Ben Nuttall

Blog: A Day In The Life

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Tuesday, 23 February 2010

ITV Fixers & Absolute Radio

On Sunday morning I was at my computer, surfing the web and doing some programming. I kept an eye on Twitter, noticing that Dave Gorman was tweeting about the radio show he was broadcasting at the time (Absolute Radio). The theme of his show was people's odd routines & rituals; things they do all the time, without questioning. People were texting, emailing and tweeting in saying things like they always put their left sock on before their right, or that they always eat food in a particular order (crisps: large to small; skittles: yellow first; etc.), when they changed the volume on the TV it would have to be even or a multiple of 5, and other things like that. I sent Dave a tweet saying I don't have lucky numbers, but criticise people whose lucky numbers are non-prime..., thinking little of it at the time. A couple of hours later I happened to check my ReTweets (my tweets, retweeted by others) and noticed that several people had retweeted this tweet, none of whom I recognised until I noticed that among the retweeters was none other than Dave Gorman himself, meaning that he must have seen it in his mentions, liked it and retweeted it, then several of his followers must have seen it and retweeted it themselves.

By the time I had seen this it was towards the end of the show so I waited for the show to be made available as a downloadable podcast (similar to iPlayer, et al; watching shows after they were broadcast). I downloaded and listened to it when I got home last night, listening out for my tweet to be read out. Unless I missed it, I don't think Dave actually read it out on air, but at one point one of the co-presenters performed a song about the things people had sent in - and he mentioned it! That part went like this:

I'm normal you know. I'm normal you know.
I sort out my sweets in an orderly row
In case I end up with too many yellows.
I'm perfectly normal, aren't I?
I'm perfectly normal. I'm perfectly normal.
I have to read an old book at bath time.
I don't have a lucky number but if I did it would be prime.
I'm perfectly normal, aren't I?

The podcast can be downloaded from Absolute Radio (21st February).

Now allow me to explain my prime number thing. I don't have any numbers I would consider my 'lucky numbers', partly because I rarely find myself in a situation where I need to pick numbers in such a way, but mostly because I know there's no such thing as luck and cannot stand people's attitude to sticking to their 'lucky numbers', especially when it comes to things like the Lottery (I hate the Lottery and despise people who play it thinking they have a reasonable chance of winning, but I think I'll save that for another blog post). Being a mathematician, the only method I would use to pick numbers where there was no indication of any difference to be seen between them at the point of selection would be to select mathematically interesting numbers. Usually number selection of the nature to which I am referring is between 1 and 10, sometimes 1 and 20, 30 ... 50 or around that area, so you're looking at relatively small numbers (note that seriously interesting numbers are numbers like 33 550 336, 9 814 072 356...) so the even numbers have little appeal as they're common and have many factors or are factors of other regular numbers, which pushes me to go for the primes. Having said that, 6 is a wonderfully interesting number as it is the smallest perfect number (the sum of its factors 1, 2 and 3 is 6), and 2 is the only even prime.

Recently I was contacted by an organisation called ITV Fixers, which is a project to give 16-25 year olds the chance to do something to help others in their area of interest or something they are passionate about. We arranged for the Manchester parkour group to take part in this to launch a project to promote our view of parkour and show people what we do. They filmed us doing some training last week and we shot some interviews, and the week before, Paul & I attended the exclusive launch event (ITV Fixers has been running down South for some time and is just launching in the Northern areas now) where I was introduced to the regional news reporter Tony Morris who asked me to speak about the project during the official launch.

The main show will be shown next week but the preview (meet the fixers) was shown yesterday (watch from 2:18):

EDIT: Something I forgot to mention; Dave Gorman has to be commended for his commitment to replying to people on Twitter. He makes such an effort to reply to people who mention him in tweets, which is a great thing for him to do. If you remember reading on this very blog almost a year ago, I posted explaining what had led me to start using Twitter (Tweet Tweet); it was due to a blog post of Dave's in which he explained the one-way system of connection (as opposed to becoming someone's friend on Facebook, Twitter lets you follow someone to see their tweets without them having to see yours, only whose they decide to follow). He explained then that he always tried to reply to people who sent him tweets, which made up for him not following people back, and still meant that he could use the service the way he wanted (i.e. following only people he wanted to.

I happened to mention Dave in a tweet a couple of weeks ago ('Googlewhack' was trending at the time), without demanding or expecting a reply, but one came. I replied back and so did he again. The next day something else came up and he replied again. This was actually the day before I saw him do standup at Sheffield City Hall, and that night I mentioned him in a tweet saying the show was great and I'd really enjoyed it - he sent one out thanking everyone who'd tweeted about the show, that he was glad they enjoyed it. Then this week he retweeted my prime numbers thing during the radio show, and after I posted a link to this blog post (mentioning him) he replied saying:

Labels: Featured, Internet, Maths, Parkour, Twitter

Posted by Ben Nuttall at 14:34

Friday, 15 January 2010

Midnight Ice Climb Up Helvellyn

Some friends & I decided to make the most of the snow by heading to the Lake District for a midnight mission up Helvellyn one Friday evening in mid-January.


I was due to return to Manchester from spending the Christmas holidays at home, and as the mountain passes over the peak district from Sheffield were closed due to snow, I was forced to get the train. This meant I was restricted in what I could take with me, knowing it would be at least a week before I could get the rest back. As I had planned to do the Helvellyn trek that evening, most of the stuff I took was kit for the climb! I had two large rucksacks mostly full of kit & gear, and my laptop bag with me on the train. I got off the train at Manchester and went straight to Gordon's flat to sort out kit. We checked through what we had with us, trying to share kit evenly between the group, making sure everyone would be sufficiently warm & safe. We nipped to a local outdoor shop to stock up of a few bits & pieces and at about 8pm set off for Blackpool, which is where Gordon's brother Alex lives.

We arrived at Alex's house, checked through kit, stocked up on food and ran over the routine in the garden by practising the rope systems we might have been needing on the hills. After a couple of hours of kitting up and getting ready for the ascent, we headed to the Lakes in the cars. Setting off later than planned (around 11:30pm) meant we were starting the climb early Saturday morning. We had a bit of an epic getting up one of the mountain passes to the place we were starting from, as the snow was so deep on the road that our cars got stuck. We had to get the ice axes out early and smash up the thick snow and shovel it to the sides for us to pass.



We parked up and began the trek. We started with only a few layers on, with several more packed away in our bags as we would get hot & sweaty on the way up but knew as soon as we stopped higher up, we would get very cold very quickly.



The night sky was clearer than I've ever seen it. You could make out several constellations and see the North Star. The trek up was very hard to endure for our calves, and trekking through deep snow made things difficult. We had two home contacts Gordon was keeping in touch with to let them know we were on track - the situation was that we would text or call them at each checkpoint and if we were more than an hour and a half behind schedule (which had been adjusted at our later-than-planned start) and unreachable they were to call mountain rescue and give all the information they had about our position and where we were headed.

Anyway, they say a picture is worth a thousand words so here's the rest of the story in several thousand words' worth of photographs:









P.S. Just so you know, we got home safely, although exhausted, with a touch of frostbite on Gordon's part. Tip: never be the one everyone asks to open their food because you're only wearing one pair of gloves at the top of a mountain.

Labels: Featured, Mountain Climbing

Posted by Ben Nuttall at 22:32

Thursday, 12 November 2009

Parkour Thriller Zombies

An amazing new film here. Parkour Thriller Zombies. Starring, written, directed & produced by Paul Maunder. Watch it. Keep an eye out for me (I'm the first zombie and I'm at the back-right during the Thriller dance):


Over the last few months we've been rehearsing the Michael Jackson Thriller dance, and Paul's been writing and planning the film. We spent a few hours each week for about 6 weeks filming zombie parkour scenes and we filmed Thriller in one sitting (10 takes at different angles).

I didn't have a lot of time to be in most of the zombie scenes, but I got practising for Thriller and made sure I was around for filming it. The one night I was there for the zombie filming was the one at Dean's house when I came to the door at the beginning of the film and Paul threw holy water on me and I attacked him and mauled his arm before being hit on the head by Freeman's nunchucks and having my neck broken. That was a hilarious scene to film as I had blood capsules (which were out-of-date, might I add) in my mouth and had to pretend to bite his arm and shred his skin with my teeth. The way the blood capsules work is you bite them to release powder into your saliva which turns it red and makes it foam, so I was literally druelling it all over his forearm and shaking my head about to make it look like I was biting and ripping. We had to film the scene about 8 times to get all the camera angles Paul wanted (to make sure he had some good ones to pick from) so this meant I got hit on the back of the head with the nunchucks and have my neck "broken" 8 times! It also meant that my bloody saliva was all over Paul's arm and was starting to get really mankey for him to have on his arm. There was a brilliant clip we filmed of him running off after the final take to wash it off in the sink, saying "That was the most disgusting scene I've ever shot - bloody Ben Nuttall's saliva all over me..."

Anyway, it's a great film and has had over 10,000 views, 500 comments & 500 ratings in just the first few days. Between you and me, we're aiming for 1,000,000 views within 12 months. So get commenting, rating, favouriting and most of all get sharing!

Huge thanks and congratulations to Paul for producing, to Dean for his efforts with make-up and to everyone else who took part.

Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0GtKbeyYBg

Labels: Featured, Parkour

Posted by Ben Nuttall at 17:23

Thursday, 30 July 2009

Alps Trip 2009 (3. Austria)

This is post 3 of 3 in a series on my Alps Trip. See Posts 1 (South France) and 2 (l'Alpe d'Huez).

That night was our last night with the group as Miles and I were headed North-East to Austria while the others headed home after a couple more days of biking. We went for a nice meal at the resort, which we decided to splash out on. Miles and I opted for a two-person minimum set meal which turned out to be a plate full of raw meat (chicken, duck and beef steak) which we hat to cook for ourselves on a stove they provided us with. It came with a bowl of mashed potato and a load of veg and went down well ... once we’d cooked it. The following morning, Miles and I bid farewell and headed to Austria. We drove through Italy (Torino & Milano), witnessed the crazy drivers and paid the expensive tolls and we finally made it to our destination: a campsite in Prutz, near Landeck in Austria. The campsite was full of kayakers and we were greeted by one who was on his own looking for people to go boating with. His name was Andy, he was from London and he took us down three local rivers the next day which was brilliant! It was more independent learning as we were paddling as peers, no-one in charge, just the three of us taking it one bend at a time, instead of the way we’d been doing it so far where someone was leading and we were following – I actually had to consciously look after myself now which is the best way to learn. We soon realised that the Austrian rivers were massively high volume – big wide rivers with huge waves, which we’re not used to in the UK as most rivers are either big and wide but flat with no waves, or thin, steep and creeky. We met up with some other UK guys for the third river that day and all went ok.

A couple of days later we headed to the Ötz valley to met up with a Bavarian kayaker by the name of Bijon he met in New Zealand. Bijon was working for German rafting company in Austria over the summer, taking groups of German people rafting in Austria and Switzerland. We joined them at the rafting base for their BBQ and chatted with the Germans. Our tactic: Don’t mention the war. Miles mentioned it once but I think he got away with it. Seriously though, we enjoyed their company and they seemed to enjoy ours, buying us drinks and talking to us about all sorts. Obviously we don’t speak German but they all speak English, so that’s the way it was. After the Germans went off we head upstairs for a little rafting guides’ party – had a great chat with a German guy called Norman. Then we had to sleep on the floor in the drying room full of wetsuits and things, in the room with me was a New Zealander who we were told snores really badly – I thought I’d risk it and be alright but by the early hours I couldn’t believe the amount of horrendous noise he was snorting – it was nothing like I’d ever witnessed before. I had to move, and even when I did I couldn’t sleep because I’d been woken up. The next morning I saw the guy I’d been chatting to at the party, Norman. He saw I was wearing my trademark Blogger t-shirt and asked if I was a blogger. “Yes I am” I said, beaming with pride. This reminded me of how I like to be thought of as a “Blogger”. We talked about blogs for a while and later on got on the office computer and showed each other our respective blogs. Norman-slow-motion.

We drove to Switzerland the next day to tag along on two of their rafting journeys – Miles as the safety kayaker, while I joined five of the Germans in the raft with Bijon yelling instructions at us in German. This proved somewhat difficult as I didn’t understand what he was saying unless I heard the words for left, right, forwards and stop which were easy to remember once he told me – the more complicated instructions (more urgent ones such as “Everyone get down in the raft and hold on tight”) were tricky so whenever everyone else would dive somewhere I would just copy their actions which meant I was slightly delayed – this was rather problematic as these instructions carried a matter of urgency and failure to comply often meant the risk of tipping the raft! I asked Bijon what those instructions were in German so I would remember to do so when he shouted them, which helped a lot – I managed to follow these orders without delay. I had a great time rafting, as it was a whole new experience to be on the water in such a big inflatable craft with other people rather than single man kayak where you are completely in control and responsible for yourself. The water was much harder, higher and potentially problematic than I could probably deal with, so it was a good option to go rafting instead that day.

That evening we attended a party at Bijon’s house – not a cool rafting party full of drunk European student girls, but a family party for his housemate’s Dad’s something’s birthday party – a middle-aged woman’s birthday party. We ate their food and chatted with their family a bit (at this point every Auntie and Uncle, Grandma and Grandpa, Niece and Nephew had turned up) before heading off to a cool rafting party full of drunk European student girls. We chatted away and got speaking to a range of different people from the local rafting companies and ended up in someone’s halls-of-residence-esque summer rafting guide accommodation where they proceeded to smoke lots of weed while we tried not to look too out of place, although we certainly were. I was really tired at this point from the lack of sleep the previous night and all the rafting of the day so being laid on a bed in a room full of weed smoke, I was dozing off. We soon left and slept at Bijon’s house.

The next morning we were awarded with Bijon’s famous pancakes. This was something I’d been looking forward to – the only thing I knew about Bijon was that, according to Miles, if you were on a night out with Bijon, you could end up in the remotest field or desert and Bijon would somehow locate the ingredients and make pancakes. I’d spent two or three days with Bijon and still no sign. The first thing I saw of him that morning, Bijon was on the phone to one of his pancake contacts arranging for the delivery of flour. Flour arrived shortly in the arms of another stoner. Here they were at last! Bijon’s pancakes! And they were fantastic. This day was our last day before heading back so we decided to hook up with Norman and the flour guy to go kayaking. They took us for a run of the Oetz, which was the scariest kayaking experience I’ve ever had. I was seriously terrified as it was massive pushy water with hidden holes and all sorts – all immediately upon putting on to the river. I’ve never been forced to use support strokes quite so frequently and urgently. I was having to work my very hardest every second just to keep the boat upright! So many times I nearly went over. I got through the worst of it to find there was a harder and more unpredictable section coming up. That’s pretty much how it was for the next three hours: me thinking “Phew, I’m glad I got out of that bit alive” and then slowly discovering there was more around the next bend. We got to a rapid that the guys we were with said was called the ‘Constructa’, named after a German washing machine brand – because that’s what it would feel like if you got stuck in it! We got out to portage a deathly weir and were at the end before long. A huge sigh of relief. I’d wanted to do one last river before we left, something that would push my limits. That was what I was looking for and I’m glad we did it. We bid farewell to Norman and the Flour guy and headed to France!

We decided to stop at Fontainebleau on the way back through France. Font is an amazing place – a vast forest full of bouldering opportunities, it’s just South of Paris. We drove there from Austria, passing through Switzerland and Liechtenstein. We arrived at Font at about 4am, no idea where exactly we needed to be for the bouldering, so we ended up sleeping in the McDonald’s car park beside the van, with the intention of using the free Wifi when it opened. We woke up at about 8, then realising that McDonald’s didn’t open till 10 we stayed in the van and read our books for two hours. At 10 they opened up and we hopped straight inside, checked online to see where the spots were and shortly after that we headed off to find somewhere to climb. We stayed there a while, had a bit of a climb and I jumped around the rocks a bit and then we headed off in plenty of time to catch our ferry. We ended up arriving at Dunkirque (after popping into Belgium to look for war graves) seven hours early so it was worth us paying a little extra to get on an earlier ferry. I finished my book on the ferry (America Unchained by Dave Gorman – a fantastic story about a coast-to-coast road trip across America, avoiding the chain stores and only buying from independent gas stations, shops and hotels) and started my next one. We were home (as in Sheffield) an hour before we were supposed to leave France, which was an achievement. What was even more of an achievement was that I returned alive with all my kit in tact, albeit a little more second-hand-looking.

Labels: Alps, Alps Trip 2009, Featured, Kayaking, Travels

Posted by Ben Nuttall at 18:17

Alps Trip 2009 (2. l'Alpe d'Huez)

This is post 2 of 3 in a series on my Alps Trip. See Posts 1 (South France) and 3 (Austria).

That day shook me up a bit, but the next river we did in France was fairly easy-going, and the next was big but not as scary. Then we had two days away from water as we headed up to l’Alpe d’Huez which is a ski resort in the Winter; mountain biking in the Summer. The first day was mostly driving, and when we arrived late afternoon Miles hired a downhill mountain bike – Miles is really into his biking so he knew which one he wanted straight away – and paid €120 for a day and a half. He rode it on the purpose-built dirt track near the centre for the rest of the afternoon (this involved him jumping it off the roof of a hut and putting a few scratches in the protective body armour he’d been loaned). We were too tired from the drive to bother putting up our tent that night. Mistake. The worst storm I’ve ever witnessed. We thought we’d be ok under a tarpaulin shelter hung up from John’s van. Mistake. We would have been ok if it had been mild rain. It wasn’t. We were ok while it was raining (at which point Miles decided he was better off sleeping in the back of the van) but then it started pouring underneath the van and wetting my sleeping bag and thermarest. Hmm. Time to join Miles in the van, I thought. But unfortunately the back of the van was full of our stuff (literally full) so with a few things taken out was just enough room to fit one person laid across the bags – this meant I was stuck with the only available option – sleep across the two front seats. Brilliant. Whichever way I turned I had something sticking in me – the gear nob or the hand brake or whatever. At least I was dry.

Anyway, morning came and it was time for me to hire a bike for the day. I wasn’t as keen or extreme as Miles so a simple cross-country bike was sufficient. I was hoping it wasn’t going to be as much as Miles’ ... and when he said it was only €22 I jumped for joy (on the inside) and handed him the tiny amount of mickey mouse money he demanded and feeling rather pleased for myself went to purchase my gondola (ski lift) ticket. We decided to do an easy blue route to get started. It started with going down a steep hill and immediately coming up the next hill. Sara said not to put my brakes on while I was on the hill and to wait till I was over the other side, so I held the handlebars without resting over the brakes – but when I got to the top on the other side I needed to brake quickly and so reached for the left brake and slammed it on. Mistake. On bikes in the UK, the left brake is for the back, the right for the front. I’ve only been on a bike once (last year – see Happy New Year 2009) since I was a kid but my instinct told me which brake was which. Unfortunately they have them on opposite sides in Europe. Crash! I hit the wrong brake – the front – and went flying through the handlebars and skidded with the bike. I cut my side up which stung a bit but I was more frustrated with the French than in pain. I got back on and continued with the route. The next route we chose was marked as a red on the map, but when we got up there (right up there, this one started much higher up the mountain) it was clear that it had recently been downgraded from a black. Not good for a novice. We ran it anyway. I fell off a lot.

Then we planned to do a longer route which was a concoction of several other red routes, on which we somehow got very lost due to poor French mapping and ended up doing many more dodgy routes than intended and ended up in a little French town in the wrong valley (Sardonne), and pushing for time (we needed to get the last gondola back and return our bikes to the hiring shops by 5pm) we got onto the right track, which turned out to be a really good one that ran through a dense woods! I had a great time, rode hard and fell off even harder! In fact at one point I fell off and skidded down the steep cliff away from the path, with my bike thrown even further down. It was impossible to get myself back up it carrying my bike as I was knee-deep in leaves. The path continued to my right as I looked back at it from below, so I edged my way to the side, trying with all my might to drag the bike with me – and after a ten minute struggle I managed to get myself back on the path. The chain had got caught up in branches or something and wouldn’t go so I had to adjust it a few times to get it to work, but then I was off – to catch up with the others. I’d been shouting them to let them know I was stuck and that I’d be further behind, they’d been shouting back to me to ask if I was alright, but neither of us had heard each other. Anyway I finally caught them up and they’d been waiting for me (Sara worrying whether I was still alive or not) and started to walk back.

We were in a real rush now so Mark & Miles sped off towards the nearby village in attempt to make it for the last bus back to the gondola which would take us back to where we started. Sara and I continued on, stopping to ask for directions on the way. It’s funny how Sara launched into her only-slightly-broken French which only confused the (we think German) couple she was talking to, but when I asked Sara something (obviously in English) they butted in and said “We speak English” which made it a bit easier for us to communicate rather than us all trying to speak an unnatural language. We eventually made it to the village, Allemond (at this point I was aching all over), and as Mark & Miles weren’t waiting at the bus stop we presumed they had made it in time for the bus and we had missed them. There was another bus about 45 minutes later so we waited for that, knowing it wouldn’t get us back in time for the last gondola, so we were thinking we’d have to get a taxi or something back to our vans. With so much time to wait I wandered into the town to find a boulangerie for what turned out to be the best two pastries (almond covered and filled croissant & pain au chocolat) I’ve ever had!

I’d turned my phone on when we stopped, in case Mark got back to the van and tried to ring me, and luckily he did. He’d seen a missed call on Sara’s phone (which she’d left in the van – I was the only one with a phone with me on the bike trip), which was from right at the beginning of the day when I was waiting for them after hiring my bike, but he’d thought it was more recent. He phoned me and I said we were at the bus stop in Allemond and could he come and pick us up. He arrived somewhat later with Miles in the van and both their bikes on the back. This puzzled us as we thought they’d got the bus and the gondola back and dropped Miles off to return his hired bike (as this was one of the main timing issues), but when quizzed, Mark explained that they hadn’t made it to Allemond as they took a wrong turning and ended up in the wrong village! And that Mark had hitched a lift from “some crazy-driving French guy” back up to l’Alpe d’Huez, quickly ran back to the van, phoned me and come to collect us (picking Miles and the two bikes up on the way). So when we finally all got back safely to l’Alpe d’Huez, we were a little worried about the bike hire shops, presuming they’d be closed by that time (it was about 6:30). Miles had promised to return his by 5pm, but my guy hadn’t given a time (although I presumed it would have been the same, and we presumed they would close soon after 5, maybe 6). Anyway, when we got there we saw that both shops were still open, so that I would be fine as we hadn’t agreed a time, and Miles should be ok being a little bit late. Miles was hiding in the back of the van, and got Sara to tell the guy he’d been in an accident and taken to hospital, which was why she was late bringing it back for him. He was fine and didn’t mind and gave her his driving license (Miles had left his driving licence as deposit, but my cheaper bike hadn’t required a deposit).

I took mine back, gave it to the guy, he didn’t really say anything at first of acknowledge that I was there. I pointed out that I was returning his bike and he took it from me, sill saying nothing. I said “Ok?” and as he wheeled it off, still not really saying anything, I presumed everything was ok and that I had been excused. I said “Ok then, thank you. Bye.”, just to confirm that I was going to go. He finally said “Ok. Bye bye.” Then after a few seconds said “No wait … no bye bye!” ... he was calling me back. He pointed at the bike and said “Broken!” Hmm. I don’t know much about bikes but I was pretty sure that bike wasn’t broken. I had just been riding it fine. “Sorry?? What’s the problem?” I asked. “Broken!” he said. I tried to convey my look of confusion to him in order to get some more information out of him about his allegations, which seemed to work as he pointed to the centre of the back wheel where the chain can be notched onto the gears. I gave him my confused look again and he said “Derailer!”. At this point I urged the others to join me to try to work out between us what he was trying to say. He pointed again and repeated “Derailer!” and the others knew what a derailer was. I didn’t. He was claiming it was bent. I couldn’t tell if it was or not. The others said it seemed to look a little bent but looked ok, until he shifted it into a really high gear which when he demonstrated how the chain would always fall off when the wheel span in this high gear, because the derailer was bent. Miles suggested bending it back but he explained how this was not possible. He wanted me to pay €32 for a replacement derailer. He hadn’t taken a monetary deposit or kept my passport or anything, yet he demanded a sum of money which was more than I had paid to hire the bike. I didn’t think this was fair. Surely it’s part of the cost of having a hire business, that eventually the equipment depreciates with use and needs fixing or replacing, and I think it’s unfair to put blame for damage on one person unless through reckless use. I wasn’t going to pay him for a repair on something he’d hired to many people before me. I told him this and said I was going to go. He said he was going to phone the police. I went to sit in the van with Mark and the others to ask them what they thought. John arrived on the scene and he said that derailers break really easily, if you hit a rock or something they can break, and that he breaks two or three a year. Well I was still against the idea of him charging me for wear-and-tear but thought that as it wasn’t a huge sum of money, I’d probably knocked it one of the many times I’d fallen off, and it was not worth the risk of any epic Alpine police chases with us in our Volkswagen Transporter with kayaks on the roof rack, so I decided to pay up. I wasn’t happy about it but even at €54, mine was still less than half the price of Miles’ bike so I could hardly complain. The annoying thing is I felt cheated. If he’d have charged me €54 at the start of the day I’d have paid up and felt lucky it was much cheaper than Miles’, but the fact that he’d claimed damages and demanded a further payment put a downer on the whole thing. But these things happen.

Labels: Alps, Alps Trip 2009, Featured, Kayaking, Travels

Posted by Ben Nuttall at 17:09

Alps Trip 2009 (1. South France)

This is post 1 of 3 in a series on my Alps Trip. See Posts 2 (l'Alpe d'Huez) and 3 (Austria).

They say that you can learn more from two weeks in the Alps than you can kayaking a whole year in the UK. I can vouch for that after 3,298.7 miles, 8 countries, 13 rivers, 5 mountain bike trails, 2 rafting trips and half a day at Fontainebleau.

Miles and I set off from Sheffield at about 1pm on the Monday (after quickly setting up our new website Adventure-Psychology.co.uk which we got stuck on the side of the van before we left), headed South for Dover, stopping off at a guy called Ted Piper’s house in Henley-on-Thames for a cup of tea and a chat. You know how they say everyone knows everyone in the world through 6 people? Well there’s a theory within the UK kayaking community that everyone in kayaking knows Ted Piper through 1 person. There’s a thread on UKRGB forums that proves it. By the way, Ted Piper got really ill (viral meningitis) while kayaking in Northern Norway earlier this year and had to be flown home immediately – without his car – so if anyone fancies driving it back to the UK for him before the roads close for Winter, I’m sure he’d appreciate it.

Anyway, we got to Dover in perfect time for our 10pm crossing and were at Dunkirque (cheaper than Dover-Calais) by midnight (now 11pm in France time, woah – time travel!) and on the aforementioned Ted Piper’s advice, planned to avoid the toll roads through France. This just happened to pass through Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany, Switzerland and Italy. By about 6pm (with practically no sleep) we were at our destination – Bourg Saint Maurice in the South of France, near the Italian boarder. We met up with the others who had been there a few days already: Mark, Sara, John & Nicola, all of whom have been boating all around Europe (and some in Nepal) many times before. Miles has only boated in New Zealand and the UK and I have never boated abroad!

The next day we did our first Alpine river, which was continuous class three/four whitewater. The biggest and hardest I’ve ever paddled! We went down a gorge to a place you can only get to by kayak (or raft) which was an interesting experience. The next few days we did some medium-hard stuff. In the UK if we want to go kayaking we need high water levels, and for that to happen you need a lot of rain and horrible weather, whereas in the Alps you need lots of sun and heat to cause the glaciers to melt and pour down the mountains into the rivers! This also means that the water is clean and pure! It’s brilliant! UK rivers are horrible and full of guk, making them a murky brown colour.

It was immediately noticeable that the standard class of river was much higher and more consistent than in the UK. Rivers are graded from one to six: one being still flat water; two is moving water with few or no obstructions; three involves slight manoeuvring to avoid complications; four is potentially dangerous water with complicated flow which can require inspection; five requires inspection and mistakes will lead to severe danger and potential injury; and six is usually unpaddleable where a mistake would certainly lead to severe danger, serious injury and possibly death. It is possible for danger to occur on any class of water (even one – such as simply drowning) and kayaking is certainly a dangerous activity at any level and precautions must be taken to prevent danger, and where danger occurs, safety and rescue must be put into effect. It was apparent that Alpine rivers were very fast flowing due to a higher gradient in the mountains and gorges and that the class of water was consistent throughout. So in the UK, a class four river would most likely be two/three for the majority with a few odd features at class four, whereas in the Alps it seemed that the gradings were accurate for the whole river, so a class four might actually be 3+/4 throughout, pushing on 4+.

One of the rivers we did towards the end of our first week, the Guisane, started off with a very scary class four rapid section which we thoroughly inspected and almost decided to portage (walk round and get on after it) but Miles & John ran it fine and we went for it. It actually tipped me over towards the end and I went down the final wave upside-down but managed to roll back up fine. The river continued to push my limits and was very continuous in its pace and difficulty, which proved to be a bit much for me, especially on what seemed to be an off day for me. I got tipped awkwardly and failed to roll back up and saw my boat get washed away downstream while I swam to the side and got out. The boat luckily got pinned on a rock not far away, so we analysed the situation and got Miles positioned downstream of it and we threw rocks at it to try and free it from being pinned against the rock, which after a few good throws, worked! Unfortunately with the speed of the water Miles was unable to stop it and it ended up drifting further. I climbed to the road side and ran along to catch it up – after a good few minutes’ jogging I spotted the green boat against the clear water – it had got pinned on another rock so I got myself down to the side of the water and waited for the others, in their boats, to catch up and get it free for me. John managed, after a few attempts, to hook a line onto the grab handle and we set up a pulley system (with an actual pulley – something I’ve never seen in kayak rescue! Brilliant!) to release the boat and reel it in, which worked fine.

Just before the end of the river I went down a rapid at a slightly bad angle and got stuck in a hole (note: holes are nasty bits of backwashing water caused by water pouring over a rock – if you get stuck in they’re hard to get out of whether you’re in a boat or swimming, and should be avoided at all costs!), flipped over a couple of times (that’s what they do – they just flip your boat over repeatedly – it’s like being in a washing mashine!) before popping my spraydeck and getting out – fortunately I didn’t get stuck in it after that and managed to swim to the side with my boat but my paddles got thrown to the other side and got swept away. I saw Miles catch up with them and throw them onto the side. I later found that they’d hit the side and fallen back into the water. He’d tried a second time but they’d disappeared from view when they dropped. Hmm.

In rescue situations there’s an order of priority: first comes yourself; second comes other people; third comes boats; fourth comes paddles and other smaller equipment. I’d got myself out, there was no-one else in danger, I’d got my boat out, then I started looking for my paddles (at this point I was still under the presumption that they were on the side where Miles had thrown them) and when I started asking the others I began to realise they were probably floating off down the river. Hmm.

I climbed up the side onto the road and dragged my boat up with a rope then ran down the road, peering over the edge to the water to look for my paddles. I ran a fair distance without seeing anything that resembled paddles. Luckily this was where the river smoothed out and became a lake so the water was pretty much still which meant they would probably be floating here. They weren’t. I looked all around, even saw what I’m almost certain was the re-used coke bottle, half full of water, I had loose in the back of my boat – it was floating in the lake, not moving, so I guessed my paddles should be somewhere nearby. They weren’t. Hmm.

It got to the point where I’d almost started mourning for them. I wasn’t prepared to accept that they were gone (sorry, did I mention they were brand new – I bought them for this trip – not cheap at £130 although you can pay a lot more for paddles), but after a good search and people starting to hint that they would be stuck under a rock somewhere and that I’d never find them, I’d just about given up. I’d lost them. Brand new £130 paddles – my first decent set! And they’d lasted less than a week! I was gutted. Mark started telling me about when he lost a set in Nepal and how annoying it is, but these things happen. Thinking about that was the peak of my mourning – but I thought I’d better just check one more time. I couldn’t see anything (but the coke bottle) in the lake part so I walked back up with John to where Miles had thrown them where they had first gone out of sight – checking by the rocks on both sides. Nothing. It was annoying that they were completely black – if the blades were bright coloured I may have been able to spot them better. I reached the point as far upstream as they could have been, stopped, turned around and began to pace back with my head hung in misery. John offered comforting words to try and soften the pain of my loss, which caused a pang which was tantamount to the aforementioned peak of my mourning. John dipped his hand into a nearby pool behind a big rock – and he pulled out my set of paddles – like they were being withdrawn from a Mary Poppins-esque handbag of Alpine water. I was surprised to see them, but didn’t let out any emotion. I just stared at them in his hand. They were back! I hadn’t lost them at all! This was fantastic. I was relieved! But for some reason this situation called for some sort of humour – I can’t remember exactly what my confused brain conjured up at the time but I seem to remember it being something along the lines “They’re not mine, but they’re sort of similar. They’ll do.” – I thanked and congratulated John and we headed back up to where the others were stood. Phew!

Labels: Alps, Alps Trip 2009, Featured, Kayaking, Travels

Posted by Ben Nuttall at 16:48

Friday, 29 May 2009

My First Two Weeks with Android

Two weeks ago I received my new HTC Magic smartphone - it's powered by Google's open-source operating system, Android. This means the source code for the system the phone runs on is freely available to download, which means any developer can write their own applications and tweaks for Android phones.

With switching from mobile provider 3 to Vodafone, I managed to negotiate a good deal on the contract - it's £40/month instore and I managed to get it for £20/month - that includes 600 minutes, unlimited texts and internet, as well as the free phone (worth £500). Also I have the option of starting a new contract after 15 months, obviously only if I stay with Vodafone (but my plan is to do so, as they're probably the best provider and loyalty is rewarded in this economic crisis - or at least if you tell them you're leaving it is!).

This is only the second Android phone on the market so far (with plans for about another 18 by the end of the year), following the G1 (aka HTC Dream) which was exclusive to T-Mobile. I was going to go for the G1 until I heard about its successor - a better phone on a better nework!

Within minutes of having the Magic perform simple tasks at the touch of my finger, I was enraptured by its user interface and functionality. The first thing I was asked to do was sign into my Google Account - this, I discovered a couple of minutes later, had automatically loaded my Gmail contact list into the phonebook - not particularly handy as I had no phone numbers in there, only email addresses - until I realised that once I transferred my numbers from my old SIM card - it automatically synchronised my contacts! Say I had Joe Bloggs stored as a phone number in my old nokia phone, and Joe Bloggs stored as an email address in my Gmail contacts - once I put them together I had one entry for Joe Bloggs with a phone number and an email address! And best of all - this contact list is constantly synchronised with my Gmail account so not only does it update both if I update one or the other, but it also means that I can never lose my contacts as they're always backed up automatically! It's the same for Google Calendar. Magic!

Apps

Once I'd got my head round how amazing the usability of the phone was, it was time to dip into the Android Market and see what apps were out there - I'd heard of a few good ones and wanted to see what else was available. It came loaded with Gmail, Google Maps, YouTube, Google Calendar, Google Talk and a bar code scanner (I'll come to that later) and these are the ones I've downloaded in the last two weeks (all for free):

Shazam

Hear a song and want to know the name/artist/album - this recognises songs and shows you the info

Bubble

Spirit Level - hold the phone horizontally, vertically or flat on a surface and the on-screen bubble "floats" to the centre of gravity

handyCalc

Scientific calculator (damn right!)

Compass

A dynamic navigational compass

Metal Detector

Yes, you heard right. This app actually analyses what you place the phone near and buzzes more the closer it gets to metal. It's not practical at all, as you pretty much have to know where to position the phone in relation to the metallic object to get it to buzz, but it is novelty

Google Sky Map

Point the phone at a part of the sky and it shows you the stars, planets and constellations - you can also search for them and it tells you which way to point the phone to find it

The Schwartz Saber

A light saber that makes the noise when you move the phone

0870

Uses the database of SayNoTo0870.com to find geographical numbers to dial when you ring premium rate numbers

My personal favourite - Where's My Android?

You know when you misplace your phone, have to ring it to find it, then realise it's on silent? Well those days are over for Android users - with this app you set a particular word, and then when you can't find your phone you text it that word, and when it receives the text it turns silent off and starts ringing! Genius or what?

There are many more I have installed, little things like stopwatch, voice recorder, notepad, which come with phones as standard - but this way you get to pick and choose which one you use (like I did when I found out the standard calculator had only basic operations). There's also a good Facebook mobile app, as there is for Twitter, and a good multi-account IM client - ebuddy.

I've also got a few games I downloaded from the app market - sudoku, solitaire, ping pong, air hockey - the usual stuff - and also some brain training ones: MathPractice; Maths Workout; Iconic Memory; Slide Puzzle.

There are also widget apps you can download for the home screen - time & date, calendar, battery percentage, music player, etc.

The camera

How many mega pixels?? If I got a quid for every time I was asked that - as if the resolution of the picture is the only feature you can judge a camera on. It's like when people compare a high-res phone camera to a not-quite-so-high-res digital camera as if the phone will take a better quality picture, which it won't because it's not got the quality lens and focus of a digital camera. Anyway, rant aside, the camera's a 3.2mpx but it has a fantastic lens and focus! Nothing compared to a decent digital camera but very good quality for a phone.

The camera's focus quality comes into play for the aforementioned bar code scanner app - you can use the camera to scan the bar code of a product in a shop, research the product and compare prices online! You literally see and hear the lens focus in on the bar code in order to read it - it does the same when you're taking a normal photo - it adjusts focus automatically. If you scan a book, CD, game or something like that, you can read reviews, research information about it, as well as compare prices.

The video's ok. Nothing special but good enough (phone cameras are never going to replace digital cameras - their only purpose is for taking a picture or video when you don't have your camera on you).

Touchscreen

I love it. You can literally 'throw' icons, menus and page content to where you want it to go. Say with a web browser on a computer, to scroll down the page you would scroll down with the scroll bar or the mouse scroller, but on the web browser on the Android, to go further down the page, you touch the page and drag, or even flick, it upwards and out of view, bringing the below into view, as the same for up, left and right.

There's a menu bar along the top of the screen all the time (except in apps that use the full screen), this shows if you have any notifications (missed calls, texts, emails, downloads, etc.) on one side, and the time, your battery level, phone signal, 3G signal, and wifi signal and sync status when appropriate. If, say, you see you have a new text message, you touch the bar at the top and drag or flick it downwards to open it up and reveal the details. As for the tab at the bottom of the home screen, which you tap or drag/flick upwards to open, which shows all your installed apps.

When I talk about dragging or flicking things about, that's literally what it fells like when you touch something and move it - it feels like you're actually physically moving it with your fingertips, and when you drag the menu up or the notification bar down, it feels like you're actually holding it, pulling it up or down. On the home screen you have a selection of app shortcuts and widgets to start with, but this is 100% customisable - you can place icons wherever you want (none are locked), remove them, add new ones and add widgets. You have three screens: one central one, and one either side to the left and right. To get to each side you simply drag the screen to one side like you would with web content, move it out of the way to access another area. Each of the three screens has 4x4 grid for you to use as your canvas - icons take up a single 1x1 space and apps take up varying rectangular areas.

There's an interesting innovative unlock feature - you set a 'pattern' by dragging your finger over a sequence of nine pins on the screen, and you have to use that pattern/combination in order to unlock and gain access to the phone - this is in place of a PIN or password.

Google Maps

Other bits

Starred Contacts - in my opinion this is a much better, easier and more flexible function compared to standard Speed Dial, which requires you to assign up to 8 contacts to a number 2-9 (1 is voicemail) and memorise them. This is just a feature which allows you to 'star' a contact - like starring an email in Gmail, the empty star silhouette is there for you to tap to make them a starred contact - and then you open your list of starred contacts and pick from the list. I have a shortcut to my starred contacts on my home screen.

Buttons - this particular phone has 6 buttons on the front below the screen (green phone, red phone, home, menu, back & search), a tracker ball for precision (e.g. go back two spaces in a block of text while composing a text message), which is also a button (you can also use it to navigate but that's no fun!), and there's a volume up/down long button along one side.

Typing/Texting - this phone's predecessor, the G1, had a slide-out QWERTY keyboard but this one just has on-screen touch typing, which only took me a few days to get used to typing quickly on. I'm not perfect yet, I sometimes hit the full stop key which is next to the space bar. Occasionally I'll hit the wrong letter, where it'll usually pick up on the typo and automatically correct it. You can either type with it up-right (compromising keyboard width for extra viewing space) or rotate the screen to hold it horizontally in two hands like a PSP, using your thumbs to type).

It's good for suggesting/predicting words when you start typing them which is really useful for longer words, just saves you typing them in full - and it gives as many suggestions as it can fit along the screen (with an arrow to view the next ones). I was stumped for a few days on how to add new words to the user dictionary while typing them so that it could predict them in future, but I posted the question to the Android Community forum and the answer came within minutes - you just long press the word and it saves it.

One of the best things about this phone as a phone (as apposed to a palmtop gadget) is its conversation-view for text messages, similar to that of Gmail, whereby you see each part of a conversation rather than one message at a time, so if there's a text conversation between me and Joe Bloggs, it shows my message, then Joe's reply, then my reply, and back and forth following the conversation.

Menu Button & Long Press - long press (pressing and holding) is a really useful way of adding extra functionality without the use of buttons (on-screen or physical) - like if you're viewing a text message conversation you can long press a text message and it shows you a menu of options specific to the text message you pressed - call the sender, save the number, forward the text message, copy the content of the message, view the time & date of the message, etc.

The menu button (a physical button) is there so you can view the menu or settings of whatever you're viewing at the time (to save taking away space on the screen from what you're doing/viewing)

Music Player - the phone comes with a 1GB micro-SD card (which you can obviously replace with a bigger one) which is the ideal medium for data storage for pictures and videos (taken with the camera or transferred from your computer) and music. The music player is great as it organises your music into artists, albums, etc. and you can easily search for an artist or song or whatever. It's generally much more sophisticated than the previous generation of phone media players which usually only let you play, pause and skip - whereas this phone lets you drag across the timer to manually skip further on or back through the current song.

It comes with a nice smart little white leather case you can slip the phone in to to keep it protected in your pocket. This is great except for one tiny flaw - if I want to simply check the time (we all do it - who wears a watch these days?) I have to remove the phone from my pocket, slide it all the way out of the leather case to touch the menu button to turn the screen on to see the time.

For people like me, who use all the Google services anyway, and make full use of them - I can't see us ever going back from Android. Now I've lived like this I can't imagine going back! Not having my contacts synchronised with Gmail? Or my calendar? Or not being able to locate my phone with a single text message when it's on silent? Or not being able to pull a light saber out of my pocket at any time?

I've been following (in the Twitter sense as well as the normal sense) the development of Android and what to expect next from the project. Loads of phone companies are realising its potential and announcing launches of new Android-powered phones throughout 2009. Even some laptop manufacturers are playing around with it is an operating system for mini-notebooks - and before long I imagine we'll be seeing it on more powerful laptop machines. With any luck it could develop to much greater things and, I may be getting way ahead of myself here, it could be the dawn of the overtake of Microsoft Windows as the standard computer operating system, which would rid the world of dependency on hidden-source bug-ridden corporate systems and programs and give us the option to use (and develop) open source programs.

I've written about dozens of features of the phone but that's only a tiny proportion of what it can do. I honestly could have written twice that much again and still not touch the limits of the phone!

...Oh and I almost forgot - it makes and receives phone calls too!

Labels: Android, Featured, Google, Internet, Java, Programming

Posted by Ben Nuttall at 22:21

Monday, 27 April 2009

Lots of Training and a Session with the BBC

I've had a weekend full of training, which followed two days of programming with parkour training in the afternoons, and today is my rest day. Thursday I went out training as a break from Java; Friday I met up with my good friends Gordon & Scott for some afternoon parkour in the sun; Saturday I went along to the usual jam and then attended a session with the BBC; Sunday was the monthly pole jam followed by weekly gym (as is -nastics) session.

One of the things I've wanted to do for a while is to wallflip outside. I've done them in the gym on at least one occasion but never bothered or had the guts do try them outside. During a gym session back at home I tried them to see if I could pull one off first time, which I could. I practised for a while and decided I was going to try them outside at first opportunity. This opportunity came to me on Friday when I was at UMIST with Gordon & Scott. I did it fine. That was over grass, and at first opportunity I tried it over concrete, also fine. It's not a huge achievement but I'm glad it's out of the way. I can feel much more confident about them now. As most to you know I'm more into pure parkour than flips, but I think it's important for everyone to have the capability to comfortably perform the basic flip movements: front; back; side and wall flips.

I can do backflips (standing on floor and off smallish objects) fine, fronts I probably could do if I tried but I've lost comfortability with them so it's a target to get them back. Sides I have only ever done in the gym and I've not really any idea if I'm doing them right or not, but they seem to be very comfortable when people do them, and seem to be a natural flip movement once familiar so probably worth getting. Once my flips arsenal contains those four I'll be happy with them and will ensure to maintain them. Some pictures of me wallflipping:

Then came the Saturday jam; Gordon & I arrived at Castlefield to find Dave leading the group through an exhausting push-up exercise using triangle numbers (*not factorials! as we sometimes call them. Triangle numbers are simply a sequence of numbers starting at 1, increasing by 1 each time, and used in such exercises in that you do 1 repetition of something, then 2, then 3, then 4, and so on until you reach your physical limit. They'd done it slowly up to about 15 and ordered us to catch up, so we got straight down to it and did 1 then 2 more then 3 more then 4 more, right up to about 8 without stopping (which would be 1+2+3+4+5+6+7+8=36), then I took a short rest before doing the 9th set, then the 10th, then the 11th, and leaving it there.

*Factorials are multiples, not sums. i.e. 5! (5 factorial) = 5x4x3x2x1 = 120

After the jam, five of us (Dave, Paul, Scott, Dean and myself) headed of to the McDonald Hotel in Manchester to meet up with some people from the BBC who had contacted us the week before to see if we would be interested in auditioing for a TV programme they were making. The programme would aim to prove that intelligence comes in many forms, not just the Oxbridge / Rocket Science type, and that people who practised parkour, for example, were intelligent in other ways to rocket scientists. They were getting groups of people (some of the ones they mentioned were rocket scientists, hairdressers and drag queens) to audition to see which groups they would like to take part in the programme itself.

They filmed some interviews with us to try and get us to prove our intelligence in a variety of forms: listing the similarities between a dog and a cat; giving advice in a hypothetical relationship scenario; working out a problem-solving riddle; putting together a cardboard box from flat; etc. It was clear that sme of us were very good at certain bits and not so good at others, for instance Scott was spot-on with the problem-solving task, Scott & Dean were very quick with their cardboard boxes, Scott, Dave and I seemed quite helpful with the relationship issue while the others stayed quiet, and Paul & Dave were very imaginitive with listing the similarities between a dog and a cat.

Then came the hardest bit, which turned out to be very interesting: we had to state the strengths and weaknesses of each other in the group, so Paul listed Dean's, Scott's, mine and Dave's and we would all, in turn, list each other's. It was very hard to think of something constructive for both of these, but very interesting to hear what everyone had to say. My general stengths mentioned were that I 'have my finger in many pies' (Dave) saying that I am keen to be involved in many things in life and not just stick to one thing, that I make good websites (Paul - want to stick to your judgement now you've seen this?), that I am generally good at certain movements in parkour. Weaknesses were that I don't train hard enough (Scott), that I don't do enough variety of training (Dave), that I am a stickler for spelling and punctuation (Paul), oh and Dean didn't like my shirt. I did my best to say things that were constructive to people, and that were fair and just. Then they asked us to say our own strengths and weaknesses and give ourselves a mark out of ten for intelligence (1 being Paris Hilton; 10 being Stephen Hawking); I said that what I liked about myself was that I never just concentrated one one thing in life and that I keep my options open and try to be good at a wide range of things rather than just really good in one thing, and that my main weakness was that I make excuses for things I know I ought to do, like if I know I ought to do some conditioning I'll often find a lame excuse for not doing it, and explained that I am aware of this and am working on it. As for the score out of ten, I hardly think of myself as a genius, and refused to place myself anywhere near Stephen Hawking (I have so much respect for how intelligent he is) so I put myself on 6, but Dave convinced me I had drawn myself short so I upped it to 6.5, which probably should have been 7 really. We were all between 6 and 7 (except Dean who placed himself on about 3). They filmed everything and will show all the footage to their executives for them to decide who will be featured.

They also filmed a private interview with each of us individually where we were asked to give 3 words to describe ourselves (I really stuggled with this as I didn't like the idea of branding myself so lavishly! Ended up going for Determined, motivating and dedicated), say the alphabet backwards (I got stuck at t-s, or is it s-t?), but when I got stuck I said "Ok I can't, but I can recite pi to 35 decimal places!" and she was like "What, really? Go on then - you mean like pythagoras and that?" and I said it was Archimedes who really distinguished it, and then said "Ok, pi is 3.14159265358979323846264338327950288" and she was astounded and said "So would you say you were more mathematical than linguistic - but you're a stickler for spelling and punctuation! So are you good at memorising things?" and I said "Not really, I was just determined, motivated and dedicated enough to learn that!".

Then we had to fill out some questions and do an IQ test of which some parts were dead easy, others were dead hard. One question was what is the missing number: 0,1,1,2,3,5,8,13,...,34 (It's the Fibonnacci Sequence: a term is given by the sum of the previous two terms, so the answer is 21 as 8+13=21 and 13+21=34).

Then on Sunday we went to the pole jam which was interesting as usual, followed by the gym session which was fun. I'm going to try to make it to the gym every week now.

Hopefully the BBC executives will think we'll make a good match for rocket scientists and cast us for the show, but who knows? It could be the drag queens or the hair dressers.

Labels: Featured, Parkour

Posted by Ben Nuttall at 16:37

Friday, 24 April 2009

MATLAB and Java Assignments

I've had a hectic week this week trying to get all my assignments in. I had a MATLAB assignment due in on Thursday and a Java one due in today.

The MATLAB one involved two questions: the first was a banking system which calculated interest and mortgage payments; the second was an animation of a sporting event. The first question involved a switch statement to begin, so the user was prompted to choose one of four options, each one taking them to a certain part of the code and allowing them to perform their chosen banking task. Within each of those I had to use nested for loops and if statements, taking input values and getting the loops to work out how to calculate the answer based on their inputs (for instance if the user entered 10 years, the loop would have to run 10 times), which was kind of fiddly but fairly easy. If you don't know what a for loop is, it's quite common in many programming languages, and here's a brief explaination:

for i = 1:10

a = 2*i

end

This means that the loop runs 10 times (for i=1, for i=2, ..., for i=10) and does the code inbetween each time. So the first time it runs, the variable i=1, so when i is multiplied by 2, a = 2 (in MATLAB this would return the answer each time). The second time, i=2 so a=4, then each time i increments by 2 until i=10 and a=20. This is a very basic example but there are many applications this can be used for.

For the animation, I had to draw the figures using x- and y-coordinates of polygons, filling them in with a chosen colour, and then use a for loop to change their coordinates (i.e. move all the x-coordinates one space to the left every time the loop runs). It started off as a simple yacht animation, but I got carried away when I added the second yacht and made it into a pirate chase with a bullet being fired.

It actually sailed smoother before I added the movement up-and-down, but the code to make it do this was rather complex and imaginative so I left it in to get more marks. I nested an if statement within the for loop:

for j = 0:120

...

if rem(j,2)==0

yboat = yboat + 1

else

yboat = yboat - 1

end

...

end

So every time the loop ran (the ellipsis doesn't show the bits of code that get the x-coordinates to move the the left), the if statement checks to see whether j is divisible by 2: if it is, the y-coordinates increment by 1; if not, they decrement. This makes the boat (and all its related shapes, again not shown) move up and down alternately. The assignment handout included a video of an animation worth 90% and it was much simpler than mine so I should have scored fairly well.

Once I had this finished and submitted I had to get on with my Java assignment: to make a simple sketching program in Java, as an applet for HTML. About 24 hours before the deadline I hadn't done much, only the very basics, and then spent most of the afternoon helping 3 other people to get that far, went to have a beak for about an hour and a half and went to train, then did a little more before going out to see the Inbetweeners at a club in Manchester, then woke at 10:00 the next morning to carry on with it, just 2 hours before the de this was only enough to get 40%. I worked on it every second for the next two hours, trying bits of code to get it to do more advanced fuctions, I added colours, a reset button, a change background colour function, different shapes, a text field, another text field, a change size field, and so on, until I had completed the list of functions to include, which were given with percentages of how much you would get if you did them, upto 70% (a First Class), and it said extra marks would be awarded for extra features and for the general 'look and feel' of the applet, so I should have done pretty well. I submitted at 11:59. Just in time. Here it is:

Java and MATLAB's m-code is very similar in what you can do and the code you use to do it, but MATLAB seems to be much simpler, for instance a simple if statement requiries the following: line 1 - a condition (e.g. if x>2); line 2 - a statement (i.e. do something); line 3 - else (or else if for another condition); line 4 - a statement (i.e. do something else); and more else if statements and conditions as required. Java requires brackets round the conditions and silly curly bracksets round the statements. Also, in MATLAB, when you type something it indents if accordingly, so when you write if, it turns blue and indents it, then on the next line it will indent further, then as soon as you type 'end' it turns blue and reduces the indentation creates a collapsing option for the if statement.

Next year's Java will be much more complex, with a much stronger emphasis on objects. As for MATLAB, I specifically chose the units which included MATLAB programming, one of which was about computer graphics and virtual environments, and most people who aren't interested in programming will have gone elsewhere so it should get much more hardcore.

Labels: Computers, Featured, Java, MATLAB, Programming, University

Posted by Ben Nuttall at 17:42

Thursday, 16 April 2009

Top 100 Songs of All Time

This is a list of my top 100 songs of all time, in alphabetical order by song name:

• Abandon Ship - Less Than Jake
• The Airplane Song - Scouting For Girls
• All My Best Friends Are Metalheads - Less Than Jake
• All The Small Things - Blink 182
• Another Girl Another Planet - Blink 182
• Belgium - Bowling For Soup
• The Bitch Song - Bowling For Soup
• Bittersweet Symphony - The Verve
• Blitzkrieg Bop - The Ramones
• Blue In The Face - Alkaline Trio
• Brimful Of Asha - Fatboy Slim
• By The Time I Get To Arizona - Public Enemy
• Can't Take It - All-American Rejects
• Capital H - Motion City Soundtrack
• Cat Like Thief - Box Car Racer
• Chop Suey - System Of A Down
• City of Gainesville - Less Than Jake
• Crazy Amanda Bunkface - Sum 41
• Dear Bobbie - Yellowcard
• Directions - Josh Rouse
• Does the Lion City Still Roar? - Less Than Jake
• Elvis Aint Dead - Scouting for Girls
• Everybody's Talking at Me - Harry Nilsson
• Everywhere - Michelle Branch
• Express Yourself - NWA
• Fat Lip - Sum 41
• Feeling This - Blink 182
• Fighting - Yellowcard
• Five Becomes Four - Yellowcard
• Flourescent Adolescent - Arctic Monkeys
• Franco Un-American - NOFX
• G's and Soldiers - Planet Asia
• Gainesville Rock City - Less Than Jake
• Gangsta Gangsta - NWA
• God Only Knows - The Beach Boys
• Golden Age Of My Negative Ways - Less Than Jake
• Gone - Jack Johnson
• Got To Get You Into My Life - The Beatles
• Guerrilla Radio - Rage Against The Machine
• Heal The World - Michael Jackson
• Here, There and Everywhere - The Beatles
• Hey There Delilah - Plain White T's
• I'd Do Anything - Simple Plan
• I Am The Walrus - The Beatles
• I Heard It Through The Grapevine - Marvin Gaye
• I Miss You - Blink 182
• I Want You Back - Jackson Five
• I Wish I Was James Bond - Scouting For Girls
• I Woke up in a Car - Something Corporate
• It Had To Be You - Motion City Soundtrack
• Jesus Christ - Brand New
• Josie - Blink 182
• Landmines And Landslides - Less Than Jake
• Light Up The Sky - Yellowcard
• Limousine (MS Redbridge) - Brand New
• Lucky Man - The Verve
• Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds - The Beatles
• Malachi Richter's Liquor's Quicker - Less Than Jake
• Man In The Mirror - Michael Jackson
• Michelle - The Beatles
• Misery Business - Paramore
• Mostly Memories - Less Than Jake
• New York, New York - Frank Sinatra
• Nite Nite - Kano
• No It Isn't - +44
• Not The Same - Bodyjar
• Octopus's Garden - The Beatles
• Paper Walls - Yellowcard
• The Pretender - Foo Fighters
• Protège Moi - Placebo
• The Rock Show - Blink 182
• Roll Over Beethoven - Chuck Berry
• San Francisco - Westlife
• The Science Of Selling Yourself Short - Less Than Jake
• Seventy Times 7 - Brand New
• Shadows And Regrets - Yellowcard
• She's So Lovely - Scouting For Girls
• She Drives Me Wild - Michael Jackson
• Shrink The World - Yellowcard
• Soco Amaretto Lime - Brand New
• Somewhere On Fullerton - Allister
• Summer Wind - Westlife
• Sunday Morning - Maroon 5
• There She Goes - The La's
• Thoughtless - Korn
• Till There Was You - The Beatles
• Want You Bad - The Offspring
• Wasting Time - Blink 182
• Watch The World - Box Car Racer
• The Way You Look Tonight - Westlife & Joanne Hindley
• Welcome To The New South - Less Than Jake
• When You Say Nothing At All - Boyzone
• When Your Heart Stops Beating - +44
• Where Is The Love? - Black Eyed Peas
• You've Got A Friend - James Taylor
• You And Me And One Spotlight - Yellowcard
• You Lied - Allister
• You Never Can Tell - Chuck Berry
• You Won't Know
• 20 Below - Hidden In Plain View

I selected them manually and individually to start and had about 200, which I had to narrow down which was incredibly difficult.

Labels: Featured

Posted by Ben Nuttall at 00:01

Wednesday, 15 April 2009

Tweet Tweet

I'm now on Twitter. If you're one of the people who have heard of Twitter and you're terrified that it will be the new Facebook which is the new MySpace, then please calm down, this is not the case. No-one is going to leave Facebook to join Twiter, they are not the same thing. Facebook has statuses, photos, videos, applications, comments, wallposts, private messages, groups, pages and all the rest, and I think it's safe to say it's here to stay. Twitter, however, is only about status updates. Now before you dismiss it as pointless saying "but Facebook already does that", reseat yourself and allow me to explain. The main thing about the conceot of being on Twiter is that it's purely one-way. Facebook is two-way; if you want to connect with someone you request to become their friend and if and only if they recipricate, the connection is formed. On Twitter, you choose to 'follow' people, which means their updates appear in your feeds when you log in, but they don't have to accept you and in turn receive your updates. For example if I want to receive Stephen Fry's updates, why would he want to receive mine, along with the thousands of other people following him?

It was this concept that led to me signing up. It was a post on Dave Gorman's blog about how a couple of people had sent him messages saying he was rude not to follow them, when they had followed him. He explained to them that it would be pointless for him to follow the thousands of people following him, as it would be impossible to take in so much information and he wouldn't be able to actually keep track on the people he specifically wanted to. These people were seriously offended by this and said that he should be polite, even if he wasn't going to actually read the updates. So apparently they would prefer it if he admitted that he was never going to read their updates, just so they could add one to their number of followers, like the MySpace culture.

In my opinion, MySpace has its place - mainly for musicians, groups, bands, singers, DJs and such. It was only being used by people because Facebook wasn't here yet. MySpace isn't for me, but Facebook and Twitter are. Facebook is for almost everyone. Twitter isn't for everyone, because a lot of people don't have anything interesting to post. I hate those statuses on Facebook: "...is having a pizza", "...is bored", "...is popping in the shower" - WHY BOTHER!?

However, there are genuinely interesting and/or witty people out there who are on Twitter. Whether I am interesting and/or witty is up to you and it is your decision whether to follow me or not. One of the things I like is that I can have my updates shown in the sidebar of this website, so it's not just my Twitter followers that will see them, but my website and blog readers.

These are some of the people I'm following:

• NASA
• UK Parliament
• Stephen Fry
• Jimmy Carr
• Dave Gorman
• Google
• Google Chrome
• Downing Street
• MC Lars
• Richard Branson

These are some of the people following me:

• UK Parliament (hmm)
• Cheryl Cole (hmm)
• Bender (a fan-made Futurama tribute)
• The Real Alan Partridge (fan-made)

Labels: Computers, Featured, Internet

Posted by Ben Nuttall at 14:10

Tuesday, 14 April 2009

Version 3 & Problems with IE

I decided I needed a new website template so I made one. Much better, don't you think?

It's compliant with W3C Web Standards (XHTML 1.0 Strict and CSS 2.1) and I'm even using PHP to render it using Server Side Includes, as well as a PHP email form on the contact page. I've learned so much these last few months; a great resource for web developers (beginner/intermediate/expert) is W3Schools - it gives you all the information you need about every single tag, every single CSS style, how each browser renders each element, and which tags and attributes are permitted under each of the levels of markup (HTML/XHTML and Frameset/Transitional/Strict).

Version 3:
Versions 1 & 2:

(N.B. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is the international standards organization for the World Wide Web, founded and headed by Sir Tim Berners-Lee, OM, KBE, FRS, FREng, FRSA who invented the internet at CERN and is now a professor at MIT, probably the best institute for technology in the world)

Of all the people who converted to Firefox from Internet Explorer (IE), most of them know it's better but they don't really know why. One of the main reasons it's better is that IE does not comply with official W3C standards - it literally just ignores how things are supposed to work, and does it its own way. Firefox, Chrome and the other browsers all comply which means that when someone designs a website following the proper standards, as they're supposed to, it will look fine in Firefox, Chrome, or whatever they're using, but then they open it in IE, some of the elements will be displayed differently - something small like the spacing following a set of a bullet points - in the good browsers there will be a reasonable space immediately after a set of bullets, but in IE there will be no space. This can be resolved by adding the space manually using CSS, but that will double the space shown in the good browsers - and why should they suffer because of IE's incompetence? It should also be noted that if a website's code is valid, it will generally load faster, run smoother on all browsers and systems, and (along with other factors) increase a site's search engine optimisation.

One of the more famous bugs in IE is known as the Internet Explorer box model bug. This is a problem with the way IE interprets the markup and style differently to the W3C standards; when you set the width of an element, and then apply a margin, some padding and a border, IE will subtract the width of the border and padding and the content width will be whatever is left, whereas the W3C way is to declare the width, then add the padding, border and margin to it. IE's way means that if the sum of the margin, border and padding is greater than half of the width (half because it counts on both sides so can be doubled) then you are left with a negative width, which is impossible, so it just disappears! The diagram below should explain this clearer:

Labels: Computers, Featured, Firefox, Google, Internet, Web Design

Posted by Ben Nuttall at 19:00

Saturday, 28 March 2009

Google - Chrome Experiments, StreetView & Gmail

I've been blown away by so many things Google have done so far this year (and it's only March). They've done loads of work on Gmail which has incredibly made it even better; Gmail was already the best webmail service around, and it's been making life easier for millions of users all over the world for a few years now, and still they're constantly making small improvements (mostly based on the developers' own personal issues).

There is a section within Gmail called Labs which allows you to pick and choose which of their extra features you wish to use; this has been amazing for me recently - they've made such brilliant solutions to common problems with general email services. A good example is the 'forgotten attachment detector' - how many times have you sent an email to someone saying "...please find attached my (CV/Document/Presentation)..." and hit Send without remembering to actually attach it? Well this labs feature detects if you mention the word 'attach' or 'attachment' and prompts you if you haven't attached any files. Pure brilliance.

Another new feaure in Gmail is the ability to view all your email in your web browser while offline. If you're not connected to the internet (or you temporarily lose your wireless signal) it will just open your inbox where you can view all of your past emails and their attachments, and you can even send new emails (which will send as soon as a connection is found). Once your connection is back it will automatically download any new emails.

Next up, StreetView in Google Maps; it's been available in the US for a couple of years now and last week it was launched in the UK! You can now go to ground level in the major cities and actually look round 360° as if you were actually stood there. You can walk forward through a street, look round and pick a street to go down and just wander through. Not only can you spin round on the spot but also look 290° vertically, so you can look up at a tall building ahead.

I'm an avid reader of Dave Gorman's blog. Last week he posted about how when he heard that StreetView for UK was being released, it reminded him of "an incident from many moons ago" when he had been walking down Bethnal Green and saw a bizarre sight - a small car mounted with a huge nest of cameras - which he stopped to gawp at with curiousity, before seeing the Google logo on the side of the car, which made him realise that they were photographing for the StreetView project. He then realised that he would be shown in Bethnal Green looking stupid when they launched it. And he was right, except that they have blurred everyone's faces out, so until he announced it to the world, he would have been the only one to know it was him. You can view it here.

If you go to maps.google.co.uk and search for 462 Bethnal Green Rd, Tower Hamlets, London E2, UK and then select 'Street view' it'll show you a view of the Shakespeare pub. I'm on the other side of the road so scroll round and you'll see me leaning against the wall of the Quicksilver Gaming Centre (boy, do I live in a classy part of the world!) It's probably not obvious to anyone else that it's me. But it is you know...

Lastly, Chrome Experiments (I realise I talked about them in reverse order of the title). Google Chrome is a web browser made by Google, which they decided to make using ideas based as if from scratch, so ignoring the concept of current browsers (because they were created back when all we did on the internet was look at text and images, and now it's all about applications and very interactive stuff), they came up with a much more powerful engine to surfing the web. I started using it when it was launched in September, but a few months later I was back to Firefox because it was a bit too BETA, especially with the slow internet connection I'm on in halls. I decided to give it a try again when I heard about Chrome Experiments (they removed the BETA tag a couple of months ago).

Chrome Experiments is a project which aims to demonstrate the power of the new Javascript engine, V8, and allow outside innovation to do so. It just goes to show how the power of innovation is changing the internet and the useful things we can do with the internet. This may be the dawn of Web 3.0 - it's just being demonstrated for fun at the moment but it could lead to a better way of conveying information, which afterall is Google's world mission.

The experiments on the site include a page that renders the Google homepage and when anywhere is clicked, all the elements drop to the bottom of the screen and bounce (and you can still type and search, with all the elements laid out on each other at the bottom), another couple I've seen let you pick up a ball with a mouseclick and you can throw it about within the browser box (one lets you throw it between different browser boxes, the other has as many balls as you want, and they bounce against each other), another lets you play Tetris (built using Javascript and DOM), another shows a man's (or a pirate's) face and as you speak into your microphone, his mouth moves up and down as if he's talking.

Here's a video showing a few examples:

"Not your mother's Javascript"

I joined Twitter today. More to come on that in a new post on the next few days. Anyway, you can follow me here: twitter.com/Ben_Nuttall

Labels: Computers, Featured, Google, Internet

Posted by Ben Nuttall at 19:53

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