bikes and things

I used to quite like running but for some reason I stopped. I think it was going back to a life of curry, beer and late nights at University for Diploma that killed it.

The last time I ran properly was in 2002 and I was kind of ok at it. I used to run after work with the guys from DKA, where I was working at the time, with the aim of training for the Bath Half Marathon which we all did together. I did ok and ran 1 hr 46 with a bit of walking in there as I’d set off too fast. But then than was it for twelve years with no more running.

The more time that passed the harder it seemed to be to want to get back into it. That first trip back was always going to be painful so time just passed. I tried the occasional treadmill session but it’s just so damn boring as well as being harder on the knees that outdoors running in my experience. That thud, thud, thud on the treadmill is also so annoying.

So Emma and I made a pact to start running in the new year. To avoid the pain of that first run and being put off for another few years I found a programme called Couch to Five K or C25K.

Its secret is that it’s a gentle introduction to getting the body moving, starting off alternating between walking and running small distances, and slowly building up until after 8 weeks, you’re ready to run 5 kilometers or 30 minutes non stop.

There’s podcasts and various apps to use to help you do it but we went with this one. After 8 little runs I’m actually enjoying it again and keen to run more as is Emma. The first few are a bit hard and also a bit sore on the knees as they adjust to running again. Having someone in your ear telling you to run, walk, rest as well as a little encouragement also helps.

Lets see how we get on when we get to the end but it’s already surprising how much easier it feels. I’d recommend it to anyone. The gentle start has really help as has the app.

I love computers but hate them in equal measure sometimes. The sense of pure frustration and hatred is so maddening when you come across something that stops you doing what you wanted the machine to do for you, aka a computer bug.

In this instance I’ve been merrily sending emails from my photography account to clients and others and have now only found out that a lot of them haven’t been sending or even filing in the sent items. They just disappear into the ether. Fortunately I’m not the only one as this thread on discussions.apple.com bears witness to, beware it’s filled with despair, hatred and frustration. There appears to be no reliable fix as such with a few edge cases saying delete all mail accounts and so on.

Ahh well a fun evening of deleting and re-adding mail accounts waits. The most maddening thing is that my iPad works just fine.

Pleased with this little shot whilst sat in the car on the way to Oxford. I’ve always admired the shadows that form on this little underpass. I might wander down there with a tripod and the proper camera soon.

The new normal.

Via xkcd.com

Yesterday I went up with Gavin to Afan with the idea of riding W2. We had a later than planned start due to me not wanting to get out of bed and the motorway being down to 50mph due to the awful weather. It’s hard to think about getting your shorts on and heading out went visibility is down to a a few metres.

We ended up getting on with it and getting out after the usual faff. The climb up Whites has been completely changed by the removal of the trees. It used to be dark and enclosed and now is open and barren. This is presumably due to the problems with Ash trees the area has had over recent years. It’s a real shame for many reasons but mainly due to familiar trails not being so familiar any more. It also meant that the trails get a lot more exposure and washed out again completely changing the feel of it all.

The climb seemed easier than usual and I felt far fitter than I had ever felt riding around here. We kept on to the top and found some sections almost completely beneath water. The single track was a stream in places which was entertaining.

As usual the weather opened up a little and we were treated to a lovely view back down the valley with the river in full flow.

Gav wasn’t up for the full W2 so we headed down Whites Level without the extra loop. I enjoyed the Energy section, especially the section in the woods but really wasn’t blown away by the rest of it. Normally I love this trail but it seemed to have lost something to me.

The final descent had a new option which we gave a go. It was nice enough but very wide and open and lacked a lot of the tightness of the original. That feeling of twisting through the trees on a tiny little path was lost and just seemed like a big open downwards path which was pretty sanitised.

So whilst it was good to be out I really didn’t think it was that good. Added to that I checked my GPS and we’d only ridden 16.6k which is kind of pathetic really. This then made me think back to all those years I’d ridden this and felt like we’d done a decent ride! Things have changed now but that’s kind of ridiculous. W2 is a more respectable 44k.

Anyway it was good to get out again but I was left disappointed by the shorter ride.

A few photos from a wander around with a tripod the other day.

Hey, I just want to get in and listen to some music a podcast or something. You know, not have to wait 5 mins for you to fuck around with something you could do as a background process.

It drives me insane each time I see that. I want to keep a well kept music collection and have all my media in one place and synced over my devices. But why do you have to make it so difficult for me? Complete bloatware.

Fortunately Apple don’t have any competition in this space at all from younger more agile competitors.

I didn’t go cycling, I felt guilty. But then I got over it and had an amazing day in Peckham with Emma. Glorious.

Unfortunately my favourite photo service, Everpix, shutdown recently. They kind of mucked up their business model and couldn’t get enough revenue in to keep the lights on. There was plenty of discussion of why they got it wrong, their business model and why Apple didn’t buy them. Anyway, they closed and I stopped getting my favourite daily email with photos from the past.

Fortunately a service called Picturelife has sprung up to fill the void. They spent a long time by the looks of it on sweating the little details as Mathew wrote about recently.

This gives a really nice impression when you install, create an account and start uploading your first pics. It’s then easy to configure a daily or weekly email digest and it seems a little smarter than Everpix in picking out faces to show you. The iPhone / iPad app will also send you a push notification each day if you want but I prefer the email. This is the kind of email I get each day. It’s nice to have a little blast from the past although I really need to tidy up my photos as those little snaps of receipts and the odd screenshot clutter the whole thing up.

There’s lots of other features which i haven’t explored. A lot of them allow you to share photos privately instead of Facebook etc but I’ve not really investigated it yet. I normally print out photos on Photobox and post them to people instead. The web interface is nice and subtle too.

And the downsides? Well apparently it chews up a load of HD space through a cache issue which will hopefully be fixed soon.

Update three: WOAH! Spent a panicked few moments after clicking the above Backup button trying to figure out why my machine was bleeding disk space. I watched 6GB trickle away as Scratch Disk Almost Full message popped up all over the place before a friend (Ta Tim) at 54B helped discover that Picturelife creates a full image cache of your iPhone image library in User/Library/Picturelife/Storage/Images.

That and I don’t like the non-standard buttons. But on the whole it’s a great replacement and their business model seems to have more legs to it – i.e. paid.

This is probably one of the best things I’ve read recently about Google. A fantastic critique of why their new contact lens isn’t such a great idea for those with Diabetes as well as fairly succinctly distilling why Google+ is utter crap. Summary; they’re engineers and don’t get humans.

This quote really jumped out at me at how succinctly it sums up Google.

And yet, I cannot get over what seems to me a tone-deaf approach by Google’s scientists. It also highlights Google’s fundamental challenge: it fails to think about people as people, instead it treats them as an academic or an engineering problem. Instead of trying to understand the needs of actual people, they emerge with an elegant technological solution.

It is not just this one time. Google+, their social network, is a fail because it fundamentally isn’t social or about people…

Via Daringfireball