Wednesday, August 30, 2006

Wot No Posting - Update I

After returning from Bali, I had a long weekend up in Newcastle, mainly to see the folks and sister, after all I hadnt been up since breaking my ankle all those months ago. Another reason was Abigail's Christening (Een and Sarah's new baby) back in my home down of Winlaton, and I'd arranged to take Philippa, as she cant drive yet - dur.

Normally when I go up, its all stressful and pressured, I think mainly because I dont go up that often, then I spend the whole time running around, trying to keep everyone happy, but not this time - it was pretty relaxed. I think it was due to still being in Holiday mode, but hey, it was still 5 oC cooler than in Leamington. One thing that didnt change, was my mum harping on about how me and Philippa are perfect for each other and oh, "blah blah blah".

I picked up Philippa as arranged and she looked stunning, she normally does, but this was drop dead stunning. The christening was nice, as far as churches go, and Abigail didnt cry at the ceremony, which is always nice. I bumped into Harry (Een's dad) at the party afterwards, where he harped on about me and Pippa getting it together, then Pippa decided to rate ties in order of niceness, mine coming bottom. I came to the conclusion, doesnt matter what it was, regardless if she does like me like that, I'd always rank bottom - but such as life you know.

We'd arrange to go watch Newcastle play Villareal that afternoon, then go for some beers and relax, however, when we got back to Pip's place, ordered a Pizza, she decided to go for a Powernap and I had to wake her when the football was about to start on channel5. We had a couple of beers, and decided that maybe we should just stay in and watch a movie instead - which we done.

A good long weekend, might actually go back up vr shortly.

Friday, August 11, 2006

Keep on running :: Nike +

I purhcased a ipod nano before I went away on vacation in Bali, and a couple of days later, Apple and Nike released a joint partnership called Nike+. Effectively, its a small device that slides into the base of the ipod nano, the same slot that you dock with your PC, which communicates wirelessly to a small device which slips into the bottom of your Nike+ trainer. The device itself is pretty cheap, at 15 quid, however the expense comes when you have to buy the trainers, which to be fair, I've been after a new pair for a while, so its a small excuse, isnt it ?

I also purchase a Nike+ top, which has an embedded little pocket on the arm that houses your ipod nano, and also includes cable holes, so you're not running around and also strangling yourself at the time.

To calibrate the device, I popped my trainers on and wandered into town a couple of weeks ago, managing about 400metres, however today, managed around 2.18 miles. How do I know this ? Well, when you dock your ipod into the PC, it automatically updates the runs up to T'interweb via iTunes, giving you graphical view of when you slowed down, when you speeded up and updates every mile (or Km if you're metric).

Nike+ :: faster than me, obviously.

The Nike+ application also allows you to setup goals, mine is to run 10 miles in 8 weeks (of which I've done 2.1 miles so far) and it also allows you to challenge other Nike+ users within the same area or same age or same sex.

The Leaderboard function gives you a list of people (per week, per month, or ever) which allows you to drill down per sex, per geo, per age. Currently, out of everyone, I'm 10125th, and in the UK, 786th, and finally, in the UK, between the age of 30 and 39 and male, I'm 268th - impressive.