I suppose engaging in different ways. The RS4 is about two seconds faster around the track in the hands of The Stig, has twice as many seats, more luggage space and costs about as much.... so I don't think the day was good for Z sales :-)

Right, next event, an autotest around cones, with old style Le Man starts, that is, you run to the car, get in, drive off, do a stint, then park, run out, tag the other driver, then she does her stint. Lots of fun. Traction/stability off, wet track.

The Stig joined us for the Le Mans thing. He got in as a passenger for one of my team's practise run. How much pressure is that? Driving the Stig? Well apparently he has a sense of humour, fiddling with the radio and knocking the car out of gear.

On my turn, however, there were two problems.

1. It was an automatic. One of those olde worlde torque converter types and bloody awful. Compared to Herman's DSG it was a joke. Horrid thing.

2. After my stint, I began to run to tag the other driver when something in my leg snapped. Big ouch.

On the positive side, I'd done what I'd come here to do - drive on the TG track, but I was now unable to walk, so had to be looked after by the event staff... and I'd like to say they were all great people.

I sat out the Batak thing and couldn't even get into the Gran Turismo contraptions, so a bit miserable, then one of the event girls asked if I'd like to sit in with an instructor in the GT-R on the drive out (local country roads).

Yes Please!

If I was at all wavering on the desire for a 370Z it was completely shafted from being in the GT-R. Even faster than Rosie and the DSG transmission makes for smooth progress around the twisty roads. It doesn't sound as nice as Rosie's V8 but there are certain compensations. The instructor reckoned it was comparable in experience to an R8 V10 (as aspiration of mine) so there's something to look forward to :)

At the end of the day, I still couldn't walk, didn't win any prizes (I think my times were middle of group, certainly nothing to shout about), so thought about leaving. I really couldn't walk (and still struggle today) so wondered how I was going to drive home. Fortunately, moving my right ankle was painless, so unless I needed to brake heavily I should make it home and did so.

Big smile on face from the experience, slightly dampened by the injury.

And like the TG/Nissan website says, only twenty people will know what it's like, and I was one of them.

Wales

2010-06-04T01:06:00.000+01:00

The last bank holiday weekend, we headed over to North Wales again. I loved it last time, wandering mostly around Snowdonia, with a bit of pottering around other interesting places, and we stayed in a rather lovely manor.

This time, I wanted to return to the area, drive over the Llanberis Pass (a few times), but maybe see something different.

We picked Bodysgallen Hall for the place to stay, a little way outside of Llandudno, but close enough to the mountains for a blast.

We never made it into Llandudno itself, but did have a tour around Anglesey, a rather splendid place, especially the north side where we had a wander around Bull Bay.

The area in general reminds me a lot of the Alps, strangely enough. Llanberis Pass is as good as the San Bernadino and the A55 from Conwy down to Bangor is very much like the tunnel sections to the west of Geneva. You really don't have to go that far to get good roads. Rosie loves them.

The area is also well stocked with Shell garages, essential for feeding a thirsty girl as they all sell V-Power :-)

Well, that's it for another bank holiday. The next one in August will probably see us on another Euro road trip; a different route this time, but I'm sure the Alps will feature again...

-

Satnav Note: Kate didn't see any use this trip. I've completely switched over to Rosie's built-in satnav. There may be plusses and minuses, but Rosie wins out over all.

Tech Note: Usually, I take the MacBook with me on trips, for keeping in touch, planning routes, checking out local tourist things, etc. On this trip, the iPad made its debut (with the MacBook as backup). The iPad completely met my needs, however, and the MacBook stayed in its case. In fact, it hasn't come out since we returned.

Peak

2010-05-05T21:55:00.000+01:00

It's so nice having a bit of sunshine recently, after a long, cold and damp winter.

May bank holiday season is upon us and we took a trip up to the Peak District. Nice to give Rosie a run out, nice to get out of the city, see some hills etc, and generally nice to have a long weekend.

The weather forecast for the weekend, however, was rain. Lots of rain. We were lucky though. Saturday was sunny and dry, Sunday a bit drippy during the day and Monday was mostly dry coming home. So we escaped the rain in London.

We stayed at the Lee Wood hotel in Buxton - a nice place off the Park, comfortable rooms, but slightly inept staff. To get service in the bar, you needed to ask at reception. It took the waiter a couple of attempts to bring us the correct breakfast, and the evening session was challenging to them too. Still, a nice place and quite relaxing.

Buxton itself is pretty, compact, a bit like Bath but a fraction the size. It has a park with water, an opera house, and lots of pubs.

We didn't go there for walking in the hills, something that I suppose most people go the Peak District for, but it was nice to have a blast around the park. The Snake Road (A57) in the north is particular pleasing. The Pass was almost reminiscent of the San Bernadino Pass in Switzerland and a lot closer to home. It was only occasionally blighted by caravans.

Following on from my previous post, we chose to use only Rosie's satnav for this trip. Worked extremely well, except for a time where she didn't know where a village was. We had Kate as a backup, but she didn't know where it was either. Fortunately, the iPhone did, so we could work around the problem. Not having to stick something to the windscreen has become a real bonus and will probably continue to use only Rosie for my navigation needs. Kate may well be destined for eBay.

So, this is the May bank holiday season, so where to go for the next long weekend? I'm thinking North Wales again - Rosie has never been there before and Lena and I really enjoyed it last time. The Llanberis pass beckons.... :-)

In the meantime, there's an election tomorrow, and younger brotherly visits over the next two weekends.

Busy month!

Rosie vs. New Kate

2010-02-02T22:37:00.000Z

A sat nav comparison - New Kate is a TomTom 950 Live (old Kate was a 520) and Rosie refers to her built-in RNS-E device (Rosie being an Audi RS4).

Background

Old Kate was very good and served me well for the last (nearly) two years, but shit software from TomTom meant that syncing and updating a device with an SD card installed was just too much grief and finally the whole thing became too much so I bought New Kate that had all the maps on the internal 'drive.' Much better and also had the cool LIVE services.

Rosie's RNS-E is built in, but has maps circa 2006 and lacks a few features.

So, here's a feature comparison:

Viewing experience

New Kate's screen is smaller than Rosie's but is higher resolution and brighter. Also, New Kate, being stuck to the windscreen, is more in line of site, so you get to keep your eyes on the road more. On the other hand, Rosie also puts turn information on the instrument cluster right in front of you.

Having driven a few hundred miles now with Rosie's sat nav, I'd say there's not really much in it.

Route accuracy

New Kate wins hands down here. Not only does she know the roads better (up todate maps), but knows about crap roads (and to avoid them) and can do eco routes and - here's the winner - has live services so can route based on actual traffic conditions.

Rosie has TMC, but not very often. She doesn't know about eco routes and is much slower at recalculating a route when you ignore her and go somewhere else.

Ease of programming

New Kate is very easy to program. On screen keyboard means you can type in names and places. Unfortunately, the responsiveness is crap, so you end up retyping and generally taking ages. On the other hand, you can pre-program routes from the comfort of home or hotel room, whereas with Rosie, you need to be in the car.

Rosie is a bit more fiddly to enter destinations (no keyboard) but surprisingly has many special destinations built in, eg, I couldn't enter the postcode for a place I wanted in Margate, but she did have the place itself.

Ease of use when driving

It is very hard to do anything with New Kate when driving. Mainly because she's just that much further away (stuck to the screen), and the touch screen requires a bit of accuracy of prodding, taking attention even more from the road. So basically, don't.

Rosie is a bit easier. All controls are via the MMI interface which can be used without looking and is within reach.

New Kate can be controlled via voice, but only you prod the right places on the screen first. RNS-E also has voice control but not in Rosie (needs some phone preparation hardware).

Sexiness of voice

Rosie. Hands down. Although Kate is quite bossy :-)

Convenience

Well, Rosie is always there, so scores highly with convenience. No need to plug anything in, or stick to the screen. On the other hand, New Kate is convenient in that you can plan before you get in the car.

Miscellaneous

Rosie has a nice feature where on a motorway, she'll list all the upcoming junctions and service stations. New Kate doesn't do that.

New Kate knows where the nearest cheapest fuel can be had and can do Google lookups. Rosie cannot. Although I'm not sure it's that useful in practice. The latter is also an expensive service which I may not want to pay for.

New Kate can show the map whilst Rosie shows info on the music I'm listening too. Rosie can't do both at the same time... well she can a bit - the info cluster in front of you still shows next turn info.

New Kate can read road names, whereas Rosie can only read road numbers and major town and city names.

Summary

A tricky one. I think for most things, I'd use Rosie for navigation but if going on a longer trip, especially somewhere in Europe, I'd probably use New Kate. If nothing else New Kate would be a backup.

I'd really like to be able to say Rosie is perfect and New Kate is going on eBay, but I can't. Even if I get the 2010 map updates, I'd still be torn between the two.

I think a revisit is required in six months.

Rosie's return

2010-01-17T00:42:00.000Z

Rosie came home again on Friday after a night at the service centre. The battery was properly checked and proved to be ok, and she's got new gaskets for the rear light clusters.

So a little blip for the first few days, but I'm impressed with the followup service.

On the way back from the service centre, we celebrated with a tankful of Shell V-Max and today she had a run out around Greenwich and down to Bluewater and back. This is only a 60 mile round trip, but that's a quarter of the tank gone.

Rosie is one thirsty girl!

Used cars

2010-01-12T21:14:00.000Z

So is this what it feels like to own a used car?

Rosie, for me, is less than a week old, but she's really almost three years old.

I collected her on Saturday, but on Sunday morning she wouldn't start. I called the free Roadside Assistance people who said the battery was almost dead. OK, so twenty minutes later, the battery was recharged and Rosie and I went for a little blast, and all was well.

Well, almost.

Rosie's boot was full of water. No, not the boot space, but the boot lid. The space where the light cluster lives. Not a good place for water.

I managed to drain it out, and called the dealer and said "Oi!" and Rosie is now going back in to have the seals checked and the battery looked at.

I don't know, maybe I'm unlucky, but Herman was completely flawless for the almost two years we were together, and now I'm having my first issues.

On a positive note, any work done/parts supplied will be free, and if things do go really pear-shaped, I have a 30-day, no quibble replacement policy, but it's still a bit disappointing.

I am happy, however, that the pre-sale checks yielded a slightly worn tyre, so Rosie was given four new boots. And a free service.

So things are maybe not so bad.

And like her siblings from last year, she puts a big smile on my face when I push the loud pedal :-)

Rosie

2010-01-08T18:09:00.000Z

Tomorrow, I'm scheduled to go and fetch my new car, Rosie.

But there is a snag, and a bit of a worry, namely, the weather.

Do I risk crashing Herman on the way, making Rosie unaffordable? And risk crashing Rosie on the way back? Neither outcome would be pleasing.

I'll probably give it a try anyway, as I did manage to get up to Scotland and back without incident in much worse weather.

I'm reminded, however, of my dad buying a new car just before Christmas and ending up abandoning it in a snow drift. It was about a week before he finally got it parked outside his house...

Anyways, fingers crossed there will be no more snow tonight and a mini heatwave to melt the existing ice :-)

Update: Rosie arrived safely. The only potential hic-up was on a tricky bit outside my house where an Aston Martin and a Maserati were having some difficulty on the ice. Serves them right for not having 4WD!

Three

2010-01-06T08:36:00.000Z

This blog is three years old. Happy birthday blog :-)

2009

2010-01-01T12:04:00.000Z

About this time last year, I wrote this, a review of 2008. I did one for 2007 too, so might as well do one for 2009.

2009 started with some uncertain ill health, that turned out to be gall stones. I had my cholecystectomy in February and have been a reasonably good health ever since. My weight has slowly crept up toward my pre-illness weight, but thankfully still about 5kg down.

There was quite a lot of travel in 2009, starting with a long weekend in Dubai in February for wife's birthday. Amazing place.

At Easter, we had a long weekend in Cornwall/Devon, giving Herman a mini road trip.

In June we had a much longer road trip; two weeks through France, Luxembourg, Belgium, Italy, Switzerland and Germany, taking in the Alps, Italian Lakes, French Riviera, Black Forest and generally some of the Best Driving Roads in the World.

We were to return to Belgium in August - Antwerp this time for a minibreak, and another chance for Herman to play with the trains.

In September, we left Herman at home and travelled to Turkey for a week and met up with my mother-in-law, sister-in-law and niece, and a very nice time it was too.

We would have gone to Belgium (Brussels) again a couple of weeks ago if it wasn't for the wrong kind of snow in Calais :(

Finally, for travel, I took Herman up to Aberdeen for Christmas, visiting my dad and stepmum. A bit of drama on Britain's roads, but generally OK.

Work wise, this year started out very well, rebuilding business with Nomura and generally things were good.

By the middle of the year, long hours and weekends were ramping up my stress levels and I began to look for an exit strategy. This culminated in a move to Barclays Capital in October, where stress and work levels have dropped to the floor, so much so, that I'm seriously craving challenges for this year.

Family life took a bit of a dent toward the end of the year, and apparently there was a credit crisis too.

So, for 2010, I will try to strike a better balance of work, personal and family life, reverse the weight gain trend and generally stay healthy.

Winter travel in UK

2009-12-29T08:51:00.000Z

2009 sees another winter where the UK seemingly can't cope.

For us, it started with an aborted attempt to spend the weekend in Brussels before Christmas. We were to take Herman on Le Shuttle and across through France and Belgium.

We got as far as Junction 8 on the M20 before Operation Stack kicked in and kept us there for several hours.

In this case, the snow had closed the ferry port in Dover (M20 feeds this) and in addition, the French weren't letting trucks off the boats/shuttles onto their motorway system out of Calais.

Further, Eurostar's trains encountered the wrong kind of snow and so Eurotunnel had to use Les Shuttles to rescue passengers.

The prospect of waiting up to a day to get to Brussels (which was in a blizzard) just for two nights stay was looking grim, so we bailed out and went back home.

My next journey was a few days later, driving up to Aberdeen.

This was surprisingly easy. M11, M25, M1, A50, M6 - completely fine. Stopped overnight in Preston, then onward the next day to Aberdeen.

This started out OK, but due to black ice and trucks jack knifing on the motorways, I was diverted across country (B roads then A71) and this was a bit hairy, with about 40 miles of untreated twisty country roads. Herman became a snow plough in places and nearly ended up in a ditch a couple of times - very slippery - but got through OK.

Aberdeenshire was supposed to be under 3 miles of snow, but the last leg up the east coast was actually fine, only thwarted by the last 100 metres by the slippery and steep untreated road up to my dad's house.

Compared to a friend's attempt to fly up to Edinburgh from Luton, my journey was really easy.

On the way home now. Last night I drove down from Aberdeen to South York, via Newcastle. Again, mostly easy, with only one scary high speed black ice bit on the A697 where Herman fortunately kept going in the same direction :-)

Side note - Coldstream is a very nice little town to stop for a break, as the parking was free and the toilets immaculately kept.

Just had breakfast and waiting for the sun to come up a bit for heading off for the final 3.5 hours.

Finger crossed it doesn't all end in doom!

Update: arrived safely, and typically, it was just raining heavily for the last 20 miles to London.

Lodger

2009-11-25T08:28:00.000Z

We've got a lodger! Only for about a month, but my sister has come to stay.

This will probably mean weight loss for me, as we'll probably have the same amount of food and drink in the house, but with an extra mouth to feed.

Bonus!

Sudden urge

2009-11-22T13:45:00.000Z

I had a sudden urge to re-theme the blog.

Nothing else to say at the moment.

Reader of Books

2009-10-24T19:02:00.000+01:00

A few weeks ago, I was thinking of getting a handheld eBook reader, and I saw a couple of Sony models owned by colleagues at work.

The PRS 505 is Sony's early (first?) effort, but it was, well, old and superseded by a newer one. The PRS 600 is one of the newer ones, similar form factor but had a touch screen and I found this made it less contrasty and quite a bit shiny. Its extra features (dictionary, note pad, card reader) all sounded appealing, but you can't get away from the shiny, low contrast display.

So I plumbed for the PRS 300.

This is high contrast, low shine like the 505, but in a smaller form factor. It also has none of the bells and whistles, but is it any good as a reading device?

Well, yes. It is.

I've now read two Iain M Banks novels, purchased from Waterstones online store. Immediately prior to this, I read another of Bank's novels in paper form and I can honestly say that the eBook form is absolutely fine. If anything, less eye strain, and easier to handle.

I've also tried reading PDFs, but this is less satisfactory as the screen is a bit too small for the pre-formatted pages and reflowing with a larger type doesn't work well.

Battery wise, it's showing three out of four bars full after the two books plus lots of fiddling with PDFs, so pretty damn good.

The only real criticism I have is with the software used to move books from computer to device.

The Sony software doesn't work 100% well on the Mac with Snow Leopard (it's written in Flex/AIR, I think, so should be cross platform), but it really doesn't work well with DRMed books as the necessary connection to Adobe Reader doesn't work as expected.

I can live with this as I just do the connection in XP/VMWare, but the real pain is the total lack of useful information from Sony support, who seem to have a different story each time you call/email them.

Money-wise, eBooks from Waterstones are similar price or maybe a bit cheaper than the paper equivalents. This is good. There are also thousands of free books out there. Even better.

So all in all, a good buy and I definitely think I'll be reading books in 'e' form where possible from now on.

No-mura

2009-10-03T10:28:00.000+01:00

(see what I did there?)

Well, I'm no longer at Nomura, taking a week off, then off to pastures Blue.

I have mixed feelings on leaving. The people at Lehman (and Nomura) have been great and a pleasure to work with and I'll miss them, but the job itself wasn't quite right for me, so I am pleased to be moving on, hopefully in the right direction.

There are some other definite advantages to moving to Barcap:

It's a five minute shorter commute, so only about a 15 minute walk now.

They don't have a subsidised staff restaurant, so I'll have a fighting chance of losing some weight (though see point 1 for less exercise)

So another chapter in my career ends and a new one begins.

Pirate's Beach

2009-09-26T08:02:00.000+01:00

So we went to Pirate’s Beach Club in Tekirova, Turkey for a bit of sun and to catch up with some of my in-laws.

Warning, the link above has very annoying background music – music they played a lot at the resort itself.

This beach resort is unsurprisingly themed on pirates, although thankfully more Long John Silver than Sumalian, and it’s not really in your face – just everyone wearing stripy shirts and a hanky on their heads.

The resort primarily caters for the Russian market and so everyone except me was Russian and all the staff speak Russian, although a few did speak a bit of English too.

This was fine for my family, but a bit weird for me, especially as all the events and activities were in Russian too (but very very good). Fortunately, the weather was nice, I had a good book and the bar was free.

Mostly, though, it was great to catch up with my sister-in-law, who I hadn’t seen in eight or nine years and her daughter who I’d never seen. I do quite like being an uncle.

Travel notes after the jump…

The actual travel was quiet varied.

An early flight from Gatwick meant leaving home around 4am in Herman, valet parking (cheaper than getting a taxi there and back) then waiting for hours as the flight had been delayed.

I suppose we shouldn’t have been surprised by this as it’s Thomas Cook Airlines, possibly the worst airline in the world.

Everything is an extra cost. Eg food. Luggage. A seat for people with legs. That sort of thing. Even water had to be paid for.

Taxi ride from Antalya to Tekirova was a bit exciting. I think about 85km and a little over an hour travel time and it was raining.

The driver was a lunatic, driving well over the limit, in the middle of the road, forcing other cars into the gutter and generally being scary. I know places like Mumbai have a reputation for dangerous driving, but I can’t imagine it happening there at 120km/h like it did in Turkey. Enroute, we saw four or five recent serious crashes.

The return taxi ride to Antalya was more of the same although not raining so a little less scary.

Antalya airport is a nice place to be waiting for a plane and the return flight was ok (although having to pay extra for everything again).

Best bit is coming home to have Herman waiting at the valet station. I don’t think I could have faced trains/transfers/long term car parks and other such nonsense.

Result: we arrived home relaxed and de-stressed, and that’s what you need from a holiday.

Gobble Gobble Gobble

2009-09-10T21:38:00.000+01:00

We're off to Turkey!

Mother-in-law, sister-in-law and niece are already there (a beach resort near Tekirova, apparently) and we're heading off on Saturday to meet them. I've never seen niece before and haven't seen the others for a few years, so very much looking forward to it.

I'm also half way through serving my notice in my current job and start my new job on October 12.

All in all, makes for a relaxing time :-)

Belgium!

2009-08-27T23:01:00.000+01:00

We're off to Antwerp this weekend, and once again we find ourselves in Belgium during the Belgian GP but without going to the race.

Anyways, I like Belgium and am looking forward to another hurtle through the French/Belgian countryside, then a day or so soaking up the Leffe.

Hurrah for bank holidays!

Cunning plan

2009-08-12T08:54:00.000+01:00

The UK Met Office received a lot of flak for predicting a 'barbecue' summer, with many people deciding to 'staycation' in the UK rather than go abroad.

It's true, there hasn't been a great summer so far, and now people are cancelling their stay-at-home plans and panic travelling to the costas.

But the weather is now improving and I think this is a cunning plan on the part of car-loving weather predictors.

This sudden exodus is freeing up the more interesting roads, in particular of caravans.

So, well done Met Office. Do you think you can pull the same trick next year?

It Hertz

2009-07-31T08:15:00.000+01:00

I was in Scotland last weekend and rented a car from Hertz.

I had booked a "Hertz Compact 4-door car" as I would be carrying passengers, but what I ended up with was a dodgy 3-door Vauxhall Astra, although I didn't really bother to count the doors until I got underway.

My dad tells me that rental cars usually have fewer than about 13k miles as they get pretty well shagged after that, yet mine was showing over 33K and only 18 months old.

It felt old and abused too, with some worrying mechanical noises from up front. Anyways, it didn't break down, so I suppose no harm done.

However, today I get the invoice from Hertz, on which it claimed the mileage when I collected it was 3989 and when returned 4083 and that I'd done 94 miles.

Bollocks.

I'd actually done 280 miles according to Kate (my TomTom) and used 44 litres of fuel (about 23mpg!)

So not only did Hertz give me a gas guzzling, under-doored, ageing piece of shit, but they lied about it on the invoice.

I wonder if all car rental companies are like this?

Notes from seven countries

2009-07-18T05:22:00.000+01:00

Last month, we took a break from the madness of work and headed over to mainland Europe with Herman for a two-week tour of seven countries.

It's taken me a few weekends to sort out all the photos on Flickr, and whilst I've posted a few notes on Facebook, I'd thought I put up something here to round it off, mostly disconnected thoughts on travel related topics...

Preparing Herman

This was Herman's (and my) first time driving abroad and on the wrong side of the road so some preparations were in order. This included the purchase of high visibility jackets, an extra warning triangle, a fire extinguisher and some sticky things to put on the headlights.

I'd heard rumours on teh interwebs that the French police in particular liked to stop les rosbifs and fine them for not having prominently displayed hi-vis jackets, so we were prepared!

"I'm driving on the right"

Something I state out loud to my self and the world in general on a regular basis, in particular when setting off or coming off a motorway.

Only once in two weeks did I find myself scaring the shit out of someone coming the other way and that was because I didn't realise it was a two-way road.... Oh and another time when I went the wrong way down a one-way street in Davos, but that doesn't really count as I was still over on the right!

Blinky Blinky

The French indicate left to overtake someone and keep indicating left until they've passed the other car(s) and then pull back in to the right.

This sort of makes sense on small two-way road, but makes no sense at all on three or four lane motorways. The crazy French will sit in the middle lane for ages with left indicator blinking away with absolutely no intention whatsoever of moving into the left lane.

Trumpet

The Italians love to drive right up your trumpet when you're in the outside lane, flash they lights at you and generally be aggressive, but when you pull in to let them pass, they crawl past you at 1km/h and then slow down. Crazy.

The Swiss love their speed limits and will often break quite hard when moving from one limit to the next. Clearly the Swiss treat speed limit signs as an instruction to drive exactly at that speed and not as a maximum. Crazy.

Love and Hate

I loved Luxembourg. Very friendly, pretty place. Very surprising as I was expecting it to be quite dull.

I hated Geneva. Well, that's a bit strong, but I found it a bit shabby, a but unwelcoming, although the series of tunnels through the mountains going in to Switzerland from France were lots of fun.

Nice / Monaco / Col de Turini

We stayed in a super hotel on the Nice sea front with valet parking and close proximity to stuff you want to do/see after three days driving. There is a relaxed poshness about the place. Very civilised.

Monaco, just down the road, felt quite different. Hilly, cramped, chaotic. We got to drive around what was the Formula 1 GP circuit from the previous weekend. Was a strange feeling as I recognised the place from having driven around it many times in Gran Turismo. Feels much more claustrophobic in real life, however.

From here we took our first proper hurtle to the Col de Turini. The roads of this twisty, hilly, ex-rally stage are quite dusty and the trees make for poor visibility from corner to corner, making the whole thing quite nervy at speed, so this was more of a nice day out in the country.

Italian Lakes / San Bernadino Pass

From Nice, we headed east into Italy, then north to Lake Como on the southern edge of the Alps.

The lake has three legs and we were staying on the west side in the middle in Menaggio, but used the ferry to visit Varenna and Bellagio across the water. Each town has its own style, so you need to see all three before you can say you've done the lake. The three days there were very relaxing and by this time all the stressed of past weeks had gone.

Como was also a staging point for our second hurtle - the San Bernadino Pass. We were doing these roads in the same order as the Top Gear boys and knew that this was going to be more fun than the Col de Turini, and as a driving road, it certainly was. Better tarmac, wider, sweeping open roads and more hairpins. But like the TG boys, I found this one a bit lacking. Perhaps if I didn't know what was coming up in the next few days, I'd have been satisfied, but instead just gave me a thirst for more.

Road to Davos

From Lake Como, we were heading for Davos in Switzerland, and Lena found on teh interwebs a small picturesque village called Soglio, just inside the Swiss border. We told Kate (our satnav) to take us there and blimey, was this a treat.

It's a small town perched on the top of a mountain with snowy peaks in the distance and green hilly bits all around. Very Sound of Music.

Continuing on to Davos took us over the Flüelapass, which in my mind, was better than the San Bernadino Pass and Col de Turini, and this was just on the way. I knew I was going to like this place.

Arriving in Davos, we met up with my old chum Mark and had beer and the next day we had a wander around the hills. Good to stretch the legs!

Davos to Stelvio via Bormio

Hurtling-wise, this was the main event and the original reason for the whole trip (for me at least). The planned route would take us over three passes (Flüela, Ofen, Stelvio) and then back the same way. Five or so hours driving in total.

The weather didn't look so good on the morning of the trip as cloud had descended and we couldn't see the top of the mountain. It was also cold and raining a little. Heading up the Flüelapass, it started to snow and at the top it was slippery and all a bit concerning.

On the other side, it brightened up but it was still quite exciting.

The Ofenpass is almost a forgotten bit on the way to Stelvio, but was easily better than the Col and SB passes. Here there are longer bends with good visibility so you can get some speed up relatively safely.

Just when you think things can't get better, you arrive at the Stelvio pass. Hard to describe, so probably best to just look at the pics. Hairpin after hairpin in the most stunning of surroundings.

Driving heaven (just don't look over the edge!).

Black Forest

After Switzerland, and the three main driving bits done, we headed north to Baden-Baden in the German Black Forest for three days relaxing.

For me, driving- and scenery-wise, this was going to be an anti-climax, and it was. The German roads were rubbish (single lane, full of trucks going 70km/h) and it was only a bit hilly rather than Alpine.

Baden-Baden itself was very nice though, with a very pleasing hotel with funky pool, great places to eat and drink, and a trip back into France to the Châteu du Haut-Kœnigsburg. That trip took in the famous Black Forest High Road, but I wasn't that impressed. So far, German roads weren't doing it for me at all.

Heading north to Belgium, however, is where we found some de-restricted sections of autobahn and Herman could legally stretch his legs. The road surfaces weren't all that smooth, but was still able to get up to around 130mph with a bit more to go. The tricky part at this speed is someone doing only 70mph pulling into your lane ahead and you having to break heavily. I imagine this being very dangerous if you're doing 180mph! Also, there was never anyone driving up my trumpet trying to get past, so all in all, a bit of fun and we made good time.

Belgium

Last leg of the journey was a night in Spa.

Spa was disappointing... No, that's not true. I expected it to be a bit dull and it was. The weather was rubbish too. We did, however, have a relax in the swimmy spa complex at the hotel.

Better was the trip to the chunnel the next day. We stopped in Sint-Niklaas, where it was lovely and hot and sunny and they were holding the Belgian beach volleyball finals on the big main square. Then on to Ghent, which was really rather picturesque; a cross between Amsterdam and Bruges, I think.

Somewhere we'd like to visit again, probably by car, over a long weekend.

Stats

So a brilliant two weeks, probably the best holiday (vs trips, backpacking, etc) I've ever had.

Distance driven: about 2790 miles

Average mpg: about 31 (not bad considering)

Countries visited: seven (missed out on eighth, Liechtenstein)

Stress levels: very low

Worst drivers: Italian

Worst roads: German

Better

2009-06-06T09:11:00.000+01:00

The last few weeks have been quite difficult for me.

Work has been generally unsatisfactory as there is way too much support/management and not enough hands-on development work. This was made worse by my boss taking a couple of weeks in Asia followed by three weeks on holiday, and all this at a particularly busy time.

Net result? ultimate responsibility, 60+ hour working weeks and being permanently on call.

Well he's back now, so at least I no longer have to cover his role and generally having an extra body in the team spreads the support load around a bit more.

I even had yesterday (Friday) off in lieu of the bank holiday I had to work a couple of weeks back. Very nice turning the raspberry off :-)

Good news now is that I have one more week in the office, then two weeks off on holiday. Hurrah!

We're going on a Euro road trip, in part, inspired by the Top Gear search for the best driving roads in the world.

Itinerary goes something like this:

London -> Luxembourg -> Geneva -> Nice+Monaca

Nice -> Menaggio (Lake Como) - staying 3 days

Menaggio -> Davos - staying 3 days

Davos -> Baden Baden - staying 3 days

Baden Baden -> Spa -> London

The six days in the lakes/alps will see us visiting Col de Turini, the San Bernadino Pass and Stelvio Pass as well as many other interesting bits. The trip up through the Black Forest is supposed to be amazing too.

All in all, should be eight countries/principalities and something between 3800 and 4000 km

Can't wait. Herman's quite excited too :-)

Bank Holiday

2009-05-23T07:02:00.000+01:00

Hurrah! Bank Holiday long weekend!

Oh wait, it's 6am and I'm working. Got shed-loads of stuff to do today.

Fortunately, I'm only on call tomorrow and have a few system checks to do. No stress. It's just the last chance to prepare everything for the big MSCI rebalance next Friday.

Monday, I'm in the office all day.

Why do they call it a 'bank holiday' when everyone has a day off except banks?

I'm also creeping up in weight. Am now 103.5kg, so up about 2kg from low of a few weeks ago.

Eurovision

2009-05-16T08:12:00.000+01:00

The last few months have been very busy at work. It's not just the long hours, but the lack of genuine free time during the evenings and weekends.

I manage and support a system than runs from Saturday afternoon through to the following Saturday morning. All maintenance and upgrade work happens in that window on the Saturday.

When I do get a bit of free time, I just want to chill out.

So it's fortunate that this weekend, I have no work scheduled (thank's Rich!!), it's Eurovision and that's an excuse to revel in silliness and have not a care in the world.

At least until that Sunday 3am bing.

Canada

2009-04-11T06:44:00.000+01:00

We're in Canada this weekend.

At least that's what the weather report in our hotel's reception would suggest.

We're actually in Trebetherick, Cornwall, England, but the fool who got the weather report just typed 'cornwall' into the BBC weather website and got 'Cornwall, CAN' instead.

Wife spotted this when it claimed lows of minus seven.

Anyway, when bringing this to the attention of the receptionist, she said something like: oh it's right, but best to look out the window.

Gosh, is that a moose I see?

Fat Bastard

2009-03-30T07:37:00.000+01:00

I had a good weekend. I took Friday off (in lieu of daft hours worked previously) and went to visit aFj for hurtling, beer, sausages, catching up, and soup. Yesterday, I went food shopping and bought a lot of chocolate and other bad things.

This is all very therapeutic, but unfortunately, has had an unwanted effect on my waistline.

I've been around the 101kg mark for a few weeks now, but this morning have definitely hit 102kg with signs of hitting 102.5. Not good.

So what should I do now? There is still much chocolate loveliness in the house, so maybe I should just eat it all to get out the way?

My gym membership resumes on Wednesday (suspended for a month whilst I was recovering from operation), so that should help.

Right. Decision made. I'm off to consume two packets of chocolate digestives and the rest of the brownies.

I'm feeling thinner already.

Mobile confusion

2009-03-17T22:37:00.000Z

I am one of those people that choose Mac but have to work with Windows and this has (loosely) extended to my mobile life. I choose iPhone, but also carry a Raspberry.

Sometimes this causes some confusion, e.g. trying to take a picture with the Raspberry (it has no camera) or staring at my iPhone email and wondering where my work emails have gone.

Fortunately, this doesn't happen too often as the Raspberry is fugly, heavy and oversized (although smaller than many, mine's an 8800).

Having to carry both is a tad annoying though. Maybe one day my employer will let me use Exchange support on the iPhone so I can dispense with the Raspberry altogether.

Kent loop

2009-03-17T07:06:00.000Z

On Saturday, we went out for a drive. One of those pointless trips you make for the sake of it. Not actually going anywhere; just going for the pleasure of being out and about behind the wheel.

Well, I suppose we did go somewhere and it was at least partially planned.

This was a lower Kent loop, from home in E14 London, out to Saint Margaret's Bay, then Dover, inland a bit toward the Houghams and planned to have lunch at the Lighthouse in Capel-le-Ferne.

It was too early though, we pressed on toward the marshes: Lympre, Burmarsh, Newchurch,Ivychurch, Lydd-on-sea and Dungeness.

The marshes are unfeasibly dull - I knew it's all flat, but it was just dull.

Dungeness, on the other hand turned out to be quite interesting, what with the strange cottages on the 'beach' and, power stations and as wife puts it, the eeriness.

From there on to Rye, where we stopped for a potter and some lunch, then back home via Tenterden.

All in all a nice drive. All places we've never been to before and found a few nice roads for hurtling.

For those concerned about the planet and hateful of unneccessary journeys, fear not. Herman has only done 6000 miles in the last year (and ever), so probably emitted a lot less carbon than hippies in Priuses doing 20,000 miles a year (evey year).

Useless agents

2009-03-10T18:59:00.000Z

I got an email from a pimp (employment agent) today.

Now I'll say first off that some are very good and do an excellent job, but by and large they do make me giggle.

So today I received the following. Given that I architect, build and manage software systems for a financial institution, this is rather wide of the mark.

I am contacting you as I have an old copy of your CV and would like to bring to your attention a position that we have available in East Sussex.
An Arboriculture/Forestry Lecturer is needed by a College set in a scenic location in a 800 hectare estate. The college has been awarded Centre of Vocational Excellence in 'Rural Business Management Training', 'Horticultural Technologies' and 'Sport and Recreation', TQS accreditation.
They are looking for applicants who ideally hold a degree or similar professional qualification in forestry or arboriculture, have excellent organisational, communication and time management skills, are flexible in their approach and are IT competent.
Previous teaching experience and qualifications would be beneficial but are not essential.
The position comes with a salary typical to FE Lecturing roles(£22,000-£28,000), 40+ days holiday, pension and training for Teaching qualifications.

If this type of position matches your skill set or aspirations and you are interested in a career in Further Education, or know someone who is, then get in touch.

I wonder where they got the "old copy" of my CV ?

Anyway, if anyone is interested, I can forward this email on.

Office move

2009-03-03T21:05:00.000Z

Last September, my employer's holding company went bankrupt, taking all our money and forcing us to go into administration.

An evil British company bought out the bulk of the parent company in the US and a very nice Japanese company bought most of our business here in London, parts of Europe and Asia.

All very good, but it was always on the cards that a merging of staff would occur and that people would move to a different building.

Now our building is by far the nicest, so nearly everyone came to us. We also had a lot of space left by the thousand or so people that lost their jobs.

Unfortunately, my group has now had to move. Not to the City, but to the darkest, most miserable part of the building we're already in.

No longer can we wave to Reuters employees who have nothing better to do but take pictures of us and publish stupid stories. No longer can we admire the views of All Bar One on a summer's evening. No longer can we complain about bright sunshine on a fine autumn afternoon.

No, we're in the cave. Miles from any window. And no pencils in the stationery cupboard.

Still, at least the tea machine is a bit closer now.

Back to work

2009-02-26T09:15:00.000Z

I tried to go back to work today; well 'go' is not quite right as I'd be working from home as I don't want to risk having a full normal day, with commuting, wearing trousers (belt line rubs against lower incision), being jostled, etc.

However, my two methods of remote access are broken. Bit frustrating really.

Also, my raspberry is useless as receiving 10 days worth of email (at about two messages per second) seems to be all it can manage so the interface freezes up and I can't send email because my mailbox will be filled up.

Tricky. I want to be doing something.

Hopefully, my remote access can be sorted out sometime this morning.

Not quite over

2009-02-21T07:31:00.000Z

In my last post I said that I'm glad that my health problems are over because they tend to be all consuming. Well, even though keyhole surgery is not very invasive, it is still surgery and takes its toll.

I have to take paracetamol every six hours, which means that part way through the night it wears off and I wake up, although increasingly, this is due to back pain from having to sleep in a fixed position. Maybe I can work on an ideal arrangement of pillows or something, but I suspect this won't be resolved until I can sleep on my side again.

Sitting and standing is a lot easier now. I can now sit on the sofa and get up without help - huge bonus :-)

Food-wise, I can definitely eat things that would previously have knocked me out. It's a huge relief to be able to eat without fear. However, I'm getting bloated quite easily and will need to check up with the doctor next week about that, but otherwise, feeling much better.

The plan now is to continue to take it easy, go back for a post-op visit with my surgeon on Tuesday and take off the dressings on Friday (stitches should have dissolved).

With any luck I should be able to go back to work by Friday too

Post op

2009-02-18T13:43:00.000Z

After yesterdays procedure, I am now back home, feeling a little fragile, but otherwise ok.

It's amazing that something that used to hospitalise someone for a week or more and keep them off work for a month, can now be done over night and be back to work after a couple of weeks or less.

All I've got to show for my visit is four small holes, and collection of small gall stones in a jar. Better out than in! To celebrate, wife bought me a chocolate croissant, and it was very lovely.

I'd like to observe that the staff and facilities at The Princess Grace were brilliant, although checking out took a little longer that I would have liked.

Now I need to find somewhere comfortable to be.

I tried the sofa in the lounge - very comfortable to sit, but quite painful if I want to get back up again. Bed is ok, but boring. So far, I found most comfort sitting in my Aeron chair. If my employer splashed out on these I could probably go back to work!

Anyways, glad this is all over, as poor health has a habit of consuming all of your thoughts.

One final note. Being 102kg makes my merely 'overweight' according the stupid BMI rating. For about 9 years I had been 'obese'.

Under the knife

2009-02-17T07:17:00.000Z

Today I'm off to hospital to have my gall bladder removed, a procedure I still have trouble pronouncing (and spelling): laparoscopic cholecystectomy.

Anyways, it should be a quick and straightforward operation and I'll be home again tomorrow, then a week or two rest (yay!)

Since this all started, at the beginning of December last year, I've lost a lot of weight (net 12.5kg as of today). I had hoped that I would break into double digits by this time, but didn't quite make it as I'm now only 102kg. I suppose that's not too bad, but after my op, I'll be able to eat and drink normally again, so I fear it won't go down any further.

On the other hand, I've become used to eating healthily, not quite so much and drinking even less, so maybe it'll stick.

On the third hand, I could murder a kebab, a large piece of cow, several cakes and anything with pastry.

Time will tell.

Every little doesn't help

2009-02-16T19:44:00.000Z

I saw yesterday that Tesco are doing their spend more than £50 and get 5p off per litre deal on petrol.

On the face of it, this looks good, but a quick visit to petrolprices.com shows Tesco at least 6p more expensive than the cheapest near me (ASDA for regular unleaded, Sainsburys for higher octane stuff).

I've heard that Tesco actually put up their prices around these times.

Wouldn't surprise me.

Dubai

2009-02-11T06:33:00.000Z

We've just got back from a mini break to Dubai for my wife's birthday.

We stayed at Al Qasr in the Madinet Jumeirah resort - this is near the palm island and adjacent to the Burj al Arab.

The resort is a bit Las Vegas. It comprises two hotels, a shopping centre and access to another resort hotel and the Burj al Arab, all with their own themes. They are all connected by electric buggies and abras (boats) on an internal water way.

Because of this, it's possible to see and do lots of different things without actually having to leave the resort. Given that the rest of Dubai appears to be a shopping mall and building site (like Vegas) this is probably a good thing.

You don't see many arabs there and the (excellent) service and hospitality comes mostly from people from south-east Asia. You do occasionally see a local in a thawb and ghutrah, but usually propping up a bar (somewhat surprising).

Weather was quite good, although a little strange. It is warm and sunny in the mornings, but overcast and cooler in the afternoons and actually quite chilly in the evenings. Quite pleasant actually, although you do need to get your beach/swimming done by lunchtime.

Dubai doesn't strike me as a particularly cheap place to visit, and this resort was particularly expensive. You get the feeling you're going to be cleaned out as soon as you arrive, with Rolls, Bentleys and Lamborghinis parked outside, then you see restaurant and bar tariffs and you're left wondering if your normally ample credit card limits are going to be sufficient.

However, I'm left feeling it was pricey, but not a overpriced - good value of money, if you will. Certainly the best service I've experienced.

The one bit of the trip that's not so great is the travel. The flying time is around seven hours or more with 45 mins drive time at the Dubai end and 90 mins at the London end, so for a four day trip, that's a lot of time squeezed in a metal box.

Will I go again? Yes, I think so. Probably in four or five years time. Like Vegas, it's always changing, so next time, there will be more to see. I'd particularly like to go up the Burj Dubai.

Mini break

2009-02-06T10:41:00.000Z

Today, we're leaving the chilly British weather for Dubai for four days. This is good because I haven't actually had a proper full day off work since New Years Day - even reasonably free weekends sees me having to do something, usually at some weird hour.

So looking forward to it enormously.

Apparently it's not snowing there, but it is at Heathrow, so perhaps we'll not be going at all...

New Graphics Card

2009-01-31T07:51:00.000Z

As my MacPro was a bit poorly, I installed a new graphics card last night. It's an NVIDIA GeForce 8800GT.

Installation was easy (everything is easy inside a MacPro). The card itself is about half the size of the outgoing ATI Radeon X1900, but most importantly is mostly silent.

Now running something vaguely graphics intensive like iTunes visualisation or Time Machine is a quiet relaxing affair, and not like descending into the bowels of a cruise ship's engine room.

More importantly, it's stopped crashing.

Hurrah!

UAE Embassy

2009-01-28T06:40:00.000Z

Yesterday I went to visit the surgeon who's going to do my cholecystectomy.

It was a bit of a mini adventure as I thought he was at 71 Harley St, London. Upon arrival I was somewhat confused by the name on the door being United Arab Emirates Embassy.

Undeterred, I went in and enquired but was informed by a couple of polite, but insistent gentlemen that this was an Embassy and perhaps I should try next door.

I did this, where I was confronted by a slightly confused woman who claimed (rightly) that this was 69 Harley St and that perhaps I had the wrong place.

Clearly, asking for directions was not working, so I reverted to checking the appointment in my iPhone.

Ah. Not only did it say 78 Harley St, but also had a convenient map showing where it was and where I was (and a helpful purple line showing how to get there).

Fortunately, 78 turned out to be correct. It had a really nice reception area and splendid coffee.

Usefully, the surgeon confirmed my other consultant's diagnosis, explained the procedure and why it needed to be done and suggested I contact his secretary to sort out a time.

This I did when I got home, but work commitments and a short planned holiday prevent me from having it done in the next 2 - 3 weeks, so will sort something out later in Feb.

On a side note, I'm now 103.5 kg. This is down from 116.5 kg at beginning of December. Weight loss is slowing, but still happening. Hopefully I'll break into two digits by the time of my operation, but I fear that once I can eat properly again, it'll probably go back up.

play.com are evil

2009-01-26T14:56:00.000Z

Further to my earlier post about play.com being rubbish, I got an email from them today:

This item was only available in limited quantities and whilst we have attempted to source additional stock we have been unsuccessful. As it is unlikely that we will be able to offer the item again in the near future we have cancelled your order. The full amount has been refunded back to your card; please allow 3 days for this to appear on your card statements.

So when they said it was dispatched on 5/1/2009 they were actually talking through their arses. At the time of sale, they said they had several in stock.

Nice.

I will definitely not be using play.com again.

Update: I ordered a new one from Amazon last night, and have a shipment notice today along with a tracking code from shipping company. That's much better.

Update 2: It arrived yesterday afternoon, less than three days after ordering. Sadly I haven't had time to play yet.

Endoscopy

2009-01-24T19:33:00.000Z

I was back to the Wellington hospital today for an upper endoscopy examination. A number of people have told me that this is particularly unpleasant, and lo, it was.

Good news is, there was nothing apparently wrong with my stomach and surrounding bits so my problem is almost certainly contained to the gall bladder as indicated by previous tests.

Given I've had a number of very painful of episodes, my consultant is recommending a key-hole cholecystectomy (removal of gall bladder). Shouldn't be a problem - it's non-essential.

Will be nice to get this over and done now so I can get back on to normal food again!

MacPro health

2009-01-24T07:05:00.000Z

My MacPro has been getting very noisy and a little unstable recently.

It's an early (2006) model with a mere 4 Xenon cores of just 2.66ghz but still jolly splendid.

I've tracked the problem down to the graphics card, and with a bit of research there seems to be a common problem with ATI Radeon X1900 overheating and causing visual problems and even lock ups.

Right on cue, the fan is now ramping up - clearly typing this sentence is highly graphically intensive !

So I think a new graphics card is in order.

The easy option is the Nvidia Geforce 8800GT from Apple - pricy compared to the Windows PC version and not quite state of the art, but has a good power/performance/price profile and considerably better than the ATI.

The alternative is to force the case fans to go faster permanently to help in cooling and probably wear my noise cancelling headphones all the time too.

play.com is rubbish

2009-01-18T10:31:00.000Z

I ordered some goodies from play.com on 26th December 2008. I chose play.com because of price, but mostly because they had what I wanted in stock and were going to deliver in the first week of 2009.

Well it's 18th Jan now and still nothing.

Visiting play.com's "where is my stuff" page, I'm greeted with this:

Our records show that the item you selected was dispatched on 05/01/2009. Although items are usually received within 3–5 days of the dispatch date, we need to wait 21 days from the date of dispatch before being able to trace, replace or refund lost items.

So basically, they misled about the availability and timeliness of delivery and they're saying I have to wait three weeks after the start of 3-5 working days before I can do anything about it. Plus, they've had my money since 26/12.

At least with Amazon, you can complain much earlier and get a replacement sent out and even cancel the order.

I don't think I'll be using play.com again.

Windows 7 beta

2009-01-15T08:15:00.000Z

For a giggle, I thought I'd try this out.

I downloaded both the 32- and 64-bit versions to run in VMWare on my Mac, however, looking at the downloaded DVD images, I couldn't tell which was which. Only one worked, however, and that was the 64-bit version.

First impressions? Well, like others have said, it is much quicker than Vista and in VMWare with 1GB to play with, it's just as quick as XP, maybe even a bit quicker.

It has a very Mac-like dock - I like it.

But it crashed when trying to use 64-bit Java. Complete lock-up.

Oh well, it is a beta.

Looks promising for 2010, or whenever it's supposed to be released.

Stones

2009-01-13T15:36:00.000Z

Went to the very pleasant Wellington Hospital today to get an ultrascan done; something my mother- and sister-in-law recommended on day one, back in November.

I have gall stones.

So well done to my GP for misdiagnosing and not even considering letting anyone else have an opinion.

Right, not sure what happens next but it almost certainly involves a bit of surgery.

I'm quite pleased really. Better to know what the problem is and get it fixed than spend months or years fannying about trying this diet/drug or that.

Health Reminder

2009-01-11T07:41:00.000Z

Yesterday, I was on the phone to my mum, saying how I'd been feeling fine for the last two weeks, that the trip to see a proper doctor in the week had filled me with confidence and that all was well in the world.

Two or three hours later, I was back in the familiar pattern of pacing around in pain.

It's probably my fault, being cocky about my apparent good health and throwing caution to the wind with my food choices, but I am now reminded that I am not, in fact, well, and had just masked the symptoms by having a non-dodgy diet.

So for now it's back to boring food again, or at least cutting out anything overly fatty (which we think is the main trigger).

I've got a scan and possible subsequent endoscopy examination this coming week, so hopefully complete diagnosis will be forthcoming.

In the meantime, I'll take comfort in being 10.5kg lighter today than I was on December 1st, even after a week or two of eating fairly normally.

Upgrade

2009-01-08T07:47:00.000Z

I had a pleasant surprise at work the other day.

I was called into big boss's office (oh know, should I clear my desk?) and was told I had been upgraded.

Quite a pleasant surprise and it's always nice to be appreciated and rewarded for work done.

No extra money though :(

Specialist

2009-01-07T18:53:00.000Z

I went to see a specialist today about my health problem.

Very different experience compared to my local GP, with the consultant coming to different conclusions based on the same facts that my GP had.

Interestingly, his thoughts and action plan were very similar to those of my mother- and sister-in-law (both doctors), so it's a pity I'm not ill in the country they live in.

So, I've had some tests done today and have more scheduled and generally have confidence that whatever my problem is, it'll be properly understood and fixed.

I think that this feeling of confidence is the missing bit from the NHS. At no time over the last six weeks (except for the time with paramedics) did I feel like I was being cared for.

I also have some new, more specific eating advice. Instead of the misery of December, I can now pretty much eat anything, but staying clear of overly fatty foods.

To celebrate, I've consumed a beer.

I might have another.

Two

2009-01-06T08:36:00.000Z

This blog is two years old. Happy birthday blog :-)

Mini off life support

2009-01-03T15:39:00.000Z

My Mac Mini had drive trouble some time ago and I 'fixed' it by booting off an external drive.

This has been most acceptable for the last 15 months or so, but recently, with a rejig of media stuff in the living room, I thought it would be nice to have the mini working properly off its own disk.

I found some money languishing in my PayPal account, did some interweb research on best drives and upgrade instructions and this morning set at it.

It's an Hitachi 250GB drive (old was one 100GB) and the instructions were found here. Thanks Sole!

I was particularly impressed with the ease in which a disk can be cloned from one to another and then just boot from it. No hassle at all and all handled with Disk Utility.

I was also impressed with my Stanley putty knife and am proud to be the owner of such an essential Macintosh DIY tool :-)

Cutting edge (ish)

2009-01-03T15:38:00.000Z

Five or six years ago, we had fairly cutting edge A/V set-up in our living room.

A brand new (and v expensive) Panasonic 42" plasma panel - one of the best panels money could buy at the time, hooked up to a Sky digibox via SyncBlaster and a Sony digital 5.1 amp and DVD player.

Fast forward to today where SD plasma panels, especially those that don't have a tuner or SCART socket, are a bit, well, quaint.

So time for an upgrade.

The panasonic went to a good home and a shiny Sony 46" Z series Bravia took its place.

The Mac Mini now hooks up via HDMI and looks splendid. No more fannying about with VGA switch boxes.

PlayStation 3 on order - should arrive shortly, so HD gaming and movies are on the cards.

Same Sony AV amp as before, but it does have optical audio input so no need to change that.

One of the biggest improvements (for me) is that now the screen automatically switches from 4:3 to 16:9 via SCART control. Joy!

No Sky HD though as my building has a somewhat quaint shared single-LNB satellite dish arrangement, but BluRay will fill the HD movie gap.

Now, I wonder if all this will seem equally quaint in another 5 years?

2008

2008-12-31T22:42:00.000Z

About this time last year I wrote this, a review of 2007. In the same style, here comes a review of 2008.

I started the year employed, for a company called Lehman Brothers, and clearly that didn't last out the whole year. Barclays bought the US bit of Lehman after the bankruptcy, and Nomura eventually bought out most of the rest. I'm now doing pretty much the same job at Nomura. So I did manage to end the year employed, but the axe is looming, so who knows what 2009 will bring.

I followed up my plan to end my reliance on public transport and in early April, I took delivery of Herman. We've now done about 5500 miles and have not crashed or collected any parking/driving offences. Hurrah!

Travel-wise, we've mostly stuck to the UK, visiting much of Kent, Surrey, Oxfordshire, Gloucestershire, Somerset, Cumbria, Snowdonia, Yorkshire and several visits to Bluewater.

We did escape these fair shores briefly, with a visit to Barcelona.

I ended the year with a bit of ill health, but seem to be recovering ok now.

Hopefully, 2009 will have as many or more of the good bits of 2008 and none of the dodgy bits.

Update: Clearly 2008 was a year for memory loss too. My wife reminds me we also had a few shopping days in New York (pre-banking collapse, obviously).

Cold water

2008-12-29T22:27:00.000Z

Our water heater thingy packed up today. Or rather, it was boiling away, filling the cupboard with steam and splashed water and the top tank lid was bouncing around. My guess is a broken thermostat or something.

Anyway, I turned it all off and called a plumber, who will arrive tomorrow sometime.

In the mean time, no hot water :(

At least my heating isn't dependent on it :-)

Update: Plumber arrived, replaced several bits, cleaned up mess and then charged me £WTFOMG!

At least it's working again.

Eating again

2008-12-28T21:45:00.000Z

After being on a weird diet for the last couple of weeks, I've started to eat more and with a bit more variety. In particular, I managed something resembling a normal Christmas dinner, some lovely biscuits made by my sister and even a couple of half-glasses of wine.

No major ill effects so far, so it's possibly safe to say that the drugs I was taking in combination with diet have caused the immediate problem to go away.

I still haven't tried eating anything too large, or anything spicy, so it remains to be seen if I'm completely fixed.

As an experiment this evening, I tried half a mild chicken korma from Waitrose. Nothing too exciting or demanding, but if there are no ill effects from this, I think it's probably safe to put this blog's tagline back the way it was.

Visiting

2008-12-22T06:42:00.000Z

Today, we're going to visit family.

Specifically, my mum and step-dad in Gloucestershire and on the way, picking up my sister (Tooting) and my older brother (Molesey).

Nothing unusual about this I suppose, except I don't get to see family very often. I haven't seen my mum since May, and my sister in over a year, I think.

Also, tonight, we're all going out for a Christmas meal. This means I'll probably have to eat relatively normal and even festive things. Something I haven't done for a while.

Should be an interesting exercise.

If I don't survive the evening well, I'll be in no fit state drive home tomorrow, so will get to extend my family visit a little longer.

Update: I survived :-)

Blimey

2008-12-18T07:12:00.000Z

I gained 0.5kg. No idea how that happened :-?

Cold

2008-12-17T07:09:00.000Z

Gaaah! I've managed to survive so far this season without getting the lurgy. Now have woken up with a serious sniffle and due to my other condition, can't take most cold medicines. Joy!

Things I currently can't eat

2008-12-13T14:43:00.000Z

In my current condition, I cannot consume:

alcohol

black and red pepper

chillis

caffeine

chocolate/cocoa

tomatoes

fatty foods

anything fried

onions

garlic

cinnamon

cloves

peppermint

and more...

But basically, beer and curry is right out, as is coffee and chocolate brownies.

What superb timing!

I've adjusted this blog's tag line until things are sorted.

Still Unwell

2008-12-13T08:27:00.000Z

No improvement and have a few more episodes where pain has just knocked me out for several hours :(

Went to see my GP yesterday (my actual GP, not the duty emergency one). She gave me a lot more time for discussion and now know a lot more about what's wrong with me. She doubled my drug dose, and explained what it does, when it should be taken, and more importantly what / how I should be eating (basically bread/water). All really useful information that was not passed on to me before, and I didn't get to ask questions as the previous GP seemed interested only if getting me out so she could see the next person.

Worse, this first GP messed up the paperwork for the sample I provided so it was just discarded by the lab. The system doesn't allow for this to be communicated back to the GP and to me.

A wasted week then in terms of care/treatment.

As I say, my GP yesterday was a lot more helpful/useful, but it still feels like NHS care is painfully (literally in my case) slow.

I discussed going private with her and I think I will now take that option. If I do that I'll get endoscopic and ultrasound examinations, more thorough blood work and all done very quickly.

My mother-in-law and sister-in-law are both doctors in Russia. When discussing things with them, they are horrified that these tests/scans aren't done automatically the first time someone goes in with my symptoms. Letting someone suffer for days or weeks when something could be done is incredulous to them.

Over there, they also operate a system of polyclinics where you can see the appropriate specialist in the same building at the same time. I've no idea why people are so against this system being adopted here.

I think that next time I'm going to be ill, I'll do it when visiting my in-laws.

Unwell

2008-12-05T14:41:00.000Z

I've been a bit unwell recently.

Last Thursday, after getting home from work and having some dinner, I felt very full (even though I hadn't eaten much) and experienced a fair amount of upper abdominal and chest pain. This started to become debilitating so lovely wife called for an ambulance (which arrived very quickly).

The paramedic in the ambulance did a load of tests and concluded I wasn't having a heart attack but should go to Royal London A&E anyway.

At the hospital, they did the same set of tests and effectively kicked me out. Clearly I wasn't going to expire. The nurse who did my blood pressure/ECG even suggested that if I'd taken a paracetamol, I wouldn't have had to come and inconvenience her. Charming. Somewhat at odds with the NHS assertion that you call for help whenever you get chest pain...

Standing out in the rain at 2am in my dressing gown, I did feel a bit better, so went home. Friday was a day off and I took things easy. The weekend was the same, but I found that I couldn't really eat anything (and nothing coming out the other end either). If I did eat, the pain would return.

Back at work I tried contacting my local GP but generally got busy signals, and my medical insurance via work seems to be in flux at the moment.

Tuesday at work, and having lost about 4.5kg in as many days, I thought sod it, I'm going to eat. Not much, but something. Unfortunately, by the evening the pain was back so I decided to suffer through the night and go straight to my GP in the morning.

At 9am when the place opened, the receptionist asked if it was an emergency... not sure what the definition of an emergency is for them, so I said yes and finally got to see someone at 12.

The doctor thinks my problem is dyspepsia but not sure of the underlying cause (probably GERD/gastritis but could be peptic ulcer or something nastier). Sample requested, drugs provided to aid delivery of said sample and a prescription for Omeprazole. I take this for a couple of weeks and then see what happens next.

I still don't feel 100% and am quite nervous of eating anything as the pain was really quite bad before. I am much more comfortable now though and haven't had any really bad pain since taking the drugs. Hurrah!

--

I very rarely have cause to use the NHS in the UK. Apart from being a fat bastard, I'm quite fit and healthy, so this was a fairly new experience.

I have to say that the differences in attitude and care between the various departments is striking.

The ambulance crew were outstanding. Prompt, reassuring, helpful, engaging. Can't fault them at all.

A&E nurse person was not good. Made me feel unwelcome and her personal medical opinions were borderline dangerous (having talked to real doctors since). Levels of cleanliness there were quite poor too. Staff going in and out of curtained areas and rest areas without washing hands etc.

The night GP at the walk-in centre at the hospital was very much: you're not dying so bugger off. Fair enough - can't really complain there. On the cleanliness note, it was interesting that the first thing the doctor did when I went in was complain to the reception staff how dirty the room was... hmmm.

The emergency GP at my local health centre (my GP was not there) was very good, very helpful, inspired confidence, but ultimately didn't have time for questions. Not so bad in this day and age because you've always got wikipedia to fill in the gaps once you know the basics :-)

Finally upgraded

2008-11-23T09:16:00.000Z

I finally upgraded my iPhone to an iPhone 3G this weekend.

Or more precisely, I bought my lovely wife an iPhone 3G and thought I might as well get one for myself at the same time :-)

To keep things simple, hers is black, mine is white, although I have to say, the black one does look much nicer.

The purchasing side was somewhat elaborate. We were going to Bluewater anyway, so I thought I'd go to the Apple Store there.

Upon arrival, I explained I wanted to buy one and upgrade one, but the Apple girl said you have to go to O2 (or possible the Carphone Whorehouse) to upgrade, so perhaps do both there. Fair enough.

I wandered around the corner to the O2 shop, where it was empty except for a bunch of very bored looking people sitting around the outside. Apparently these were the shop assistants, and once I'd managed to wake one up, was told it's not possible to upgrade my existing iPhone.

A classic "computer says no" moment. What's more, the O2 drone denied that it was ever possible to upgrade an iPhone because of the remaining term on the 18 month contract; this despite the fact that just about everyone I know who had an original iPhone did upgrade some months back.

The O2 drone invited me to call O2 and ask them when I could upgrade (probably in 3 months)... I replied that it was somewhat ridiculous that I should call O2 when I'm in an O2 shop, but, and straight out of Little Britain, all I got was a shrug.

So giving up on the upgrade prospect, and secretly hoping that the O2 drone never procreate, I bade her farewell and went back to Apple Store and said: two spangly new iPhones please, upon which the Apple guy said: yessir! take a seat.

What followed next was somewhat time consuming and convoluted, but not really unpleasant.

In summary, to buy an iPhone you need to do a credit check on an O2 website, sort out contract (on a different O2 website) then do something funky on a wireless device wielded by the Apple Guy.

Twice (two iPhones).

The slightly embarrassing part for Apple is that the O2 websites are such a steaming pile of shite, you need to use Windows Internet Explorer to use them properly. So Apple guy fires up VM Fusion on the iMac to do so.

This is all very different from when I bought my original iPhone, which went: I'd like to buy an iPhone please / Yes sir, here you are, that's £lots please, have a good day.

Now, what to do with the old iPhone ...

Lane assist

2008-11-15T08:15:00.000Z

My TomTom (GO520) got a software upgrade yesterday, and seems to have gained three new features:

1. Kate now stutters

2. Kate now tells me she can't find a faster route (IQ maps or something)

3. Lane assist

This last one is extraordinary.

It puts up a diagram of the lanes ahead with green arrows on the one you should be in.

Great, but if you didn't already know which lane to be in, it's generally far to late to move, so would seem to be pointless.

Perhaps TomTom secretly informs the DVLA of people who generally get it wrong so that their licenses can be revoked.

Clean up

2008-11-06T07:24:00.000Z

When I joined Lehman in April 2007, the systems and processes imposed by the US part of our global team were very messy and required a large amount of man-power just to keep going. The philosophy seemed to be "long hours = good work."

I've long wanted to clean this all up, but it's just not been possible as it requires buy-in and enthusiasm from all concerned.

Since the Nomura/Barcap split of my group, however, I've had the opportunity to do that cleanup.

It's very satisfying.

I wonder....

2008-11-05T21:38:00.000Z

... if Obama will get through four years without starting a war with anyone?

Xbox Lobotomy

2008-11-04T20:48:00.000Z

Am I the only one who thinks these creepy Xbox 360 ads make you think that Microsoft wants to lobotomise* its customers?

* ok, I know it's surgery to the pre-frontal lobe...

Getting it up

2008-11-01T16:29:00.000Z

It took a while, but after a lot of hard work by the team, we finally got it up.

Where 'it' is the One True Global* Puma.

* the other Puma being the dodgy one that only runs in the US :-)

Hulk

2008-10-27T07:17:00.000Z

I watched The Incredible Hulk at the weekend (the one with Edward Norton).

For some reason I thought that most people believed that the previous film was rubbish and this was much better, even good, but I didn't think so.

Or maybe I imagined that.

Anyway, how Norton got an Oscar nomination for it is beyond me. Hurt and Roth were especially poor. Cameo by Lee was painful.

Still, it was nice to see Lou Ferrigno as the security guard (again) and Hulk's voice. I wonder if he has some contract where he has to be in every TV show or film about the hulk?

Anyways, as a side-line, I bought the film from iTunes and watched it on my Mac Mini attached to the big plasma in the living room. Not quite as plug-n-play as an AppleTV, but worked well and quality was good. Much better than the typical annoying DVD interface where you're forced to watch endless ads and trailers.

Christmas

2008-10-24T06:33:00.000+01:00

A number of people I see and people in the media are groaning about it still being October yet the Christmas decorations are up in some places, Christmas ads in magazines and shops etc, and it's true, it's all a bit much.

But the other day, whilst in Sainsbury's, I saw Hot Cross Buns!

That's like half a year too early :-(

Nice buns though ;-)

Gran Turismo

2008-10-18T08:32:00.000+01:00

I've given up waiting for the full version of GT5 to come out on the PS3, so will just go back and play GT4 on the PS2 all over again.

It's still a great game.

Scottish Banks

2008-10-12T23:04:00.000+01:00

I wonder what the Scottish Nationalists think about the UK government taking controlling stakes in RBS and HBOS.

Wordpress User Spam

2008-10-07T06:19:00.000+01:00

In recent weeks, I've been getting a lot of user registrations on this blog. The users have typical spam characteristics like random-looking email addresses and names with "cheap" and "buy" and the name of some pharmaceutical brand in there.

But they never post anything. Not even try. So what's the point?

New Job

2008-10-04T12:11:00.000+01:00

Well, actually it's my old job, although not completely.

So Lehman Brothers Holding filed for Chapter 11 a couple of weeks ago, the US bit got bought whole by Barclays Capital, and Nomura International are in the process of buying the Equities plus other bits of Lehman UK, the whole (I think) of Lehman Japan and also Lehman India.

Deal not done (UK), but it looks very much like we're here to stay, but with a change of owner.

A lot of people in my group in London were looking for new jobs, many had offers, some more than one, but by and large, people have decided to stay. It gives you a somewhat warm and fuzzy feeling to know that a whole bunch of people are pulling together to make stuff work and make it work better than before (and without the US bossing us around!)

So what about me? Well, I'm in a far greater position of influence that I was two weeks ago. I have a bigger, happier team to work with, and we're likely to expand.

I do have one very good and concrete option elsewhere, but my feeling right now is to stay.

Audi Driving Experience

2008-09-30T07:09:00.000+01:00

Yesterday, I went to Silverstone for the Audi Driving Experience.

Why? Well, Herman's an Audi, and they invited me, and I thought it would be lots of fun. It was.

The day is a mix of fun and learning. You learn about grip, weight distribution, dealing with understeer and oversteer, and the limits of the car, and more importantly, your own limits.

After a brief talk by one of the two instructors, Rob (Netherlands) and Stefan (Austria) we pair up and head out to the cars. The format is two people per car and the instructors are in contact by radio. This works out really well, because you spend just about the whole day (9am to 5pm) in the car, swapping with your co-driver after a few sets of exercises.

My co-driver Bill was in is upper 70s and a brilliant bloke. He turned up in his Audi RS6. I want to be like Bill when I grow up :-)

First exercise was a short slalom course in the 250hp 3.2 V6 TT. Bill and I picked an S-Tronic (dual clutch, like Herman) model. Half a dozen cones to whiz through, then a tight coned chicane, a hairpin, more cones and a garage box to stop in.

This was a good exercise to learn the rhythm of driving and how to carry speed. We did 3 sets each with ESP on and 3 with ESP off and our times were recorded. Bill and I both seem to be in the middle of the field on times, so fairly happy with that (ie we didn't come last!)

Next exercise was an understeer recovery test in the 354hp V8 S5. This was a proper manual and the first time I'd driven one since January. Fortunately, you don't forget how, but I found it all a bit woolly. A very long clutch, very little feeling in the throttle and steering that felt disconnected.

So, we accelerate hard up to about 40mph, then turn sharply left into a very wet and slippery hairpin, then deal with the inevitable understeer by lifting and unwinding the wheel a bit. A useful lesson, but the least fun.

Last lesson of the morning was high speed obstacle avoidance in the (again manual) 420hp RS4.

OMFG was this thing quick! If you ever want to put a smile on your face, strap yourself into one of these :)

Anyway, the test. Accelerate hard (you get to about 50-55mph) into a line of cones, where in front of you is some blue cones representing a hazard. The idea is that you don't have time to break so you just lift off and drive around it, avoiding the cones and trying to keep the car on the course.

This was mostly done with ESP off, so is a good test of reaction to loss of grip. I was extremely pleased that on one of my runs, I lost it and ended up with RS4 pointing the wrong way as I didn't react quick enough to the tail coming out. Huge smile on face :-D

Lunch was awesome. Amazing what you can rustle up in a camper van :)

Afternoon and we were back in the RS4 for a lesson of taking the correct line through different types of corner on a track. This was a tightening left hander (almost a hairpin) followed by a 90 right and 90 left.

This was starting to remind me of the license tests you have to do on the Play Station in Gran Turismo :-)

To me, the RS4 was simply awesome. When you floor it, the corner appears before you've had time to think, but you turn in anyway and it just sticks to the tarmac with your internal organs trying to exit sideways. OK, after a few runs you get used to it, and begin to feel the limit and learn to control the drift and, more importantly, get faster, but I still stepped away from the RS4 with a big grin and wanting one. Badly.

Next up, back in the S5 for a lesson of ABS breaking. This is the same as the obstacle avoidance test in the RS4, but where you have a bit more time to think, so breaking becomes an option.

Essentially, you break hard and steer around the obstacle and come to a full stop. Having had to do something similar to this in real life, I was not surprised that you can break very hard and still remain in control, but there were others in the group that didn't.

Last exercise of the day was back in the TT for laps around the Stowe circuit. Ten laps each, swapping with co-driver after five, and with the group, taking it in turns to follow the instructor car. This is good because if you are slow, he backs up, but if you drive right up his trumpet, he zooms off to give you some more room to play with.

Again, huge fun, putting into practice what we'd learned during the day: choosing the right line and break points, dealing with over and understeer and generally how to drive fast round a track.

To finish off the day, the instructors took us out for a couple of entertaining (read mostly sideways) laps of Stowe in the RS4. Yay!

In summary, a top day and good value for money, especially considering the time you spend in the car under instruction. Double especially as it's someone else's car, fuel, tires, etc :) And the food was good.

My thoughts on the cars:

TT - to me seems well balanced, easy to drive and the 250hp quite manageable. A good sporty road car and fun on the track.

S5 - a little soft and woolly. Doesn't really feel sporty and I'm not sure it deserves the S badge. Very comfy seats though. Almost impossible for me to climb in the back of one.

RS4 - a four door rocket. Hard seats and suspension, so not a car for long journeys and wasted in a city. I still want one though :-)

Next steps.

Having completed this event, I can now do the Advanced Audi Driving Experience. This will be at Rockingham International circuit and driving the TTS, tuned RS4 and the very exciting R8. Can't wait :)

And yes, I probably am having a midlife crisis :-)

Arsenal

2008-09-27T22:17:00.000+01:00

Losing against Hull at home. LOL

Dangers of spam filters

2008-09-25T14:54:00.000+01:00

I see that some companies are making formal job offers by email these days.

At least I was lucky to see it. It ended up in my mail spam folder and I just spotted it before doing the purge.

Wednesday

2008-09-24T07:13:00.000+01:00

But it feels like Friday already - been a busy and tiring week; last week too.

Today is going to be very busy with already-planned interviews and the first day of the Lehman/Nomura merge, so half the day in the City and half in Canary Wharf.

Fortunately, I've got a long weekend coming up, with an Audi Driving Experience day at Silverstone on Monday, so something to enjoy and take my mind off business.

I predict lots of sleep on Saturday and Sunday.

Turning Japanese

2008-09-23T16:26:00.000+01:00

So today we find out that the European Lehman business was acquired by Nomura. We lose the US, but keep with the Lehman guys in Tokyo.

Our new CEO, Kenichi san, looks like a top geezer too.

Interesting times, lots of opportunity, and quite a few relieved faces around here.

Undead

2008-09-19T21:35:00.000+01:00

So it's been a week and we're still moving.

In fact we were quite busy today. Can't really say what about, though.

It's certainly an experience.

Marie Celeste

2008-09-18T10:43:00.000+01:00

Well, not quite, there are a few people around, but not as many as last week, or yesterday for that matter.

If Barclays (or anyone) are going to buy any assets here they'll have to hurry up, else there will be no one around to work it.

For now, another game of scrabble is in order, I think.