mike-davis.net

The economy is in meltdown, banks are toppling like your own choice of notably topply thing, unemployment is on the way up - all we can hope is that our elected representatives have their collective eye on the ball and will come up with some sensible plans.

Ha. Some hope. What are they paying attention to right now? Fretting about some unfunny jokes made by a couple of overpaid radio presenters.

Now, in common with 98% of the 27,000 people who’ve apparently complained about the messages that Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross left on Andrew Sachs’s answering machine, I haven’t heard the broadcast in question. This is mainly because I make a point of avoiding any shows that may possibly feature Russell Brand, because I find him tedious and unfunny. But I know a storm in a teacup when I see one, and right now I’m looking at a right old tsunami in the fine china.

Never mind what they said. On the day the show went out, two people complained. Let’s count them. One. Two. That’s it. It could all have died right then. But no - it got on the news (particularly the fresh, new, self-flagellatory post-Hutton BBC) and everyone and his dog piled in. Even so, it took 10 days for the number of complaints to reach 1,400 or so - impressive, since stuff only stays on good old Listen Again for a week. Which of course means that the next 25,600 people to complain haven’t heard the thing they’re complaining about.

And then we’ve got the Prime Minister, who surely, surely, has more important things to deal with, sticking his oar in. Which means that Cameroon has to weigh in too. It’s just mental. NOBODY CARES. MOVE ON.

Still, apparently Brand’s quit his radio show, so some good’s come of it all…

And yes, I’m well aware of the irony of saying that nobody cares when clearly I’ve become sufficiently encared to make my first posting in three months. What can I say? Except that beer’s great :-)

iPod to DVD player hack,
originally uploaded by MikeDavis.

We’ve had this portable DVD player thingy for a while, which has proved to be a very useful thing for long car journeys to keep Isla entertained (although we try to make a point of covering as much ground as possible without it…). The downside is that it’s tricky to control what’s going on from the front of the car (especially if the car is, in fact, the camper, in which case the player is about six feet behind the front seats). Also we end up carting about quantities of DVDs, and if Isla kicks the player (which she can in the car, but not in the camper) then the disc door tends to pop open and everything stops.

Enter the household iPod. We never had any intention of storing video on it, but when I noticed that the DVD player had audio and video in jacks around the back it suddenly looked like a good idea. I was anticipating having to either buy another dock or cannibalise an iPod connector to get video out of it, but it turns out that there’s a video signal on the headphone jack, which is very handy indeed. One jack-to-phono AV cable and mild cannibalisation of a stereo jack-to-stereo jack lead and a spare SCART adapter and job is, as they say, a good’un. Just need to make a longer (and nicer looking) version so the screen can go in the back and the iPod up front.

Obviously now I have to spend several hours ripping and reencoding DVDs of children’s programmes. Such is life.

And yes, I haven’t posted for a loooong time. I didn’t have anything very interesting to say. Still don’t, but I’m boshing this up because someone, somewhere might find it useful…

Regular readers (hah!) will know that I have, in the past, dabbled with “multisport” events. Most recently I teamed up with Carl and Chris to take part in the Dirty Double run/bike/assault course adventure race thing organised by votwo. The venue was Itchen Valley Country Park near Southampton, and with the weather in the previous few days being bordering on the biblical the conditions were, well, soft. Much of the running legs were on the water meadows bordering the Itchen, likely to be moist at the best of times. On this occasion large areas appeared to be considerably below the actual river level and there were a couple of waist-deep stretches.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Our team’s secret weapon was Carl - he’s training for the London Marathon, aiming for a sub-three hour time and prone to returning from 22 mile training runs without apparently having broken a sweat. Chris is working up to a triathlon, while I’m OK on a bike but hadn’t run for over a year (not since the previous adventure race I’d done, in fact). It wasn’t all that surprising that Carl basically led us round, with Chris and I swapping position depending on the current modality…

We all got a bit of a surprise, though. Heading off from the start at a comfortable pace we very quickly found ourselves at the front. We were expecting to be reasonably competitive on the bikes, but we were still on foot at this point. There was a way to go yet, though, and with the format being run/bike/run/bike/run an awful lot of changes of shoes to negotiate. I’d equipped my shoes with stretchy laces, which made for brisk transitions but also meant that the sticky bits of the run course (ie all of it) could fairly easily suck the shoes off my feet. Still, it only happened about nine or ten times and they were quick to put back on.

We held on to our lead through the first bike leg, giving a comfortable buffer for the run through the water meadows (and “through” is definitely the operative word). I was still quite happy at this point, and somewhat buoyed by hearing the team behind us call, “There are the leaders!” from the other side of a loop in the course that we knew would take at least a couple of minutes to complete. In traditional adventure race style, the run leg passed right by the transition area and then went back off into the woods the other side of it, allowing us to approach the transition across an open field into a biting headwind. To add to the fun, there was a scramble net to negotiate before getting back on to the bikes.

Alarmingly, we overtook a team at this point - they’d just got on to the bikes for the first riding leg, and therefore looked likely to be out on the course for quite a long time. Two fairly straightforward laps later and if anything we were a bit further ahead of our rivals. It started to go a bit wrong in the final transition when the act of changing my shoes caused a mighty spasm of cramp right up one leg. Fortunately it freed off again, but with lots of twinges on the final run lap I wasn’t getting any faster and we definitely needed that gap over the second-placed team.

Somehow we managed to keep our distance for most of the final run leg, helped in no small measure by Isla shouting “Go, Daddy, Go!” from the sidelines (she’d already attempted to join the race at the start), and in fact it was only a mild degree of faffing to negotiate the final 9ft plywood wall obstacle that allowed the others to close up. The last 50 yards of the course featured a scramble net, two chaps in gorilla outfits attempting to impede our progress, a fenced-off area full of exercise balls and the aforementioned plywood cliff. I decided that I was lightest, so gave Carl and Chris a leg-up to the top before realising that I could only just reach high enough to get pulled up. I had to ditch my now rather slimy gloves for better grip, and having lost the use of my legs by this point it was pretty much down to my team-mates to get me to the top. We made it, though, and crossed the line just over a minute clear.

It’s now Tuesday, and I hope to be able to walk properly again by the weekend.

There’s an official report on the votwo site (notable for referring to us as “highly trained” - if only they knew…) and a report from the Southampton Daily Echo that possibly marginally exaggerates how unpleasant it was.

(Ali took the picture)

Well, the “post more” not-really-a-resolution didn’t last long, then. January’s a bad month for all sorts of reasons, and this one more than most, with “fixing up lots of bits of the house” added to the general clamouring for my attention. Pfft.

Anyway, the real point of this post is to vainly attempt to draw the attention of any readers still extant to my second stab at the CLIC24 24-hour charity MTBathon and the sponsoring thereof:

It’s going to be sunny, dry and warm this year. I have decreed it.

My ugly mug seems to crop up in all sorts of places, and I usually don’t notice until months after the fact - I once made an appearance on the cover of a French mountain bike magazine that I’d never have noticed were it not for the chance connection made by a French acquaintance. So picking up on my “starring” role in IMBA’s festive e-card thingummywotsit while there’s still left-over turkey in the fridge is pretty prompt by my standards.

It is, of course, largely pure chance that it’s me - the pic was taken last year by MTB lenschap Seb Rogers after a mad scramble to get on to the hills before a surprise snowfall melted. I can’t even remember what bike I was riding - it would appear to be a black one of some sort, but beyond that it’d be pure guesswork.

Anyway, Merry Recent Christmas to one and all. “Post more here” may become some sort of Resolution of the New Year persuasion - not a lofty goal in all honesty, a dozen posts during 2008 should just about cover it…

Once upon a time I used to write quite a lot about politics. These days, I don’t. There are a few reasons for this, but one of the key ones is nigh-on perfectly illustrated by Security Minister Lord West. On the off-chance that you’re unfamiliar with Lord West’s most excellent shift from “saying what he thinks” to “on-message” within the space of an hour, this is what he said on Radio 4’s Today at 8:20 on Wednesday during an interview about the time that terror suspects could be detained without charge (a time that’s been increasing exponentially, but that’s another story):

still need to be fully convinced that we absolutely need more than 28 days and I also need to be convinced what is the best way of doing that.”

And here he is again, around 9:30:

I personally absolutely believe that within the next two, three years, we will require more than that for one of these complex plots. So I am convinced that’s the case.”

It’s so laughable that really nothing more needs to be said. And the same is true of almost everything that emanates from Westminster these days. Was it always like this?

Tyred out,
originally uploaded by MikeDavis.

Another in what may prove to be a short series of “odd things seen while driving”. I did, of course, stop the car to take the picture. And to get out and roll the errant tyre to the side of the road. Thinking back, I should probably have collected it and taken it to a tyre fitters for proper disposal - I clearly had an underactive social responsibility gland that day.

E4,
originally uploaded by MikeDavis.

Inspired by Bez posting a pic of a carelessly designed logo, I remembered an old pic I grabbed in a traffic jam a couple of years ago. Obviously I was ducking down behind the dashboard in case any errant flying bits of Channel 4 logo or whirling red kites came by.

(Yes, my phone takes crap pictures, but they’re better than the phone calls that my camera makes).

I’ve got used to people trying to steal my money via email - I now reflexively delete anything at all that purports to come from a bank, eBay or PayPal. I should probably make that happen automatically, but still. Yesterday, though, was a bit of a new one. I work from home and therefore have two phone lines into the house. I have a personal rule not to answer the work one after 5.30pm in the interests of work/life balance (well, it’s more of a guideline than a rule, but as is so often the way, I digress). So when it rang at 5.28 I picked it up and was on the receiving end of a vaguely oriental-sounding mumble.

“I’m sorry?” quoth I.
“Hello there, we just calling to find out if your Sky TV is operating correctly,” says woman on the other end, over a terrifically bad line.

Naturally enough, we don’t have Sky - there’s enough crap telly for free^[1] without paying for more of it. And also naturally enough, being English, I went for the apologetic line, as if it was somehow me doing the inconveniencing.

“Sorry, I think you must have the wrong number.”
“OK, bye.”

And that was that. Until 25 seconds later, when the home phone rang. Sandra picked it up this time, and guess what? Yup, the same woman enquiring after the same non-existent Sky service. Who quickly hung up without a word when Sandra expressed her concern that someone had phoned both our numbers consecutively to spin the same line. So not at all suspicious, then.

Quite what can be done about it I have no idea. Needless to say, you don’t want to start discussing your financial arrangements over the phone, though - be vigilant.

Ooh, it’s all gone a bit public service, which of course brings me to: [1] I’m conveniently ignoring the license fee, of course, although to my mind it’s worth every penny. In fact, it’d be worth it just for Radio 4 (although I could probably live without Melvyn Bragg and In Our Time, which just makes me feel like I have the intellect of a mollusc).