Software, Technology

Trialling Disqus

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I’ve been thinking for a while that this blog needed tighter social integration into Facebook etc., and came across Disqus ("discuss") whilst researching commercial spam filters for a client. Am trying it out here – it’ll allow you to comment on posts by logging into your Facebook, Twitter or Disqus account and hopefully diminish barriers to commenting marginally, not to mention make for a slicker, more interactive commenting experience.

Thoughts appreciated.

So far, all I’ve really had opportunity to notice is that the set-up process was fairly seamless and I had to do remarkably little hackery to get it to take the place of the native WordPress commenting engine, and that it syncs into the WordPress DB so even if Disqus someday goes bust (always a worry for Silicon valley start up services) – I’ll still have all the comments here.

General update, Observational

The routines and rhythms of a country gentleman

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I seem to be turning into a country person. My surprisingly enduring passion for running has been joined by a not-insignificant-interest in gardening (at least insofar as it results in food), instead of drinking I’m more often driving, BBQs have become a regular occurrence, and every room in the house is fast acquiring its own ‘project’ – whether its painting a wall, putting up shelves or insulating.

Is this a mark of middle age? Maybe. Am I embracing it? Hells yeah, this is massive fun. Maybe at some point a year or two after we moved in we’ll ‘finish’ but the received wisdom seems to be that these things are endlessly cyclical…

There are limits to this, though. I don’t own any tweed, will never own a gun, and don’t plan on taking up hunting or fishing. Golf, however, may happen again at some point…

Travel

Airline delays and corporate cheekiness

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We had a couple of significant hold-ups when travelling, the worst of which was a four hour delay leaving for Finland on ‘BlueOne‘, an SAS airline. A pilot friend indicated to me that when they reschedule or delay flights, they often do it for the minimum possibly window they can to avoid a fine under EU law – which is three hours. Sure enough, the flight was rescheduled by 2h55m and they should have been in the clear… However the flight was delayed a further hour and so I thought I’d write in, checking for compensation.

It turns out, that as the flight wasn’t postponed for commercial reasons – i.e. the airline hadn’t put us onto another, more full-up and therefore more commercially viable flight – but had rather been delayed because of a shortage of cabin crew. The check-in girl told us they were “tired.” This amounts, as far as I can see, to bad planning on the airline’s behalf and if anything you’d think they would have to compensate us… but no, not required to at all, apparently.

It was reasonably astonishing shoddiness, but at least SAS’ customer support desk had the good graces to feel bad about it – to the tune of a token 100 euro gift voucher.

If anyone needs to know the low-down on your entitlements, MoneySavingExpert has a good article on it. The airlines won’t volunteer it, that’s for certain, though, so you have to be proactive in following up an issue yourself!

Miscellany, Travel

Airport snow and dodgy landings

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An older thought, but one I wanted to capture. When visiting Finland – still covered in a blanket of white in mid April – we wondered why Heathrow seems to collapse at the slightest dusting of snow.

It seems it’s partly due to the lack of expertise, equipment and manpower to clear the snow – but given that aeroplanes are overengineered to cope with adverse weather conditions (as you’d hope), there had to be another reason – and after all, Heathrow could learn its lesson and buy a few more snowploughs for next time!

One reason, it seems, is conservatism on behalf of BAA – with every airline in the world flying into LHR, it hardly matters what standards Boeing manufactures their planes to, or the quality of BA’s training. It’s the maintenance staff at Air Qumran and the risk posed by its hungover pilot who’s never even seen a snowstorm, much less landed a plane on an icy runway slick with a fresh dusting of powder.

I don’t blame them on that front. After all – we all learn defensive driving these day so we are prepared with other driver’s competence – why not manage an airport the same way?

General update

Commute blogging

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The increased volume of blogging despite the fact I’m back to work is down to the MacBook Air and 3G card. I rattle off a few posts into Evernote, then refine and publish when time allows, adding links and correcting stuff. It works brilliantly when I get a seat (and don’t have more pressing work bits to contend with).

Hope you’re enjoying it. Any requests or feedback appreciated.

 

Software, Technology

Google Android maturing fast

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If you read my earlier post on the Android vs IOS debate you’ll understand many of the reasons why I feel that Google’s platform isn’t quite ready for the mass market yet, despite its increasing sales success and technical brilliance. However, at Google I/O some news dropped that will make a difference to this.

In brief: Google is unifying the platform – which will mean fewer different versions in the wild, simpler and more regular updates for all phone (and tablet) users, and a marginally more tightly controlled user experience!

The conflict between open and closed, open ideals and ‘being evil’, tends to get polarised to extremes. In my view, complete choice is just too confusing for the average Joe, so am massively pleased to read that Google seems to have understood this (to some extent) – albeit from the perspective of the developers. Hopefully it’ll bring Android into contention for me the next time I review my handset choice… Which might give Google a little time to thrash it all out if the rumours of supply chain disruption to Apple’s iPhone5 production line bear true!

In unrelated news, my brother-in-law is trialling a Blackberry Torch for a week, having used an iPhone 3GS for the last 18 months. May well get his thoughts for another blog post, whichever way it goes…

Music

Lonely Island – Turtleneck and Chain – album impressions

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Ever since I was 11 years old I’ve been trying to work out what music I liked, other than the Beatles / classical music / west-end musical / intricate guitary combo I was brought up with. I remember buying the Cranberries album in 1993/4 for Zombie, and feeling a bit unsettled that – other than Zombie – it wasn’t quite what I expected. And since then I found my feet in a rock/alt rock/folk rock and occasional hip-hop melange that feels like “me” when I turn the volume up.

One slightly more niche genre that keeps rearing its head is musical comedy, and more specifically – comedy rap. My brother introduced me to Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince when I was 11 years old and I distinctly remember thinking that the song “I think I can beat Mike Tyson” was one of the funniest things to be composed ever at the time (I now know it’s not). In it, Will Smith challenges Mike Tyson to a fight and gets seven types of crap kicked out of him.

Needless to say, when The Lonely Island materialised with their epochal ‘Incredibad’ album a couple of years ago, featuring such works of self-deprecating parody as “On a boat” and “Like a boss” (all LI videos are NSFW, btw) I felt that the void that had been made as the Fresh Prince evolved into Wiki-wiki-Will Smith had once again been filled. So it was with not a little anticipation that I checked out some tracks from the new album, Turtleneck and Chain.

Sadly, for me, for the most part, it doesn’t live up to the heights of its predecessor. The tunes aren’t as catchy, the raps aren’t as articulate or funny. But two things made me smile.

First, the song “Rocky”, in which Andy Samberg challenges Rocky to a fight and gets seven types of crap kicked out of him. Sound familiar? I wonder if it was a deliberate homage to the Fresh Prince (in which case it’s clever-ish) or if its (in)advertant plagiarism (in which case, not so much).

Second, “Jack Sparrow”. There are few people whose swagger I’d like to match, but Captain Jack has a certain slurry je ne sais quois that has got to make for a hell of a party trick. Michael Bolton feels the same way – check it out:

Running

10k time – improvements in a week

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OK, so instead of running my third 10k of the week yesterday I assembled my study from Ikea flatpack crates and went to the playground with my wife and daughter, but still… it was a good week for running training.

The last three 10ks I did (SunWeds/Sat of last week) saw a pretty dramatic improvement – 68 mins, then 64, then 61. I attribute some of it to improved fitness from the regularity of the runs, but most of it I’d say was down to my attempt do make the ITB rolling part of my daily routine. Which means I have five minutes before my shower rolling around on the ground with a large polystyrene roller. And whilst I’m down there, I’m trying to restart the ‘100 push ups’ challenge, which I flatly gave up on a couple of years ago and have since lost all tone from the requisite muscles.

Perhaps the activated core and the stretched ITB will let me achieve my target time of 2hrs for the half marathon when I face it in October? We’ll see…

Food

BBQ tech and recipes – beercan chicken, snørbrød, rotisserie and roasts

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snørbrød med rodpolseOne of the many lovely things about visiting Amanda’s family in Denmark is that there are so many ‘grillmasters’ – BBQ wizards who know everything about BBQ’ing and have the technology to prove it.

They use barbecues there in ways we don’t remotely seem to consider here. Amanda’s cousin Thomas was gifted a plug-in rotisserie for his Weber BBQ, to allow him to do juicy, juicy roasts. He also spoke of his Weber beercan chicken device – to achieve the same impact that Christopher Walken does in this video – only using a BBQ.

Jokke and Onkle spoke of the benefits of indirect heat and did a number of full-on roasts – beef and lamb – on the BBQ. On the one night we BBQ-ed for them, Onkel was actually surprised that we wanted to put meat directly onto the grill!

Jokke and Annie’s other mastery came in the form of snørbrød – BBQ’d bread, Viking style. Bread dough is mixed, left to rise, and then pulled around a trimmed down stick. Hold over barbecue and rotate until the bread cooks through – and pull of stick to reveal perfect receptacle for jam, sausage, ketchup – whatever you like! Amazing, and particularly wonderful with the Danish rodpolse – best hot dogs ever.

All yummy.

In a not unrelated conversation with NCT friend Darren, we mused as to whether there might be a market in BBQ flavoured scent. Everyone would assume you had always just been barbecuing and that would give you a rugged, manly aura, I’ve no doubt, in a not unappealing way. Amanda wasn’t that impressed at the idea, though, so I might not be a consumer of it myself…

I sense a long summer of barbecuing ahead!

Running

Running update

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I resolved, at the start of this year, to manage the relatively modest target of 10k per week run – a minimum of two 3 mile runs or so a weekend. Before the sabbatical, I was struggling a bit with that; despite a good january (65k run), February had seen me slow to a miserly 40k. Maybe just on target, but not much more than that.

The sabbatical saw a bit of a refresh; 53.5km in March and 60k in April. Progress, or so it would seem – but I continued eating at sabbatical rates, so my weight hasn’t gone down and that’s contributing to my persisting slowness.

May, to date, has also been a bit better – 30km run so far and its not even midway through the month yet. I’m trying to stick to a routine of two-three 10k runs a week, which is non-trivial as I’m not as limber, fit or light as I was when I was last doing this distance, but the only way to get there is to push along!

So, YTD I’m actually ahead of my target, modestly – 270km odd run. I’m hoping that the newly revised target, as well as the more regimented ITB rolling and stretching routine will see my overall distance rise more significantly. My speed is still poor; the weight affects everything and whilst I’m not ludicrously heavy the extra few kilos feels significant on me at the moment. I haven’t found the will to start the obsessive compulsive diet tracking yet – maybe that should be on my agenda? {sigh}.

Race plans remain thin on the ground. I’ve entered the the Basingstoke half-marathon but I’m still hopeful Ill do a second one at some point this year. Maybe a Northern summer half marathon? We’ll see…

Armand David's personal weblog: dadhood, technology, running, media, food, stuff and nonsense.