Dave's Blog

I recently picked up a British Cookbook from Past Times, more for the Pease Pudding recipe, but I was thumbing through it last night and found myself inspired to make an old classic that my Nan used to feed us; Toad in the Hole.

I’ve never actually made this before but it didn’t come out too bad, although the Yorkshire pudding was a bit stodgy in the middle, personally I like that, but I wonder if I should have cooked it longer.

Either way, this is a nice cheapo meal that tastes good, so it was very friendly on the budget.

I also served it with Colcannon, which is basically mash with spring onions and a bit of cabbage (traditionally Kale), peas and gravy.

I had some batter left over so I used it to make us pancakes for desert, in spite of the fact that the batter had both salt and pepper, they came out great smothered in lime juice and sugar.

This post was brought to you by the symbol π and the sound ‘nom’.

Almost a year ago, I started getting back into badminton in a big way. Almost since the beginning, I’ve been getting pain in my knees. At first I shrugged it off as being unfit and overweight, I started wearing a knee support to help the pain, which it did but lately it’s been getting worse even though my fitness has come along leaps and bounds.

Normally, I don’t advocate trying to self diagnose through the internet, you’ll end up convincing yourself that you have some rare disease with 3 weeks to live or something equally unhelpful. But in this case, because the pain is so specific and directly associated with Badminton, I think I’m on fairly safe ground:

I think this sounds like Patellar Tendonitis, AKA “Jumper’s Knee”, the pain is just below my knee cap and I really feel it most when I’m limping up and down stairs.

I brought this up with some of the players at my club and received a number of different suggestions, all of which I’m going to try to follow, working on the principle that a problem is best tackled from many directions at once. Of course this is no good as an empirical study, but I get the impression that I don’t have much time to waste.

About Me
At present I play about 5 hours badminton a week, 2 hours on Tue, 1 hour on Thur and 2 hours on Fri. Additionally, I’m not a light person, I weighed myself this weekend and I come in at 21st 13lb, which funnily enough is exactly how much I weighed in January before I started all of this Badminton malarky.

Knee Support

As I said, I’ve been using a knee support during badminton for the past 10 months, so this alone isn’t ‘fixing’ the problem, although I cannot dispute that it helps. Those rare occasions where I forget the support and play anyway, leave me with a lot more pain the next day.

I’ve been using a Fortuna Neoprene Knee Support (with Open Patella). I’ve also tried both a Boots own version without the open patella (hole in front of the kneecap) and a velcro adjustable one, I went back to the Fortuna as I felt it helped the most. The reasoning behind the open patella is that it takes the pressure off of the kneecap whilst holding it in place and providing tendon support.

I’ve also just bought a Patella strap designed specifically for this problem, I haven’t had a chance to use it yet but I’ve tried it on to walk up and down stairs, which is when I really feel a lot of pain and it seems to make a difference. How much difference it’ll make during and after play, remains to be seen.

Epsom Salts
My coach suggested soaking in a bath with Epsom Salts. Ironically, living in Epsom, I had a really hard time finding any, so instead settled for ‘Dead Sea Salts’ which seem to be pretty much the same thing but three times the expense and ostensibly from the Dead Sea! I’ve used about half of the box now, soaking in a bath for half an hour after badminton, but I can’t discern any difference to my knees.

However, I no longer have dry skin on my elbows! Comparing the results versus the expense, this was a clear bust. I’m going to stick with Radox. I think the heat from the bath helps more than what happens to be in it.

Better Trainers

This should have been a no-brainer, however it still took me until September to splash out on some decent badminton specific trainers, having worn the treads off of the soles of the previous cheap pair I’d picked up from TK Max.

I opted for the Yonex SHB 102MX Men’s Badminton Shoes, which I picked up through Amazon for the kingly sum of £85, but don’t let this put you off, the difference was instant and well worth every penny. The extra cushioning on the sole has also made a big difference and I no longer find lunges and jumps as painful as with other trainers.

There have been other benefits to the trainer upgrade; I used to occasionally turn my ankle when changing direction quickly, never anything serious but painful enough to put me on the floor for a second or two, but the increased lateral support of these trainers have really helped and I haven’t had this problem since.

Gel Heel Cushions

The next logical step (haha!) from trainers was to try a pair of heel cushions. There’s not much to say about these, as we’re all well aware of what they do and how they do it:

Gel Max anti-fatigue heel cushions provide all day comfort for your feet, no matter what level of activity they are put through. The advanced gel and Poron design cushions every step and helps relieve heel, knee and lower back pain associated with foot impact and heel strike.

Use to help:

• reduce general heel pain
• cushion heel spurs
• absorb shock to heel, knee and lower back
• help treat bursitis, achilles tendonitis and plantar fasciitis

Again I was surprised that I hadn’t immediately thought of using inserts as part of the solution. I’ve been using these for a week and I’m already happy that they’re helping cushion impacts and reduce the stress on my knees.

I bought these GelMax Heel Cushions from Lloyd’s Pharmacy for £9 and I’m already tempted to get another pair.

Cod Liver Oil Tables
I remember my Nan taking these every day as part of her arthritis care, so I thought I’d give it a go too. I’m not quite man enough to drink a teaspoon of this vile ichor, so I’ve opted for the tablet based solution from Boots. Difficult to tell if they are making a difference really, but the effects are supposedly more widespread than joints from increased brain power, reduced risk of heart disease blah blah blah.

Whatever the reasoning, it’s good enough for my Nan so it’s good enough for me.

Glucosamine & Chondroitin Tablets

This is the big one, people at the club couldn’t quite remember the name of the tablets they were taking, aside from ‘gluco-somethingoranother’, but they came highly recommended as having made a huge difference. A couple of days and a long chat with a Pharmacist later, I was in possession of these tablets. They weren’t exactly cheap at £15 pounds for 20 days supply but I’m willing to give anything a go at this point:

Glucosamine is a naturally occurring substance known to play a role in the health and resiliency of joints. It helps maintain joint mobility and flexibility in conjunction with a healthy diet and lifestyle.

Chondroitin is a compound found in connective tissue that helps attract fluid into joint cartilage.

I’ve been taking 3 a day now for four days now so it’s too early to make any comments about about them. I’m quite put off by the fact that the text on the box is replete with qualifying language like ‘could’ and ‘may’, but the recommendation of others goes a long way with me so I’ll certainly give it a go.

Lose Weight
It always comes down to this, losing weight will reduce the load on my knees. However that’s easier said than done, but I thought I’d mention it as one of the things I’m going to try, although I’ve said this before.

Assessing the results
So those are the steps I’m trying to sort my knees out, I’m going to apply all of the above, with the exception of the Epsom Salts, and see whether my knees improve or not. I’ll report back in at the end of November as to whether any of this has made much of a difference.

I just saw this on BBC Click: “Vizualize.me launched this week with a service that visualises your CV by taking the information you have put into LinkedIN and turning it into a sharable infographic.”

It was quick and easy to do and the results are quite nice, I’m not entirely sure how much use I’ll get out of it as I don’t see myself sending it to a potential employer but it did remind me to update my LinkedIn profile properly at least!

As it looks like this badminton thing is not just a phase, I thought I’d best start a proper category and talk about it more. I was recently reviewing a friend’s blog and she structures things very strictly, making certain posts on certain days, I quite like the idea of this but at the same time I know that I’ll not stick to it with the same rigidity. I’m going to give it a go anyway and start trying to blog more regularly about badminton and what I’m doing and learning, all of this will be filed under the Badminton category.

I’m going to try to make a badminton post on a weekly basis on Wednesdays and see how things go from there.

I was recently working on a bug found in our software options dialogue, well more of a suggestion really, which involved an interesting fix that I thought I’d share: The problem was that I’d used a Tree View control to display a list of options that the user could check/uncheck, I’d sorted them into sections using Parent and Child nodes and enabled the .CheckBoxes = True This was great and did the job, but I didn’t want the check boxes on the parent nodes, just on the child nodes.

The solution was to use the owner draw functionality exposed by the control to customize the drawing of the root tree nodes and prevent the check boxes from drawing, I’ve also set .ShowLines = False as they didn’t look very good without the checkboxes:

In order to do this you need to set the .DrawMode property to either .OwnerDrawAll or .OwnerDrawText then handle the DrawNode() event of the control, here’s the code I wrote to handle the DrawNode event:

    Private Sub tvwAvailableFilters_DrawNode(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As System.Windows.Forms.DrawTreeNodeEventArgs) _
        Handles tvwAvailableFilters.DrawNode

        'Hide the check box for top level nodes by overrding the draw event and drawing manually
        If e.Node.Level = 0 Then
            'Create a brush and fill the node area
            Using newBrush As New SolidBrush(Me.tvwAvailableFilters.BackColor)
                e.Graphics.FillRectangle(newBrush, e.Node.Bounds)
            End Using

            'Override Control font to Bold and Underline headings
            With e.Node.TreeView.Font
                Dim newFont As New Font(.FontFamily, .Size, FontStyle.Bold + FontStyle.Underline, .Unit)

                'Now draw the text manually
                TextRenderer.DrawText(e.Graphics, e.Node.Text, newFont, _
                                      e.Node.Bounds, Color.Black, Color.White)
            End With

            'Tell the system not to draw the object, we've just done it
            e.DrawDefault = False
        Else
            'System should draw the object
            e.DrawDefault = True
        End If
    End Sub

The No Strings Badminton session tonight at Rainbow Leisure Centre was a complete farce. I don’t know if there’s some big publicity drive on at the moment, but since last week there’s been a lot more people coming, which ordinarily would be a good thing but tonight was so over subscribed that I left after an hour having played only 3 matches. The rest of the time was spent waiting around for courts to become available.

What really made things worse was that the guy organizing the session was pairing people up with massively different abilities, that was when he was there at all. My first game was with two people who had never really played before, which didn’t exactly work up a sweat. Speaking of the organizor, he disappeared for the last 20 mins that I was there, all the while more people were turning up wondering what was going on. There was no queuing system or pegging and people people trying to organize themselves into queues it quickly resulted in dissent.

All this is from an organization that boasts a lot more than it’s actually been delivering. Colour me distinctly unimpressed. I’m going to go again next week but I really hope they get there act together. If they don’t, I think I’ll complain as I was really enjoying playing on Friday night in addition to Monday at Ebbisham.

Quite annoyed.

Ok, so I’ve received a few nudges from people who want me to follow up on my post about the Trek FX+.

Since I bought the bike back on May 12th, I’ve clocked up 685 and I’m still impressed with the bike and glad that I bought it, however it’s not been plain sailing. I’ve been dogged by maintenance issues and faulty parts constantly, in fact I feel like I’m only just getting to the point where I’ve ironed out all of the issues.

I’ve been using the bike for my commute into the office which is around 9.1 miles, and I generally take 45mins on average. The route I take is all on road cycling with heavy traffic, passing through Sutton then Croydon. I don’t go into the office every day as I have the luxury of being able to work from home twice a week, so in theory I should be clocking up around 50 miles a week. Obviously it hasn’t worked out like that, but either way, I’ve given the bike some serious road usage since I bought it. In fact, it’s fair to say that I’ve really enjoyed cycling in and prefer it over public transport whenever possible.

I’m going to list some of the main features of the bike and my comments on them before getting down to the maintenance issues I’ve had :

Motor
This is what we’re here for right? I have very little to say about the motor, which in itself speaks volumes. The motor is perfectly quiet at all times, I’ve never heard so much as a peep out of it, yet it’s always there adding a noticeable push to every revolution and on the steepest hills, I can turn the assist up to level 4 and sail up the steepest hills at around 13-15mph.

I’m comfortably averaging around 14-15mph for my commute, which means I can get to the office quicker than the train without the attendant disruption and effort of walking out of my way to go to the nearest station. The motor cuts out at 16mph and gradually reduces its level of assistance as you near the cut off so there’s no jolt from one mode to another, it’s all very smooth indeed.

Whilst this might sound a bit miserly, I find it to be more than enough, the motor lets me quickly build up speed as I have to stop constantly due to traffic and traffic lights, wasting all of the momentum I’ve built up. I’ve seen on the internet that you can put the firmware into ‘Sport Mode’ which will increase the cut out level but whilst I’ve thought about doing it, I don’t really need to so I haven’t tried this out yet.

There is a ‘Generate Mode’, which can be turned on manually, but frankly this is a bit of a gimmick, I don’t go down any hill long enough to make it worth adjusting the settings and I couldn’t honestly say how much power is added back into the battery, it’s certainly not noticeable on the battery charge status. However it does go into generate mode when you pull the rear break, this is much more useful as it’s automatic, but again I can’t really see much measurable difference, but I’m sure every little helps.

Battery Pack
At 2.5kg the weight of the battery pack is noticeable on the bike, in fact, I’d say that with the battery and the motor, the bike is very heavy and I’d have trouble cycling comfortably without any form of assistance so I generally cycle around at assistance level 2 (of 4) and push it up to 3 for hills. This seems to use around 85% of the battery for my journey to and from the office.

This is all important because the charging pack for the battery is a beast, it is heavy and bulky and puts me in mind of 1990s laptop charger units, this means that whilst it’s possible to carry the charger with you, you really wouldn’t want to, given the choice. The charging process is quick though and in spite of the lengthy list of dos and donts in the documentation, it’s easy to use and charges up in 3-4 hours or less.

The paperwork suggest that the battery is only under warranty for 600 charges, I’ve probably done around 60 charges in total and I’ve not noticed any particular reduction in the battery’s capacity nor have I ever been left without charge, which to my mind is the most important thing.

If I’ve had any niggle other than the weight, I’ve noticed that the battery pack tends to rattle around quite a bit when I’m going over poor road surfaces (namely, most of Surrey!), I’m sure it didn’t do this at first but it certainly does so now, I try to keep my bike running silently and it annoys me when there’s a rattle or squeak. I can solve this myself with some rubber and super-glue but I haven’t gotten around to it yet.

Classic Controller
This is the little computer that sits on the handle bar, it doubles as bike computer and the control mechanism through which you adjust the level of assistance.

As a bike computer it logs Odometer/Trip counter/ Clock/Chronometer/ Average speed, which is all fine, however there doesn’t seem to be a group reset button, if I want to reset trip counter and chronometer I have to reset them separately, I’d be much happier if there was one button that reset all of the counters at once like other CatEye Computers I’ve used but this isn’t the end of the world.

The buttons are easy to use, even through waterproof gloves and the bike is very responsive when making changes. A couple of times, I’ve accidentally turned the bike off, whilst trying to turn the lights on (Hold power button for 3 seconds), which is not great when you’re on the road. It’s a shame they didn’t add another button to switch the lights on and off, but this is only really a minor niggle.

Once during heavy rain the battery indicator showed as empty throughout the whole commute, which was a bit worrying but the motor was working throughout and the lights were on, so I’m assuming that was some kind of short or connection issue, it’s never happened again and generally the battery indication is very accurate.

Puncture proof Tyres
The tyres on this bike are Bontrager Race All Weather Hard-Case, 700x32c, which have been excellent. The route I take is covered with glass and bits of debris from car accidents (nice eh?) and not once have I had a puncture, which is all I really care about, these days I don’t take a puncture repair kit with me and I’ve never looked back.

Maintenance
As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve had an uphill struggle with the maintenance of this bike, before I go any further I want to say a huge Thank You to Dave and the team at Fudges Cycles in Epsom, who have bent over backwards to resolve any faults I’ve had. I’d happily recommend them if you’re in the area, their details are below:

Fudges Cycle Store
21-23 Upper High Street
Epsom, Surrey KT17 4QY
01372 744 116
Train: Epsom Rail Station
Open Mon-Thu,Sat 9am-6pm; Fri 9am-5pm;

So here’s a summary of the maintenance issues I’ve had since May, i.e. in the 3 months since I’ve owned the bike:

• 1 x Saddle Replaced
• 2 x Pedals Replaced
• 1 x Lights Rewired
• 2 x Brake Block Replaced
• 5 x Spokes Broken

Maintenance Log

09th May 2011 – Test Ride & Purchased

10th May 2011 – Picked Up

14th May 2011 – Taken back to Fudges, next day pickup. Lights not working, problem with wiring fixed, also had kickstand removed, noticed a slight grinding noise on journey home. No charge.

19th May – Constant grinding noise around 15-17mph and on application of rear brake

20th May – Taken back to Fudges, same day pickup. Grinding was due to a faulty brake block, the metal backing was twisted and rubbing against the wheel rim. Block replaced. No charge.

24th May – 100 miles

14th June – 200 miles

24th June – 300 miles

27th June – Taken back to Fudges, next day pickup. Broke the saddle and a spoke on the rear wheel snapped off. Saddle was replaced for free with a generic one, spoke was replaced at the cost of £1 for the spoke and £15 for the servicing. Fudges suggested that I avoid pot holes and bumping up and down the kerb to prevent spoke damage.

07th July – 400 miles

14th July – Taken back to Fudges, next day pickup. Snapped a spoke and buckled the rear wheel. Spoke was replaced at the cost fo £1 for the spoke and £15 for straightening the wheel up.

05th August – 500 miles

06th August – Taken back to Fudges, same day pickup. Broken spoke on the rear wheel, spoke was replaced for free and £15 for the servicing. Fudges suggested using a backpack rather than a pannier to try and keep the weight off of the back wheel.

14th August – Taken back to Fudges, same day pickup. Broken spoke on the rear wheel, spoke was replaced at the cost for £1 for the spoke and £15 for the servicing. Fudges suggest that if it happens again, to replace the rear tyre with a wider one to help absorb the impact.

16th August – 600 miles

17th August – Taken back to Fudges, 2 week pickup. Broken spoke on the real wheel. At this point nothing I can do other than lose 2-3 stone overnight can be recommended. After seeing people complain on the internet I’ve asked them to go back to Trek with the issue and see what Trek has to say, I’m starting to lose my patience.

30th August – Picked up from Fudges. Trek sent a completely new set of heavier gauge spokes, the rear wheel was rebuilt using the new spokes with longer reinforced nipples for strength. Also a wider puncture proof tyre (Specialized Infinity Armadillo Tyre 700 x 38) was added to the rear wheel to help cushion impacts. Cost £25 for the new rear wheel, no service or other parts charged.

31st August – Taken back to Fudges, same day pickup. A constant ‘pinging’ noise on wheel revolutions didn’t sound quite right. New nipples were too long for the custom spokes provided by trek, reinforced nipples replaced with shorter ones and the wheel was rebuilt. No charge.

09th September – Taken to Evans Cycles Croydon, same day pickup. Pedals replaced with DMR V8 pedals in Black. Cost £28. I used Evans as they are nearby work and the constant grinding and squeaking from the pedals had gotten to the point where I was embarrassed to cycle down the street with such a cacophonous accompaniment.

Conclusion
All in all, the 2010 Trek FX+ has been a brilliant purchase, it’s enabled me to forgo public transport and get back to a more active lifestyle. The commute is now doable, to the point where I don’t really think about ‘having to cycling in’, I just do it and enjoy it. The only times I really grumble is during heavy rain but buying the right clothing has made that less of an issue.

However, whilst the electric components themselves are all I could hope for, some of the other components are not of a high standard in my view, having spent £1,500 this is a little disappointing. You can see that most of the money has gone into the electric components rather than the other aspects of the bike. Pedals, V-brakes, saddle and lights are all from the lower end of the market and it’s a glaring contrast.

These components, combined with the constant issues I’ve had with the spokes of the rear wheel have made this bike a real labour of love, in the last month I’ve ridden the bike a lot less simply because of the time it’s spent in the shop. With the new heavier gauge spokes and the newer components, I finally feel like the bike is now ‘sorted’ and at the point where I can rely on it for my commute to the office. Of course I’ll be happier when I’ve added another 500 miles without breaking any more spokes!

In spite of everything, I’m still a big fan of this bike and I’ll happily recommend it to people who want to get into cycling but aren’t quite fit enough to get away with it yet, but do be aware of the potential maintenance issues, especially if you’re a heavy bloke like myself.

Living in Epsom and working in Croydon means I rarely go into town these days, last night was the exception. Met up with friends in Bar 55 in Camden for Cocktails happy hour and had an absolute blast, at £7.50 for a cocktail it was pretty pricey but happy hour from 6-8 saw two for one which brought the prices down to reasonable levels.

I had to bail early as ever for the long slog back home. I took a few snaps which are up on the gallery, don’t worry, I removed the ones of Scott’s penis, mercifully blurry though they were!

This morning was my first journey to work on my new bike, a Trek 2010 FX+, electric assist, and I’ve got to say, I think it was worth every penny.

I live in Epsom and work in Croydon, which is about 10miles. I’ve tried cycling this once before and it was a complete disaster, between hills, traffic and traffic lights, I managed to stumble into the office after 1 hour 10 minutes, barely able to stand and even less able to sit comfortably! That evening, I tucked my tail between my legs and got the train home. Not quite my finest hour.

My biggest problem is weight, at ~22 stone, I just can’t throw myself up hills the same as someone half my size and a lot of the time, I’m just happy to have made it to the top without having to push uphill. So whilst the gym warriors amongst you are sitting there thinking “I do 6 miles in the gym every evening and it’s easy.”, consider that you might not do so well in a more practical environment, simulated hills or not!

It looked like my goal of commuting to work by bike was over, and in fact it has been for the past year until last week at work when discussing what we were going to do with our annual bonus, a colleague suggested an electric bike. Until this point, electric bikes hadn’t even been on my radar, and like most people my first thought was that riding something like a bicycle with a lawnmower engine strapped onto it was not only defeating the point, but probably quite dangerous.

At work we have a guy who cycles around all of the offices with a trailer on the back of his bike selling sandwiches, this isn’t a small trailer by any means, and it becomes even more impressive when he said that the shop was based in Richmond, quite some distance away. It turns out that his is an electric bike, which is the only reason why he can manage the journey and the weight. Also his bike didn’t look too bad either, aesthetics*are* important after all.

So I started seriously considering an Electric bike as an option. Turns out that my preconceptions of electric bikes were way off of the mark, firstly you don’t just switch them on then drive to your destination. Everything seems to be ‘Pedal assist’ or ‘Electric assist’, essentially you pedal and the motor adds to the energy you put in, if you don’t pedal, you don’t go anywhere. People have described the technology as ‘flattening’ the route, which sounded like exactly what I needed.

A few days, a lot of Googling and a mountain of text later, I had bought a Trek 2010 FX+ from the Epsom branch of Fudges, for the sum of £1,500. They had asked for £1,700 but when I pointed out that their website was £200 cheaper, they lowered the price. All told they were brilliant though and it seemed more a genuine miscommunication on pricing than an attempt to rip anyone off. Thus had I spent my bonus, some savings and some money on a credit card which I’d been heretofore paying off!

So this morning, I cycled into the office on the Trek and I was blown away by how much of a difference it made, I cycled 10.1 miles, in 41:09 minutes averaging at 13.5 miles per hour, in the process I used up just under half of the battery and whilst my legs felt tired, I wasn’t on the point of collapse.

I’ll make a proper review of the bike after a couple more rides, but I’m planning on using it for the commute every day.

I’m selling my Kona Dawg on eBay if anyone might be interested, feel free to pass it on. Price is nominally £550 but I’m happy to accept a lower offer from friends or relations. It’s served me well but in all honesty, I’ve not ridden it enough and I could do with the extra cash to pay for the new bike.

Size
Frame size M(17″)
Colour Platinum/Black
Frame tubing Kona Clump Light 7005 Butted Aluminium/5″ travel

Component List
Note that those parts which have been upgraded are marked with an Asterisk*

Rear shock Fox Float R
Fork Marzocchi EXR Pro 120mm
Headset Aheadset STS
Crankarms MTB Evolve DH Chainset*
Chainrings 44/32/22*
F/D Shimano Deore
R/D Shimano Deore XT
Shifters Shimano Deore
Handlebar TruVativ LE Riser
Stem TruVativ XR 3D Stem (HS-05-XR)
Grips Kona Jackshit
Brakes Hayes Hydraulic HFX-9 XC
Brake Levers Hayes Hydraulic HFX-9 XC
Front Rim Sun DS2-XC
Back Rim Mavic EN 321 Disc Rim*
Specialized BG2 Sport Saddle*
Thompson Elite Seat post*

Well it’s been about a fortnight since we picked up Mr Chevy on the way home from my Parents place. Julia had the name ‘Mr Chevy’ picked out for about 3 years so you can imagine her pleasure when we discovered that the kitten was in fact a boy, in spite of what we were told. Although in fairness sexing kittens seems to be a tricky procedure that seems to involve a vet looking up the kittens arse for about 3 minutes!

Anyway, the little mite is settling in fine and hasn’t managed to get into too much trouble yet, I’ve uploaded some pictures to my new gallery:

I’ve just finished upgrading my Gallery software from v2 to v3. In spite of all the URL re-writes it appears to have broken all of the image links that were previously on the site, I’ll have to go back and fix all of these in time.

Gallery3 is a massive leap forwards in terms of UI and ease of use, certainly from the admin side of things, hopefully you shouldn’t see too much difference in the site once I finish configuring everything.

Anyway, new gallery is here

Next on the upgrade list is MediaWiki but last time was such a pain to do that it’s really put me off :/

I finished my first beginners game of Civilization V at about 2am this morning, and my first thought wasn’t “Yay me!”, it was: “Oh shit, I’m supposed to be getting back to a normal sleeping pattern for work next week!”.

So I headed more of less straight to bed, only to lay wide awake for the next thirty minutes contemplating my recent change in sleeping patterns. You see, it’s quite unusual for me to go to bed and not be instantly asleep, in fact, if there’s one thing I do very well it’s sleep. Yet since Christmas, I’ve had a lot of trouble falling asleep normally.

Then it suddenly occurred to me that my main Christmas Present from Julia, was a Senseo Coffee machine, which in common with all children with new toys, I’m using a LOT. I do normally drink a lot of coffee anyway, but I think lately my caffeine intake has probably quadrupled.

On the plus side, I’m getting a lot of use out of my new toy! On the downside, the chances of me getting my sleeping patterns ironed out before work on Tuesday are not good. I sense a rough transition back to the real world coming up in the near future!

Thanks to Dan and Tarah, I went to see Bill Bailey on Sunday night in Greenwich. No thanks to all of the engineering works, which seemed specifically designed to prevent me from getting into town from Epsom. But still, thanks to no less than two cab journeys, trains and tubes, I eventually arrived.

I was racking my brain to think where the venue was, but as it turned out, they’d just slung up a marquee in the National Maritime Museum, which seemed to do the trick, I was quite surprised at how small the gig was, it’s difficult to judge but there can’t have been more than 1000 people there.

Here’s the tour spiel which sums up the content quite nicely :

Dandelion Mind

Featuring Bill’s trademark musical interludes, observations and stories of the road, Dandelion Mind will be based loosely on the theme of doubt (or will it?), as we follow Bill from his real-life saga of being trapped by the ash cloud, to his barely contained rants about celebrity, TV, creationism and Michael Winner. He demonstrates new instruments, both ancient and modern, he sings an internet love song, a lament about punk heroes, Iranian hip-hop, and plays a mean folk-bouzouki.

Thomas the Doubter gets a new look, and Darwin’s curious obsessions and the myth of intelligent design are all worked over in Bailey’s own surreal style. He revisits the music of his youth, with a brand-new French Disco re-working of Gary Numan’s hit, Cars, played in his own inimitable way, and maybe some Wurzels-based remixes of classic German techno. Just your normal Bill Bailey gig, then.”

I thoroughly enjoyed it, even though the man himself looked about as stiff as a wooden board thanks to a slipped disc, he didn’t hold back and will probably regret some of the more enthusiastic jumping around.

Unfortunately I ended up with a restricted view thanks to a support girder which seemed to be in the exact spot that would hide Bill Bailey for 85% of the time, but we chose those seats, so there’s a lesson for the future.

One thing that bugs me every single time I go to a show or gig or just about any performance is the whole charade of the encore. This isn’t anything against Mr Bailey in particular, it happens all the time. Just do the show, without all of the marching on and off stage to riotous applause. It’s either unthinking slavery to tradition at best, or extreme vanity at worst and I wish people would do away with it.

Seriously, what is the point of the encore? Why not just start and finish as planned without the sophistry of marching off and on the stage 5 times.

But yeah, my normal grumblings about encores aside, brilliant night. We walked Jules back to the high street to admire his new shiny car, then after seeing him off, ambled down to the riverside to catch the boat back to Woolwich. On the way we happened past Bill Bailey himself on his way to the pub, I can’t say I had the courage to say anything to him but Tarah thanked him for a great night, and indeed it was.

I didn’t take any pictures really, but there was a blue spotlight that caught my attention and I couldn’t help but snap Jules and Tarah, it came out quite nicely considering it was using my HTC Desire.

It’s been ages since I’ve blogged anything so I’m trying to get back into the habit of writing, sadly for everyone else, I find it easier to write about what’s enthusing me at the present, and that’s a computer game called StarCraft2.

I seem to have spent most of this weekend playing Starcraft2, and I’m thoroughly enjoying it. I’ve played around 20 missions so far and I think I’m down to the last few and I *still* haven’t unlocked all of the technology.

I’ve always found that really annoying with RTS games in general, the whole restricted development during a campaign. In many games it’s used as a sort of tutorial, get players used to one set of units and gradually introduce more. But Starcraft seem to have gone to the Nth degree with this where I’m at the point of completing the game but there are units I still haven’t been able to use, I find that annoying as hell.

This means that while you’re plodding through learning various units, the tactics that you’re employing are liable to change or become obsolete in a full game without any restrictions. To my mind this always separates things out so that you have the campaign game and then the completely different multi-player game. I guess this is why with games like Supreme Commander, I’ve always preferred playing skirmishes against the AI lacking anyone else to play against.

Another thing that’s been annoying me is the lack of unit formation. I think I’ve been spoiled with ‘Sins of a Solar Empire’, where your fleets would automatically form themselves in the most optimal way, with heavier units and capital ships to the front of the fleet and the more support oriented units to the rear. There’s nothing like this in Starcraft2. If I want my medics to the rear, I need to put them in a separate group and micro manage them away from the slaughter. I’d love it if you grouped multiple units, gave them a move order and then they turned up in a sensible order. I’m sure some people would say this is about the skill of the player, but then I’m used to more strategic games with a much higher level of view. SC2 seems to be more about close view, skirmish fighting.

So yeah, that all said, I’m really enjoying the game, the campaign missions are really quite varied with gameplay devices that I’ve not come across before, like lava flooding low level areas every time interval, and playing missions as an alternate race through the narrative device of an Elan crystal which allows you to relive your alien buddy’s experiences.

I’ve also quite liked the Wing Commander style of intermissions where you wander around the ship and interact with various people and objects by clicking on them, which feels particularly old school. And of course the general plot and story line are very entertaining and the rendered video cut scenes are of a breathtaking quality, just like Warcraft3.

Hopefully I’ll be able to finish off the campaign soon and get down to some AI skirmishes so that I get a feel of the real game.

I’ve been trying to take photos of the Moon on and off for ages, with predictably terrible results. Finally with my new camera, I have a chance of getting it right, so I’ve been out snapping whenever I see a particularly good Moon and I’ve been pestering James endlessly for tips on getting it right.

Last night was a particularly bright moon and clear sky so I was out again at midnight, no doubt looking a bit creepy. Below are a couple of the pictures. They’re not as stunning as every other picture of the Moon, but they’re the best I’ve managed to take thus far. Tips for improvements certainly welcome.

This weekend I’ve mostly been moving furniture around in the study. I don’t know why I feel the need to shift everything about every now and then, maybe the ongoing need to get the most of out space? Maybe I just need the change. Either way, with some help from Julia, I’ve been shifting everything about, partly to accommodate a new Futon that hasn’t been pancaked into a single layer a single atom wide by years of use (I’m looking at you Dan!). Personally I could still sleep on the old one without much discomfort but at the same time when you can count the slats through the mattress, it’s time to go!

So with my bonus, I bought a newer and slightly more expensive futon from Argos which should be a lot better for people staying over. Unfortunately it’s bigger than the old one which has made space a bit tighter.

Unable to resist the temptation to geek-up even the most mundane of tasks, I used Autodesk Homestyler to plan and move things around. It’s entirely flash based and is free, but to be frank is a bit limited as you can’t precisely size their 3d models so where my desk is 205cm I’ve had to settle for 200cm and such. Which means that the bookshelves are not quite as cramped on the plans as they are in real life, but I’ve used it before and for the minor task of moving stuff around, it’s perfectly adequate. Especially handy for avoiding that last minute problem of stuff not fitting right, but I wouldn’t use it for micro-millimetre precision.

Here’s the finished product both in 2D and 3D.

I’ve always held the view that if you don’t bother to vote, you can’t really comment. In that I’ve never voted before now, I’ve tried to keep up that ideal, I doubt I’ve been 100% successful but I’m only human

But as I said, this time I’ve been much more interested in politics, even though I’ve felt that my vote wouldn’t actually count. So not only have I kept up with the election and the various party policies, but I even went to the polling station for the first time with Julia, who was also voting for the first time.

I think it’s a measure of how disappointed we were with the current government and all of the mistakes the government has made that we actually felt that we needed to register our disgruntlement. I can’t comment on why Julia wanted to vote by from my point in my opinion in the last 10 years our personal freedoms have been eroded to the point of non-existence by the laws over which the Labour government has presided.

Personal Freedoms (Rant)
People taking photographs are now regularly stopped on the streets of London by zealous officials demanding that they delete their snaps, be they professional photographers or just tourists who are clearly on holiday. Even now there’s a general undercurrent of worry when I’m using my camera.

If the police want to search through my files and find that I’ve encrypted just about every piece of data I own, they have the right under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) to compel me to reveal my encryption keys with the threat of Gaol if I refuse. I would of course refuse on principle. Even worse, even if I did capitulate and want to provide keys, there’s a couple of encrypted archives whose passwords I’ve forgotten but I keep around in case I suddenly remember the keys! I couldn’t reveal those if I wanted to. The only saving grace here is that the authorities have only sent one person to prison for this thus far.

Thanks to decency laws, some of the pornography which I downloaded in my youth is almost certainly illegal! I say almost certainly, there’s still a lack of guidance to police forces on what actually constitutes an ‘extreme image’ but rest assured that if you’ve even briefly browsed the darker side of the web you could have something nasty in your web cache. Personally, I’m reluctant to purge the gigs of pr0n I worked hard to download, even though I’ve only even looked at the tiniest percentage of it, just on the off chance that some parts of it may be ‘extreme’. I’m sure you could arrest most of the men in the country on this one!

And for Christ’s sake don’t get me started on the Digital Economy Act which was most recently rushed through the parliamentary wash-up.

You may think that none of this really applies unless the police kick my door in and confiscate all of my computers, but that’s not as unlikely as you may think.

A couple of years ago a friend of mine had all of his computer equipment confiscated and was arrested by the police based entirely on a false accusation by a former employer that he had stolen some hardware off of them when they fired him.

Totally untrue and in recent months it was thrown out by a court. But that didn’t stop the police from holding onto all of his computer equipment for two years and no doubt searching through everything they could find. Luckily he’d just rebuilt and formatted his main machine but that didn’t stop them trying to pin other charges on him based on what they’d found on his kit! Innocent until proven guilty indeed!

All it took was a petty minded company man and a burned bridge to kick things off, how many of us have stormed out of a job in the past with a two fingered salute? Probably more than one of two of us.

So welcome to the UK where now live, where the spectre of terrorism has criminalized most of us without any of us being the wiser. The only reason we haven’t all been carted away is because the police haven’t focused on us, yet.

The Election
So I voted, for all of the reasons above and more. Even though, I already knew that my vote would make very little difference. Thanks to all the great online tools I knew well in advance that Epsom was going to be Conservative in spite of my MP’s homophobic comments just before the election.

Here’s a list of those tools I’ve used recently :

• Vote Match
• Voter Power
• They Work for You
• Hear From Your MP
• Write to Them

When trying to work out who to vote for, I was actually torn between Conservative and Liberal Democrats. Conservative policies closely matched my own opinions but frankly I find it very difficult to trust them and I worry about the undercurrent of racism and homophobia that seems to rear it’s head every now and then.

Whereas I find the LibDems seemingly more trustworthy and some of their policies to be sensible, I was quite put off by large parts of of their policies, such as on Trident and the immigration amnesty to name a few.

What we’ve actually seen, play out with the Conservative/Liberal coalition to me seems the best of both worlds. The bulk of the Tory manifesto and some of the better ideas from the Liberals bound up with the integrity of the LibDems and the appeal of Nick Clegg.

Realistically I know they’re not going to repeal all of the laws mentioned above but I fervently hope they’ll start moderating them when they can, given the importance of all of the other problems we’re faced with.

Obviously we’ll see what actually happens, but I can’t help but be both pleased and optimistic. This is the first time I’ve ever given a shit and I hope it’s not all wasted effort.

The time has come to face facts, it’s been well over a year since I played Eve properly. Sure, I’ve logged in. Set some factories building and placed a few sale orders, but I’ve not actually played in any real sense. The last time I even killed any one was 28th of July 2009 and before that, was in May. That says it all really.

For all that time I’ve been paying 14.95 EUR times three accounts, about £39. It’s about time to do something else with that money. Like put it towards paying of credit cards or suchlike.

So, as of today, I’ve cancelled all of my Eve accounts. They won’t disappear into the ether and one day I might reactivate them but for now it’s a sad goodbye.

I’ve had a brilliant time in eve ever since I first subscribed on 11th January 2004, the high point was flying with the Mercenary Coalition as members of both Sharks with Frickin’ Laser Beams [FRICK] and Body Count Inc [BDCI] and I’ll never forget the fun I had flying with Millennium [MLM] both in game and in Amsterdam. Ahh happy days.

Hygelac Total Skill Points: 87.9 million Kills ~918, Losses ~34 [Character Sheet]

Brynhild Total Skill Points: 64.0 million Kills n/a, Losses n/a [Character Sheet]

Hrethel Total Skill Points: 47.0 million Kills n/a, Losses n/a [Character Sheet]

I’m making my primary domain the DaveSpace.org.uk domain which I’ve owned for a few years now.

As part of this, I have a new GoogleTalk account at : Dave at DaveSpace dot Org dot Uk.

If any of you use GoogleTalk then feel free to add me.