Leeds again
Another trip to Leeds, this time to fix the internet link in the Leeds incubator. I’d assumed that because the router wasn’t responding it would be down to someone unplugging something - in fact it turned out to be a fault with the BT line. Calling the number gave perfectly normal ringing, but there was a total lack of tone - either dial or web - from the linebox. Hence no ADSL, hence no remote access. Even more annoyingly, there still isn’t any phone service in the Leeds incubator space.
BT have this rather nifty SMS update facility now - “your fault has been escalated”, “an engineer has been dispatched to site”, “your fault is now resolved” etc. Unfortunately the last one was a bit optimistic - there’s still no response from the router, which makes me think another visit is needed tomorrow. Something obviously needs kicking again…
Filed under Me | Comment (0)Concorde
Aviation anorak that I am, I’ve just watched the BBC’s coverage of the last commercial flight of Concorde touching down at Heathrow. The first and only time I’ve been to Rekjavik a charter flight from the UK came in while I was waiting to fly out to Brussels, and because I was air-side I could get right up to the jetway where it was parked and get some pictures through the windows. Having stepped off a 777 a week or so earlier, my first reaction was how small it was close-to. But about five years prior to that I happened to be driving past the end of the main runway at Birmingham airport one afternoon, when a Concorde took off overhead. Not expecting 4 Olympus engines to come across the road a few hundred feet up and at full takeoff power, it was a bit of a shock to put it lightly. After that I always had a degree of sympathy for the inhabitants of Windsor who got blasted twice a day if the wind was in the wrong direction…
Filed under Geek | Comment (0)A productive morning
For once, this morning was productive - a project brief, project proposal and two case studies, all PDF’d and emailed away. So now I can fiddle around with things with a clear conscience until later this afternoon, I’m going to have a play around with Agendus for the P800…
Update: It didn’t work. At all, which for a 0.9 beta doesn’t inspire confidence. And the P800 sync software is now slowing my laptop down, grrr…
Filed under Work | Comment (0)Update
More for my benefit I suppose, but here’s what’s been going on:
August
Scrapped one project (with the Large Retailer) on the basis that it was going nowhere, and started another with Not Quite So Large B2B Supplier (names have been changed to protect the innocent). Large amounts of hassle all round.
Decided to get the hell out of Leeds and go to York instead. Started looking for properties in York, found this.
September
Moved in to York. Wrote up dissertation, after much gnashing of teeth crunching numbers for hierarchical cluster analysis (don’t ask). Did various bits of work on the business. Installed the systems for the Spark incubators in Leeds and Wakefield. With no excuses left, find a decent route and start running along it
October
Finished the dissertation and handed the damn thing in. Sighs of relief. Business work starts in earnest. Win some, then lose them. All looks a bit dodgy, then other prospects pop out of the woodwork. Panicking? Not quite yet, but still the possibility.
Snickleways
Last night’s club run was through the Snickleways - which is York-speak for ‘gap between building just narrow enough for one person to fit down semi-sideways’. Not the most obvious route for 20-odd runners to pound through, but effective - it’s not particularly fast, but as you don’t spend more than 30 seconds at any one pace in any one direction, it very rapidly gets heart rates up. Not just of runners, either - there were more than a few wandering tourists who were startled by a line of runners who exploded from a 3-foot wide alley exit, ran two doors down the street and almost immediately dived down the next gap between buildings.
We were out for about 1h20, and the consensus was that the distance came to about 10 miles. I’ve no idea if that’s anywhere near correct or not, by the time I’d been in the lanes for 10 minutes I was completely disoriented and lost track of where I’d been let alone where I was going. But the route back took us down the main road past the racecourse, and by the time I’d reached that point I hit the wall. It’s the first time in a very long while I can remember this happening (which probably means I’m not going far or fast enough), but within the space of about 30 seconds my legs turned to lead and my lungs became about as much use as a pair of paper bags. The thing that amazed me was the sheer speed that it happened - one moment I was feeling relaxed and in control of the pace, and the next I was reduced to hobbling along while the rest of the group accelerated off into the darkness. The last mile or so was at least half the speed of the previous nine, as I shuffled over the railway bridge giving a reasonable impression of having had a hip transplant.
Filed under Play | Comment (0)Running away with it
Having made the move to York, one of the things on my list of things to do was to get out running again. York’s the ideal place to do it - it’s about as flat as it’s possible to get without being non-stick, and being on the riverside there are some excellent routes practically on the doorstep. The weather’s been good as well, so there’s really not a lot of excuses.
I also decided that I was going to start club running again, which is something that I haven’t done for a very (very) long time. For some reason I’m hopeless at maintaining a steady pace on my own - I tend to speed up until I’m going ever-so-slightly faster than I’m comfortable with, and end up feeling completely shagged out at the end of it. At least when you’re running with people, there’s a pace that you can nail yourself to, which makes the whole process that much more successful as far as I’m concerned.
I went out with the second of the clubs that Google found for me on Tuesday, and ended up in a fast group. It wasn’t what I’d planned particularly, but when you don’t know anyone it’s difficult to know what someone’s idea of ‘fast’ is, relative to yours - for all I knew, they could be capable of leaving Paula Radcliffe in the dust. The group I started out with was reasonably large, so it didn’t seem like a problem - although with a fractionally-quicker pace it could have been. Because I was in the middle, there was at least the possibility of dropping back to the slower end of the line - until I looked around after about twenty minutes to realise that I was the slower end - there was noone in sight behind.
And it’s a powerful incentive to keep up, when you find yourself twenty minutes out from a club that you’ve only the sketchiest idea of it’s location, and you’ve spent the last twenty minutes concentrating on maintaining the pace of the group and not crashing into trees rather than logging the lefts and the rights and mentally reversing them so you could get home if you needed to. Basically, I didn’t have the slightest idea of where I was, so falling behind was going to be a bad idea if I ever wanted to see my wife and family again (OK, slight exaggeration, but there are some disconcertingly dark bits of York.)
All of which meant that I ended up going further and faster than I would have normally intended to - and just goes to show how I wouldn’t have gone as far and as fast if I’d made a deliberate choice about who and where and how fast to go. But it was actually a bloody good run all the same, made all the better for knowing that I really shouldn’t have been able to keep up the pace given the amount of effort I’ve put in up to now. Maybe I’m in better shape than I thought…
Filed under Play | Comment (0)Excuses
OK, so I haven’t posted here for the wrong side of two months. Partly due to pressure of work, partly due to moving, and partly due to the novelty wearing off (hey, at least I’m honest).
But then just recently I had a reason to fiddle around with the website, and ended up reading back through some of the entries here. It made me realise just how much I’d forgotten about what I’d been doing - not years-and-years-ago type stuff, but things that took place only a couple of months ago.
Quite apart from the fact that I’d be stuffed if I ever sat down and tried to write an autobiography (not that there’s any danger of inflicting that on the world), it’s a bit depressing that so much of the day-to-day stuff that comprises my life doesn’t actually lodge in my brain for any great length of time. All of which makes me wonder if this blogging thing is more than a bit of a narcisstic geek indulgence, and actually a medium-term memory replacement.
So I’ll try to start posting again…
Filed under Me | Comment (0)