Andy’s Techie Blog

Do Something That Scares You

Has it really been a month since my last blog post? I seem to be in one of those busy periods at the moment where days and weeks seem to fly past!

I’ve had this post written in my head for a while but not actually typed it up yet but since it’s Friday afternoon and I’m wrapping some things up before spending a couple of days with my family I thought I’d knock this off the to-do list.

The advice “do something that scares you” and variants of it come up an awful lot and the reasoning behind it is sound.

By doing something that takes you way out of your comfort zone you’ll learn an awful lot. That may be about yourself, your ability to do something or even that you can overcome a fear by facing it head on.

This doesn’t mean you need to go and jump out of an airplane every weekend!

I’m obviously going somewhere with this….I wanted to share something I did recently that scared me.

I’ve been a visitor to the Pecha Kucha nights in Birmingham ever since they launched.

I heard about the format many years ago and as soon as I found out it was coming to the region I’ve been attending ever since.

The concept is simple. Someone presents on a topic using only twenty slides. They also only get twenty seconds per slide. That in itself doesn’t really sell it as interesting but it does make for really focussed and passionate presentations and since they can be about anything I’ve learned lots about topics I normally wouldn’t have an interest in.

You can see videos from previous Birmingham events here.

A few months ago I was at a Pecha Kucha night and was having a conversation with Richard Tubb about how brave the presenters were for getting up and doing it. We’ve both presented to groups of people in the past but agreed that the strict structure of Pecha Kucha could make it very difficult if you got your timing wrong or lost your train of thought through nerves or whatever. In a regular presentation style you can “fill” or explore a different avenue before coming back to the point you were on previously.

We both laughed about how we’d never do it and ordered another beer.

However, the organiser of the event Jo Hardy had asked me a couple of times if I’d present since I was such as regular to the group and in the interests of doing something scary I finally said yes.

I put together some slides and was all set to do it but the event had to be re-arranged. Have psyched myself up to do it I was a little disappointed. However, the Coventry event was the week after(their videos are here). I’d never been to the Coventry event as it’s normally on the same night as AMITPRO but this time around it was on a different evening and they were short of speakers so I offered to help out and took my presentation there.

Some of you may be thinking, “that’s not scary”.

I guess it depends on your point of view. Growing up I was very shy and the thought of standing up in front of a room of people filled me with dread. It’s something I’ve worked on as I’ve become an adult. I was going to say “as I grew up” but you need to have grown up for it to become past tense  

In recent years I’ve presented at various user groups and I’m also expected to speak in front of a group at the BNI group I’m a part of and while it’s still something that doesn’t come naturally I don’t dread it in the way that I used to. In fact when it comes to talking about a technical topic it’s something I’ve come to enjoy.

Doing this was a little bit of validation for that there are always things to learn and if you want to change something about yourself you’re perfectly capable of doing it. If you’d have asked me five years ago if I’d be talking to a group of people about anything I wouldn’t have believed it. Yet I now seem to be doing it with an increasing regularity.

Do Something That Scares You – you don’t know where it will lead.

Almost forgot….Did I mention they filmed it?

Video should be below or behind this link.

I’ve not actually watched it though as listening to the sound of my own voice is definitely something that scares me.

Pecha Kucha Coventry | Vol.5 | Andy Parkes from MINDRIOT PRODUCTIONS on Vimeo.

Useful Productivity Website: Trello

I’m really enjoying Trello.com at the moment.

The story behind the site is that the people at FogCreek built a tool so the people in their teams can see at a glance what everyone is working on. They then decided it would be a good idea to make it available to everyone else!

The basic idea is the system is made up of three things.

Boards – a collection of lists – a board can be an abstraction of a specific project. A project folder if you were doing this without a computer.

Lists – a collection of cards – imagine a stage in a process (e.g To-Do, In Progress, Complete) -  Think of it as a piece of paper if you were doing this without a computer.

Cards – an activity of work – a specific something that needs to be done – an entry on your piece of paper if you were doing this without a computer. What’s really good about cards is they start as just a title but if you drill down you can add as many or as little details as needed (comments, work complete, embed pictures and videos)

Sounds simple enough? Hope that makes sense!

You create a series of lists – add some cards and then you can shift those cards between lists as work gets done.

So here’s a simple example of how I’ve been using it.

I’ve got a board called WORK

On this board I’ve got three lists.

To Do   -   Doing   – Done

I add things I need to do into the “To-Do” list. If i need to add extra details I can but generally the title is enough.

Initial card creation.

Card in more detail. You can add pictures, video, text. Assign team members or categorise with colour labels.

As I start to work on a specific item I drag it into the “Doing” list. I update the list if needed if it’s a work in process and I’m not completing it straight away. Obviously once the task is complete it’s dragged into the “Done” list.

Dragging to the Doing list.

Nice and simple. It’s just me using these but I can see it getting really powerful when a group of people get involved. Especially when assigning a task to someone is as simple as dragging their avatar onto the card.

So how’s this different to other collaboration applications?

Everything is so easy. Data entry consists of typing and pressing enter. You can fire off a series of new entries really quickly. There is no constant clicking ok / save every time you do anything. You can enter a little or as much detail as you feel like. Very importantly – it just works.

Finally you can use it on just about any device you like. I’ve been using it on my TouchPad in the office instead of keeping lots of paper lists hanging around my desk. Also because it’s web based if I think of something I need to do it only takes a second to get onto the site and add something new. It’s then available everywhere I’ve got a web browser.

Sign up is really easy too. You can either create an account on the site or sign in with an existing Google account.

The Trello homepage gives some really good usage examples.

It’s honestly worth spending ten minutes taking a look – it’s free!

Book Review–Roo’d

Look a book review!

This is the review I’d started when I was hit with what I originally said was writers block and eventually attributed to being burnt out.

I’ve avoided coming back to this but I really do need to get it out of the way so here it is.

After the previous book I’d read I was pleased to say I really enjoyed this one! This was despite reading the description and being a little bit wary.

The story is set in a near future where body modification is the norm and having your jawline reshaped is a common as having your ears pierced!

The main character is Fed, whose defining physical characteristic is that he has prosthetic legs – despite living in a world where getting a new set of legs would be trivial.

Fed is a bit of a loner, highly intelligent and a near genius with computers. His life is at a bit of a crossroads when he meets up with his estranged brother who convinces him to get involved in a what sounds like an impossible “get rich” scheme. Fed agrees to get involved and drops out of school which is where the fun starts.

Fed’s skill with computers a key part of the plan so this part of the plot was obviously of interest to me.

The story is very much about how Fed grows as a person and tries to figure out who he is as he comes across a wide variety of weird and wonderful characters and they soon realise they are way in over their head.

What I really loved about this book was the imagery it created of the world it was set it. I honestly think it would make an amazing film!

The title of the book sounds a bit random but once you realise what the phrase Roo’d means it makes perfect sense.

It all gets a little bit crazy towards the end but it doesn’t take anything away from home much I enjoyed this.

As with a lot of the books I’ve read so far this year it’s available on a creative commons license so grab it and check it out!

Highly recommended.

The Long Overdue HP TouchPad (and tablet!) Post

It’s overdue as I’ve been in possession of a HP TouchPad for almost a month now but also I’ve wanted to write about tablets/slates/whatever for a while but I had so many different things to talk about the post jumped all over the place and I scrapped just about everything I’d written! So here’s my final attempt.

I’ve wanted a handheld, touch based, computing device for what feels like most of my life!

Growing up and seeing things like this on my TV screen fuelled that geeky desire.

and going back a bit further this:

Anyone remember this?

It’s not a massive surprise there was such fuss about Microsoft’s rumoured Courier project!

So the years went by and we had laptops that were called tablets with “touch” screens that needed a stylus to work with and it was no different to carrying a heavy laptop around with you (and a wallet that was as empty as the tablet was heavy!)

Until finally Apple released a massive iPod/iPhone and called it the iPad and redefined what we call a tablet.

Unfortunately, the iPad isn’t for me and I’ve been waiting for a viable alternative ever since. (I do have a unfair personal bias towards Apple products, but that’s for another time – or shared over a pint if you’re buying!)

But for my mind there hasn’t been a viable alternative. Lots of different manufacturers tried to get in on the act but they aren’t quite there.

So when HP announced they were going to acquire Palm in 2010 this got my attention. An operating system that was showing some promise with the giant that is HP behind it – what could go wrong?

Quite a lot actually. Before we get on to the device itself, when it was released as soon as I saw the price my heart sank.

Approx. £399 for the 16Gb model and £479 for the 32Gb model.

HP aren’t the only ones guilty of this. The manufacturers seem to think that because people are willing to pay a premium for the iPad they should price their devices to get near that price.

The thing is one of the reasons I wasn’t interested in an iPad was the price. As I write this you can pick up the wi-fi only, 16Gb iPad 2 from the Apple store for £399.

If you’re looking for a tablet if you’re going to match the iPad for price surely you need something software/hardware wise that makes you stand out. The TouchPad and lots of other doesn’t specifically have anything that makes it standout from the iPad (an exception to this would be the Asus Transformer for example)

One of my concerns is that while it’s certainly a clever piece of kit and runs tons of useful apps one thing that it isn’t is a computer. As a result if I got one would it fit in with my lifestyle (personally and professionally) or would I be throwing at least £400 on something I’d end up not using as I’d find myself reaching for my laptop or my netbook?

I wouldn’t really know until I had one but I wasn’t willing to spend that sort of money to find out.

I also didn’t really know exactly what I wanted one for. Yes, the touch screen is nice, as is the portability but I have a netbook that while it’s a little underpowered it does everything that I need to do when out and about.

So back to the TouchPad.

You’re probably aware HP decided they didn’t want to be in the tablet market any longer and to get rid of the existing stock they slashed the prices in big way. First in America, and finally over here. Take-up was massive and various retailers saw their online stores fall over as they struggled to cope with the demand which also left a lot of disappointed people who either couldn’t get onto the websites to actually place an order or battled through to place an order only to be told later the order couldn’t be fulfilled. I was one of the lucky few (with a massive thank you to @SpritesBites for helping me out).

I’m still trying to decide whether this proves HP got the original pricing wrong for the Touchpad or will people buy anything when it’s so drastically reduced in price as it’s a bargain.

Nearly a month on I’m not regretting the purchase and I can report I do use it everyday. I’m certainly glad I didn’t pay the original price for it though.

At home it’s been really useful as an instant-on device for browsing, checking email, twitter, Facebook and playing music while doing bits and pieces around the house.

At work it’s become my third screen. I push all my social media onto it which has actually helped increase my productivity as moving away from my keyboard and mouse is more of an explicit action than switching to another tab in the browser on my desktop. It’s also where I keep various to-do lists and notes which is helping me get a bit more organised.

webOS is actually pretty neat. Treating applications like cards is an interesting abstraction and the upward swiping gesture to close a card is nice. The application notifications are certainly not intrusive and having the home button flicker when you receive a notification while the device is in standby is a very nice touch. The look and feel is on the whole pretty attractive and some applications such as Guardian Zeitgeist, Sky News, iGizmo and rad.io are a joy to use.

The built-in applications are pretty decent. Contacts, calendar and email are simple enough to use and Exchange integration is obviously massively important.

The app catalogue is nice to use as well. I really appreciate the fact it recognises when you have an app already installed and instead of a “download” option you get a “launch” option. Featured applications are displayed in a magazine style which is a joy to browse through when you have a spare five minutes.

It’s not without it’s faults though.

When I first started using it the whole experience was very sluggish. I’d certainly recommend reading this great piece by Gareth Halfacree which has various different tweaks that can help improve your experience. I’ve switched logging level to a minimum which has made a massive difference. (it appears to have broken Angry Birds though!) I haven’t quite been brave enough to install PreWare yet though but it’s something I’ll be doing soon.

Flash in the browser is both a help and a hindrance. It’s been great that sites such as YouTube just work but there have been some sites which have been a pain. When browsing the BBC news site if a page has an embedded video I’ve had the page constantly refresh. I’ve actually switched to the mobile version of that site just to make it usable.

When it’s the hardware is getting a little bit stressed you don’t always receive feedback. It’s very frustrating when you’re using an app and your on-screen touches suddenly stop doing anything. After jabbing the same spot two or three times it comes back to life and those extra screen presses are then processed causing mayhem in your current app.

Finally you have to accept that going forward the future is uncertain for webOS. HP still haven’t fully indicated what their plans are and other than the homebrew community you can’t see many developers wanting to put together apps for the platform.

In summary, I’m glad I was lucky enough to get one at the price I did. With more usage I can see it being a gateway to me being more open about spending a bit more next time around.

So what exactly will next time be?

At the moment it’ll probably be a straight fight between the iPad 3 and Windows 8.

The rumoured Amazon device may have an impact but at the moment there is no concrete information to go on.

I’m not entirely sure what to make of Windows 8 yet. Is it a desktop operating system or is a tablet operating system? The Metro interface does look very nice but how practical is it going to be on a traditional system (i.e with a keyboard and mouse).

The move to an ARM version is on the face of it interesting but since it looks like existing  x86 applications will need to be re-written for the ARM version why are Microsoft bothering? We’ll effectively end up with two different operating systems and they’ll be confusion over which applications will run on which device. Wouldn’t the Windows Phone operating system have been a better fit?

All just thoughts at the moment – Windows 8 has a long way to go until release and Apple are being their usual tight lipped selves on any plans they may have for the next iPad

You’re notice I’ve not said an awful lot about Android. I’ve not seen many devices that seem to for for me from a price/hardware spec perspective and the multitude of different operating system versions and whether the next one would be available for your chosen device was frustrating. It is something I’ll revisit though.

As I suspected I’ve jumped around a bit here and this post is long enough so it’s a good place to stop.

Just like every other area of IT everyone has their own reasons as to why their chosen bit of kit is better than the others so please leave a comment – I’d love to hear what you think!

When did you last have a real break?

This is a personal post – if you’re looking for something technical feel free to move along

I wrote a post recently complaining of writers block. I wrote the post as a way of giving me a kick. It didn’t have the desired effect in the way I hoped it would but it did get me thinking in more general terms.

I mentioned in the post that it wasn’t just blog writing that was suffering, but writing in general. I realised that there was actually more to it than that.

My productivity has also been through the floor. Tasks that I should be getting through easily (personally and professionally) were dragging on and I’d been putting off anything that required extra effort. After a day at work I’d get home and my normal routine is to do something. It doesn’t matter what it was and could be reading, gaming, spending time with Bryony, whatever – the point is it’s doing something with my time at home. Instead my routine was replaced with collapsing on the sofa and channel hopping for the whole evening which is something I rarely do as I usually only watch TV when there is something specifically I want to see (Dr Who being a current example!)

It was only on the run up to some time off work I realised I was burnt out.

I had two weeks off work organised for the start of August and I realised it was the only time I’d taken off all year. I then realised that babies and knee operations aside since the business started the most I’d ever had away from work was a week.

I’m dreadful at booking time off work and if my good wife didn’t give me the occasional reminder I probably wouldn’t have any! It’s not an intentional thing. I’ve usually got so much going on elsewhere I don’t think far enough ahead to next break.  

You do need to switch off some point though and I think I’d gotten to the point where I had nothing left and was “running on empty”.

One thing people talk about is work/life balance and while I know mine needs some improvement I thought I was doing ok.

A typical work day for me looks like this:

Get up between 6am-7am  (depending on how I’ve slept! A topic for another time.)

Arrive at the office between 7am-8am – getting to the office early generally means I get lots done while no-one is around.

Lunch – no fixed time. 99% of the time involves sandwiches at my desk

Leave work between 6pm-6.30pm

This is an average day. For example, If I have a BNI meeting I’m up around 5.30am and on AMITPRO nights I’m not home until much much later.  

That’s actually quite a long day when you write it down, especially since lunch usually means eating sandwiches at my desk. When I think about it there have been particularly busy days where I’ve not moved from my desk at all!

So that’s work – where is the life balance?

On an average day I make sure I’m home to put the children to bed as a minimum. We chat about their day while getting changed, brushing teeth, etc and always read bedtime stories together.

I rarely ever bring work home of an evening and ActiveSync (push email) is actually off on my phone by default. I don’t need it on when I’m in the office so I specifically turn it on during work hours when I’m doing something away from the office. This means I should the evenings to do whatever I want.

Again, just an average. There are some occasions where I do work at home but I do keep it to a minimum.

Weekends are also work free. This is family/personal time. Email rarely gets checked and it’s common for me to leave the office on a Friday and not check it again until Monday morning.

I thought I’d got a reasonable balance. I thought I’d got enough time away from work of an evening and weekend to keep me fresh and make sure I was splitting my time time between the business and my family.

I was wrong

We don’t really switch off properly during those evenings and weekends. Modern working life blurs the lines between where work starts and stops and while I may not be checking email of an evening and weekend that doesn’t mean I’m not thinking about stuff I’ve got to do the following day, ideas to flesh out or solutions to problems. In the same way while I’m in the office I’ll be thinking about that dripping tap in the downstairs toilet when I’m supposed to do doing a quote or how much new school uniform is going to cost while I’m looking at a PC that won’t boot.

Both areas of our lives are fighting for attention and you need to make an effort to stop and have some time where you’re not thinking about your work or your home life.

As I mentioned earlier I had two weeks away from work arranged so made sure I used that time as well as I could on relaxing, spending real quality time with my family and taking a proper break.

A week in Center Parcs followed by a couple of days in Wales was just what I needed.

It was great seeing so much of the girls and Bryony for an extended period of time and I came back refreshed.

I am a realist though. My phone wasn’t off the entire two weeks. For a start I’m a geek. I can’t do without my Internet connection – in my work life and my personal life but email stayed off and everyone in the office were told I was only contactable as a totally last resort. Everything else would have to wait.

However, I made one small adjustment that had the biggest impact.

I turned my “out of office” auto-reply on.

I’ve never turned it on before. Normally if an email comes in when I’ve been on holiday I’d either reply to it or delegate it to someone in the office.

This isn’t really switching off from work is it!

One of the main reasons I never use out of office is that I feel uneasy with email automatically responding for me. Susanne wrote a very good piece about it recently, she said

Having led a life in sales, I have always loved receiving out of office messages – they are typically a wealth of information such as mobile and landline numbers, job titles, and correct spellings of names that I can access should I be looking for ways to get a foot in the door to your business. You tell me that Janice Jones is in charge in your absence and hey presto, I have another contact to add into my CRM system… very useful if I’m being told I have to have at least 2-3 contacts per company on file.

And if I’m a spammer, well, all I need is your out of office to kick in and I know you’re there. Which suits me fine since I can sell on my data to someone else knowing that your email address is live. Maybe in this instance it would have been better to have not activated your out of office in the first place?

People always look me like I’m a lunatic when I say I consider out of office messages a security risk. What Susanne said feeds into that for me and have a look at some of the results of this search. I’ve always been sufficiently paranoid to leave them off.

However, I bit the bullet and made use of the out of office feature and it worked exactly as it should. I received several emails that didn’t need my specific attention. The auto responder let that person know I was away and they got their problem sorted by someone else in my absence.

I’ve been back in the office a couple of weeks now and I can report I’m feeling much better about things. Writing has come back to me (if you’re still here after the length of this it won’t be a surprise!) and the inclination to plonk myself in front of garbage TV has gone. I’ve gotten into some bad habits during my “rut” but I’ll get those kicked into touch soon enough.

I hadn’t placed enough value on taking a real break.

I was at a Comptia meeting recently and we were all invited to suggest a idea for “best practice”. Something we’ve done to improve our business.

Jat Mann from PC Pal simply said “take a holiday” – he told me afterwards he was joking as he couldn’t think of a suggestion but it’s no surprise that after the voting his suggestion came second!

Rob Franklln from JPT Solutions also wrote a post called “Downtime is good” which is about taking a break. Rob talks about making use of his network so that he can have that downtime.

It’s not just me then!

So after all that waffling my message in short is.

You can get more done by stopping once in a while.

Whether that’s taking two weeks off or getting away from your desk and having a proper lunch break it’s worth doing. 

Tony Sale–Thank You-RIP

It was my birthday on Saturday and in true geek style I decided the perfect way to spend my day would be to pay a visit to Bletchley Park.

This blog post was intended to be all about my visit but unfortunately I heard some bad news this morning so that’s on hold.

Tony Sale passed away on 30th August 2011 at 80 years of age.

He was the responsible for the rebuild of Colossus, the first modern computer and if it had not been for his efforts details of Colossus would have been long forgotten as it disappeared after the second world war. The rebuild project was a huge accomplishment and is even more impressive when you consider how little documentation was left behind. He was also a major driving force behind the work in getting Bletchley Park to where it is today and held roles such as Secretary of the Bletchley Park Trust and Museums Director.

I was fortunate enough to meet Tony on my first visit to Bletchley Park and he was a perfect gentlemen and happy to spend time chatting about Colossus and Bletchley Park.

Tony had his own website www.codesandciphers.org.uk which is a mine of information about everything Tony was involved in and it’s worth taking the time to have a look as it covers a variety of topics including details of how Colossus was used to break the Lorenz cipher, the Colossus rebuild and videos of some the talks Tony gave at the National Museum of Computing.

Details of Tony’s life are well documented elsewhere on the Internet so I’ll just finish by saying

Thank you Tony.

Every visit I make to Bletchley Park is better than the last and I’m grateful of the contribution you’ve made to the history of computing in this country.

Weight Loss For Geeks

Last time I talked about my recovery from my knee surgery I mentioned I thought I’d gained about a stone in weight.

Losing weight is never something I’ve really had to worry about before. Despite having a predominantly desk based job for most of my working life my weight has always stayed pretty constant.

Growing up I’d always figured I was one of those lucky ones that could eat whatever they wanted without fear of gaining a pound or two. Turns out this was very naive of me. It’s mostly down to exercise.

In basic terms we all pretty much know if we consume more calories than the body needs it will store the excess as fat.

It’s no secret I love to play football and up until my mid-twenties this was two or three times a week as a minimum. As I’ve gotten older there have been various factors that have reduced the amount of times I play in any given week (children, work, etc) and over the years my weight had gone up some but nothing to worry about. Once that stopped altogether because of my injury the pounds have piled on at a faster rate. Turns out all that football was what kept my weight in check!

So in preparation for the new football season and the on-going recovery of my knee I’ve been running and cycling to get my fitness levels ready for pre-season. Pre-season training is hard enough at the best of times so I wanted to give myself a head start!

I hadn’t given any thought to losing the weight I’d gained. My initial expectations were that all the extra exercise I’d be doing would take care of it by the time the season started. However, after a conversion with some friends on Twitter I was inspired to put a little more thought into it.

Considering the stereotype of people who work in IT (see the image above!) it’s amazing how much technology can help with fitness and weight loss so I thought I’d list some of things I’ve been using.

Tracking

Myfitnesspal is where I started. There are lots of similar websites but this is the one I was pointed at and it works just fine for me. The idea is simple. Enter your height, weight, age and a goal (i.e lose one pound a week) and the website gives you a calorie goal for the day. You then track all the food you eat and the exercise you do. This is basically calorie counting. If you stay under your calorie goal you’ll lose weight! Adding some exercise will give you some more calories to work with. I actually added an extra mile to a run as in the mood for pizza!

The site has a massive database of food which in my experience matches up with the nutritional information you get on most food packaging. The site is of a Facebook style in that you have a profile and you can update your status with thoughts that other friends can comment on. Activity on the site also updates your status and friends can offer words of encouragement.

This has been really great for motivation as it helps to keep you from feeling isolated. There is a very strong community around the site and there are various forums where people can ask for advice or share success stories.

Finally there are also mobile phone apps to help with tracking food and exercise. This particular site has support for Windows Phone which has been great for me!

Running and Cycling Routes

Gmap – Pedometer.

I love this site as it’s so simple. It’s a Google Maps mashup that allows you to plot running and cycling routes. Once you create a route it creates a unique URL so you can refer back to it as needed.

Again there are lots of other websites that do similar things. Some of them come with companion apps that use the GPS in your phone to track the distance you cover and how quickly you complete the route as well as sharing with friends. Runkeeper is an example and I’ll be taking a look at that more closely as I’ve recently purchased a sports armband for my phone. If you have an iPhone/iPod and are willing to invest some money the Nike+ system is very slick.

That said gmap was the first mapping tool I found and it’s really simple and quick to use hence why I’m mentioning it here.

Heart Rate monitor.

The only thing about using a tracking website such as myfitnesspal is that it can only guess at how many calories you burn during a particular exercise. Everyone is different and perform certain exercises at different intensities so any figures you use are only a best guess. You can get around this by using a heart rate monitor. I managed to get a cheap chest strap and watch in a sale in a local sports shop. I’m still getting to grips with it but the two work in tandem and give you various stats such as your average/max heart rate and calories expended. As you’d expect there is a very wide range of these!

Apps

There lots of apps that will work with your smartphone to help with exercise and weight loss. Other than myfitnesspal and runkeeper I’m not using any at the moment but I wanted to mention and give an example of how your phone can help exercise.

One thing that people always worry about when starting to exercise is actually starting! If you want to start running but haven’t done any for years the thought of trying to run even a small distance is very daunting.

There are tons of apps for just about every platform around for the “couch to five k” concept. The idea here is that you follow a set program where you start at short distances and gradually build up to five kilometres. The apps help as they will tell you when to run, jog or walk via voice prompts or making your phone vibrate.

While I didn’t use an app I followed my own informal method and I built up from running one mile to three miles and I recently completed a five mile route and I can certainly see how having a virtual jogging mate can help!

The Internet

Ok this is a little broad but like most geeks I want to know as much as possible about something I’m interested in and the Internet provides a vast amount of resources on exercise and nutrition. I’ve learnt more about BRM, BMI, VO2MAX and the like than I really need to know! You can find fitness programs, workout videos and as much detail about how the human body works than you can handle!

The only downside is sometimes there is too much information and there is so much conflicting information about what does and doesn’t work it can be difficult trying to figure out what you should believe.

In Summary

There are lots of gadgets and tools available to help get fit or lose weight. You can even buy a set of scales that automatically tracks your weight via wi-fi! I can report using the things I’ve mentioned above has worked for me and other than the heart rate monitor, which is a luxury – I would have been fine without it, the whole thing has cost me nothing. 

MyFitnessPal reports that I’ve been using the site for 70 days and in that time I’ve lost 16 pounds. That’s also taking into account a two week break I had for a holiday where I put some of that back on I’m so pretty pleased with it. 

So what did I actually do?

Diet – I didn’t make any drastic changes in terms of what I eat but did change the amount. It was only though tracking the calories that I realised how much I eat and how certain foods can have an effect. At the moment breakfast from a well known fast food chain is pretty much half of my calorie goal for the day!

Exercise – I started off with a bit of cycling to get me back into the exercise habit but since then my exercise has pretty much consisted of running.

I run pretty much every day where possible as I can do a couple of miles in 12-15 minutes. This means it’s easy to fit it in before or after work. On days where I’ve got a little more time I’ll stretch it out to three miles (and more recently I’ve completed that five mile run which I’ll start to throw into the mix)

Motivation – Unfortunately all this talk of technology can’t escape the fact you have to actually execute this yourself. This isn’t easy and no-one else can do it for you but the things I’ve mentioned are really good support tools to keep you on track.

I’ll be honest and say I still hate running. This obviously becomes much easier if you enjoy the exercise you’re doing and lots of people do get the “fitness bug” once they start to see results. Luckily I do get this with football. I love doing that so coming back from training or a game totally shattered is fine – I just can’t do that every day!

I’ve only touched on some of the things that are available if you’re serious about changing your body. Do you have any tips or tools you’ve used yourself? Comment welcome below

Andrews and Arnold–Deaf Accessibility Done Correctly

Just a quick one I wanted to share.

I frequently moan on my blog (and in person if we’re being honest!) about how Deaf accessibility, especially when it comes to technology isn’t something that’s taken into account often enough so it’s nice to be able to praise someone when they do get it right.

Andrews and Arnold are a UK based ISP whose name regularly comes up in newsgroups and at user group meetings.

I was checking out their website today when I saw this.

That’s something I don’t see very often. A specific note for deaf customers with details on how they can get in touch with the organisation in a variety of ways (even via IRC and usenet!)

I’m sure you’ll agree this is a good thing but what I really like about this is that it wasn’t tucked away on some obscure corner of their site.

It’s on the front page of their site

The contacts page also has email addresses, SMS numbers, and links to their twitter account.

I’m not an Andrews and Arnold customer so can’t comment on the quality of their broadband or their customer service but it’s great to see some extra effort being made.

The simple act of contacting a company is major headache in our household. Many companies, especially large ones won’t correspond via email and SMS is just not an option for them which means if Mrs P has a query about something (let’s say her mobile phone bill) how do we do this?

It usually involves me calling them which isn’t easy as we’re both at work during the day and then we have a song and dance with customer services because I’m not the account holder. Sometimes they’ll speak to me and I have to relay info to Bryony and sometimes they flat out refuse. This means the whole thing becomes long winded and far more stressful than it needs to be.

And this is just the short version of how it usually works!

So well done Andrews and Arnold – I hope more companies follow your lead.

What do you do about writers block?

Genuine question!

My last post on here was June 22nd and the last one before that was May 23rd. I had gotten into a nice rhythm with posting after wanting to be a bit more consistent in 2011.

However, at the end of May I was writing up a book review and had a really hard time trying to explain the book. The words just weren’t there and since then I’ve found it really hard to write ANYTHING. By that I mean blog posts, emails, proposals, meeting requests, service tickets. As soon as I open the editor I just go blank. My twitter usage has been up and down too and generally anything I add on their at the moment is in response to something else.

The problem isn’t inspiration, I’ve had plenty of ideas and I’ve started lots of things, restarted and then given up. For example, my “first week with Windows Phone” post will now more than likely be called “my first month with Windows Phone” ! That should have been an easy one!

I mentioned it on Twitter and had a couple of suggestions.

First was to create a structure and then fill in the details. That could be a title for each section or just a bullet list of points you want to cover. It’s a really good way of writing but unfortunately that’s generally how I write all my blog posts normally.

Second was to just write. Get it onto the page and you can turn it into something more meaningful afterwards. Also a good idea and in part it’s the only real point of this post.

I’m just writing something, anything and getting it finished.

I’m kind of brute forcing my brain in an attempt to get over whatever hurdle it is I have in front of me at the moment.

Fingers crossed it works! I’ve got to do something about it not just for the sake of this blog but for getting me back on track. You’ll notice the AMITPRO blog and anything that goes with it has gone quiet at the moment too (apologies to anyone who is a member if I haven’t done something you’re waiting on yet – I’m trying!)

Now I’ve written four hundred words and given myself some therapy in public I’ll throw it open to comment – what do you when you hit a wall like this?

Word 2010–Double Sided Printing Option Missing

I’m failing at blogging big time at the moment. I’ve had several ideas for posts recently but I seem to start them and can’t finish them.

Anyway, this one seemed to write itself so hopefully it’ll be a bit of a kick start!

I took a call earlier in the week as someone wanted to print on both sides of the page while using Word 2010.

This is what she was expecting to see in the print options.

As you can see there are options to flip on either the long edge or the short edge.

This is what she was seeing instead.

My first thought was that the duplex option hadn’t been enabled on the printer driver but this wasn’t the case. Clicking through to the printer properties allowed the user to choose double sided printing which came out as expected.

I’d like to say I could take the credit for figuring this out but a search helped me out.

I found this thread on a Microsoft support forum which detailed the same problem.

It suggested the cause was down to a missing DLL

c:\windows\system32\prntvpt.dll

It was indeed not the system.

I upgraded the .NET framework on the PC to version 4 but this still didn’t solve the problem

The thread suggested two other options,

1) Uninstall .Net Framework and reinstall.

2) Copy the dll from another PC.

I went for option 2.

I found a PC that was on the same .NET version, copied the DLL and ran the following from a command prompt

REGSVR32 c:\windows\system32\prntvpt.dll

I reopened Word 2010 and the double sided options reappeared.

This was a Windows XP system but I’m pretty sure the same thing would apply for Vista/Windows 7.