Churn

Wednesday 18 Apr 2012 | No Comments

Last post two months ago! Well, a lot has happened and blogging hasn't been my first thought for quite a while. Maybe things can stabilise a little bit now and I'll be able to put a few more ramblings down here.

The biggest thing that has happened is that I'm now living with Stephanie in London! I'm not sure which shocks me more - that over the winter I've gone from bachelor hermit to live-in lover, or that I'm now a Londoner. One seems like the most natural thing in the world, while the other freaks me out a fair bit. I was going to say that those who know me will know which is which, but thinking about it they probably don't, so I'll just say that the cohabitation thingummy is the good bit - admittedly it is a bit of a shock knowing that you can fall in love with someone so easily and completely, but it's not like I'm the first person to have done it (I just thought people who did were idiots, that was all). Maybe the most surprising thing is how clear it is. No doubts at all, something so self-evident that it didn't even need a second thought.

So we rapidly reached the point where a decision had to be made on how to move forward. In a matter of minutes we decided I should leave Cambridge and move into hers in London, and the rest, as they say, will be history. Taking one thing at a time meant sticking with my job in Cambridge, and the reverse commute isn't too bad so far. It looks like I'll always get a seat and can while away the hour's travel with a book easily enough. It might even be worth picking up a light laptop and do a bit of writing! Two hours a day confined to either reading or writing can't be bad. It is expensive though, which is the main downside that weighs on my mind - Stephanie has already noticed that I'm obsessed with money which is very unfortunate. I don't want to be, but it seems to been on my mind a lot for the last couple of years. My years of failing to establish some kind of financial security is a bit of a worry to me, although it's not like I can do anything about it overnight. If I could let those thoughts go then the commute would actually be a benefit to me - the train is really that stress free! I'm having to get up in the morning earlier than before, but I've shifted my work hours an hour earlier too, so I end up getting home virtually the same time as previously.

There is another downside however. Previously I'd cycle to work in my own time, but now I'm part of the great commuter rush. My travel is now synchronised with thousands of other faceless commuters, and the psychological impact of this is far worse than I expected. It has the effect of reducing your significance from an individual to a cog in the machine. As I reached home the other night I debarked from the train and then shuffled with the crowd up the station stairs to the exit. We then dispersed slightly in all directions, but in front of me there was still a long row of people walking up my street, nose to tail like sheep. One by one, as we marched along, someone would take a sudden left turn and disappear into their house. Half way along the street it was my turn to turn left and I disappeared into my home, locking the door behind me and feeling utterly dehumanised. Maybe that's a bit dramatic since to be human seems very much a herd thing at times, but it was still unpleasant.

Stephanie has talked a lot about leaving the rat-race behind and getting a smallholding somewhere. I took this mostly as a 'return to nature' type thing where she wanted to push her green fingered skills to the limit, and the idea really appealed to me for that reason, but now I can see how city work life can be soul crushing - and I've only been here a few weeks!!! There are massively positive lifestyle elements to being in London, and I'm looking forward to all that entails, but I'm also thinking how I now want to get away from the rat-race too. Maybe it's time for some solid escape planning.


Missing a Month

Thursday 9 Feb 2012 | No Comments

Oh dear, my poor neglected blog! Now it will never show January 2012 in the archives :-( How careless of me...

I guess I can blame falling in love, along with all it entails such as endless talking, shagging, and browsing estate agent websites. There's also a pinch of laziness and too much TV watching, but since that doesn't sound as good we can quietly forget that bit. It's not much of an excuse however, since it's only weekends caught up in the whirlwind and I can't convincingly explain my lack of writingness on weekdays. The best I can come up with is: Fridays are bundled in with that weekend excuse since I'm either driving down to London, or Stephanie's heading to the bright lights of Cambridge. Monday is the trip back, and I usually collapse into an early beddy-byes, Tuesdays and Thursdays I try to run after work which somehow wipes out the entire evening (bizarrely, considering I'm only running for half an hour - but the de-sweating, showering, and catatonic state that follows seem to fill the entire evening!). So that leaves Wednesday, which is traditionally writer's day off, because it starts with W. So there we are. Tricky. As usual it always comes back to 'if only I didn't have that stupid day job!'.

As well as bemoaning the lack of writing motivation, I also considered a return to the poker tables. Several lunch-breaks were usefully taken up studying MTT strategy (that's multi-table tournaments to the uninitiated). However I seem to be improving on my reality-evaluation efficiency - previously I'd get all worked up about making a fresh start at the tables and dive in on a Saturday morning, only to give up in disgust an hour later when the first bunch of games get away from me (poker seems to have been designed to make you feel lucky *only* when you have no idea what you're doing - once you know how it works, then it becomes an eternal grind of unluckiness. The poker gods hate a smart-arse). Anyway, my efficiency has improved because now I don't even have to start playing - I just have to look at my laptop and instantly experience the crushing depression of open ended straights never improving, flushes falling to full houses, and just ludicrously bad luck. At the very least imaginary gambling losses are far cheaper than the real thing, so I ought to feel happy about that.

Hmm, so there's two paragraphs on how I don't do anything. I should feel ashamed really - one of my dog rolling in stinky muck rants is about feature writers, and how they write complete crap because they have to write something. So everywhere you look there are articles along the lines of 'Have you noticed how...'. Some lazy writer has been thrown a bone by an editor, and woken up on Saturday afternoon realising they had to turn in some copy on Friday. So they dig deep for inspiration and remember that Dave in the bar was telling them how Wagon Wheel chocolate bars were really bigger in the past and it's not just our imagination that they seem smaller and you really couldn't get a whole one in your mouth back in the day. So the moronic writer quickly churns out an article on why chocolate seems smaller than you remember. Or why people don't queue any more. Or why they do. Or why people put clothes on cats, or how to manage your time, or how to live with a commute, blah blah blah. Inevitably they write articles which are anecdotal, yet claim an authoritative perspective where clearly it must be fact! Dammit, and now I'm doing it on my blog. Have you noticed how the majority of blog posts start with 'I haven't posted in ages!'.

/rant derail

And of course only geeks understand that / business. Oh well, I am who I am.

Ok, I'll stop there, even though I've not really written anything. Can't spurt it all out in one go now, can we!


10k!

Wednesday 7 Dec 2011 | No Comments

I've not actually been running much lately, mainly because of the epic two weeks it took to clean my apartment ahead of a certain person's arrival. There was grime even under the grime, and just went on and on and on! Then last weekend I was up in Derby to see her family, then over to Paris with work followed by the weekend in London. So I figured that I must have built up a fair bit of running energy and it was time to try a 10k (not much of any other type of energy though, truth be told I'm a bit exhausted now).

To do ten kilometres meant doing my usual round twice. The second circuit was always going to be a bit tricky in just stopping myself opting out and taking a short route home. But I was determined to give it a go, and paced myself well right from the start (pace as in snails pace). Here's the final result;

 

The last 500m were desperate though - legs shaking a bit and I'm pretty sure I was leaning over to one side. I also had got a bit nervous that I'd reach home and the clock would say 9.8km, leaving some stupid running up and down the street. Fortunately it was ok, and I'd achieved 10k! :-D

Legs and knees were hurting a bit today, and I'm not sure it was the greatest idea (especially as some of the pain feels slightly cruciate tendonny pain, which will definitely not be good if that goes wrong). So I'm thinking that I should stick to 5k's, and at least then I won't wear myself out while having a better chance of getting three runs in a week. I've lost a huge amount of weight in the last 6 months (hadn't realised how fat I was - I'm sure I looked fairly normal!), so as far as I can see carrying on with less than 10k shouldn't be a problem.


A Bit More

Wednesday 23 Nov 2011 | No Comments

40 minutes running today (6.5km). Not so energetic on getting home, reckon adding three and half more kilometers is going to be tough.


Getting a Car

Wednesday 23 Nov 2011 | No Comments

I've decided to buy a car! Well, I decided ages ago really, but wasn't in any rush to go and look at any. I figured that once I'm ready to look for houses to buy I'd need a car, so might as well get one sooner rather than later. It's actually loads sooner since I'm nowhere near ready to buy a house, but as usual once an idea gets stuck into my head I have to act on it. The amount of times I've almost thought 'I hate my job', and suddenly stopped myself, knowing full well that if I let the idea settle I'd be handing in my notice within days (it's happened!).

So I started out by deciding I wanted a saloon car - I'm a bit too tall for a hatchback, and the worst thing about my last car was the road noise drowning out the radio. So this time I wanted something a little bit more substantial, and obviously that means either more money or an older car. Of course being a cheap bastard that means an older car. I then read a bunch of reviews on sites like WhatCar and Autotrader on what models are decent second hand buys, and BMW 3 series cars stood out a mile. On the internet forums they also seem well liked, although generally had a boy racer image (not sure what that means at my age).

I then happened to mention it to a work colleague in the kitchen, and immediately several 3 series owners were telling me how fast they could take this or that bend, and they all loved their cars! So decision definitely made I reckon.

I've almost looked at one car, but after doing an online vehicle check it turned out to be an insurance write-off. Possibly that doesn't mean it's a bad thing, but I just haven't a clue about cars, and I wouldn't know a good repair from a bad one. The owner said it was something to do with being a recovered stolen car, and there hadn't really been any damage. But still, I felt I was too clueless to really trust it. Tomorrow morning I'm off to see two cars, with unfortunately the more expensive being the better looking one (except for the near black tinted windows! Boy racers see... I'm hoping that'll just peel off, but I've no idea). So tomorrow I could be a car owner!


Mileage

Friday 11 Nov 2011 | No Comments

Another excellent run last night! Would have been pretty bad if it hadn't to be honest, since that was the first one I'd managed all week (damn that tramp shit). The route was my new long route, and when I got home I was still full of energy - could easily have carried on (suppose I should have maybe - takes an immense amount of willpower to carry on past the house though, way more than I've got).

So that's three runs recently where I've been able to significantly increase my distance. I think the difference is down to my breathing - previously I was generally out of breath, and if anything would stop me it was just my lungs gasping their last! More recently my breathing has become easier, and much more consistent throughout the entire run. With that no longer holding me back it's now more about the strength in my legs and my general stamina - both of which probably aren't too bad thanks to all the tennis I play (maybe if I played a more aerobic sport the breathing wouldn't have been a problem either).

I probably should stop being coy about the actual distances I'm running either - I was a bit embarrassed that the distance wasn't amazingly immense, but we all have to start somewhere (bizarrely when I was buying the running shoes the shop guy thought I was probably running too far, although when I told him how much tennis I played he said it was probably ok. Excellent shop - Advance Performance. More than happy to give a link to them!). Also a few years back I was running 10k most days with my brother, but really it was way more than I could manage and it was totally killing me. The only reason I could get round was due to him doggedly dragging me round. This time I'm running on my own, which is infinitely better as I can stay at a comfortable speed, and run just as far as I want to. Maybe a bit harder having just myself to motivate the actual 'let's go for a run' bit, but I'm not doing too bad there tbh (as long as I don't sit down on getting home from work - got to get home, get changed, & get out!)

So I started out with 20 minutes of running, which came out at about 3km. I'm now up to half an hour at 5km, and if last night was anything to go by I can push a lot further than that. My goal is 10km, despite what I said about my brother's runs. The difference is getting there comfortably, rather than the 'dive in at the deep end and let your body catch up' approach. I'll have to admit that approach really works for him - I remember it was how he learnt to ski. Basically he'd throw himself down black runs, and while the first bunch of attempts were on his arse, by the end of the day he was skiing them!

So, here's my route last night;

I take an anticlockwise direction on there (click on the map to get a decent view - bit too small to make out the route on that pic). I reckon at the point towards the end where I hit Elizabeth Way and take the underpass (big road going north-south in the middle), I should carry on straight and get back to the river. I could then take another loop around the parks or along the river - anything to avoid running around the streets really, despite it being nearly pitch black at night. I'm currently wearing some red LED armbands, so look a bit like a running Christmas tree, but it helps avoid all the moron cyclists charging across the park without lights.


Word Count

Wednesday 9 Nov 2011 | No Comments

A 'force myself to write something' blog post again. All the grand designs to write something creative seem to have floundered right now - not a word written in more than a month possibly.

Two reasons really, the first was that I decided to write an application for my phone. After the success of my little clock I wanted to try something more ambitious. So I've been creating an augmented reality viewer that tells you the name of hills. You hold the phone up and look at the countryside around you in the camera view, and it overlays the names of the hills or mountain peaks. I've more or less finished it, although don't have a good screenshot to post here (for some reason it can't do a screen capture of the camera view - all you get are the hill markers. I'll have to fake one up for putting on Android Market). For the last week or so I've been showing it to anyone who'll put up with me, and the response is kinda lukewarm. Not enough hill walkers amongst my friends I guess, and also augmented reality is one of those things that's awesome because it's so intuitive - like the best kind of special effects movies, if you can notice what's going on then it's getting in the way.

Second reason is that all my creative writing skills (yeah, skills - what else do you call it. Don't answer that! :-) ) are going into writing emails to Stephanie (as mentioned in a previous blog post). When I started this blog I intended it to be a personal (but public) journal, which is a tricky balance when you're aware that it's not just strangers reading it, but friends & family (um, co-workers even). So sharing some elements of your life is perhaps a bit too personal (perversely if this was a totally anonymous blog and I knew it was only strangers reading it, then it would be a lot easier). On the other hand if I don't mention the people I'm sharing my time with it's going to be a very dull blog, with just opinion, rants and cool webpages I've found etc. At the moment it's not a huge issue, as I'm totally aware nobody's reading my carelessly crafted ramblings. Every page view is tracked in detail, and I know exactly how many hits I'm getting from London, Oxfordshire, Wales etc (ok, bit of a mix of geographical elements there, but whatever - you all know who I'm referring to when I mention these places :-) ). I'm not complaining, just saying that putting thought into whether I should mention this or that seems a bit irrelevant (but who knows who'll read the archives).

Anyway, I'd rather write to Stephanie constantly than try to put together a weak short story. It's a lot more fun when you've got someone writing loads of interesting and entertaining stuff right back at you - kind of ups the game a fair bit :-) . It's funny how things have changed in such a short time - I remember writing letters (handwritten on actual paper!) to girlfriends and every letter would be pages long. A weekly round trip of sending a letter and getting a reply usually meant you could pile up the writing matter and have plenty to say. Email totally changes that - it's there in an instant, and you even know that they're probably at their computer and should have read it by now. Sometimes it seems more like a conversation than a letter, but at least it still has that 'can't wait to get a reply' thing going on. Thank god I don't have to use a pen any more though.

 

Other things that have happened lately - the annual bonfire at Greg's building site was a great success as usual. I've just about recovered now, with the last two days walking around as a sleep deprived zombie. I returned home to find mice have invaded the house, plus some tramp had a shit behind the bins (omg, so disgusting! I couldn't stop retching for an hour after finding it and can't even get near it without starting again. Fortunately it's been non-stop rain this week). My war with the spiders seems to be over however, which is a big relief when having to open a second front against the rodents. I bought some rat traps and they've been snapping away at regular intervals. It feels awful when you hear one go off, especially as they're RAT traps, not mouse traps (I wasn't sure what the critters were - they looked awful big for mice, but kinda small for rats). So the traps are a bit overpowered, and tend to practically cut the poor things in half. I was tempted to let them be, but I guess that's not really an option when they're in the house (well only kinda in the house - they're in the walls, and can only break inside in the water boiler cupboard. From there they can't get into the main areas, but maybe it'd be only a matter of time).

Ok, that'll do - blog responsibilities covered. I might see if I can mock up that screenshot during lunchbreak and post it here later.

Here's the screenshot - it's all faked really since I'm not actually in Wales and the capture can't get the camera image. So instead I replaced the camera with a photo I took while climbing the Cnicht, and forced the app's GPS to those co-ordinates;


Border Patrol

Monday 31 Oct 2011 | No Comments

A former mayor of Cambridge has decided that day trippers are a nuisance. It seems they bring the neighbourhood down, and generally make the place untidy. He also complained about the punts for hire people touting too vigorously. Clearly what he's really complaining about is that his shopping is getting interrupted by too many tourists. Typical old fart - I guess you reach a certain age and you really can't be arsed to think of anyone else any more. His way of enforcing the scheme would be to tax the hotels, which makes even less sense - squeeze part of the tourist industry that the day trippers don't even use?

So anyway, I saw that story today in the Cambridge News, instantly thinking how ludicrous it was (very Cambridge though), and before tapping out this blog post I figured I'd look it up again (to check my vaguely remembered facts), and it turns out this ex-mayor is called John Hipkin, same name as a very dislikeable English teacher I had at school. The photo on the news site looked kinda like him too. However, despite my scarily competent Internet stalking skills I couldn't find any links with this man and my former teacher. There's just one solitary letter (also in the Cambridge News) where somebody said they remembered him as our teacher, but to be honest that doesn't really mean much. Especially as the letter sang his praises, so I find it hard to believe that the author actually knew the teacher. You can tell I didn't have much of an opinion of him - he was excessively self-opinionated and a bully, and I was extremely fortunate to have several other English teachers who continued to inspire me. Without them I'm sure he would have squashed any love of literature I had at the time. Could the (ex)mayor of Cambridge have the tech-savoir to wipe all records of him at a miserable secondary school (OFSTED describes it as rural? Perhaps they couldn't be bothered to even go and see the derelict pile of crap - many of our lessons were actually in portacabins!). Understandable that he'd want to, but hard to believe he could. Maybe he was just lucky to have been working during the technological dark ages.

In other news, I managed to get to the next bridge on tonight's run. It wasn't as desperate as I had expected, so looks like it'll be my regular route now. Not quite sure how to push the distance since that's the last bridge, and unless I want to run around the villages up to Baits Bite lock I'm not sure where to add on the miles. I could repeat the loop, but that's a bit dangerous since the moment I reach home I'll be fatally tempted to stop. At the final bridge today the police and fire services were pulling someone or something out of the water. Took 3 fire engines apparently. No idea what was really happening, but hopefully it wasn't too serious.

Update: The firemen were searching for a missing person, but didn't find anything at the time. A week later a body was discovered however, so very sad. I don't know how unusual it is, but there does seem to be a lot of deaths in our section of the river (not just accidents, there was a murder as well a few months back).


Wayward

Saturday 29 Oct 2011 | No Comments

When I got back from my two weeks of slogging up mountains I found that I'd suddenly become super-fit! Well, fitter anyway - for a while I've been going for a run a few times a week and failing to build my distance up, post-holiday it was suddenly easy! So the new longer distance became my standard route, after which I'm waiting for it to get comfortable before going a bit further. Possibly last night was the turning point as it was one of those runs where there's no stopping you. I charged round and got back home with plenty of spring still in my step! If I can repeat that again I'll push my distance even further. At the moment my route is over the river Cam, round Midsummer's Common and Jesus Green, then back along the Cam before picking a bridge to cross back for home - conveniently I can just skip a bridge and take the next one along to boost the distance. The next bridge is quite a way though, so might be a bit of a killer.

By coincidence I had been on another day out walking last Saturday (so clearly a good training technique). I'd been down to Welwyn Garden City with the gorgeous Stephanie walking to George Bernard Shaw's house, and just generally wandering around the countryside. The weather was fantastic (t-shirts in October!), and it was a great day out. My map reading however was abysmal - I think we walked twice the distance we needed to simply from doubling back to re-find the path. By sheer luck we managed to get back to Welwyn GC just as the sun set (only to discover that there are no decent pubs near the station - only sports bars with peeling wallpaper & puke smells!).

Thinking back to Wales a few weeks earlier, I had been getting lost there too. I'd even been having a go at dad's upside down approach at compass bearings, only to find later him totally nailing our position when we got bogged down in some swampy ground without a path in sight! So it seems I've completely lost my navigation skills :-( In the past I could read a map impeccably, confidently getting from A-B in whiteouts over Kinder Scout or blinding blizzards in the Cairngorms, never putting a step wrong. I have to admit I didn't try very hard on the Welwyn GC walk - somehow being in open and flat countryside on a gloriously sunny day doesn't really make you worry about getting lost too much (as opposed to a frozen mountain in the middle of nowhere). I was even relying on my phone's GPS, which totally let me down - I don't think I ever got a lock with an accuracy of less than a kilometre, which was next to useless.

So maybe time to get some more practice in (if just to boost my running distance), and also I should be nicer to dad about his map skills - clearly too much pot & kettle stuff to criticise him now :-)


New Model Robot Army!

Sunday 23 Oct 2011 | No Comments

I want one! Only £1400, so a bit too pricey. Maybe I can steal the designs somewhere and make my own (much more Dr Evil!).

Someone with deeper pockets than me has already taught his to ride a bike;


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