( Random subject i know, but couldn’t think of anything else ).
Thought the following video might be of interest to people. Its a forward looking approach to the world we live in at the moment with some very unexpected facts – like for example China will soon be largest English speaking country. When you think of things like that it makes for a very thought provoking discussion. For example, what will the history lessons in 20 years time be saying? Even, How will the lessons be run? Where from? Will we even need to if a computer can think the same as us. Unfortunately, with it comes a price. With the increased use of computers and technologies comes an increase in our use of natural resources and a greater divide between those that have and those that have not.
If i’m going to leave you with anything though, i want it to be enthusiasm. Working in technology means we can be part of a change that is making a dramatic impact to the world. We have a responsibility to make the right change and its so easy to look back to see what’s been achieved to believe that anything is possible.
So, i figured its woth a quick post to say thank you to all those that have sponsored me for my Swimathon this year. At teh moment i’m at the very impressive total of £270 and unfortunately for me that means that after the swim a rather embarasing photo of me with Duncan Goodhew will be making an appearance ( yes, even on here ). However, it is great news that i’ve raised so much and thank you to everyone that has donated – it means as lot, especially during these times.
For those that are interested, over the weekend i was able to dig out all of the old certificates from the previous times i’ve done the event and its quite interesting. I had forgotten how much i had done it and i thought that others might be interested. Enjoy ( i was born in 1981 ).
I remember a while ago reading about the carbon cost of google and while i can understand looking at every company big and small to reduce carbon i couldn’t help but think that there are surely some things that we can’t do without. Yes, encourage companies to reduce carbon( 1 ). No, lets not be stupid and instead be realistic about how much we rely on certain things. Google is one in particular where its fairly easy to say we would not be where we are today without being able to research and find things at our fingertips. I’m now looking forward to making my new coffee table with a nice coloured glass top purely because i was able to find a manufacturer on the net who will make just what i want.
This did get me thinking though. I can’t live without Google. In fact, it occured to me how dependant i am on products from Google and Apple. To list them all, in my house / online i make heavy use of : Apple iPhone, Apple TV, Apple AirPort Express, Apple iTunes, Apple Mac Desktop Pro running OS X, Apple iPod, Apple MobileMe, iGoogle, Google Desktop, Google Mail, Google Calendar, Google Reader, Google Docs, Google Notebook, Google Analytics and Google Chrome. ( Phew ). Okay so i might be able to make do without music in my lounge or something like that but the Google suite of products are a good example of small tools integrating well together to make a big difference. On their own they don’t do much, but when its possible to get at them from anywhere all in the same place it starts to make each of them more and more useful. Google Reader was my newest addition to consolidate my feeds and means i don’t have to keep a news reader on my mac in sync with one at work. It was even better when there is then a widget that works with iGoogle so i don’t even have to leave the comfort of my own home ( page ) to view them.
( 1 ) – interesting side note, talking of reducing carbon, take a look at Blackle. Its essentially an interface on to Google but the difference is that the screen is black. The company states that black pixes use less energy than white ones and so by providing a black interface to the popular search engine will save a lot of energy ( 1,150,058.345 Watt hours saved at time of writing ).
Today i am celebrating 3 months of being left handed. Sounds like an odd thing to say but in retrospect it feels like that’s the case. On 19th Dec 2008 i had surgery to repair a muscle hernia in my right fore arm. This was hopefully the solution to a long series of injuries and pain that often stopped me playing ultimate and other things like DIY ( not always a bad thing ). After the op i had to ensure that i didn’t use it for anything that could rip open the hopefully now fixed hernia. To be specific i couldn’t lift anything heavier than half a full kettle. I figure i pint is less than half a kettle, right?
Although this is now the third time that i’ve had an operation on my arm, nothing quite prepares you for being in some way handicapped for a while. Now that three months is up, looking back i think i’ve coped pretty well. Although i haven’t had to write anything left handed i’ve tried to do as much as i can with my left hand. Some things are easy – picking up bags, opening doors – and some things require a lot of concentration – cutting things for example. All in all, in some ways i’m pleased that i’ve gone through this. Not only should i now have an arm that works, but i also don’t feel as useless if and when i have to use my left hand. I feel more coordinated and more in control. Its all good.
And what do i do to celebrate? Well, probably not the best place to start but you’ve got to start somewhere, and that place is down the driving range! Fortunately all seems to have gone well and besides a bit of expected soreness, i didn’t really notice any pain! In fact the only thing that i did notice was that my shots were actually going straight and where i wanted them to go. Didn’t realise that was part of the surgery! Roll on the full 9 tomorrow!
As you will have seen from previous posts i’ve recently been increasing the amount i swim in order to complete the 5000m challenge for the Swimathon ( *cough* sponsor me *cough* ). The problem with this is that in a 25m pool i have to swim 200 lengths & that means concentrating and counting – two things i don’t normally have at 6:30am! For a while i’ve been looking for a training aid that will help me and as part of the research i’ve found things ranging from the £400 Suunto Triathalon Pack through to the rather cheaper Timex Ironman series of watches. The problem i found with all of them was that swimming seemed to be a secondary thought. When swimming, yes you want a nice big display, but you don’t want pathetic small buttons which make it impossible to count laps & times. The Zoggs Lap-Pro was perfect in this respect in that the whole face was a big button but unfortunately this product was discontinued.
I was almost at the point of giving up when i came across the Sport Count series of timers. As is no real surprise these are Australian made watches that specifically target one handed operation. Considering the top end model was $40 AUS it was not a difficult decision to purchase one and i’m pleased to say it arrived on Tuesday. My first experience with it was Wednesday morning during my training and first impressions are certainly good. This is mainly because there isn’t anything too complicated to go wrong. Its a simple timer with a single button. While it took a little while to work out how to operate the thing with only one button, once i got that sorted it was comfortable to wear, not obtrusive and easy to read, even when underwater. For me the real benefit came when i got the lap times off the watch and realised that one of the ‘laps’ ( 100m ) took 50% more time than all the others. While you could argue i was just slow, in this case it turned out i did 200m more than i thought because what i thought was 4 lengths was actually 6!
I got mine from eBay and the cost was £25 to purchase & send the item from Australia, then £11 worth of import tax. Its not the most complicated of watches, but for me its perfect.
So, i was halfway through writing a blog post about my recent appointment with the Asthma clinic when i suddenly had to think twice about what i was writing. I was intending to write the good news that had been passed on to me by the nurse to say that my FEV figures had gone up since my last appointment in September. I was however, until i tried to get the exact figures from the images i had taken.
It was the slightly geeky part of me that decided to take a photo of the results rather than write them down but it turned out to be a good idea. When i looked at the results from Mondays appointment something didn’t add up and basically the nurse had read the meter incorrectly. I was clearly able to see the results from September and use that to make sure i knew which were old results and which were new. The end result is that unfortunately ( somehow ) despite a new prescription of drugs and at least 3 times more exercise than normal, my asthma is apparently worse than it was before. As with all statistics however, we can’t simply look at one data point and i’ll e heading back to the nurse in a month to make sure its not getting any worse!
When the iPhone came out i got one to organise my life. I have a terrible memory for the things that i need to remember and the thought of integrating calendar, tasks, emails etc into a device that i carry around all the time was very appealing. I spent a fair amount of time looking into how i can get all the various pieces linked together and included things such as Remember the milk which would help keep track of my tasks. At the time, Google didn’t offer a synchronisation service for the iPhone and so i had hooked together various services including the new MobileMe service offered by Apple. This was a cloud ‘push’ service which offered to keep Mail, Contacts and Calendars in sync with all configured devices including PC’s, MAC’s and iPhones. For £56 a year it wasn’t cheap but i took the leap and went for it.
A few months on and i’ve only just about switched over my emails to make use of this new email. To say i’m not making the most of the service is an understatement but that doesn’t mean to see i can’t comment on how useful it has been. With push email, the notifications are essentially unlimited length text messages which i can reply to on the spot, or phone for a more detailed chat. The online contacts mean that any corruption can easily be corrected with a simple ’sync’. The calendar wasn’t as useful because i prefer the Google Calendar plugin for iGoogle.
One thing i hadn’t made use of, until now, was the Gallery feature offered by the service and this was largely because i hadn’t taken the time to organise my iPhoto gallery properly. Now that i’ve done that, i have to admit i’m impressed with the Gallery that MobileMe offers me. The integration is seemless and after two clicks ( and a small upload time ) an event or gallery can be published online. However that is a service that lots offer. I’m more impressed with the user interface of the product and for me this was the biggest swing away from my old tool. For those that are familiar with iPhoto won’t notice much of a difference to the online experience both from an administrative point of view, or from a view perspective. The gallery loads quickly and provides the nice ‘thumbnail flick-over’ that allows you to quickly pre-view the album. Once inside an album various views allow you to quickly get to the image you want without having to wait a while for the images to load. The iPhone version of the gallery is nice too!
On the down side, there are a couple of things that frustrate me. The concept of nested albums is something that seems to be lacking from iPhoto and sadly this is also lacking from MobileMe. I can’t understand why i shouldn’t be able to create sub events or sub galleries in an album and that oversight is something i haven’t got used to yet. Although i don’t always want people being able to steal my images i’m also surprised that there isn’t an option to view the original image size. And lastly, the interface is clean and works well but i would personally like to see the ‘next page’ links a lot more obvious and i’d like to be able to skin the application ( for example, to be able to configure rows and columns so that album titles don’t get cropped ).
Overall, i’m really pleased that i’ve moved my gallery over. It took a little while, but i haven’t looked back since. In fact, the only looking back has been looking back through old photos that i forgot i even had!
As with all statistics however, we can’t simply look at one data point and i’ll e heading back to the nurse in a month to make sure its not getting any worse!
