Blog: A Day In The Life
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Wednesday, 30 September 2009
So Much To Do, So Little Time...
There was a time in my life, while I was at sixth form, where almost every day of the week was full of me being busy. Literally from getting up in the morning to going to bed at night I would have no time to spare on some days. For instance every Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday in my final year would go like this:Tuesday
8:30 - 4:00 - school
4:30 - 8:30 - parkour training
8:30 - late - bus home then revision / computer / websites / etc. (cramming)
Wednesday
8:30 - 3:00 - school
3:00 - 5:30 - go home then revision / computer / websites / etc. (cramming)
5:30 - 9:00 - scouts
9:00 - late - go home then revision / computer / websites / etc. (cramming)
Thursday
8:30 - 3:00 - school
4:00 - 7:00 - work
7:30 - 10:00 - venture scouts
10:00 - late - go home then revision / computer / websites / etc. (cramming)
I had so many commitments when I lived in Sheffield - I was an Assistant Scout Leader at a younger group (11-14), I helped run the activities & organise things at the venture scout unit (14-18), I ran the venture scout unit's website (and still do haha), I had a job as a pool lifeguard, I had parkour training, I ran canoe classes for the scouts at the swimming pool and lifeguarded the swimming session for them as a volunteer, I had my A-levels to prepare for, and on top of that I was a bit of a geek and needed to spend time on the internet doing what I used to describe as random but necessary internet tasks (things like sending and replying to emails, checking forums, social networking, reading bits of news, finding out about new technology and such, and blogging, of course...) - I can't look back on these things as a waste of time because I wouldn't know half the amount of stuff I know about computers, the internet, websites or random articles I read up on on wikipedia!
At one point I was doing maybe four parkour training sessions every week - and with three evenings with scouts, two or three shifts at work and trying to fit everything else in - it was manic. All of these things were important to me and the more I got involved, the more committed I became.
I've realised I'm at a stage now where I'm going to be in a very similar situation here in Manchester. I've just started by second year at university (this year's marks count towards my degree classification, it's a lot harder, I have more units and I'm now living in the South Manchester suburban area of Withington, near Stockport, which is a lot further out than I lived in halls last year!), I'm in a more demanding and responsible role on the committee of canoe club (of which I also run the website), I'm trying to train harder in parkour, and I'm also trying to learn more programming languages in my own time - as well as doing freelance web design alongside everything. I got my timetable for uni last week and that's what reminded me of my situation of my last two years back in Sheffield - I have some days when I'll finish at 5:00 or 6:00 in the evening (ugh!) and other days when I finish at 1:00 in the afternoon - the three days I finish early are the three days I need to be in town (where uni is) in the evenings, so I either waste time getting the bus home and back again (accumulating an extra hour to my travel time), or I find something to do in uni, in town or with friends in town - like today I finished at 1:00 and had to meet up with the canoe club committee for a meeting, then we went into the Union office to sort some admin stuff and fill forms out, then met with another committee member to discuss the upcoming pool sessions and weekend river trips, then had some food before going to meet the parkour guys for training at 6:00, trained till 9:30, got home at 10:00, made tea, caught up on some house stuff with my housemates then replied to the day's emails, checked the canoe club forum, did some stuff on facebook (canoe club stuff and catching up with friends) and then ended up writing this blog post in the early hours - and I've got to be up early for a 9:00 lecture! So I either have the choice of staying out all day (leaving at 8ish getting home some 14 or so hours later) or wasting time by coming home and going back again. The weekends are hardly a break either - I'm either parkour training, running river trips for canoe club or occasionally visiting my family or something.
There's so much to do and so little time, and I find myself trying to be better at everything I do all the time - which makes it even harder to do it all! I want to train harder at parkour, I want to practise and coach kayaking, I want to do well at uni, I want to make new friends and spend time with the old ones, I want to visit friends in different places, I want to do freelance web design, I want to learn new programming languages, I want to spend time with my family, I want to watch films I've never watched, I want to spend time on the internet, I want to blog about things, I want to learn more maths, I want to do the Rubik's cube, I want to learn about things that interest me on wikipedia, I want to spend time with my housemates, I want to read all the books I've been meaning to read for ages (and re-read the ones I love) - and I just do what I think is best at any one time (like I'm writing this blog post now when I really ought to be sleeping).
Labels: Computers, Internet, Parkour, Programming, Scouting, University, Web Design
Posted by Ben Nuttall at 03:52 
Monday, 3 August 2009
Going Google
I just read an interesting short article on the official Google blog entitled "Going Google" with Google Apps which in just three short paragraphs sums up the benefits people experience by using Google Apps and other Google services. I'm a big fan of Google (as you may have gathered from reading my blog) and use a lot of their services.
Here are the first two paragraphs of that article:
Every morning, millions of people wake up to a very refreshing experience at work. They don't see "mailbox is full" errors in their email. They don't worry about backing up their data. They can get to any file they need from any computer, anywhere with Internet access and a browser. They can all access and edit the same documents and spreadsheets at the same time as their colleagues. They use Gmail and Google Calendar at work as fluidly and easily as they use their personal Gmail accounts. They video, voice and text chat with their peers globally as naturally as they send email.
The IT people at these companies and organizations don't waste time or money buying, installing or managing email servers. They focus on the smart, innovative stuff they want to work on, because they never have to bother with expensive and painful software upgrades, hardware compatibility issues or managing data centers. They have left many IT frustrations and costs behind and moved on to something better.
Hopefully that will give you an insight to how people benefit from using Google Apps, and why it is an ideal business solution.
The websites I run use Google Apps, which is a wholesome solution for companies or organisations for their domains. So say for my university canoe club's website (MMU Canoe Club), I set up Google Apps for the domain, which means we get as many club email addresses as we need (up to 50 for a free account) with a massive amount of storage; we get an online document collaboration tool which allows each committee member to add/edit documents, spreadsheets and other files online; and we can use a shared calendar and all add/change events.
Using these Google services doesn't require the user to use Gmail as their main mail account, use Google Calendar for their personal calendar, or have an Android phone - but if they do use any of these things they will continue to experience the benefits of Google Apps.
If, like me, the user uses Gmail as their main email account then they can set up forwarding (as I do) to ensure all their club mail goes to their main account and they can reply or send new emails from their club address without leaving their normal Gmail account. There's also the option to configure with Outlook (though why anyone would wish to do so is beyond me). If, like me, they use Google Calendar for personal use, then they can set it up to show more than one calendar's entries together (colour coded), so I could have my own calendar entries in blue and the canoe club's entries in red. If, like me, the user has an Android phone, then they can access their email on their phone at the touch of a button, and even be alerted of new mail. They can send mail, reply, search, archive and sort mail. Without going too far into the functionality of Android, they can do it all really easily. They can also access their calendars on their Android device, add/edit events and receive reminders of events on their phone.
Being a web developer, I need to look to find the solution the company I design for is looking for. If they don't have a company email system set up (say, for instance, they just use their own personal hotmail, yahoo or ISP email accounts) then I would suggest Google Apps as a solution. If they do have something set up (say, Outlook) then I would look at this and probably suggest Google Apps as an alternative if they would be interested in it.
Google Apps is simply a perfect solution for a business or organisation - and if they have fewer than 50 users then the free edition is open to them (for a small fee of $50/year they can get unlimited users and extra features) - why anyone would pay for someone else to provide them with email accounts and such, and pay for just a handful of POP3 email accounts, I can't understand. Nobody can provide a better service than Google and it's free, easy to set up and keep running.
Universities are a prime example of the perfect users for Google Apps - quite a lot of universities in America are using it, and Google have been working with education authorities in developing nations to give them the opportunities to have access to better learning resources. Unfortunatey my university has recently decided to "Go Microsoft" and opt for the evil alternative to Google Apps, Live@edu. It's launching in a few weeks so I haven't seen what it's like yet but I only hope I can have my email forwarded to my Gmail account like I did with last year's system, otherwise I'll be forced to use Windows Live Mail (ugh) and go out of my way to separately check my university email account.
If you don't use Gmail, give it a try. It'll change your life. Here's a video explaining what I just explained, but better, and in less than two minutes:
Labels: Android, Computers, Google, Internet, University
Posted by Ben Nuttall at 16:49
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
endThis 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)==0yboat = yboat + 1
elseyboat = 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, 12 February 2009
I Did Quite A Bit Of Kayaking In January
I did quite a bit of kayaking in January; in Wales, the Lake District and more locally in the North West of England. I think the first one of the new year was the Dee in Llangollen in North Wales, which I did a few years ago while doing my 4-star course. I was incredibly excited when we first got out to look at the finish point, a series of falls called Town Falls - you should have seen the look on my face - it was just pure happiness. Anyway we got on the river a few miles up from there (this is a big group from the club, including those who are brand new to canoeing), and immediately had a swimmer (someone fell out of their boat and swam), who got back in (much colder) and drifted a bit and fell in again, swam for ages, got even colder until she could find a suitable place to get out. Meanwhile, a few of us at the other side of this particularly wide river, aimed to catch up, when one of our number did the same and swam an awful long way, and during my attempt to give instructions to her to grab hold of my boat so I could tow her to safety, she shouted "Ben - I can't even see you - my contact lenses have come out!", but after much confusion and rapid coldness, on her part, I got her out, where she laid curled up shivering. Like the first swimmer, she was hyperthomic.
We got her wrapped in a space blanket and gave her some chocolate and after a while she came round and was able to climb up to the road, with the help of three of us. We got them both to sit in the group shelter to keep warm while we got someone to drive the vans round and they were fine once they got into some warm clothes. The more observational of my readers will at this point be wondering what happened to her boat as she swam - you see, in these situations, the person is the priority over the boat, so we let it drift off while we ensured she was safely out of the water - well her boat had drifted down a bit and got pinned on a rock right at the top of a fun section called Serpent's Tail which is a section of the river which twists like a snake. Anyway, with her boat going nowhere, pinned against a rock in the middle of a wide river, we had left it there until we knew the casualties were ok. Once they were in the van, three of us got our heads together to work out how to get the boat back. Between us we came up with an idea for a system that would enable us to wade across the water safely, tied to eachother using a rope and the harnesses on our buoyency aids, so that we could form a strong triangle and wade across without getting swept away; we managed to reach the boat, clip a carabiner to it and wade back to the side, where we could tow it back, which we pulled off without a hitch. We then went home which made the trip pretty much wasted, but at least we had some practice at dealing with incidents, minor first aid and a boat rescue. I never got to paddle Town Falls which was a shame, but I'm sure we'll be going back soon (maybe in lower water if we take the freshers, or if we run an intermediate trip there).
The best river I did was the Sprint in the Lakes, one Sunday a few weeks ago. We got out of the van and inspected the first section of falls (Garnett Bridge Falls) from a bridge; I literally spent about 15 minutes looking at it, deciding whether or not to run it or not, and if so, which line I would take. Of the three other guys I was with, one said no, the others said yes and looked at it briefly, I just stood looking at it, wondering whether it was time to say no.
I carefully picked my line and checked out what would happen if I went off-course, and decided that I would do it but I would have to, without a shadow of doubt, make sure I would definitely get the line I had planned, or I would be in some serious danger. We walked round to the get-in point a little way up from the falls, and I said to he other two, Lewis and Cookie, "Right - who's going first then?" ... they looked at me. Apparently that was the wrong thing to ask.
We got in our boats and waited for each other, I psyched myself up and started to head downstream. The river was really quite strong, much stronger the ones I've been doing recently. I neared the top of the falls that led under the bridge, thinking to myself that it looked completely different from an in-boat perspective than how I inspected it from the bridge. I knew it started river-right so I cautiously approached the first fall, which I hit but got slightly stuck in but managed to skull out of, and proceed to the next. At this point I couldn't really tell which line I had planned, and carried on even more cautiously, doubting myself but knowing I had to go on, and swept towards a rock in the middle of the river, where I thought "I need to go to the left of this rock" and immediately regretted it.
It swept me too far right (I was meant to go left at it to hit the only runnable line) and I tried to paddle as hard as I could, facing 45 degrees towards where I should have been, trying desperately to get back on track, when I hit a rock side-on, going pretty fast at the time, which tipped me over from the front, sending me down a sharp creek on the left (upside down and facing backwards), where I felt the rocks crashing against my helmet, then I remember being in the backwash of the fall (that's where the water flushes back on itself, and if you get stuck in it, it doesn't let you out), still upside-down at this point. I think I tried to roll up, but the stopper just took me back over and knocked the paddle out of my hands, so I tried to handroll back up, but that didn't work as I was still in the stopper, so I popped my deck (pulled off the spraydeck, the skirting covering the cockpit of the boat to keep water out) and clambered out of the boat, but I was still in the stopper, and it wasn't letting me go. I was struggling to catch my breath, and in desperate need to get myself out of the stopper and into the calmer waters ahead. At on point I managed to take a breath for a second, knowing I only had a second, and thought to myself of something I had heard about stoppers like this - as I've already said, if you're stuck in them, they won't let you go, but the water does flush out underneath, so if you tuck up and dive down underneath the bubbly white part of the water (the bit that's back-washing), it should chuck you out from below. So that's what I did - and it must have worked because I ended up in the calmer pool part that the falls poured out to.
Lewis was facing me, still in his boat, telling me to get to the side. Cookie was at the other side, shouting something about my boat. I took a minute to get myself back - the coldness and time without oxygen does funny things to you. I was ok, just very shaked up. After a minute I got my boat out and emptied it, taking my time getting ready to get back in to carry on. I knew I'd be ok but was shaken up and gutted about breaking my 3 year no-swim record. But I guess it means I've finally been tested.
We continued with the river, which was exciting and contained many further falls and unpredicatable sections of whitewater, which we had to inspect before running since only one of us had done the river before, and that was quite some time ago. One of the falls saw another swimmer, Biddy, who was the one who didn't run the first falls, and it turned out later on that he did some serious damage to his ribs (2 broken, 1 dislocated, 1 fractred, I think he said). I still felt very shaken up from my swim, as I'd got trashed and knocked about a bit, came out with a bruised knee and a few scratches on my new £150 helmet (good job I had it, eh!) but worst of all was the mental impact on the incident. I wasn't quite myself for the rest of the river, although I did all the falls and drops, I still feel I would like to go back and do the river again some time again - to have another go at Garnett Bridge Falls where I got trashed - I can't let it defeat me!
Anyway here's a short video of me getting trashed - you only see how I picked the wrong line and me getting tipped over badly, then the film cuts as the guy filming (broken ribs Biddy) runs round to see if I'm alright:
We also did the Greta and the Kent. You can see pictures and videos from these trips on the new Media page of the canoe club website (which I run). I've also recently added an embedded phpBB forum which involved plenty of fiddling around with random bits of code to get it to show within the content of the actual website template.
Labels: Featured, Kayaking, University
Posted by Ben Nuttall at 02:00
Monday, 27 October 2008
London, baby!
I'll try and be quick because I'm mega busy at the moment - got a massive week ahead of me and time is precious but I'm trying to keep up the whole 'frequent blog post' thing I've mentioned in the last few posts so here I am writing this from my brand new ASUS laptop which I set up last night. It's always interestingto know what the first thing a person does when they get onto a brand new computer; mine was to download Google Chrome (a new web browser made by Google - it's amazing - try it!) which since it was released last month has been my new primary browser, knocking Firefox down to second (followed by Safari then IE).
Anyway the laptop's fine. Oh and I'm now on Vista, which I was hesitant about swithing to, but I'm glad to say I'm very happy with it so far - it's not too different from XP other than its slick style and smooth design, and I've found that the only functional differences were things thatI felt were missing from XP so I'm really glad they've improved it on those parts. Things like the ability to select several photos in a folder and rotate them all in one go, which is an obvious function to include but was missing from XP which incurred the dubious task of manually viewing each picture and rotating each one separately (each rotation taking a good few seconds).
I digress. I had a great weekend in London with my parents, who I haven't seen since I moved out a month ago, so it was nice to let themknow what I've been up to and how my course lectures and my halls life are going. The trip was primarily arranged due to my invitation to London Zoo to be presented with my Queen's Scout Award but seeing as it was my parents' wedding anniversary that weekend, we decided to make a weekend trip out of it. I caught the train home after my computing lecture on Friday afternoon and spent the evening at home and we got the coach from Sheffield to London early Saturday morning, a lovely four hour journey, and checked in to our hotel and after a nap we spent the evening in London; we went on the London Eye which I took many many pictures of (and from).
Sunday morning we got up early to get ready for the presentation, headed out for the tube in the pouring rain and made our way to the Zoo! We checked in there and spent some time wandering about checking out the animals and exhibits, then when it was time we went over to the Mappin Pavilian which is where the presentation was held. I hadn't really any idea what the presentation was going to be like - I hadn't really thought about it; all I knew was that I would be being presented with my Queen's Scout Award certificate from Peter Duncan, the Chief Scout (head of the Scout Association) and former Blue Peter presenter. Despite being bang on time, I was the last to arrive (at this point I discover there were just four of us being presented at this time) and was immediately ushered into a sofa while having my coat removed by some sort of organising person, and before I had a chance to take in my surroundings I saw Peter Duncan just ahead of me, shuffling four creamish certificates in his hand to see who was to be first. "Ben Nuttall" he called out, and asked me to step up to join him at the front. I stood up and looked out at the dozens of people applauding - I'm still not really sure why they were all there.
I was put on the spot and suddenly asked by Peter Duncan what I did to achieve my Queen's Scout Award (for those that don't know, the Queen's Scout Award is the highest accomplishment in the Scout movement, and is patroned by the Queen (formerly King's Scout Award) and achievement involves completion of the Duke of Edinburgh Gold Award as well as various other tasks). I completed mine over a year ago; with the most talkable bits happening over a year ad a half ago, so having to reel off a nice little speech about a four-day walking expedition I did in April 2007 was rather awkward but with it being such a memorable four days I managed to share a few entertaining short stories about the hike and mentioned what the purpose of the expedition was and how we ended up finishing it at the pub from ITV's Heartbeat while they were filming. Peter asked me a few more questions, and we had a good chat about Scouting and the future of the world and I was presented with my long-awaited and well-deserved certificate, photographed a few times, and I took a seat to listen to the next three people and their adventures.
After this we got a chance for more photos and I had a good chat with Peter; I told him about my Grandfather (94 next month!) who met the very first Chief Scout, the founder of the worldwide movement, Lord Baden-Powell. We then talked about the media and their tendency to ruin good news stories with silly headlines and pictures that make the articles lose their point about what Scouting today is all about; outdoor pursuits, adventure, opportunities galore, making something of your youth, preparing for adulthood and showing future employees and such that you have made the most of your youthhood by getting out there and doing something.
We thanked Peter and the organisers for a great presentation and I was congratulated on my achievement once again by those present as we departed. We had a look round the rest of the zoo before heading back via tube to the coach station. Another four hour journey back to Sheffield and a couple of hours chilling out at home before having to get the train back to Manchester, only to find that it had been cancelled. I had to get a train out to Hope in the peak district, wait for a bus there which took me to Stockport, then waited for a train to take me to Manchester (an hour later than planned at quarter-past midnight). I had a maths test in uni at 9am this morning, so I had to do a spot of last minute revision on the train, but without any spare paper I had to take notes on the back of a bank statement I had in my bag!
So after my morning lectures and the maths test today I got my new laptop set up and here we are. I took many photos in London at the weekend, so check the London photoset out:
Labels: Google, Internet, Scouting, University
Posted by Ben Nuttall at 23:59
Thursday, 23 October 2008
BCU Student Safety Seminar
I was asked by the chairman of the canoe club if I would like to attend the BCU whitewater student safety seminar with him and the vice chairman, being a fresher who is keen to commit to kayaking and to the club and likely to be seriously involved in the club over the next few years. I jumped at the chance and we went last weekend and had a great time - it was at a whitewater & mountaineering centre called Plas-y-Brenin in North Wales, hosted by some of the greatest kayakers in the UK. It was a great experience for me to hear the opinions about gear, techniques and advice from these well-accomplished paddlers, without it being dictated to me like it has been in the past - it's great when someone can just give you their personal opinion for what it's worth, explain and justify it and leave you to hear opposing views and make sure you get the facts, rather than hammer it into you that their way is right.
We arrived at the centre before 9:00am (having got up at 5ish to set off by 6:00am). Not much to report about the journey other than us finding the following joke hilarious at the time (mostly due to lack of sleep):
I spent all yesterday in the garden with my step-ladder; not my real ladder, my step-ladder...
On the Saturday we sat through a seminar with Tom Parker about the importance of safety and avoiding at all costs the chance of an accident happening where you could be left to blame, by simply making using common sense and being sure not to take inexperienced paddlers down rivers beyond their abilities and leaving them in positions where they would be vulnerable to an accident. Then we did a session on ropework where we tested some throwlines (bags of rope used for rescues by pool lifeguards and canoeists) to see how easily they break, which was interesting! Things like this are really worth sparing no expense on to ensure you've got a good one. We did some work on how to manufacture a harness from a short length of rope and use it to climb or abseil a vertical face to get to, our out of, a river and manouvre boats in such a situation. Then I attended a talk on how to plan trips abroad from your club, which I think I'm going to pursue this Summer, probably the Alps.
We ended up staying in a grotty bunkhouse with some paddlers from Birmingham University and on the Sunday I put myself down for the session on how to lead and run steep river creeks, where we drove out to some grade four sections of rivers and chucked ourselves off some mental waterfalls and drops. The sort of experience where you do something, then look back on it and think "Woah ... that was a bit mad" but it was cool 'cause the session was aimed on how to run it safely, so we got out to inspect each difficulty when uncertainty laid ahead, and spend much time dicsussing our strategies, choosing our own lines through the water and watching each other to learn from each other's actions.
The quality (and presence) of safety equipment was very much stressed at this seminar; I now know I need to go out and spend a lot of money on new gear. I underestimated the need for good shoes (yes, canoeists need to wear shoes while boating) because you need to ensure you're safe when getting out to inspect difficult unfamiliar sections of rivers, and also when getting from the car/van/minibus to the river, and back again, as this can often prove difficult and may require a bit of climbing, lifting boats and setting up rope & pulley systems to get the boats to where they need to be. Another thing I'd overlooked was my helmet, which is perfectly suitable for paddling about on flat water (where the only likely dangers are maybe banging your head on a boat, getty or paddle) but for the sort of thing I'm doing these days I need a good quality full-protection one (not a full-face helmet - but some paddlers do choose to). One of the guys on the course said he doesn't mind spending £100 on a helmet because, quite frankly, his head is worth more than that. How true.
I haven't got any pictures from the seminar but here's one of me (looking rather angry for some reason) on the River Kent in Kendal in the Lake District last weekend:
I've treated parkour as a discipline over the last three years (my first year of parkour was more about finding my way and realising what I wanted to do than actually training - how are you supposed to train towards something if you don't know where you're going?) and now I've decided to treat kayaking the same. I'll be training & coaching every Wednesday evening at the Aquatics Centre and trying to do a river every weekend, sometimes I'll do a beginner trip on the Saturday and an advanced trip on the Sunday.
I'll be updating this blog more frequently now and I've got my next post planned for after the weekend, so watch this space. I'm seeing my parents when I go home on Friday and we're spending the weekend in London which will be awesome. I'm also getting my new laptop when I go home - I'm sure that ever since I confirmed purchase of the said laptop (using this desktop PC), and it realised it was being made redundant and replaced by a younger slimmer more portable model, it has purposefully and maliciously decided to boycott me and has been ever so slow. It's been great these last five years - its spec isn't anything to shout about but it's done everything I've needed it to do and it's brought you 55 blog posts and several videos! But it's the end of an era and I'm scarily moving on to Vista (dual-boot Linux) and may the new era of portability live long (until it gets replaced by the next technology, of course).
Labels: Kayaking, Parkour, University
Posted by Ben Nuttall at 14:45
Friday, 10 October 2008
A Fresh Start
I'm now at the end of my third week of university. I've moved away from home and now live in halls of residence in Manchester, which is a completely new experience for me. I can cook and generally fend for myself but it's still very different from being at home. I'm having a wicked time out here and loving the whole Manchester scene - the parkour's awesome, the bars and clubs are pretty cool, my flatmates are a great bunch of people and I've also joined the canoe club which is brilliant.
There are ten of us living in my flat - five boys and five girls - which sounds a lot but I think it works fine. We've each got our own room on the corridor and we share a sizey kitchen which we all use at different times so there's only ever a maximum of two or three of us cooking at once. I couldn't have asked for a nicer group of people to live with. We're all from different areas of the country (even one girl from France) and we're all completely different in person which makes us gel in that we all have something to bring to the group and there are plenty of questions bouncing off each other about all our hobbies, interests and ways of living. We all went out together the first few nights and got to know each other and the city, but now we're tending to do our own thing in smaller groups (a few of us joined different union clubs) and we're all settling in to our own ways.
In Freshers' Week I had no lectures, just introductory sessions. So after two weeks of lectures I'm feeling like I'm definitely on the right course; it's exactly what I was hoping for and I can see it being challenging enough to be worth doing, I feel like I'll be learning useful things rather than stuff that's pointless. My degree title will be BSc (Hons) Mathematics and Computer Studies - I opted for the Combined Honours programme where you pick two separate subjects and do the core modules of each rather than a single course where you do lots of extra modules. This was because I wanted to keep my options open by doing a combination of two subjects and develop a wide range of skills in two fields. Interestingly, the Maths course at my uni is very computer-oriented, and the Computing course is very Maths-oriented, so they'll go together very well.
I'm having to learn two new programming languages; M-Code for solving complex mathematical functions in an application called MATLAB (Matrix Laboratory), and Java for writing and executing programs.
My modules this year are:
- Mathematical Fundamentals
- Programming (Java)
- Discrete Mathematics
- Linear Algebra
- Programming (MATLAB)
- Computer Platforms
- Statistics
- Learning & Employability (lol)
I have the option to select a major and minor next year (i.e. do more Maths modules and fewer Computing, or vice-versa) or just leave it at 50-50. I'll see how I get on.
Maths started easy (C2) on Day One, then zoomed ahead to FP3 on Day Two, which is way more advanced than I did at A-level, but I understood the lectures and managed to do the questions afterwards so that's good. I did ICT at GCSE and A-level and learned nothing of any real use to me - everything useful I can do on computers has been self-taught. Schools just don't teach anything that's useful to people today. I'm glad to say that so far the Computing lectures and practical classes have been interesting and I can see me getting a lot out of the course.
Yesterday evening I had the best midweek parkour training session for such a long time! There were about 15 of us out, and even Sam Corbett had come over from Sheffield to see a Swiss guy called Tobias who he had met in Lisses who was staying with Scott McQuade. We did some great training for about three hours, we chatted about parkour and there was a brilliant atmosphere within the group. Then Sam departed for his train home, which he missed and so ended up staying the night at mine. We did some more jumps on Oxford Road on the way home and chilled out with a pizza and watched some Futurama! Unfortunately Sam had to set off first thing in the morning to make it back for his lectures but it was nice to have him round. The first overnight guest at my "pad".
I absolutely love the location of my accommodation. It's a maximum of five minutes away from where my lectures are, ten minutes from a massive ASDA and ten minutes from the parkour meet-up spot. Oh and canoeing takes place every Wednesday evening at the Aquatics Centre across the road. I love how I can nip home in between lectures for food or if I forgot something, it's so convenient. I can't imagine any other way now! I went on a beginners' river trip in Bury with the canoe club last weekend to get the freshers started (in fact, sue to my experience and qualifications they asked me to help lead the trip) and I'm going on an advanced trip this weekend! They've also asked me to take one of the three places on a BCU Event where you learn how to run a uni canoe club, which should be really informative and exciting! Tomorrow I'll be showing prospective students around the halls of residence (like I looked round last year).
I can see it's going to be a wicked three years. Watch this space.
Labels: Computers, Kayaking, Maths, Parkour, University
Posted by Ben Nuttall at 22:45
