Happy Christmas 2006

Best Wishes to everybody for the holidays. I'll be upgrading the site soon. If you're thinking of a new years resolution how about running 20 minutes 3 times a week... ?

6K Santa Run

Cold start to the day but the 6k santa run around Loughborough was great. Got a time of 27:20 averaged 7:43 min/mile for the race and came somewhere in the top 30 I think. Pictures here.

Weight and Running

An update on the running and weight loss! I'm now into weight maintenance not so much loss. The key here is to get weighed every week. If you put on just 1 lb every month, thats nearly a stone over a year! Me and my friend get weighed most weeks and keep the details in a google spreadsheet. I get differents weights on my scales at home, so these are all relative. I can loose 5llbs at different times of the day even.

I've embedded the sheet here direct from google spreadsheets.

Before

After

Santa Fun Runner

I'll next be running at this run in Loughborough with over 700 other santas!

I've phoned the future and its not VOIP

We had freetalk for a year, no problems at all. It worked out the box. Probably about half a dozen calls were rubbish quality during that time. Then Dixons realised it was making no money (and probably didnt know how to start billing those on an annual contract) - so sold out to Vonage.

I got the vonage box, lost my phone number for a day while they transferred and then got a terrible line. At work I've tried sipgate. Not so bad call quality, but 1 in 3 dials you get a number unobtainable sound as the sipgate network struggles to get you connected.

So, back to copper wires. It's the future?

Fish and Chips!

Thinking of Fish and Chips for tea? I'd pushed it off the menu as out of bounds. But check out
http://www.lovechips.co.uk/chips_v_takeaway.html Its possibly slightly biased, but Fish and Chips comes out at 396 Calories, against my a favourite curry value of 1064 Calories!

And dont forget.. its National Chip week 12th February...

Now looking for another run over at www.runnersworld.co.uk

Completed the Robin Hood Half Marathon

I've raised quite a bit or money for Childrens Brain Tumour Research in the process so will be collecting the money shortly! THANKS TO EVERYONE who supported me!

Heres the official result:

Gun Pos Gun Time No Chip Pos Chip Time
2276 01:56:09 675 2286 01:53:35

Here's how I did it courtesy of my Nike Plus iPod kit:

From Running

Used the iPod Nike+ system - with no calibration - it was spot on the mile markers, in fact when I put my foot down on the first mile marker it announced first mile.

Top 10 Runner in GB!

Its Official - I'm the 8th furthest runner in Great Britain, according to www.nikeplus.com and also 8th in the leaderboard for duration.

New Great Site and its not from Google

A new favourite site of mine - not yet owned by google! http://www.gliffy.com
Its what could become the Google Visio. I've done some good stuff with it today. Results are best printed to PDF.

Green Flag

If you use Greenflag for your "AA" cover - dont accept any renewal at the moment. For August they are offering free at home which makes the cover about £40 to £50 cheaper to buy a new policy online. The renewals telephone line cant match the deal either. Renewals should be cheaper surely, repeat customer, no new payment details, no need to send a welcome pack, etc...

Nike+ iPod

Check out my review and how to make a sensor holder (for non Nike Plus shoes) here.

First Time 10K

In training for the 1/2 Marathon in September I completed the 10K run at Holme Pierrepont 183 Mark Cherry S 0:52:26 Photos

The World Cup 2006

Its nearly here, every other car is flying a flag. To celebrate,
here is my complete website in German!

Lottery Results Update

I've found some time to add some new functionality to the lottery results website and its had a bit of a makeover so now looks much better too. Its now got password and syndicate reminder services which were the two most common questions we got for it.

Thanks to google, its now free too! Google Adwords revenue will hopefully pay for the site hosting and create some money for charity too.

Did you know that the number 13, unlucky for some, is actually the least drawn number from the UK National Lottery? Check out the statistics here!

Run Run Run

You'll know I've never ran far in my life, but recently now on a fitness drive and gradually increasing the running.. In fact this is run was pretty good.. I'm (trying) to do the half Robin Hood Marathon in September. Not only will the training get me fit but we can raise some more money for Childrens Brain Tumour Research too - http://www.justgiving.com/dotcom

Two Brands Better than One?

I just found this site http://senditnow.com/ from a google, looking for a courier for something. Decent enough site. Turns out when I get to the end its actually Royal Mail / Parcel Force directly. Cool. Good prices and no middle man.

Similarly, did you know www.cameras2u.com is acutally Jessops in disguise? They'll not let on, only a yell.com search throughs them up as the same address. Amazing difference in prices between high street, jessops.com and cameras2u.com They are more than happy to take your money mind with the high street option!

Out with the Mayo!

Have you forgotten Salad Cream in this day and age of mayonnaise and drizzled dressings? I just rediscovered it. Salad is edible with this stuff. What's with the salad anyhow? Week 2 of my diet and I've 4lbs to loose for the first milestone...

Remember those Telephone Dishes

I just remembered about the great telephone system where you got a small dish on the side of your house and 2 telephone lines for alot less money that BT... Took me a while to remember the name of the service but it was Ionica. "Our revolutionary telephone system uses digital radiowaves"... They ran out of money and closed down years ago.

Their website is long gone, but the waybackmachine had a cached copy... http://web.archive.org/web/19980624130611/www.ionica.co.uk/

Google Calendar

Well, I've been waiting for google calendar for a while, in fact I just sold my Palm on ebay this week. Still, my good friend and frontline googler Bretty found it first and it went live today...

Check out http://www.xs4all.nl/~hagemans/ for a tool to convert outlook to iCal format which google calendar will import.. its much better than the CSV support from outlook too...

Happy days. Happy Easter!

Good Sport

We got tickets and went to see the opening night of The Games over at the National Watersports Centre in Nottingham. It was freezing cold but it made a good night out. We saw the Jet Skiing and Kayak events.

We're now watching the Commonwealth Games and I'm also keeping the local Age Groups Swimming Gala Results up-to-date over at www.lasa-results.org.uk

Google Chat

I just (finally) got gmail google chat - the integrated version. Brilliant. Not only can you get distracted from something dealing with an email, but now you can get distracted reading it with a chat from someone! Still, definitely looks good.

I just found that the google spell checker doesn't know of the word google either ;)

Now waiting for google calendar...

Other google news is that I tried to apply to carry google adwords on a site I hosted. I want to raise some more money for the children's Brain Tumour Research Centre in Nottingham but google have turned down the application. They seem quite happy to accept my money for google adwords though for advertising...

Football

We've just been and watched Leicester v Derby tonight. Good football. The fans in the kop end were throwing stuffed toy sheep around, Derby being known as the "Rams". Brilliant. Refereeing was appalling. In junior football refs seem to blow the whistle for every other throwing, two feet should be on the floor, hands over the head.. in the Championship it never gets picked up. Do the refs think grown ups needn't bother?

Google Toolbar Button

I just put together a Google Toolbar Button that takes you to the tracker page for Royal Mail. Just highlight the tracking number (e.g. DP645035876GB ) and press the new button.

You can install it by clicking this link. You will need to install google toolbar (v4) first - its more good google gear and now includes bookmarks. You can get the latest google toolbar from http://www.google.com/tools/toolbar/T4/index.html

UPDATE: My button has been listed in the google gallery Here's my entry.

Swimming Results

A new database is up and running in beta testing over at http://www.lasa-results.org.uk/2006/index.php for the Leicestershire County Age Groups.