Category Archives: Life

Gym Log, Star Date somethingfunny

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This is mostly just a record for myself, so I can look back in a year or so and see if / how much my gym sessions have changed (I’m going to record the distances next time I’m at the gym and update this, because I can’t remember them all).  This is what my current gym session consists of (not in this order, I mix them up to keep thing interesting).

  • Recumbent Bike – Warm up – 9 minutes, ~70rpm
  • Treadmill – 8 minutes, 5.5km/h, 2-9% incline
  • Upright Bike – 8 minutes, 80-100 rpm
  • Wave Form – 4 minutes, level 8
  • Cross Trainer – 2 minutes, level 1
  • Rowing – 10 minutes, medium intensity (1800-1900m)
  • Arm Bike – 5 minutes, level 4, 5, 6, 7, 4
  • Lats – 3 sets, 15 reps, 20kg
  • Shoulder Press – 2 sets, 15 reps, 10kg
  • Chest Press – 3 sets, 15 reps, 20kg
  • Low Row – 3 sets, 15 reps, 20kg
  • Leg Press – 2 sets, 12 reps, 30kg
  • Abdominal Crunch – 3 sets, 15 reps, 20kg
  • Pectoral – 2 sets, 15 reps, 15kg
  • Adductor – 2 sets, 15 reps, 20kg
  • Abductor – 2 sets, 15 reps, 20kg
  • Leg Curl – 2 sets, 15 reps, 20kg
  • Leg Extension – 2 sets, 15 reps, 15kg (These make me want to die!)
  • Recumbent Bike – Cool Down – 10 minutes, ~80rpm

13/10/2011 – update: Leg extensions are only 15kg and Abdominal crunches only 20kg.

14/10/2011 – update: corrected a few other entries.

David Gemmell’s Legend

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You can read my full post about re-reading David Gemmell’s Legend over at BookThing.  I just wanted to write a short piece here to say that it’s as good as it ever was.  I decided to re-read it (and all of his books) while we were going through our books, adding them to Good Reads.

I have half a mind to re-write some of my reviews on BookThing because they tend to be very short in the early days, but we’ll see how that pans out.

Exercise for the sake of it

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I have never been interested in taking part in sport.  I’ve just never found it an enjoyable activity, sure I played football as a kid, and tennis in the street for two weeks of the year, but it wasn’t something I found engaging.  I don’t think PE at school helped, but I wouldn’t say it stopped me either, I just never enjoyed it.

And I never liked the idea of exercise for the sake of it.  Running is great if you enjoy running, but running purely because you feel it is good for you never sat well with me.  That probably explains most of the motivation for things I do – but anyway that’s a different story.

I’ve had a pretty sedate lifestyle (I know, with my physique you would never have guessed right?), although never being able to drive meant I spent my teens, 20’s and early 30’s doing a lot of walking, but these days it’s slowed even more.  We’ve not done any LRP events for 5 years or so, and my job is even more desk bound than it used to be.

There have been a couple of events over the last 12 months which left me feeling embarrassed or frustrated at how out of breath I was.  So I’ve been wanting to make a change.

But the real inspiration for what I’ve done (more in a bit) is Grete (@randomwittering on twitter, and owner of Bookthing, on twitter as @bookthing_uk), my amazing wife.  Grete has been going to the gym (and aqua aerobics) for nearly 2 years now.  I’ve been talking about maybe going for about 12 months, and I finally took the plunge a few weeks ago.  I had two inductions at the local council run gym, the first was good, the second less so.

But I eventually went for a full session with Grete, and have been a couple of times a week now for the past month and a bit with a short break.  I won’t say I enjoy it, it is after all, exercise for the sake of it in its most pure form.  I mean let’s be honest, walking at 5.5km/hour for 10 minutes with varying inclines is great except you never actually go anywhere.  So no, I don’t enjoy it, but it does make me feel good.

It makes me feel like I’ve made a positive change in my life which will hopefully result in things being better.  I’m never really going to change my eating habits a great deal these days – I made that change when I found I was diabetic and I’m just about living on the edge of what I can tolerate food-wise (although the last 12 months have slipped a little).  So I needed to make another change.  I’m not fit enough to ‘do sport’ even if I wanted to (which I don’t, maybe American Football, but not much else), and the advantage the gym has is that at least what you do varies during the 90 minutes or so you’re there.

So, thank you Grete for inspiring me to go to the gym, and for inspiring me to make a positive change in my life.

I can’t stop having the bacon cobs for breakfast, but at least I can burn off some of the calories walking nowhere for 10 minutes.

I hate cars

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So it’s my semi regular I hate cars post.  Our Megane gave up the ghost suddenly out of nowhere.  One day it was fine, one day the head gasket is gone and it’s on its last legs.

Thanks to some super quick action from Grete’s Awesome Father (Or, the GAF), and most of our savings (which is the first time we’ve had any for ages, and now they’re gone), we’ve got a new old car.  A Ford Focus.

Some random points,

  1. Air con – don’t need it until you have it, then can’t live without it.
  2. Some company paid us for the Megane and then they scrapped it, and it was easy and painless and we made enough cash to cover insuring the Focus.  This is a big change from when we scrapped the Escort and we had to beg someone to take it away and we paid them for the privilege.
  3. Slow punctures suck.
  4. Kwik Fit’s policy of charging different prices for the same service depending on whether you book online or just turn up in the store is shocking.  Luckily the store sorted out us.
  5. Cars in general, suck.

That is all.

Stars!

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Took this last night while waiting for Bubbles to come in (she didn’t).

No post-processing (other than re-sized to 1024)

Same resized image, but lightened,

And the original full size dark image (won’t display well if you click on it, unless you’ve got a really wide monitor).

An Open Letter to the Cast of Castle

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Dear Mr Fillion, Ms Katic, Mr Huertas, Mr Dever, Ms Jones, Ms Quinn, Mr Santiago-Hudson and Ms Sullivan.

Long have I defended the right of artists to have crazy batshit eccentric desires.  It is a fact, I would declare, that actors are artists, and artists have minds that we simple consumers can not understand, can not even fathom.

I have excused the behaviour of artists and actors alike.  Flying a hat first class across Europe?  He’s an artist!  Demanding people not look you in the eye?  She’s an artist!  A bowl of wolf nipple chips in the dressing room?  An artist!

All these and more I have forgiven actors before you and I will forgive actors after you.

But there is a line!

A line that should not be crossed!

Why, I shout now, why do you only work for half a year?  The latest season of Castle has finished its UK run.  Now we must wait!  I am a consumer, I do not wait!  But wait I must for another half year to pass before I see you all on my screen again.

Why?  So you can go gallivanting off and make a movie?  So you can all dress up and go out dancing during the award season?  We consumers work all year!  Every week, earning a crust so we can stuff stuffed crust down our gullets while living our lives vicariously through your on-screen actions.  We can’t cope with you not being there for half a year.  This evening, without Castle on my Television I had to have a conversation with my wife!  My wife!  I’m not even sure what she wanted to talk about, but I’m pretty damn sure I wasn’t interested.

Was it about a woman drowning in a bath of chocolate?  No!  Neither did it involve putrefying corpses lying in bed for a week.  Not even a hint of a crime or a mystery to solve.  Tomorrow I fear I might even need to watch the News or some other non-fiction TV content to get my fix.

So I ask again, what right do you have to only work half a year?  Do I not deserve more than 24 episodes of Castle?  Am I not worthy?

Yours, disgruntled of England.

PS. Keep up the excellent work, looking forward to season 4.

PPS. Wish we could buy the DVD’s in the UK!

Too Warm!

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It’s pretty warm here atm.  I realised a few weeks ago, that since I record the temperature of a little computer in the house, we can see how the house temperature has changed over time.

The computer does very little, and has roughly the same workload throughout the day, so these temperatures are purely as a result of the ambient air temperature in the room.

CPU’s

Hard Disk

Data collected with Munin and graphed by Munin using the ubiquitous rrdtool.

You are not alone

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I was thinking about random stuff last night just (actually, a few days ago now, since it took me a few days to publish this) before falling asleep.  It dawned on me that no matter what our beliefs, there’s a very good chance they’re shared by someone else.  You are truly not alone.  You might feel like you’re the only one who likes something or feels a certain way, or who has experienced a particular thing.  But you’re not.

There’s just under seven billion people on the planet (that’s 7,000,000,000 for clarity, damn you long and short scales).

One Percent (1%)

If you feel like maybe only one in a hundred people feel like you, that’s 70,000,000 (70 million) people.  That’s everyone in the UK and a few more besides.

One Tenth of a Percent (0.1%)

Maybe only one in a thousand people feel like you do.  So that’s 7,000,000 (7 million) people.  So just about everyone in London.

One One-Hundredth of a Percent (0.01%)

If one in ten thousand others have experienced what you have, that’s still 700,000 (7 hundred thousand people the world over).  In other words, everyone in Sheffield.

One One-Thousandth of a Percent (0.001%)

Maybe only one person in every one hundred thousand (100,000) people likes the same band you do.  There’s still 70,000 of you worldwide.  Enough people to fill Old Trafford.

One Ten-Thousandth of a Percent (0.0001%)

Now we’re getting down to small numbers.  If one in a million people think like you, there’s still 7000 of you knocking about the planet.  You could sell out the Hammersmith Apollo and still have to find somewhere to sit the other 2000 people.

One One-Hundred-Thousandth of a Percent (0.00001%)

Maybe you’re one in 10 million.  Maybe no one in all of London feels like you.  Even so, somewhere there are another 699 people in the world who do.  If you got the whole world together in one place, and you asked if anyone felt like you, 699 people would raise their hands.

One One-Millionth of a Percent (0.000001%)

In a land of 100 million people you are unique – but there are still 70 people on the planet who share your interest.  You could hire a London Bus, fill it and tour the world!

Trust me, you’re not alone.

The Good, The Bad and the Brick Work

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A day of two halves.  Our car is dying.  I hate cars.  You know that if you’ve read more than 2 posts on this blog.  I hate them and they hate me.  We can’t afford to buy into owning one at the right level where you can trade them in at the end and get another, so we run them into the ground, end up paying over the odds for maintenance and then manage to scrape together enough money to buy a new one when they die.

So here we are again.

However, in good news, the guy a friend recommended came around today and fixed our brickwork.  Let me tell you, it’s a weight the size of Everest off my shoulders, dampened only by the news of the car (which we got today).

This is how it used to look.

This is how it looks now, with some before and after shots at angles that will make your eyes bleed.