New Everything

- New computer stuff from Ebuyer!
- New blog template (in fact an entirely new website) in the making!
- New Firefox out last week! Version 3!

The night before last I bought some stuff from Ebuyer:

- Hannspree XM New York 19" TFT widescreen Monitor
- Western Digital Elements 500GB External Hard Drive
- Extra Value All-In-One Card Reader
- Labtec USB Webcam

And they all arrived this morning at 9:00! I got free delivery and they were here within 36 hours! How amazing is that? I first saw the external hard drive in the ebuyer edeals email (I get it every week and take a look for good deals on things I want/need but have never gone ahead and bought anything from looking at the email) because it was such a vast amount of storage at such a low price! Half a terabyte (500GB) for £50! Compared with the last external hard drive I bought for £60 in 2006 (60GB), with both storage/cost ratios measured in gigabytes per pound (GB£^-1).

Therefore, based on my purchases:
In 2006 the cost of external hard drives was 1GB per pound = 1GB£^-1
In 2008 the cost of external hard drives is 10GB per pound = 10GB£^-1

To measure the rate of change in cost over time, we can use a simple calculation used to measure acceleration, which similarly is the measure of changing speed over time:

Acceleration = (Final Speed - Initial Speed)/Time

a=(v-u)/t

Therefore, the rate of change in cost over two years is (10-1)/2 = 4.5

So we can say that, based on my purchases, the ratio of storage to cost in external hard drives is falling at a rate of 4.5GB per pound per year! (That one's for you, Woollard!)

Anyway, I thought I'd treat myself to a sexy new monitor and get rid of the bulky old one that takes up half the desk. I'm well pleased with it already - I have a huge resolution (1600 x 1024) and I can now watch 16:9 films without huge black space at the top and bottom!

I thought it was about time I bought a webcam, especially seeing as I'll be moving to Manchester soon and won't be seeing much of my friends - and it was dirt cheap, like the cardreader.

So here's my setup showing my sparkley new monitor, webcam blue-tacked to the edge, my awesome mouse (the Logitech MX 1000 Laser Cordless Mouse - also bought from Ebuyer):



You can see a preview of my new blog template on my monitor in that photo! I've been working on it today and I overcame the problem I was having last week with it not rendering properly in Internet Explorer. Seriously, if it wasn't for IE, web development would be a walk in the park! This is one of the many reasons why everyone in the world should use Firefox! There was a new version out last week and there have been some amazing changes and really useful additions! If you don't use Firefox, why not give it a try and see for yourself what all the fuss is about? It's safer, faster and the all-round better choice when it comes to doing everyday tasks on the web! Download it now! http://www.mozilla-europe.org/en/firefox/

Oh and you can check out the new template. I'm currently holding a test blog at http://www.bennuttall.com/test with a few random posts for testing purposes. I'm hoping to have the new site up some time next week. Watch this space! It might be a bit bluer next time!

I Am The Source of Knowledge

I'm back from the longest period of absence in the history of this blog. I've been busy doing the following:

- Preparing for exams
- Thinking
- Working on my Euphony business

Unfortunately training doesn't come into the list, seeing as I've hardly had time for it lately. I do my best to get out and train whenever I can, but with my final exams coming up, it's been hard to find time. I had my last exam earlier this week, immediately after which, I went to give blood (my former IT teacher expressed her surprise that I'd have any left after the exam period) and went to buy a book to add to my ever-growing 'to read' pile.

I've been thinking a lot about everything lately. Getting involved with the Euphony business has put me in a place where I'm spending time with people from a whole range of backgrounds, and similarly to the parkour community, this is a great way of getting everyone's ideas together and sharing thoughts with strangers. There's a great emphasis on personal development, which, I feel in a very general sense, is basically my life purpose. Everyone I'm involved with has their own attitude to life and to business, and feel that listening to people and really thinking about what they are talking about can be a great way of self-improvement. I've been attending various conferences, seminars and training sessions with a range of people in the business, and I've been given some great talks, great advice and really encouraging and inspiring sessions.

The reason for this post (other than to get back into the swing of things) was meant to be about wikipedia, but it seems to have taken a minor segment of the post, but I'm not changing the title now, I like it, it sounds cool! Anyway, I was doing some random browsing earlier and found that on the Lisses article on wikipedia gives a source for its information, the source being a blog post entitled Trip To Lisses 2007 written by Ben Nuttall. That's me.



I thought it was pretty cool how someone had come across my site in their research and thought that it was a reasonable source of information. It's not like my site is the sole source of information about lisses and parkour, so it's not like I could have written any old rubbish and someone would have used it as the truth. It's also weird how I've had 3 people contact me in the last 2 weeks, from 2 different continents, all asking me how to get from Paris to Lisses, which hotel to stay in and for general information about Lisses. I've hardly had anyone ask me about that until the other week, and then I get two more within a matter of days. Weird. I wrote an extensive reply and sent it to the other two guys, I think I'll upload it as a web page and stick it in the site as a parkour resource.

I have lots planned for this Summer. I go on holiday to the Spanish Pyrenees in about a month, which I'm really looking forward to. But while I'm here at home (until I move out in September for uni), I have plenty of tasks to be getting on with, including redesigning this site completely. Hopefully I'll have a new site up and running by the end of Summer. As well as changing the layout of the site, I intend to revolutionise the content by taking a leaf out of my friend Joe's book and try to post at least once a week. So far I've been sticking to about one a month on average, only posting when something amazing happens, but wouldn't it be nice if I could have something to write about every week? I'll be keeping posts much shorter and much more to-the-point in the hope that more people will actually read the posts. Please give feedback in comment or email form, I want to know what you think of the site and I want to know when you read a post. Be back soon.

Pi Day 2008

Pi - An irrational constant used to represent the ratio between a circle's circumference and its diameter, symbolised by the greek letter Pi, approximately 3.14159265358979323846264338327 (not rounded)

Pi Day - A geek holiday held to celebrate the mathematical constant Pi, observed on March 14 (3/14 in the American date format)

Pi Approximation Day - Celebrated on 22nd June (the fraction 22/7 gives pi to 3 decimal places) among other dates such as the 314th day of the year and the 355th at 1:13 (355/113)

We celebrated Pi Day 2008 in style. My Maths class were particularly excited about it, and I'd brought in some pies and cakes and other circular food, as well as a half-moon cake (because there are Pi radians in half a circle) and we did some hardcore integration involving Pi (not just for fun, it was on the course) and then paraded Pi around and took pictures!

We had a medley of the Pi Song (Mathematical Pi by Ken Ferrier and Antoni Chan) - the song can be downloaded from this page (I also recommend The Milk Song)

I know Pi to about 35 decimal places, thanks to the song (plus a few extra digits). The record is 100,000, which is pretty crazy. Pi presents us with the most incredible concept; the fact that its decimal digits go on infinitely without any significant repeats, with no patterns emerging, it may as well be random. We have always wished to learn from Pi and discover its secrets. Maybe one day the numbers will be plotted on a graph in such a way that we will realise a connection with something in nature, space, the truth about life ... who knows?
If you do know, please email me at ben(at)bennuttall.com

Read more about Pi on wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pi

More Pi Day photos from me and from everyone

Happy Leap Year 2008!

Today is the 29th February. This is something which happens just once every four years, so I'd like to take the opportunity to post. It can be a tradition for this blog, I'll post something about it being a leap year every 29th February. I promise.

Happy birthday, Leanne!

My friend Leanne reaches the ripe old age of 5 today, this is her 5th birthday, she was born 20 years ago this very day.

Winter Runaround / The Bone of Contention

The Winter Runaround is a Scouting competition for 14-25s where teams of 4-7 travel across South Yorkshire by means of public transport with pre-purchased travel passes, with the aim of competing bases at Scout headquarters all over the county in order to earn points.

The Bone of Contention is a challenge trophy (a bone on a wooden plaque) which started as a Venture Scout challenge whereby one Venture Unit (the challengers) would propose a challenge to the present holders of the Bone in order to attempt to win it from them, and since it was won from my Venture Unit about 5 years ago when I started, its location has been unknown.

This is the story of how these two pieces of information came together one Saturday in February 2008.

I entered the Winter Runaround with team mates David Webster, Rob Batley, Dom Sharpe and Andrew Webster, and since more than one of our number are over 18 we had to enter the Network competition (18-25) rather than the Explorer one (14-18). We were given our travel passes and at 08:00 we were off! We started at Woodseats, our own HQ on Helmton Road, and completed the base there and earning our first points before heading off to Tickhill via bus, train, bus. We completed the activity on the base there and some more points and continued with our travels.



Throughout the day we visited bases in Sheffield, Rotherham, Barnsley and Doncaster. We caught dozens of trains, buses and trams and sprinted between bus stops and bases at every opportunity in order to be most efficient with our timing. We had the route planned out to-the-minute and allowed for complications or changes of plan with alternative routes. Having an Internet-enabled phone was very useful as we could check train and bus times with ease, plan the next move as we'd know what time we got in and where we needed to be and at what time. All in all it was a very hectic day of dashing off in all directions, sticking together as a team and solving problems (involving mental and physical activity) at bases to earn points.



The highlight for me was when we caught a train to Barnsley, then a bus out to near where the base was, sprinting down the road to the base and completing the task (getting the day's best score on that base), sprinting back up the road and catching the same bus we'd just got off (the driver had finished his route and turned back on the return journey), and the driver asked if we were lost but we told him why we were heading back the way he had just brought us
and he was rather impressed with the timing. We then arrived at the bus/train interchange with 20 minutes before our train to the very last base (having decided to miss out the other Barnsley one due to us pushing for time) so we decided to risk it and sprint up to where the other Barnsley base was and try and complete the task and make it back to the station in time, and we found it on very vague directions, completed the task getting half the maximum points (and more than most on that base) and rushing off with five minutes to get back for our train, and catching it to the next base. We managed to complete the task on that base (which meant we'd made it to all ten bases over South Yorkshire and earned points on each) and make it to the finish point in Chapeltown with an hour to spare.



Then after a final activity at the finish point, gaining even more points, all the teams returned (some late with points deducted) and were together for food and drink before the results were confirmed.

Back to the Bone of Contention...

I've been trying to track the Bone for months now, and the last I heard it was in possession of a guy called Charlie who ran a Unit somewhere. At one of the bases in Barnsley, I noticed that the lads helping run the base were wearing hoodies depicting the name and nature of their Unit (as is the trend) and I could see that they were members of Charlie's Angles Explorer Unit (that's Angles, not Angels) and I knew that this was where the Charlie with the Bone was based, so I enquired as to whether Charlie was there, and he was the guy I happened to ask, so I further enquired as the the location of the Bone of Contention, and he said he gave it to Sharon (the organiser of the Winter Runaround) that very morning, so I made a mental note to locate Sharon later on and ask her what was what.

When we made it to the finish point and had eaten, I found Sharon and she told me that the Bone was now a Network challenge and - most relevant of all - that she would be giving it to whichever Network team won the Winter Runaround.

So there we were, part way through the reading out of the results of the day, our younger team, the Explorers, had already found out that they had come 2nd in their competition, and there were 3 Network teams left to be read out (in reverse order, naturally), one went, it wasn't, another went, that wasn't use either, then came our Unit's name ... "Woodseats Network - 1st Place!" and we were presented with the trophy as pictured below:

Check out some more photos here and here

Check out the Woodseats Venture Unit website here

Google vs. Microsoft & Yahoo! (The Future of the Internet)

Yesterday, Google made the following statement on their blog, regarding the takeover of Yahoo! by Microsoft, and I thought it was a great article contemplating the future of the Internet:

From The Official Google Blog: Permalink for post

Yahoo! and the future of the Internet
2/03/2008 11:45:00 AM
Posted by David Drummond, Senior Vice President, Corporate Development and Chief Legal Officer

The openness of the Internet is what made Google -- and Yahoo! -- possible. A good idea that users find useful spreads quickly. Businesses can be created around the idea. Users benefit from constant innovation. It's what makes the Internet such an exciting place.

So Microsoft's hostile bid for Yahoo! raises troubling questions. This is about more than simply a financial transaction, one company taking over another. It's about preserving the underlying principles of the Internet: openness and innovation.

Could Microsoft now attempt to exert the same sort of inappropriate and illegal influence over the Internet that it did with the PC? While the Internet rewards competitive innovation, Microsoft has frequently sought to establish proprietary monopolies -- and then leverage its dominance into new, adjacent markets.

Could the acquisition of Yahoo! allow Microsoft -- despite its legacy of serious legal and regulatory offenses -- to extend unfair practices from browsers and operating systems to the Internet? In addition, Microsoft plus Yahoo! equals an overwhelming share of instant messaging and web email accounts. And between them, the two companies operate the two most heavily trafficked portals on the Internet. Could a combination of the two take advantage of a PC software monopoly to unfairly limit the ability of consumers to freely access competitors' email, IM, and web-based services? Policymakers around the world need to ask these questions -- and consumers deserve satisfying answers.

This hostile bid was announced on Friday, so there is plenty of time for these questions to be thoroughly addressed. We take Internet openness, choice and innovation seriously. They are the core of our culture. We believe that the interests of Internet users come first -- and should come first -- as the merits of this proposed acquisition are examined and alternatives explored.

Permalink for post

And here's what I think of it all.

The Internet wouldn't be what it is if it wasn't such an open and innovative network of people with ideas. The very concept of anybody having the ability to share their idea by putting it together and letting people use it for free is an integral part of what the Internet is. By this I mean a programmer can think to himself "wouldn't it be good if I could have a portfolio of my photography and share it with others, let them give me comments, etc." and he can just write Flickr and invite people to use it for the same way he wants to use it, and the next thing you know it's a massive photo-sharing community with millions of users.

Similarly, that's how Google started; Larry Page and Sergey Brin simply wanted to make information available to users of the Internet, so they devised a new method of searching the web using their own special algorithms based on how they thought the right information would come up with any given search so that it would be a more useful search engine. The same for Facebook, which started as a one-person idea that it would be cool to keep in touch with fellow Harvard students online, then expanded to several other major Universities in the U.S., then all Higher Education institutes over the world, and as of September 2007, any person over the age of 13. Now there are over 60 million people using Facebook with over 65 billion pages viewed per month. I could also mention Wikipedia but I'm trying to keep this post short.

Note the use of Flickr (owned by Yahoo!) and Google of examples of the Internet at its best, along with Facebook and Wikipedia, which in my opinion are the four best things on the Internet today. Google expands to show Gmail, Blogger, Google Maps, YouTube, etc.)

So as Google says in the above article, this is not simply one company taking over another, it's about preserving the underlying principles of the Internet: openness and innovation. What would the Internet be like if it was controlled not by the everyday innovative programmer with an idea, but by the richest man in the world, out to make more money? We all know the situation with Windows, MS Office and every other Microsoft product or service; they strive to defeat competition, not allowing anyone to share their ideas, show how they would change it if they had the chance, unless they were in Bill's pocket. We all suffer the problems inherent in being forced to use certain software and paying the Earth for computers and upgrades for our old ones. We're having to put up with this influence from Microsoft with most of our computational pursuits as it is, but I fear that if the Internet fell into the hands of Mr. Gates it would no longer be open the way it is now. Google worries that Microsoft will do what it takes, exerting the same inappropriate and illegal influence over the Internet that it did with the PC market.

Google also mentions the fact that if you accumulate the number of email addresses controlled by Microsoft and Yahoo!, the two largest webmail and Instant Messenger services, just think about how many people's email accounts they have in their hands! Think about it, of all the people you know, how many have an @hotmail, @msn, @live, @yahoo address? They'll all be controlled by Microsoft if the takeover goes ahead as proposed. This means a heavy influence on everything inherent in the email process, and it doesn't get much more personal than a person's email inbox.

I hope reading this has made you think about how seriously some people take the choice, openness and innovation involved in using the Internet.

Google troubled by Microsoft move at BBC News: Link

Place de Chevreuse - Parkour Pilgrimage Preview

Here is a short preview of a long-awaited Parkour Pilgrimage Video by TK17. The video is made up of many traceurs' Lisses trips and will be around 70 minutes when complete and will feature action, interviews, history and a load of great stuff like that. The preview only features a small section of the action, all around the white walls area of Lisses near the school. It features clips of me from my Lisses video and Sam who was with me on that very same trip, his video.

The video's going to be shown to David Belle in March for approval and should be publically available soon after that! I'll keep you posted.

Read about the project at p.net

Schmap Sheffield Guide

A photo of mine was selected to be featured in the Sheffield Schmap Guide, a worldwide online travel guide broken down into cities. The photo used is under the Sheffield Hallam University section of the Sheffield guide and shows the Sheffield Parkour group training on Christmas Eve 2006 on the annual 'Santa Jam' where we dress up in Santa Suits. The photo credits my name and links to the corresponding photo page on my Flickr.

Here's a screenshot of the inclusion, with my name credited:

Click to view in Flickr

Here's the original photo (It's not a brilliant picture, but meh - they picked it!):

Click to view in Flickr

Link to the Schmap Sheffield Guide: here

Link to the screenshot: here

Link to the photo on my Flickr: here

Googlewhacking!

"What the HELL is a Googlewhack?"

Googlewhack: 1. A string of two words which, when entered into the search engine Google, return a single result. 2. A person who is responsible for the webpage on which a Googlewhack has been found.

Googlewhacker: A person who seeks Googlewhacks.

Googlewhacking: A web-based activity using the popular search engine Google to find a string of two words which return a single result.

Here are the rules of Googlewhacking:

1. No punctuation (inverted commas, apostrophes, hyphens, etc.)
2. Both words must be in www.dictionary.com (underlined in Google)
3. No Word Lists (must be real webpage of information)

TWO WORDS, ONE HIT

One word followed by a space followed by another word. No hyphenated words, no use of "speech marks to denote a phrase like this". Only letters A-Z, no other characters or numerals. The webpage must be a page of information within which the two words have been used in normal context and not just a list of words. Read into it more at googlewhack.com/rules.

I'll tell you how I came about this fascinating word game. There's a British comedian called Dave Gorman who, without telling you his story, has a book and DVD by the name of Dave Gorman's Googlewhack Adventure, which are both fantastic. The book follows him all over the world where he meets dozens of Googlewhacks (people whose sites contain a Googlewhack) while trying to avoid writing a novel he was being paid to write. The DVD is a live stand-up show of him telling the same story to a Swansea audience.

The DVD and book (both of which I highly recommend) inspired me to have a go myself, and after a couple of months of failure I'd pretty much given up, thinking that seeing as Dave's adventure was back in 2003, and today's Internet is somewhat fuller than the old days and that Googlewhacks must be near-impossible to find now. But there was light at the end of the tunnel, thanks to telling my friend Mark about Googlewhacks, we had a go and within minutes, saw those magic words "Results 1 - 1 of 1 for...", and here it is:

My first Googlewhack, click to view fullsize in Flickr
Note: I have purposefully avoided using the words in order to maintain its GW status

I was over the moon with this! It's a beauty! It was my very first Googlewhack! It obeys all the rules, it's 100% legit. I then went on to register it in the Whack Stack at googlewhack.com to get it registered under my name and to make sure they recognised it as a real GW (sometimes the Whack Stack rejects something you see as a GW because your browser or personalised search filtered the results and it's not a real one) and all was well, I had my name in the list (you'll find it a dozen or so pages in now).

A couple of days later I had another go and BANG! Another Googlewhack materialised on the screen from the ultimate power of my now experienced fingertips. Again, see for yourself:

My second Googlewhack, click to view fullsize in Flickr
Note: I have purposefully avoided using the words in order to maintain its GW status

And so I registered this one too. My name's in the Whack Stack twice now. My tactic is word-disassociation. I choose a long uncommon word and stick another word in that I think is most unlikely to appear in conjunction with the first word. It's not easy, though. Try it.

The great thing about this is the sorts of sites you find the Googlewhacks on. Take Dave Gorman's first GW as an example. He ended up spending some time trying to find one, and finally hit the jackpot with Dork Turnspin, which was found at www.WomenAndDogsUK.co.uk which is the website of a guy called Marcus from Birmingham who collects photos of women and dogs:

#1
This was the first photograph I found. It was in a book!


#20
In this photo we can see her shoes. They are red, suggesting that she is lively.

Isn't this brilliant!? This guy is so unique in so many ways. He actually collects second-hand photographs that contain women and dogs. He's in a second-hand bookshop and buys an old book concealed within which, he later finds, is the first picture above. He puts it to one side, and months later he happens to come across another picture of another woman and another dog. He sees the opportunity to start a collection and host them on a wesbite to share with the world. You might think it's a bit odd, and yes, you're not wrong, but isn't it beautiful in its own special way? I think so.

I hope you enjoyed my write-up about Googlewhacks and hope you will try to find one for yourself. Please comment to let me know if you do find one, make sure you stick to the rules and remember to register it at the Whack Stack!

Many thanks to Dave Gorman for sharing this with the world. Another thing you should know about the guy is that he once went around the world with his flatmate Danny Wallace, on the strength of a drunken bet. Danny said that Dave couldn't meet "loads" of people who share his name. They set the bar at 54 Dave Gormans (or Gormen, to use the plural they use in the book), which was one for each card in a deck (including the jokers), and it turned out that there were "loads" of them, which they met on their journey. That was also a book, which I highly recommend, and came before the Googlewhack one. Oh and Dave is an amazing photographer. Check his pictures out at his Flickr: flickr.com/photos/dgbalancesrocks

I sincerely apologise if reading this has led you to waste a considerable amount of time of your life trying to find yourself a Googlewhack. Seriously.

Us On BBC Inside Out

It all started with an email from Jamie Coulson. He asked if I could set something up to film parkour for his programme, Inside Out, for the BBC. I told him about the (then upcoming) Trace Gathering and he was very interested, so I negociated some details with Jason Matten, the organiser, and arranged for Jamie and a cameraman to come along for one day of the event.

We met him at Grindleford station and walked up to Padley Gorge where he filmed a warm-up led by Jason, and as the day went on the two BBC guys followed the groups around the peaks and filmed bits here and there.

A couple of weeks later we arranged a filming session in Sheffield City Centre to capture parkour in the urban environment as well as rural. We did some stuff around the Crucible and Hallam University mainly. They also filmed some interviews on both filming days which were an integral part of the programme. Dave Sedgely talked about working towards parkour being taught safely by qualified coaches, Daniel Ilabaca talked about what he understands parkour to be about, and there were other good talks from Blake (Saiyans) and Jason Matten.

The video, as was shown on BBC One Yorkshire & Lincolnshire, can be seen on the You Tube:

Here's Paul's Trace Gathering video, he's only just got round to editing it but it's well worth the wait:



My apologies for the video overload but this one can't be missed. It should be compulsory viewing for anyone who does parkour. It's Jin's new Naijing Parkour Sampler, his first parkour video while he's been in China. Parkour at its absolute best:



That's all for now. More coming soon. Meanwhile, check out my photos on Flickr: flickr.com/photos/bennuttall