HelmetCam:1 Stupid Drivers: 0
On my way home from work on Friday last week I saw a car coming towards me along a road with a 20mph speed limit that to my eyes was doing closer to 40 than 20 so I gestured to them, politely to slow down. The car responded by deliberately, to my eyes, swerving towards me. I’ve had some debate with a couple of friends about wether what I did was provocation to the driver…frankly it doesn’t matter if it was, there was no call for that action as a response.
Luckily, actually deliberately to capture this kind of thing (although more often stupid and careless drivers and fellow cyclists than malicious ones), I have for the last couple of weeks been wearing a camera mounted on my cycle helmet. It’s a dinky little thing but it can capture full 1080p HD, slo-mo at 240 frames per second and can also live stream straight to Ustream 🙂
Anyhoo…before I go on take a look at the incident for yourself. http://youtu.be/SX6YFCGoN2I
After sending the youTube link to the Cambridge Police Twitter account I was asked to go to the Police station today to discuss the incident.
I took the full HD video with me on my iPad to show the officer who I had an appointment booked with. After viewing it a couple of times he asked if he could borrow my iPad to show a colleague because he wasn’t sure what the driver could be charged with!
Upon his return I was informed that unless they could prove who was driving they couldn’t press any charges at all but the car in question was owned by a Woman and he suspected from their age that the other driver named on the same insurance was her Son (I had told him it was a man driving). He told me he intended to speak to the registered owner of the vehicle and let them know what had happened, and if he was told that someone else was driving he’d speak to them as well. He also told me that the police would be informing the insurance company about the incident and would leave it to their discretion as to what happened next.
Overall, I think that’s a pretty fair result 😀
My Naked Lunch moment…
Tonight I went swimming in my new wetsuit for the first time…and for the first time in Cambridge’s rather strange outdoor 100 yard long Lido. As was always going to happen I started off too fast and was slowing up halfway down the second length (second 100yrd remember) but it wasn’t so much that I was running out of energy, more that I felt like my new wetsuit was trying to kill me!
By the end of the second length (and as in the indoor 25M pool I was doing sets of 200m) I really felt like the suit was moving around and really pulling against the front of my neck on my throat. When I brought the suit last Saturday there had been someone in the shop to help and advise me when putting it on and it had felt fine. The shop also had an endless indoor pool so I was able to try swimming in it and did do for around 5 minutes with no problems at all. And yet, with every stroke down that second length I felt like the suit was trying to strangle me.
At the end of that length I stopped the time on my watch and set about tweaking things to see if I could get the suit to fit better. As I was on my own I’d had no help putting the wetsuit on, but I’d had a quick practice at home the night before to see if I could manage it and it seemed fine…the one thing I was worried about was doing the zip up but by arching my back and pushing my shoulder blades together I seemed to manage it fine.
I swam another couple of lengths and things we’re a little better but still not great, certainly not good enough to be able to swim a mile in without stopping. After each pair of lengths I’d try another tweak here or there and by the time I’d finished I think I’d got things pretty well settled down, but it’s safe to say that tonights session was a whole bag of no fun.
Getting changed afterwards I had what David Baddiel described during his and Robert Newman‘s Wembley gig as a Naked Lunch moment. The example, if memory serves, he gave that night was a male ballet dancer. “I’m on stage, in front of loads of strangers, wearing nothing but tights, my packet’s showing…what the fuck am I doing?!? Oh, I’m a ballet dancer, that’s OK then”.
For me it was more along the lines of, my new ‘gadget’ has just tried to kill me, I’m knackered, I’m stood on a cold, wet, concrete floor, in a small wooden cabin, it’s pissing it down with rainy and I’ve still got to cycle home…and keep doing this for another 4 months. What the fuck am I doing?!?”. I then continued to get changed and put my trousers on…and realised I was wearing an old pair of trousers that by now probably have getting on for a four inch gap between my stomach and the trousers. “Oh yeah”, I thought, “I’m, losing a fuck load of weight…that’s OK then!”
To relax myself after I’d then cycled home in the rain I went for a quick 10 minute run on the treadmill, and if I’ve chosen to go for a run to relax you know things must be bad!
Plan 9…from somewhere
I’ve got a little under 4 months to go until the Triathlon is here and I think I’ve just mentally moved onto what must be the 9th iteration of my training schedule.
The recent Cambridge Beer Festival did put something of a dent in my schedule as expected and also brought 4 more pounds of weight on over the 2 weeks it was running (actually a bit less than I expected) but getting back into train has been tricky at best.
I did my first run since the beerfest on Monday evening and even though it was only the now standard 3 miles it was hard work..I’ve still got to double that distance and I’ve now got less than 4 months to get there.
Plan 8 involved building fitness through swimming and on the bike and limiting myself to runs every couple of weeks thereby reducing the pounding on my somewhat arthritic frame. After last night I’m not sure that’s going to work. I think I just need to get miles under the legs, but just in smaller, more regular doses.
I’m therefore going to try and run just a single mile every day that I have time. Including showers and changing it shouldn’t take me more than 20 minutes so I really have no excuse.
Now that I’ve got a wetsuit I’m also goi got start some open water and long LONG course swimming. Finally I’ll start to put in some longer rides at the weekends when I’ll have the time to spare.
I’m not as yet 100% confident that I can actually finish this thing with the run at the end but I’m going to give it a damn good try!
Help! I appear to have accidentally entered an Olympic Triathlon
At the end of February this year I decided that dieting on its own was far too dull to do for another year and I needed a target, a good reason not to have another pint rather than just to watch a number get lower most weeks when I weigh myself. (Lucky him!! Mine stays the same or rises – theWife)
For some reason entering an Olympic distance Triathlon, taking place at the end of September, seemed like a pretty good idea at the time and a week after pre-registering I entered… see, it’s not as if this was even a spur of the moment drunken decision! (Crazy one yes – theWife)
To let you into the level of the stupidity we’re dealing with here, I’m still 3 stone (20Kg) overweight and have Arthritis. I need to swim one mile down the river Cam, cycle 25 miles and then run a 10K (just over 6 miles). Until I started training I hadn’t run since I was at school, done any swimming more than a holiday potter for about as long, and I only cycle for commuting.
On the plus side my diet regime last year did have me on a cross trainer regularly so fitness wise I’m not heading into this from a complete standstill – clearly there is quite a lot of work to do.
At the time the intention was to just do it with whatever kit I’d got already and simply for the sake of finishing. Since then, and rather unsurprisingly, my competitive instinct has kicked in and so unfortunately has my penchant for buying gadgets. Still, I probably needed a new bike right?!? (mental craziness has kicked in – theWife)
Now, as everything for this event is somewhat spiralling out of control, and because I’m unlikely to do something this stupid again I’ve decided that I should support the official charity of the event, Cancer Research, and try to raise a decent sum of money.
I’m aiming for £1000, and that, dear reader, is obviously where you come in.
I’m not going to talk about the charity, they do a far better job of it than I ever could, but all I will say is that almost everyone I know either knows someone that’s been affected by cancer directly or has had a family member affected, so the cause is clearly a good one. (a very very good one – theWife)
I, and presumably they, would appreciate anything you can give to try to help me reach this target. Donations can be made through the Just Giving website at justgiving.com/jodrell
Please feel free to publicise this page or the Just Giving one directly to other people. I’ll be adding more to the site as my training progresses, with a few pics of just how silly I look wearing Lycra and just how knackered I look after some of the training sessions. (ha ha ha ha they’re worth seeing and spending money for – theWife)
After a pub chat a friend and I decided that 3 hours was a good round number to aim for as a time with a 30 minute swim, a 1.5 hour ride and 1 hour run at the end. We did of course forget to factor in any time for the transitions and changes between events, but I still think it’ll be a good mark to measure myself against, despite it actually being a pretty slow time (according to people who do this kind of thing regularly). (that’s not slow in my opinion – theWife!) To be honest though, I’ll just be happy to finish the whole thing without having to stop and walk.
So there we have it. A silly event, a silly target and a pretty silly amount of money…come on people, how hard can it be?!? (OK so it’s mainly crazy but the money’s not silly so get spending you lot – theWife) (oh and I proofed it, so sorry for any errors or interruptions! – theWife)
Oh crap I’m boned :-/
As I mentioned in my previous post I’ve entered an Olympic distance Triathlon. Training actually hasn’t been going too badly. I’ve had some pretty good advice from a post on Reddit and last Friday i ran 3 miles for that I think was the first time ever.
After cycling around a lot on Sat then pooling around Cambridge doing some shopping on Sunday morning I decided my legs needed a break and thought I’d pop swimming on Sunday afternoon. There was a land session from 5-6 which meant I could swim, then get back to cook dinner.
As I said previously I used to do A LOT of swimming so was banking on this being an easy start for me, even if it were to take place tomorrow. After that swim yesterday I’ve probably got more confidence in me being able to complete the Run that the Swim!
After just 100m (4 lengths) I was wondering why I couldn’t feel my arms! Back in the day 1500m would have been a warm-up before the main session and now I’m blown up after 100m :-/
I switched to Breaststroke for 100m and then alternated 100m swims between Freestyle and Breaststroke until I’d managed to clock up 1000m and then skulked out of the pool…the half mile ride back home wasn’t particularly pleasant either.
What the hell have I let myself in for!
Current mood: terrified
Chance of completion: 50%
3 Silly Things…
On Monday I did 3 silly things…
Firstly I closed a window with 6 tabs open and told my machine I didn’t want to save any of it. That’s an hours work I’m not getting back :-/
Secondly I managed to wash my wallet…
Not just drop it into a puddle or the toilet or something bu actually put a pair of trousers into the washing machine with the wallet still in the back pocket thereby giving my wallet, driving license, all my cards and some cash a damn good soaking. However, other than my leather wallet now looking somewhat faded everything seems to have survived the experience rather well.
The third thing I did was to enter an Olympic distance Triathlon…
Let me just give that a moment to sink in.
That’s a 1 mile Swim, a 25 mile bike ride and a run of just over 6 miles (10k).
To give you an idea of just how stupid this was I’ll give you some background on me. I’m 40 years old and have had arthritis for around 15 years. I lost, through diet and exercise on a Cross Trainer, just over 3 stone last year but I still weigh about 16 and a half stone (230 pounds or 105Kg). The furthest I’ve ever run was a 2 mile Cross country at school. I do Cycle regularly but that’s only just over 2 miles each way to and from the station for work. I used to swim a hell of a lot but haven’t done anything serious for 25 years…
I mean, how hard can it be?!?
Current mood: thoughtful
Chance of completion: 65%
Douglas Adams was right…
Having just wasted almost an hour and a half of my life banging my head against a corrupt data dictionary in the INNODB database engine, a system that’s designed not to crash but in the unlikely event that it does it’ll automagically recover itself, I am very much reminded of this quote from Douglas Adams…
“The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to get at or repair.”
Douglas Adams (1952 – 2001)
Thai Pink Eggs!
Well, I’ve always said I’ll try anything once and I do like a bit of cooking so how could I resist buying these Pink eggs when I saw them on sale in a supermarket in Thailand.
The pack simply says that they’re preserved eggs but gives no indication as to how. There’s also nothing mentioned about if any preparation is required so off to the Internet I went.
It turns out they’re a variation of Chinese Century Eggs and are prepared over a number of weeks by being sealed in a mix of clay, ash, salt and quicklime. The pics on that page also made me even more nervous about trying them…they may be Pink on the outside but they’re Black once opened!
It turns out my fears were groundless. The preservation process turns the white of the egg into a very dark brown or black and somewhat translucent set jelly that’s actually pretty flavourless. The yolk however is another matter. The colour is an opaque very dark green to black with a somewhat lighter colour on the edges and the texture appears to be that of oil paint.
The taste of the Yolk is slightly salty, rich, creamy and intensely eggy. Really very tasty indeed!
The one thing missing from the ones I had, and I can’t say I was disappointed by this omission, was the smell. Perhaps it’s the more modern preservation process or some variation in these Thai Pink versions of the Century Egg but the commonly described smell of sulphur/ammonia was absent.
All in all I think these will make a nice change for the office from bringing biscuits back 🙂
Of Course This Stunning Building Is an Aquarium
from Gizmodo http://gizmodo.com/5992422/of-course-this-stunning-building-is-an-aquarium
by, Leslie Horn
Blue Planet Aquarium is the most aquarium-like aquarium you’ve ever seen. Cloaked in aluminum shingles that evoke fish scales, it’s shaped like an ocean wave. More » 
Russian meteor largest in a century: explosion rivaled nuclear blast
from reddit: the front page of the internet http://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/18l2uu/russian_meteor_largest_in_a_century_explosion/
by, (author unknown)
submitted by newnaturist to science
[link] [46 comments]
