Well I’ve been keeping this to myself for a bit, generally feeling pretty glum and sounding off to those around me so it’s time to update my blog readers with the latest news.
I saw the orthopaedic consultant a week and a half ago and unfortunately I do need an operation to shave the side off my prolapsed L4/5 disc. To be honest I was expecting it almost wanting it as a permanent cure and am not particularly worried about the operation as it is now done via keyhole microsurgery and as a day case with a fairly quick recovery. Now the down side; I have to be referred to a surgeon – 3 month waiting list – and then probably another 3 month waiting list for the operation after I have convinced him I need it……..
It looks too that my exertions to lose some weight and get fitter, together with a wearing off of the effects of my lumbar injection now mean I am back in some pain if I am on my feet for long periods and therefore am back sitting on the sofa in the evenings and weekends rather than out and about.
I have taken it easy for the last few days and will try an easy turbo trainer session over the weekend as I think a little comfort easting has also crept in which needs to stop and I need to reverse its effects!
Today I have just heard that one of my early Orienteering Coaches who used to look after the Devon Junior Orienteering Squad in the 80s was tragically killed in a road accident near his home in Shropshire last week. John was a driving force for junior orienteering based at QE school in Credition as well as being a stalwart of Devon orienteering club organisation. He lead some of my very early trips away orienteering including probably my first real adventures away from home when I was 11 or 12 to the White Rose Orienteering Festival in Yorkshire and to the British Champs on Shining Cliffe.
John was an advocate of public transport and cycling and used to cycle everywhere therfore it is so tragic that he was killed in an RTA presumably just commuting to work after so many years of pedaling.
My thoughts are with his family, so terrible at 59 – John Searle RIP, thanks for giving so much to junior orienteering.
I collect Google analytics stat’s on my blog to show sponsors that they are getting some return for their support. It is also interesting and useful to peruse the stat’s to get an idea of what people like and don’t like, what is popular and where my visits come from.
Ives noticed some Google Chrome Adverts joining the Windows Explorer adverts on the television recently. I suspect this graph shows why !
– what do I use? Chrome when I can and Explorer when I have to….
Well its now a year since I jumped off a garage roof in Russia. The view of my training diary says it all 🙁
A quick update – my back continued to get better over the last 6-8 weeks and I have been able to do a little turbo trainer and road rides (on a full sus mountain bike) though only for up to 90 mins but it has plateaued again and I can easily over do it. What really still gets me is impacts and standing still for any period of time, I have to avoid them completely.
I had an MRI scan 2 weeks ago and see the Consultant and Surgeon together in two weeks. We will then make a decision as to whether I try another lumbar injection or if its under the knife time to get in there and see what the problem is…..
In the mean time I am under orders to get some aerobic fitness back and get rid of some weight (lost nearly 3 kgs already) so I am in the best possible state to have an operation. Fingers crossed!
Last Wednesday I found myself underground at the Building Centre in London with a select group of people for the BE2Awards / Talks. (Built Environment Web 2.0 and Social Media) chaired by Bernie Mitchell
I’d been invited to speak about “BIM, Bikes, Blogs and Pozzoni”, particularly how BIM and social media go together like “ipads & skinny latte” and how I had used social media to promote Pozzoni’s BIM credentials since the 2011 Government Construction strategy mandated the use of BIM. I was sharing the platform with some other speakers and the awards were given out between the talks.
I was on after the interval so nervously fumbled my notes with thumbs dancing on my phone tweeting away as I watched the other speakers before me.
There was a definite biking and outdoors twist to the talks and I found them engaging and entertaining. There were about 40 in the room and many more watching online as it was held as part of London Social Media week.
Richard Saxon, the UK’s BIMbassador was up first talking about Growth through BIM, selling UK PLC BIM skills to the rest of the world and gave us the news we are now 2nd behind Finland in our BIM maturity. (he also told me during coffee that the Pozzoni / Kier scheme Poynton High School was shown in Brussels the day before!)
Cycling Journalist Carlton Reid then spoke about the UK bike scene which was well received before a great presentation by Phil Sorrel on GeoBlogging, a few of us in the room immediately seeing possible practical applications for this technology on Construction sites.
Nick Katz talked about Honest Buildings, a crowd sourced platform for connecting business opportunities and building data and Tim Oldman spoke on the Leesman index, a measurement of workplace productivity to feed into evidence based design.
The closing address was by Liz Male, chair of Trustmark who spoke about the Green Deal and the implications of a recent omission to the legislation regarding ancillary works.
My piece seemed to go down well, I used my normal style of big images, trying to lighten the tone of what can normally be a fairly dry subject as I bounced around BIM, Bikes and Blogs, ending with a call for more use of project collaboration extranets and use of open IDs and encourage this.
Of course every awards ceremony has a party and we all trooped across the road to the College Arms for a Beer or 3 of course all checking in with Four Square as we crossed the street!
We managed to get Holly out of school for a couple of hours and rode up the road to Brocton to watch the Skoda King of the Mountains Climb from Brocton Green up to Glacial Boulder.
Originally we were just going to ride up to where we were going to watch but Holly got a good reception form the crowds lining the climb so we carried on up to the Skoda finish line where she got a really big cheer. Hopefully the feeling will inspire her for the future.
We came back down and watched on a slightly up hill section without too many others with good views down the road. we scribbled on the road with chalk, met up with more friends and started the wait. After what seemed like hundreds of police motorbikes, sirens blaring, through came the tour. All over in 30 seconds but we got to see our heroes close up.
I started blogging as a way of increasing my profile, to attract sponsors, to help with the costs of racing, particularly internationally. I joined twitter I seem to remember to try and get some more publicity to win the Doreset Cereals little blog awards. I then realised that twitter was huge in my area of work (Building Information Modelling and IT in the Construction Industry) and I have jumped in with two feet becoming a big user of twitter and ausing it to network effectively amongst my piers and promote the company I work for, Pozzoni (www.pozzoni.co.uk).
I have just been invited to speak at the Built Environment Social Networking awards next week in London, the Be2 Awards and Talks ! Ill be sharing a platform with a few Built environment types giving 20 minute presentations amongst the awards, but also Carlton Reid who will be the Be2Bike Keynote on the growing application and importance of social media in the world of cycling. I am honored to be in the same lineup as Carlton @carltonreid who has been writing about bicycles and travel for 20 years. He has written for many cycling and travel magazines and UK newspapers including The Guardian and The Independent, and is the author of several books on travel and cycling. He is executive editor of BikeBiz.com, editor of Bikehub.co.uk, Quickrelease.tv and iPayRoadTax.com. Author of the acclaimed Bike to Work Book, his latest project is Roads were not built for Cars
Be2 talks and awards are not just about the built environment but are about promoting the use of social networking across sectors. If you are in London on Wednesday afternoon why not come along. Cost £15.00
The @Be2Talks + Be2awards – London, 26 September 2012
Many UK riders have seen in the past few years British Mountain Bike Orienteer Ifor Powell riding around with a small box on this handlebars, a home made cycle computer. (he is a electronic engineer and programmer) This development has culminated with an android phone based bike computer which in my opinion ticks every box. I have been using it for a while and recommend trying it if you have an android phone. ( I use a sony Xpeira Ray though the Active model would be perfect)
IpBike is an Android bike computer app. It does everything you would expect of high end bike computer plus a bit more with the extra capabilities of a phone. There are a good number of Android bike computer apps but most of them just use the GPS. IpBike also gets data from ANT+ based sensors, e.g. bike speed and cadence sensors as well as heart rate and also ANT+ power meters. For this to work you either need a phone with built in ANT support, like various members of the Sony range or with a modern phone you can plug in a USB ANT stick to add ANT support as detailed here. This of course allows you to use it to log your turbo trainer sessions as well as outdoor rides.
As well as supporting ANT+ sensors if your phone has a pressure sensor IpBike uses it to give you high quality altitude information and thus those interesting incline and rate of climb numbers. The display is optimised for use on the bike, with b
IpBike is free to download from Google Play but there is a 1,000,000 wheel revolution limit to let you try it out after which you you need to buy IpBikeKey to unlock the limit.ig clear text you can read at a glance for the main sensor data. There is mapping data from Open Street Map sources that can either be directly downloaded or pre loaded on the phone as described here. You can upload a .gpx route files to follow, the map will show the route with your position on it and automatically rotate the map to keep it aligned as you go. Post ride there are all the stats you want from the ride as well as a map of the route and a plot you can pan and zoom over to take a closer look at the climbs with. The feature it has you don’t get with a stand alone bike computer is direct upload to various websites like Strava, RunKeeper, TrainingPeaks and Attackpoint so no need to have your PC around. Once you have a good bit of data recorded you can query it to say find out how many race miles you did in the year or your total stats for the month.
