John Allsopp

Professionally engineered Internet solutions for humans

Comedy cake: 29 September 2005: I tried to bake a cake for my g/f's homecoming. I chose the (this is all from memory) Boston Cream Pie from early on in Nigella's Domestic Goddess book.; It's supposed to be filled with, if I've remembered it correctly, creme patisserie, which is the gorgeous filling you get in French cakes. It's made like a custard so it needs egg yolk to make it set.; Well I'm sure I got the quantities right, so I must either have not cooked it for long enough, or perhaps it does need more egg (if anyone knows, let me know), because when I put it all together, the filling just poured out onto the surroundings. Comedy cake. It still tastes nice tho.; Btw, I only had enough cream for half the topping, so that would have been pouring down the sides too if I'd done the full thing.
Traffic report: 28 September 2005: It's been a while since I checked my web site traffic logs, but things are looking interesting. I mean, the numbers aren't huge, but they aren't intended to be. But they are growing. In August 2003 I had 294 page requests. In August 2004, 2,412. In August 2005, 4,459.; Monday seems the favourite day, with every day dropping off thereafter. That's interesting .. I was analysing the traffic for myKitchen and it does the opposite .. as people plan their weekend of looking around kitchen showrooms the traffic increases to peak on Saturday. Perhaps my blog offers escapism to get people through the early part of the week.; The peak time for reading it is 4am. So unless I'm doing the equivalent of late night radio, I can only assume that my regular pokes at Bush have stirred up some American readers.; Google.co.uk brought the most new visitors .. 2,887 found my site in the last six months. The highest single entry is still for Vance Miller, the kitchen guy with his regular cohort of dissatisfied cheapskate customers. 25 people found me through that. After that, 13 for apple pips and arsenic, 12 for Patrick Rattigan, 12 soundwave scarborough reason to believe (? that one's a mixture of a few blog entries), 12 for eco balls, 12 hansa apricot kernels, 12 bosch wff2000, 12 paint shop scaffolders, 10 for scaffolding acorn, and so it goes on.; Overall (through all search engines) people found me most often by searching for the following phrases:; Peekaboo dog, eh? I worry sometimes. With good reason I think.; I think that does two things. Firstly if 2,887 people found this blog in the last six months (through google.co.uk alone) and the biggest grouping of those was 25, and after that 13, that means people are searching and finding my ramblings on a wide range of subjects. Secondly, mostly people will end up at one of my reviews or comments on a particular product or service.; I don't set myself up as a guru on the Bosch WFF2000, of course. What you get is just a user's comment. But when bloggers comment on such things it obviously matters (to society, and to marketing and business) because people do search and find it. This really is a rise in consumer 'power'. I was talking to one of my former lecturers the other day and he was getting excited about the Internet starting to realise its purpose. On the one hand, the Internet is an information source, on the other, it's a publishing medium for anyone who cares to publish. We had the website explosion in the early days, but that was really for people who knew how to do it. Now with services like Blogger and Podcasting almost anyone can publish very easily. By blogging my experiences, I'm helping the bad to realise what's wrong, and the good to get recognised. That's got to be a good thing, a positive contribution to society. I'm part of a revolution at last :-); My most popular blog is August last year's which has been at least glimpsed by 1,441 people, but 1,279 people visited my search engine position page. I should update that really, I've learned a lot since I wrote it. 1,141 have read my How I Work page, which suggests that publicity wouldn't be a problem if I wanted more work, I'd just need to tidy up those pages and make them more persuasive.; Did I mention that I contributed (accidentally) to a Sims mod? Here's the discussion and if you wander down to the 21 January 2005 that's my photograph from Tossa de Mar.; Now this is interesting. Take a look at The Tin Shop and consider for a moment the type of person that uses that site and compare that to the demographic for my site. Now, for Tinshop, 72% are Windows XP users, whereas only 50% of mine are. 8% of Tinshop users are still on Windows 98, whereas 19% of mine are still holding out. 9% of Tinshop users are on Windows 2000, whereas 14% of mine are. When it comes to Linux, almost none of Tinshops visitors use it, whereas a full 14% of mine do (and yes, I'm removed from the calculation).; When it comes to browsers, it's a similar story. 84% of Tinshop visitors were using IE6 compared to only 60% of mine. 18% of mine are using Firefox 1, and 15% Firefox 0, whereas with Tinshop users only 5.5% are using Firefox 1 and none using Firefox 0.; Between them, 92% are Windows users, 5% Mac, and 2% Linux. This really shows that it does no good to go by averages, the demographics of each site are very different and are reflected in the user's choice of access method.; Geekily fascinating.
Information Britain: 27 September 2005: What a bunch of arse! I reviewed Johnny Jump Up below and, noticing that there was an entry in Information Britain for The Merchant but no reviews, thought I'd send in mine. But rather than send them the text, I wanted to put it as a link, basically because it's my text not theirs.; Now, I know there are strong issues atm with automated and semi-automated online marketing systems that try to raise your website's position in the search engines by writing replies to people's blogs that link back to the website being publicised, so I understand the problem. But, they've printed the trite sentence I sent them and removed the link to the good stuff. Bastards! It makes me look a chump.; I may be in the wrong here, but the way I see it, they should have taken it all or none of it. My offer was for them to link to my review. They've essentially taken out the 'cost' part of my offer, but kept the bit they want.
Johnny Jump Up: 25 September 2005: My g/f's away at her mum's for a while and so besides making comfort cakes (butterscotch layer cake, Nigella, exceptional) I've been to the pub. Twice! The first time, in The Merchant, I noticed their list of bands on and I asked the barman about Johnny Jump Up who were due to play Saturday and Sunday at 4pm. I'd seen their name around elsewhere. He described them as upbeat Irish rock. Sounded good.; When my friend arrived, I asked whether he'd seen them, and he said "yes, and they were shit". I said "well, I was just going to pop down one of those evenings and see what they were like .. it's so easy, I'm just up the hill, and I can stay for five minutes or have a beer". He said "have the beers before you come".; OK. Well, anyway, I was still curious to see what other local bands are like so I asked a different friend to come along, well two actually, one said no and the other called five minutes before they were due to come on and said yes, so we met and listened, in the end, to the last half of their first set, and all of the second set. They were great :-); 4-6pm on a Sunday afternoon, out of season. On Thursday evening at 8:30-10pm there were about 10 people in The Merchant. When we arrived on Sunday it felt a bit embarrassing, a bit like we were sat among holidaymakers having a clapalong, but we took the available space and ernestly studied their PA and what equipment they were using and hoped no-one thought we were gay.; But what's to not like? They were as described .. guitar, bass, fiddle/flute/recorder and three voices, singing Irish songs with verve and energy and plenty of skill and ability. It reminded me of something (which I think I've blogged before (yep, Feb 2004)) which a friend (hi Clive) said to us as teenage punks, and remember, punks hated everything pre 1976 and pretty much everything thereafter unless it was held together with safety pins. He said "I think those who don't like Abba are denying themselves something". This is the same. If you don't like Johnny Jump Up, something inside you has died somewhere along the way. Best seek help. And if you're feeling down, the bass player's impression of a parcel shelf nodding dog will definitely cheer you up (actually, his head moves around like a particular cartoon character, but I can't remember which one).; Two hours later, the pub is, if not full, it's only because the contents have settled. People looked in through the window and came in off the street. Yes people clapped along, but it wasn't like a pensioner's day out, all sorts of people were there enjoying a moment of purity. Walking through the pub fuelled by a couple of pints of Guinness you could believe you were on a great night out in Dublin. Pretty good, as I say, for early Sunday evening.; The stars of the show, though, were perhaps a mum, dad and two young girls. Mum and dad equally interacting with the kids, playing with them, clapping along, pulling faces, dancing in their chairs, and the band sometimes smiling at the girls dancing, and in the break, chatting with them. Beautiful.; I dunno. My friend must have seen a different band, because if you've any humanity, Johnny Jump Up are a joy.; BTW, I've corrected this blog. Previously I referred to them as Jumping Jack Flash which is obviously a Rolling Stones track. Sorry about that.
Narrowboat holiday: 25 September 2005: NARROWBOAT: On the 20 June this year, I went on a narrowboat holiday with my dad. Just me and him. I wanted to get to know him as a person, not just as my dad.; Thinking back on growing up, I don't suppose he was around a huge lot. He worked shifts, starting at Stanton and then after redundancy through a few jobs to working for what became Powergen at Castle Donington Power Station. That's now gone, and there was rumour they were selling it to "the Chinese".; Anyway, so dad was usually either in bed recovering from a night shift, or coming back at 10pm with me calling for him to come upstairs and see me. I mean, I certainly don't resent that .. that's working life for you, nowadays both parents would be at work, I'm just giving my reasons for wanting to get to know him better. I'm amazingly thankful of the hard work he put into giving us a decent life (mum too obviously).; If I think back to my childhood memories of my dad, a couple stick out. In one, I'm in bed trying to build Escher's endless staircase out of lego (see Ascending, descending). Dad comes to my aid, realises it's impossible and says I'm tired and should go to sleep.; In another, he's off work with a carbuncle on his big toe and comes out to play football (daft idea, right?) with me outside. It's sunny, and the new garage which he's building (he used to be a bricklayer) is half complete. We play for a short while until I accidentally kick his carbuncle and he limps off back inside.; There was his brother's daughter's (have I got that right) wedding in Leicester which was around a pool in a hotel. It was the height of the IRA bombing campaign and just after the bride and groom left for their honeymoon we had to evacuate the hotel because of a bomb alert. We were let into a local church. I wanted to watch out of the door in case the hotel exploded, but mum wouldn't let me.; Later, my dad found a phonebox and called for the minibus but dialled incorrectly and got the vd clinic instead. Some days later, prompted by a poster in a lavatory, I asked dad "so what is vd?" I can't remember his answer. Nowadays answers like that are just a click away or easily accessible in a magazine.; I remember sitting on the front seat of the minibus on the way back home. Leicester has (had?) lots and lots of traffic lights very close together, and I noticed the bus driver pulling away as the next set turned green, while our set were still on red. I was scared, but too young to speak out.; I think that's the wedding when Grandad Allsopp was tipsy enough that he came onto the minibus with his hat on backwards.; Anyway, then came punk and adolescence and, well, you're supposed to fall out with your parents aren't you? I mean, we never fell out, but of course there's the ever greater tidal pull of wanting to make your own way, to tear from your moorings and experience life's waves yourself. The early part of that, psychologically, is that rather than finding your parents the fount of all knowledge and wisdom, you just find them irritating or embarrassing. That's the whole basis of the dance-like-your-dad jokes (but actually, my mum and dad dance every week, so they'd be embarrassed (as would everyone else) by me). I'm just saying that's biology, it's one of the forces put there to make you fly the nest. I'm not really saying I felt those things as strongly as that sounds, just that, after a while you focus on your friends and don't make any more effort to get to know your parents. It'll be interesting to test that theory with all the kids we know who are coming up to their first teenage years.; Anyway, I came to realise recently that I still hold vestiges of that mindset and it's ridiculous twenty five years on. I probably know my mum better because we do talk on the phone and email and so on, but, anyway, I felt there was more to know about my dad and, better sooner than later.; So, there we were, on the 20th June, sat in a beer garden for an hour and a half with the narrowboat open trying to cool it down. It's hot.; We set off from Sawley Marina with a Canaltime boat and, since they wouldn't let us go down the Soar, which was very irritating because they didn't tell us that until we got there, and nor would they let us go beyond Trent Bridge in Nottingham onto the Trent, we decided to go up the Erewash because dad has a lot of history up that way.; My parents still live in the home I grew up in, in Long Eaton. Sawley is south west of Long Eaton, and the Erewash goes north through the centre (of LE). A narrowboat goes at 4mph at best, so by teatime, what with embarkation and training, we hadn't left Long Eaton yet. I refused to stop for the night until we had, so we pressed on.; By 8:30pm, even the Sizzling Pub Co's The Plough in Sandiacre, which has mooring enough for a couple of narrowboats, had stopped serving food. Sandiacre people are obviously hard workers, up at 6am for a factory shift.; So we got recommendations for a local chippy and made our way through cod, chips and peas midlands-style and followed it up with two glorious pints of Bass.; Dad grinned a lot. He was thinking how mum would laugh if she only knew how far we hadn't come.; On the way back from the chippy, and bear in mind the sun had set by this time, we walked past a wall and I said "can you feel how warm it is by this wall?" Dad agreed. We touched the wall and it was like a radiator. Warmer, I'm sure, than body temperature. We were going to need sun cream. next
Falling: 25 September 2005: I'm reminded of a dream I had a few months ago. It's in the style of an ad for a pension investment.; A youngish, successful couple push a huge metal ball into the spiral space in the middle of a tall concrete and iron railings stairwell in an office building. The ball freefalls between the stairs, connected to the couple by a chain.; The couple are smiling, confident. The ball hits the floor with a solid thud, cracking the tiles. The chain hangs from them to the ball, swaying in the space.; They smile, hold each other, and jump.; The freefall isn't quite as beautiful as they thought it would be, but they embrace as they fall. Halfway down as they accelerate, she says she has a doubt. She asks him "but what will happen when we go into negative equity?" He reassures her "that's fine, we'll just borrow against the house".; She smiles at him, reassured, and cuddles up, pressing her face into his chest as their freefall speed increases and the wind noise rises to a scream.; It becomes clear that the floor represents negative equity. They're expecting to go through the floor and be OK. They've taken on life's journey together, made their plans, and entered into it with faith that they'll have what they need in retirement.; The couple are partly me and Ali. I'd convinced Ali to go with this plan. It was daring, that was the point. Not many people would do this, that's why the rewards were worthwhile.; The floor also represents hard reality. The couple hit the ground in a big thud-crunch of extra-dead jam and gristle.; The image style now turns to realistic cartoon and we see people in a waiting room. You get the impression they're waiting in a bank. There are small spatterings of the couple's blood on their clothes, but they're brushing them off. They continue to wait patiently for their turn for an appointment to set up their pension.
Caterpillars: 24 September 2005: Autumn is definitely here, and lots of caterpillars are leaving their food and looking for somewhere to pupate until the spring.; I've seen two hairy ones walking across the pavement, one which I think was a Ruby Tiger, that would be a thrill to see as a moth.; A yellow and brown striped one turns out to be the Broom moth.; A really groovy one which was about 5cm long (honest, I measured it) and maybe 1cm in diameter, was bright green with yellow chevrons and .. get this .. a horn on its bum was probably a Poplar Hawk-moth.; Then this, a Buff Ermine I think, in our back passage. Then another in our back garden.; Update: see also 2006.; This all started when I noticed a Large White caterpillar crawling up the outside wall of our house. I didn't know where it had come from. The next day there were five or six. I traced their source to some brussels sprouts the old guys across the road were growing. So these had scaled up and over a five foot wall, crossed a cobbled street, and were six feet up the wall of our house. One had pupated underneath our windowsill.; In order to persue my renewed interest in flying insects, I thought I'd get me one of these, a Jensen CV-8 (seen at Scarborough's classic car shindig last weekend), drive it around quickly, and upon returning, I'd be able to scrape off the remains of, and identify, the beautiful butterflies and moths that used to live in the area. I think that's what that air intake on the bonnet's for. Sigh .. one could so easily fall in love. (Update: I think I am in love, I can't stop looking at and thinking about this car).
iPod backlash: 24 September 2005: I'm sensing an iPod backlash.; Scarborough's currently moistened with the juices from an influx of new students, eyes wide open, making tentative new friends. On my way up to the gym the other day I saw a guy who I assume was walking from the uni, dressed in dark clothing, wearing an iPod and walking, well, almost in the style of the ads. Expressively. Perhaps he was just getting into the music he was listening to.; Now, I have the impression an American would see that and think "cool". Brits take one look and mutter "tosser" under their breath.; I do understand though. At that time of my life, I wanted to wear a red suit, mainly because that's what I'd seen Keith Levene wear when I saw PiL play at Futurama (8/9th September 1979: Futurama One Festival, Queen's Hall, Leeds). I wanted the Flying V too. I even went into Burton's in Long Eaton (then a gentleman's tailor) to enquire about getting a red suit made. For a young person, first time away from home, going to university is the first opportunity to really do what you want, to express yourself.; Anyway, if the people who wear iPods can't hide them (because of the white cable), it only takes one or two "tossers" to put people off identifying with the product. The iPod's image, therefore, depends on the people who use it and since us Brits like to keep things real, linking the iPod's image with the people who work in the multimedia, graphics, arts and web design isn't going to make most people want one. Or maybe the northern perspective has seeped further into me than I thought.; Having downloaded iTunes for Windows, there are other issues. Firstly, some of the things I've wanted to download recently are not available in iTunes. Take for instance Keith Levene's project Murder Global mentioned in the link above. It's easy to think that iTunes will allow you to explore music without boundary. Murder Global doesn't come up in an iTunes search. I've looked for a number of more popular items too and found them missing.; iTunes is perhaps never going to be complete, since it depends on agreements being made between Apple and music publishers. Apple, being an American corporation, is probably going to look at the world's music publishers and aim at Pareto's top 20%. That would leave out the remaining 80% of small music publishers. In that scenario, what happens to difference? To diversity? To the small publishers? How do new movements start? What about the world's ethnic music? It's a corporate, sanitised, selected subset of music. The people who listen to that, who choose iPod, are therefore buying into style over substance, are cutting themselves off from musical difference, from discovery, from the new and different.; Another thing, which I think possibly is just 'old thinking', but is worth considering, is that if you buy a song using iTunes, you don't get anything physical, so there's no artwork, no sleeve, and it's unlikely you'd be able to resell the file you just downloaded. Remember being reminded to calculate the replacement value of your record collection for insurance purposes, and being surprised at how many hundreds of pounds it was? Records and CDs have resale value. So the cost of a CD might be, say, £10, but you might be able to sell it for say £2, so it's only cost £8 really. Records used to be collectors items, some appreciated in value. On iTunes you pay £7.99 for something that's instantly worthless. Well, it's like a meal, you can't resell it, but you do get to enjoy it yourself.; £7.99 is a lot to pay for something that has no substance. Substance costs a lot to manufacture and move around the world. It makes me feel like the record companies have taken yet another opportunity to improve their 'take', like when we moved from vinyl to CD. The cost savings haven't been shared.; With my recent book fetish I'm finding some comfort in the idea that I can resell the books I no longer want. The price of owning the book, therefore, is much lower than just the purchase price.; My alternative plan is this. Keep buying CDs, use amaroK, Ogg Vorbis, and a (forgive me) Media Center PC to play it all.; Written while listening to iTunes on Windows XP.
A regretful thing: 24 September 2005: Something just reminded me of an amazingly sad thing that happened to me on holiday in Tossa De Mar.; I was on holiday with my partner (Ali) and her mum. Ali was obviously dividing her attention between me and her mum throughout the holiday. I was really enjoying the holiday, but the edge was taken off it by the sensation that Ali was vaguely and generally annoyed with me.; Anyway, she came up with this idea of having a day of us going our separate ways. I thought that sounded great and started thinking about what I might do. So, come the day, Ali's mum went off on a boat trip, and Ali sent me off to the local Internet cafe .. I had to keep an eye on a client during that holiday. After that I went for a walk, had an ice cream, wandered around the town, and walked to a viewpoint. I turned up back at the hotel around maybe 4pm (perhaps a bit earlier). Ali was incandescent.; She'd not intended separate ways in that sense. She'd wanted her mum to go one way, and for us to have a day together. She'd expected me back from the cafe after an hour or so, while she'd got herself ready for a nice, romantic day. Not only did we not get the day together, she was trapped in the hotel because she had the only key.; I just find the thing awesomely sad. Perhaps if I were an actor it might be something I could use to trigger tears. It blows my mind that it happened between two people who have been together for twenty years. I still find it very stressful to write about. Just amazing.; It could have been worse. I'd even thought I might go off to Barcelona for the day, even considered going to see The Chemical Brothers who were playing that night. Imagine if I'd done that, she'd have been calling around the hospitals.; The wierd thing is, too, although we do have to work at communication sometimes, particularly recently it really couldn't be better. We've always been able to turn off the telly and turn to face each other on the sofa and just talk for the rest of the evening .. those are often our best times.So what happened? I think the 'annoyance' I perceived was actually just Ali being stressed about making sure her mum was OK. I really like her mum, so we were both just 'on holiday', chilled, happy. So when Ali suggested a day of separation, I thought she wanted space from both of us, space on her own, specifically space from me. Admittedly, that's not usual, but the holiday wasn't usual either.; Why didn't I discuss my plans with Ali? That's definitely something that causes me problems sometimes. I like keeping my own counsel. So I wanted to be able to say what I'd done afterwards. Anyway, I was enjoying the idea of not actually knowing myself what I planned, of just going with the flow.; The other thing was that Ali obviously didn't want to give the impression to her mum that she wanted her to go away for a day so we could be together. Not that that would have been a problem, but said directly it might have been a bit much. So she was being indirect, whereas I took it directly. Then because she didn't want to mention what she really had planned, we couldn't talk about it while her mum was around. And when we were on our own, I'm sure it never occurred to her how I'd interpreted what she said, and since I thought she was annoyed with me, I didn't really want to raise the subject in case it caused an argument. I think arguments shouldn't be started as you're going to bed, that's a time for reconciliation if anything. I also thought that, if she was irritated by my whole presence (which is the impression I'd got, I just couldn't work out why), she didn't really want to hear anything from me at all.; The only thing that gives me comfort is that, while I had a really good day, after a while I missed Ali and wondered what she was up to. That was why I wandered back to the hotel, to see if she was around and how she was feeling.
Drummer: 23 September 2005: Yes, I did see the drummer joke on Corro. Very funny.
Blog anniversary: 22 September 2005: It's the second anniversary of this blog today. In my first entry I say that "a blog isn't important to me". Hmm. That's changed I have to say. People do read this and talk to me about it, so it has become something I've grown to love. It is important to me now.; I also said "blogs are for people who felt their own opinions were important enough to broadcast to the world", implying that I'm not one of them. That's changed a little too. I feel it's good for me to record what's going on with me.; Someone told me that a group of friends from my past were reading it and taking the piss. Reading it is voluntary, and they were :-); The detail I go to comes from attempting to record the process that goes on in someone's head when they deal with a company. I know, having been on the inside of marketing, how simplistic it can be, and I want to show how complex buying decisions really are.; Sometimes, yes, I'm trying to persuade. The Software Patents thing is an example, GM is another. Other times, such as when I'm talking about politics generally, I'm probably just exploring stuff myself. So are these thoughts important enough to broadcast?; I think the thing is, having reached my age, I'm no longer so bothered by whether others disagree, I'm happy to verbalise where I'm at and accept that that has the side effect of showcasing my faults. Realising ones faults is a beautiful thing.; I'm not trying to start an argument or persuade (well, not very often anyway), I'm usually just bringing up an aspect of a subject that I feel hasn't been explored. And I believe in engaging, that's the important thing. Engage with what's going on around you. Vote, organise, make a difference. So, yes, it's become important to be able to publish. At the same time, though, I've avoided publicising my blog through the various services. I'm happy for friends and family and people I invite to read it. For now, I don't seem to need more clients.; Someone asked me to enable replies on this blog. I've no plans to do that. I spend enough time on this without having to parry counter arguments. You can email me if you've something to say. See that's part of the point, I don't want to argue because I'm not trying to persuade. I'm just dumping my RAM. Anyway, the point of this blog is to provide a way for someone in, say, Madrid, to get to know me before engaging me. My clients, almost without exception, become my friends, so it's nice to be able to get to know each other on a human level despite being geographically distant.; I was also testing whether publishing new content to a site every day helps get a good search engine position. That seems to work. I'm constantly swapping first position in Google with another John Allsopp who runs the "Dog or Higher" blog on the other side of the world. Then again, he's got a blog too so surely they cancel each other. Well, at least I can say that I have a blog and I have got the number one position (presently, like I say, it swaps and changes, I certainly don't sweat over it). I've emailed him once or twice, he seems like a nice guy. One day maybe we'll meet.; As for needing "somewhere to put my criticisms of public lavatory design as they relate to effective product and web software design", there's not been a lot of that, but I do get excited by potential. Watch this space.
Too many books: 21 September 2005: I'm buying too many books. I'm interested in too many things. The latest was a spate of graphic design and illustration books. Then a Mac magazine (because I'm probably going to get a Powerbook at some point), a copy of The Economist (because I love its writing style, and it has a technology section), an NME because when I wanted to work out current music I couldn't seem to find one, and it has a free CD on the cover. Not very prior to that it was books on accessible websites, and I actually, can't quite believe this myself, bought a book on viruses to try to answer my own questions from before. I'm buying more books than I have time to read.; The latest is I've found a book on synthesisers, how they work and how to use them, and I want that. This is because someone showed me Reason the other day and it's an awesome piece of software. Problem is, I don't know how to drive, well, hardly any of it. I don't know what the knobs do, I don't know how to patch it together. I don't even really know much about mixing desks. So I need to know.; I'm hugely looking forward to installing the Agnula distribution. Having looked at that I think I might feel more at home there, and that will give me a unique viewpoint on sound and music. I want to look at it from a programmers perspective.
Monbiot likes business shock: 21 September 2005: This is quite curious, Monbiot in yesterday's Guardian saying that business isn't necessarily the problem.; Monbiot is obviously much more on the ball than I am, but I worry about whether the government people in that scenario were self censoring based on past experience of control and pressure by business. The stick doesn't have to be applied every time, the mere fact that it can be is enough.; I would argue that this is a case of Chomsky's manufacturing consent.; The other thing that's slightly worrying about this discovery of Monbiot's is that I've come from the other end. I've come from the beautiful world of business and marketing theory, wherein every need is fulfilled by a company who then receives competition that contributes to ever lower prices. All needs are consequently fulfilled more and more easily. That's why business and marketing is the biggest force for good on the planet .. I believe that. That's how it should be.; Could it be possible that Monbiot's never really dealt with the positive side of business? It feels like he's just discovered it. That would be an omission .. surely not.; Those innovative companies with their answers to global warming show business and marketing theory doing what it should. Isn't the main problem that big business is so big it can dictate regulatory policy, and that it's become so big so quickly that no-one yet knows what to do about it?
Saddam (again): 21 September 2005: OK, so maybe I understated how horrid Saddam was. Looking here there's plenty to think about. A quick totup says Saddam was responsible for 330,130 deaths over his 24 year reign.; Interestingly, since I last wrote about this we now (thanks Steve) have a half decent estimate of the civilian deaths due to allied forces in the two years .. at least 25,884 at the time of writing. Out of interest 25,884/2*24 = 310,608 .. in other words, we're killing Iraqi civilians at pretty much the same rate Saddam did. And that's just the 'civilian' deaths. I wonder how many conscripted military people were killed on the way in? How many 'insurgents' have been killed.; Just to continue the "it's our money and our government" thing, the cost to the US appears to be about $196bn (about £108bn) so far, the cost to us Brits £3.1bn. So of those 310,608 Iraqi civilians killed, us Brits are responsible for 3.1/108 * 310,608 = 8,915, which is about 8,915/60,441,457 = .0001475 of an Iraqi each. I wonder what that represents. Is it like, each of us is responsible for cutting off the end of a finger, or for a punch in the mouth?; Interestingly, if .00007375 of an Iraqi is killed on my behalf each year, even if that carries on for my whole life and I live to be 100, I'd still only have killed .007375 of one. I was just curious what the effect of the UK as a warring nation is .. I mean, there have been two Iraq wars, the Falklands and obviously WW2 and so on so I wondered actually how many lives I might be responsible for in my lifetime.; I guess what we're not doing is all the other torture .. oh hang on .. there was Abu Ghraib wasn't there? When I started that sentence I believed myself, then I thought "ah!". But surely, yes, there's a big difference between that which is hopefully an isolated incident with a modicum of investigation and corrective action, and the original Abu Ghraib which was just one tool of popular control under Saddam.; So yes, I probably shouldn't forget what life was reportedly like under Saddam and yes, maybe it is ever so slightly better, and yes the people have some self determination and control over their lives now .. oh wait .. no that's wrong too :-); But you know what? I can absolutely see why getting rid of Saddam might be construed as a noble, humanitarian cause and why Bush et al might be thinking we're all nutcases for even thinking this could be a bad thing. It probably all boils down to incompetent implementation.
Bush: 20 September 2005: According to the fantastic Deborah Tannen, stop me if I've blogged this before, Americans work out their ideas in adversarial arguments. The argument isn't a bad tempered thing, on the contrary, Americans apparently can feel upset when Germans go over and start 'arguing' (in the belief that that's having a good intelligent exploratory conversation) because the Americans feel, essentially, no arguing on a first date. Arguing is something you do with friends.; Much generalising going on here, but anyway, these are Tannen's research results, I'm just summarising them. I don't remember her distinguishing between Americans from different states in this regard, but I'm sure there are enormous differences. Still ...; Americans, apparently, will often present an unfinished thought as if it were a fait accompli. The point being that, by arguing, they get to find the holes in their thinking. They get to work things out that way. They need people who will argue in good humour with them, or at least who won't carry a grudge about it if they lose or stage a coup if they win, so getting involved in such an argument is actually a message of acceptance.; Because of the adversarial, argument method of working things out, the proposer of an idea has to present it initially in as strong a way as possible in order to ride out the impending storm. If it survives, it's a good idea. If not, don't expect a public climbdown or an apology, it'll just quietly disappear.; So when your American boss turns up one morning and says "I've decided, I'm closing the business down and I'm going to buy a ranch with the profits .. you're fired", argue. He or she probably just thought of it in the shower and is wondering what you all think.; Is it too far to jump to think .. a) Texans, surely, would do a lot of this, and b) "Good morning everyone, I've decided, we're going to invade Iraq. You're either with us or against us." Is it outrageous to think that maybe, just maybe, he was trying us out to see whether it was a good idea, and it turned out we were too soft and scared to say no?
Saddam: 20 September 2005: I'm learning about research, because I've a study I want to conduct, and I've just been reviewing Kerlingers 4 ways of knowing, namely: tenacity (we know it's true because we just know it's true), authority (we know it's true because someone in authority told us it is), intuition (we know it's true because we've reasoned it out and it must be), and science (we know it's true because we've proved it using scientific methodology).; I'm still rather taken by the footage showed on Channel 4 News last night of Saddam in his early years paying a visit to Dujail. He's every inch the charismatic leader. Channel 4 News took pains to ensure we understood that the enthusiastic crowd were so because they were being watched by the secret police and those who weren't were likely to be punished. It still looked pretty convincing to me.; Saddam travelled slowly in what looked like a fairly ordinary Mercedes, but again we're assured it's bullet proof. He went into people's houses and kissed their children. He wore what looked like ordinary fatigues.; Of course, he then got shot at, and ordered his people to raze the place, allegedly, but none of that's on video.; It occurred to me to wonder if Iraq might be ungovernable except by a dictator. People with strong religious convictions must surely be operating under Kerlingers method of authority .. things are true because they read so in the Bible/Koran, or were told it by a priest or imam.; The 'authority' method of knowing is flawed, so the science lobby would have it, because there is no way of working out the actual truth. If a population contains people with different religious views and at least some either hold those views strongly enough to kill or die for, or have nothing much to live for, then surely they're going to come to blows.; The quickest, perhaps the only way, to stop that would be to attempt to shift the authority to the head of state. People willing to die for their beliefs aren't going to worry about noise abatement legislation, so the only way forward might well be to ensure that everyone knows the consequences of doing wrong. An occasional well publicised, extremely gory, state sanctioned murdering spree would achieve that. Actually, the more gory, and the more well publicised, the less of them there would have to be. That would make Saddam an arch strategist, an efficient publicist, rather than someone who murdered for fun. I'm not making light of the murders, but, you know, we kill our enemies too. The number of Iraqis we've killed (you and I, our taxes, our votes) remains uncounted (not true, see later). And it's ironic that the publicity which Saddam perhaps needed to keep down the number of beastly things he ordered done helped to bring the world's attention to him. I'm sure there are plenty of dictators who murder aplenty in secret and no-one invades their countries.; Perhaps it will turn out that the best way to govern Iraq is the way Saddam did. At least it was secular, and at least it was relatively stable (I mean, it wasn't, but compared to the current tv news mess it seemed pretty quiet). Contrast Saddam's Mercedes and fatigues with the armoured tanks we have to travel around in. If he'd only kept his growth ambitions under wraps he would still be there.; I used to get irritated with those who would argue that a benevolent dictatorship is the best way of governing. They were just looking for an argument, I thought. They probably were. But the Kerlinger thing really makes the difference. If someone is heavily religious, according to this, they are not willing, at least in part, to accept a researched, agreed, proven truth. In other words, you think you're dealing with someone reasonable, but you're not. Someone who is religious is completely different to someone who 'knows' by science.; Does that mean that Iraqis are indeed different? Does that mean that Americans are completely different too .. I'm given to believe that religion is a big deal there. Is this a religious war played out by people who genuinely believe in their own 'authority'?; The point, I think, is that it was lovely to see the indigo fingers of the people of Iraq voting on Sky TV. Watching it, you put yourself in their shoes and wonder what it must feel like. But if what's in your head is the same as what's in mine, which is, there might be a supreme being and I'm looking forward to finding out, but so far I see no evidence, and that things are mostly true because of what science tells us .. what you think you'd feel in Iraqi shoes is nothing like what they are actually feeling.; Gah, this is difficult to put across without sounding really, really distasteful. This isn't a text about our differences, it's an attempt to understand others. But it's getting mixed up with my feelings about organised religion, which are mostly strong and negative (whereas my feelings on spirituality are strong and positive). I'm not saying Iraqis are too stupid to understand, I'm not saying we should emphasise our differences (because that tends to lead to racism), and I'm not saying that religious people are bad. I'm saying that if someone is religious, they hold a completely, fundamentally different value set to someone who is not. As someone who is not, it occurs to me to try to understand that a little more because if I don't, I'm not going to be able to put myself in a religious person's shoes the next time I want or need to. And I'm finding it difficult to put myself in their shoes, to see the world as seen through the brain of someone who believes in the 'authority' way of knowing over everything.; That's another side to it, of course. It's obviously not a polarised thing, we believe things authority figures tell us all the time even if we are science driven, and I'd imagine an Iraqi 'extremist' would be happy to plug in appliances to their electricity supply, watch television, and cook tea in the full knowledge that those capabilities are brought to us by the world of science. So perhaps this is about wondering whether Iraq contains a small percentage, but still a sufficiently large one, of extremely 'authority' driven people that make it ungovernable by normal means because their views are so fixed. The probability that most Iraqis are perfectly likeable doesn't make the country governable. It might make trying to sort the place out a worthy cause, though, for their sake.; I'm not sure where that takes us, but it's interesting. This little tale turns out to be more about my dislike of organised religion. I didn't know that until the end.
Autumn: 16 September 2005: Right that's it, it's all over. The central heating's just come on (first time in about four months). It's officially cold. Summer's over. Autumn's here, start Christmas shopping. Must do some work.
Alison Lapper: 16 September 2005: Predictably, I do find Alison Lapper Pregnant powerful and beautiful and wonderful. Who cares what I think, but that's what I do do do.
Flash frame: 15 September 2005: Oh, I almost forgot to blog this. I was watching A Beautiful Mind over the weekend, was it on BBC1? Anyway, they broke for news and at around 22:08 started a vt about the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and I'm sure I saw a flash frame, right at the start of that. It said TRY RECOVERING in red text on a black background.; I had drunk two pints of beer by that time, and I think I happened to see it because I blinked at just the right time. Did anyone video that, and can anyone verify what I saw? Or am I going ever so slightly mad? I thought flash frames were illegal. Interestingly, the film was partly about the mathematician John Nash, who sees things that aren't there (actually the real chap didn't according to Wikipedia), so that would be funny. Good film though.
Thermostatic radiator valves: 14 September 2005: Thermostatic radiator valves don't seem to work, they just whistle. Our plumber did warn us about the whistling, but about them not working? Not a peep. They just don't. Maybe I'm being unfair, and I can't remember .. well now at the end of the summer I can't remember the central heating being on at all .. anyway no-one else seems to bother with scientific exploration so why should I. Nope, thermostatic radiator valves don't work, and that's an end to it. I'll hear no more said on the matter.
The day I felt good: 14 September 2005: There was a day when I felt really good. I clearly remember as a kid, probably in my early teens, and this will put a date limit on it within the family because it was before my dad built the garage, playing with a powerball against the wall of the house. It was a beautiful sunny day, but not hot.; For some reason that I couldn't reconcile on the day but which I put down mostly to a hormone surge, I felt completely happy. Perhaps not with my lot then, but I think it was the possibility, the things to come .. becoming an adult, taking control of my life, and doing with it what I wanted.; I'm not saying I'm miserable now, far from it, I'm happy as Larry (and he's pretty happy). It's just that moment sticks in my mind. I was brimful of the possibilities of my life to come, the woman I was yet to meet, the career and income I was yet to enjoy.; Leaving aside the probably very real reason for the feeling, the hormone surge, that possibility is still with us all, yet we feel tied down by our responsibilities. I'm sure that must be true if you have children, but otherwise .. what's stopping us? We can make our lives what we want them to be, surely.
Research: 13 September 2005: I blogged earlier about how research has been compromised by commercial interests. If you look here and search for "genetically", you'll see a specific example of that. The whole article appears to be a case study in Chomsky's theories about how pressure groups keep the media in line, blogged here and written about in his book Manufacturing Consent.
Spiked: 13 September 2005: Is Spiked good or not? I can't decide. Have a look and let me know yes or no and I'll blog the vote.
dB meter: 12 September 2005: I blogged previously about blokes loving measuring. Well, I bought a decibel meter. Ridiculous I know, but I've always wanted one and I knew too that no one event was going to be enough to make me buy one. Also, old lightmeters are still useful, sound levels aren't going to go away, it's not like buying a CD player when you know CDs are going to go out of use eventually. So it'll be part of my estate, in the end :-); Partly, I wanted to know just how irritatingly loud the manky old CPU fan on this old machine had become. Recently it had quietened and my efforts to build the new silent PC had slowed, particularly as the clients who wanted to use it, for video processing, had started to pay very late indeed. Also I ordered a video card from Scan which arrived and came out of the bag in two pieces. They are replacing that without a problem, but it takes a week to cycle around the system.; But then it started to get louder and worse and I couldn't concentrate and I wrote to Quiet PC and they didn't have a replacement fan (very old format, system 370, slot 1, Celeron 400MHz) and OMG what was I going to do!; It reached 50dB, if you're interested. Apparently that's the level of sound from a quiet restaurant. Except the sound of a quiet restaurant is quite nice, whereas the sound of a banshee giving birth while losing her leg to a rusty blade, isn't.; Anyway, I followed the advice of a colleague from the Scarborough Linux User Group and basically removed the fan, oiled it, and put it back again and now we're down to 43.7dB and it's a much smoother sound .. more like, apparently, the sound of a residential area at night. I can concentrate at last.; The other thing I thought we'd use it for is testing the sound of each instrument in the gig soundcheck on Saturday. However, I got ridiculed for that one, so it never happened. I thought it was a good idea .. start by checking all the instruments are equally loud and go from there. It's a base point.; I should have left it running over the gig to get the maximum dB, but it didn't occur to me.
Saturday's gig: 12 September 2005: I think I've just about recovered from Saturday's gig, the first time I've played live in a band since Splat! in about 1980 or so, and then I was on guitar.; Everyone kept asking me if I was nervous but I didn't feel it until we hit some interesting on-stage errors, which thankfully few seemed to notice. That's when I started to think "hey, this could actually go badly wrong, right here, right now". But the thing that gave me confidence was that we practiced on the Wednesday before, after a break of three weeks while people went on holiday, and yes in that time we'd forgotten stuff, but actually we've practiced enough that it didn't matter .. kind-of "oh, OK, we're having another verse are we, no problem". So that made me feel that although things may go wrong, we'd just handle it.; Anyway, the upshot of the night is that really, I can't think of any way it could have been better. The audience .. friends and family .. were simply fantastic, some travelled from as far away as London to see us. We were helped by so many people too with the loan of gear, provision of food and so on. It was, like the best things in life, a co-operative effort by people to do something interesting and it damn jiggly worked. Fantastic.; Incidentally, I am trying to keep the band and this site separate for a fairly simple and ridiculous reason which I'll tell you in person if you ask. But if you check the bulletin board, you know where that is (if you don't, email me), you'll see I've written a little more about it there.
Free software fights back: 12 September 2005: When I first read this I thought it meant that a company would lose the right to use all free software if it used software patents against any one, which would be classic union-style organisation and gave me a real thrill, but it's just the single software package attacked. That doesn't seem right, since small startups won't have any real leverage. It protects big programs and doesn't defend little ones, which seems not in the spirit of the free software movement. Still, Stallman is cleverer than I am so he must have his reasons.; Incidentally, for the record, I've never (ever ever) been a union chap, never used a union, anon, but recently have started to get interested. My partner's union doesn't seem particularly effective, they seem to have too close a relationship to Labour or they simply lack teeth nowadays, so although I don't want to go 'back' to the days of docker, miner, car worker, teacher, civil servants, power workers, etc. going on strike, the pendulum seems to have swung too far away from worker power. Even here in Scarborough, and even sat here in my office, I can feel that people are simply being squeezed too hard. They have to give ever more performance with ever less resource. I don't know what the solution is, but neither, it seems, do the unions.; I think we need a union against unions. We need to organise a union-contributions strike, and we'll only start paying again when they actually do something useful. What about a people's union, it doesn't have to be work related, we can just set up a completely alternative body that really represents us. I guess it's all in Animal Farm.
European Commission: 12 September 2005: The European Commission seems dangerously free of any responsibility to its electorate, here agreeing to the import of "Monsanto's genetically modified oilseed rape" "despite the decision of the UK, and most EU Member State governments, not to support the application".; Wasn't it the European Commission that wanted Software Patents too? We need to know more, this doesn't seem to be linked to people's wishes at all.; As an aside from that issue, I've just read this and now I understand what Peter Mandelson does. We have one commissioner from each country, each of those handles a portfolio for the whole of Europe. Peter Mandelson is our man, and his portfolio is 'trade'.
Nighty Night: 10 September 2005: The new series of Nighty Night by Julia Davies is just amazing. I can't seem to find many links to the new series (everything points to the old one), but it's on Tuesday evenings on BBC3 I think.; It's not a programme to watch with your family. It's as gobsmackingly brilliant as The League of Gentlemen or even Chris Morris' Blue Jam and in the same open mouthed, "she can't be .. she is" kind of way. Amazingly funny too. Totally recommended if you have a dark humour.
Scrap: 7 September 2005: Walking to the gym yesterday I passed a wasp and a Daddy Long Legs in mortal combat. The wasp was trying to sting the Daddy Long Legs, which was rather effectively using its legs to push the wasp away. They rolled around in the pavement dust as I walked past. The rest of my walk was consumed by questions.; I wanted to know why these two were fighting. I've answered that one now. Once, a wasp stung my partner in her throat (she drank it down after it had got inside her can of drink). She had to be taken to hospital and sat looking at the apparatus they planned to use to cut into her throat if they needed to. They took it rather seriously. Thereafter I was happy to kill wasps just because. Anyway, what use are they?; Rats too .. after we were invaded by them one Christmas when we lived in Derby. They kept us awake at night biting their way in, and then on Christmas eve I arose drunken from the sofa to spot one exiting the kitchen. I think that's the one I drowned in a margerine tub with holes in after the cats resolutely ignored it. Sorry about that.; Anyway, the answer to why the wasp was attacking the Daddy Long Legs is, as always, in wikipedia. Wasps are predators and they are our friend because they eat other, perhaps more damaging, pests.; Incidentally, my only other up-close wasp experience was trying to get wasp grubs for fishing bait. I was a teenager and had read that you can find wasps nests by watching the direction they fly in and following them. I got on my bike and did just that and, by jove, it worked. I found the nest. Next I bought a canister of Wasp-Be-Gone----Like-NOW-Dudes and pumped it into the hole. I recoiled as the wasps flew out as if from a Gatling Gun and cycled home, constantly looking over my shoulder in case they'd regrouped and were coming for me.; The next day, I dug up the nest, took it home, and extracted the white grubs. Fascinating structures, absolutely amazing. I made groundbait from the paper, used the grubs as bait and had the best evening's fishing I ever had. Actually, it was the last time I ever went fishing.; Anyway, so Wikipedia answers why the wasp was attacking the Daddy Long Legs .. to eat. Possibly, that was a noble cause because Daddy Long Legs lay eggs in lawns and the resulting grubs, leatherjackets, spoil the lawn's perfection. That's from memory so I could be wrong.; More interestingly, I want to know how the Daddy Long Legs even knew it was being attacked. Surely the wasp would just come along, sting the Daddy Long Legs, and that would be that. But the Daddy Long Legs obviously has an early warning system. Not just that, it then has a fairly effective defence system too. How does it know all that? It can't possibly have learned those things, it doesn't live that long .. so they must be genetic, automatic responses to being attacked by a wasp. So what triggers that response .. is it the noise they make?; As interestingly, how amazing that it can push the wasp away effectively .. its senses work well enough to do that. Is it sight .. that compound eye? Sight is incredibly complex, mentally, so that would be impressive. Or does it sense the vibration of the wasps wings .. it certainly was buzzing loudly? (I can't find much on insect hearing, this is the best I could do). And in the spin of the fight, rolling around in the dust, the Daddy Long Legs knew where to push its legs to push away the wasp. Those legs weren't just flailing around, they were concentrated against the wasp. That's quite an automated response.; The other thing about it was how inconsequential it was to me. An instant in time as I walked past .. "oh look, two insects fighting to the death". I felt rather Douglas Adams about it. Maybe the arguments we get into, those which consume our personal world for a few hours, are just as inconsequential in the greater scheme of things. A family dispute or an argument between friends perhaps just isn't that important compared to the bigger questions.; I saw, I think, a Speckled Wood, too.; The other thing about that journey is our lettuces. Since losing the garden we decided to grow lettuce in windowboxes, but early in the season they were covered in whitefly. Not just whitefly, but rather large, spider-like mites and really a whole ecosystem of distasteful creatures it took ages to inspect for and remove before the lettuce could reach the plate.; I asked a friend who is studying permaculture what we might do, and she said we should plant native flowers to attract hoverflies (they eat pests too).; I jumped on from that and took a small bottle the next time I walked to the gym and searched for ladybirds. Not only did I not find any, but I didn't find any greenfly either. Maybe nature's ways of balancing things work that well. I wondered just how natural our lettuce patch .. two stories up, away from other vegetation, sat in John Innes #2 (I've never been a fan) .. really is. The lettuce from it really doesn't taste as good as that from the garden. Our lettuces seemed to be the only plants in Scarborough infested with pests.; The only time I did see some aphids on my walk they were being farmed by red ants. I mentioned this to my friend the next time I saw her as a point of mutual interest and as a way to show I had insight into the kind of thing she's studying. She took the subject and ran with it, explaining to everyone how ants sometimes protect aphids from predators because of the honeydew they produce. Aphids suck the juice from plants, and out of their back end produce a sweet substance called honeydew which the ants enjoy eating. The ants extract it by stroking the aphids with their antennae. I thought "hey, that was my interesting story you just pinched!" So much for solidarity.; A week later, I noticed a ladybird had arrived by itself and now the lettuces are bug free.
Max heart rate: 5 September 2005: I hadn't clicked that the fact I have a heart rate monitor allows me easily to calculate my maximum heart rate, because it remembers the maximum rate from any exercise session, so I only have to run about for a bit, then run as hard as I can up a hill, and I'll get my maximum heart rate. I did, 180.; The quick method is to take 220 (for men) and subtract your age (43 in my case) to reach 177, which is what I've been working on.; That's interesting. It means my heart rate range from training, which was estimated to be from 133.6 to 146 becomes 135.55 to 148.25. In other words, I haven't been pushing myself enough because of max heart rate guesswork.
Which: 5 September 2005: Even Which? is behind the anti GM campaign.
Weight: 5 September 2005: Also, my weight's risen again, to 15st 2lb. That's where I was at the start of June and only 3lbs off my maximum. In June I was in the middle of my hardest training period. After that the weight dropped off until six weeks later I was 14st 10lb (corrected, thanks Clive).; If I'm kind to myself, I have noticed more muscle. I have been raising the weights at the gym, but that's never stopped. Anyway, it certainly doesn't bode well for the winter period. After this week my training's going to slowly drop off to reach what I planned to be a maintenance program over winter of just one 30 minute run and one hour-long gym session. I now realise that's too little, but I think I'll stick with it because a) this running lark has interfered with my work, so it would be good to claw back some time, b) let's see what running through the winter is actually like .. it's one thing to get caught out in a summer shower, but winter weather is altogether different, and c) it'll give me a baseline against which to measure subsequent winter programmes .. I always intended that, between annual marathons, I'd need more than just an hour and a half's maintenance training per week.
Stride: 2 September 2005: I've been ignoring the fact that the second run in the week is supposed to be a 'form' run. This is never explained in the book, hence I've ignored it, oh except for that disastrous hip-running attempt that put my back out for weeks. Anyway in the last few weeks I've been thinking about it again and, on the assumption it means I should concentrate on my running form I decided to try to lengthen my stride and to push myself more purposefully with my calf muscles at the end of each stride. I've no idea whether that's correct, but it sounds about right.; The first effect is that I'm using more muscles than before, or perhaps different ones, or the same ones for different things. Anyway, I'm more out of breath when running, so despite taking longer strides I'm having to slow those strides right down until I'm almost walking before getting my heart rate anything close to my upper limit. Slowing down the stride rate is actually difficult because you get into the habit of breathing in rhythm, and if you're breathing slower too (but your heart rate's still high) you get out of breath. Not sure how to solve that one tbh. Maybe I need to breath to a calypso rhythm or something.; Yesterday, the third attempt at this, part of the run that's been taking me 27 minutes or so took me 25, so I thought maybe I'd improved by 10%. I suspect, though, that was more to do with me having difficulty staying within my heart range.; Today I ran normally on a treadmill. Normally now still does mean long strides because your body soon gets used to things. Anyway, to run at 141 heart beats per minute I had to drag my miles per hour down to 4.8 and my stride length turned out to be 3.43 feet. This is a serious drop on my figures for the beginning of June when they were 5.8 and 3.67. I'm thinking this is because of the new technique and when my muscles get used to it I'll be even faster, but it could be that I've simply not been training as hard. If things drop that fast, I'll be back to square one in February after a few months on minimal training. 4.8mph would see me finish a marathon in 5.5 hours, by which time obviously everyone's back home with their feet up and you're battling rush hour traffic.; I did have the brainwave that, since I have a heart rate monitor, I can easily measure my maximum heart rate by basically running up the nearest hill until I almost die, stopping hopefully before I actually do. I'm going to try that to get a more accurate measurement because I'm not sure the heart rate range I'm using is optimum.
People searching: 2 September 2005: Hmm, this doesn't seem to work yet. I'm sure it will in due course, but it lists out of date information, doesn't separate different people with the same name, and can't seem to help me find my schoolfriend Neville Tooby (I know Steve, I still have the info you gave me).
GT73: 1 September 2005: Monsanto's GM oilseed rape GT73 was approved by the EU for use as animal feed yesterday, but not to be grown here, or to be used in human food.; The problem, though, is that animals fed GM food and their products (milk, cheese) need not be labelled as containing GM. There is evidence of gene transfer through the digestive process. The study I saw that showed that, I vaguely recall, was done with something like insects and I've not seen anything about it in mammals. The point is, it's at least conceivable for genes to transfer from what an animal eats into its body and be used in some way, perhaps by bacteria whose behaviour might subsequently change (so if you buy into the Yakult thing, then maybe avoiding GM is equally important). The standard defence would be that "there's no evidence" that happens, a phrase you hear time and again on the news once you get attuned to it. The standard answer is as follows.; All science has to be paid for and scientists mainly get their funding from corporations, so science that stands in the way of corporate 'progress' isn't funded, and may hinder a scientist's future career. Even if not that, there's work supported by business that, essentially, keeps scientists occupied. The free thinking days of Einstein and Newton are long gone.; Even if research is done, it may not be published. Those who serve as the gatekeepers to academic publication will also be scientists whose income comes from corporate sources. If research is published that provides a problem for business it will react, white cell like, to discredit the researchers and will fund further research to disprove or counteract the original work.; My partner and I have been discussing academic research published in her field, Occupational Therapy. She's found that she rarely finds a piece of work that stands up to even casual enquiry. We can only assume academic publications are also driven (after all, Robert Maxwell owned a great chunk of academic publishing) by finance and the need to publish. The papers in a journal are perhaps best understood as the best of the bunch from that month.; The research that proves the anti-corporate science may be well founded, and the counter-research poorly founded, but it's a rare person that would be able to make that judgment. Both would be reported equally strongly in the newspapers. Actually, since newspapers also depend on corporate money for their advertising, the spoiler research would likely be reported in a more supportive style.; I'm not just making this up, the story from last month's blog about a 90 day rat study completed as part of the approval process for Monsanto's Mon 863 corn which showed serious side effects that were interpreted into insignificance by influencing the initial design of the study and using selective statistical analysis.; In other words, science nowadays is corrupt. I'm not saying science itself is bad. I regard myself as a scientist. But the idea of being supported by research, by experts, is valuable to PR people so business has corrupted science in order easily to be able to say "scientifically proven" in its marketing communications.; Anyway, maybe it's another reason why it might be good not to eat meat. Remember CJD, caused by incorporating something unnatural to the animals' normal food? I'll bet there was no evidence that might happen either. Note too that the only supermarket that claims not to use GM for animal feed is Marks and Spencer.; The only problem with that is .. at what point do we decide to push back? Thinking people already don't eat meat, so this is no problem to a veggie. If meat eaters get health problems as a result of their diet, well, that's just natural selection at work .. everyone knows now that the vegetarian diet is healthier .. it's a lifestyle choice like smoking, drinking too much and sleeping around without protection, you pays your money and you takes your choice. But what happens if, through contamination, soya becomes entirely GM. It would be hard to avoid that, and many veggies would have to change much of their diets to avoid it. What next? Rice? Wheat? At what point would we have nothing uncontaminated left to eat? Where do you draw the line? Do you fight now, or later when GM is in everything you eat?