Russell Finn's blog

Heart rate versus gradient

2011-10-08T12:03:00.001+01:00

It's striking how closely correlated my heart rate is to the gradient. Maybe I should be working significantly harder on the downhills?

This run was done with Andy who's a better climber than descender (compared to me) so the peaks and troughs are more pronounced than they would have been if I'd been on my own. It'd be interesting to see his heart rate compared to mine. I'd guess his would be flatter?

Home Insurance 2011

2011-09-18T15:17:00.000+01:00

Our home insurance - buildings and contents - is up for renewal at the end of September. I follow an approach similar to MoneySavingExpert's advice to getting good value.

In previous year's I've found it cheaper to get the buildings part separate to the contents part because that gives 2 lots of cashback. But this year all the companies seem to have sensibly offered half the cashback amount for one component of insurance so unless the quotes themselves worked out better individually then combined is just as good.

I started with Confused.com and added the top few quotes to a google spreadsheet, recording: Name, Total Price, Cashback amount, Excess, Legal Cover, and Other Notes.

Chepeast at Confused.com was Kwikfit at £131.92 with esure close behind at £132.50 The esure quote included Legal Cover and Home Emergency cover.

Then I moved on to GoCompare, who had esure top of their list with the exact same price quote. A quick check on topcashback.com showed that £45.45 cashback for esure.

I tried quoting for buildings and contents individually but the best overall price was £139 and didn't have as much cashback.

So far I'd been quoting for contents without accidental damage cover. I reran the combined quote at GoCompare and the price for esure did not change - £132.50 including accidental damage. Most other quotes went up by at least £30.

Then I tried changing the excess for each component. Reducing the excess on the buildings part made the price go up, increasing the excess did not reduce the price. But for the contents part, reducing the excess did not change the quote from esure - sweet.

I went through topcashback.com to esure and got a direct quote. Initially it came out at a higher amount but after reviewing the options that it had chosen I was able to replicate the £132.50 quote. I found that I could reduce the voluntary contents excess down to 0 without affecting the quote (£100 mandatory excess).

I also played around with the sum insured for contents. It started covering £22000. Up to £44500, the quote didn't change, beyond that it did.

So I clicked Buy, finished the paperwork, and I can see that it's tracked correctly on topcashback.com.

Net price: £132.50 - £45.45 = £86.55 for unlimited buildings cover with £350 total excess and £44500 contents cover with £100 excess including accidental damage, Legal Cover and Home Emergency

So not as good as a couple of years back, where the contents part was paying me for cover and the buildings part was net £20 or so, but pretty good value.

How far can I run in 1 hour?

2011-09-18T12:27:00.000+01:00

I fancied doing the running equivalent of the cycling Hour record, having recently run 7.77 hilly miles within an hour at work.

I didn't do any exercise the day before. I had 2 slices of toast and a proper coffee for breakfast, and set out at 08:51 in intermittent light rain - not bad conditions for running really.

I also had another goal: sub-45 for 10k, which is 7:14.5 min/mile pace, although I hadn't calculated the required pace accurately before I set off.

There's not much to say about the first part of the run. I was fairly lucky with traffic - I didn't have to stop for anything. The first half mile is downhill which gave me a free head start on my required pace. I just had to hold on to enough of it.

10k arrived after about 44:52 - 7:13 pace. I checked the elapsed time as soon as the distance hit 6.22m, which I thought was just shy of 10k, but actually 10/1.6093 = 6.2139 so at 6.22 I was already past 10k. Woot.

But part of making sure I got 10k sub-45 involved pushing for the last 0.5 miles, raising my heart rate to 182 which is past my aerobic threshold. I was tempted to abort the Hour effort, but figured I'd just ease off a bit so that I could recover.

It took 0.23 miles for my heart rate to come back down to 171, a little lower than I should have let it drop to. My average pace for the recovery section was 8:01, then I picked up the pace again.

With 13:20 to go until the hour arrived, I was happy to work at a decent rate but didn't fancy flogging myself. Over the final section I averaged 7:31 pace, heart rate 175bpm, 1.78 miles.

I was keeping an eye on the watch, but I didn't notice that the hour was nearly up until I had only 15 seconds to go, so I didn't have much time to gain some extra distance in a sprint finish.

Once 1:00:00 arrived on the watch I stopped to catch my breath, reset the watch, and jogged home really slowly as a warm down.

Distance in 1 hour: 8.21 miles.

Re: gradient, the elevation at the start is about 45 metres, and about 15 metres at end, so the net gradient is about 0.23% downhill.

Running: actual versus target

2011-06-19T15:06:00.006+01:00

This is a chart showing how my actual mileage for the year has been progressing against a target of 2 miles per day. I started off aiming for 1000k for the year (1.7 miles per day), but I'm comfortable beating that so I've upgraded my goal.

I've been using dailymile to track my running and cycling. To generate the chart I wrote a perl script to extract my data for this year, find the Running entries, and output a table of dates with cumulative mileages.

I'm currently manually copying the output in to a google docs spreadsheet. It'd be nice to automate the update of the spreadsheet too but I'll leave that for another day...

Cycling to Work 2011

2011-06-10T21:30:00.002+01:00

I've converted my local spreadsheet to Google Docs. The advantages are that I can:

"live" publish the latest version, by which I mean that when I update the data the image above is automatically updated
update it from any computer with web access, without installing any software
share the spreadsheet for others to copy or suggest improvements
do this for free

How am I doing so far? Of 101 trips to the office, I cycled 83 of them - 82.2%

Of the 17 drives to work:

1 was to try out (alright, show off) my new car
4 were giving a lift to Jenny and her Italian exchange student friend
1 was to take Jenny and her Italian exchange luggage to school
1 was to take a tent and kit to work for Mark Halliday's stag weekend
1 was to get in time to present at some education I helped create
7 were due to inclement weather. On most of these I also gave Isobel a lift to school which is on the way to work.

Projecting out my current rate I'm looking at about 183 for the year. Last year I totalled 130ish but I didn't start until the clocks changed.

I'm hoping that I can achieve more vacation than drives to work. Bring it on!

The Rules

2011-03-28T22:05:00.002+01:00

There is a great set of Rules from the "Keepers of the Cog": we maintain the sacred text wherein lie the simple truths of cycling etiquette known as The Rules.

There are some rules that my friends find particularly apt:

Rule 5: Harden The Fuck Up.

Since so many other rules refer to this one, we have to begin here. If someone just needs to "man the fuck up" then we tell that person to see Rule 5.

Rule 7: Tan lines should be cultivated and kept razor sharp. Under no circumstances should one be rolling up their sleeves or shorts in an effort to somehow diminish one’s tan lines. Sleeveless jerseys are under no circumstances to be employed.

Rich Harran is a good example of someone who is both very brown and very white.

Rule 9: If you are out riding in bad weather, it means you are a badass. Period.

John likes to think this one applies to him. Which compared to most of the rest of us, it does.

Rule 12: The minimum number of bikes one should own is three. The correct number is n+1, where n is the number of bikes currently owned. This equation may also be re-written as s-1, where s is the number of bikes owned that would result in separation from your partner.

Rule 16: Championship and race leader jerseys must only be worn if you’ve won the championship or led the race.

Rule 34: Mountain bike shoes and pedals have their place. On a mountain bike.

John has SPD pedals but his bike isn't technically a road bike. But it also definitely isn't a mountain bike. Half fail.

Rule 42: A bike ride/race shall never be preceeded with a swim and/or followed by a run.

A rule written for Andy who is easily confused. Like when he put petrol in his diesel on the same day as doing the Blenheim triathlon.

Rule 55: If you are riding down a mountain, you must first have ridden up the mountain. It is forbidden to employ powered transportation simply for the cheap thrill of descending. The only exception to this is if you are doing intervals on Alpe d’Huez or the Plan de Corones and you park your car up top before doing 20 repeats of the climb.

Rule 56: When wearing a cycling kit and enjoying a pre or post ride coffee, it is only appropriate to drink espresso or macchiato. If the word soy/skim latte is heard to be used by a member wearing cycling apparel, then that person must be ceremonially beaten with Co2 canisters or mini pumps by others within the community.

Yeah, this one is mostly for me. Latte goodness is bad. Also guilty: Mark Halliday (and not just once)

Rule 62: You shall not ride with earphones. Cycling is about getting outside and into the elements and you don’t need to be listening to Queen or Slayer in order to experience that. Immerse yourself in the rhythm and pain, not in whatever 80′s hair band you call “music”. See Rule 5 and ride your bike.

John used to fall fowl of this one but has since corrected his ways.

Rule 64: Cornering confidence generally increases with time and experience. This pattern continues until it falls sharply and suddenly.

This rule is totally owned by Andy Perry. Sometimes he even has to abort the ride because of it.

Rule 75: Race numbers are for races. Remove it from your frame before the next training ride because no matter how cool you think it looks, it does not look cool. Unless you are in a race. In which case it looks cool.

Ed gave me grief when I forgot to take the timing chip off my helmet from the Wiggle New Forest sportive.

So 2 for Russell, 2 for Andy, 2 for John. What about Alan and Ed? Maybe they can have Rule 5 all to themselves?

Or perhaps we could invent some new rules:

Rule 86: Though shalt not get the train home (Alan)

Rule 87: Only teenage girls phone their mum for a lift home (Ed)

Have I missed anything?

First fettle

2011-03-12T19:30:00.000Z

Fettling is a British slang phrase which means "the art of repairing or tuning a bicycle". Until today the extent of my bike maintenance has been fixing punctures and changing tyres. I've never changed a chain before and when Rich's snapped on our Wales weekend ride last year I decided that I wanted to be able to change/fix my own chain.

Last Autumn the local bike shop (LBS) advised that I would need a new chain and cassette as mine were overly worn. I decided to defer replacing the parts and keep using the bike over the winter as I didn't want shiny new stuff exposed to grime, salt etc. The LBS quoted about £35 for a Shimano 105 5600 cassette, £30 for a KMC X10 chain and £20 or so for fitting, and I'd be without my bike for a number of days.

I'm riding the Wiggle No Excuses sportive next weekend with Andy so I had to get this sorted out this weekend.

My bike previously had a KMC X10 chain and an Ultegra 6600 12-27 cassette. A month ago I looked in to the options and settled on a super-light KMC X10-SL chain (silver, not gold) for £32 and a Shimano 105 5700 cassette from Ribble for £31. The chain is an upgrade, the cassette is one step down in the Shimano range but it is a newer version so it should be similar to what I'm used to.

To allow me to shorten the new chain to the correct length I bought a Topeak universal chain tool from the LBS. I got a 10% discount meaning that I paid £8.09 which is within 10p of the best price from Google Shopping.

I struggled for a while trying to remove the old chain via the special missing link and then gave up and used the new chain tool instead.

I laid the old and new chains alongside each other to work out that I needed to remove 7 links from the new chain. A missing link was included to easily join the ends.

There's a good video showing how to remove and fit a new cassette. It also mentioned that there might be an extra spacer needed which was lucky as I found I did indeed already have an extra spacer on my bike. Without the hint I would probably have removed all of the old parts and fitted only the new. Instead, I made sure I only removed bits that I was replacing - keeping the existing spacer.

A quick spin 'round the block suggests that everything's back where it's supposed to be. I didn't need to adjust anything with the gears.

I also got some quality SwissStop brake pads from Jim and Anna for Christmas. They are secured with a 2mm allen key which took me a while to find. Changing them was no trouble: remove the securing bolt, slide the pad out, slide in the new one, screw in the bolt, adjust the brake cable to accommodate the wider pads. For the first pad I used the new bolt supplied with the SwissStop pads but the head got damaged as I tightened it up so I reused the Shimano supplied bolt for the other 3 which were no bother.

Roll on next weekend.

First Asda price guarantee analysis

2011-03-06T22:45:00.003Z

This is the first stage in my quest to extract more value from the ASDA Price Guarantee...

I'll say up front that I think ASDA are overall cheaper for my shopping and that I appreciate what they're doing with this guarantee.

The ASDA Price Guarantee says "We'll guarantee your comparable grocery shopping is 10% cheaper at ASDA or we'll give you the difference".

They currently compare against Tesco, Morrisons, Sainsburys and Waitrose. If ASDA are not 10% cheaper then they issue you a voucher for the difference which can be used against a future ASDA purchase.

It is important to note that it is the total value of the trolley/order that is compared, not each individual item.

This means that whenever Asda is cheaper, the "saving" is effectively offset against when it is not cheapest.

An example may help illustrate the point. Consider an order with 2 items: Bread and Milk (you actually must have 8 different items in an order to qualify, but only one of them needs to have a comparable product at another store)

Bread... ASDA: £0.70, Tesco: £1.00

Milk.... ASDA: £1.10, Tesco: £1.00

The total cost of the Tesco order is £2.00 and Asda is £1.80. ASDA are 10% cheaper so no refund voucher is due.

But if the order could have been split in to 2 orders, the Bread order would have no refund but the Milk order would have resulted in a 20p voucher.

My shopping trolleys have so far resulted in either no refund or refunds of relatively small amounts like £1.50 on a £100 shop - certainly worth having but not 10%.

Looking at the comparison tables it is clear that if you could avoid mixing the good value items in with the poor value items then more savings could be made.

On our most recent shop we got 2 trolleys: one for what looked like good value items, one that looked like normal prices. We did not do any formal research on prices before we started. If we could have perfect knowledge of the prices then this would all be really easy, but in the Real World that info isn't very quick to obtain.

Update: I think this is new... mySupermarket now have a Quick Shop search which lets you see the prices for a single item. I successfully used it from my iPhone the other day when looking at lasagne sauce. They had Dolmio reduced from £1.66 to £1.00, or an own brand for £0.96   A quick search showed that Tesco were offering it on BOGOF at £1.76 So I bought 2 for £2.00 and the price guarantee shows that I could have got 2 for £1.76, so my voucher includes the 24p I overspent and an additional 10% of £1.76 = 18p. So I got 2 Dolmio sauces for £1.58 which is a good price.

2 Trolleys, 2 Vouchers

"bargains" trolley: 27p voucher from £43.55 - 0.62%
Normal trolley: £1.70 voucher on £75.09 - 2.26%

So far I've only been analysing the "bargains" trolley. The website shows you some info on the basket totals at each store and you can access another page per competing store table showing a table of the compared products.

"Bargain" Basket Totals

Tesco, 27 items, 19 unique, £22.99, £25.25, £2.26 cheaper
Sainsburys, 22 items, 16 unique, £17.34, £23.23, £5.89 cheaper
Morrisons, 19 items, 13 unique, £15.62 v £20.13, £4.51 cheaper
Waitrose, 8 items, 6 unique, £10.70, £13.42, £2.72 cheaper

ASDA were more than 10% cheaper for all but Tesco, where they were 9% cheaper. So the voucher covers the other 1%.

Cornish Icecream

But a quick look in the ASDA versus Tesco table shows that some items were much cheaper at Tesco. The very first line is:

1 x ASDA Easy Scoop Cornish Vanilla Ice Cream (2L)    £2.20    £0.99

I though £2.20 was a fairly good price for Cornish icecream but clearly it went in the wrong trolley.

Given that this trolley only resulted in a 27p vouchers, if I had put this item in the other trolley then this trolley would have resulted in no voucher but the other trolley's voucher would have increased by £2.20 - £0.99 = £1.21 i.e., overall I'd have been 94p better off.

Script

I've written a perl script that reads in 4 files in to which I have copied and pasted the comparison tables.

The script is still under development, but here's what it's found so far.

ASDA: (22 compared) cheapest = 16   most expensive = 7
Tesco (19 compared): cheapest = 4   most expensive = 5
Morrisons (13 compared): cheapest = 2   most expensive = 3
Sainsburys (16 compared): cheapest = 0   most expensive = 5
Waitrose (6 compared): cheapest = 0   most expensive = 2

So ASDA is by far most often the cheapest but it is also most often the most expensive.

Getting the items in the correct trolley could make quite a difference.

Other Notes

There are some "errors" in the tables, presumably caused by the mySupermarket website having an older record of the prices than what I actually paid. For example, we got 8 medium Easter Eggs and they cost £1 each (no linked offers or anything like that). But on the website it says:

3 x Cadbury Creme Egg Medium (178g)    £4.00    £3.00

so this has wrongly resulted in £1.00 being contributed to my voucher.

Also, it was quite nice to have 2 trolleys as they were each lighter and weren't threatening to spill the contents out. It was much easier to repack the trolleys at the end when the items were bagged up.

What's next?

Analyse the "normal" trolley receipt
Work out what the voucher would have been if we'd used only one trolley
Work out various optimal trolley configurations for the shopping
Look in to sourcing the prices before going shopping

v1 script output

Kellogg's Corn Flakes (500g)
asda: 1.00
tesco: 1.98 -- most expensive --
morrisons: 1.98
sainsburys: 1.98
waitrose: 1.98

Cadbury Creme Egg Medium (178g) (3 of)
asda: 4.00
tesco: 3.00 ++ cheapest ++
waitrose: 5.00 -- most expensive --

ASDA Smartprice Sparkling Water (2L) (3 of)
asda: 0.48
tesco: 0.48
morrisons: 0.48
sainsburys: 0.48

Kellogg's Multi-Grain Start (375g)
asda: 1.00
tesco: 2.39 -- most expensive --
sainsburys: 2.39

ASDA Orange Crush Zero (2L)
asda: 0.72
tesco: 0.54 ++ cheapest ++
sainsburys: 0.64

Nestle Caramac Ice Cream Bars (4x50ml)
asda: 1.00
tesco: 1.00
sainsburys: 1.00

Batchelors Super Noodles Chinese Chow Mein Flavour... (5 of)
asda: 2.00
tesco: 2.00
morrisons: 3.45 -- most expensive --
sainsburys: 3.00

ASDA Easy Scoop Cornish Vanilla Ice Cream (2L)
asda: 2.20
tesco: 0.99 ++ cheapest ++
morrisons: 2.20
sainsburys: 1.20
waitrose: 1.30

Mars Skittles Rainbow Pack (4x45g)
asda: 1.00
tesco: 1.40 -- most expensive --
morrisons: 1.00

Kellogg's Honey Loops (375g)
asda: 1.00
tesco: 2.35 -- most expensive --
morrisons: 2.35
sainsburys: 2.35
waitrose: 1.80

Silver Spoon Treat Toffee Sauce (325g)
asda: 0.96
tesco: 0.75
morrisons: 0.49 ++ cheapest ++
sainsburys: 1.00 -- most expensive --

ASDA British Double Cream (600ml)
asda: 1.50
tesco: 1.50
morrisons: 1.84
sainsburys: 1.84
waitrose: 1.85 -- most expensive --

ASDA Smartprice Coco Rice (375g)
asda: 0.65
tesco: 0.65

Dr. Oetker Glimmer Hundreds & Thousands (86g)
asda: 1.00
morrisons: 1.29 -- most expensive --

Silver Spoon Dark Chocolate Chips (100g)
asda: 0.50
tesco: 0.50
sainsburys: 0.74 -- most expensive --

Dr. Oetker Giant Stars (13g)
asda: 1.00
morrisons: 1.29
sainsburys: 1.39 -- most expensive --

ASDA Rich Roast Coffee Granules (200g)
asda: 1.48
tesco: 1.48
morrisons: 1.48
sainsburys: 1.49 -- most expensive --

Nestle Rolo Milk Chocolate Egg with a Rolo Tube (1...
asda: 1.00
tesco: 1.00

Askeys Crackin Chocolate Topping (225g)
asda: 1.00
tesco: 0.75 ++ cheapest ++
sainsburys: 1.00

Silver Spoon White Chocolate Chips (100g)
asda: 0.50
tesco: 0.50
sainsburys: 0.74 -- most expensive --

Dr. Oetker Chocolate Hearts (45g)
asda: 1.00
morrisons: 1.29 -- most expensive --

Kellogg's Variety Pack (8x25g)
asda: 1.00
tesco: 1.99 -- most expensive --
morrisons: 0.99 ++ cheapest ++
sainsburys: 1.99
waitrose: 1.49

Sportives 2011

2011-02-13T21:34:00.001Z

This week's Cycling Weekly has a full list of cycling sportives. The number of them, and the number of participants has grown massively over the last few years.

2008: 72 events, 14841 entrants
2009: 144 events, 29118 entrants
2010: 221 events, 47750 entrants
2011: 243 events

The following are the ones I am considering. See the doodle link to share which ones you fancy (or could be persuaded to do if lots of us are doing it - no commitment)

Sunday March 20, Wiggle No Excuses Sportive, 75-80 miles. (Entered, hotel booked)

Sunday April 13
a) Evans Ride It, Woking, GU24 8AZ, 60/90 miles, £11
b) Meon Valley Riser, Fareham, PO17 5BL, 50/88 miles, £21/23

Sunday May 1st, Isle of Wight Randonnee, free + £13 ferry from Soton, 65 miles on the island (99% likely to do this, with lots of others)

Sunday May 8th
a) Hampshire Hilly Hundred, Sparsholt/Winchester, 100 miles, £25
b) Wiggle Jurassic Beast, Bovington Tank museum, BH20 6JG, 101 miles, £25

Sunday May 22, Wiggle Bournemouth, Christchurch, BH23 6BL, 100 miles, £25

Sunday June 5, Wiggle Sussex Surrey Scramble, RH20 1DL, 91 miles, £25

Sunday June 12, Wiggle Magnificat, Newbury, RG14 7NZ, 127 miles, £27

Sunday June 19, Great Western Sportive, Swindon, SN3 1TA, 170km

Saturday June 25, Wiggle The Long One, Chichester, PO18 0EU, 129 miles, £25

Sunday July 3, Test Valley Tour, Romsey, 150km (did this last year, quite good)

Sunday July 10, Wiggle Mega Meon, Waterlooville, PO7 8AA, 95 miles, £25

Sunday July 24, Wiggle Wight Ferry, Brockenhurst, SO42 7ZE, 100 miles, £37

Sunday August 21, New Forest Rattler, Ringwood, BH24 3NF, 79 miles, £21

Sunday August 28, Blenheim Palace, OX20 1PP, 100 miles, £29

Sunday September 11,
a) Wessex 50/100, SP1 1JH, 100 miles, £19
b) Southern Sportive, Petersfield, GU31 4AS, 155km, £26

Sunday September 18, Southdowns challenge, Fareham, PO17 6EU, 80 miles, £23

Sunday October 2, Wiggle New Forest 100, Brockenhurst, 102 miles, £25. (did this last year, excellent)

Sunday October 23, Wiggle South Downs 100, Chichester, PO19 1SB, 102 miles, £25

Sunday November 6, Wiggle Devils Punch Bowl, Liphook, 75 miles, £25

2,3,4,5

2011-01-30T11:07:00.001Z

This year I'm tracking how often I commute by driving versus cycling. After an exciting competitive start it's become a bit one-sided thanks to some adequate weather.

In the cold winter months I typically choose the shortest, hilliest route. It's 4.6 miles and takes me 16-19 minutes. In the summer, when it's daylight, dry and I'm fitter, I can do it in under 14 minutes.

Whilst it can be pretty cold on some days it's still far more enjoyable than driving.

In case you hadn't guessed 2,3,4,5 refers to the number of days cycled each week for the first 4 weeks this year.

Running fitness, as measured by heart rate

2010-12-02T12:47:00.000Z

Having had a couple of months with no running (but lots of cycle commuting) due to injury, I've started to get back running.

On Monday I went for a 5.6 mile run with Andy Perry and it felt like hard work. My average heart rate was 169 bpm.

I looked back through my previous runs which I store in SportTracks to see how that compares.

1) Similar heart rate

21 July, 5.1 miles @ 7:16 min/mile with heart rate 172 bpm
11 Aug 2010, 6.36 miles @ 7:31min/mile with heart rate 168 bpm

2) Similar pace

5 Aug 2010: 5.1 miles @ 7:54 min/mile with heart rate 160 bpm
17 Aug 2009, 6.26 miles @ 7:59 min/mile with heart rate 148 bpm

These results show they I'm less running-fit now than in the summer, and much less than I was last year.

Compared to 17 Aug 2009, I'm having to work at 21 bpm more to go a touch slower over a shorter distance. Grrr!

It's not all bad though:

* I did a fairly good parkrun this year though - I came 20th out of 159, and I'm still top of the Hursley Park Runners team.

* Until August when I got injured I had been (very slightly) over-achieving my yearly goal of averaging over 2 miles/day

* Andy and I did the Farley Mount loop in August: 10.35 hilly miles at 8:24 min/mile pace and it was very comfortable

* I enjoyed putting together a view of all the routes I've covered running from Hursley (and we've since run a couple more roads too)

Andy crashed his bike, again.

2010-09-02T15:48:00.001+01:00

Nice 25 mile cycle ride this lunchtime, although it wasn't so good for Andy Perry who crashed on some loose gravel near Ampfield.

He also crashed immediately after restarting when he was in too big a gear, didn't engage his cleats quickly enough and fell off sideways.

He still managed the rest of the ride, averaging 16.1mph, but he has some sore body parts now.

Selling my iPhone

2010-09-01T11:33:00.000+01:00

Having aquired an iPhone 4 (yes, it's awesome and no, it hasn't dropped any calls), I wanted to sell my iPhone 3G 16GB. It was in pretty good condition, having been covered by an InvisibleShield most of the time.

Starting with the MoneySavingExpert article I looked at the various options listed at MobileValuer to see what I could get.

Based on the terms and conditions and the feedback I read Envirofone seemed the best bet. I chose £158 cash instead of Argos vouchers. Today, Envirofone is listed as offering the second highest amount of the 10 options. I don't think they were that high when I made my decision.

2010/08/05, ordered
2010/08/08, received an email saying that I had qualified for Collect+. This saved me the postage fee.
2010/08/09, sent using Collect+ at a local petrol station
2010/08/12, received email saying "We have now tested the mobile phone you sent to Envirofone and are delighted to let you know that it has passed successfully, meeting all our terms and conditions."
2010/07/17, full quoted payment received via BACS transfer

Andy's cycle commute

2010-08-13T09:34:00.000+01:00

On Wednesday evening I cycled with Andy Perry to his place near Fleet.

We took the southerly route, which is longer and more hilly, and saved a little treat for the end when we tackled the steep hill to Ewshot and sped down the other side at 42mph.

After an evening watching the England-Hungary match with beers, chips, pizza and cornish ice-cream we had an early night and got up at 6:00, had a quick breakfast and set off at 6:29.

For the return leg we took a shorter (37.5 versus 42.5 miles) much flatter route - about half the amount of climbing. We averaged 16.1mph over 2:18 moving time (2:30 elapsed).

We made it in to work at 8:59 but strangely Andy didn't fancy doing a 10k run at lunchtime.

iPhone 4 versus Samsung Galaxy S photos

2010-07-14T14:19:00.004+01:00

Statistically irrelevant no doubt, but even so, here are some photos taken within 30 seconds of each other of approximately the same scenes.

Round 1 - inside, quite close up

Top is Samsung, bottom is iPhone 4. I know which I think is better. The original images are available to examine by clicking on the images below.

Round 2 - Outside

We examined these photos "blind" (ie, we didn't know which image was taken by which phone). We mis-identfied which image was which. Overall, they're pretty similar but the windscreen of the silver car, 3rd back on the left, is better in the Samsung photo.

Cycling to Wales

2010-06-20T00:36:00.007+01:00

Last weekend we cycled to the Brecon Beacons and back. "We", is Mark Halliday, Ian Vanstone, Rich Harran and I. Over 3 days we cycled over 300 miles and climbed over 3250 metres.

Day One

(route) We set off from work at 12:20 on Friday, the early light rain having thankfully cleared away. Mile one was downhill and flat but then we had our first mini-climb of 80 metres up to Farley Mount. This is one of the hardest hills near work but it would pale in to insignificance by the end of Saturday.

We followed the Garmin Edge 705 Sat Navs directions to Stockbridge, taking a route I hadn't done before. We set our top speed of the day of 39mph down the B3049 in to town.

Between us we had 3 Garmin Edge's. I think this is because they're so hard to follow that you need significant redundancy. And like the Space Shuttle's control system, when one system disagrees with the other two, you can follow the directions of the two that agree.

By 1:40 we were skirting Andover heading generally north. This began the longest, ever-steepening climb of the day, from 119m to 277m in 5.1 miles. Not very tough but 25 minutes of uphill. Followed by a lovely 102m descent in just 1.1 miles. And straight in to another 76m climb. And a 95m descent. Quite good fun really.

Then we zig-zagged around loosely following a river west for about 21 miles. Rich picked up a puncture which took about 20 minutes to repair - our only mechanical issue for the day. Between Alton Barnes and Stanton St Bernard we saw a chalk horse on a hill. The landscape around this area is striking. Rich commented that it was lunar: wide plains and distant bumpy hills. Really pretty.

At Bishops Cannings we turned north and climbed a short(ish) steep(ish) hill (58m in 1.3 miles) and gently swung west to cross the M4 north of Chippenham.

We cycled through a beautiful village made of stone called Grittleton. Check it out on StreetView, although I remember the place being far prettier than the linked imagery suggests.

We reached Luckington, our destination, at 6:30. We were very generously being put up for the night by Kirsty, a friend of Mark and Ian. After a quick shower we went to the local pub, the Old Royal Ship. The World Cup started today and France were playing Uruguay. There was a big screen in the pub but we sat outside in the evening sunshine. Turns out we missed a poor 0-0 draw anyway. After a lovely meal and a few beers with Kirsty and John (her man) we headed back for a relatively early night.

Day Two

(route) This is the one I'd been fearing. But it started well with a top quality cooked breakfast (thanks Kirsty). We were rolling before 8:30.

The first task was to get to the M48 bridge to Wales (the M4 bridge doesn't cater for bicycles). The first hour of the day was mostly flat and we averaged 16.5mph. For one 2 mile section we averaged 22mph (although we did drop 53 metres).

Ian had been looking forward to crossing the bridge and I can see why. You're quite high up and the views are fantastic. Looking down in to the water you can see swirling currents moving in all directions.

Once in Wales the sun came out and we headed north past Chepstow and turned west and up a hill on the main road. First gear was employed but it was fine. My bike has a "double" not a "compact" crankset. This means that my easiest gear is significantly harder to turn than a compact - which the other 3 cyclists had. My easiest gear is 39x27.

At the top of the hill we came off the main road and descended a tiny single track road. Then we were introduced to our first real hill. For the next 0.65 miles, the road *averaged* 11%. Blissford Hill in the New Forest is 25% but that was nothing to this. We ascended 112 metres in 1040 metres. Sitting down for this climb was not an option. It felt like I had to stamp on one pedal while lifting up on the other just to turn the wheels. Our speed dropped to about 3mph. There was a lot of heavy breathing. At one point everyone but Rich dismounted because it was crazy steep (28% according to GPS) and the road was covered in small pine cones that made it slippery. At the top we caught our breath, admired the view back down over the estuary and scoffed chocolate. This was the first time I've had to dismount due to gradient. But it wouldn't be the last...

Coming down the hill on the other side was quite hard work as the road was small and twisty so we had to use the brakes all the way down. 234m elevation down to 46m and apart from lovely views, no benefit. Grr.

Ian started to make noises about his gears not feeling right but we headed down in to Usk for a bite to eat before he took a proper look. I emerged from the One Stop with a tonne of sarnies and wraps to hear Ian say that his chain was bust. It hadn't snapped (wait for tomorrow) but one of the links had split and looked very weak. Mark had brought spare chain pins so Ian took out a couple of links from his chain and got it all fixed. A quick lunch ended up taking 50 minutes but at least it was sunny and the rest of us enjoyed a leisurely lunch.

Shortly after 12:00 (38 miles) we saddled up again and followed the river to Abergavenny. En route Rich picked up another puncture which was fixed without any drama. We went through the middle of the town. It looks like a nice place, nestling among some big hills. Worth visiting some time.

We took the flat Brecon Road out of town for 7 miles, which concluded an easy 20 mile flat section. We turned right on the A479 which had recently been resurfaced and was lovely and smooth. With the strong sun and recent tarmac I feared it might be soft and sticky but it was perfect. We climbed up the A479 for the next 7.4 miles, gaining 240 metres. Long, but not too bad.

From the top we loved the descent to Talgarth on the new road surface. 189 vertical metres dropped over 3.2 miles in 8 minutes at an average of 24mph. Sweet!

Along a country lane Rich and I saw a large predatory bird take off and fly just over our heads with a decent sized black bird gripped in its claws. Nature in action!

The big climb of the day was just around the corner. We approached it by coming up a steep hill, then the road kinked steeply upwards, looking quite a lot like a vertical wall of concrete. You can't see the gradient very well on StreetView, but if you look at the fence posts on this image you can kind of see it. The GPS trace suggests the peak gradient was around 35%. I had to dismount, again. For the first uber-steep hill of the day I had walked up it in my cleated cycling shoes which isn't very easy because the cleats exacerbate the angle at your ankle, but this one was so long I took off my shoes and walked sock-footed until the gradient eased off to something more sensible like 15%.

For 5.6 miles we rode up a narrow road taking in some amazing scenery. We climbed from 385 metres up to a peak of 530 metres. Whilst tough, this part of the ride was what we came for and it didn't disappoint.

For the next 12 miles and 40 minutes (!) we dropped down the valley from 530m to 113m. And then ground up another 110 metre climb, what looked, from the graph, like the last real ascent of the day...

But wasn't. Just after we crossed the A40 the road went straight up a ridge, gaining 80 metres and peaking at 21% gradient. This one was tough but was conquered.

All we had left was the road to our destination which the others had done before and said it was a bit steep. We'd had a nice 106 mile warm up and only faced another 75 metre, 0.5 mile climb. With a gradient tightening to 20% for the last 200 metres. I gave it a big push, resolved to make it, but had to dismount just 40 yards from the end as I wasn't getting enough oxygen and my lungs were about to fall out.

We finally reached Ian's Aunt and Uncle's place at about 6 o'clock, having cycled 107 miles in 9:33 and climbed 1475 metres.

After a quick bath we sat outside on a picnic table for tea (thanks Joy) with awesome views over the valley. What an amazing place to live. We heard lots of interesting stories about the trouble the heavy snow caused earlier in the year. Pudding was excellent too - home grown rhubarb made in to a delicious fool. Truly scrumptious.

Then we watched the England game with a couple of beers and some smoky bacon crisps (of which they had a surfeit) before giving up and (again) having a relatively early night.

Day Three

(route) Everyone slept like kings although I did head to the loo in the middle of the night and forgot that there was a couple of steps out of the bedroom to the landing and took a tumble. I received a whack on the knee which could have been disastrous but wasn't. It felt a little bruised and tender the next morning but it didn't affect my cycling.

We were up for breakfast for about 8 o'clock. After lots of cereal and toast we were ready and set off at 8:50. It was a bit awkward getting started as our route continued up the steep hill we finished on last night but we managed it without incident.

We took a fairly main route back to the M48 bridge. The best bit was heading out of Devauden down a billiard table smooth road averaging 28mph on a 3 mile section that dropped 160 metres. Top speed was a touch over 40mph.

Over the bridge, over the M4, heading for Bath. I was hoping to avoid the worst of the hills:- I recently went to Bath and parked in the Park 'n' Ride at Lansdown near the race course and the hills round there were big! It turns out Mark had routed us that way as there isn't much choice if you're avoiding main roads. We climbed from 103m to 285m on a hot day having cycled nearly 200 miles over the previous 2 days. It was quite tough but we just took it slowly and ground it out. Some nice views though.

We turned left off the main road before the PnR and took some narrow lanes to the east edge of Bath, heading through Bathford and near Bathampton (imaginative names they have in these parts).

Mark had been warning us about a steep climb for a while and it arrived on Warleigh Lane outside Claverton. It's about a 75 metre ascent over 1/3 of a mile. Mark walked part of it because he still has achilles and knee issues from his London-Edinburgh-London ride last year, and Ian walked part of it as he dare not stand on the pedals given the state of his chain. Rich and I both made it to the top without stopping which was satisfying given the 3 hills I'd walked yesterday.

Then we rolled down the hill in to Bradford-on-Avon. I hadn't heard of the place but it looks really cute. We were looking for lunch and we got directions to the local Sainsburys. We passed a bicycle shop and then literally 50 metres later Rich's chain appeared to explode. We later found out that the front dérailleur had slipped down the seat post and got caught in the chain, ripping it off. Rich found one half his chain but not the other half which had disappeared. I'm amazed at the luck of having a bike shop 50 metres away and that we wanted to stop for lunch anyway. Rich bought a new chain whilst the rest of us went to get food from Sainsburys.

We had lunch by the canal as Rich fixed his bike. Mark and Ian managed to mistake 2-litre bottles of water for 1-litre bottles so we had twice as much as we needed. A couple of bottles were gifted to a random passer-by.

We still weren't half way home so we got going once Rich had fixed his bike and had some food. We'd conquered all the nasty hills but we still had 60 miles to go. We went through Warminster and then followed the river for 22 miles to Salisbury. Somewhere in this segment we spotted another white horse. I haven't managed to find it on StreetView yet though.

As we got in to Salisbury there was a point where the road narrowed to a single lane. A BMW driver (what else?) saw 4 cyclists about to enter the single lane section and gunned it. We had to stop in a hurry and he flew past. He either didn't see or didn't care about the stop sign after the narrow bit as it emerged on to the main road, but on another day this could have ended in a nasty car crash. Idiot.

It's odd to think of Salisbury as "nearly home" but it felt like it. Less than 25 miles and I'd be home (although Ian and Rich had slightly further, and Mark 5 miles less than me). There's a bit of a hill out of Salisbury in to Aldebury, parallel to the A36, but tiddlers like this no longer bothered me.

Then it was over the A36 to the lovely flat terrain of the Deans, Lockerly, Kimbridge and home.

112 miles for the final day, 9:38 hours, 1050 metres of climbing. (The elevation graph above is from Mark's GPS and doesn't show the full distance).

Summary Statistics

81.6 miles, 107.3 miles, 111.7 miles = 300.6 miles (plus a 5 mile commute to work for me).
750m, 1475m, 1050m = 3250 metres of climbing. Highest point at 530m in the Brecon Beacons.
6:10, 9:34, 9:38 = 25:22 (including stops)
2 punctures, 1 new chain, 1 chain repaired.

Everyone was pretty tired by the end. I was developing saddle sores on the third day but otherwise was in remarkably good shape. I chose not to cycle to work on Monday and on Tuesday I do the school run. I cycled Wed, Thurs and Friday though. Rich cycled every day the following week.

Over the 3 days, as well as big meals, I had:

5 KitKat Chunky
4 Snickers
2 bags of Haribo Super Mix
2 bottle of Lucozade
2 Alpen-like bars

Mark had planned the route using BikeRouteToaster.com which is a great tool. It can reroute by dragging like google maps does, it shows elevation, it has lots of import/export options, and it can show maps from and route over OpenStreetMap. Superb.

Rich and I took rucksacks but Mark and Ian packed everything in to their jersey pockets and various saddle bags. I used sun cream but still ended up with sharply defined lines on my upper arms between pinky-brown and white.

Rich's pattern of one mechanical failure per day also continued on into Monday when his gear cable snapped on the way in to work.

Overall: a lot of fun, met some people, ate tonnes, saw many pretty views and villages, was defeated by and conquered some big hills, did back-to-back long days. Thoroughly enjoyed.

Cycling weekend, before we go

2010-06-10T08:34:00.001+01:00

Heading off tomorrow, Mark Halliday, Rich Harran, Ian Vanstone and I are cycling to Wales to tackle some hills, returning on Sunday. The elevation profile above is for the second day.

This will be my first set of back-to-back long rides whereas the others have done Lands End to John O'Groats before.

Day 1 leaves work at midday and heads off to somewhere north of Bath. It has the most short sharp ups and downs and covers 82 miles. Forecast seems to be rain in morning and clearing later. We should arrive at 7:00 where we can clean up and have a pub lunch.

Day 2 is hilliest and 105 miles long. Basically getting to the bottom of the valleys in 35 miles, then heading gradually up them, climbing up and out of the end, along, then back up into the top of the next one (miles 72 to 77 climb 400m) before heading south and down it (miles 78 to 90 look sweet!). Heading off at 8ish, or earlier if possible, we should arrive at Ian's aunts by 5 to socialise before watching England v USA at 19:30.

Day 3 is longest and goes near Bath, which is pretty hilly. It has a great run back along the river valley, the last 40 miles being on the whole downhill. We plan to leave at 9:00, getting back for 6:30 or so.

I'm a bit nervous but massively looking forward to it.

iPhone usage analysis

2010-06-09T22:22:00.002+01:00

I'm going to be replacing my iPhone 3G with an iPhone 4 shortly. I got my current phone on an 18 month £30 contract - the cheapest available at launch. I calculated that a PAYG option would have been cheaper for me but O2 didn't launch it until a few months had elapsed.

Given my usage pattern over the last 2 years, would I still better off with PAYG?

If O2 make it easy to see historic usage graphs then I couldn't find it. After some laborious copying in to a spreadsheet I ended up with:

Talk minutes: average 23, min 9, max 51
Texts: average 40, min 22, max 78
Data in MB: average 165, min 107, max 292

This usage pattern was achieved whilst on a contract: for the first 18 months it included 75 minutes and 125 texts, and currently includes 600 minutes and 1200 texts (£20/month). I used the phone fairly frivolously because I was always well within my allowance.

What about data? O2 used to be "unlimited" but now has a 500MB limit, after which they reduce the speed. This is according to the O2 rep responding to comments in the O2 blog where they announced the 500MB cap.

"If you go over your data limit and don't buy a Bolt On then your data speed will gradually slow down. You won't be charged further.

Posted by: O2 | 10 June 2010 at 05:52 PM"

So it looks like a 500MB "limit" is fine for me. I've only exceeded 200MB twice in two years.

iPhone revisions seem to be an annual occurrence so an 18 month contract seems odd. Choosing 12 or 24 months is probably wiser, depending on whether you really need to have the latest handset or if you can survive the second year with a superceded model.

I currently get my broadband with O2 and I get a £5/month discount for also having a mobile with them. The rest of the family are on Vodafone so if I switched mobile providers I'd lose the discount. I've been content with O2's coverage although I think Vodafone would be better. So unless Vodafone have a significantly cheaper option for the iPhone I'll be sticking with O2.

I've used over 90% of the storage on my 16GB 3G. The current selling prices for the 16GB and 32GB 3GS are £237 and £282 respectively. So whilst there is a £100 premium for the bigger version you should recover about £45 of that if you sell it after 2 years. Given photos at 2.5 times the resolution of my 3G, and HD video recording, it seems prudent to make sure I've got sufficient storage so I'm only looking at the 32GB version.

The low use and cost options that look like candidates are:

1) £30/month for 18 months. £323 for 16GB version. 100 mins, unlimited texts

Over 2 years: £323 + £30*18 + £10*6 = £923

2) £25/month for 24 months. £249 for 16GB version. 100 mins, unlimited texts

Over 2 years: £323 + £25*24 = £923

3) PAYG. £599 from Apple (O2 aren't doing PAYG until they stop being able to fill their orders with contract customers).

O2 PAYG: When you top up with £10, you get 500MB and 300 texts to use within the next month. So if you spend less than £10 on calls each month they you will be carrying over some credit each month. Calls cost 25p a min for the first 3 minutes a day then 5p a minute for the rest of the day.

I used an average of 23 minutes when I was on contract - I'll use a bit less than that on PAYG, say 20 minutes.

20 mins * 25p/min = £5.00 on calling costs.

So each month I top up I'll end up with an extra £5 of credit. At some point I will stop topping up and will instead spend PAYG credit on the Web Bolt On which costs £7.50 for a month of data plus texts at 10p and minutes at 25p/min. Once my balance drops too close to zero I'll revert to £10 top ups again.

So the pattern may look something like this:

Month 1: £10 topup, data and 300 texts included, £5 spent on calls, balance £5
Month 2: £10 topup, data and 300 texts included, £5 spent on calls, balance £10
Month 3: £10 topup, data and 300 texts included, £5 spent on calls, balance £15
Month 4: £10 topup, data and 300 texts included, £5 spent on calls, balance £20
Month 5: no topup, spend £7.50 on Web Bolt On, £3 on 30 texts, £5 on calls, balance £2.

So 5 months costs £38. 24 months is about £190.

Total cost for 2 years of iPhone 4 32GB = £599 + £190 = £789. Or £1.08 per day.

And if you can sell your iPhone after 2 years for £200, it's only £589 for 2 years = 80p per day. Which is cheaper than a small coffee or bottle of coke.

Just for interest, if you used your iPhone like an iPad and could live with no phone calls nor texts (you will actually have 300 texts/month for 3 in 7 months):

Month 1: fund £10, balance £10
Month 2: buy Web Bolt On for £7.50, balance £2.50

you end up spending about £110 for 24 months (ending up with some credit).

My iPhone 4 is now ordered. O2 have sent me a micro SIM and scheduled a switch over date to PAYG. Can't wait.

Tour de New Forest, #1

2010-04-11T19:35:00.002+01:00

To mark the end of my Easter holidays I did a nice long bike ride in the sunshine around the New Forest. I planned the route (GPX link) so that I took in a mixture of roads I'd never done before and some that I know are classics.

Went to: Hamptworth, Lover, Godshill, Frogham, Ringwood, Burley, Brockenhurst, Minstead, Calmore
Distance: 77.26 miles
Time on bike: 4:45
Average speed: 16.2mph (including stops = 13.9mph)

I set off at 9:44 and whilst there was a small nip in the air it was definitely shorts and T-shirt weather. The first 8 miles were the most direct route going north of Romsey to get to the good stuff. There's a really lovely lane named Coombe Lane leading west from Awbridge. It's narrow, has a fairly good road surface and has some beautiful houses and estates and a pretty pond. Definitely worth doing again.

Most of the roads on the route I took from Awbridge to Plaitford were really pretty - highly recommended, although it does seem that whichever way you go you'll have to ford a stream (or take the footpath bridge over it).

The route then followed the A36 for 0.8m but the white lines that define the sides of the road effectively provide a cycle lane and it's gently downhill all the way so it's actually quite nice.

Then I went along roads that are just outside the boundary of the New Forest but they are still picturesque. The village of Lover came next, which always makes me smile. The uphill route out of Lover finally got me up to 110m elevation which is not far off the highest in the New Forest.

Then it was through Hale and Hale Purlieu to Woodgreen where there were lots of roaming ponies and a horse drawn carriage. Then up and down some hills in to Godshill and down the main road, turning off for Blissford.

By this point I was kind of nervous as I was about to tackle a hill with a 25% warning sign. I stopped before the bottom and thoroughly enjoyed a gooey Caramel egg (many thanks to my in-laws for that; it really hit the spot).

In the end it was a bit of an anti-climax. It was definitely very steep but my bike didn't creak worryingly as Mark Halliday had warned me and it was all over very quickly. Compact cranks? Pah. But I did notice that I was panting quite hard for the next minute or so.

Then it was down through Frogham and along the flat roads through North and South Gorley. I caught up with a car that was patiently following a tractor. I drafted the car for a few seconds but then stood on the pedals and accelerated past the pair of them - whoooosh! Fun.

At the ford south of the Gorleys I saw a procession of old cars go by, then I saw them parked up for a meet 1/2 a mile further on. I also noticed a sign that you don't see very often:

Then it was south and over a bridge over the A31 and through Crow back in to the New Forest proper. The section between Crow and Burley is really pretty and has a nicely named parking spot: Smugglers Road (no apostrophe).

It was about this point that my suspicions that I'd been having a following wind were confirmed. For the next few miles as I went mostly east I had some quite strong headwinds.

I'd been through Burley once before, but this time I approached and left by different roads. The road east-south-east out of Burley goes up a short hill where there is plenty of car parking at the top. I'll be going back there sometime soon with the family to walk and explore Burley properly.

Then it was across the moors in to the outskirts of Brockenhurst before starting the beautiful wooded section of Rhinefield Ornamental Drive and Bolderwood Drive. At the top of Bolderwood Drive, rather than contuining under the A31 and crossing Ocknell plain (which is also lovely), I turned sharp right and went back towards Lyndhurst. At Emery Down I turned left and went along towards Minstead. As I stopped to check the map, I overheard a family of 6 on bikes who were "discussing" whether they were going the right way. I volunteered the services of my iPhone to familiarise themselves with the route and off they went. I hope they made it. Then I took a new, quieter, shorter route through Minstead to the A337.

I crossed over the A337 and enjoyed a flat section before leaving the New Forest at Bartley. Then rather than turning north and re-entering the New Forest to Copythorne and Newbridge (which is nice but I've done it recently), I carried on east along the road to Calmore and crossed the A36 to Hill Street which is a pleasant if somewhat under-maintained road towards Romsey. This finally pops out at the top flat section of the A3090. This route cuts out the longish and steep hill on Ryedown Lane which is on the way back from Blackhill and Wellow.

Then it was down the hill on the A3090 (40.4 mph) and back through North Baddesley to be welcomed home with some tasty sandwiches made by Emma. And some Galaxy Easter Egg chocolate. And a full-fat Pepsi. Nice.

This route would be about 60 miles if it started and ended in Romsey in stead of Eastleigh so would make a good training route for someone getting in to sportives.

So now I'm feeling totally ready for the Isle of Wight Randonnee in 3 weeks time. That'll be 8+66+8 miles which is more than today's ride but there's an hour-long ferry journey between each leg and we'll be stopping to get our cards stamped every 10-15 miles so it'll be nice and gentle.

Blissford Hill is 25%

2010-03-21T18:41:00.002Z

I've done several hills with signposts showing 14% and I've found that the perceived gradient varies greatly...

For example, a 14% hill near Owslebury is fine:

But the 14% White Hill out of Pitton feels much steeper:

But the hill between West Dean and Whiteparish is signed as "only" 12% but it's much longer and is probably the hardest climb I've done in Hampshire. (Do you know of anything harder?)

25% should be in another league entirely. Blissford Hill, just north of Frogham in the New Forest, is 1-in-4 although apparently it is quite short. It will shortly be on the agenda for a cycling trip.

First group ride of 2010: New Forest

2010-03-21T16:23:00.001Z

Went to: Michelmersh, Sherfield English, Nomansland, Lyndhurst, Minstead, Windsor, Wellow
Distance: 58.5 miles
Time on bike: 3:47
Average speed: 15.5 mph

Rich Harran, Andy Perry and I met at Hursley at 10:00 this morning with Mark Halliday and Ian Vanstone turning up 10 minutes late as Ian had picked up a p*ncture (don't say the word). We had plotted a route and transferred it to Ian's Garmin Edge 705 but it seemed to want to route us straight to the final destination rather than follow the route so we were making up the Sherfield English part of our route as we went along. It turned out fine, although we did have to walk through the mud to avoid a 4 foot deep ford at one point.

Spring is definitely here. It's still cold enough to warrant long sleeves and overshoes but at times there was actual warmth in the air today.

The New Forest was as lovely as always though it's too early to see any newborn foals. The hill out of Nomansland was as challenging as ever with the front wheel feeling like it wanted to come off the ground.

I hit 42 mph on the hill that goes under the A31 (and later 43.2 mph on the A3090 descent in to Romsey).

We stopped at Lyndhurst for some "lunch". I had 3 full-fat cans of Coke and 2 granola bars. Not awfully healthy but I'm sure the ride burned those calories and more.

Andy's posterior aspect was giving him trouble for the last few miles - this was his first ride over 25 miles this year and it takes a couple of decent length rides to toughen up. Ian recommended trying different saddle shapes to find one that fits properly.

I got home at 2:45 to find that Emma had made her speciality Cup Cakes - very tasty.

First decent length ride of 2010

2010-03-14T19:27:00.000Z

Today felt like the first day of spring; 12C and sunny intervals. A good day for a bike ride. I've already done a couple of rides of 22 miles but that's definitely a "short ride". Today was a day for a medium length ride. My ride classification system goes like this:

Short: 2 hours or less
Medium: about half a day
Long: most of the day

Anyway, today's ride:

Went to: Botley, Fort Nelson, Swanmore, Upham
Distance: 42 miles
Time on bike: 2:46
Average speed: 15.1mph

The route was pretty flat for the first 16 miles followed by the easiest route to climb up to Fort Nelson. On the way back there are hills at Bishops Waltham, Upham and Owslebury. Lots of countryside and hardly any traffic.

What are you looking forward to this year?

2010-03-09T11:53:00.002Z

Have you ever played the game of "If I won the lottery, what would I do?" Even though I've never bought a lottery ticket I still find that this is an uplifting experience. Sadly it's only a pipe dream for almost all of us.

But I've realised that there's another game that has, for me at least, a similarly uplifting effect. It's called "What are you looking forward to this year?"

As you play you try and quite fully visualise and experience the event. For example, if you're looking forward to the Goodwood Festival of Speed then imagine the noise of the F1 engines, the feeling you get from seeing motorbikes pulling wheelies for a hundred yards, or an F1 car burning out on the hill, and the sense of shared experience with your mates.

I always feel much more positive after playing this game. And the particularly nice thing is that these events are actually going to happen.

My list for this year includes:

Cycling round the Isle of Wight on May 2nd
Easter vacation with my folks
Goodwood Festival of Speed
Tennis at Wimbledon
Farnborough Airshow
The next iPhone
Bournemouth Air Festival
A hot summer holiday somewhere in Europe
The Tour de France
The next version of Ubuntu Linux

Making mp3 versions of C64 tunes

2010-01-09T20:30:00.005Z

The music from old Commodore 64 games is available to download in "sid" format from http://hvsc.c64.org/.

I had previously downloaded the collection and found some of my old favourites. I had been playing them every few months using the Windows version of sidplay.

But since I've moved to using ubuntu as my main operating system I was missing them as now I only boot Windows to do iTunes stuff. Installing a player was as simple as typing
sudo apt-get install sidplay.

To create a .wav version of a .sid tune you use:
sidplay2 -os -o1 -w -t5:14 sanxion.sid.
The flags are all documented in the man page.

You could use lame to convert the .wav to .mp3 but I used the Sound Converter application.

Then I added the folder containing the mp3s to iTunes, edited the ID3 tags, added them to my iPhone playlist, synced, and now I can listen to C64 music wherever I am.

The games I did this for include:

The Ocean Loader: #1 and #4
Sanxion
Last Ninja 2
Monty On The Run
Crazy Comets
Cybernoid 1 and 2
Myth
Flash Gordon
Parallax
Thrust
Wizball

3000 miles

2009-10-14T10:08:00.006+01:00

Today's commute has brought up 3000 tracked miles on my Orca. A quick look at SportTracks shows:

First ridden: 21st April 2008
750 miles have been commuting
The longest ride is 124 miles (followed by 121, 106, 91, 84, 82)
Top speed: 44.9 mph
Averages:

Average(mph)	Distance (miles)
21.3	3.63 miles with 1 turnaround
21.2	5.15 (commute home)
20.8	10.15 with 5 turnarounds (and one bee sting)
20.0	15.6
18.2	26
17.9	58
16.1	121

and:

Gear cables snapped: 2
Punctures: 0
Falling off after forgetting to unclip: 3
Got soaked through: 3

Ride to Swanage

2009-09-01T21:45:00.025+01:00

Went to: Romsey, Fordingbridge, Wimborne Minster, Wareham, Swanage, Sandbanks, Bournemouth, Christchurch
Distance: 124 miles
Total time on bike: 8:15
Average speed: 14.9 mph
Total climb height: 700m (take the absolute value with a pinch of salt but about 30% less than the 65 mile Isle of Wight ride)
Link to route on Bike Route Toaster

Over coffee the guys at work and I have been devising various bike routes, some quite unlikely (10 days to Budapest is the least realistic so far) and some definitely do-able. One of the rides that we were hoping to squeeze in this year is to Swanage and back. This is over a 100 miles, known as a Century ride.

But with everyone having busy weekends for the next few weeks and the decline of summer time it looked like it wasn't going to happen :-(

But then work decided to give us 2 days vacation to celebrate the release of our product. The forecast for Thursday (27th August) was good and I'd already planned an approximate route so we decided to "man up" and give it a go, despite a distinct lack of training for some peleton members.

Four of us would be riding:
* Alan Chatt, previous longest ride 65 miles round the IOW, next to no recent practice
* Ed Altenburger, previous longest ride 91 miles on the New Forest sportive, some recent practice but had to bale out with exhaustion on the most recent long ride after 45 miles
* Andy Perry, previous longest ride 40 miles (and just 18 miles before that), but good CV fitness from regular 10k runs
* me, previous longest ride 121 miles, not expecting trouble

Before the ride we figured it would be unlikely that we would all complete the distance but we weren't sure who it would be that'd struggle. But we were sure we'd get to Swanage and there are plenty of railway stations to rescue those in trouble.

We met near Romsey at 08:00. A very nice chap at work (Pete S.) let us use his driveway for cars - Andy drove down from Fleet so he had a particularly early start. I commuted 8 miles to get there. In this post I'll be using elapsed distances from Pete's house. We were on our bikes and rolling at 08:15.

After just 5.5 miles and 22 minutes Andy picked up a puncture in his front wheel. We managed to pinch the replacement tube whilst fitting it so we used the now-patched original tube and were a lot more careful the second time when squeezing the tyre on to the wheel. We were stopped for a total of about 20 minutes.

Setting off again and we were straight in to the New Forest. I was a little surprised to see some fat pigs wallowing at the side of the road. We took the relatively gentle climb through Bramshaw to the ride's quite tame peak elevation of 140 metres.

Then we had 5.5 miles of beautiful open moorsland scenery as we streamed to Fordingbridge in a tight line of wheel to wheel cycling.

At Fordingbridge we stopped to snack and check our route. We noticed that we were virtually outside Perkins bike shop so Andy bought another spare tube - the first spare was pinched right next to the valve so a patch wouldn't be likely to stay on for long.

After 10 minutes or so we were off, enjoying quiet lanes down to Wimborne Minster where we stopped and got food from a bakers - a steak pastie for Ed, Andy and I and Alan had a sandwich. Alan also got some ibuprofen as his knee was getting sore.

On the way to Wimborne Minster we crossed paths with a group of 15 or so cycling pensioners - I'm looking forward to some of that when I retire.

Back on the bikes and we followed some urban roads to Lytchett Minster. Then we crossed the A35 and promptly encountered a massive queue of stop-start traffic on the A351. For about 3 miles we weaved past stationary and creeping traffic. This was enough to put us off our original route which would have taken us further along the A351 to Corfe Castle.

We went through the middle of Wareham which looked quite nice but we didn't stop. To avoid the busy A351 we crossed it and headed into unplanned territory.

Which of course turned out to be hilly. What looked on the map a bit like a hairpin bend near Cocknowle indeed turned out to be a hairpin bend. The road climbed to a local high point (129m elevation according to GPS) and we stopped at the top to admire the view.

From there it was downhill to Corfe Castle. We were treated to a less often seen view of the castle ruins as we descended north-east in to Corfe. We joined the traffic going through/to Corfe and managed to miss our turning that would have let us avoid the rest of the A351. By the time we were sure we'd overshot we were far enough out of town that it seemed more sensible to continue than go back. The traffic was also light past Corfe so it was still a nice road to cycle on.

After another 4 miles or so we started our final descent in to Swanage. It felt great to see the sign welcoming us to Swanage as we were zooming downhill at 30mph. We followed signs for the town centre and eventually stopped when we saw the sea was only 10 metres away. There was a chippie there so we all got chips + buttie or pie. Distance so far: 57.5 miles.

We refilled our water bottles with water and added some electrolyte powder that we'd all got from ZipVit in a great value promotion. Then we headed off towards Studland which involved climbing steadily from sea level to 97m elevation which didn't please Alan.

But then it was downhill and perfectly flat for a couple of miles before we reached the ferry. There was quite a long queue of traffic waiting to board but cyclists had a separate lane. We reached the ferry just as the doors were being closed but the nice man let us on. It cost 80p to travel the few hundred metres to Sandbanks. As we left the island and entered the linkway we passed a gorgeous Ferrari Enzo.

Alan had decided that his knee trouble and the lactic acid burn in his legs were sufficient for him to retire. We checked the iPhone to find railway stations. Bournemouth looked to be about the same distance as Poole so Alan was with us for a bit longer.

We went to the sea front to cycle along the promenade but they ban cycling in the months of July and August. A friendly lifeguard told us that we'd be stopped by people like him all the way along and advised us on an alternate route. Unless you're on the promenade then cycling in the Bournemouth area isn't particularly pleasant (unless anyone knows some good quiet routes?).

We eventually found the station and said goodbye to Alan. He'd done 72 miles which isn't half bad. Andy, Ed and I rode in rush hour traffic through Boscombe and Christchurch before branching off towards Bransgore on lovely quiet roads. I realised that I had turned off the GPS watch on the ferry so I'd missed out 11 miles of our trip, grrr.

By this point the mileage was making itself felt in our bums, especially Andy who hadn't done this distance before and hasn't ever really gotten used to his saddle.

At Thorney Hill we crossed a cattle grid which signaled our re-entry in to the New Forest. The road from Thorney Hill to Burley is perfectly smooth, flat and really open moorland and is a delight to cycle on - definitely one to revisit.

We followed the road out of Burley back to the A35 and then began the climb up the lovely Ornamental Drive, ducking under the A31 before reaching the 130m elevation of Ocknell plain. We must have had a 15mph following wind heading back over the plains as the air felt perfectly still whilst we were doing 20mph.

Then it was nearly all flat/downhill back to Romsey to complete a 110 mile round trip. I then had another 7 miles to get home, arriving home at about 19:20.

All in all a great day. Where next I wonder?

Solo ride over local hills

2009-08-02T17:54:00.007+01:00

Nice hilly 58 mile bike ride this morning, although my rear gear cable snapped 17 miles from home at Nomansland. This left me with the use of only the small 12-tooth cog on the rear cassette. I didn't have a screwdriver to adjust the hi-low screws :-( I only had to dismount and walk at one point - the steep hill at the top of Ryedown lane as it meets Gardeners lane (at 76.3km)

Losing the gears didn't affect my average speed - 17.9mph. If anything it increased because I lost the option to go slowly up the hills as I had to stand on the pedals to keep them turning. Good training for hill climbing :-)

I've traced the route on Bike Route Toaster so click to see where I went. This is the best site I've found for creating routes and viewing their elevation profile. Please let me know if you know of anything better.

Ride to Newbury

2009-06-20T20:30:00.004+01:00

Went to: Winchester, Newbury, Andover
Distance: 91 miles
Total time on bike: 6:17
Average speed: 14.6 mph
Total climb height: 1320m (take the absolute value with a pinch of salt but about 37% more than the 65 mile Isle of Wight ride)

Today I had a great day on the bike with Ed Altenburger. We've both got Orbea Orcas but his is the 2009 model which has a slightly lighter frame and he's got wheels one level above mine. It's a very pretty bike. I'm not jealous. Ahem.

It had been raining just before I woke up at 7:00 and the roads were still wet when I set of to Ed's house at 8:00. There weren't any puddles and the slick tyres didn't really cause any spray so I stayed dry. Following last Saturday's bag incident I was bagless which is the best way to cycle. I'd managed to squeeze two Mars bars in to my saddle bag which was how many I'd eaten last weekend.

The way up to Newbury had some climbs but nothing too steep so we took it easy and we arrived in Newbury 2.5 hours after leaving Winchester. We both had bowls of non-skinny latte and we shared some Rocky Road/Tiffin (thanks Ed!).

We'd planned two routes to our next stop at Andover: one which looked great on the map and one which avoided the worst of the hills but still hit 240m elevation. We'd had such a comfortable ride out to Newbury that we decided to tackle the hillier route. Ed would regret this choice an hour later but given that he made it home in one piece it was great training for him (and me).

We were using the iPhone to find our way. The Maps application served us well. We had network data reception every time we stopped and the GPS showed where we were on the map making it easy to decide which road to take when we weren't sure where we were.

We could see a big ridge in the distance and we knew there was no way around it. But it was still a bit of a shock to turn a corner and find that the road suddenly took off vertically. Well, maybe a 16% gradient any way. Ed tackled the first half and took a breather whilst tying to pick his lungs up from the floor. It was good to hear the cars labouring to get up the hill in 2nd gear.

I scouted on ahead and found that it levelled off after another 200 metres so went back to encourage Ed but he'd already set of so had nearly caught me up anyway.

The views were magnificent from the top; this photo is about half way up the final steep bit.

Once over the hill we had a mixture of pleasant gentle decents and more climbing to do. The hill had really taken it out of Ed and he was in a bad way on the ascents for the next few miles before they finally petered out 6 miles north of Andover.

We stopped at Sainsburys in Andover and had a sugary drink and some food and saw 3 old planes doing fly-bys accompanied by 2 helicopters - was there an air show on?

Thankfully the last leg home wasn't too hilly although we don't live in Holland so there was still some climbing to be done. I got home at about 4:30 and devoured what was left of Emma's lovely Victoria sponge cake.

All in all, another lovely day-long bike ride. My total tracked road bike mileage is now up to 1729 miles. Roll on 2000 miles.

Running versus cycling fun race

2009-06-19T22:14:00.005+01:00

On Thursday we had a "fun race". Fun, that is, if you relish the idea of 25 minutes of hard cardio-vascular effort.

The idea for the event came from a race that Ed Altenburger and Alan Chatt had last year. The challenge back then was "Can Alan cycle to along Port Lane to the sign and back on his knobbly-tyred mountain bike TWICE before Ed can run to the sign and back once?" One round trip distance is 3.65 miles and it's flattish, being 30 metres higher at the far end.

Things have changed since last year and now the runners are Andy Perry, Alex Mitchell, Jon Tilt, John Cooper and me, and the cyclists mostly have road bikes, so the nature of the race has changed a little.

For me, the main challenge was to be faster than half Alan's speed - he has a shiny new full carbon monocoque Orbea Onix. I've been doing lots of running over the last few months although the focus has been on distance not speed. We genuinely didn't know how it would turn out.

Pete Siddall also joined us - he commutes literally every day on a knobbly-tyred mountain bike so another sub-competition would be to see if he can beat the fastest road bike.

Each competitor submitted a target speed which represented an aggressive effort - something you would be pleased to achieve. I picked 7:00 min/mile pace given that I've not run much below 7:25 pace before so this is uncharted territory. Alan picked 18mph but thought he might not quite be able to maintain that speed. If that was the case, and I could hit my target pace then we'd be virtually "the same" (technically he'd be twice as fast as me).

I created a spreadsheet that calculated each of our target times and a handicapped start time such that we should all finish at the same time.

I think we were all pretty nervous on the day - it's not often you get to aim for an all-out effort alongside other "athletes".

Dave Lenehan (training for the New Forest Ironman but resting a knee on the day) was officiating and counted us all down to our start times and recorded finishing times.

Earlier in the week I'd revised my target pace down from 7:10 to 7:00 to match John Cooper so we both started at the same time. John's out of training at the moment but in the past has been much quicker than I am.

I started breathing heavily straight away - up the only significant hill of the course. For all I could tell John was holding his breath. He looked very relaxed. After 1/3 of a mile I told him not to wait for me and eased back ever so slightly and he pulled ahead.

He got about a 20 metre lead on me but it didn't continue to grow. My heart rate was at about 175 and breathing was hard work.

After a mile or so I crossed paths with each of the 3 cyclists. They looked to be putting in a decent amount of effort. Pete had already overtaken Phil Willoughby on his new road bike. The handicap system meant that Pete shouldn't catch Phil until the finishing line so he must have been seriously overachieving his estimate.

When I reached the halfway mark John was still 15 metres or so ahead. On the way back I felt like I was maintaining maximal effort - heart rate was up to 183 +/- 2. But I started to catch John, and gradually caught and overtook him at about 2.75 miles. As he'd said at the start, his approach would be to go out hard and try and hang on. Apart from a red face he still looked and sounded like he was comfortable though.

Shortly after Pete came by - he was first to finish by a significant margin (he won't get that much head start next time!) The finishing order shows by how much people exceeded their target speed.

My next goal was to catch Andy Perry. He has what must be an efficient gait since he never seems to be running fast. He didn't look to be that far ahead so I was confident I'd catch him sooner or later - especially since every time I looked at my pace on my watch it was sub-7:00 pace and Andy was aiming for 7:40 pace. But seeing him ahead and actually catching him were two different things. I inched closer over the next mile and finally caught him at about the 3.3 mile mark. He finished 11 seconds after me in the end.

The last couple of hundred metres are downhill. I was checking over my shoulder for the faster runners behind to catch me but I couldn't see them so apart from feeling knackered I was pleased to be finishing ahead of the pack. But then I heard a whooshing sound and Phil came steaming down the hill at 32mph and pipped me to the post by a few seconds.

I managed a final extra sprint for the last few yards and finished, gasping for breath. I looked at my watch to see that my average pace was 6:28 ! Way faster than I'd have dreamed of getting.

Andy Perry finished just after and lay down on the grass verge while fending off a heart attack. His actual pace was 7:10 which was also much faster than he'd been hoping for.

Then came John Cooper, averaging 6:38 pace, another significant over-achievement.

Jon Tilt was next - he'd caught and passed Alex. Jon had averaged 6:12!

Then came Alan - averaging 18.2mph - almost bang on his target pace and "last" was Alex, averaging 6:45. Alex was the only person to not exceed his target pace which perhaps shows that he was better able to estimate than most of us, but also that he's out of running practice at the moment. Averaging 6:45 when out of practice is no mean feat!

Results

Alan was not twice as quick as me - 18.2 versus 9.3mph. Result!

The fastest cyclist (Pete) was just over twice as quick as the fastest runner (Jon) at 19.47mph versus 9.23 - 10 seconds difference over 22:30 minutes

On the day, the mountain bike was faster than the carbon fibre road bike. Doing 19.5mph on a mountain bike is seriously impressive.

Alan and Alex had the best guess of their speed, Pete had the worst.

For someone who's only had his road bike for a fortnight or so, Phil was impressive at 16.2mph.

John Cooper appeared to be running *very* comfortably but actually went off slightly too fast and paid for it on the way back, although he still overachieved his target by a substantial amount.

Andy Perry can maintain his easy shuffling gait and still run fast at 7:10 pace

5 athletes finished within 1:05 of each other. Excluding Pete the spread of finishing times was only 2:29

I'm going to schedule a repeat of the event just before the summer holiday season starts. Whilst it was rewarding to do the "fun race" it was a big effort and not something I'd want to do every week. If you want to join in then let me know.

My first century ride

2009-06-14T21:12:00.007+01:00

Went to: New Forest, Wimborne Minster, Bournemouth, Christchurch, Lymington, Beaulieu
Distance: 121 miles
Total time on bike: 7:33
Average speed: 16.1 mph
Total climb height: 670m (take this with a pinch of salt but much less than the 65 mile Isle of Wight ride)

On Saturday I did my first "century" ride with Mark Halliday and Rich Harran. They were doing a 100+ mile as some last minute training for their "Longest Day" ride where they head north from Winchester at 4am and cycle all day until dark, which should be about York where Rich's family lives.

We met at North Baddesley at 08:00 and headed to the New Forest. There are loads of foals and calves in the Forest; it's really nice to see animals in the wild like that.

Before long we'd reached Ringwood, then Wimborne Minster where they were having a folk festival. There was much dancing and people with bells tied to their feet. It seemed like the whole town were involved. If they do it annually then it's worth a visit next year.

We passed Kingston Lacy (a National Trust place that is a good 45 minutes drive on fast roads from my house) and started south, aiming for Corfe Castle. We went a little off our ideal route and stopped at a shop for sweeties and a drink.

At which point I realised that the drawstring bag that I'd been carrying was no longer on my back. *%&*#! The only place it could have been was the last time we'd stopped which was about 6 miles back. Grr. My iPhone was in my saddle pack but the bag contained my normal spectacles, £10 cash, a credit card, my bank card and 4 Mars bars.

So we raced back with me leading the way as punishment (it's much harder work leading than following, by about 18% at 20mph according to The Complete Book of Long-Distance Cycling).

When we got back the bag was not there. Double *%&*#. 100 yards away was a National Trust property (White Mill) so we cycled over and asked the assembled gentry if anyone had handed in a bag. A very nice "old boy" in a suit had it:- a local lad on a bike had found it and left it in his safe keeping. Phew!

The detour had somewhat ruined our plan to get the ferry from Sandbanks to Poole so we replotted a route to Bournemouth beach. We'll leave Corfe Castle and Swanage for another century ride.

The weather at Bournemouth/Boscombe beach was weird. It was warm and sunny one minute, then further along the coast it was like being in a cloud. The visibility was down to 1/2 a mile or so and it looked like it might be raining back towards Bournemouth.

We had some well-earned (77 miles) chips on Boscombe beach and soaked up the sunshine. Speaking of which, I'd put suncream on my face, neck and legs. Which meant that only my exposed arms were sunburned when I got home. I've got a very fetching tan line half way up my biceps.

Going through Christchurch made me realise that when Emma and I had visited several years ago we hadn't found half of it so we went again today (no, I didn't cycle there) and had a lovely couple of hours exploring the town, abbey, ruins and marina.

We stopped in Lymington for a "full fat coke" and for Mark to get some Ibuprofen - his achilles is giving him some trouble if he pushes hard up the hills.

Then it was "only" 29 miles home via Beaulieu and Marchwood and I was home in time for tea.

My previous longest ride was 76 miles (or 81 miles in 3 stints for the Isle of Wight ride). The step up to 121 miles was surprisingly comfortable. It definitely helps to be riding in a group. You get to rest while drafting the others, you can resist the temptation to go too fast and you've got company to keep your mind occupied.

I'm looking forward to my next day-long ride. Maybe Brighton and back? You coming?

Jaunty versus Intrepid

2009-05-16T21:28:00.004+01:00

I installed the latest version of Ubuntu on my Lenovo Thinkpad T61 recently. It's codename is "Jaunty Jackalope" but it's normally known as just "Jaunty".

I had changed from using Windows XP as my primary operating system to the previous Ubuntu version, Intrepid Ibex, last November.

For me, the main differences between Windows and Ubuntu were:
+ Boots much faster
+ The command line environment is far superior
+ Installing software using apt-get and Synaptic is wonderful
+ Updates and patches are offered and applied without requiring a reboot
+ Wireless works first time at home (WinXP requires multiple retries - no doubt a driver bug but one I still haven't fixed)
+ An extra clipboard - the middle mouse button pastes a copy of what is selected, without first requiring a Control-C operation to copy it to the "copy" clipboard.
+ CompizFusion - graphical whizziness builtin
+ Multiple desktop support built-in
- USB under VirtualBox doesn't work for iTunes/iPhone, although I have now got it working for my Garmin Forerunner 305 GPS watch
- Multi-monitor management is not quite as good
- Sound works pefectly under WinXP, sometimes distorts in Ubuntu
- Lotus Notes works slightly better under Windows, particularly around window focus

I've kept my Windows partition as is, other than using Ubuntu's Partion Editor to shrink the NTFS partition to free up space for the Ubuntu partitions.

So what's the difference between Jaunty and Intrepid? There is a good page that describes what's new but I've only used 3 of these features: a new notifications mechanism, a new file system technology and an even faster startup.

Notifications

I'm really liking notifications. When an application detects an event, eg. an email or instant message or Tweet arrives, a simple pop box appears in the corner of the screen. 90%+ of the time I just read it in place before it fades. Unless I need to respond I don't need to switch to the relevant application to read it.

There is more that can be done of course - placement, colour, font, duration are not currently configurable but even without that it's still great.

Faster Startup

My aging Windows XP installation takes the best part of 5 minutes before it's started and even then it's still doing things in the background meaning that it feels sluggish.

I did some measurements this evening and my Intrepid installation gets to the logon screen in about 45 seconds, and having logged in I can run a command in a terminal window within about 80 seconds.

My Jaunty installation gets to the logon screen in about 30 seconds, and having logged in I can run a command in a terminal window within about 47 seconds.

Impressively, Jaunty boots in just 59% of the time which makes it about 70% faster.

ext4 file system

This file system can't be ready by my old Intrepid installation, but that's not a problem. The wikipedia page lists the improvements over ext3, including support for exabyte sizes, more sub-directories, checksums in the journal to improve reliability, faster file system integrity checking and nano-second timestamps.

A benchmark comparison concludes that ext4 is faster in most benchmarks but not so much that your average user will notice. They note "What perhaps is more important is that with the addition of the new features, the performance hasn't regressed. Also, when testing the EXT4 file-system, we hadn't run into any problems with stability, file corruption, or any other issues."

A comparison of Jaunty boot times using ext3 versus ext4 on the same hardware showed that ext4 was 11% faster. I'm sure that I won't be seeing that size performance gain in my every day operations but ext4 may well have contributed a few seconds to my improved boot time.

So overall I'm loving Jaunty. Why not burn a CD and try it out? The CD will boot to a working Ubuntu system to let you try it out on your hardware without using your hard disk. Then you can run the installer from there.

New found fitness level

2009-05-07T18:19:00.004+01:00

Today Andy Perry and I did our longest run so far: 9.4 miles in 1:20 (8:33 min/mile). It included hills and single-track bridleway sections and it was drizzling, so not ideal conditions.

The pleasing thing is that we did part of this route 3 weeks ago when we ran 7.8 miles at 8:35 min/mile pace so today we were ever so slightly faster and went 1.6 miles further, but my average heart rate on the first run was 156bpm but on today's run it was only 146bpm.

So further, faster, and more easily.

I'm putting this down to an increase in my cycling volume: the Isle of Wight 82 mile day and I've been commuting for the last 2 weeks. Commuting means doing 5.2 miles as quickly as possible so I've had a good mix of short high-effort cycling, medium-duration medium-effort runs and long low-effort cycling.

I am feeling a bit stiff now though :)

PS The drizzle was enough to dampen our clothing and when we finished I had slightly chafed nipples. I asked Andy if his were sore and he said no. But a minute later I noticed that he had blood on the front of his shirt. Turns out his nipples were completely numb and he'd rubbed one raw. Ouch.

Isle of Wight Randonnee 2009

2009-05-04T21:21:00.010+01:00

Went to: The Isle of Wight
Distance: 67 miles (plus 15.5 commute to the ferry)
Total time on bike: 4:44 (plus 1 hour commute to the ferry)
Average speed: 14.2 mph
Fastest speed: 38.3 mph (according to my Forerunner 305 GPS)
Total climb height: 966m

On Sunday we cycled around the Isle of Wight. A tiring but thoroughly enjoyable day was by all: Alan Chatt, Mark Halliday, Jim McDonnell and me.

I'd never been there before except for a quick trip to a single pub up-river in Cowes on Janet Willmott's yacht a few years ago. It's a really pleasant place around which to cycle - lots of sea views, coastline, chalk cliffs, beaches, cute villages and rolling hills.

The day started at 8:00 as Mark arrived at my house and he, Jim and I set off to Southampton port. After 7.7 miles and 28 minutes of formation cycling along boring main roads we arrived. Despite having pre-booked and printed our tickets we still had to check in and get a boarding pass (although on the way back just showing the printed ticket was enough). We joined the queue of gaudily attired cyclists and Alan arrived after 10 minutes.

We boarded the ferry after most of the motorized vehicles and were instructed to lay our bikes down on the floor. There was plenty of space so we weren't overly worried about laying down our collective £8000 worth of carbon fibre and titanium.

We went up on deck and enjoyed the sun breaking through the early clouds as the ferry steamed towards Cowes at 16mph (according to Jim's Edge 705). When we docked they let the cyclists off first and Mark lead us to the Randonnee stall. We collected our cards which we would get stamped at 6 points around the island to prove that we had done the whole 100k distance.

We set off at about 10:00 and 100 metres later ran in to the back of the queue for the Cowes chain ferry. There were already about 100 cyclists waiting. Foot passengers and cyclists travel for free; cars are £1.50. The first time the ferry reached our side the cars were let off and then the waiting cars were let on, followed by as many cyclists as could be squeezed in between the cars.

The second time the ferry came back the cars were let off but the mass of cyclists refused to part to let the cars board first. The cyclists had been there longer and there seemed to be a whole boatload of us. A brief stand-off ensued as the ferry staff refused to let us on unless the vehicles boarded first. After shouts of "What do you want, £1.50?" and a minutes procrastination common sense prevailed and all the cyclists were allowed to board. When we got to the other side we all mounted and headed off amidst a sea of colour.

The density of cyclists was amazing - for the first few miles we seemed to be surrounded by bikes, some passing us but most being overtaken by us. The density caused problems at one switchback corner as the road steepened to perhaps 13% gradient for 20 metres. Weaker riders wobbled to a stop causing those directly behind to stop too. You don't want unexpected stops when you're clipped in to your pedals but all of us powered past and up the hill unscathed. The event had 2156 cyclists registered including 1851 doing the full 100k route. It was virtually impossible to get lost as you could almost always see a stream of cyclists ahead and behind. The route-marking blue signs were easy to find and we'd also been given a leaflet with the route marked on it. All in all, pretty well organized.

We then had a nice flat mile-long section with a view of the Solent and the mainland before the road turned inland and we entered the kind of terrain that we'd spend most of the ride doing; quiet country lanes with views of fields and hills, but not so much of the sea.

After about 5 miles we were passed by a 16-year old boy on a mountain bike. After Mark drafted him for half a mile I decided that it wasn't the done thing to be pulled along by a knobbly-tired bike and we passed him, leaving it up to him if he wanted to draft us in return. He didn't, and we didn't see him again. Given that our bikes are at least 30% easier to ride on the roads than his, he would have had a much more demanding day than us.

After 16 miles and 1:03 of riding without stopping we reached our first checkpoint at Yarmouth. After a quick bit of packed lunch and a comfort break we remounted and were disconcerted to find that our next 2 miles were to be along a stony bridleway. Skinny-tired road bikes and trails aren't the best of bedfellows so we were pretty apprehensive but we made it down the 2 mile section without picking up any punctures. The boy on the mountain bike would have been going faster along here than we were as we were going pretty slow. I'm not sure there's any evidence that riding at two-thirds pace will reduce your chances of getting a puncture but that's what we did.

From Freshwater Bay we climbed from an elevation of -2 to 81 metres in a 1300-metre long climb - about a 6% gradient. This was the second hardest climb of the day but we were still quite fresh and the views of the cliffs and beach were spectacular.

Once over the top we were treated to a 38mph descent. This began the pattern of climb/descent which repeated itself for the rest of the ride. When your legs are tired the joys of the descents are somewhat dulled by the knowledge that what-goes-down-must-go-up.

Mark snapped his rear gear cable coming down the hill so we stopped and tried to affect a roadside repair. He had a spare cable with him but we couldn't work out how to get it in to the shifter so instead we adjusted the hi-low screws on his rear derailleur to give him the 3rd smallest (and hardest) cog at the bike and the 2 rings at the front. He thought that part of the old cable might be stuck in the mechanism so we'd try to get it fixed at a shop in Ventnor. This left him without any easy gears and the longest climb of the day to broach. But this is the crazy guy who's soon to be doing London to Edinburgh and back in 4 days so we had no worries about him.

Shortly after Jim nearly "clothes-lined" another cyclist. We were approaching a right hand turn on a narrow country road and Jim vigourously thrust out his hand to indicate his intentions. I'm not sure whether his intentions included punching the woman in to the hedge but he nearly succeeded.

We stopped a mile before the biggest climb to have the rest of our packed lunch and to try to regain some freshness in our legs before the ascent. As we ate we were passed by a team of about 10 guys in team formation all in matching red lycra, prompting some discussion about getting matching outfits for the Hursley cyclists. Watch this space... (with fear).

The ascent wasn't too bad. It was quite long but it wasn't very steep. Over 1.8 miles we gained 124 metres of elevation in a long drag that took our slowest team member 12 minutes of continuous slog.

After another couple of miles we reached the second checkpoint, ending a 19 mile stage with the 2 biggest climbs of the day. I treated us all to a chilled Kit Kat, and Mark found that during the stage he had freed up his gear lever which enabled him to fit the replacement gear cable; better late then never.

I remember less about the second half of the ride - partly because it was familiar-feeling country lanes but probably more because we were getting tired. Alan in particular didn't relish the last 10 miles which felt like a procession of semi-steep climbs and descents. The ride was also over twice as long as any he'd done before so he did particularly well to make it without stopping on any hills and without complaining.

Towards the end I attacked one longish hill in a big gear to try and blast up it and found I was suprisingly fresh. So for the rest of the ride I would attack the hills until I ran out of steam, grind on in discomfort for a while, then turn round and coast back to join the tail of our group. I was quite pleased with how quickly I recovered though - I found that the coasting back phase was enough to give me the energy for another sprint. After a few of these my legs were burning and and I think I had an idea of how Alan must have been feeling for the last 10 miles.

The was one corner somewhen near the end when the Spinnaker tower suddenly appeared and seemed to be really close, but then we turned back inland and didn't see it again for ages.

We arrived back at Cowes just before 5:00, collected out final stamp and received a certifcate. We joined the ferry queue in the sunshine and were on board after 15 minutes. A tasty pint of 1664 each, some evening sunshine and a ferry trip home was a great end to a great day.

I half-jokingly said to Mark that we should do it again soon but do 2 laps. I've just received an email where he's called my bluff and proposed two weekends when we could do it. The less crazy in our gang could join us at lunchtime for the second lap when we'd have burned off our excess enthusiasm and would appreciate a more relaxed pace. Sounds like fun.

Quickish run with Andy

2009-05-01T21:24:00.005+01:00

Andy Perry and I ran 6 miles today quicker than we've done before - 8:05 min/mile. Andy felt a bit under par on Tuesday when we ran but today he said that he had no excuses (other than age, weight, slippery conditions, fitness etc etc).

This route is quite a good one as it starts off downhill for the first 1.6 miles, over which we averaged 7:40 min/mile pace. Now thoroughly warmed up we spent the next 2 miles climbing nearly 80 metres. Then the rest of the route is downhill apart from a couple of relatively insignificant slopes.

My heart rate trace shows that I wasn't pushing very hard. Andy was getting a much better workout today than I was. Lucky him. The drop in heartrate after 3.2 miles was due to the track getting quite muddy and slippery and we slowed to ensure no embarrassing falls.

You may have spotted that we finished in Hursley village rather than where we started. This cunningly avoids running up a steepish hill at the end of a long run. I initially felt quite guilty about this cheating but when I mentioned it to Jon Tilt (a seriously fit guy at work) he gave it his approval as it was a guaranteed way to make sure we get a cooling down period as we walk back up the hill - something lots of long distance runners don't bother with.

Next week our goal is to run 9 miles, in preparation for a circular 10.5 mile run up to Farley Mount returning via Ampfields woods.

50 quid Sainsburys vouchers win

2009-05-01T20:51:00.003+01:00

You may not have noticed but the Sainsburys Active Kids vouchers have a 15 digit code printed on the bottom of the front face that you can enter in to a draw on their website.

Every five minutes between 8am - 10pm until 3 June 2009 they are giving away £50 of vouchers to someone who entered a code in that time window.

And the other night I won! Sweet!

So how lucky was I? According to Wikipedia their annual revenue is around £20 billion.

Daily that's around 20 billion/363 = 55 million. Vouchers are given out for every £10 spend. Assume half of the revenue results in a voucher being given out so the number of vouchers issued per day is around 2.75 million.

I've no data on which to base the fraction of vouchers that get entered in their Draw. Assume only 1 in 10 as most people I've spoken to hadn't noticed this feature and lots of people won't be bothered.

If the codes are entered evenly over the period, which I'm treating as being the same thing as saying that those issued on a day will be entered on a day, then the number entered every 5 mins is 2.75 million / 10 / (14*60/5) = 1640.

So my odds of winning a draw were approximately 10/1640 = 1 in 164. Lucky me.

1000 miles

2009-04-27T20:45:00.004+01:00

I reached a GPS-tracked distance of 1000 miles on Friday. I commuted Tuesday-Friday which is about 40 miles and had a nice 31 mile ride with Alan on Friday afternoon.

Alan got a 2009 Orbea Onix on the CycleScheme this year and it's a lovely bike. This years model, unlike last years Onix (which I ordered but didn't get), is a carbon monocoque frame and looks pretty snazzy. It's got Shimano wheels and componentry and he's very pleased with it.

Went to: Crawley, Longstock, Michelmersh
Distance: 31.2 miles
Total time on bike: 2:00
Average speed: 15.6 mph
Fastest speed: 37.6mph (according to my Forerunner 305 GPS)
Total climb height: 385 m

Almost all of this ride is on quiet country lanes. There are 3 climbs of which the 3rd, at 29 miles in, is the steepest - just what you need when your legs are getting tired.

The section after the 2nd peak, after 11 miles, is a gentle 2 mile descent where you whizz along at 25mph putting in very little effort. If you have a good imagination then you can pretend that this is your normal pace and that you'll be entering the Tour de France next year.

Our average speed after 23.1 miles was still an impressive 16.4mph - but it dropped off quite a bit over the last few miles as our legs got tired and there were some more ascents to tackle.

Fabulous Ride

2009-04-19T21:03:00.005+01:00

Went to: Michelmersh, the Deans, the New Forest
Distance: 47.3 miles
Total time on bike: 2:45
Average speed: 17.2 mph
Average heart rate: 154bpm
Fastest speed: 39.8mph (according to my Forerunner 305 GPS)
Total climb height: 460 m

I had a fabulous bike ride this afternoon/evening. The route was picked to try out the 2 main options for getting to Redlynch for a future cycle ride with Alan Chatt who lives in Salisbury.

You may also have noticed that the route image above isn't using Google Maps data, it's an image from OpenStreetMap which is a cool project that provides mapping data without cost or licensing restrictions - it's completely for free. The data is supplied by regular people - I contributed a lot of roads and footpaths in my area as it was pretty sparse. Check it out. If anything you know of is missing then have a go at adding it. It can be strangely addictive.

The way out included a pleasant climb in to Michelmersh - anything that doesn't require the use of 1st gear counts as a good climb in my book.

From there I followed an official cycle route from Lockerly through East Dean to West Dean. It was lovely and flat although I could see I was tracking a mean looking ridge to my left.

Then I turned left. I climbed 122 metres in 1.12 miles and 6:15 minutes. First gear was most definitely employed. Max heart rate was 182bpm which shows I had a little in reserve but this intensity had to be sustained for about 3 minutes and I sounded like a steam train. The steepest part of this hill started at a hairpin bend and was 0.3 miles long and climbs 59 metres. That's a sustained average gradient of 12.2% and it levels off at the top so most of it is about 14%. I averaged 7.1mph up the steepest part.

I reached Redlynch after 1:24 riding time. I'd been using the Maps application on my iPhone for navigation - no backup paper maps. I'd dropped 6 "pins" as way points for the areas that I didn't know. I stopped 4 times to consult the map (and once for a train at a level crossing). The first time I had no O2 coverage for data but the Maps application caches the areas you've recently viewed so whilst I couldn't get any new zoomed-in maps a more zoomed-out map was available and it was enough.

A couple of miles after leaving Redlynch I properly entered the New Forest. You know when you enter because there is a cattle grid to cross, taken slow on a road bike. I've done a few at high speed but it sounds awful and it's pretty violent. It's useful to know that the bike can take it but I'm not intending to do it again.

I really like this part of the New Forest - north of the A36. It's mostly open moors with few forests so you can see much further. I think it's at a higher altitude than the other side of A36 and the views are breathtaking. I was treated to a panorama over miles of moorland with the sun in an early stage of setting - beautiful.

As you might expect there were ponies and donkeys all over the place including some cute foals. I gingerly cycled past some startled-in-to-running cows and calfs at one point, whistling a tune in an attempt to appear less threatening.

After leaving the Forest I went through Blackhill and nearly to East Wellow before heading straight in to Romsey via the most direct route. This meant I took the last section of dual carriageway in to Romsey - down the hill. My GPS watch says I did 39.8mph which is frustratingly close to 40mph - which I haven't yet achieved. But this was after 2:10 riding time and 37.25 miles of cycling so I didn't have fresh legs. One for another day.

I got home pretty tired but after 2:45 of fairly quick cycling that's a good thing - I'll sleep well tonight. I'd bought a couple of fruit and custard tarts earlier so I wolfed one down (Emma enjoyed the other one later) before glugging a probiotic yoghurt drink, chomping a little bit of Easter egg, scoffing a sausage, mustard and ketchup sandwich and having a Weight Watchers pizza. I won't buy that brand of pizza again. The Pizza Express ones are only 25% or so more calories and are much tastier.

All in all, a fabulous ride. I need to work out how to maximize my time in the New Forest without cheating and driving there.

Ride to Andover

2009-04-05T18:09:00.004+01:00

Went to: Andover, the Wallops
Distance: 54 miles
Total time on bike: 3:20
Average speed: 16.1 mph
Fastest speed: 39.3mph (according to Forerunner 305 GPS)
Total climb height: 568 m

Another lovely countrified ride on a mostly sunny day. I met Mark Halliday at Hursley and off we went.

The cycling was uneventful - quiet country lanes and no nasty hills. We passed through numerous sleepy villages with quaint thatched cottages. It really is a nice part of the world down here.

Our destination was Andover; in particular, a coffee shop that serves latte. Cafe Nero didn't have any outside seating so Costa won. They serve coffee in soup bowls and having cycled 25 miles to get there it didn't feel wrong to put 2 sugars in.

The photo was taken with my iPhone, which takes a bit of a pasting for only having a 2 megapixel fixed-focus camera, but it takes perfectly adequate snaps.

There weren't many hills that troubled me in the slightest although the last one is long and saves the steepest part for the end so after 46 miles this was a little bit challenging.

Tying my shoelaces

2009-04-02T20:00:00.002+01:00

It turns out I've been tying my shoelaces wrong for the last 30 years. I've been tying a Granny Knot, which results in an uneven knot that tends to come undone.

So first I made the trivial change to convert it to a Standard Shoelace Knot. The difference is due to the adjacent contact points within the finished knot. In the Standard Shoelace Knot, tension on the bottom part of the knot (due to foot movement) will pull the adjacent top part of the knot tight. In the un-balanced "Granny Knot" the adjacent contact points run in opposite directions so the same tension on the bottom part of the knot will work the adjacent top part of the knot loose.

For a couple of days I tried tying one shoe with a Granny and one with the Standard knot to see if either would come undone but neither did.

But now I've upgraded to using the Ian Knot. The end result is identical to the Standard knot but it's definitely faster to tie. I'm actually enjoying tying my laces now. There is beauty in its simplicity and efficiency.

Ian's website also has lots of lacing patterns, some decorative, some functional. The ones for lacing shoes for use on my mountain bike could be genuinely useful.

Ride to Lymington

2009-03-29T19:20:00.006+01:00

I've had a good day today. The clocks have changed, the Grand Prix season has started, I watched a 1000 or so runners stream by in the Eastleigh 10k (it was fascinating to watch the runners' styles), I had a rewarding bike ride and Emma and Isobel made some great cakes.

Went to: New Forest wilderness, Beaulieu, Lymington, Brockenhurst
Distance: 76 miles
Total time on bike: 4:54
Average speed: 15.5 mph
Total climb height: 543 m

I met Mark Halliday at North Baddesley at 11 and we headed off to the New Forest. Mark's Garmin Edge 705 found us some back roads to mostly avoid the traffic around Southampton.

Our first stop was in Beaulieu where we enjoyed a full fat Coke. Shortly after we disturbed a couple of pheasants. As they took off they crossed our path and one of them "unloaded" itself, narrowly missing me. Not a hazard we had been anticipating.

We had a little jaunt down to the sea front at one point. We were only about 3 miles from the Isle of Wight. The Spinnaker tower was visible in one direction and the Lymington ferry in the other. There was also a couple of ponies enjoying the beach.

We had a late lunch at Lymington: a Spicy Chicken pasty. I don't think it was just the appetite from a 35 mile ride to get there, but it was the most tasty pasty I can remember eating.

I saw plenty of places in the New Forest that I didn't know existed - lots of potential for family walks.

Cycling on the open parts of the moors when there's a headwind is a bit tiring so we were grateful to find an icecream van at one of the car parks. No icecream but another sugary drink and energy levels were significantly boosted.

When we got back we found freshly baked hot cross buns and lovely cup cakes. Emma had put chocolate in to the middle of the cup cakes, the idea being that if you eat it shortly after its cooked then it'd be gooey. But we weren't back until nearly 5 so by the time I got my cake the chocolate was solid, but it was still delicious. No big surprise, but chocolate-filled cakes taste great.

I'm looking forward to our next ride - which could be an organized event around the edge of the Isle of Wight in May.

Accidental 7 mile run

2009-03-20T20:31:00.004Z

This sunny afternoon I went for a run, intending to do a loop around Ampfield woods and back. But somehow I missed the bridlepath to re-enter the woods and ended up going back over the hill past Merdon Castle.

On the plus side, the GPS trace looks much more impressive.

6.96 miles in 58:30 at average pace 8:25 miles/min. This includes the time hopping through muddy sections so it should be a shade faster when the ground is dry.

A sunny 65.5m ride

2009-03-15T16:48:00.003Z

Another long bike ride today in gloriously sunny 16C weather. I met up with Mark Halliday, Rich Harran and Ian Vanstone at the White Horse in Ampfield at 9:00. Executive summary:

Went to: the countryside
Distance: 65.5 miles
Highest point: 143m
Total climb height: 640 m
Average speed: 15.2 mph
Total time on bike: 4:19

We went anti-clockwise around the route above. We saw very little traffic and lots of countryside. The detour through Crawley (the most North-Easterly point) was partly to miss out a section of the main Stockbridge road but mostly because it's a really pretty village.

For sustenance I took a packet of Thornton's Belgian chocolates. I figured that the calories wouldn't be a problem over that distance.

The road out of Pitton was fun. It's steep at 14% but not too long - 40m of ascent. It's probably the steepest hill I've done.

Steep hills are particularly challenging on my bike because I have a regular "double" crank, not a "compact crank". This means that my easiest gear is not very easy at all. My small chainring has 39 teeth and my biggest cog at the back has 27 teeth. Everyone else has compact cranks and has the luxury of a front ring with just 32/34 teeth.

We stopped at Mark's house in Romsey and he heated us up a lovely risotto (mushroom, chicken, ham, butternut squash, other veg, stock). He'll make a lovely wife for someone one day.

Riding in a group of four was good. Riding two abreast on the quiet roads meant that we could talk easily and the rear two could draught the front two. I'm looking forward to a bigger peleton when Alan Chatt, Ed Altenburger and Alex Mitchell get their bikes.

Longest bike ride so far - Petersfield

2009-03-01T15:08:00.008Z

I've just got back from my longest bike ride so far and it was great. Executive summary:

Went to: Petersfield
Distance: 56 miles
Highest point: 220 m
Total climb height: 762 m
Average speed: 12.7 mph
Total time on bike: 4:23
Fastest speed: 40 mph
Punctures: 0

I met Mark Halliday (who is cycling from London to Edinburgh and back again in 4 days later this year - please consider sponsoring him) and Rob Smyth at the Brigadier Gerard pub in Horton Heath at 9:00 on Sunday 1st March 2009. After a quick go on Rob's bike, a Trek Madone 4.5, we headed off at an easy pace. The roads were nice and dry but there was complete cloud cover and it was a bit nippy in my cycling shorts and vented cycling shoes.

We were following a route Mark had planned and uploaded to his Garmin Edge 705, a Sat-Nav like bike computer. This really helped us spend time enjoying quiet country lanes without worrying too much about navigation, although we did take a wrong turn after a mile or so which added an odd kink to our route but it was along a nice lane so a nice little detour really.

After about 6 miles Rob and I had a moment of confusion at 2mph resulting in him falling off. No harm done, although his brakes were rubbing immediately afterwards which made me worry that he'd buckled a wheel. But briefly applying the brakes sorted it out.

Our original route took us almost to Petersfield but by the time we got there we fancied a latte and a quick look at the town. There seems to be a market their on Sundays which meant the town was nice and alive, and we found a Cafe Nero with a free outside table. 3 large lattes with sugar please.

Leaving Petersfield the Sat-Nav took us near "Steep" and appropriately enough we went up a 2.4 mile long, 152 metre ascent, steep-in-parts hill, which I enjoyed but I'm not sure Rob did.

We stopped a couple of times to scoff Mark's home made chocolate brownies and my "kicking about the house" chocolate stash. We figured that with 4:23 of time on the bike we could afford to eat chocolate.

Towards the end of the ride the sun started to peek through and it almost felt warm.

And when I got home I found a box of 12 Krispy Kreme doughnuts so I further figured that I could have 2 of them.

My bum feels a little sore from sitting on the small bike seat and my butt muscles groan when I stand up but I'm feeling really invigorated.

Overall the Orca was a very comfortable ride over that distance - my last outing was 6 weeks ago so I hadn't had a chance to get used to cycling again so once I "break myself in" it should be even easier.

So if you're interested in doing a ride like this let me know. The more the merrier.

I love my bike

2009-02-03T11:17:00.008Z

The Orca is a lovely bike. I haven't ridden road bikes since I was about 14 so I don't have much to compare it to, but it certainly delights me. I love the acceleration when you get up on the pedals. I look forward to short sharp hills that on a mountain bike would drop me down to a snails pace, but on the Orca I put in a burst of effort in and fly up them at 20mph. I like going down long hills and finding that there are about 2 more small-cog gears than I expected. And it looks lovely.

I remember coming back to Hursley from Romsey after an 18 mile ride and finding that I could put in 3 seconds of effort to go 2mph faster, then maintain that pace comfortably for a few seconds, then again put in the effort to go 2mph faster again, then maintain that pace, and then again one more time. On a mountain bike, putting extra effort in seems to make very little difference to pace, and if you do get some extra then it disappears very soon after. The Orca lets me hold on to the pace for much longer.

I've only done one "long" ride so far - most of my rides are high energy affairs as I find I can't go slowly on the Orca. It just wants to be ridden fast and is so rewarding to do so. The furthest I've been is 38.7 miles. 2 hours and 20 minutes, average speed 16.5mph, average heart rate 158bpm. Total climb height about 1000 feet. I went through lots of picturesque villages including some I hadn't seen before. It was great. My back was slightly sore towards the end but was fine was fine when I got off the bike. I think I just need more practice.

The frame is all carbon and does an impressive job of smoothing out the bumps. The tyres are the thinner ones (700x23) and I pump them up to about 90psi so there isn't much cushioning from them. But most road surfaces feel smooth and I've hit some potholes that I thought would be nasty but the bike took them in its stride. The only surface I don't like can be found along Poles Lane where the surface seems to induce a vibration that feels almost resonant - the space between the bumps in the road must the perfectly wrong for the bike. On a mountain bike you wouldn't think twice but it's annoying on the Orca. But there are very few roads where I've had this problem.

I got a standard double crankset (52&39 teeth) with 10 cogs at the back: 12 - 21,24,27 If I were to buy again I'd opt for the compact crankset. I find that my normal speed on the flat is about 20mph where I'm in the big ring at the front and about the 4th cog at the back. That doesn't leave many cogs at the back to handle slight uphill gradients. It's rare to need the smallest 2 cogs at the back (although it is fun when I can use them). I think a compact crankset would give me a better set of gears for normal riding and a couple of extra gears for climbing. Some hills can be quite challenging with the standard crankset - but then it's rewarding when you manage them.

I cleaned my bike the other day. The shapes and lines in the frame are simply gorgeous, especially at the back end.

SportTracks running data

2009-01-31T10:11:00.004Z

I had to stop running from April-December in 2008 due to inflamed toe joints so the more interesting SportTracks data is for 2007. How's my pace now? OK: a recent run was 3.52m, 7:38min/mile pace, 26:55min, 169bpm average heart rate.

In 2007 my mileage looks pretty consistent - a mixture of running with friends from work at lunchtime but mostly running from home.

August looks like I took a break but I cycled 179 miles that month so maybe that's why I don't have much running mileage.

Below are my runs sorted by pace but the hard ones were those with a high average heart rate: 177bpm for 32:07 at 7:44min/mile pace for 4.15m (Hurlsey - Port Lane sign and back).

But one month later I ran further, faster, with a lower HR - 164bpm for 36:31 at 7:43min/mile for 4.73m. I must have gotten a bit fitter in that month (and the route was a little flatter).

SportTracks cycling data

2009-01-31T09:48:00.005Z

I fired up SportTracks this morning and looked at some Activity Reports. The cycling data covers both fun rides from work with mates on my mountain bike, commuting on various bikes, and going out on my road bike.

Distance first:

And average speed second. These are all on my Orbea Orca - I can't go this fast on a mountain bike.

I'm pleased with the 20mph average over 15.57 miles. It is a route that avoids steep hills. Average heart rate over 46.8 minutes was (only) 157bpm. (In 2007 I averaged 177bpm for 32:07 whilst running 4.15 miles, 7:44 pace). In the graph you can see the correlation between gradient, speed and heartrate.

Fartlek training

2009-01-13T19:08:00.005Z

As someone getting back in to running I've done a few multi-mile gentle runs and I thought I'd mix it up a bit with a Fartlek-like run.

I wore my Garmin Forerunner 305 GPS + heartrate watch and my intention was that whenever I felt I'd recovered from one sprint I'd go again.

My average pace on this 2.64m run was 7:34 min/mile which is much faster than it would have been if I'd done the usual constant-effort run.

The graph nicely shows me running faster every time my heart rate dropped to 170, including at 16:00 where I was going uphill finding it tough going but I checked my HR on the watch and it said 170 so I made myself run.

Would I ever have done that without the HR watch to let me know, and the promise/threat of seeing my performance on a graph? Probably not.

My Carbon Fibre Bottle Cage

2009-01-07T20:59:00.003Z

For Christmas I ordered a Planet X carbon fibre bottle cage. I initially found it on ChainReactionCycles for £20, and it says it weighs 24g - confirmed by their photo.

I then googled for it to find alternate vendors and Planet X themselves were doing it cheaper, plus their photo says it is a 22g version.

I ordered from Planet X. The actual price charged was less than the price listed on their web page.

And when it turned up there were 2 of them in the box. I've looked again and I don't see anywhere that says that they come as a pair, although I do have 2 mounting points on my bike. But there was no mounting kit (2 screws basically). So I've used the screws from the old one and kept the other cage as a spare for now.

I weighed the cages on an electric balance and the old one weighs 64g, the new 22g. Which will send me soaring up the hills with far less effort, ahem.

There's a review on RoadCyclingUK.com which gives it 10/10 for value, 9/10 overall. Sounds about right to me.

Help the Aged

2008-11-17T19:33:00.002Z

I received a letter from Help the Aged today telling me that the goods we've donated have so far made £42.90 for the charity. That's pretty good - as I recall it was old clothes and toys that we really had no use for.

As I read it (it isn't 100% clear), they're now giving me the option to claim back the £42.90 (less a 5% administration) fee, or I can let them keep the money in which case I have freely donated it to them so they can claim another 28% tax from the government and I can add it to my tax return and save 18%.

It's a shame we gave them 5 bags of stuff at 4:50 this Saturday when they weren't willing to let us in the shop so they didn't ask for my Help the Aged card and neither of us will get the tax benefits.

A good month for QuidCo payments

2008-09-28T22:03:00.002+01:00

This lot have turned up in my QuidCo account over the last few days, which should result in an overall payout in a couple of days of £108.49

30 Jun 2008 15:04:55 EmpireDirect £42.54 £0.85 - JCB Pressure Washer

04 Jul 2008 18:52:40 Play.com £79.98 £3.20 - PS2 Guitar Heroes III inc 2 guitars

04 Jul 2008 22:55:56 Purple Parking £57.94 £7.50 - Gatwick parking for Nice holiday

07 Jul 2008 13:55:07 Carphone Warehouse £0.00 £20.00 - iPhone :)

10 Jul 2008 07:58:54 Play.com £20.97 £0.84 - CD and earphones

13 Jul 2008 08:56:33 Prudential Car Insurance £0.00 £75.00

This year's buildings and contents insurance

2008-09-14T21:01:00.004+01:00

I won't be getting this year's buildings and contents insurance for free this year ;( The highest Quidco cashback rates have dropped since last year.

But if the cashback comes through then it's still looking free for contents and good value for buildings. Here're the numbers:

Contents: Halifax, £55 cashback, £52.50 quote, £150 excess, unlimited cover (excluding credit cards, mobiles phones and cash). Paid via interest free direct debit.

Buildings: Asda, £68 cashback, £92.15 quote, £200 excess. Paid using VISA as they didn't accept American Express so a missed 1% cashback opportunity.

Note, it's worth playing with the excess because some companies didn't increase the premium when reducing the excess, eg for Asda, it made no difference to have an excess of £150 or £250.

I also checked out Lloyds as they are offerking £120 cashback if you get joint buildings and contents cover but the quote was £197 so it wasn't a cheap as buying separately from different companies.

Update: Checked Quidco this morning and pleased to see:

£68.00 from Asda Finance tracked* on 14/09/2008
£55.00 from Halifax Home Insurance tracked on 14/09/2008

Abbey credit card to charge £10 dormancy fee

2008-09-04T18:43:00.002+01:00

I have two credit cards with Abbey - one because it gave 5% cashback on the first £1000 of spend at supermarkets, and the Zero card which has 0% foreign transaction loading.

The Ts&Cs have been updated to say that if I don't use a card for 6 months then they can charge £10.

So that's one more thing to remember :(

Abbey Zero credit card versus Natwest for foreign purchases

2008-08-29T08:37:00.003+01:00

I just received two credit card statements, one from an old Natwest VISA card and one from the Abbey Zero card. The Zero card is one with zero loading on foreign purchases. Normal cards like the Natwest one say they add around a 2.75% surcharge.

I see a transaction on each card for purchases in Euros from France that are reported on the same date. The Zero card gives an exchange rate of 1.2609 Euros to the pound, Natwest 1.204

This is a bigger difference than I expected - about 4.6%. I spent £336 on the Zero card so using it in preference to the Natwest card saved me about £16.

Farnborough Airshow 2008

2008-07-21T22:36:00.005+01:00

Red Arrows and the Airbus A380

Airbus A380

Apache

On Sunday I went to the Farnborough Airshow. I went with my 2 daughters on the train from Eastleigh to Farnborough station, where free buses took us to the airfield.

We saw lots of static and flying planes and helicopters of which the Vulcan bomber, Eurofighter Typhoon F-35, Airbus A380 and the Red Arrows where the most memorable. The Vulcan was by far the loudest plane of the day.

There was a fair amount of free stuff to collect from the stands, although they were mostly engineering firms doing specialist pieces for planes so it was mostly the likes of Rolls Royce and BAE that had free stuff that interested us. The University of Manchester had a good stall with hands-on puzzles for children to experiment with. They gave us a badge and a keyring, but had run out of bouncy balls :(

There was an IBM truck, demonstrating the various Blade technologies to customers and partners. They also had a PS3 and Wii to play with and the very nice man I spoke to gave my kids a (VGA+, 800k) digital camera, a baseball cap and a folder. We also got to nibble on biscuits, Miniature Heroes and (full-fat) cold Coke.

The Red Arrows closed the show with their full display - it requires a fairly high cloud base - which lasted 30 minutes and was very impressive and polished. But for me, the highlights were the noisiest planes - the Vulcan and Eurofighter.

Even the kids said they had a good day out and would do it again. It helped that they had their Nintendo DS's for when they got bored but they enjoyed the atmosphere of the event - 80,000+ visitors, not including the 1,000s of support staff and pilots etc. Looking forward to going again in 2 years...

This years car insurance

2008-07-16T22:05:00.003+01:00

Last year I got car insurance from Swiftcover at a premium of about £220 with £35 cashback from QuidCo.

The renewal price was similar, £221. But renewing won't get me any cashback.

I got quotes at the start of July and Privilege was the best with a quote of about £226 and £70 cashback.

But when I came to make the purchase last weekend, the cashback had dropped to £50. Grr.

So I've gone with Prudential with a annual premium (paid up front) of £234 with £75 cashback (which has tracked already). ie, annual premium of £159.

The Privilege quote included a 0% APR for monthly payments, but didn't include a courtesy car. The Prudential cover does include a courtesy car for as long as it takes to get the car repaired. The excess is quite high though at £300, but I've not claimed in 13 years so fingers crossed it doesn't matter.

iPhone - one day in

2008-07-12T20:03:00.002+01:00

I'm just letting the kids have a go on a free app from the AppStore named Cube Runner where you steer a little spaceship using the iPhone's built in accelerometer. This little break seemed like a good time to right a quick blog post.

Here's an unstructured list of things that spring to mind.

Shiny. Shiny. Shiny.

The 3G coverage seems fine around Eastleigh. I used it at Boyatt Wood shops whilst waiting for our pets to see the vet (they're fine, the rabbit didn't seem to mind being jabbed with a needle).

Web browsing speed over wireless and 3G is perfectly acceptable but a real computer is still much nicer to use. I logged in to the Hampshire Online Library, used HotUkDeals, checked del.icio.us - so far everything going well.

I've set up Yahoo and Google mail and they're both fine.

I installed the free Shazam application - I hadn't come across this before and I'm very impressed. It collects 10 seconds of music using the iPhone's microphone and sends it to Shazam who tell you within a second or two what song it is. It's worked perfectly so far listening to music played through my Thinkpad's speakers and a radio station being listened to on the TV. Neat.

O2 have started charging me from the 9 July - the device didn't arrive until Friday 11th. So that's £2.00 I might consider asking for back.

The Google maps application is neat but definitely not a Sat Nav app. It doesn't track where you go, it just asks the phone where you are "now" when it is relevant. Like the online version you can get a route planned and drawn on the maps and it generates a list of turn by turn text directions if you have someone in the car to help navigate. But if you deviate it won't know. But you can always replan a new route from whereever you are "now".

The location awareness feature is cool. I installed the WeatherBug app (which is buggy, not yet recommended) and I started to add a new location, thinking that I'd be telling it my post code or town. But instead I just clicked on "Current location" and it said that Southampton was the nearest point it new about. Cool. But then it crashed - I'd guess that it hasn't been tested using UK locations.

The auto-capitalization and correction functionality was a real pain when I was trying to enter my email address in some web forms. It kept changing russell_finn to Russell_Finn which some systems will tolerate (Google) but others won't. It also kept changing .uk to .I'm Because this was a web form and not an iPhone app the data entry mechanism wasn't the specialized email address entry sort but was the vanilla one - I've now turned off the smarts but now I'm missing them. A way to switch between them more easily would be good - it's buried in the Settings section.

The Safari browser works so well that rather than complaining about basic functionality I'm wishing that it had more features like Firefox like addons for del.icio.us, Secure Login etc.

I guess there's a Password Safe type app, and hopefully it's free, as I need to put passwords somewhere (not my IBM internal ones, just websites etc).

iTunes has some neat features but the basic spreadsheet approach to displaying songs causes performance problems, even on my quite powerful laptop. I can live with it.

I've switched networks from Vodafone to O2, and I didn't move numbers (to let another family member have the Sony Ericsson k750i) so I need to tell people the new number. But probably not on this blog :)

iPhone 3g coming tomorrow?

2008-07-10T18:57:00.002+01:00

I received an email from Carphone Warehouse:

"Your new iPhone 3G is now available and will be sent to your chosen delivery address on Friday 11th July. It will be delivered by our courier Citylink. If no one is available to sign for the delivery, a card will be left with contact details so you can rearrange it at a more convenient time. Deliveries will be made between 9am - 5.30pm"

I'm going to be at the Goodwood Festival of Speed tomorrow but hopefully Emma will be in to sign for it, or I'll collect from the Citylink depot down the road when I get home.

It's like waiting for Christmas day...

I've ordered an iPhone 3G

2008-07-08T17:24:00.004+01:00

Sadly it seems that the Pay as you Go option won't be available until much later this year.

By the time I realised that O2 were selling the iPhone their ordering system was down. By the time I realised that it was back up again they had sold out of the 16GB version.

But Carphone Warehouse have the 16GB version and have accepted my order. I went via QuidCo and it's already tracked at £60 cashback. (Nb. They're out of stock now).

Update: Now QuidCo shows this transaction as "declined". Hmm.

I chose the £30/month package which includes unlimited data and 75 mins + 125 texts per month which is way more than I currently use.

So for 18 months it'll cost £159 + 18*£30 - £60 = £639.

The iPhone hardware must be worth about £360 (that's what it looked like O2 would charge for it), which seems fair based on a 16GB iTouch costing £230 and the iPhone has GPS, telephony and always on data.

The unlimited data is worth about £180 (maybe less, but about that amount).

Getting £200 worth of the phone in advance and paying in installments must be worth something, say £40.

So that means that the minutes and texts are costing about £3.27/month (or £6.61 if the QuidCo doesn't come through).

Seems pretty good to me.

iPhone 3G

2008-06-29T19:48:00.002+01:00

I think I'm going to get an iPhone 3G (the new version includes a GPS receiver and 3G support).

The main questions are:

1) 8GB or 16GB. The latter costs an extra £60. I'm currently favouring the 16GB.
2) Black or White? You can only get White with the 16GB option, not 8GB. What do you think?
3) Contract or Pay and Go?

My average spend is about 50p/month as I very rarely make calls or text, although I do normally carry it with me.

a) Contract : £160 for phone, then 18*£30 = £700. This includes 75 minutes and 125 texts.
b) Pay and Go : £360 for phone (which includes 6 months data), then 12*£10 (for unlimited data) + PAYG=£30 = £510 ish.

Note: the Pay and Go rates are not finalised - they were temporarily visible and hastily removed.

Prescription sun glasses

2008-06-15T21:19:00.005+01:00

I've been looking in to prescription sunglasses recently.

I'd really like some sports wraparound glasses but the curved lenses can't be made prescriptive so you end up with normal sunglasses with prescription lenses in a simple frame that is inserted behind the sunglasses. So they look cool from the outside but a bit silly on the inside. You'd also be looking through 2 sets of lenses.

But the biggest drawback is that they cost £200+. £100+ for the frame and tinted lens, £40 for the insert frame and £60 for the lenses.

I was killing time in Southampton whilst Emma and the kids were in Lush, and went in to Vision Express. They have an offer at the moment where you get tinted, UV protecting lenses for £39. You pay full price for frame which range from £20 to £150+.

My prescription is -3.5 and -3.0 which meant that I couldn't get the Hackett shades I wanted as they were too curved. I found another pair, Studio 123 WEH01, that were good (not as good but they were also £20 not £60).

I needed an eye test (£25) to get a current prescription and, asking at 2:40, they had one appointment left which was at 3:10 so that was perfect. By 4-ish we were leaving the store having ordered the glasses and arranging free delivery.

The receipt shows that the lenses normally cost £82 so getting them for £39 seems like a genuinely good deal.

Anyone for table tennis?

2008-06-15T20:51:00.003+01:00

I've just ordered an outdoor table tennis table. I spent a couple of hours researching the options, mostly these in the £280-£375 price range:

BUTTERFLY Easyfold Outdoor Table Tennis Table
Cornilleau Hobby First Outdoor Rollaway Table Tennis Table
Cornilleau Sport 140 Outdoor Rollaway Table Tennis Table
KETTLER Stockholm Outdoor Table Tennis Table
Cornilleau Sport 240 Outdoor Rollaway Table Tennis Table

I managed to avoid going for the most expensive option, being reassured that all the Cornilleau tables are truly weather proof and have a 5 year guarantee on the playing surface (3 years for the rest of the frame).

I ordered the Hobby First from Millet Sports, priced £297.99. This is better than sweatband.com who want £325. This table comes with 4 bats, 6 balls and a cover.

I chose them over tabletennispro.co.uk who have the same list price because I should get up to 6% cashback from Millet Sports as I ordered via Quidco.com. They also accept American Express so that's another 1% cashback.

Hopefully it'll be here within a week or so - I can't wait.

Orbea Orca - how I got my bike

2008-06-07T19:29:00.003+01:00

Here's the full (you may fall asleep) story about how I acquired a bike worth £2300-ish for £1100-ish. More photos here

At IBM we have a flexible benefits scheme. We can opt to take some of our pay in a variety of forms other than cash, typically without paying (as much) tax.

For example, we can get paid in food vouchers for use at work without paying any income tax on them whatsoever. So an 88p latte (mmmmm...) really only costs 52p for a higher rate tax payer. There's also tax free Child Care Vouchers which are great as people insist on being paid lots of money to look after my kids.

One of the options is to hire a bike for a year. Technically it is not a bike purchase scheme but in practice you always get the option to buy the bike at the end of year for 5%+VAT of its purchase price. You pay in 12 monthly installments so you also effectively get an interest
free loan.

We can choose to spend anything from £100 to £1500 on a bike and bike-related accessories each year.

So I started out thinking I'd spend about £600 post-tax = £1000 pre-tax on a bike. I found the Trek 1.9 for £1000 which is a nice looking bike, with fancy wheels.

Then Rob Smyth and I joined forces and looked at bikes together as we had the same requirements. We went to the Peter Hansford in Winchester to look at the Trek 1.9 but they didn't have one in the shop. Looking at the Trek, BMC and LeMond bikes they had (with lots of helpful advice from Richard who works at the shop) we left having decided that we now both wanted a Trek Madone 4.5 (£1400), leaving £100 for shoes, pedals, pumps etc.

Then we went to the Peter Hansford in Chandlers Ford and left there being very happy with the help from their road bike guy, Adam, and we were leaning towards getting an Orbea Onix. This bike seemed like a better overall package than the Madone, but it was close.

After some web research we finally decided to order 2 Orbea Onix bikes. Peter Hansford do an excellent bike fitting session where you get measured for height, leg length, shoulder width, arm length and get to try the different "clipless" pedal technologies. We compared Shimano SPD and Look and decided on the Look system. I had thought that I'd choose SPD so that I could walk around a town after cycling there but trying the shoes made me realise that there's no way I'd choose to walk for more than a couple of minutes in SPDs - I'd take a spare pair of shoes instead.

We were originally told that the bikes would take about 3 weeks to be ready. But after 3 weeks we were told that Orbea were struggling to source the Shimano Ultegra groupset for the bikes and there'd be a delay. After a while Adam persuaded Orbea that he would source the groupset in the UK and invoice Orbea, which they agreed to. But then after another week or two we were told that Orbea had said that they didn't actually have any Onix frames and that it would be another 3 or 4 weeks before they'd be built. Aaargggh.

BUT, they did have one top of the range Orca frame that they could let us have instead of one of the Onix frames at no extra cost. This is a frame that costs about £1800. It was used by the Orbea racing team during 2007/2008 - a serious piece of kit.

But there's 2 of us and only one frame. We agreed that we had to get the Orca - we weren't going to turn down their top of the range bike. But who'd get it? We considered tossing a coin, but neither of us were willing to risk losing the toss. We worked out that if £186 was to
be given from Orca-buyer to the cheaper-bike-buyer then the percentage discount we'd be getting would be the same. But we both said that we'd definitely give the other £187 to have the Orca. But we also agreed that if the other offered £250 then we'd let the other have it.

We finally agreed that if I gave Rob £210 then we'd both be happy. Rob chose Madone 4.5 and it would only take 2 days to be built. The Orca was shipped from Spain and built in about the same time so we both had our bikes by the start of the next week.

So Rob's got a bike worth £1460 (he got Look Keo Sprint pedals thrown in for free for the inconvenience) for about £650 and I'd got a bike worth about £2300 for about about £1100. Both bikes are beautiful frames to look at: full carbon frame and fork, decent groupsets and pretty wheels.

When my bike turned up I realised that I had also been given the top of the range Orbea seat post and handle bars (Zeus Cat III) so that's another ~£100? of value which I hadn't been expecting.

And yes, it rides like a dream. Worth every penny.

Cashback card - one year in

2008-06-05T17:14:00.003+01:00

I just got my first annual cashback from the American Express. As expected, I seem to have received 3% cashback for about the first 3 months, then 0.5% for the remaining balance up to £3500 then 1% for the remainder up to £10000.

I didn't quite reach £10000 this year so I didn't break in to the 1.5% band - mostly because I also got an Abbey card that paid 5% cashback on supermarket purchases.

Total cashback from Amex for the year = £131.05

Switching Gas and Electricity

2008-05-25T12:30:00.003+01:00

About 3 years ago I used an online Gas and Electric switching service to move from Southern Electric and British Gas - the default local suppliers which is the generally the most expensive option - to a dual fuel scheme from Powergen (now called EON). I'm sure it saved money but I forget how much. I got £20 cashback by switching using a link from Mutual Points

So time's moved on and there's more money to be saved, and cashback to be reaped.

The best place to start is with Martin Lewis' excellent site, MoneySavingExpert.com, specifically the switching article.

I used a recent bill and today's meter reading to work out how much gas and electric I've used since December to give me an idea of my annual use (about 14600 kWh gas and 6800 kWh electric).

I then used MoneySuperMarket to get started. My current estimated annual bill is £1084.

Switching to a dual fuel option with British Gas would save me about £68.50/year (6.3%) and get me £30 cashback.

Switching just the Electric to the same British Gas option would reduce that part of my bill by £62.60 to £602.73 and get me £17.50 (or £20 according to QuidCo - UPDATE It has tracked as £20 so hopefully that will be the pay out in a few months).

Switching just the Gas to Atlantic would reduce that part of my bill by £23.50 to £395.33 but not get me any cashback (other providers had cashback but not Atlantic).

So dual fuel is an annual bill of £1,015.61 with £30 cashback

Gas and Electric sourced separately is an annual bill of £998 with £17.50 cashback.

So doing thing separately is a little cheaper, but I'd really like 2 lots of cashback. So I put my Gas details in to EnergyHelpLine.com who seem to offer £15 cashback for all providers.

So I've switched using MoneySuperMarket for my electric and EnergyHelpLine for my gas and should net an annual bill of £998 and get £35 cashback.

Helicopter downdraft

2008-04-22T16:46:00.003+01:00

Today an air ambulance came to Hursley in case it was needed to transfer a man who was having severe heart pains (it wasn't used in the end).

We went outside to see it take off. It made a lot of noise whilst spinning up, and then when it actually started to take off there was an impressive amount of force in the downdraft. A nice bit of excitement at the end of a working day.

Deer just over the road

2008-03-30T10:47:00.005+01:00

This morning we saw deer in a neighbour's front garden. The kids got very excited and after getting a photo and looking at them through binoculars they eventually got spooked and ran when Jenny waved at them.

The Hour, by Michael Hutchinson

2008-03-15T10:37:00.003Z

Last weekend I read a great book that I heartily recommend (isn't the library great?)

It is about Michael Hutchinson's attempt to cycle further in one hour than anyone else ever has - although of course it isn't that simple.

He covers the history of "The Hour": the riders, technology, drugs, and how it has now become the anti-technology Athlete's Hour.

He talks about how he got in to cycling quite late in life, his training, racing, creating the bike for the attempt, the attempt itself and much more.

He has a writing style that is easy to read and addictive - I read the book over one weekend. There are lots of funny bits and his descriptions and opinions of the people involved are refreshingly honest - especially of himself.

I'd recommend this book if you're at all interested in cycling, record attempts or the mind of professional athletes - great stuff.

How I got this years home contents and buildings insurance for free

2007-12-08T19:12:00.000Z

Now that I've been paid I'm happy to write up my home insurance story...

1) I don't live in the biggest house
2) I don't tend to make claims on my home insurance so I am happy to accept a slightly higher excess on insurance policies, eg £150 instead of the default £75/100.

Looking at the cashback on offer at Quidco it seemed that the fixed amount of cashback is comparable to what I pay for my insurance. So when it came to renewal time I got quotes from all the insurance companies that offered a decent amount of cashback.

For each site, I worked out (quote) - (cashback), and made a note of the excess. I was also slightly wary of sites with higher quotes and higher cashback amounts, in case the cashback didn't come through and I ended up with only the higher quote.

I decided on:

Contents - Co-operative - £56 quote - £70 cashback
Buildings - Prudential - £93 quote - £85 cashback

The transactions "tracked" immediately so I could tell that I should get the cashback. The funds cleared about 2 months later and I got paid via a BACS transfer on December 1st.

Overall, I got paid about £5 to have my home insured for a year. T'is a crazy old world.

PS You should also use Quidco for purchases you make online whenever possible, eg Comet, HMV, Tesco, GAME, Woolworths, Asda, Waterstones, Hilton Hotels.

PPS I also got £10 when I applied for and was accepted for an American Express Platinum credit card that gives 1% cashback on purchases. I used this card when I paid for my home insurance so it was actually even cheaper :)

Running home from Winchester

2007-10-25T17:15:00.001+01:00

After an enjoyable night out in Winchester with some guys from work (meal at Ask pizza then beers in the Exchange and Old Gaolhouse), I went to the train station. The next train wasn't for 25 minutes and it was a bit cold.

I didn't fancy waiting around so I decided to jog home, figuring it was about 6 miles so only 60ish minutes. This is comparable to a 25 min wait, a 15 min train ride and a 15 min jog home from Eastleigh train station.

It turns out the route I took home wasn't the shortest - by about 3/4 of a mile - so it was actually more like 7 miles which is 3 miles more than I'd normally run. And it took 1 hour and 15 minutes :( The shorter route has a couple of sizeable climbs though which this route doesn't.

Was it worth it? Yeees. I guess. I must have burned 700 calories, improved my cardio vascular fitness, avoided spending £2.70 and listened to some interesting Logically Critical podcasts.

Crash update

2007-08-10T09:06:00.001+01:00

I cycled in to work today so I'm clearly not that injured. My grazes are healing nicely but the thing that's most impressive is the blackness of my hip bruise. It scares the children nicely :)

Free beer from Threshers

2007-08-09T17:56:00.000+01:00

I just picked up my free beer from Threshers. Looks like I'm going to have a nice evening.

Find your local Threshers here

Bike crash

2007-08-08T20:34:00.001+01:00

I had a bit of an incident on Tuesday lunchtime's trip to Otterbourne Jumps. I came down a little bit sideways and parted company with my steed. I then used my back to slow myself down. Nothing's broken but I'm a bit stiff and sore. The bike's fine though.

Minehead birthday cycle ride

2007-07-31T16:58:00.001+01:00

I got to tackle some stupidly steep hills around Minehead on my birthday this year. The photo is taken from the high point (I didn't go all the way to the Dunkerry beacon as I had to be back in time for tea). Excepting a possible flight from somewhere like Taiwan, this is the highest that my bike has been.

Goodwood 2007

2007-06-23T21:45:00.000+01:00

On Friday I went to the Goodwood Festival of Speed with Mark Perry, Ed Altenburger and Rich Cumbers.

We all had free tickets from The Times. We arrived at about 10:45 and despite having driven through some heavy showers to get there, and we could see big black clouds in the distance, the ground was dry. That's important as the F1 cars don't like the rain.

After a quick look at some cars doing a run up the track (there isn't a circuit, it's a hill climb) we started our tour of the major manufacturers' stands. The Ford stand had 5 different versions of the new Mondeo. It has a suprisingly nice interior (for a Mondeo).

The Mercedes stand had more impressive, and expensive, cars. Nice...

Whenever there were cars on the track we'd go and watch. The Wacky Races cars were mildly amusing

After lunch - a tasty Indian kebab - we watched the modern supercars leave from the starting line. Some did massive wheelspins, some were a bit skittish under heavy acceleration, some just went very fast with no fuss (Bugatti Veyron) and one looked like the driver couldn't find 2nd gear.

Then we checked out the environmentally friendly concept cars...

and the trials bikes.

Then we went half way up the hill and watched the cars and bikes screaming up the track. As always the Formula 1 cars sounded just awesome. The modern superbikes were impressive too, with them being wheelied for at least 100 metres. When the Red Bull F1 car came back down it stopped about 10 metres away from our position and then did a massive burnout down the hill. Just superb :) Ed's got it on video, I'll add a link soon.

At one point it started to rain at the bottom of the circuit but was still sunny where we were (which partly explains my sunburn).

Then we went up to the rally stage and saw Peter Solberg in this year's Subura WRC car flying over the newly constructed jump. We also saw Colin McRae's car doing the rally stage and then later up close

On the way back down the hill we saw this year's Ford Focus WRC car do a double doughnut at the hairpin bend that is furthest down the hill. Very cool.

Finally we went past this year's main showpiece

to the back of the house to see the Ferrari exhibition and the Supercars.

I've normally got no interest in old cars but there was one that really caught my eye. It has a striking modern metallic light blue paint job that doesn't come through in the photo.

I'm sure I've missed out several other cool things, and I don't have that many photos as I decided that in general it's better to get the full experience rather than be half focussed on the camera and half on the action. Thankfully it seems that Ed disagrees as he's got some great stills and videos.

There's far too much to do in one day at Goodwood. If we can go again next year I'd like to get there much earlier to try and see a lot more of it.

Father's Day

2007-06-17T20:33:00.000+01:00

This year's father's day was good. I got lots of well thought out presents:- I did choose some myself (Lindt balls, cafetiere, ball) but the surprise presents were great too.

After a lie-in until 9:30, I had a breakfast of pancakes with golden syrup. Mmmmm.

We went to see Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer
at the Southampton Odeon which was quite good. It's a simple comic book action film that kept the kids (inc. me) happy. 7/10.

New cash back credit card

2007-06-02T19:01:00.000+01:00

Following Natwest's decision to stop providing cashback Airmiles on their VISA card I used MoneySavingExpert.com to look for an alternative.

I must have previously tried applying for an Egg card as when I tried to apply this time it insisted on making me log in rather than creating a new account. Since I had no idea what the password is and I couldn't see how to get it mailed to me, I instead applied for the American Express Platinum card.

Amex Platinum offers 3% cashback for purchases made within the first 3 months, then tiered rates which will average out at about 1% for me, but it offers 1.5% for all purchases each year past £13,500.

It's also a good idea to have more than one supplier:- I recall VISA had some network problems earlier this year so having more than one card provider seems prudent.

I had heard that AMEX is less widely accepted than VISA but I used it today in Tesco, Frankie and Bennys and B&Q so it seems like it'll be OK.

Oh, and I got £10 cashback from QuidCo as I used their link to apply.

Jump Fest

2007-06-01T21:14:00.002+01:00

We chanced the weather and won today with a sunny ride taking in the local jump sites. Not much hill climbing but we took in several woods and found jumps in 4 locations : mile markers 3, 7, 8 and 13 here. Total distance covered was about 16.9 miles.

We also went to the Otterbourne Hill woods on Tuesday where we conquered 2 new jumps, each about about 7 feet from the take off ramp to the landing slope. Scary but exhilarating.

I also cycled to and from work on Tues and Fri, adding 9.5 miles to the mileage total for each day.

This week's cycling.

2007-05-19T21:58:00.001+01:00

We managed 2 rides this week, the first on Wednesday that explored Otterbourne woods, and the second on Friday which was quite a bit longer.

On Friday we managed to find the "downhill fun" that a local bike shop had mentioned. When we got there the MOD red flag was flying saying that we couldn't enter. As it was about 12:45 we took the opportunity to have lunch, during which time a guy on a quad bike drove up and took down the flag. Nice timing :)

Yes, we did push the bikes up the steep bit at 13.5 miles. The total height climbed was 2101 feet. We also found out that they've introduced bulls (cows don't have horns do they?) on to Shawford downs.

Friday's bike ride

2007-05-13T12:21:00.001+01:00

We (Alan, Ed and I) roughly repeated last Friday's bike ride this Friday, although we found a way through the woods to avoid the last couple of miles along Romsey Road.

We didn't take a lunch this time so we spent less time away from work. Plus, when we got back, we had a lunch to enjoy.

It's nice to get the climbing done before the halfway point - you feel like you've really earned the downhill coast.

New fastest run

2007-05-13T10:51:00.001+01:00

After collecting Emma from work on Wednesday, and having enjoyed rather too much chili con carne + chip shop chips for tea, I thought I should go for a quick run to make amends.

I took the GPS wristwatch but forgot to wear the heartrate strap. I normally keep an eye on my heartrate to make sure I work hard enough so instead I tried to maintain a 7:30 minutes/mile pace. The first 0.7 miles were downhill to the Tesco petrol station and I averaged 7:00 min/mile for that. The rest of the run was quite hard work on my lungs but my legs felt good.

When I got back home (up the hill at the end, aargh) my average pace over 3.75 miles was 7:26.

It's probably just as well I didn't have the heartrate strap as I might have slowed down if I'd seen what my heart was doing :)

Neil's Wedding

2007-05-13T10:42:00.000+01:00

I went to Neil Johnston and Rebecca Daly's wedding yesterday. They had a church service in St Edmunds in Southampton, followed by a wedding breakfast at Chilworth Manor.

One of the highlights was a chocolate fountain with stawberries, raspberries, turkish delight, jelly babies, doughtnuts, profiteroles, pineapples, fudge etc.

There was also a roulette wheel and 21s/pontoon game. Everyone got a voucher for £50 of funny money. The winner at the end was Neil's second-nephew who ended £300 up because he collected vouchers from all the people who didn't want to play. He won a soft toy and a bottle of champagne (his dad looked pleased). A nice example of working around the rules to win - no doubt he'll go far.

2 bike rides from work this week.

2007-05-04T22:14:00.001+01:00

The weather's been glorious every day this week down South and we managed to get out for 2 bike rides. Rather than the usual there-and-back trip to Otterbourne Jumps or Farley Mount, both were circular trips taking in some new tracks (well, new to the others but I've been pretty much everywhere around here).

The ride on Wednesday took in some of the river Itchen and Shawford Downs followed by a fun fast downhill bridleway.

The ride on Friday included a favourite downhill section in Farley Woods, the Shrine on top of Farley mount where we had lunch, a landing strip in a field, Upper and Lower Slackstead and Ampfield wood.

My sister featured by Nike & Men's Health magazine

2007-05-03T08:57:00.001+01:00

My sister was recently interviewed by the Nike Plus marketing team. She uses the Nike Plus running system with her iPod, but she didn't use the Nike Plus shoes - she cuts out a section from the base of her trainer to simulate the Nike Plus shoes.

But now, as a thank you for the interview, she has some real Nike Plus running shoes and various other bits of running kit.

The Nike site is a pain to reach: Start here, choose Recovery Training with Paula Radcliffe and then "Anna Finn". They'll feature someone else before long so be quick.

Men's Health have a much more static looking link but a less cool photo.

New Forest cycle ride

2007-04-28T22:42:00.001+01:00

I went for a nice bike ride this morning whilst the missus and kids shopped in Southampton.

The first 4 miles were unpleasant dual carriageway, but the next 12 more than made up for it. There were plenty of ponies out on the open lands, including a few foals. Very cute.

What's the least bad way to get from the centre of Soton to Eling? I tried coming back a different way, and it was better as it wasn't dual carriageway, but it wasn't exactly pretty and Shirley high street is a very busy area that doesn't suit bikes. Any ideas?

MapMyRun.com

2007-04-27T21:55:00.001+01:00

Reading an article on the IBM Developerworks site about Ajax-based websites (the cool interactive ones), it talks about a Google Maps Mashup named MapMyRun. I had previously used Gmap-Pedometer, but this one goes much further.

I've uploaded a couple of runs including the quickish 4.73 mile one mentioned in an earlier post. It isn't as good as viewing the original GPS data using eg SportTracks as it doesn't support the pace and heartrate data, but you can mark the run as public which allows other people find it and add comments if they wish.

Online Chess

2007-04-23T22:16:00.000+01:00

There's a great online chess site named Scheming Mind.

Whilst there are options to pay an annual fee, you get to play "normal" chess against online opponents for free.

If you fancy a game, my user name is finnr.

Crazy sister running 7 full marathons in 7 weeks

2007-04-23T21:40:00.001+01:00

My sister is running 7 Marathons on 7 consecutive sundays. You can see her plan and progress on the charity website that she's supporting.

She was interviewed by Colin Jackson for BBC1 in the Londom Marathon on Sunday,

MotorCycle World at Beaulieu

2007-04-23T21:27:00.000+01:00

We're probably going to MotorCycle World at Beaulieu this year, Saturday 23rd-Sunday 24th June.

We've been for the last 3 years and it's always been worth the entrance fee, even the first time when it rained. There's lots of noisy motorbikes, maybe some stunt cars, stands galore, free stuff, and all the normal features of the National Motor Museum (monorail, musuem, Palace House, abbey, coffee shop).

You should go too.

Spring Duxford Airshow

2007-04-23T21:22:00.000+01:00

I'm thinking of going to the Duxford Airshow on 20 May 2007. I haven't been to a "proper" airshow for ages and I love the power of the modern jets.

Want to come too? The wife and kids aren't too keen so I'm looking for people to go with. £24 on the day, £20 in advance.

Duxford’s season of legendary air shows will take off in May with a spectacular display of aircraft, ranging from historic and iconic warbirds, such as the Spitfire, to contemporary military jets.

There will be over three hours of aerial displays at this event, which also includes a special ground and air-based salute to Falklands 25 – the 25th anniversary of the liberation of the Falkland Islands by British troops

Recent Nintendo DS game purchases

2007-04-23T11:42:00.000+01:00

The recent DS games I've bought because they were reduced on t'internet are:

Big Brain Academy
Puyo Pop Fever
Bomberman DS

and 42 All Time Classics has been ordered from Tesco for £8.97 with money back from QuidCo

My best runs and new trainers

2007-04-22T12:22:00.000+01:00

These numbers are taken from my Garmin Forerunner 305 GPS wristwatch.

Distance (m)	Pace (mile/min)	Average heartrate (bpm)	Comment
3.10	7:32	160	Flat route in Warwick
4.73	7:43	165	Mostly flat route near Warwick (Old Milverton)
4.15	7:46	177	To Oliver's Battery sign and back

The work-run was done a couple of months back on my beat-up old Asics. I've got new shoes now (and bigger lungs).

I got 2 pairs of Reebok Premier Road Plus DMX III Stability Shoes from the Reebok shop at Bicester outlet village near Oxford. They claimed they were £70 reduced to £35, and they were included in a buy-one-get-one-half-price offer. So far they seem pretty comfortable, but they are definitely a road shoe. They're light and airy, which is good, but they don't provide much support on uneven surfaces.

Dilbert and the Way of the Weasel

2007-04-22T11:45:00.000+01:00

I read the Dilbert cartoons via the RSS feed (http://feeds.feedburner.com/tapestrydilbert) but never got in to the TV show.

I also follow The Dilbert Blog (http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/rss.xml) , though it isn't about Dilbert. It is thoughts, observations and provocation from Scott Adams, and it makes for entertaining reading.

Given my enjoyment of Mr Adams' output, I bought the book Dilbert and the Way of the Weasel and it is every bit as good I could have hoped. It is interspersed with Dilbert comics but I find I generally laugh more at the humourous turns of phrase in the main prose. There are also snippets of emails from the real world, which are hideous tales of what goes on in businesses today. For example:

Mr. Adams, My boss explained to me how she delays responding to e-mails by varying amounts of time, just to impress upon people their relative standing in terms of power.

I haven't read the Dilbert Principle, but on the strength of this book I will be soon. Highly recommended, especially if you work for a large corporation.

Fantastic: The Life of Arnold Schwarzenegger

2007-04-22T11:21:00.000+01:00

I recently finished reading the hardback version of a biography of Arnold Schwarzenegger, which covered his life from birth to about 2005 when he became the governor of California.

It's a well written, easy to read book about an interesting man. It includes some B&W photos and a comprehensive index. The author is clearly an admirer but the tone in never sycophantic.

Arnold comes across as a driven man, applying himself first in body-building, then in the world Hollywood films, and now in politics. There's a bit where several bodybuilders come to Arnold for advice, and as well as giving them astute observations, he praises each of them with "If I had your body, I would be Mr Olympia". These bodybuilders are later upset when they find out that he told them all the same thing, but the one of them (Frank Zane) got the point - "The fact is that Arnold could have won Olympia with a number of different bodies because of his attitude - it was all his attitude".

I recommend this book, even if you're not interested in bodybuilding.

Blog revival

2007-04-22T10:56:00.000+01:00

I haven't posted here for over a year (I onl y posted twice). Instead, I exclusively used the IBM internal blog.

This blog will now be used for non-IBM (and mostly non-computer-related) information and maybe also as a sort of exercise log.

Neat new Sysinternals tool - ZoomIt

2006-03-28T09:23:00.000+01:00

If you haven't already discovered Sysinternals then go and take a look now!

There's a neat new tool on there, ZoomIt, which allows you to zoom in/out on areas of your screen, and to draw on the screen. How useful could that be whilst giving a presentation?

http://www.sysinternals.com/Utilities/zoomit.html

A good AJAX introductory series of articles at developWorks

2006-03-27T11:11:00.000+01:00

Today I read the first 4 developerWorks articles on AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript And XML).

They're well worth reading, although number 3 is missable as it re-covered material already introduced in number 2.

The first article is here: http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/web/library/wa-ajaxintro1.html