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Yesterday despite being fairly unproductive has still seen a large milestone in the development of my programming skills and real world applications of this. For some unknown reason I have never really been too fond of fancy tools to integrate programming preferring to stick to notepad++ and jedit simply coding on my own. This even continued throughout last year on a group project where code was simply ftp’ed into a directory and each person worked on his own code.
If you have never heard of Kolo before then I would highly recommend checking our their myspace page. They hail from Exeter in the south west of the UK but have recently been over in the US recording in Nashville, Tennessee. Having just completed a support slot with 3 Doors Down they are very much on the up and are playing a few gigs in Exeter and Plymouth over the next few weeks. The Vikings EP was released on 15th October a limited edition of 1000 were made so if your quick you might still be able to get one and I would seriously recommend it.
Vikings contains the tracks Rain Is Good For Migraines, Someone Call The Police, Alive and Why Do These Vikings Keep Chasing Me?
I have yet to hear the title track but the first two are both foot stomping indie tunes with driving guitar lines and catchy hooks. They have previously released two EP’s Thank You For the Burning Sensation and a US – EP, both containing a similar sound. The sound is not unlike Harrisons or Milburn which is surprising as they come from a completely different part of the country. More mainstream bands they compare well to are The Cribs and Maximo Park, although the vocals are slightly different.
I cannot stress how good this band are and if you live in the Exeter area you are very lucky, I am sure they will be embarking upon a full Uk tour soon but getting your hands on the EP will stand you in good stead.
Thought I would write a follow up for the review I did of Bloc Party’s new album Intimacy, having listened to it a number of times over the past week I feel better equipped to properly evaluate the quality of the album, especially when compared to their previous two full length releases. I have also been listening to the stand-alone track the band have released as a free download with the album.
Still having major problems with injuries, the knee problem and shin splints I had over the summer keep flaring up. This is no becoming very annoying as I have done little exercise over the past 2 weeks and have tried to rest as much as possible. I believe the root of the problem may be in my diet, as I have never particularly focused on regulating this having being able to eat anything and never put on weight.
I have tried to take a more scientific approach to calculating my requirements, however I cannot seem to find a decent web resource which actually details the calorific and food needs dependant on current weight and height. There are many out there that do the job but each one gives me a different answer.
From this I have decided to create my own diet using my own calculations. My current weight is 60kg (132lbs) and using a set of scales calculated my body fat at around 10%, I am looking to keep this fairly constant although a slight increase will be no problem. I am around 180cm tall (approx 6 feet), using many of the online formulas I have calculated my basic needs to be around 1500 calories a day without any exercise, factoring in general daily life I have added 500 and then 1000 on top of this to account for my workout each day. Giving me a total of around 3000 calories a day to aim for.
This then needs to be broken down, as anyone trying to build muscle will no simply eating 3000 calories is not enough, if all the 3000 are carbs it won’t do much good. So I am using a 40% carbs 30% protein 30% fat diet, this give me calorific needs of 1200 carbs calories 900 protein calories and 900 fat calories. Now there are 4 calories in 1gram of protein and carbs and 9 calories in the equivalent weight of fat. This leads to the following diet breakdown;
3000 Calories
300 gram Carbohydrates
225 gram Protein
100 gram Fat
Now I have constructed the diet plan I am going to try to build a weekly diet plan filled with food to meet these needs, I am also going to try aand build a piece of software that can calculate this stuff properly and keep track of calories to suggest foods to keep up daily allowance. Will post my diet structure tomorrow when it is finalised.
It has taken a few weeks to get properly back into the swing of things in terms of workload but now it is piling on, mainly due to array of careers talks I have been going to as well the job applications I am sending off and checking through.
So first proper week back at University done and the main priority apart from getting to all the lectures was sorting the Broadband out at the flat. Despite there being three main options for broadband due to cost I had ruled out satellite, leaving either cable or ADSL. Having looked into both I decided to go the ADSL route even though this meant taking out a BT phone line because I found a good deal with BE giving us upto 24megabit for £18 a month with unlimited usage.
Once we had signed up and waited for everything to get switched on lo and behold a problem occured, the speed was dire getting upto 500kbits download at maximum so I phoned BT and the BE. To which I received an excellent response, BT sent an engineer round the next day (which was Saturday) and he found the fault and fixed it within half an hour and we were back upto speed.
So finally I can check my e-mail, write you some blog posts and work from home properly. Its amazing how much easier everything is with the internet back on and the fear of having to trek all the way to the CS building to scab the free wireless.
More importantly I have devised a slightly more organised schedule to both my work and blogging so my updates should be more regular, I will update with my training and running related information a couple of times a week and posting technological issues in between which I have encountered on my course. This will be interspersed with random posts about football and other interests.
Hopefully if any of you are actually regular readers you will have noticed the page header has changed. Admittedly it is only slightly but I have quickly knocked up a new logo so the page looks a little better, I am still planning a re-design but with exams after Christmas now aswell as the summer I doubt this will be for a while. Email me at manutdfan2004 (at) gmail.com with suggestions on colour scheme and opinions on the logo all are very welcome.
Despite an injury riddled training campaign and a longest run of 3 miles over the previous 3 weeks, I managed it finishing the Great North Run in a time of 1 hour 48 minutes and 8 seconds. This smashed both my course PB set last year of 2 hours and 34 seconds and my half marathon PB of 1 hour 53 minutes and 18 seconds set at Wilmslow Half Marathon this year.
I ran with both legs heavily strapped and only stopped once throughout the race (only to pull up the supports) also noticing little pain thanks to being filled with ibuprofen. My start was slow and set off at similar pace to last year testing out my shins and knees to make sure I would last the race, however once going I soon picked up my stride and recorded a fast first 10km. Lagging slightly in the middle of the race as usual I then picked up again towards south shields to get over the line, even managing to sprint the last 200m before my legs gave out with cramp in both calves.
You can see the pace I ran at on the nike+ website here, and this includes loads more statistics. I finished in an overall position of 5829, last year having come 12,112 and am delighted with the way things went. To improve next year I am hoping for a few less injuries and a proper sports watch so I can track my pace properly.
Currently at hope in Lymm, Warrington so I have quite a trek on to get back to Bristol before lectures start tomorrow at 9am. Having also ruined my car which needs a new sump fitting, would have been done on friday but the screws to remove the cat pipe from the engine are in an impossible position and the exhaust is in the way of the sump. Anyway this means an overnight train journey entailing a 4 hour wait at crewe station and 4 changes, from Wilmslow to Crewe then onto Birmingham New Street from here to Cheltenham Spa and finally the last leg to Bristol Temple Meads, I will be setting off at 23:02 tonight and arrive at 8:02 tomorrow morning giving me 58 minutes to walk to the uni buildings.
Needless to say if you see me tomorrow don’t expect much in the way of conversation or recognition as I am likely to be sleepwalking, lectures are over for me at 11:00 so I have the rest of the day to sleep.
Last proper training session today before the big day on Sunday, admittedly I am still not running on roads yet as I haven’t wished to risk it before the race. Have been in the gym all this week on the bike and weights, last week I was running on grass nearby house at home. Feel slightly less well prepared than last year, but thats only to do with all the injury problems I have suffered. Will dose up on painkillers before the start and with a good warm up I hope to feel few effects of the shin splints, will then be having a couple of weeks rest before getting back on the bike and starting again ready for Wilmslow in the spring.
Am back in Bristol at the moment and hence the lack of internet as our new flat is not connected yet, roll on 7th October so I am sat in labs abusing the Uni’s internet connection. Have got quite a trek to get up to Newcastle, firstly am getting the train home from Bristol via Newport, then driving on Saturday up to Carlisle (nearest hotel with spare room), then driving across to Newcastle, doing the run driving back home and then onto Bristol with a few bits of stuff I forgot to take down last weekend.
Had a bit of drama last night, with fire alarm going off in Java for a good half an hour and being barracaded inside. No-one quite knew what was going on even the bar staff which was a bit odd but sure will find out in the next Epigram with a Daily Mail style headline.
I have just started to properly develop for my new websites, www.crosscomputing.co.uk and www.stolenadventures.co.uk. So the first port of call was to setup an offline testing area to make sure all the pages interact correctly and save on my bandwidth. To write the pages I am using a mixture of HTML, PHP, CSS and MySQL. For those who don’t know HTML is the language which most webpages are written in, PHP is a scripting language which can be used to create dynamic web pages, CSS is not the band but Cascading Style Sheets which are used to standardise page design so each is the same and finally MySQL which is an online database which can be used to hold data and perform queries upon.
I found this website which provided a really useful guide on how to setup all of the above on your machine as a testing suite. It took me about an hour to get it all up and running, however I did have a slight problem in that I was loading the wrong dll file as the instructions are based on running Apache 2 and I have version 2.2. After that it was all plain sailing and am now ready to get down to the real work of designing and coding the sites.
To any of you who dont already know about Quidco, it is a web based service offering cash in return for purchasing items from online stores or signing up to various services. Another bonus is there is no signup fee, although they do take £5 per year out of any earnings which is very reasonable. Now I know a few people will be thinking this is just another one of them sites that has mostly useless junk and pays very little for them. However I have saved so much money over the last year using it, a few examples £50 for signing up to play online poker, £40 for changing my broadband supplier (which was an extra £4 cheaper and faster) and i’m planning on getting a new phone contract which will net me £50. All this plus a percentage of sale fee with most online shops, these are normally between 3 – 10% I have yet to find a place they don’t have some form of deal with. The money is paid into a paypal account within 3 -5 days, the only slight annoyance is it normally takes around 2 months to pay into your quidco account from the date you perform the offer. Although for the amount I have saved i’m not complaining.
