graham.reeds/ » Leisure

Crowd source pavements

graham.reeds — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 14:05:57 +0000

Just looking at where Google would have me walk to get to a local dry cleaners. It’s literally across the bridge an turn right and that isn’t taking into account turning off early and heading across the park. Surely some enterprising Googler could add a feature where pavements and cycle paths could be manually added and voted on for reliability?

Employ me and I would do it for you!

24 Heures du Teesside

graham.reeds — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 08:58:00 +0000

This weekend was the running of the British 24hrs at Teesside Autodrome. For those of you who followed the first 6 hours on Twitter (until my charge ran out) then you know we were way down the rankings at the start of the race. Our break came in the early hours of the morning when I did a couple of 1.5 hr stints and managed to push us above the surrounding competition and to the next level. The final results still haven’t been published on the Teesside Karting website but by my calculations we ended up 50th overall and I managed to set my best lap time of 1.21.508 during my 6am stint. It’s a pity that the overall laps of everyone isn’t recorded.

The past few days have been agony for me. First I was hit by a wave of tiredness (I had very little sleep – mainly a few minutes dozing) then the following day the aches and pains kicked in followed by another wave of tiredness (spent most of the Monday asleep). Yesterday started off painfully but by the end of the day (and several Ibuprofen/Paracetamol later) I wasn’t feeling too bad. Today just my floating ribs hurt.

I would really like to take part in the full championship and have a competitive kart, but the hire karts aren’t too shoddy since some of the teams were putting in sub 1.20 lap times. I guess to get below the 1.21 mark I need to lose a few kilos around my middle and improve my overall fitness.

Suit update #2

graham.reeds — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 13:38:52 +0000

As you may have guessed from my previous post I have sent my race suit back: I wouldn’t be truly happy until I had something that fitted correctly, even if it cost me (and them) extra in the long run.

Suit update

graham.reeds — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 17:14:36 +0000

I’ve received today my replacement race suit. I just tried it on and it is still tight (especially around the crotch (cue jokes)) despite being an L. However I was able to sit down this time.

One thing I did notice about the suit was that it had a diagram on the flap that goes across the zip around the area where the belt goes across the waist. This diagram says the suit is an L and is suitable for people of 179-185 in height and chest of 106/114. Which I fall in the middle of – maybe I am just long of leg.

This also doesn’t match the sizing info on the demon-tweek website. Also the sizing diagram on the website gives 2 L sizes and a single XL size. However the order form is gives L, XL and XXL options. If I was to order the larger of the two large what would I order?

This whole experience has been very depressing. I doubt I will send it back as that will mean I have spent an extra £20 sending it back and they will have lost any profit margin that they would of made on it.

Suit

graham.reeds — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 16:54:59 +0000

To go with my new boots I bought a new suit. I measured myself and my chest, waist, and hip sizes indicated that I was a small, but at the upper limit of the height range. To be on the safe side I opted for medium and awaited delivery.

When it arrived I tried it on. The first warning was when my foot could barely fit through the elasticated ankle. The I started to worry when it was tight around the thighs. To cap it off I had zero room around my crotch and could barely do the zip down the front. Medium my arse!

So I sent this back and asked for the large. Also I hate dry clean only clothing. It’s all added expense.

Shoes

graham.reeds — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 10:06:20 +0000

I followed the online guide to calculating my shoe size and ordered a pair online. I was concerned I was being over generous with slack space. I needn’t of bothered if anything, they are too tight – less than half a cm gap between my big toe and the tip of the shoe. Also the shoe is very narrow.

Question: Do I send them back (incurring mailing costs) or keep the shoes and hope the stretch a little?

Ninja!

graham.reeds — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 11:47:25 +0000

My ‘Big Shuriken’ arrived yesterday. The installation was painless if a little fiddly. The large overhang of the heatsink and its proximity to the PSU made attaching the locking mechanism difficult and the same for the fan headers.

However the proof is in the pudding. Running Handbrake with the stock cooler would cause my machine to overheat and shutdown within a couple of minutes. With the Big Shuriken installed the highest I saw was 68C.

Rock on!

Location, location, location

graham.reeds — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 06:23:15 +0000

I cannot now live without my HTC Desire but it is no means perfect.

One of the most annoying things is the weather widget that is displayed on your home screen.

It detects that I am currently in Stockton-on-Tees but shows no weather for here. Enter the app and do a search for Stockton and it presents you with Stockton-On-Tees – note the capitalised O?

It has been a while since I did any Java programming but I am pretty sure there is a tolower() function available.

While on the weather widget, it has Stockton but not Middlesbrough. Eh?

Emprex keyboard

graham.reeds — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 18:28:54 +0000

I bought an Emprex keyboard with track ball to replace the brown bread Keysonic. My first thoughts is the keyboard is nice but the track ball is horrible. Also the lack of scroll wheel is frustrating.

Twitter

graham.reeds — Thu, 27 May 2010 10:27:25 +0000

You can follow my karting exploits this weekend via the power of Twitter. Just look me up.