The Musings of Major_Grooves

Ghana fun

2011-04-05T23:41:00.001+01:00

Rambling notes from my first few days in Ghana:

Took a trip along the coast to Elimna for a couple of days before the MEST activities get started.

Took the STC Bus (State Transport Company). The bus was meant to leave at 10am and take about 2.5h to get to Elmina. I ended up waiting 3h for the bus and it took 4h to get there. That is kinda similar to taking a train at the weekend in the UK, so it was not too bad for me, but the Dutch girl I was sitting next to at the station struggled.

Had my first experience of a Ghana public toilet there. I have over 20ps, he hands over a wad of toilet paper. The facilities themselves were grim.

Got to the guest house – the Almond Tree Guest House – and it was as nice as the Tripadvisor reviews said it was. Even nicer maybe. I was staying in the Bob Marley room with air-conditioning. The power went off in the middle of the night but I had already cooled the room down so it wasn’t too bad. I only had hot water once – not sure why – but the cold showers weren’t exactly cold so it wasn’t too bad.

On the Sunday I took a trip along to see Elimina Castle, which was built by the Portuguese as a place to trade slaves. Took a dodgy old cab along the road to get there, as soon as a I got out the cab I was surrounded by about 5 or 6 teenagers. “Hey what is your name?” “Where are you from?”

I made a less than voluntary donation to their “school.” I hope they enjoy the $20. I also made a less than voluntary purchase of a couple of bracelets which would have my and W’s name on them, ready by the time I left. They also wanted me to write my surname down, but I wasn’t sure why (I would realise in about 1h).

Did a tour of the castle. It was taken over by the Dutch and subsequently sold to the English in exchange for some land (in Sumatra maybe?). Needless to say the conditions the slaves were kept in were horrible. It’s hard to accept that slavery by Europeans was once normal. L

In the castle I got speaking to an English tourist who agreed that the “young salesmen” were quite intimidating and said he had also been totally gamed when he first got there. As I left the castle a couple of my enterprising young friends noticed me, and my heart sank a little as I noticed them beckoning to all their friends to join them. Great.

They had finished my bracelets. Lovely. They had also prepared a “present” for me – a large shell with “To our Scottish friend Steven Renwick from...” and all their names and their email addresses written on it in black marker pen. I tried to decline it, then I said I would take it if it was really free. “Yes it is free!” “Really free?” “Yes!” OK, so I took it and hid everything in my bag so I wasn’t too obviously a tourist mug. Then my friends decided they wanted my free gift back. I guess the marker pen must wipe off easily.

My rubbish taxi was waiting for me and nearly ran a couple of families over as it sped to meet me and then it took me back to the guest house.

Once back at the guesthouse I asked them to send a decent cab – i.e one with seatbelts would be nice, and a/c would be nice too. They sent Abraham. He had seatbelts, but the a/c was a bit dodgy. I paid him a vast sum to be my driver for the afternoon and he took me to Kakum National Park.

At the national park I went on a jungle canopy walk, suspended 30-40m above ground-level. Everybody else on the tour was Slovak but thanks to my incredible language skills I was able to effortlessly blend in as one of them, despite only saying “How are you” and “I left my pineapple of the bus, please ask the vicar to send a replacement”. They had also stayed at Elmina and had also run in to the young entrepreneurs outside the castle.

I saw lots of Ghana countryside on the drive to and from the national park. It really is like you see it on TV – a mixture of corrugated iron houses, mud huts, and concrete constructions – with a couple of notable differences. 1) The plastic rubbish everywhere – I didn’t realise what a blight plastic is till I had seen it strewn everywhere in the Ghana countryside. It is *everywhere*. 2) Ghana seems to be sponsored by Vodaphone – you can go through a village and 50% of the buildings will be red with the Vodaphone logo painted on. Very odd. Apparently Vodaphone offers to paint houses for free and the deal is you have to accept Vodaphone branding.

Today I got a taxi back to the STC station in Cape Coast. Abraham’s car was playing up so he sent a friend. Just before the taxi showed up a rainstorm started. Lucky I had my waterproof jacket with me as I was getting soaked inside the car. This was the worst taxi yet. I could not see out the windscreen so I’m not sure how he could. Anyway we made it.

“The white man wants to go to Accra” they shouted when I came in. It was 1045 and I was wanting the 11h bus. I was told there is no 11am bus – only 3pm. Bummer. Turns out that was not true – the 11am had been pushed back to 12 and it eventually left at 12.30pm with me on board, which is where I am now writing this post.

Further: got chatting to a young guy on the bus who was totally in to Manchester United. He gave me a minute-by-minute rendition of their last game. We had even travelled to Russia for the Champion's League final. Amazing dedication. Unfortunately though if football is the universal language then I am only semi-literate but I did my best.

Got a taxi from STC to the hotel. As my taxi pulls up who is getting out of his own taxi, but Mike! Many beers were drunk that evening...

Today we did our first MEST day with a tour of Accra, but I'll make that a separate post...

Posted via email from Steven's posterous

NatWest MBA loan

2010-09-13T21:55:00.001+01:00

So, I'm going back to university in a couple of weeks to start an MBA. In true social media geek style I have started new blog specifically to cover the MBA and any business issues I feel capable of discussing.

My first post covers the NatWest MBA loan - essential reading if you're thinking of applying for one to fund your degree.

Cycling home along the Thames in Oxford

2010-08-20T19:07:00.001+01:00

Download now or watch on posterous

IMG_0850.MOV (1511 KB)

Posted via email from Steven's posterous

Pacific Coast Highway 1 Video

2010-07-08T22:23:00.001+01:00

Download now or watch on posterous

P1020940.MOV (15732 KB)

Posted via email from Steven's posterous

All done and dusted

2010-07-03T05:07:00.001+01:00

The biking is done for this year. Today we rode North up Pacific Coast
Highway 1 back to San Francisco. It was really cold on the coast but
warmer as we moved inland again.

We decided that we wanted to ride over the Golden Gate Bridge so
headed to Sausalito for lunch. W got a great video of us riding over
the bridge.

We then rode back over the bridge - $6 toll for a motorbike. What a
rip-off! I got us back to the hotel on Post Street, W checked in and
took our bags in and I went to hand the bike back. It wasn't due till
tomorrow morning but if took it back early it would save hassle
tomorrow.

So I make the not unstressful rise through downtown SF back to the
bike shop. So glad to hand it back without any mishaps.

Then, still wearing my bike kit, I walk out of the bike shop, hail a
cab and get back to the hotel.

When I get back W asks me where the luggage is. Ha ha - of course she
already has taken our stuff in. No really - where is the lugage we
left at the bike shop for the week.

Oh...

Looks like I'll be making another trip to the bike shop tomorrow
morning. Damn.

Posted via email from Steven's posterous

some video riding towards Carnel Valley

2010-07-02T16:50:00.001+01:00

Download now or watch on posterous

P1020974.MOV (21776 KB)

We've got a better video in Carmel Valley but I can't post it yet because it's too big. Will do later.

Posted via email from Steven's posterous

Lake Nacimiento and Carmel Valley Road

2010-07-02T16:07:00.001+01:00

Yesterday's roads were great - Lake Nacimiento, then Carmel Valley Road. I wasn't going to try Carmel Valley Road as I though it might be a bit to twisty, but I was persuaded by Norm - a biker we met at the Bluebird Motel. I'm glad to did it - the views were absolutely amazing and the ride was just right. We could ride for an hour without seeing traffic. Amazing!

In one of the pics you see what we thought was a tornado at first. It looked like a massive cloud originating at some point and turned the sky really dark. Turned out it was actually grass fires at Fort Hunter Ligggett which we were riding through.

W has taken some great videos but I am having trouble uploading them at the minute.

See and download the full gallery on posterous

Posted via email from Steven's posterous

Frenchman on Kwak

2010-07-02T01:40:00.001+01:00

We saw this guy stopped at the side of the road crossing Lake
Nacimiento dam. We didn't see the 'No Parking Any Time' signs till
after we had stopped and got off.

He was immediately amazed that we were riding a Harley but had full-
face helmets and proper biking jackets. We explained we were European
then it made sense to him and we agreed that most Harley riders are
mad going about with tiny helmets and just t-shirts.

Turns out he was French and had been living in California for 30
years. He sounded like he had just got off the boat.

We told him we were heading for Carmel Valley Road and he warned us
that the road was quite small and difficult. Another few minutes chat
and we were on our way...

Posted via email from Steven's posterous

Carmel Valley Road

2010-07-01T18:13:00.001+01:00

We're about to ride to Salinas via Lake Nacimiento and Carmel Valley Road.

See and download the full gallery on posterous

Posted via email from Steven's posterous

Pacific Coast Highway 1 to Cambria

2010-06-30T18:39:00.001+01:00

Yesterday got off to a good start when the 'limo' that was arranged to take us from the hotel to the bike rental place turned out to be a proper white stretch limo.

Got to EagleRider and there was a Portuguese guy, Pedro, there hiring a bike and taking the same route as us so we agreed to ride down together. eD from sport-touring.net came along too to help us get out of San Francisco and take us on a bit of a tour out of the city. So grateful to eD - without him we would have been quite screwed getting out of the city! Nice twisty roads out of SF then we stopped at a famous biker cafe called Alice's Restaurant (see previous post for pic).

OK, I don't have time to write more now - got to go ride! Take a look at the pics and I'll write up more later. We're in Cambria now. About to go try Route 58. :D

See and download the full gallery on posterous

Posted via email from Steven's posterous

Escape from San Francisco

2010-06-29T22:02:00.001+01:00

The riding is good!

Posted via email from Steven's posterous

Penguins and pancakes

2010-06-29T06:42:00.001+01:00

Went to Monterey Bay Aquarium. Saw more sea otters. Penguins will rule the world one day
Now in San Francisco. Exited BART as Gay Pride March went past with ticker tape falling from the sky. A suitable welcome for our arrival I think.
Waited 40min for a table for breakfast at Dottie's True Blue Cafe. I had pancakes but I didn't really like them that much tbh.
Went to visit a friend at Google HQ today. Google HQ rocks. Please can I have a job there? I could be a gardener or something...
Going to pick up the Harley tomorrow. Now the real holiday starts!

Download now or watch on posterous

IMG_0726.MOV (5083 KB)

See and download the full gallery on posterous

Posted via email from Steven's posterous

Spot the Seal

2010-06-27T08:07:00.001+01:00

I hired a bicycle yesterday and took a ride down to Monterey, where I hired a kayak for a few hours. It was not particularly sunny, but of course I still managed to get burnt. I had a wetsuit on, so I have a nice line at my ankles, and my forehead is glowing nicely. Out on Monterey Bay I saw loads of seals, quite a few sea otters and a seagull using a dead seal as a surf board. :D

Burnt feet really hurt. Not good.

See and download the full gallery on posterous

Posted via email from Steven's posterous

Spot the Seal

2010-06-26T18:29:00.001+01:00

Burnt feet really hurt. Not good.

See and download the full gallery on posterous

Posted via email from Steven's posterous

Freezing in Asilomar; TomTom California map?

2010-06-23T18:27:00.001+01:00

We arrived in Asilomar yesterday after a 2.5h bumpy bus ride from San Francisco. This conference place is a little odd - kind of like a cross between a scout camp (Douglas Wood anyone?) and something from Amityville.

Main problem is that it is really cold and misty. This isn't the weather that Arnie was showing off on all those "Visit California" adverts recently! I'm sitting in front of a roaring fire right now. It would be warmer if we headed in-land, but considering we're planning on riding Pacific Coast Highway we might not be getting much sun.

W is working now in some meeting. I'm thinking of going for a cycle ride but I'm not sure I've got warm enough clothes!

Gripe: I still planning the route for next week. I have my TomTom Rider (v1) with me and wanted to add a map for California to it. However, it seems you cannot buy individual state maps in the US. Seems a bit daft when you can buy individual country maps in Europe. The US is the size of a continent and California is about the size of the UK so you've got just as much chance of only needing a regional map. Would someone using their TomTom in Washington really want to be forced to buy a map which included Georgia? Seems like a economically motivated decision by TomTom which is daft when they're about to be crushed by Google et al who will be offering a more customer focused service.

You used to be able to buy individual state maps for TomTom so if anyone can point me in the direction of one please do. It doesn't matter how old it is - I doubt Pacific Coast Highway has changed much recently!

Pic is of Crater Lake taken on the flight over.

Posted via email from Steven's posterous

Time to ride California again

2010-06-20T21:21:00.001+01:00

On Tuesday I'll be flying out to San Francisco and on the following Tuesday I'll be picking up a Harley-Davidson Electra Glide and riding for four days around California. I did this 6 years ago and loved it. This time I'll have W sitting behind me! Like the social media geek I am I'll be using Posterous to tweet, blog and Facebook my pics as I go along. If Google Latitude worked properly on an iPhone I would be able to track my route properly too. Use a map you say? Yeah I guess that would make sense...

Technical gripe - when you email a photo directly from the iPhone to Flickr via Posterous, the GPS Exif data seems to get stripped out, which is a shame. I'd like to have all the photos geo-tagged.

Posted via email from Steven's posterous

Post Office Oxford

2010-01-30T12:44:00.001Z

Post Office Oxford
Originally uploaded by major_grooves

When i arrived at the Post Office with the queue below there was only
two people serving. I wonder how busy it has to get for them to
consider opening all the counters. Really people should be grateful
that the Post Office has shut all the local post offices. If they
hadn't people wouldn't get the opportunity to travel in to central
Oxford and queue for 20 min. Thank you Post Office for being so useless!

LipDub videos and stupid record companies

2010-01-16T12:22:00.008Z

I made a Barenaked Ladies LipDub movie with some friends in Dundee over Christmas as a wedding present for a friend. It was inspired by a fantastic LipDub movie of the Black Eyed Peas' song "I Gotta Feeling." It's such a fantastic clip, I think I've probably watched it more than a dozen times (also see the follow-up 'making of' video). It's impossible to watch without it putting a smile on your face.

I tried to upload our movie to YouTube. OK, the video has the Barenaked Ladies' song "If I had $1000000" playing throughout, but I just assumed that YouTube would automatically add a "buy this from iTunes" link that you often see on videos with music in them.

Nope, YouTube just blocked the video as soon as it was uploaded.

I knew that most of the major record companies had been getting their knickers in a twist about arranging licensing deals with YouTube so that their music could be posted. Turns out Warner Music Group has thrown a major hissy fit and now all their music is blocked. There are amusing/annoying stories about of people's videos being blocked because some copyrighted music is playing in the background i.e. on the radio or something!

Wonderfully, YouTube gives you the option of uploading the video with a) no audio, or b) audio from YouTube's library of available music. Me thinks that might somewhat spoil a LipDub movie. For example.

I don't really have a problem with record companies protecting their music per se. I've always been against file-sharing as it just feels like stealing. However, I do think that the record companies are being quite short-sighted with the opportunity that YouTube presents to them. When I listened to the I Gotta Feeling LipDub, I immediately bought the tune on iTunes. A few months later I bought the whole Black Eyed Peas album (should I really be admitting this?!).

I didn't buy them through YouTube, so Google gets no money from this - just Apple, the record company and the band. However, I bought them because of the video on YouTube. I wouldn't have bought it otherwise.

Warner Music Group apparently don't get this. I therefore presume they are run by thickos and I fart in their general direction. Black Eyed Peas' record label, Interscope (part of Universal Media Group) are clearly much more enlightened.

Of course everyone wants to get their video on YouTube so they can have their 5-minutes of fame! Instead I have uploaded the video to Vimeo, which is a really beautiful video website. They've actually been encouraging people to make LipDub movies (and even claim to have coined the term). Sadly though, they're getting sued for their efforts.

Anyway, here is the video we made. I expect the morons from WMG will come along eventually and issue a takedown notice, but in the meantime please enjoy:

$1000000 LipDub from Steven Renwick on Vimeo.

A LipDub movie we made to Barenaked Ladies' "If I had $1000000" for Kev and Hilary's Wedding (8th Jan 2010). Filmed at various locations in Dundee and Carnoustie.

Image from Flickr user Tracy Russo used under a Creative Commons licence.

Engrish: Green Grass is Afraid of your Trample

2009-10-25T20:52:00.002Z

Green Grass is Afraid of your Trample
Originally uploaded by major_grooves

A week last Thursday W got back from a month long trip to China where she had been travelling the silk road. Amongst the 403 photos she showed me this morning were a few amusing examples of Engrish.

A couple more here.

AffectLabs (FestBuzz) at TechCrunch London

2009-09-25T16:05:00.004+01:00

BitchBuzz at TechCrunch London
Originally uploaded by BitchBuzz

Yesterday I pitched Affect Labs (aka FestBuzz - for more on that see below) at TechCrunch London.

Update: See also TechCrunch Europe's Event Wrap.

I'm rather pleased, and still more than a bit surprised, to say that we won "best pitch"!

Picture above is me on stage with Mike Butcher, Editor of TechCrunch Europe, receiving a bottle of bubbly.

There were a lot of interesting companies there with some very good pitches. I did think it would be nice to get in the top 5 but I didn't think I'd really done anything to deserve winning. Not that I'm complaining though!

Credit where credit is due though, the presentation was largely based on Jennie's learnings in the run up to the TechCrunch Geek 'n Rolla event earlier this year where she pitched Affect Labs. Some of the slides were ones that she had made for a pitch she did at an Astia London event, also earlier this year.

Of course, like all my interactions with TechCrunch events, I don't like things to be straightforward. I had visited the relevant Amiando page almost as soon as the event was announced. The first thing I did was click on the link to export the event in to my Google Calender. As I knew I was going to be pitching I didn't have reason to buy a ticket or visit the Amiando page again.

So yesterday, at 3pm, I turned up like an eager beaver for some pre-pitch practice.... at Gilgamesh Studios in Camden. Nobody had a clue what I was talking about as I wandered around what looked like a giant empty Indian restaurant asking where the TechCrunch event was.

Turns out the original plan was to hold it at the Gilgamesh Studios, but the venue had quite quickly been changed to the Cafe de Paris near Piccadilly Circus. The people that had already bought tickets were notified of the venue change by email, but as I wasn't buying a ticket I wasn't notified (random link found through Google shows venue as Gilgamesh).

So in future I'll remember not to blindly trust Google Calender exports. In the end I wasn't too late for the event and managed to get some very helpful tips before I went on stage.

Cafe de Paris is an interesting venue isn't it? The private rooms (where we prepared before the pitches) had what they describe as a VIP boudoir but which everyone else described as looking like some kind of porn set. I wonder what goes on in there hmmmm. It would have been a bit nicer without the dodgy stains and cigarette burns on the beds...

Tonight they're hosting the FHM High Street Honeys '09 party. I should have hidden in a toilet for the night or something. Quite contrasting clientele to have one night after the other! Om nom nom nom :D

I got some good questions from the floor. I particularly liked the audience's reaction when I was asked where the technology originated: "Jennie's PhD research in a NLP group at Cambridge University". I think I did hear a kind of "ooh" from the audience. Hud that!

A Hungarian chap, who knows the sentiment field, attempted to ask a technical question. Fortunately, nobody, including myself, could really understand what he was saying. I say fortunately because I did go and speak to him later and I wouldn't have been able to answer his question very well on stage.

One slight issue that did become apparent through the night was our own brand perception. We were publicised as FestBuzz, we were introduced as FestBuzz, and the first thing I did was go up there and say "I'm Steve from Affect Labs". I pitched as AffectLabs (which is the registered name of the company), told the audience about FestBuzz (our 4iP funded Edinburgh Festivals project), and referenced Benchmark7, which is the working name of our sentiment classification engine. Also my business cards are heavily Benchmark7 branded.

Well for the rest of the night I was "the guy from FestBuzz". I had to explain the three names more than a few times. I spoke to Mike Butcher about it and he was definitely keener to refer to us as FestBuzz - "that's what people know you as"! (TechCrunch had written a short piece about us when our 4iP funding was announced). So that's something we'll have to keep in mind as we move forward.

Anyway, I had a great time at the after show party, which was timed to coincide with the end of Seedcamp. It was pretty nice having lots of people compliment the pitch (even before we won) and then have people congratulate me later. :) I met a whole bunch of great people. Now the challenge is to connect the business cards to the faces to the conversations to the follow-ups that may or may not have been promised!

Some more pictures from the event can be found here on Flickr, courtesy of BitchBuzz.

The event was actually streamed live on Ustream. If my day before the event had not been so busy/chaotic I would have put the link in my Facebook account. Is it possible to watch things which have already been streamed?

Thanks to TwistedTree for organising the event.

The 51st Company

2009-09-13T13:17:00.008+01:00

In my previous blog post I was lamenting our failiure to get in to the TechCrunch 50.

Well this week, in an unexpected twist to the story, I got an email from TechCrunch CEO Heather Harde asking for us to go over there and pitch.

Oh my heart did skip a beat!

Apparently some companies were at risk of not making their slot, so she wanted us to come over as the "first reserve" so to speak. If it turned out that we weren't needed then we would be given a DemoPit spot instead.

I received the email on Wednesday. She wanted us to fly over on the Friday to work through our pitch then get stuck in on Monday or Tuesday.

Only problem was, since getting the initial rejection, we had been working on other things - not making a specific demo for TC50 (we had something specific in mind that would have been exceptionally cool for all companies there - not just us).

Shortly after getting the email I was on the phone to my co-founder Jennie.

"So you know that demo we were going to do specifically for TechCrunch 50 that was probably going to take about 2 or 3 weeks to get ready? Do you think you could still do it in two days? How about if you just stay here and work on the demo, while I go over to San Francisco, have a great time at the conference and bask in the limelight of being a presenting company? Strictly speaking do you need to take time out to eat and sleep?"

OK, so pretty obviously it wasn't going to be possible. Nevertheless, we could have presented something, possibly shown FestBuzz. The only problem would be that it wouldn't be a product launch, so much as a technology pitch, and TechCrunch 50 is about launching products.

Even if we didn't end up on stage, we would have been in the DemoPit. Doing an exhibition without any preparation would be challenging to say the least. I figured we could probably wing it, however with rather prophetic timing, Jason Calcanis' email newsletter had just arrived with 22 tips on how to operate a trade show booth.

Let's just say that none of these tips include, "decide to go to a trade exhibition a couple of days before it starts and just wing it". Hmmm....

So anyway, Heather had said in her email that she would call me the next day or that I could call her at any hour to discuss, so I did that. No answer on her cell phone so voicemail was left and then I sent her an email outlining my concerns and suggesting that we probably couldn't do it. I tried calling a few more times, because I was really hoping that she would try to persuade me to do the pitch. However I never heard back from her. No phone call or reply to my email, so I guess it was taken as a decline (unless they're still expecting us to turn up. That would be awkward!).

When Jennie and I were talking about the possiblity of doing the pitch, there were quite a few things running through my head. This is TechCrunch 50 and we've been asked to do it! It's web-tech lifetime opportunity - we would be mad to turn it down. Even if the demo is not perfect we should just do *something*.

Luckily Jennie was the voice of reason, not least because she would have to make the damn demo! Sure we could turn up and do a demo of *something* but it wouldn't be good enough. We might end up doing more harm to the company than good. Just because it's TechCrunch 50 doesn't mean we should put our reputation at risk. Even if we're just mediocre, people don't remember mediocre. I think I was being driven more by the prestige of the TC50 badge rather than the practicalities of the situation.

The reality is that although I was extremely excited when I got Heather's email, I knew we probably wouldn't be able to do it. At first I was like "Yah!" but then I "Meh'd"...

So I guess we were the 51st choice company (unless some other reserves had already turned them down!), and Michael Arrington's 75-80% chance of us getting in was fair. I wish the best of luck to whatever company has presumably replaced us. I do hope they get a chance to go on the main stage and make the most of this (presumably) unexpected opportunity.

That's twice in the past couple of weeks I've meant to have had a conversation with Heather and we have not managed to connect. I really hope I'll get the chance to speak with her eventually! And hopefully they'll remember us and Affect Labs will still get a chance to pitch at a TechCrunch event in the future!

N.B. We've actually got a few pitches coming up in the next few weeks. We were selected as one of the Guardian Tech Media Invest top 100 companies and we'll be pitching at the related event at the Emirates Stadium, London on 1st October.

TechCrunch50 Rejection

2009-08-24T21:38:00.009+01:00

[Update: We actually got asked to pitch!]

I started writing this post as a response to another person's blog post in which he talked about his rejection from TechCrunch50. It was turning in to a bit of a mammoth response, so I thought I would be better posting it on my blog and just leaving a link to it on his. So it begins as a response...

Hi, we had a similar experience, although possibly with more mishap and with our expectations even higher.

So we applied and were happy to be told we would be interviewed. Unfortunately the interview timings seemed pretty difficult to book and were timed for US West coast people and we are in the UK, so we had a bit of difficulty getting a reasonable interview time.

Eventually we got the interview time set, with the screen sharing and teleconference details sent out. My co-founder and I were waiting in the teleconference (separate locations) and in the screen sharing facility. Our interview was with Heather and we got an email saying she's running 5min late. Fair enough.

I had researched her so knew she was TechCrunch CEO and saw she had worked in corporate M&A, which is similar to my background so I thought we might have something in common.

After a few minutes we could see Heather in the screen sharing facility and she started chatting to us. She says she's in the teleconference but can't hear us. We're in the teleconference too but we can't hear her. Oh crap.

Anyway, we faff around for a few minutes but she says that she has to go and we will rearrange. Oh crap, we've just missed out on pitching to the Techcrunch CEO. :(

We do rearrange. Unfortunately the only time they can do the interview is when my co-founder is due to be hosting a big event for us. So it's up to me alone. I gladly take up the challenge! So I'm due to be speaking to Tyler from Mahalo. Ok, cool.

So in the run up to the meeting, I start getting a bit panicy that the teleconference is gonna mess up again, so I change our phone details to get them to phone me direct. I'm exchanging emails with various assistants to try and make sure they have the correct details. I'm convinced telecommunication technology is going to let me down again.

The time comes. And passes. I'm checking the online room. There's no-one there. No email this time saying anyone is running 5min late. I wait for ages. I have three phones so I keep dialing in to the teleconference rooms to make sure he's not dialed there by mistake instead of phoning me directly.

Eventually I get an email saying Tyler is running a bit late. OK, fair enough. So about an hour after our scheduled time I get the call. I try to demo, but he can't hear me properly. He asks if he can phone on another number. Lucky I have three phones!

So we get on to a decent phone and start the demo. It goes well. Tyler actually has a pretty cool idea for something we could do. I agree it is a cool idea (I'm sure we would have thought of it anyway ;) ). Towards the end of the demo, Tyler asks me to show something quite specific that I'm pretty sure is going to be impossible. I try. I was right - it was not possible (yet).

Anyhow, demo over and Tyler gives me his email address and says if we could rig up a demo of the "not yet possible" thing, then that would be pretty cool.

A few days pass by. Tuesday night at 8.50pm I get a call on my landline. Calls on my landline are either a) my g/f's parents, or b) recorded message spam. Tonight it is c) Michael Arrington's assistant from Techcrunch. Ooh, I wasn't expecting that!

"Michael would like to speak with you in an hour."

Crikey! I do know of him already as I read Techcrunch a lot and I follow his Twitter stream. However, there's always time for some obsessive Google searching and I find out he is no. 100 on the 2008 Time Magazine 100 most influential people list.

Wow. That's quite influential. I mean, granted there's 99 people above him, but there's around 6 billion people below him, so I'm thinking that's pretty good going.

So at 10pm he calls. First thing he says is he doesn't know my name. That's ok, I'm quite insignificant, he can call me Susan if it gives us a better chance of getting in to TC50.

I do the demo. Michael mentions the same cool idea that Tyler did. I presume Tyler mentioned it to him. I agree whole-heartedly that it would be a cool idea. As before I can't show the demo of what he's suggesting, but this time I can show him it in command line form.

He says he "gets it" and he "loves it". The most influential man in Web tech GETS it! He LOVES it! Woo-hoo!

He then says that he thinks we'll be an "edge case" because the other partners (Heather and Jason) have not seen us, but says that his opinion carries weight so we still have a good chance. In fact, he says he reckons we have a "75-80%" chance of getting in.

75-80% chance?! That's like, more or less 100%! I mean, nothing with a "75-80%" chance ever actually fails does it? I mean if someone tells you you have a 75-80% chance of winning the lottery tonight you'd be making friends with the local Aston Martin dealer PDQ. Dead cert! (Notice I quickly suppress the words "edge case").

We wait a few days in eager anticipation. Surely we're in - I wonder what I should wear on stage?

But then I notice a tweet from Michael saying they've made the final decisions on the last companies for TC50.

Oh, but some mistake surely? Our email has gone astray! Curse you technology and your missing emails!

So we wait. And then get the /other/ email.

“Unfortunately, we regret that we are unable to place your company as a TechCrunch50 finalist…"

Oh, bummer.

We also get the invite to DemoPit, which I would *love* to do, but unfortunately in our near-zero financing state (as well as being located in the UK) it is prohibitively expensive so we have to decline. It's probably a good thing in a way, because it would have been a lot of pressure to get the product ready in time and we might not have been as good as we would have wanted to be.

However I am a bit bummed and I can't help wondering what difference the failed teleconference with Heather made. :/

Still, it doesn't keep me down for more than a few hours. It was pretty good validation to have made it to the semi-final stage. It was also a pleasure to get the chance to speak with both Tyler and Michael. I was glad they at least liked our product, even if we didn't quite make the final cut for TC50.

We've had similar validation experiences, tempered with a hint of dissapointment. We got invited out to San Francisco to do the 15min interview for Y Combinator this year. That's a long way to go for a 15min chat. Although we didn't make the final cut, it was good to make it from the 600-1000 companies that applied down to the last 60.

We also applied to all the Y Combinator-like schemes, and all of them interviewed us at least once, so there was definite interest in our company. In fact, we actually got an investment offer from one of them but decided to turn it down in the end so that was an especially good validation.

Since then our company, Affect Labs, has had some funding from 4iP to launch our Phase 1 product FestBuzz and we did get mentioned on TechCrunch Europe, which was nice.

We also have some other very good irons in the fire, one of which is certain and others which we will find out about over the next couple of months.

So I'll be keeping my fingers crossed, but not getting my expectations up too high, because even when you've got a 75-80% chance of success, that's still a 20-25% chance of failure. I mean, if someone tells you you've got a 20-25% chance of dying tonight, you'd probably put on your best underwear...

Apologies for random tenses in this post. I can't be bothered fixing them. Photo from Flickr user KatieL366.

So what is it I'm doing now exactly?

2009-08-06T12:12:00.006+01:00

I'd been wanting to start some kind of company for a while, particularly something involving Internet technology, but that idea was limited by my lack of programming skillz. My day job had given me experience of project managing the re-design and re-launch of a pretty complicated business information website/database so I was quite confident I could find my calling in the Web start-up world coming from the business angle.

It was a toss-up between trying to start-up a company and doing an MBA this year. And the start-up won.

Earlier this year I teamed up with Jennie Lees to start Affect Labs. The company is founded on sentiment analysis technology that Jennie had developed during her doctoral studies at Cambridge University. She has since moved to Scotland and the company is now established in Edinburgh.

Over the past few months we've been writing business plans, applying for funding and lots of other cool things. While this has been full-time for Jennie for some time, for me it has always had to be something I fitted in to my spare time and holidays. It also wasn't something I widely revealed at my day-job.

Well, the time has come where I need to apply more time to the start-up. We're starting to try to raise money in earnest and that means more work and meetings. There's only so many meetings I can arrange for holidays! So, I have told my employer my plans and they have very graciously agreed that I can go part-time from September. Eventually I hope to go full-time with the start-up, but only time will tell when we'll be in a position to allow that.

So the exciting news is that we've launched our first product. FestBuzz (with funding from 4iP) is crowd-sourcing Edinburgh Festival show reviews. What that means is that our technology is listening out for all the messages on Twitter that are talking about the Festival shows. We aggregate these messages (aka "tweets") and use our sentiment analysis technology to understand the emotion in the reviews - are people being positive or negative about the show.

The site launched late last week, and is not quite yet 100% operational. We've got a few features to switch on and we're waiting for the Festival to really kick off so the flow of tweets will start.

So if you're interested in getting started with Twitter and "tweeting" your reviews, have a look at this guide (or this much shorter one).

Or if you just want Edinburgh Festival recommendations from the "word on the tweet" please check out the site!

(Image taken from the FestBuzz on Flickr)

Damn those bus drivers

2009-07-21T18:29:00.002+01:00

Stagecoach OJ09BZH
Originally uploaded by KK70088

Don't you just hate it when you try to get on the bus and the driver shuts the door just as you arrive. You knock on the door assuming that he'll see you and open the doors to let you on, but no - the ba$tard just drives off and you're left there cursing him, buses, public transport and Gordon Brown.

I was on the bus the other day leaving Oxford and I saw exactly that happen to someone trying to get on my bus. The driver could easily have let the guy on the bus, so I emailed the bus company to query their procedure.

This is what I was told:

Prior to departing a stop the driver is to:

1) look in their mirrors to ensure there are no persons intending to board their vehicle
2) Close the doors
3) Put on indicators to show that they wish to move out right
3) Look constantly in both offside/nearside/inside mirrors to look for any obstacles and ensure that persons are safely seated
4) If safe to do so move off from the stop at slow speed

Once the driver has closed their doors and started their checks we state they have commenced their manoeuvre and should therefore not pick up again on health and safety grounds.

As you can imagine the issue surrounds point 1. If the driver did not see the person in time they will commence their manoeuvre, however the intending passenger may believe they should have been easily seen creates conflict over the interpretation of the incident.

Additionally, if the driver was due to depart a few minutes earlier they will at some point have to commit to making progress and departing, as they have a responsibility to operate the service on time for the other intending passengers left waiting at stops further up the route.

Can't really argue with that. They have to pull away at some time and they are only following procedure. In Oxford, where the buses are quite popular, you can be left sitting on a bus for ages waiting for it to pull away from the city centre while there is a steady drip of people constantly getting on the bus.

Don't get me started on the summer foreign language students!

Attack of the Slugs

2009-07-18T21:27:00.001+01:00

Attack of the Slugs
Originally uploaded by major_grooves

The cauliflower crop didn't work out too good. I don't think these guys helped. I went out with a paid of secators the other day and chopped a bunch of them in half. Mwahaha!

LoveFilm result! I think...

2009-07-16T21:55:00.001+01:00

I got the following reply from LoveFilm after my complaint email yesterday:

Dear Steven,

Thank you for your email.

I would like to apologise for the inconvenience that this matter has caused you.

I can confirm that I have now contacted my colleague in the warehouse regarding this issue and have been informed that we have limited stock of "Battlestar Galactica - Season 3 - Disc 3" only. We are in the process of obtaining more copies.

I can confirm that I have now requested for "Battlestar Galactica - Season 3 - Disc 3" to be sent out to you as an extra disc (this will be on-top of your normal allowance).

Please bear in mind that when we wish to allocate your extra disc, and the desired title is not available to be allocated to you, no extra disc will be sent out to you. The reason for this is because I have requested for this specific title to be sent out.

In the future please bear in mind that we do have a no late returns policy which make it impossible for us to promise our customers when a specific disc will be send out. It all depend if we have an available copy of one of your high priority titles in our warehouse once we receive a disc back from you and have to allocate your next one.

Instead of waiting for one of your high priority titles to be available we will then sent out one of the other titles on your list to prevent any delays.

Please accept our sincere apologies for the inconvenience caused by this and do not hesitate to contact us if you need more information, we will be happy to assist you.

Let's see if it turns up now!

My plea to LoveFilm

2009-07-16T00:03:00.003+01:00

I've been having some trouble getting the next DVD in the Battlestar Gallactica series from LoveFilm. I'm waiting for Season 3 DVD 3. I did email customer support and got some generic reply, but my patience is wearing this so I decided to email again tonight. I've been waiting 4 months.

Dear Yousuf,

As I sit here, still waiting for the next DVD in Battlestar Gallactica Season 3, I look at the copies of Enchanted and Volver (chosen by my other half - they look kinda rubbish) that arrived from LoveFilm today and must conclude: I am not satisfied by your answer or LoveFilm's current level of service.

First, BattleStar Gallactica Season 3 is not a new release. I can not see why there would be particularly high demand for Season 3 Disc 3 unless, unbeknownst to me, it perhaps has an episode featuring Michael Jackson moonwalking across the flightdeck of Battlestar Gallactica itself. Given that I have been waiting months for this disc, and old MJ only died a couple of weeks ago, this explanation is quite unlikely.

I can understand that one cannot expect to get a specific movie on demand, and indeed that you will have different stock levels for different movies. However, Battlestar Gallactica is a series of episodes. This means that people usually watch them one after the other, sequentially. It helps make the storyline flow. Therefore, one would assume that a stockist of any series would have equal numbers of each DVD in the series. Perhaps you might have more DVDs of a later series overall, but one would assume (lost/damaged DVDs notwithstanding) that within a series there would be the same number of DVDs in your stock. Logically, this would enable you to send the DVDs out in order, without too much of a wait between DVDs.

Indeed, for Seasons 1 and 2 of Battlestar Gallactica that was what happened. Every time I sent back a DVD of Battlestar Gallactica, I was safe in the knowledge that the next one would be popping through the door in a couple of days. In fact, although I have quite a low LoveFilm package (4 DVDs max a month I think) watching Battlestar Gallactica was the first time I had "maxed" my allowance. I confess I was addicted to the series (have you /seen/ Starbuck!?!) so I actually welcomed the enforced breaks.

But let me show you the pattern in DVDs received from LoveFilm that makes me suspect that something is not quite right here:

Between 10th December and 5th January this is the pattern (the date is the date of the returned DVD according to my account):

Battlestar Galactica - Season 1 - Disc 1 10th December 2008
Battlestar Galactica - Season 1 - Disc 2 22nd December 2008
Battlestar Galactica - Season 1 - Disc 3 22nd December 2008
Battlestar Galactica - Season 1 - Disc 4 5th January 2009

on 5th January I also returned Pirates of the Caribbean - At World's End.

Then between 9th January and 24th February the pattern was as follows:

Battlestar Galactica - Season 2 - Disc 1 9th January 2009
Battlestar Galactica - Season 2 - Disc 2 19th January 2009
Battlestar Galactica - Season 2 - Disc 3 26th January 2009
Battlestar Galactica - Season 2 - Disc 4 30th January 2009
Battlestar Galactica - Season 2 - Disc 5 24th February 2009

Season 2 was interspersed with Kidulthood, the Orphanage, Penelope and We Own the Night. It seemed for this season that one of my DVDs would always be a Battlestar Gallactica DVD and the other a normal movie.

March also saw we watching 27 Dresses and Forgetting Sarah Marshall. Please don't judge me. I happened to enjoy them both. I consider Russell Brand to be a fine comedic actor, his whimsical style amuses me, and 27 Dresses was surprisingly good.

This brings me to the end of March when I received and watched Battlestar Gallactica Season 3 DVDs 1 and 2. They were really exciting! I can't tell you why, because I can't remember now it's been so long since I watched them, but Battlestar Gallactica is always exciting, so I'm gonna stick with it.

Since I returned Season 3 DVD 2, I have received 14 different DVDs - FOURTEEN!!! - none of them Battlestar Gallactica. Just for your interest, my top rated DVDs in that time were In Bruges, which I gave 4.5 stars (the missus and I really want to take a holiday to Bruge now) and the first series of The Inbetweeners, which I gave 5 stars. Yes - 5 stars! It really is that good! Fortunately the whole series came on 1 DVD!

Can you see where the pattern breaks down? I don't know if you're a mathematician Yousuf, but there is certainly a pattern in the Battlestar Gallactica DVD distribution, which kinda falls apart around Season 3 DVD 3. I can see it.

So, it has now been nearly 4 months since I had my last dose of Battlestar Gallactica. FOUR MONTHS! I doubt many people would think to themselves, "yeah, I'm really enjoying this series. What I could really do with is a 4 month break between two episodes". Nah, no one would say that because they would have to be an idiot.

Does a 4 month wait between episodes seem normal or reasonable to you?

Is there not the slightest chance that there is something wrong with your system?

I'd say I've been patient so far, but the thought of watching Volver and Enchanted has ended that.

Or maybe you know something I don't? Maybe Battlestar Gallactica gets really rubbish at Season 3 DVD3. Maybe you're actually doing me a favour! Really, I'd like to be the judge of that. The rumours I hear are that it stays pretty good throughout.

Anyway, Yousuf I'd really appreciate it if you would look in to this for me. I really have enjoyed using LoveFilm's service over the past few years, but this experience is putting me off. I may consider cancelling my subscription if I don't get the next Battlestar Gallactica DVD soon, and I fear that jobs at LoveFilm may be put at risk by the loss of my £7.82 payment every month. I couldn't cope with having that on my conscience Yousaf.

Yours Sincerely

-Steven

--- On Wed, 1/7/09, support@lovefilm.com wrote:

From: support@lovefilm.com
Subject: Re: Feedback:: Re: Film and TV queries: Battlestar Gallactica - LF8230560TID
To: xxxxxx@yahoo.co.uk
Date: Wednesday, 1 July, 2009, 5:06 AM

Dear Steven,

Thank you for your email.

We would like to confirm to you that that the priority system is not intended as a way
of queuing your selection exactly in the order you wish to see them. Instead it is only intended as more of a 'preference'
system, by which customers can indicate which films from their selection they would prefer to see, from those that we have available in stock to dispatch to you at the time your last return is received.

Please understand that although your priority titles selection serves as an indication to us of which titles you would prefer to see first, I'm afraid we are unable to guarantee the dispatch of any particular title within any time frame. As we do not offer a 'Title-on-demand' service, the allocation of titles from your list on the day of dispatch is simply dependent on availability. If none of your priority 1 titles are in stock on that day, we will send you an alternative from your list.

I'm afraid it is the nature of our system, that we are unable to guarantee that we will always be able to send you any one particular disc (or priority of disc) at any one time. We simply cannot do so as we only have a finite stock of
any disc, and it is impossible to predict when the ones you want to rent will be in stock. This is especially true of new releases, which are always the most heavily requested for the limited stocks we have. Because we know this is not possible to offer this guarantee, we have the selection list system, and not an order queue. We will always dispatch you a priority 1 DVD if it is available, but if not we will dispatch a priority 2, and if that is not available, then a priority 3.

Hope this has answered your query. Should you have any more questions, please do let us know and we will be happy to assist you further.

Please let us know if this answered your question.
If yes, click here:
http://www.lovefilm.com/help/feedback.html?r=p&e=d259a6f6d32efa6aecd69ce62dd701fb

If no, click
here:
http://www.lovefilm.com/help/feedback.html?r=n&e=d259a6f6d32efa6aecd69ce62dd701fb

Kind regards,

Yousuf
--
Customer Services
LOVEFiLM.com
Find the films you want to watch
www.LOVEFiLM.com

LOVEFiLM UK Limited is a company registered in England and Wales.
Registered Number: 06528297.
Registered Office: No. 9, 6 Portal Way, London W3 6RU, United Kingdom.

Major Groove wrote:

> For the love of the Almighty I have still not been sent the next BSG DVD!
>
> What happened? Did you get a cheap batch that only had one copy of S03 DVD3??? I had them one after the other then I have to wait months for this one!

N97 or iPhone (or G1)

2009-07-07T20:11:00.002+01:00

I've had my N95 for over 2 years now. That's at least 6 months longer than the minimum 18 month contract I had when I got the N95.

When the N95 was announced I couldn't wait to get it. A phone with GPS - it seemed brilliant! When I got it I was actually pretty pissed off. The GPS barely worked and it was only when I hacked the phone and installed new firmware that it would actually get a GPS signal in any reasonable amount of time.

That made me pissed off at Nokia, for releasing a phone that I don't think worked properly out of the box, and at Orange for being so damn slow with their firmware updates that I had to hack the phone to get a decent firmware update. Oh, and of course Orange removed the Voip software from the phone because, "it would confuse customers" or something like that. Yeah, not because they were scared of nobody ever paying for a call again, eh?

However, since getting that firmware update I've been pretty happy with the N95. It's a pretty decent music player, the GPS works ok especially with Google Maps (what is the point in Nokia Maps unless you are in a no signal area?).

Now I would like a new phone but I don't know which one to get. iPhone 3G S, Nokia N97 or the Google G1 phone. It's difficult to find objective, comparative reviews. People who are fans of one, seem to be haters of the others. Lots of the reviews, are actually just comparisons of the specifications. I want to know what they are like to live with.

iPhone I would like because the UI and apps look great. But I don't want to feel like I'm jumping on a crowded bandwagon.

Nokia - well I've had Nokias for years now, but they never seem quite perfect. I don't understand how they manage that, being the biggest phone company in the world. I kind of like it that it is European. I've always thought it was cool that a kinda random country like Finland ended up spawning the world's biggest phone company.

G1 - well I don't know much about it.

Hopefully some really objective phone reviewer will happen along this post and make a recommendation.

Gilbert O' Sullivan - Sleeveface

2009-06-27T16:57:00.001+01:00

Gilbert O' Sullivan
Originally uploaded by major_grooves

Just looking through some of my pics on Flickr and I thought I would blog this one up again.

Dr Renwick Wine

2009-05-31T18:14:00.003+01:00

Dr Renwick Wine
Originally uploaded by major_grooves

I was walking past Oddbins and the sign outside had a special offer on "Dr Renwick" wine. Well of course I had to go in and buy a couple!

"In 1856 Dr Thomas Renwick gave his name to the small settlement of Renwick town that is now the heart of Marlborough's wine growing region. Our family vineyards, once part of the Doctor's pastoral land holdings, have responded well to our bio-friendly vineyard practices.

The resulting wines display a richness of flavour with great character and depth... we are sure the good Doctor, a wine enthusiast himself, would have approved."

Running Windows Media Player and iTunes on the same computer. Possible?

2009-04-29T23:03:00.004+01:00

Apple Store - Sydney
Originally uploaded by sHzaam!

I wonder if it's possible to run iTunes and Windows Media Player as the music players of choice on the same music, in different accounts, on the same PC.

Ever since W won a iPod Touch at a conference, she has had to use iTunes to organise her music and transfer tunes to her device. I, on the other hand, have always used Windows Media Player. So we both built up music collections in our own accounts on my PC, with the added complication that I started ripping my CDs as .wma files, then changes to .mp3 and W started out with .aac before I changed it to .mp3 in an attempt to at least have some consistency between our collections.

However the collections ended up a mess, with both of us having the same music ripped in different formats, so I decided to wipe both our music collections and start again.

I thought that if I set both iTunes and Windows Media Player to rip tunes to the shared "Public Music" folder, then both programmes would be able to read and use the music. Then anything one of us ripped in our own account would be available to the other.

However, it seems that unless iTunes did the ripping, then it won't acknowledge the music is there. Windows Media Player will, but you have to tell it to look in the folder again to realise there is more music there. (I think that is how it ended up - I actually tried this a few months ago) So it didn't work, and my dream for a gloriously harmonised music collection embracing both Apple and Microsoft and bringing them together like quarrelling cousins, has failed.

So my question is: what should I do to arrange my music in two different accounts on the same PC. Is it not possible to do this using different programmes? Should I just swallow my pride, become an Apple fan-boi and start using iTunes? If I use iTunes should I "future-proof" my collection (or rather "Apple-proof") and rip it all as mp3? What do people do?

Any advice would be very welcome. No suggestions for WinAmp please!

btw I listen to my music on a Nokia N95, and intend getting a Nokia N97 when it comes out. I can't deny being tempted by the iPhone though, but I still don't want to be a fan-boi...

The ultimate vision is to have all the music running on one computer, and having a nice Squeezebox system set up.

Lovefilm no-return envelopes

2009-04-27T18:35:00.006+01:00

Lovefilm.com Film Desktop
Originally uploaded by lildude

As someone who enjoys (and whose job involves) data analysis, I imagine that one of the cool things about running a huge business to consumer internet company, apart from the pots of cash, is the chance to analyse customer data and work out its affect on revenue.

Where do your customers come from? What sites refer the most paying customers? How long do they stay on the site?

What's more interesting than analysing the data, is making changes to your website and your business and seeing the effect that this has on customers. For example, does moving the "buy now" button to a different part of the screen increase conversion rates, how does a customer sign-up process affect customers completing their purchases?

These changes can mean millions of pounds of extra revenue for internet companies. Of course not all customer behaviour changes involve the website itself.

LoveFilm has recently made a change to the way its service works. It's quite a subtle change, but I have no doubt that it means extra revenue for them.

It used to be that if you received two DVDs at the same time from LoveFilm, you would also receive an extra return envelope with your DVDs, in addition to the envelope it arrives in, which you usually convert in to a return envelope. LoveFilm are desperate for you to return as many DVDs in one envelope as possible. Obviously sending two DVDs back in one envelope means that their postage costs are halved.

Fair enough. When I did happen to watch two DVDs in short succession, I would return them in the same envelope. However, like most people I usually watch them at least a few days apart. Once I've watched one, I want it sent back so I can get the next semi-surprise DVD as soon as possible.

But that doesn't help LoveFilm's bottom line.

So, recently they have stopped sending you a spare envelope as standard. This means that if Lovefilm sends you two DVDs at once, you can't necessarily just watch your DVDs and send them back as you watch them. Of course, they say you can send them back Freepost in your own envelope, but that costs me an envelope, and you can be sure that most people won't be bothered to do that.

The obvious cost saving is reduced postage costs, but I do wonder if they save more money by altering customer viewing habits. If you wait till you've watched both DVDs before sending them back then you hang on to your DVDs longer, which means less DVDs get posted out, which means less handling costs and less DVDs need to be held by Lovefilm.

What really annoys me, is that Lovefilm claim that you can still request an extra return envelope to be sent. At first it was quite easy to request an extra return envelope. My memory might be playing tricks on me but I am sure you used to just have to click a button requesting a new envelope. Now, however you have to search around the website to get any info about it, and eventually if you dig enough you will find that to get a return envelope you have to send them an email asking for one.

/edit Thanks to the comment from the helpful LoveFilm user experience bod below, I have now been shown that there is in fact still an easy link to request an extra envelope. Doh! I've clicked it so only time will tell if I receive one.

I have done this two or three times, and each time I get an email back telling me I will receive an extra return envelope with my next DVD. I have yet to receive an extra return envelope.

It's not that it hugely bothers me - I've been maxing my account out on Battlestar Galactica recently anyway! It's just irritating that Lovefilm have moved in to that phase of their success cycle when they do things that are just irritating to customers, but which probably result in higher revenues for the company. We've seen Ebay do it in spectacular style, by giving the impression that they almost want to alienate their entire customer base. It would be a shame if Lovefilm went the same way.

That said, I'd say about 1 in 4 of the DVDs I receive these days are nearly unwatchable. I'm sure it didn't use to be so bad.

and another question - if the DVD pouch doesn't mention the DVD on it, does it really matter to return it in the same pouch? I can't see any kind of chip in them...

eventually DVD postal services will die off just like visiting your local Blockbuster. We'll all be downloading all our movies (legally that is). I wonder if Lovefilm will still be around then...

Harmonic fun

2009-04-16T21:58:00.001+01:00

Try this out for fun: http://lab.andre-michelle.com/tonematrix

We be gardening

2009-04-13T18:44:00.003+01:00

After having abandoned the garden more or less for the last 3.5 years, W and I decided that we would try to rescue the vegetable patch and grow some food.

Last weekend W spent ages weeding and digging the patch. Today, we went to the garden centre and bought loads of seedlings, some compost, a spade and a few other bits and bobs.

I have to say, I think it's looking pretty good!

Off of

2009-03-15T14:14:00.003Z

I listen to Chris Moyles in the car every morning. I do genuinely think he is funny and enjoy listening to his show.

However, because I have not yet bothered setting any radio stations on my car radio, I am stuck on Radio 1 all the time, which means that on the way home I am stuck listening to Scott Mills.

He can be funny, but he is mostly irritating. He's quite puerile, and I can imagine he would be the sort of person you would really want to slap in person.

There is one thing he keeps saying that is really annoying me:

"Off of"

It's the sort of thing Americans say - e.g. "that's Rachel off of Friends".

Occasional use I think is excusable. I'm pretty sure I have said it in the past. However, he seems to be making a point of saying it as often as possible, which is really annoying. All of his radio team seem to be saying it too, presumably sub-conscious copying.

What really gets me is when he uses it in other situations, e.g. "We have James off of Oxford on the line now". WTF?!

What is he doing? He just sounds like a desperate idiot when he speaks like that. I'm not saying BBC radio presenters need to use Queen's English, but they could do with not being morons.

Nonspherical femoral head shape

2009-03-15T13:58:00.003Z

I went back to Wimbledon Clinic the other day to see the consultant physiotherapist who specialises in patella-femoral problems.

This was in fact the longest consultation I have had - 90 minutes. Went through quite a lot of the usual tests, but then she also started testing my hip strength. Apparently my left hip is super weak. I had to lie on my side and raise my leg, then she pushed down on my leg and I had to resist the movement. On my right side I could resist the push, on the left side - nothing.

So she thinks what might be causing my problem is my left femur is turning inwards due to the weakness, which then puts the kneecap under pressure. That, coupled with my dodgy gait, means sore knees.

She also put me forward for a hip X-ray as I also complain on hip pain. In the mobility tests I had extremely immobile hips, but it didn't seem to be due to muscle tightness - just the physical limitation of how far my legs could move.

I got a CD with the X-rays in the post the other day. What a lovely pelvis I have! I got a phone call from my consultant the other day to talk me through the results. So, apparently I have nonspherical femoral head shape, which explains why my hips are so inflexible.

That would explain the following:

When everyone else was doing side-kicks at Ju-Jitsu aiming for the solar plexus, I could only aim for ankles.
I can't really sit with my legs crossed.
When rock climbing, I can't spread my legs with my feet facing in opposite directions when bridging. I had to adapt and have both feet pointing the same way.
I have real trouble getting my leg over a motorbike.
On some bikes, I get incredibly uncomfortable as the fuel tank spreads my legs too far. I can only ride skinny bikes!

It doesn't change anything and the consultant says it's nothing to worry about unless I start getting more hip pain, but it's nice to know what has made me so inflexible all these years.

So now I am a bit more of an intense physio programme to build up my left quad as well as my outer hip muscle. I will also be having more physio in Oxford to follow a new programme that my London physio has drawn up for me after seeing the X-rays.

Only problem is that I only have £88 of my BUPA out-patients money left, so hopefully I don't need much more done this year or it could get pricey!

My left foot

2009-02-19T20:10:00.001Z

Smiling thumb :)
Originally uploaded by Pitel

One curious side-effect of the orthotic insoles I am now wearing, is that I have started going through my left socks at an alarming rate.

I bought some new socks a couple of weeks ago, and I am going through the left sock after about 4 wears!

This could end up costing a bit!

Note: that is not my foot in the pic. :)

BBC Complaint Response

2009-02-09T21:44:00.001Z

I received a reply to my complaint to the BBC:

Dear

Thanks for your e-mail.

I understand you feel we show a lack of understanding and disrespect for the people of Scotland through our coverage of Scottish Premier League football and our specific coverage of Rangers and Celtic.

It's worth noting that over time supporters from a number of different clubs contact us about the placement of their team in the programme. It proves that we cannot please all the fans all the time.

I do understand that this is a matter you feel strongly about and to this end please be assured I've registered your complaint on our audience log. This is a daily report of audience feedback that's circulated to many BBC staff, including members of the BBC Executive Board, channel controllers and other senior managers.

I'd like to reiterate that all feedback we receive, whether positive or negative is always appreciated. We're committed to developing better links with you, our audience.

Thanks again for taking the time to contact us with your comments.

Regards

BBC Complaints

Basically - tough luck! I doubt Rangers and Celtic supporters ever have cause to complain. Just all us diddy teams! Oh well. Business as usual.

Google Latitude: Creepy but Cool?

2009-02-05T19:16:00.003Z

I've just added Google Latitude to my phone. Latitude is an new addition to Google Maps which allows you to see where your friends are at any given time. Your phone's location is determined by your triangulated distance from phone masts (to give an approximate location) or your phone's GPS.

You can change you privacy setting so certain people, or no-one can see where you are, or you can limit it to just say what city you are in.

In theory it sounds quite cool - you can look at your map and see that mayeb your friends are nearby and might fancy meeting up for a drink. It would also be quite cool for companies that want to track field engineers but don't want to shell out for expensive fleet tracking software. You can integrate Latitude with your iGoogle page so see where all your "friends" (or employees) are on your computer.

On the other hand it is quite creepy. Always being tracked? It takes Facebook stalking to the next level. With this you literally could hunt someone down! Hmmm... dubious.

I have added it for now. I doubt I have enough techie/geeky friends to make much use of this!

W makes a good point - this is a bit like like the Marauder's map from Harry Potter.

/edit - now that I think about it - for all the paranoid parents out there this will be a god-sent!

OM NOM NOM NOM THE NOO!

2009-01-26T22:04:00.004Z

Haggis
OM NOM NOM NOM

Ringgo result!

2009-01-21T22:11:00.001Z

I'm happy to report that Ringgo got my PCN cancelled! :)

Knee progress

2009-01-20T18:01:00.002Z

I went to see a new surgeon today at the Wimbledon Clinic.

The surgeon I saw was very good and agreed my case was a very difficult one. He has referred me to a consultant physiotherapist who specialises in kneecap overload. I will apparently be getting a 1h session in a couple of weeks, through which I will be given a pretty intensive physio programme that I will have to follow.

He does think that that should help the pain in my knee and return strength to my left leg.

I also had a follow up for the orthotic inserts and had my foot force measured again, and they do appear to be helping my dodgy gait.

So, I have high hopes for the new physio regime. Positive mental attitude!

Ringgo my arse!

2009-01-20T17:59:00.002Z

Originally uploaded by salimfadhley

Like I said I love technology but it hates me.

I've been using Ringgo for a few months to pay for parking by SMS. Usually I use it when I am travelling for work to London by train. There is a code displayed on the platform which lets you get the parking for a bit cheaper so genuine commuters benefit.

Occasionally when I am out and about I will use the service to pay for my own parking (the charge goes to my personal credit card).

Today I used it when I went to visit Robbie in Chiswick. When I went back to the car there was an attendant giving me a ticket. "But I've used Ringgo", I protested in vain.

Turns out I entered my reg. number wrong. Clever. I was able to show him the payment confirmation on my phone but he had already written the ticket so I have to appeal. I am assuming I will win the appeal, as I did actually pay for the parking.

I should have just paid for a normal ticket. I'm not sure why I didn't. You have to pay extra for the "privilege" of using Ringgo.

My fault, but once again I am getting bitten in the arse by my eagerness to adopt technology. Maybe it's a sign?

LoveHate Technology

2009-01-20T17:37:00.005Z

I love technology but technology seems to want to kick my arse whenever I get near it.

Take my relationship with TomTom: almost everytime I try to rely on it, it let's me down. I spend ages with back and forth emails to TomTom support trying to get the damn thing to work. Eventually I gave up and told them I wanted to send it back for repair. I'd only used it about 2 dozen times in its lifetime.

TomTom received my SatNav (in Glenrothes!) but then I heard nothing from them again. I asked them the other day what was going on and they replied that they had meant to tell me they were going to charge me for an out-of-warranty repair, but seeing as they had forgotten to they would do it for free. Nice one! Actually, they sent me a brand new unit!. Result! Shame I don't actually have a bike anymore, but I have bought the car adaptor kit for it.

I test it on the way home from work and it is fine. Then when I plug it in to the computer and it says it needs to do an update. Okey-dokey I let it update away, thinking taht with a clean new unit everything will be ok.

Then this morning I have to drive from Oxford to Wimbledon for an appointment about my knee. I decide that this time I can rely on TomTom to guide me there. Except now the damn thing won't turn the GPS on! I drive all the way down the M40 with it unable to find any satellites ("Poor GPS signal. Are you indoors?" No, I'm flippin' not!). Eventually on the M4 I pull into the services, where lovely Anita from WH Smith gives me her name badge to reset the TomTom (from now on I will always carry a paperclip in the car!). After two goes I give up and walk back to the car - lo and behold it gets a lock!

Thankfully it now manages to guide me to the clinic with only 15min to spare.

Then I use it again afterwards and it manages to guide me to Chiswick where I meet Robbie for lunch. Then, when I try to use it to get out of London, it fails again. Cue phone call to Robbie asking if I can pop in to his school to nick a paperclip. I will forever be grateful to the acting urchins on Chiswick for donating a paperclip to me.

Without TomTom I would not have found the clinic, nor Robbie's school. I am now going to have to get back on to TomTom support to report this latest problem, and I am sure they will have me plugging the damn thing in to the computer to roll-back the upgrade. Fantastic!

TomToms should come with a paperclip as standard.

BBC Complaint

2009-01-18T17:17:00.003Z

I've just sent in this complant to the BBC. I'll post up any reply I get:

There is often a perception that the BBC is too London and England centric, and ignores Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. A typical complainant might say that Andy Murray is referred to as British when he wins and Scottish when he loses. I think this type of accusation is generally unfair.

However, there is one area where the BBC shows a lack of understanding and disrespect for the people of Scotland. That is in its coverage of the Scottish Premier League football.

I have got used to the fact that you will only ever seen footage of Rangers and/or Celtic on BBC news programmes. I can just about justify that with these two teams having the largest support in Scotland.

Although the SPL is in general treated like a sideshow, what does particularly annoy me is when you treat the rest of the SPL as if it does not exist.

For example today on Radio 1, I twice heard the newsreader mention that Celtic was playing Aberdeen. Not once did they mention that Motherwell were also playing Dundee United.

To be that shows a complete disrespect to Scotland and Scottish football (granted the quality isn't great!) - the assuption that there are only two teams in Scotland is both insulting and patronising.

I suggest that if you are ever going to mention a Celtic/Rangers game in the SPL, you have the courtesy to mention the rest of the teams playing.

CB500 Winter Hack for Sale!

2008-12-05T22:14:00.002Z

My trusty CB500 is for sale on Ebay. Bidding currently stands at £45.

Bid now and get a bargain!

Domain Name Scams

2008-12-03T21:46:00.002Z

If you are contacted by a company called Euro Systems www.es-systems.com then you may want to consider reading the following websites:

Domain name scam link 1
Domain name scam link 2
Domain name scam link 3
Domain name scam link 4

Interestingly, Euro System's phone number (08445442955) is listed on a website which reports scammers.

I'm not saying they're scammers, but their pitch was nearly 100% word-for-word the same as the domain name scams listed above. I'll let you make your own mind up.

Meanwhile, if you do want to register more domain names associated with your company, then I recommend 123-reg.

Along came a Spider

2008-11-15T20:38:00.003Z

Well after looking for a car for about... a year now, I finally took the plunge and got one.

Say hello to my 2001 Alfa Romeo Spider 3.0 v6. Not bad for a first car!

It does about 145mph and 0-60 in 6.5s. I reckon I will be taking it a bit easier than that though as the fuel economy is terrible. Sadly I have given up my bike insurance and transferred the NCB to the car policy, so I will probably be getting rid of the bike.

More pics here.

Cheques taking longer to clear

2008-11-14T13:09:00.000Z

I have been waiting for a cheque from a car finance company to clear with the garage from which I am buying a new car.

So far the bank has had the cheque for 6 days and it has not cleared yet. Apparently the garage had a letter from their bank telling them that cheques would now take 7 days to clear.

Pretty scandalous, considering the OFT were meant to be cracking down on it when it was 3-5 days as standard.

Can I have my spider back?

2008-11-10T22:55:00.000Z

Nice weather for a convertible

2008-11-08T13:07:00.005Z

I was meant to be picking up my new car today, but it turns out I can't. The garage only received the cheque from the finance company yesterday and they have to wait for it to clear so I will probably have to wait till Tuesday or, more likely, Wednesday.

What a bummer. It is a pretty gorgeous day today and it would have been perfect for picking the car up. Oh well - I just hope the rest of the week is as nice.

Just as well probably as I'm no affy weel today.

Is Africa a continent or country?

2008-11-06T20:02:00.001Z

Yes Sarah Palin really was a thicko thickie!

Coming soon...

2008-11-05T22:37:00.001Z

Phew!

2008-11-05T07:35:00.002Z

America in "Not voting in another idiot" shocker!

My political analysis: the world will now be hoping that the USA makes the transition from being a "baddie" towards being a "goodie".

The fruit fly world responds

2008-10-31T19:30:00.001Z

Who studies fruit flies?

2008-10-30T21:55:00.002Z

Just in case anyone is in any doubt - fruit fly research is the cornerstone of pretty much all genetic research which is kinda useful in medical research.

That woman really is terrifyingly thick. Amazing to think she could run the US if Ol' McCain wins and then pops his clogs thereafter.

Bike or Car?

2008-10-26T21:15:00.001Z

It's starting to get cold again and as I ride my bike in to work in the mornings I am reminded why I wanted to get a car so much earlier this year.

My reasons were: sick of getting wet; sick of getting cold; sick of not being able to carry much stuff; sick of not being able to turn up looking smart to work; sick of being confined to Oxford or wherever public transport will take me.

I did try to buy a car last month, but found the credit crunch had closed the doors to all reasonable loans. I tried to apply again to the AA for a £7000 loan - the lowest they will give. Refused! If they won't give that to me who will they give it to?!

So once again I am torn by the car situation. Should I spend a few grand on a car - a depreciating asset that will cost loads to run; or should I spend a few hundred pounds on some new winter bike gear and just keep riding the bike?

Problem with getting a car is that I don't want a crappy small car. Problem with bikes is that riding them in Winter sucks.

'ING rubbish!

2008-10-24T22:07:00.002+01:00

Just got a letter from ING. Seems that since the Bank of England has reduced the interest rates they have reduced the rate on my ISA to 4.25%. That is rubbish! It is probably below the rate of inflation. Obviously the multi-billion dollar handout from the Dutch government hasn't made ING feel particularly generous.

Must look for better investment...

Biomechanical mess

2008-10-19T13:54:00.002+01:00

I finally had my appointment on Friday with the podiatrist-type guy. Previous appointment was cancelled because he dislocated his shoulder! Turns out this had prevented him from emigrating to New Zealand. Bad for him, but, as it turns out, rather fortunate for me.

Anyway, the consultation lasted an hour. I had high hopes for this and had been looking forward to the assessment, not least because I am quite fed up of being unable to walk properly.

Well, the consultation was excellent! He really seemed to know exactly what was wrong with me. At first I had to stand there, then on one leg then the other. Some various static testing on the bed too. Then I did some walking over the force-measurement plate which feeds in to the computer. Then I went on the running machine (at walking pace!) and he watched my dodgy gait.

As predicted, I have a shockingly bad gait and my overall biomechanics are really messed up. In one of the tests to look at flexibility in my hips I got a score of -5. He was looking to see how much over 0 I scored and I was below! So, my dodgy hips turn my femur inwards and my dodgy gait turns my leg out the other way, so I have two opposing forces meeting at my knee. At least that is mu understanding of it. The problem in one leg is made worse my one leg being longer than the other.

I felt such relief hearing him explain it. Everything made sense to him, which made me feel really positive.

So he is making an orthotic shoe insert to hopefully sort some of this mess out. I should get it in about a week. I'm looking forward to trying it out!

The guy's practice is called Motion Lab. If you live in the South East of England and have any problems I highly recommend you see him before he leaves the country. I'm hoping I can get sorted before he goes.

GoogleMail Tabs in Firefox

2008-10-19T13:45:00.002+01:00

Has something changed with GoogleMail?

Perhaps the only annoying thing about GoogleMail is that it is impossible to open different emails in multiple tabs in Firefox. You can only read one email at a time. It's a pain, but I put up with it.

You can, however, open different emails in tabs if you use the GoogleMail preview on your iGoogle page. That was fine for me.

However, since this week something has changed which is very annoying.

Every time I open an email in Googlemail from my iGoogle page I get this message:

Your Google Mail account has been signed out.

Google Mail automatically signs you out of your account when it detects that you've logged out from another browser window, or when you sign in to another Google Mail account from another browser window. This is done to protect your Google Mail account, and to ensure the privacy of your information.

Is it maybe detecting that I am logged in on my other computer? I have a "Home" tab and a "Work" tab on my iGoogle page so I can use one iGoogle page for home or work. I thought that was the point. Now Google is being all pi$$y.

Can someone explain what is going on? It's very irritating!

CreditExpert Con

2008-10-19T13:33:00.002+01:00

Since getting refused for a few loans I decided to check my credit rating at Credit Expert - which is run by Experian. This is the company that the banks use to judge whether you are worthy of their money.

Turns out my credit rating is only "Fair". Apparently the only thing that counted against me is the fact that I applied for some loans, which seems a little "Catch-22" like.

Anyway, I have since found out that Experian has a little bit of a dodgy business model. You have to submit your credit card details to access your score. That is fair enough as you need to really prove your identity. They then send you a code by post to your credit card address to log-in. Again, fair enough.

You actually don't get to see your credit rating for free - you can only see the information that they hold on you. Still seems fair.

To view your actual credit score, you have to £6.99. Okay, so I paid the money to find my score.

They then want you to stay as a paying user of Credit Expert, so you can regularly check your credit score to avoid fraud etc. Only £5.95 a month. Ummm, no thanks, just checking the once will be fine thanks.

Of course this is the same practice that the likes of Lovefilm use - entice you in, take your credit card details and then "ta-da" you are paying a monthly sub...unless you cancel. Now Lovefilm, if I remember correctly, make it fairly easy so you can cancel online if you want. That is the correct thing to do.

Not Credit Expert - you have to phone them to cancel. Now there is no good technical reason for them to have this obligation - most companies will try to do everything via the web because humans are so damn expensive (they need fed and cleaned regularly).

So the only reason to have this system is to trap chumps who never get around to phoning - chumps like me.

So now I have to try and remember to cancel this damn thing tomorrow (of course they are not open on a Sunday). What are the chances the phone queue will be rather long...

Pins in my knee

2008-10-07T22:19:00.002+01:00

I had my third acupuncture session this weekend. Pic is my leg with the acupuncture needles in it. This time it was a different "doctor". Tellingly, he put the needles in different places from the other guy with none in my knee at all. He stuck one of them in teh top of my foot. You can't see it in the photo, but it didn't feel too nice getting stuck in. As usual I got the "I think my leg is going to start twitching" feeling towards the end, which is a bit scary.

After about 20min he came in and I though he was going to remove the pins, but no - he was just there to "tweak" them! Argh!

Anyway, once he was done I went out, drank some Chinese tea, let the girl tell me I needed another seven sessions, then smiled as I bolted out the door. I might try acupuncture again, but maybe elsewhere.

Acupuncture

2008-09-27T18:56:00.006+01:00

Some people (including an orthopaedic surgeon) have suggested that acupuncture might be quite good to help reduce the swelling in my knee.

I was going to go somewhere that had been recommended to me, but I was feeling very impatient today as I couldn't find a decent knee support in Oxford, so I decided to go in to a Chinese health shop. You know the ones - slightly dodgy looking, often found in shopping centres, with questionable claims on the windows.

The only time I've seen inside them is when the likes of Watchdog have done stories about them conning people in to buying dodgy medicine after looking at their tongue.

First off, just like on Watchdog, I sat down with the "Doctor" and his translator. They then asked loads of questions about my knee, and I did my best to explain without using the words "synovial plica". They did ask how my bowels were - I reckon they ask everyone this - and I said they were fine. And of course I had to stick my tongue out and have my pulse taken.

It was then explained to me that I have three meridians flowing down my leg and that they were blocked which makes the chi monkey fall off my back. Or something like that. I was by that point just wishing they would get on with it and stick the bloomin' needles in my knee.

So they I was taken in to the treatment room and I lay down on the treatment bed with my trousers off. Once again I made a pants-related error, by not then covering myself up with the provided towel...

Then the doc comes in and brings out the needles. I think my eyes must have been as wide as dinner plates when he started sticking them in me. I think there were six in total. He stuck them in a little bit, then kinda tapped them in one movement with his whole hand. When he put the two in my knee, I was honestly crapping myself and I though he was going to go straight in to my patella ligament and I was going to then hit the roof. Actually it wasn't too bad. One of the needles in my calf felt quite uncomfortable - like he had put it in when the muscle was tense and when I tried to relax it felt weird.

So I lay there and looked at the acupuncture chart on the wall. Looking at the chart such as the eye and perineum. :S

After about 20min the needles were removed. The doc then gave me a massage with some menthol oil stuff. Although it felt like he was just randomly rubbing my knee, it did actually feel quite good... that is until he did some kind of slapping thing on my kneecap that I did not like much.

Of course, I knew that they would eventually "recommend" that I buy lots of Chinese medicine and sign up for loads more acupuncture sessions. They wanted me to sign up for 10 sessions for which I would get 3 free. Hmmm... perhaps they could not detect the Scottish accent. They also wanted me to buy the oil and two boxes of medicine stuff. I agreed to sign up for 3 more sessions - I do appreciate that if it is going to have any effect it will not happen in one go - and I bought the oil stuff. They did their best to get me to buy the medicine but I did refuse on that one. I willing to accept that Chinese medicine could have some efficacy in certain conditions, but for a gammy knee I'll stick to Glucosamine and cod liver oil for the time being.

So how does it feel now? Well it actually felt quite good afterwards. It's always a good sign when my right knee bothers me more than my left. However, it's impossible to tell if the improvement is because of the acupuncture or the random rubbing afterwards.

I now stink of menthol, but I go back on Tuesday for more...

Knee: Better then worse

2008-09-24T21:44:00.002+01:00

Two days ago my knee felt great. Really strong and I could almost walk normally.

Then that evening I had to ride the motorbike up to Birmingham to get a new exhaust. I don't think the riding bothered my knee, but when I was up there I had to try and get on my knees to fit the new exhaust. I also kinda jarred it when I was sitting on the bike eating fish n' chips.

So now it is sore again like last week, which is especially annoying as the day before was the first time it had felt strong in ages. I have, however, managed to add about 2cm to the circumference of my thigh so I am managing to rebuild the atrophied muscle. Hopefully that should help!

Fraser - last week my knee was weaker than it was straight after the surgery - I couldn't do the exercises that I could do then. Now, my knee is definitely worse than before the surgery judging by its current state.

Knee progress - getting worse

2008-09-17T22:21:00.003+01:00

I had another physio appointment tonight. My physio is quite amazed about how much muscle I have lost in my thigh. She thinks I may be stuck in a vicious circle where my knee is so swollen it is causing the muscle to atrophy and because my thigh muscle is weak my knee cap is out of position, which causes more knee swelling.

My knee feels so odd. I have no feedback - it feels like it could snap backwards at any time. When I do squats, I can feel the muscle in my right leg tensing, but in my left leg in the same place it just feels like jelly.

So I now have to start from scratch and treat my knee as if I have just had the surgery (it was about 3 months ago now). My main aim is to try and build up the thigh muscle again (inner thigh muscle - can't remember the name). I have to do exercises every hour and try to ice it three times a day.

I was unable to do exercises tonight that I was able to do in my first physio appointment after the surgery - so I am weaker than I was after the surgery.

I have been to the gym a couple of times this week, but I am going to start going every day (if I can get a lift!).

So I did actually broach the question of my physio - "do you think I will walk properly again?" Answer - "I hope so!"

I do feel a bit guilty moaning about this once I have spent a few minutes on KneeGuru and you hear about the terrible knee injuries some people have.

Must work on my positive mental attitude!

Pandora's box of knee problems

2008-09-14T21:23:00.002+01:00

I had some knee surgery a couple of months ago to try and sort some pain I had when I stressed the joint after a long walk or if jogging.

Unfortunately the recovery has not been smooth.

A few weeks ago I went to see my Consultant for my post-operative follow-up consultation. By that point I had had some physiotherapy, had a full range of motion in my knee again, and had done some light walking in South-West England. The knee was still a bit swollen though, and I did still get some twinges in it. Overall it didn't feel too bad, but I also didn't feel like anything had been "sorted".

I had thought the surgeon had found something in my knee in the operation, but in my conversation with him it became apparent that although he had done some stuff in there he hadn't really found anything that made him think, "Ah - there's the problem!"

He suggested I needed to try and stress the knee again to see if it was improved. However, I never got that far.

Almost the next day my knee started to hurt more. I was getting twinges in different parts of the knee and I started to limp again. It got pretty bad, so that it was sore to walk almost anywhere, so I made an appointment with the physio again.

While I was at the physio I mentioned that I had never had my leg length measured or my hips checked. All these things are linked so that should have been checked early on. Well, it would seem that my left (injured) leg is 2cm longer than my right. How have I managed to walk normally for 28 years? Not sure...

So here are the things that are apparently wrong with me. I'll start at the bottom and work my way up. Like the song says - it's all connected!

My feet - well I have a bit of a dodgy gait. That alone can cause a whole manner of knee problems, not to mention problems with the hips and back.

Knees - well first off I've had what I now think was unnecessary surgery, so my knee is still swollen. This means I don't have very good feedback and it feels weak and unstable. Something in there is more inflamed that before so I am getting shooting pains all over the place when I walk and the original problem with the patella ligament is almost certainly still there.

Also, I have a mal-tracking patella, which means my kneecap moves kind of funny, which can stress the knee too. Combined with the bad gait, this means lots of stress on the knees. Although my left knee is the big problem at the moment, before the operation I actually had more consistent pain in my right knee.

Thighs - well nothing permanent, but my left thigh muscle has atrophied quite badly. It's circumference near my knee is about 2-3cm less than the right leg.

Hips - not necessarily related to the knee problems - but I have very tight hips. Where this does cause problems is when I ride the motorbike - I can get some really bad pains in my right hip in particular, and I can't comfortably ride a bike with a wide tank. I'm thinking Moto Guzzi...

So if that makes me sound like an old arthritic 88 year old man, well, that is exactly how I feel. I can barely walk once around my business park at work without getting in pain, and I will tell you it is not just a little scary.

So what am I doing? I am still seeing the physio and I have exercises to try and build up my thigh muscle as well as stretch my hips. I have taping to adjust my patella when I am doing exercise. Next week I will go back to the gym and try to build up my legs.

I am applying ice to my knee once or twice a day and also taking the diclofenac (NSAID) that I was given after the op. I also went to Holland & Barret and bought Glucosamine, Chondroitin and Cod Liver Oil. I am also open to the idea of acupuncture and anything else that might remotely have a chance of helping.

I am trying to get an appointment with the podiatrist and will probably end up getting an orthotic.

It has only been like this for a few weeks, but at the moment it feels like a life time. I should never have had that surgery. I really thought the problem was some specific damage to the tendon, but it is now clear it is all biomechanical. The problem is working out what caused what...

I'm hoping the orthotics will be the biggest benefit. I really do feel like one leg is really long at the moment. Presuming one of my legs hasn't suddenly got longer or one of my hip joints collapsed, I'm not sure how I can have walked like this normally for so long. It's not that an unusual problem - David Beckham has it - Patrick Vieira has one leg 3cm longer than the other. I am not yet walking in circles!

At the moment I am just hoping I will be able to walk properly again. I also wonder if ski-ing will ever happen again. I'm kind of assuming that eventually I will get proper arthritis in that knee.

Meh - this sucks!

Car Finance Vultures

2008-09-08T16:34:00.003+01:00

I was intending on buying a car this weekend. However, I did not take the credit crunch in to account.

Last time I applied for a loan, when I was a student, I went to Cahoot and had the money in my account within a couple of days at around 6.5% if I remember correctly.

Now that I'm earning a decent wage I presumed getting a decent car loan would not be a problem, despite the global economic situation. Admittedly the advertised rates are a little higher - Sainsbury's seemed best at 7.7%.

They refused me! They then referred me to another company which offered a loan at 15%! I then tried my own bank - Alliance & Leicester - who offered me a loan at 18%!!

So then I tried filling in one of those car finance applications online at the Autotrader website. Big mistake.

Since then I have had a non-stop stream of phone calls and text messages to my landline and mobile. These finance companies are like a kettle of vultures, desperate to get me to take a loan. I have just started telling them that I have already bought a car and don't need the money any more. In fact, today I just stopped answering the phone.

I think I'll just buy new waterproofs for my motorbike instead!

Stone Balancing

2008-08-25T17:09:00.001+01:00

Krishna' Butter Ball
Originally uploaded by major_grooves

One of the favourite sights ever when travelling abroad was in India - Krishna's Butterball, - a chuffing huge rock which is seemingly ready to roll down a hill and crush people.

When I was in Dorset the other day I saw a guy doing stone balancing on the beach, and it reminded me of it... but on a slightly smaller scale!

Balancing rocks make nice pictures as you'll see if you look at his website. I would have bought one if I had me own flat to put it up in.

Kevin McCloud

2008-08-17T13:08:00.003+01:00

I must confess I do like those property programmes, or "property pRon" as they are often referred to. I dont, however, really think it is fair to blame Kirstie Allsopp for the country's current economic woes. She is far too yummy (well, that's the sort of thing they say to descibe her) to be responsible for that mess. Blame Gordon Brown (non-yummy).

Anyway, one of the best shows is Grand Designs, because it shows that sort of houses that I aspire to but will never be able to afford. Oh.

However, I'm not a fan of Kevin McCloud. It's not because of the slightly arty/theatrical, patronising tone he uses most of the time, it is because of his name, or more specifically his surname.

McCloud. "Son of Cloud". Yes that's right, Cloud, that famous Norse King who ruled Skye. What's that you say? Some people spell it "McLeod". Maybe the name means "Son of Leod"? Hmmm?

I resent whoever it was that decided it would be a good idea for their family branch of the McLeod tree to change McLeod to McCloud. Must have been Americans. I would have less problem with McLoud!

Britain in "Not Completely Sh*t" Shocker!

2008-08-17T13:03:00.002+01:00

I'm confused. This is Britain. We're meant to be useless at most things, especially in sports.

However, we now stand at 3rd in the Olympic medals table, behind China and USA, whose combined population is 8 million times that of ours. If your powers of deduction aren't that good, that means that, yes, we are beating both Germany AND Australia. Take that Boche and, ummmm, sports-mad exile convicts!

Where the Hell is Matt (2008)

2008-07-08T20:48:00.002+01:00

Well I posted a link to the original video about 2 years ago, so in the spirit of nice internet videos, here is "Where the Hell is Matt (2008)"

He still doesn't seem to have been to Scotland!

New hospital policy

2008-06-27T00:20:00.003+01:00

So as I mentioned in the previous post, my consultant decided I needed surgery on my knee. The procedure is called arthroscopy.

So I got the bus down to the hospital for the surgery. It is minor day surgery, albeit with a general anaesthetic.

I had a private room, and was just relaxing waiting for the nurses to prep me. The nurse came in and gave me the surgical gown and a few other bits and bobs, then left to let me get ready. I put on my surgical gown fine (no - I didn't put it on back to front!) and put on a hairnet and a single TED stocking.

I then lay there watching TV for a while, waiting for the consultant. While I was waiting, the nurse popped in once or twice to see I was ok.

After a short while, my consultant came in with the senior physiotherapist. The consultant kind of gave me an odd look when he came in and said something about "new hospital policy". I wasn't sure what he meant, but then lay there listening as he and the physio described some of the aspects of the surgery and recovery.

Towards the end I asked him if I really needed to wear the hairnet for the operation.

"That's not a hairnet," he replied, "that's your pants!"

OH SH*T!

Yes - I was sitting there in front of my consultant and the senior physiotherapist... with my surgery pants on my head!

So I then burst out laughing, as did the consultant and physio. I was laughing so hard that I strained a muscle in my neck. They had quite impressively managed to be completely serious with me till that point. The consultant had thought someone was playing a joke on him ("new policy"), then when I didn't take them off, figured he would let the physio explain to me once he had left.

As I said to them - I had wondered why it had a hole in the top, but thought it maybe doubled as a beard net too. I didn't notice that it had two holes (for me legs!).

To say I was embarrassed would be a slight understatement.

Even once they left I kept bursting into spontaneous laughter every time I thought of it.

I have since told this story to anyone who will listen, and pretty much everyone is reduced near to tears!

So anyway, I've now had the surgery. The consultant thinks he found the problem and has sorted it. I am now off my feet for a couple of days, and hopefully in a few weeks my knee will be back to 100% normality!

Sailing and surgery

2008-06-27T00:15:00.002+01:00

Ok, It's been a while since my last post.

To summarise the more significant events of the past few weeks:

1) I went to Chicago for a conference and visited Kev. Greg and Cara came down from Toronto and we had a very good time. Conference was pretty good too. I had a speaking slot which went quite well.

2) My consultant decided that I needed surgery on my knee for the problem I've been having.

3) I went to another conference in San Diego last week. That was a very cool conference with around 30,000 people there are around 6,000 exhibitors. What was even cooler was that my company chartered a yacht, which I got to go out sailing on a couple of times.

So that's the last couple of months summarised. See next post for something more... amusing!

PhD Nightmares

2008-04-26T12:20:00.002+01:00

Shredded Paper
Originally uploaded by bartmaguire

I was telling my colleagues at work that I still have dreams/nightmares about my PhD. They are usually quite similar - it turns out I have to do just one more viva then I have my PhD, or I just have to re-write one more chapter to finish, or I just have to do a few more experiments to get done. My supervisor usually features...

They're quite anxious dreams, but I do wake up with quit a sense of relief when I realise I've done it all. Bear in mind I finished the PhD nearly three years ago. It would seem I have trouble recovering from stressful situations. I occasionally have dreams that I agree to do one more shift at Burger King, and that ended over ten years ago!

Well, this weekend W "persuaded" me to clear up some of my papers. I didn't really know what I had in the boxes, but in one of them I found all my old PhD notes. There were methods, and notes from seminars, and thousands of "scores" from when I had been counting yeasties on the microscope. I must have counted tens of thousands of the wee buggers over those four years.

I think the PhD notes might have been giving out some negative energy, so I have cleansed the flat by putting all PhD related notes in the recycling bin.

I figure I should hang on to the thesis though...

India

2008-04-12T19:11:00.002+01:00

I recently spent two weeks in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India for work. I did get the chance to take one day sight-seeing.

I went to see a crocodile park and some ancient temples, but the most impressive sight for me was Krishna's Butter ball. Nice bouldering challenge. V. diff?

I've been trying to find out some info about this huge boulder, but all I kind find is similar tourist photos. I presume it was dropped by a glacier. Or a giant. I was told that the British tried to move it with 14 elephants during the Raj, but failed to budge it. Good. Why would you want to move it? I love it - it looks like it's about to start rolling toward you Indiana Jones-style. Depending on the angle of the photo you can see that it is beautifully balanced. In fact, in some photos you can see that it is in fact chopped in half. I wonder if the other bit is lying around there somewhere too.

See some of my Indian photos on Flickr.

Scotland is quite good at...

2008-04-12T17:56:00.003+01:00

...curling!

Wow - possibly the only sport that we are consistently good at. Not quite up there in terms of Football and Rugby in terms of global impact, but hey, at least it's something.

The Scottish Men's team is through to the final of the World Curling Championships.

Good luck to the boys for today's final!

I've tried curling a couple of times on the winter rink at Lochgoilhead Hotel. Great fun, but I never could get used to the slippy shoe!

Gammy knee

2008-03-22T18:20:00.002Z

As I mentioned at the start of the year my gammy knee has been flaring up.

I decided to take advantage of my work's private healthcare insurance and see if I could get it sorted out.

It's actually slightly more involved to get an MRI scan privately than through the NHS as they insurers want you to be referred by a consultant rather than the GP. From those I've spoken to, the main difference is that getting that first scan appointment is much faster once you go private.

Anyway, I've now had the scan, and the consultant has taken a look and can't see a thing wrong with any of the structures in my knee.

The next step was to try a cortisone injection in my knee to see if that would stop whatever was getting inflamed in my knee.

So on Wednesday I went in to the hospital and got a mixture of anaesthetic and cortisone injected in my knee.

Soon as I got home from the hospital I thought I would go for a run to test my new steroid enhanced knee...

YOU DID WHAT?!

...is what everyone has said to me when I tell them that.

However, the idea is that the anaesthetic acts immediately where it is injected, therefore I needed to go for a run to test whether the injection had been in the correct place. If I felt no pain then the anaesthetic was in the correct place, therefore the steroid would also be in the correct place.

Well, it's fair to say everything expect my knee hurt during the run. Mainly my lungs. I was missing my little W pace-setter!

As the anaetheic wore off in the afternoon I could feel my knee a little bit, but nothing bad (remember last time I went for a run I couldn't walk in the afternoon).

on Thursday, however, I was in a fair bit of pain and was limping about in the office.

This meant one of two things: the steroid probably was in the right place but had made no difference, or this was the initial reaction to the steroid injection (which, I was warned, meant my knee might hurt for 24h).

So now my knee feels fine. I will probably try another run next weekend to test it again. Fingers crossed... then my international rugby career can recommence.

On Monday I go off to India for work for a week. Should be interesting!

(pic above is not my knee!)

Why Scotland are so Rubbish at Rugby

2008-03-16T22:08:00.003Z

It's really tough supporting Scotland at rugby. Really difficult watching them play and thinking, "that is the best our nation can do". The thing that gets me, is that Scotland's backs never look like breaking the line. Whenever Shane Williams or Jason Robinson gets/got the ball, you were always expecting the jinky little gits to magically weave their way through lines of defenders. Instead our backs take the ball at what seems like incredibly slow speeds and kind of bash in to the defenders.

Why do they take the ball so slow? No-one else does? Is it a tactic? I don't get it. If this is our international level, what do they do at club level? Walk?

Sean Lamont seems to be well admired and he does make a fair number of line breaks, but when he gets the ball, you are never expecting him to do some little side-step and dash through to the try-line.

I would give anything for a Scottish Shane Williams in the team. I find it hard to believe that he plays on the opposite wing to Nikki Walker. I know which wing I would be passing to.

Nikki - 11 trys in 45 games for Ospreys. 24%
Shane - 35 trys in 78 games for Ospreys. 45%

Anyhow, I've always reckoned that the main disadvantage that Scotland has is the number of prople playing rugby that it has to choose from. Scotland - 5 million people; England - 45 Million - so they's 9 times more people to choose from. As for Wales and New Zealand having less people than us - well the Welsh are just rugby mad, and the Kiwis have the Maoris.

Ian McGeechan once said that New Zealanders were just Scots who had learnt how to win.

Anyway, with regards to the number of people to choose from, I found an interesting article that suggests it is worse than the simple population stats would suggest. Put simply - not very many people in Scotland play rugby compared to other countries.

I've summarised it below (figures include women and children):

England - 1,000,000 players
France - 212,000
New Zealand - 141,000
Japan - 126,000
Ireland - 100,000
Argentina - 81,000
Zimbabwe - 55,000
Italy - 45,000
Wales - 42,000
Scotland - 24,000
Spain - 17,000
Madagasgar - 17,000
Chile - 16,000

It's worth reading this article, in which it is suggested that on the basis of the above numbers, Scotland actually punches above its weight. I would tend to agree.

So basically the problem is that we are a lazy nation who can't be arsed to play sport. That, or we just don't like rugby that much compared to football. I remember when I briefly played club rugby in Scotland and it was always a struggle to get 15 people together for the game. Half the team couldn't be bothered turning up because they were hungover. Quite sad really.

There are more deep-rooted problems with the SRU, but I won't go in to that now.

Small Town Oxford

2008-03-08T20:33:00.002Z

Another night out in Oxford, another night blighted by an idiot. This time, some guy itching for a fight in Escape. He's just lucky I didn't go Kung-Fu on his ass.

Could be the bad choice of clubs that is the problem.

Man vs Machine...

2008-03-03T19:19:00.003Z

...Man loses.

I love Doritos Chili Heat Wave crisps.

What I hate is when I go to the vending machine at work and the damn thing thinks that the row with the Chili Doritos is empty.

NO MACHINE! I CAN SEE THEM RIGHT THERE! THEY'RE NOT SOLD OUT!

DAMN YOU MACHINE! ARE YOU TAUNTING ME?! I CAN SEE THEM RIGHT THERE IN ALL THEIR MSG SATURATED GLORY. GIVE THEM TO ME! PLEASE LET ME HAVE THEM! Please... oh please...

Alright then, I'll have some normal Cheese and Onion crisps instead. Pah! My night has been ruined.

Stornoway at Jericho Tavern

2008-03-01T14:33:00.005Z

After Greg's recommendations, W and I went to the Jericho Tavern last night to see Stornoway play.

Special credit to Franziskaner for making nice beer.

Anyway, the music... I had briefly listened to theiur MySpace page and thought they were a kind of folksy Belle & Sebastien style band.

Very pleased to see that some of them started the gig wearing masks. In particular, you can't complain when a man wearing a horse head plays the trumpet. Very surreal in a kind of pagan-trippy-hippy kinda way. Like the Wickerman or something. Reminds me of the time I saw a man with a Zebra head walking past my lab door...

Although I was coming to see them I was expecting to see two support bands, but no-one else seemed to play. I wouldn't mind if it was a free gig but when you've paid money you kind of expect artists to turn up. Never mind, it was Stornoway we wanted to hear.

Their two songs of particular note are "The Good Fish Guide" which is worth listening to simply because it is a bit mental. "Here Comes the Blackout" is a fantastic song, surely worthy of a bigger stage. Go to their page just to listen to that song alone (don't forget the fish though). I'd consider buying their E.P. for that song alone.

One thing that I really hated about the gig was when horse head took off his head to reveal that he was in fact human. Unfortunately he started to read poetry. It really was the most pretentious, contrived crap I have ever heard in my life. He obviously thought he was quite good judging by the enthusiasm he put into the performance. I can only assume it was a friendly crowd familiar with this tosh, otherwise I would have expected a few pint glasses to be projected towards him. I hope horse head sticks to the trumpet when they gig outside of Oxford.

So, one song I really love, and I might buy their E.P., but I doubt I would see them play again thanks to horse-head.

Picture credit: Stornoway Fish Smokers - Stornoway's premier supplier of smoked fish, kippers, salmon, and shellfish.

Space Pirates vs Ghostbusters

2008-02-21T23:20:00.003Z

Is this the best remix ever? I've never even seen this "Space Pirates" programme (it's on CBeebies!), but I can't get this mix out of my head. Man.

Credit: the Chris Moyles Show.

Page 6

2008-02-19T22:38:00.004Z

Page 6 are a Dundee band. Andrew has been trying to get me to listen to them for a few years and at first I didn't really like the music.

However, when I was back in Dundee at the weekend I went to see them perform a small gig in Drouthy Neebors and now I'm thinking they're pretty good.

Andrew also has an amusing cameo in one of their videos, which I think is worth a watch/listen as it's a pretty good tune. Have a listen to their MySpace page and let me know what you think (Jo - this means you!). They've got a few songs that I think wouldn't be out of place in the Top 40 (not that that is necessarily a good thing these days).

In case you wonder which one Andrew is he is the tall, dodgy dancing guy in a suit. Ha ha!

Hopefully they can make it big and replace "The View" as Dundee's musical envoys.

Check out this video: Dancing Boy

Add to My Profile | More Videos

Anyway, I just bought their album through their MySpace page. I'm sure it's this post on my blog that will be their big break. I will accept royalties...

Gilbert O' Sullivan

2008-02-16T18:59:00.001Z

Gilbert O' Sullivan
Originally uploaded by major_grooves

As promised, Andy and I did some Sleeveface photos. Have a look here to see all our photos.

Check out the whole Sleeveface group on Flickr.

What sandwich have you got?

2008-02-15T11:17:00.003Z

Cheese baguette of course!

Annoyingly, whoever put this on YouTube managed to miss the first couple of seconds. Allow me to fill the gap - one of the builders asks "what sandwich have you got today?" and they all answer thus:

A legendary clip me thinks. It opened up a whole new world of Chemin' the Fat to an international audience (some more enthusiastic than others!).

I'm about to ride the bike up to Birmingham Airport to catch a flight to the Mothership. Still not sure what I'm going to do with the bike helmet. Hope the ride's not too cold.

Current Account Interest

2008-02-13T23:14:00.003Z

They say you're more likely to get divorced than change your bank account. I've been with Natwest since I was 17. That £50 they gave me to join when I was starting Uni basically paid for 7 days drinking in freshers week. Inflation hasn't been kind to that offer since I joined in 1997 and last I saw they were offering about £25 to join the student account. Shows I didn't study economics as that looks like the value has gone down, not up.

Anyway, I think I get an almighty 0.1% interest on any balance in my account. I checked out a price comparison site and found Alliance & Leicester were offering 8.5% (until April 2008) on current accounts. Anything is better than 0.1%. I don't quite understand how Natwest can have any customers when other banks will throw money at you to join.

Anyway, if anyone else fancies joining A&L, they will give us £50 to share as introduction fee. Just let me know and I'll give you the form to complete! :D

Sleeveface

2008-02-13T22:09:00.001Z

I'll have to go through Dad's record collection when I go home this weekend.

Sleeveface.

Cloverfield vomit fest

2008-02-10T23:37:00.000Z

We went to see Cloverfield at the cinema tonight. It was a great movie - has to be experienced on the big screen!

What wasn't cool was that someone actually threw up in the cinema while we were watching it. There were signs on the way in to the cinema warning that some viewers may experience motion sickness, because all of the movie is filmed on a hand-held camera.

Yes, towards the end of the movie, the putrid smell of vomit overwhelmed us. I had visions of a "Theme Park" (remember that game?) style vomit chain reaction. Luckily W went and got someone who walked through the cinema spraying deodoriser, which masked the smell till the end. Kind of like flying Ryanair in a really wide plane, with in-flight entertainment.

Starbacks is here!

2008-01-30T22:10:00.000Z

Oh yippee.

Things in Summertown are hotting up. We lost our post office to a Costa Coffee in the past year. Many would argue that you don't need a post office. Why have a local post office that you can conveniently use, when, for greater expense and inconvenience, you can make a trip in to the main post office in the centre of town? What I especially like about the city centre post office is the queues. Somehow the transaction once you reach the counter seems so much sweeter if you have spent 15min in a queue beforehand. Only a few months ago I had to tell some odd looking bloke that he really shouldn't be smoking in the queue in the post office. He was most apologetic and didn't stab me or anything!

I'm really glad the government privatised the Royal Mail. The government is cleverer than us plebs and realised quite early on that people actually hate having local amenities, particularly if they help support a community.

Anyway, the reason I started this post was to mention that, like a slowly spreading cancer, Starbucks is moving in to Summertown on the other side of the street from Costa. Hoorah! The shop they are taking over was a sanctuary for abandoned cute kittens. Or something like that.

So we are now another carbon copy suburb with two major chain coffee houses opposite each other. It's kind of sickening really, but, hey, that's life!

Fighty Oxford

2008-01-27T10:19:00.000Z

I'm not sure what it is about Oxford, but I have probably seen more hassle out when drinking here than I ever seen in Dundee or London.

From sectarian nob-heads and breaking up attacks on foreigners, to my amniosity-attracting Mexican amigo there always seems to be something going on.

Sometimes I wish I had little brother's fighty skills. Last night it would have been handy as I would have smashed some arrogant git's face at The Turf. Some coward threw a pint over the barman for asking everyone to leave the pub at closing time. Not really the sort of thing you expect at the Turf. As he slinked off, twat-face bully-boy started berating the barman when he mistakenly accused him of throwing the pint. Alright it wasn't him but it was his pathetic mate. Classic bully, saying "Everyone's laughing at you for this". They weren't - everyone was looking at him thinking "what a twat", and if they were like me they were probably thinking "I'd love to smash your arrogant face in."

Of course violence solves nothing, so I proved my superiority by letting him go unscathed. That will teach him!

Official - Dundee is pure dead clever

2008-01-16T18:09:00.001Z

According to the Intelligent Community Forum (based in New York), Dundee is one of the most intelligent cities in the world.

Dundee-born professor of international politics at Heid the Ba' University, Elsbeth Broon, made the following statement:

"Eh always k'ent eh was mair cleverer than thon gadgies fae Glasgae"

Not Running Man

2008-01-13T13:38:00.000Z

One of my New Year's resolutions was to get some decent running shoes and go running with Wendy. My aerobic fitness has always been rubbish, and I though that maybe if I tried running I might be able to get back in to rugby eventually.

So yesterday we went to a running shop in Oxford and I bought a pair of Mizuno running shoes for £75. This morning Wendy and I went running for about 45min.

Now I can barely walk. My knees, in particular my left one, are killing me. I've always had dodgy knees (since a fall at Kev's - kitchen/water pistol combination) and then I hit my left knee pretty hard when I fell in Spain whilst climbing.

So apparently I can go back to the shop and get a free consultation from the physio there. I reckon I have two choices - no more running ever again, or some kind of surgery. The sort of surgery where the NHS will try to fob you off with "rest" and painkillers for a few months first. Meh.

3D Wii games

2008-01-12T19:20:00.000Z

A bit nerdy, but still very cool. This PhD student has made a 3D system using the Wii. Games would be so cool with this. More proof that Wii rules!

Can you deep fry it?

2008-01-05T22:02:00.000Z

I never seen, let alone eaten, a deep-fried battered Mars bar. However, I am quite a fan of deep fried pizzas. I thought I would post up a photo of this delicacy for those of you who may be curious. Bought from the Fish n' Chip shop in Monifieth.

On a different culinary level, we went to the But n' Ben in Auchmithie. Never been there before - great place! I had the Arbroath Smokie Pancake, which was delicious. Highly recommended.

Charlie bit me!

2008-01-03T20:00:00.000Z

We keep watching this video again and again:

and if you like that one, then watch this one too:

Anyone got a spare £500,000?

2008-01-01T22:47:00.000Z

Just over 7 years ago, I was suffering from a monster hangover. It was the day after my 21st birthday and towards the end of the previous night I had engaged in some discussions with the porcelain gods.

What better way to get over the lingering feelings of nausea than going on a drive along some winding Fife roads. The point of this journey was to pick up my 21st birthday present - my kilt outfit.

Accompanied by my then-girlfriend, Donna, Mum drove us over the Tay Road Bridge and through Fife to Caledonia Highland Dress in Abernethy (as an aside I looked for their website so I could link to it - they don't have one, so this will have to do, but I did find an amusing kilt-related story which quotes the owner).

On the way to the kilt shop, Mum had to pull over a few times so that I could, umm, admire the views.

At one of the stops I saw the building in the picture above.

At the time I remember thinking that it was a fantastic looking old building and would be a great project to restore and turn into a big house.

Over the following seven years I always meant to try and find it again to take a proper look - if it was still there.

So last week, Dad, Fraser and I took another journey over to Fife. I couldn't remember exactly which route we had taken. I could only remember that it was about 50m from the road and that it was a building surrounding a kind of courtyard. It was amazing when we finally found it - we were starting to think we would not find it - perhaps it had already been knocked down.

Was was more interesting was that there was a for sale sign up outside it. It seems it has recently been put on the market. We guessed that it might be for sale for between £100,000 - £180,000, but in fact it is up for a cool £275,000. It does have planning permission to convert it into three residences and it also has a fair plot of land, but even still it seems a tad expensive for what it is.

At a rough guess (based mainly on watching Grand Designs and the like!) we reckon it might need around £250,000 spent on it to turn it into three decent residences, bringing the spend to £525,000. So to get a decent return you'd probably want to sell each residence for about £250,000 to get £750,000 in total and make a decent £225,000 profit (30%) with some room for overspend.

Things is I don't think you'd get £250,000 for the properties. I do, however, think the current property is overvalued. Maybe I can get it for £150,000. Perhaps it needs more properties to be build on the land includes in the plot. That would lower the value of the original building conversion and there is no planning permission to do that. Plus it would be rubbish in that stereotypical "greedy property developers who cram as many rubbish modern building into small plots of land thus ruining nice existing buildings" way.

I've checked my finances and I have £250 to invest. So I am looking for a co-investee to invest £524,750. The co-investee gets all their investment back, but profits are split with me 50:50, coz it's my idea. It's an unusual investment proposal, but I think it can work.

Anyway, the reason I posted all this is just that I think it is cool that I have been thinking about this place for seven years, with only a vague memory of it, and now we found it. I hope somebody does buy it and do a good job in restoring it. I would love to go back in a few years and see three nice homes there.

Have a look at the rest of the photos:

www.flickr.com

Happy New Year!

2008-01-01T17:37:00.000Z

Well, a very Happy New Year to those of you who ever read my ramblings here!

I had a great night last night in Carnoustie at Cara's parent's. Was great to see Greg and Cara and a whole bunch of other faces that I hadn't seen for a while.

About now I should be thinking about what New Years resolutions I should attempt to stick to. Of course I can't mention them here, otherwise I would be admitting to vices that I probably shouldn't have in the first place. I will stop doing wheelies on the way to work...hmmm...

DragonForce Rock!

2007-12-31T16:07:00.001Z

Awesome. That is the only word that can describe the force that is DragonForce.

Until very recently, my only experience of DragonForce was listening to some crazy double bass drumming that leaked from Joe's headphones. A couple of casual attempts to listen to DragonForce did not make me want to listen any further.

Little did I know, that is because DragonForce cannot be listened to casually. Oh no, you have to become immersed baby! You need to become one with the DragonForce. You need to feel their awesome-ness coursing through your veins!

My recent introduction to DragonForce has come through the highly cool game of Guitar Hero III, which Fraser got for Christmas. More on that in a second.

First, so that you too can feel the awesome-ness of DragonForce, have a look at this video:

Next, to also hear how awesome DragonForce is, plus see how difficult Guitar Hero can be, see this video:

It could be argued that if you spent less time playing computer games and more time playing real musical instruments, you would be able to play the song on a real guitar.

Dumbledore!

2007-12-30T20:57:00.000Z

This video is guaranteed to have you singing at least one of the Harry Potter character's names!

Nokia N95 accelerometer applications

2007-12-02T13:20:00.000Z

In the past week my Nokia N95 has gone from lingering disappointment, to actually meeting expectations. Main reason is the aforementioned firmware upgrade. GPS locks in less than 30s baby!

Now I've started playing with the accelerometer. The only Nokia use for this so far is the stabiliser on the video camera. However, lots of other people have started writing software for it.

So now I have RotateMe, which allows my phone to act similar to an iPhone and automatically rotate the screen (I had to play around with self-signing a certificate to get this to work - not exactly straightforward but the instructions are okay).

Then I got the lightsabre. Completely pointless but kinda cool:

And from Nokia themselves we have the ball game, which really just demonstrates the accelerometer in action:

I expect that when the N-Gage is released in December there will be lots of Wii-style games released.