Articles by Matt Mecham

As blogged previously, I was impatiently awaiting the release of the 2 DVD set “Heima”; a documentary on their recent free Icelandic tour and their new double CD “Heim / Hvarf” which has a CD containing some re-recorded acoustic tracks and a CD of new recordings (including the hard to find Salka).

The re-recorded “Von” (originally on their debut album ‘Von’) is nothing short of stunning. The longer intro features Amiina (the string quartet that record and tour with Sigur Ros) at their most beautiful. Likewise the re-recorded “Hafsól” (again, originally from ‘Von’) fares much better now the band have matured.

The real gem is the DVD. The first DVD ‘Heima’ covers their recent tour along with interviews with the band. Their music set to the frighteningly stunning Icelandic landscape is quite moving.

For such a huge band with such a devoted following, they are incredibly down to earth. Jonsi, Georg, Kjarri and Orri all seem bemused by their popularity and seem happiest playing beaten up equipment in threadbare tatty sweaters.

In a world where bling is king and children aspire to be a saggy panted hip hop stars showing off their houses and cars to MTV, it’s refreshing to see four friends creating such beautiful music for the villages and hamlets in their own country.

I’ll save a more verbose review for a later blog entry, but I wanted to get some information ‘out there’.

First off, the new metallic look is pretty nifty. It gives a nice “new” feel to the standard menus and toolbars. The new ‘Coverflow’ is very nice, too. It provides a quick and easy way to scroll through your files to find what you’re looking for.

The new 3D dock is pretty to look at but it’s very hard to see which applications you have running. All you have is a tiny little white arrow (or is it a ball?) underneath the running application.

“Stacks” are fun to play with. I dragged my Application folder into the dock to create a ’stack’. Handy to launch applications without rooting through finder. I can probably remove a lot of infrequently used applications from my dock, now.

Time Machine is very fancy to look at but it has limited usefulness to me. Most of my daily work is web based and versioned using SVN. This makes Time Machine pretty much redundant for day to day work. I also use iBackup to archive my photos and music daily which takes up much less space. For this reason alone, I’ll most likely turn Time Machine off. The two hour backup is slightly distracting when it runs, also.

I’ve not played much with ‘Spaces’ as I have a two monitor set-up but I can see this being very useful for my MacBook.

As with any new OS X release, there are a few teething troubles with existing OS X applications.

The first is with Adium. MSN wouldn’t connect this morning. This post fixed it.

You have to do some jiggery-pokery to get PHP and MySQL running. I usually use the excellent Entropy packages but these don’t work yet with 10.5. You can get the OS X version of PHP running using this post, but it is a bare-bones installation without GD, etc.

I received a warning message when I launched mail about the plugin ‘SpamSieve’ being disabled. If you use this plugin, then read this to get it working again.

So far, so good…

I was flicking through my playlists today and I noticed the ‘On The Go’ playlist for the first time. This is automatically generated by iTunes based on your listening preferences. I was shocked to notice it has been planning to kill me.

Click the picture below…

This review is based on just a few listens. Like most Radiohead songs, you get more from them the more you listen to them. Even though their sound has matured it is still very much a Radiohead album and surprisingly accessible from the very first listen. Is it their best album to date? I’d say that it’s a very close call. Most of the songs grab you from the first few bars and demand your attention.
Stand out tracks for me so far “Nude”, “BodySnatchers”, “All I Need” and “Jigsaw Falling Into Place”. Oh, and “Videotape”.
The sound is very much a continuation from “Kid A / Amnesiac” and “Hail to the Thief” but there is some definite “OK Computer” styling there too.

15 Step
Welcome to In Rainbows. Electronica assaults your eardrums. Thom mumbles and skips through the first verse “How come I end up where I started”. The guitar comes in for “You used to be alright, what happened?”. The guitar flows to the left of the mix. “It comes to us all, it’s as soft as your pillow”. Electronica gets whimsical “Fifteen Steps, Then a sheer drop”. Like Múm on speed. Thom gets more excited for the last verse. A very eclectic and schizophrenic opening for the album.

BodySnatchers
Heavily distorted guitar. Drums. Thoms vocal. It reminds me very heavily of the chorus from “Palo Alto“. Which is a good thing. The track sounds like it could have come from “Kid A“. “I’m trapped in this body and can’t get out”. More health paranoia from Mr Yorke. This track is bursting with energy. Scratchy guitars to the right, drums at the back. Electronic strings wail and then -bang- it all changes. Faster drums, long drawn out guitar notes “Has the lights gone out for you? Cause the lights gone out for me”. “I’m alive”. A wall of noise brings on the last minute then we’re back to more Kid A sonic style noodling before a loud fast finale. Literally breathtaking. This would make a fantastic live song.

Nude
Reversed sound clips. “Don’t get any big ideas, they’re not gonna happen”. Ironically, how long have Radiohead fans waited to hear that on a studio album? Well, it’s finally happened!
It would be lazy to say this track is “Fake Plastic Trees” for 2007 - but it’s so much more than that. If you’ve heard the live versions of ‘Big Ideas’ then you’ll know what I mean when you say that this song has had the ‘Motion Picture Soundtrack‘ treatment. Outstandingly beautiful.
Throughout, the haunting syrupy tones of Thom float dreamlike over a stripped down orchestration for heartbreaking effect. The strings swell packed full of reverb for the chorus. My favourite track from the album.

Weird Fishes/Arpeggi
Classic Radiohead with a guitar heavy track. It appears to be a simple melody but there are many overlapping textures which builds as the song progresses. Like most of the songs on this album, you get a real sense of how Radiohead have matured their sound. The last minute is hazy perfection “Hit the bottom. And Escape”.

All I Need
The first few bars remind me of “How To Disappear Completely” from “Kid A” until the drum machine and bass kick in. “I’m an animal trapped in your hot car” Thom sings. “I’m all the days that you choose to ignore”. Like so many tracks on In Rainbows, it’s a very naked sound. Lots of empty space and echo. “You’re all I need, I’m in the middle of a picture.”. The song concludes on a high literally buzzing with energy. “It’s all wrong…”. Not for me!

Faust Arp
Acoustic guitar. Fast spoken lyrics. Folky undertones with heavy cinematic orchestration. Swelling violins over Thom “Tumbling, tumbling…”. The music takes prominence over Thom so that he’s almost lost in the mix much like some of the earlier “Pablo Honey” tracks. The most un-Radiohead like track on the album.

Reckoner
More echo and reverb. Drum and bass. Picking guitar at the left of the mix; vaguely reminiscent of “Where I End…” from “Hail To The Thief“. Another relaxed track led by Thom’s high octave singing. A very “Radiohead” sound. The last half of the song changes tonally when the orchestra come in.

House of Cards
Guitar; warm and rich greet us at the start of this track. Thoms heavily echod voice carries the song. “Forget about your house of cards, and I’ll deal mine”. The drum line keeps the song ticking along. Even though the lyrics are quite aggressive, the score remains melancholy and almost upbeat in places. Some of the sound effects remind me of “Electioneering” from “OK Computer” for reasons I can’t quite explain.

Jigsaw Falling into Place
Acoustic guitar picking out a complex melody kicks off this track. Lots of chord changes, major, minor, 7th. Thom hums his welcome mimicking the melody. It’s hard to keep your head from nodding in time with the rhythm. Thom beats out the lyrics of the first verse without much emotion. “Close circuit cameras, before you’re comatose”. The music builds for the second verse. “Before you run away from me”. Thom is getting more excited. “Come on and let it out”…. “Dance, Dance, Dance”. The music shifts again through minor and 7th. Heavy strings for “Jigsaws falling into place, there is nothing to explain”. The sheer pace leaves you almost breathless at the end.
I bet this is outstanding live in the same way that “2+2=5” is.

Videotape
We’re slowed down by tender piano and a very raw Thom introduce the song. “When I’m at the pearly gates, this will be on my videotape”. This track is very stripped down. The drums come in a little later as Thom hums a melody above the piano. At about halfway there’s a real sense of building. The drums ricochet as if on a loop. “This is my way of saying goodbye. Because I can’t do it face to face.”. The song noodles out with the drum loop and the repeated piano melody.

I got my download link this morning for Radiohead’s new album and it was on my desktop in seconds. It’s in the format of DRM free 160 kbps MP3 tracks.

I’ve only listened to four songs so far but it’s already a fantastic album. The long awaited “Nude” is nothing short of brilliant. “Weird Fishes/Arpeggi” is great too. Despite my fears that the album would sound more like Thom’s Eraser than a Radiohead album (Eraser is a great album, but it’s a slightly different sound to Radiohead) is so far unfounded. This is definitely a Radiohead album!

Ok, sorry for gushing… I’ve been waiting nearly four years for this album…

I’m a huge Radiohead fan and I’ve been keeping an eye on their sites for a while for news of a new album. Rumours were that it would be out early in 2008.

Much to the surprise of everyone, Inrainbows is out on Oct 10.

But you won’t find it in Virgin Megastore or HMV. Radiohead have decided to go it alone and are taking pre-orders for two versions, one ‘discbox’ version which contains two CDs and two LPs as well as some artwork which will be shipped on Dec 3rd. This version contains a digital download pass which is activated on 10th October. You can also purchase the download version on its own. The boxset costs £40 and the download only version costs… well, that’s up to you. They have set no price. You decide how much you want to pay for it — or if you want to pay for it at all. No seriously, it’s true; you can ‘buy’ it for free.

To foil ‘net piracy, there are no promos, no label only copies - nothing. Unless there’s a leak within the studio, you won’t be able to find a copy anywhere.

Naturally, the music labels are shocked:

While many industry observers speculated that Radiohead might go off-label for its seventh album, it was presumed the band would at least rely on Apple’s iTunes or United Kingdom-based online music store 7digital for distribution. Few suspected the band members had the ambition (or the server capacity) to put an album out on their own. The final decision was apparently made just a few weeks ago, and, when informed of the news on Sunday, several record executives admitted that, despite the rumors, they were stunned. “This feels like yet another death knell,” emailed an A&R executive at a major European label. “If the best band in the world doesn’t want a part of us, I’m not sure what’s left for this business.”

Labels can still be influential and profitable by focusing on younger acts that need their muscle to get radio play and placement in record stores — but only if the music itself remains a saleable commodity. “That’s the interesting part of all this,” says a producer who works primarily with American rap artists. “Radiohead is the best band in the world; if you can pay whatever you want for music by the best band in the world, why would you pay $13 dollars or $.99 cents for music by somebody less talented? Once you open that door and start giving music away legally, I’m not sure there’s any going back.”

I’m literally so excited I could burst. I’ve pre-ordered the boxed version and will be ready to download on the 10th. I can’t believe they’re finally releasing a studio version of ‘Nude’!

.. and the wait is over!

If you’ve not already seen this, go see it now!

The long wait for news on IP.Dynamic and IP.Nexus will be over soon…

Debbie and I have known since the end of June that we’re pregnant. We wanted to keep it pretty much to ourselves until we had our 12 week scan and told all our family.

We had decided very recently to start a family after years of ‘thinking’ about it. I’ll spare you the graphic detail but we didn’t have to wait too long for a positive pregnancy test.

It’s been a bit of a bumpy road so far which a lot of stress and a lot of worry but we both hope that’s behind us and we can look forward to March when our baby is due.

We’ve both been keeping blogs of the experience so that we have a true record of our adventure. Feel free to read them, although you should note that they are a very personal experience and full of things like feelings and emotion. We’ll continue to update them as we go.

My blog…
Debbie’s blog…

Here’s our 12 week scan picture, showing our little baby ‘Flump’ at 11 weeks and 2 days.

We’re both excited and words cannot describe what it feels like to have created a life.

I’m a huge Sigur Ros fan.

They’re releasing some new material over the next few months. A compilation album featuring some previously unrecorded songs (including the beautiful Salka) is due out in November and the band have a website up for their ‘Heima’ project which is a DVD of their recent Icelandic tour.

They’ve released a trailer for this which showcases a song that I’m not familiar with. If the hairs on your neck don’t stand up during the key change at around 3:00 minutes then you must have just had it waxed.

The website is already up.

So, does the movie look any different from an average episode?

Yes, and no. Thankfully live-action and CG concepts where thrown out years ago and the movie sticks to the 2D animation so well known of the series. Having said that, some effort has gone into making it shine. There is excellent detail work and more shading than in an average episode which gives it more depth. Also, some ‘camera’ work has been added to complete the cinematic experience. There are some breathtaking pans and swoops mixed into the action.

But frankly, who cares when you finally have Homer Simpson on the big screen.

The movie focuses on our favourite dysfunctional American family and the rest of the Springfield characters are pushed to the margins for brief appearances. The movie manages to make an early dig at Fox and Homer makes an even earlier dig at the audience.

The first act is hilariously brilliant. It’s top form stuff from the writers and they revel in the PG certificate showing more of Bart than we’d really care to see and Homer gets to flip the finger at several people over and over again.

After the much advertised “Spider Pig” scene, things slow down a bit as the heart of the story develops which sets up a hilarious and quite thrilling final act.

Excellent stuff!

McCarthy’s most recent work “The Road” led me to this novel.

As I mentioned in a previous review; if you’re not familiar with Cormack McCarthy the first thing that strikes you is his writing style. There are no speech marks, there are no apostrophes and he breaks most ‘classic’ writing guides such as using ‘and’ only once when listing items. His style is like nothing else I’ve read and it’s all the better for it.

You’ll also note that he doesn’t give the reader any clues as to the character’s thoughts or feelings. You get an almost script like reading of the characters actions and words along with short descriptive passages. This is his genius. This is his art. This is why he’s thought as one of the greatest living writers.

The book is set along the Mexican border in Texas during the early 80s. The plot centers on three main characters. Llewelyn Moss a welder who happens upon the result of a drug deal gone wrong while out hunting. Sheriff Ed Tom Bell is an old-fashioned law keeper of the small town. Anton Chigurh is a hit man after Llewelyn.

The book seems to have many themes. Through Sheriff Bell’s monologues which punctuate the book you get a feeling for his despair at the fight between good and evil that he’s losing and his concern over post Vietnam America. He’s aware of the unfocused anger and rage of the current generation.
Llewelyn Moss is an ordinary Joe. His life is turned upside down the instant he decides to take the briefcase full of money. That single action ripples throughout his pond and affects everyone he knows and loves. He is the story of living with the consequences of your actions.
Chigurh is a genuinely scary character. He is driven by his almost fanatical moral compass. He isn’t ‘evil’ in the classic sense but strikes me as being a product of total self belief. He is cold and without compassion but in a twisted way is the most honest character in the book. His sole desire is to find and retrieve the money and deliver justice to the one who took it.

I get the feeling that although the title of the book is taken from a W.B. Yeats poem it’s more inline with the aging Sheriff feeling that he no longer has a place in world. This is brought to a head during a conversation with his Uncle towards the end of the book.

I’ve been mulling this book over in my mind for a few days and want to read it again to understand very facet.

For those who don’t enjoy reading, it’s been made into a promising movie by the Cohen brothers out in the US later this year.

Another Friday and another trip to the cinema.

This week we went to see Vacancy, the ‘horror’ starring Luke Wilson and Kate Beckinsale. I didn’t have particularly high expectations for this film so I was pleasantly surprised when I didn’t hate it.

The film follows the two bickering leads as their car breaks down forcing them to spend the night in a motel run by someone who I can only describe as an evil Ned Flanders.
Imagine, if you will, that Ned Flanders finally snapped after too many Homer jibes then murdered his family and then moved to Nowhere USA and opened a motel and you’ll be on the right track.
The actor who plays the motel owner had all of Ned’s mannerisms perfect and even his outwardly annoying enthusiasm shone through the first act.

The film descends into pretty standard survival-farce once they realise that they’re starring in a snuff film. The thing that most surprises is that it avoids most of the horror cliches. Luke’s character is inventive and creative in trying to out think their captors rather than blithely jump through the killer’s hoops.

The short running time and fresh script keep things nice and tidy. It won’t win any awards but it’s one of the better ‘horror/thrillers’ for a long time. It certainly beats watching stupid teenagers getting minced up by a paint-by-the-numbers serial killer.

I spent the greater half of last week tearing out clumps of hair in sheer frustration over an annoying bug in Safari.

It wasn’t the kind of bug that you could really code around. I can’t get into specifics but it was to do with iFrames and javascript. The bug caused a significant problem with how the application I’m working on functions.

This was the beginning of four days of javascript hell. The end result of which is a lot of recoding and a fair amount of patching to get it sort of working. A search on the ‘net revealed that it was a known bug in Apple’s WebKit which has been fixed already in the next version which isn’t due out until the next version of OS X ships.

It transpires that this abomination of a web browser is now being inflicted on Windows users now. I can’t wait to see which bugs show up in Windows that don’t show up in OS X.

I love Apple. I really do. But Safari is a constant thorn in my side and I wish it would go away. I’d love for Apple to stop dicking around with their WebKit and use Gecko instead.

What finished me off is that I’ve had zero problems with IE 7 and my javascript code.

Safari: The Web’s Best Browser? I’ll allow my SVN commit messages tell you what I think:

The annual car-crash TV event kicked off last night.

This year’s twist is that all the starting house mates are supposedly female. I have my suspicions about a few house mates, but one is obviously male.

Yes, I can exclusively reveal that Matt Lucas has entered the house in deep disguise under the name “Laura”.

(Fig 1) Test make-up shot

(Fig 2) Final make-up shot.

Rumour has it that on Friday he’s going to rip off his clothes and scream “Just call me Bubbles, darling!” before flouncing out of the front door.

Apocalyptic stories fascinate me. Man’s struggle to survive when all is lost holds my imagination. I attribute that to growing up in the 80s when the threat of nuclear war was at its peak and there were dozens of post-apocalyptic tales in book and in the cinema.

I also have a predilection for stories that explore the love between a father and his son. I don’t know whether I’m seeking to consolidate my own childhood experiences or its because Debbie and I are on the cusp of starting a family and I’m trying to weigh up the kind of father I’ll become. Tales and stories from other’s experiences and imaginations may help me shape my expectations; to give me a compass to follow.

I’m sure brief psycho-analysis could find the link between the two genres but in the mean time I was delighted when I come across a tale which combines both elements.

Cormack McCarthy’s “The Road” chronicles the journey of a man and his son as they struggle to survive in a dying world. The fate into which the world has fallen is never fully explained. Everything is dead or dying. Ash and snow fall from the sky to cover what the great fires have destroyed. One can easily imagine a nuclear winter or at least a self-imposed disaster.

If you are new to Cormack McCarthy then the first thing that will strike you is his sharp and sparse writing style. There are no speech marks. There are no apostrophes. There is nothing so bold as a colon or as pompous as semi-colon. This makes the text feel fresh and precise. His intelligence isn’t in multi-syllabic words but in structure and verse. Make no mistake, this is an easy read but it’s a piece of literature that will studied in schools in our own future.

The story picks up a good few years after this disaster. The unnamed man (”Papa) and his unnamed son (”the boy”) are trying to travel south where it may be warmer. There is virtually nothing left; not mankind nor nature. The few scattered people are either emaciated solitary travelers wrapped in stinking, filthy rags delaying their own inevitable death or gangs of men reduced to cannibalism to survive. The infrequent towns and cities are either burned to the ground or scavenged of everything useful.

The tale probes the love the man has for his son. Total and unconditional love. The powerful bond that every man should have for his child. In the bleakness of the dead and the dying the child is the man’s sole light. He tries to shield him from the brutalities of existence and the reality of delaying an inevitable death. Can the man die knowing his son will have to live on alone and without hope?

The man is often haunted by his dreams. Dreams of blue skies and green grass. Dreams of his wife before she took her own life so she couldn’t exist in such a world. The boy is born after the apocalypse and has no knowledge of what the world was like.

The book is intentionally repetitive which builds up the emotional impact of their relationship. McCarthy is at his best when he probes the painful nature of existentialism. He allows his lead character to poetically reflect on many things such as morality:

Do you think that your fathers are watching? That they weigh you in their ledgerbook? Against what? There is no book and your fathers are dead in the ground.

On how to give comfort when there is nothing left to give:

He tried to think of something to say but he could not. He had this feeling before, beyond the numbness and dull despair. The world shrinking down about a raw core of parsible entities. The names of things slowly following those things into oblivion. Colors. The names of birds. Things to eat. Finally the names of things one believe to be true. More fragile than he would have thought. How much was gone already? The scared idiom shorn of its referents and so of its reality. Drawing down like something trying to preserve heat. In time to wink out forever.

On how pointless it is to survive when there’s little hope:

He walked out in the gray light and stood and he saw for a brief moment the absolute truth of the world. The cold relentless circling of the intestate earth. Darkness implacable. The blind dogs of the sun in their running. The crushing black vacuum of the universe. And somewhere two hunted animals trembling like ground-foxes in their cover. Borrowed time and borrowed world and borrowed eyes with which to sorrow it.

And on being stalked by Death:

The black shape of it running from dark to dark. Then a distant low rumble. Not thunder. You could feel it under your feet. A sound without cognate and so without description. Something imponderable shifting out there in the dark. The earth itself contracting with the cold. It did not come again.
What time of year? What age the child? He walked out into the road and stood. The silence. The salitter drying from the earth. The mudstained shapes of flooded cities burned to the waterline. At a crossroads a ground set with dolmen stones where the spoken bones of oracles lay moldering. No sound but the wind. What will you say? A living man spoke these lines? He sharpened a quill with his small pen knife to scribe these things in sloe or lampblack? At some reckonable and entabled moment? He is coming to steal my eyes. To seal my mouth with dirt.

The genius of McCarthy is in his writing. His prose so bleak you can feel the pain through the pages. His efficient description so powerful you can envision every word. A tale to end every tale.

This is an emotionally heavy book with an inevitable ending. There is no plot twist. There is no escape. The beauty isn’t in the plot but in the writing.

One can easily allegorize God and Christ but I think that’s too literal. Certainly the child carries a terrible burden and acts compassionately to those who would harm him but I think that simply displays the innocence of youth. For me, the book is a rite of passage under the most desperate of circumstances. An exploration of living without hope of salvation. Where man’s own destruction all but proves that God cannot exist.

Warning. Here be Spoilers. Kind of.

Alright, I’ll do my best to not give too much away, but I may mention a few things which may spoil your enjoyment so if you really don’t want to know anything, click away now!

So, the cinema threesome (that’s me, Debbie and Debbie’s sister Jacqueline) descended upon our local mulitplex for the advanced showing of “Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End“. This is arguably this year’s most anticipated film and possibly the biggest film ever.

Does it live up to its hype? That depends on the type of film you expect to see. If you are looking to be immersed in a believable alternate world with logical rules and sound principles then you’ll probably come away feeling disappointed. If you’re after a pop-corn munching blockbuster with jaw-dropping special effects, implausible set-pieces and more swashbuckling than you ever thought possible then you’re in for a treat.

The size of the film its biggest attraction and its biggest problem. All too often the plot is put aside for the film to move forward. The writers make up get-out-of-jail clauses regularly (”a pirate-wizard did it!”) and add to pirate mythology to suit their needs. This often leaves you scratching your head at large chunks of pirate-babble (”There are nine pieces of eight which were used to bind her to her human form!”). Characters throughout the trilogy are killed off and brought back with flippant disregard for logic or sentiment which removes any emotional gravitas from the script. You stop caring about them if you know that they can be restored with a little bit of mumbo-jumbo and an old map.

Rules set up in the first and second films get undone with regularity, too. Davy Jones can’t step foot on land but for one day each ten years! Well. Unless it’s a little strip of sand and he’s in a bucket of water. Duh.

The plot itself also gets muddled up when the characters continually switch sides, switch allegiances, and back-stab each other more times than a room full of Norman Bates. This often leaves you concussed as the plot-guns fire more often than the iron on The Black Pearl.

But. And this a Jennifer Lopez sized but. It really doesn’t matter because the film is just so bloody awesome. This is not a big and clever film. This is about blowing the seven bells of shit out of boats in the most spectacular fashion possible.

The actual momentum of the film is non-stop. It’s bum numbing 168 minutes long but you don’t really notice as you’re constantly thrilled. Johnny Depp is outstanding as the slightly drunk and slightly camp Captain Jack Sparrow who is a little darker and a little more driven than his Wild-E-Coyote slap-stick antics of the second film. Geoffrey Rush is superb as Captain Barbossa and the rest of the cast don’t miss a beat. Orlando Bloom is given significantly more to do and rises to the occasion. Depp and Rush share some memorable scenes as they continually try to out-do each other to genuine comical effect. Oh, and Bill Nighy is brilliant as Davy Jones.
Special mention must go to Lee Arenberg and Mackenzie Crook as the hilarious Pintel and Ragetti who are at the beating heart of the films moments of levity. These two could easily do a spin-off series or movie.

You have to watch this on the big screen to appreciate the effects. They are absolutely flawless. Every wrinkle and drop of rain is rendered perfectly to Davy Jones’ squid-like face. The final set-piece is one of the finest in cinema history. It’s Pirates v England in a whirlpool. Guns crack, wood flies, bullets whizz, Captain Sparrow leaps, swords clatter together and a marriage takes place. It’s a breathless exercise in what you can achieve when money isn’t an object.
There are some artistically beautiful moments where the director gets to flex his creative muscle. The scene where Lord Cutler Beckett gets his comeuppance will make the hairs on the back of your neck stand when the music swells and… well, you just have to watch it.

Buckle your swash, find a comfortable seat, put aside your skepticism and enjoy one of the more entertaining films in recent history.

When you mention diet you instantly think of several things, two of which are calorie counting and weighing yourself.

In our goal oriented society the amount of gravitational force acting upon your body (that’ll be your weight) is regarded as the single most important figure when trying to lose weight.

After a weeks hard graft in the gym and eating very clean all week you want to see instant results and those results are usually delivered by your bathroom scales.

However, standing on a set of scales can be totally demoralizing when you don’t see the figure go any lower. You start to question yourself, your work load and whether it’ll be easier to move next door to KFC and give back your gym card.

What you may not realise is that your weight can fluctuate by as much as 5lbs in a single day. If you’re the reading sort, then check out this article for why. Feel free to just believe me on this.

Another factor is body composition. In terms of bulk, a square inch of muscle weights more than a square inch of fat. If you’re eating below your maintenance metabolic rate and you’re exercising well, then it’s quite likely that you’re losing fat but gaining muscle.

A brief case in point: I’m still exercising to lose weight. Ideally, I’d like to get down to around 185-190lbs. I’m currently stuck at around 203lb and I have been for a few weeks. Even though my actual weight hasn’t changed, I’ve gone down a trouser size and added visible definition to my shoulders, arms, legs, chest, et cetera as well as adding a few centimeters to my arms and chest. If I haven’t put weight on, then I must have burned fat and replaced it with muscle.

My recommendation is to use the scales once a month as a guide. Don’t get disheartened if you don’t see the results you expected to see, instead take the following advice:

• Take monthly pictures of yourself without a shirt on. Don’t be embarrassed, I’m not asking for you to share them. Store them somewhere safe. Be honest, too. Don’t suck your gut in or take ages trying to get your best side. This isn’t your Men’s Health audition picture. You want to relax your muscles to get a natural shot. Cheat on your pictures and you won’t get a real idea of your changes.
• Purchase a decent measuring tape, like this one. Take measurements of your waist (around your navel), your chest (around your nipples) and your biceps and thighs. Do this once a month. Record the measurements, obviously.
• Purchase a pair of fat measurement calipers, like this one. Record your monthly body fat percentage.
• Take the batteries out of your scales or hide your mechanical ones until your monthly weight in.

Your measurements and body fat percentage are far more reliable than your gravitational offset.

One small caveat with measurements: Don’t worry if your chest doesn’t get any smaller. It’s likely you’re turning your man-boobs into man-pecs. You should see a gradual reduction in your waist size although this is almost always the last bit of fat to shift.

I like to keep a record of my exercise sessions. I log the exercises I do, in the order I do them and how many reps I perform with the weight I use.

I find it really handy to keep these so I can look back at my progress, or lack-thereof and decide if something needs to be changed so that I keep progressing.

I’ve attached a PDF of the sheet that I use. I list the exercises down the left hand side and use each column for a set. In each box I write the number of reps and the weight, for example: (10/40) would denote 10 reps using a 40kg weight.

You may find it useful, too - especially if you’re using the exercise plan I previously blogged.

Download here: Exercise Log

Introduction

The first thing people think when you mention the words “fat loss” and “exercise” in the same sentence is running. I know I did.

It makes sense too. Running makes you sweat and leaves you puffing for breath. Professional runners are skinny. Case closed. Where’s my running shoes?

It’s actually not that simple. Running for long distances is an aerobic endurance exercise. Endurance exercise will put your body into a catabolic state. A catabolic state is where your body stops taking energy from your glycogen supplies, stops taking energy from your fat supplies and starts breaking down muscle for energy. Your metabolism will slow down and you’ll find it harder and harder to lose weight.

I know this from recent education and long-term experience. I ran off almost 100lb over two years. On some weeks I ran 40km (24 miles) over four days with each session lasting 60-70 minutes. I didn’t realise it at the time but I was burning more muscle than fat which made it harder and harder to lose weight. I was also left with excruciating sciatic pain down my left side.

The good news is that you don’t have to kill yourself running to lose weight and I’d actually advise against it. Aerobic exercise has its place for fat loss in shorter controlled sessions as we’ll see later.

More muscle means quicker weight loss
If we accept that the more muscle you have the higher your metabolism will be. The higher your metabolism, the easier you’ll lose weight. With that in mind, it makes sense to build your lean tissue and muscles. Resistance training or weight lifting is a anaerobic exercise. It’s a great cardiovascular exercise and will strengthen your heart and lungs just as much as casual running will do. It will build muscle and it won’t put your body into a catabolic state although it will cause muscle damage which is our aim. When you damage your muscles your body sets about rebuilding them a little stronger and a little thicker if you have the right nutrition — which we’ll get to later.
Also, weight lifting has a great “After-burn” effect where your metabolism is raised for up to 48 hours after your session.

A lot of people fear weight training because they assume that they’ll end up like Arnie in his prime. That’s simply not true. Arnie put in years and years of hard 6 day a week training to achieve his physique. Our aim is to increase our muscle mass and definition, commonly known as ‘to tone’ even though that’s a misnomer guaranteed to annoy body builders.

Training
We’ll concentrate on a total body workout plan, three times a week based on my own routine. Working your whole body in one session will keep your metabolism raised high and it’ll promote growth proportionately. A lot of beginners don’t bother training their legs and concentrate on the “mirror muscles” (chest, shoulders and biceps). This is a flawed plan because your legs contain the most muscle mass. When you put your largest muscles under repeated strain your body reacts by releasing a growth hormone which is your body’s natural steroid.

Equipment
If you can stretch to it, purchase a barbell / dumbbell set like this one. Aim for around 100kg (220lb) or more. That might seem like a lot of weight, but it won’t be long before you need it. Trust me on this. Barbell weights stack neatly and don’t take up much room. You don’t need a lot of floor space to train in, either. Just enough for you and a 6 foot bar is ideal. If you can’t get the barbell set, at least get a set of dumbbells like these ones. You can lift around 30% less with dumbbells so even a 20kg/42lb set will keep you going for a while. Ideally, you’d also have a weight bench, like this one although that’s not essential.

If you don’t want to purchase any weights then you can do a lot with just your body weight. I do recommend that you get a chin-up bar that fits in your door way. I have this one and it doesn’t require permanent fixing.

Whatever equipment you have, follow the basics outlined below.

A quick word on machines
Most gyms these days are kitted out with all kinds of different weight machines. This is mainly because it’s easier to get someone to sit on a seat and push a lever or bar than teach them how to use free weights.

I’d strongly advise against using machines and instead use free weights. Machines force you into a single range of motion that may be unnatural for your body shape and size. Your connective tissues and assistance muscles will also be unworked leaving strength imbalances that could lead to injury. I’d opt for a decent bench with lat tower every time over a smith machine or a “multi” gym.

The only time machines are of any use is if you’re recovering from an injury and want to isolate a muscle group. Of course, if all you have access too are machines and don’t want to purchase a weight set then it’s better than nothing.

A quick word on nutrition
Good nutrition is key to your success. You simply cannot out-train a poor diet. Ideally, you’ll be following the suggestions in my other blog entry. When you’re exercising, you have some other nutritional requirements. You’ll want to make sure you’re in a positive protein balance going into exercise. After exercise you’ll need a good source of protein with refined carbs to repair any muscle damage. If you don’t have any, I suggest you stop right now and order some whey protein powder. It’s hands down the best way to get important nutrients into your system pre and post workout. If you’re in the UK, I recommend ‘Express Whey’ from Boditronics and if you’re in the US I recommend this. If you’re elsewhere in the world, let me know your recommendations.
Both the listed products have excellent amino acid (BCAA) profiles and around 20g of protein per scoop. Have a scoop with water 10-15 minutes before you start exercising. Immediately post-exercise (and I mean *immediately* - you have 30-60 minutes for your post workout meal before you miss the window) have a scoop of whey with a scoop of dextrose (called glucose in the UK, available at all pharmacies) with water. The dextrose is a refined carb which causes an insulin spike. Usually that’s bad, but post-workout it speeds the amino acids to your damaged muscles. After you’ve showered, you’ll need some more protein and refined carbs. This is the *only* time I’ll recommend “white” carbs. A white bagel with chicken and tomato is ideal.

The jargon
First off, lets get the jargon out of the way. A “rep” (or repetition) is a completed movement of an exercise. In a bicep curl, a “rep” will be the action of moving the bar from your waist to your chest and back down again. A “set” is a number of repetitions done without rest. If you were to do “3 sets of 10 reps” for bicep curls then you’d move the bar from your waist to your chest and back down ten times before taking a rest. You’d do that three times in total.

A few words on technique
This is the important part. You have to nail your technique before you get carried away with yourself. Start with a light weight and practise the movement until you’re sure you have it perfect. You have to leave your ego at the door and forget about piling on loads of weight to impress your parents. That will lead to muscle or ligament tears and a rise in your medical insurance.
The most important rule is to never round out your back, ever. This goes for whatever you’re doing including picking up the weight before use. Concentrate on keeping the base of your spine in a natural curve by keeping your shoulders back and your ass poking out. It’ll become second nature after a while.

The rules
Perform this routine three times a week with a non-weight day between workouts. I do this on a Monday, Wednesday and Friday. The non-weight (commonly known as a “rest” day) is imperative to your success. Your muscles will need a day to recover if they are to rebuild stronger and thicker.

You can mix up the order of these exercises for each workout and I suggest you do. You have to constantly out train your body’s natural urge for efficiency. If you do the same exercises in the same order with the same weight you’ll stop growing new tissue because your body will have adapted to the motions. Switch between workout A and B. So, for example, do workout A on Monday, B on Wednesday and A on Friday. If you don’t have access to weights, try the body weight exercises across all three days. Each workout should last between 45-60 minutes.

Try and add a little weight to your barbell or dumbbell each week. You have to really push yourself and take yourself out of the comfort zone. If you’re not pushing yourself hard then you’ll not see any gains.

Take a 60 second rest between sets. Try not to leave it any longer otherwise your heart rate will drop and your body will start sending out hormones to repair your tissues which will leave you lethargic and unable to continue effectively.

The routine: Weights Workout A
You can use a dumbbell or barbell for each of these. If don’t have a bench, substitute the chest press for press-ups.
Click each exercise to see a demo in a new window.
4 sets of 10 Chest Press
4 sets of 10 Deadlift
4 sets of 10 Front Squat
4 sets of 10 Bent Over Row
4 sets of 10 Military Press

The routine: Weights Workout B
You can use a dumbbell or barbell for each of these. If don’t have a bench, substitute the chest flye for press-ups. If you don’t have a chin up bar, substitute chin-ups for bent over rows.
If you can’t manage 10 pull-ups (and not many people can, starting out) then concentrate on the ‘negative rep’. That is, do as many as you can and then jump up and lower yourself down slowly for the rest of the reps.
If you don’t have a barbell, substitute the front squat with dumbbell lunges.
Click each exercise to see a demo in a new window.
4 sets of 10 Chest Flye
4 sets of 10 Deadlift
4 sets of 10 Front Squat
4 sets of 10 Pull-ups
4 sets of 10 Arnold Press

The routine: Body Weight Exercises
4 sets of 10 Press Ups
4 sets of 10 Prisoner Squat
4 sets of 10 Chin Up
4 sets of 10 Back Extension

The routine: Notes
Do as close as you can to the number of reps for each set. Choose a weight that you can complete all 10 with but start struggling on the 8th or 9th rep. The last rep should be a real effort. Make sure you go slowly when pushing/pulling/raising/lowering the weight. Try and move the muscle through the complete range of movement and don’t allow inertia or body rocking to assist in the movement.
Notice how we don’t have any abdominal work or bicep curls? The aim here is to lose weight by using our largest muscles and the compound movements will do that. Your biceps assist in many of the exercises also, such as the chest press, bent over row and military press. Your abdominal (”core”) also gets a work out with squats and deadlifts. I’ve never seen any value in sit-ups / crunches or any other ab isolation work so I don’t include any in my program. A sit-up won’t burn many calories either, so it’s almost useless for fat loss.

Aerobic exercise on rest days
If you want to speed up your fat loss then you can do 20-30 minutes of aerobic exercise on your non-weight days. This can be running, cycling or any sport (football, tennis, etc). 20-30 minutes is ideal - anymore and you risk a catabolic state which will eat away your lean tissue. I do 30 minutes (6k) on the treadmill on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

Conclusion
You should see some definite muscle definition coming through with this program in around four weeks. Just make sure you’re eating and resting well to supplement the plan. Good luck and let me know how you get on!

Preamble

Health and fitness has become a bit of an obsession of mine.
The picture shows me at my heaviest in May 2004 and most recently at a 5k race in March 2007. I’ve always struggled with my weight which basically means that I struggled to take weight off. Putting it on was very easy. Over the three years I’ve read a lot, researched a lot and — most importantly — gained a lot of information from my own experiences. There is a lot of confusing and conflicting information which makes it hard to formulate a successful plan. There are also many misconceptions regarding weight loss. Many people assume you have to eat like a sparrow and workout like a horse which really isn’t true. All you need to do is give your body the nutrition it was designed to have.

So, if you’ll allow me to put aside PHP, javascript and MySQL for while and talk about protein, carbs and fat instead.

The Basics
The food and drink you consume has three basic macronutrients. These are protein, carbohydrate and fat. Each one has a vital role to play in maintaining your well-being. We’ll quickly examine each one to get a better understanding what foods we should eat and why. I’ll try my best to avoid a science lecture and I’ll distill it down to the basics.
Your metabolism is your body’s best weapon for fat loss. Your resting metabolic rate is the term given to the number of calories your body uses just keeping you alive. The higher the number, the more fat you’ll burn.

Protein
Protein is the building block for your lean tissue (your muscles and connective tissues). Your body is in a constant state of protein synthesis. Old protein blocks are constantly being broken down and new protein blocks are being built. If you’re breaking down more muscle tissue than you’re creating then you’ll lose muscle which happens a lot with crash dieters and explains why those individuals have folds and folds of lose skin once they’ve lost their weight. They have lost a lot of the skin’s supporting muscle leaving it with engorged fat cells under the surface which is why it can’t contract properly.
Protein is good because it helps build and maintain your lean tissue. Lean tissue is expensive for your body to maintain which basically means you burn more calories in a day for no extra effort. Protein has a good thermic effect too. Protein is expensive to digest which means your body has to work a little harder burning more of those calories doing so.
Protein is rarely stored as fat in your body unless you eat a huge amount of it.

Carbohydrate
Carbohydrate is your body’s prime source of energy. Controlling carbohydrates are key to losing weight. Refined carbohydrates such as white bread and white pasta will raise your blood sugar levels (glucose) which causes an insulin spike to control it. This hormonal response stops your body from using its fat supplies until your glucose levels have fallen. Complex carbohydrates such as wholemeal bread, brown rice and wholemeal pasta don’t raise your blood sugar levels and are excellent sources of slow release energy. Like any carbohydrate, excessive quantities will be stored as fat. Fruits and honey contain fructose which don’t raise your insulin levels are is stored as glycogen in the liver ready for use. Excessive quantities of fructose are stored as fat in your liver.

Fat
Fat is probably the most misunderstood macronutrient. Fat has a bad name because it has 9 calories per gram whereas protein and carbohydrate have only 4 calories per gram but eating fat won’t make you fat. Consuming a sensible amount of good fats (oily fish, nuts, seeds, olive oil, etc) will allow your body to continue using its fat supplies. Always avoid man made ‘trans-fats’ (partially hydrogenated oil) and keep an eye on saturated fat levels, although those won’t be much of a problem if you eat good natural foods.

Low Fat and Low Calorie Diets Won’t Work
Most diets will get you to go low fat and low calorie. This won’t work because you’re limiting the very things it needs to continue burning away your fat supplies. Too few calories and your body will slow down your metabolism to conserve energy and it’ll start burning your lean tissue instead! The less lean tissue you have the slower your metabolism gets and the harder you find it to lose weight. It’s a cycle that leads you straight back to junk food in despair.
It’s very easy to think you’re eating well on a low fat diet of rice, pasta and baked potatoes without realising you’re flooding your body with carbohydrates which will end up around your waist as fat.

Golden Rules

• There are a few golden rules to keep in mind when deciding on which foods to eat.
• Eat 5 or 6 smaller meals a day to keep your body’s metabolic fire burning well
• Eat protein with each meal to keep your in a positive protein balance to build more muscle
• Never eat refined carbohydrates (white bread, white rice, etc) with fat. The refined carbohydrates spike your insulin. Your body stops burning and processing fat so the fat you eat gets stored straight away.
• Avoid eating carbohydrates three hours before you sleep to prevent a hormonal response which will slow down the burning of your fat supplies.
• Eat at least three servings of low fat dairy a day. Calcium promotes fat loss in a big way.
• Drink at least 2-3 litres of water each day. Your metabolism will slow if you’re as little as 2% dehydrated. The water also helps mobilise the fat cells for use as energy.

What to Eat
The first thing you need to do is to figure out your daily metabolic rate. This is the number of calories you burn in a day going about your daily business. An average 200lb office worker will burn around 3200 calories a day. You can find out yours with this simple calculator.
A pound of fat costs around 3500 calories. If you want to lose a pound a week then reduce your calorie intake by 500 a day (making 2700), double that to lose two pound a week (making 2200). It’s suggested that you go no lower than around 1800 calories a day (for our 200lb office worker).
You’ll need to aim for around 1g per 1lb of body weight of protein a day. Around 1 to 1.5g per 1lb of body weight of carbohydrate a day although you can go as low as 100grams a day if you want a weight loss boost although continued low carbohydrate dieting will make you very tired and it promotes mood swings. Aim for around 70g of healthy fats a day.

Example Menu
Here’s what I eat in an average day on a non exercise day. When you exercise you have other nutrient requirements which I’ll cover in a later blog entry.
BREAKFAST: Protein shake (whey with water). Instant oats (unflavoured and unsweetened) made with skimmed milk with 20g raisins and a dab of honey.
The oats are a low GI food which gives a nice slow supply of energy. The raisins and honey contain fructose which are stored as glycogen in your liver ready to be used.
SNACK: Natural yogurt or Banana with small cup of mixed nuts.
Nuts contain many useful vitamins and some protein. The banana is a good source of slow release energy and low in sugars.
LUNCH: Wholemeal sandwich (no mayo) with chicken and tomato. 1 large apple
The chicken is a good source of protein. The wholemeal bread is a good source of slow release energy. The apple contains many useful vitamins.
SNACK: Tuna (canned, in spring water or brine) with a small piece of cheese
Tuna is another excellent low carbohydrate source of protein. The cheese is an essential fat which helps transport the protein to your lean tissues.
DINNER: Salmon or Tuna or Chicken or Steak (grilled or fried in a touch of olive oil) with either mixed vegetables (I like the stir fry vegetables) or salad.
The fish or meat provides the protein while the vegetables supply fibre, vitamins and are low carbohydrate
SNACK: 250g 0% Fat Greek Yogurt mixed with 1 tablespoon of peanut butter with two chopped dried apricots
The yogurt is low in carbohydrate and lactose but high in calcium and protein. The peanut butter provides some essential good fat and the apricots are a good low carbohydrate way of sweetening the yogurt
BEDTIME : Protein shake (whey with milk)
Mixing whey powder with skimmed milk provides another serving of dairy and the lactose in the milk slows down the protein breakdown which will sustain you through the night.

This totals around 2300 calories, 220g carbohydrates, 210g protein and about 70g fat.

Conclusion
The past three years have taught me that you don’t really need to change too much to start losing weight and to keep that weight off. You should be realistic and not look for an overnight change. A steady weight loss of 1-2lb a week is ideal. A little exercise will keep things moving too which I plan to cover in a later blog entry.

The Arcade Fire are one of my favourite bands and their latest album “Neon Bible” is a brilliant snapshot of life in the 21st century.

Here’s the band playing “Neon Bible” live in an elevator.

Brilliant.

If this doesn’t make you want to keep your ears clean, nothing will.

A nine-year-old boy complaining of “Rice Krispies” sounds has discovered he had two spiders living inside his ear.

Jesse Courtney from Albany, Oregon, complained of snap, crackle and pop noises in his ear but his mother Diane had no idea what his local doctor would pull out when she took her son for a short medical examination.

Don’t want to spend over two hours watching Scorsese’s latest mob epic “The Departed” (although you should, because it’s very good) - then get the gist of the film in 5 seconds.

Genius. Check out his other movies. My favourites include “The Return of the Jedi” and “Edward Scissorhands”.

I came across this blog via “.net” magazine.

It seems to me that if you’re a designer, a proper designer not someone who learnt Photoshop in between phone calls, then design runs through your veins like Pantone 7418. But more than that, it’s there in every aspect of life. You can’t stop looking at things through your designer eyes. Everything you do is clouded by this thing that lives inside you.

It really took me back to when I worked as a graphic designer. Everything I saw I viewed as a piece of design. Road signs with inconsistent leading or kerning really annoyed me. Incorrectly centered text would grate and I’d want to correct it immediately.

Similarly, I’d keep things in mind that had good design, be it a piece of packaging or a business sign. It would inevitably find its way into my own work.

One of my party tricks would be to name fonts from book covers or food packaging. I couldn’t help myself. It was an obsession.

These days, the names of fonts have been replaced with PHP syntax and the eye for good design has been replaced with an eye for neat, compact code but a small part of me still wants to go out at night and fix all the bad design I see on a daily basis.

This may come in handy for anyone else who has migrated to Wordpress from Moveable Type.

I didn’t really want to lose all those incoming clicks from the old style permalinks which have been long since spidered so I set about figuring out the best way to forward the old style to the new style.

There are some mod_rewrite examples on the Wordpress site but they don’t take into consideration that Wordpress also uses .htaccess mod_rewrite for ’search engine friendly’ links.

Here’s my final solution which is in two parts, one is a modification to the .htaccess file which converts the old “/archive/2007/04/blog_entry_title.html” format into “findmt.php?s=blog_entry_title”. A new file”findmt.php” queries the database and forwards to the correct blog entry.

.htaccess

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On

RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule .*archives/.*/(.*).html /findmt.php?s=$1 [R,L]

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
</IfModule>

findmt.php

require( 'wp-config.php' );

//-----------------------------------------
// Fix up S parameter
//-----------------------------------------

$search = strtolower( trim( urldecode( $_REQUEST['s'] ) ) );
$search = str_replace( ‘_’, ‘-’, $search );
$search = preg_replace( ‘/[^\d\w-]/’, ”, $search );

//-----------------------------------------
// Get DB connection
//-----------------------------------------

$connection_id = @mysql_connect( DB_HOST, DB_USER, DB_PASSWORD );

if ( ! $connection_id )
{
print "Could not connect to the DB";
exit();
}

if ( ! mysql_select_db( DB_NAME, $connection_id) )
{
print "Could not select the DB";
exit();
}

//-----------------------------------------
// Attempt to get post via title.
//-----------------------------------------

$qid = mysql_query( "SELECT * FROM " . $table_prefix . "posts WHERE LOWER(post_name)='" . addslashes( $search ) ."'" );

if ( $row = mysql_fetch_array( $qid, MYSQL_ASSOC ) )
{
header("Location: /index.php?p=" . $row['ID'] );
}
else
{
header(”Location: /index.php” );
}

?>

Welcome.

I fancied a bit of a change and decided to give Wordpress a whirl. There wasn’t anything wrong with Moveable Type, it’s a great platform but Wordpress has matured into quite a nice little application.

I’ll be tweaking this template a little over the next few days when I get some more time, so don’t despair at the stock header image just yet.

A few blogs that I check in with now and again:

• www.zefhemel.com
  I’ve known Zef for about as long as I’ve known the internet. He’s far too clever and will do great things in the future. Not that he hasn’t done great things already. I meant greater things.
• www.timdorr.com
  Tim has to make sense of my spaghetti code for Neowin. He’s young and ambitious. Just like me if I was young and ambitious.
• www.mytton.net
  David is also young and ambitious. Notice a trend?
• debbieuk.wordpress.com
  My better half. She’s better by at least half.
• http://www.garethramsdenpt.co.uk/
  One of the nicest personal trainers in the business. He really knows his stuff and has been a great help on my quest to not being fat. The site is packed with useful articles, too.

Current
I’m a web developer (PHP / MySQL / DOM) based in the UK. I am the co-founder and C.S.A of Invision Power Services, Inc.

Current projects include: Invision Power Board, Invision Power Dynamic, Invision Power Nexus and Invision Power Converge.

History
I started coding Perl way back in 1999 when I started up a personal website. I have been coding for about as long as I can remember. From ZX81 and BBC Micro computers though Amigas and Macs, I’ve always been hacking away at something.

Coming from a fine art and graphic design background I decided that the web was a cool place to work and set about creating a few websites.

Pretty soon I was learning Perl to customize my bulletin board (a long since dead BoardMaster script). I quickly outgrew this script and set about making my own. This eventually turned into Ikonboard.

I moved on from Ikonboard to start a new board in PHP called ‘IBForums’ (eventually named Invision Power Board).

Since then, I’ve worked on other Invision Power Services projects which continue to innovate and move forwards.

Interviews
I’ve always been fascinated with the idea of talking about myself and I’ve been fortunate enough to be asked by others to do that.

• OpenTechSupport.com (July 2001)
• SitePoint.com (October 2002)
• Olate.com (April 2004)
• TheAdminZone.com (May 2005)

Umberto Eco once said: “I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth.”

He makes a good point. A lot that passes as life doesn’t make sense and is rarely fair. We all have to face difficulties and make decisions that we don’t want to make. We somehow get by and face another day.

Life does not define you, it’s the way that you react to it that does.

Imagine, if you will, that you’re happily married with a son. Imagine that you’re hitting a career high. Imagine that you’ve been diagnosed with cancer and have six to twelve months to live. How would you react to that?

For me, that’s not something I have to face and I hope it’s something you never have to face.

I stumbled across Brian’s blog recently and have found it a bittersweet insight into how one copes with an awful and unavoidable truth. Less a depressing liturgy and more a philosophical awakening.

Read it and try to learn from Brian’s experiences.

“He who has a ‘why’ to live, can bear with almost any ‘how’.”
- Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)

Back in 1999 a little known Scottish group called Travis released their second album “The Man Who” (produced by Radiohead’s long term producer Nigel Godrich) and virtually changed the face of Indie music overnight.

I fell in love with the album’s clangy and bittersweet reflection and played it for months. It was such a landmark album that it inspired another fledgling band by the name of Coldplay. It turned Travis into a huge international success.

Their 2001 follow up album “The Invisible Band” was a change of direction. Their melancholy was replaced with bouncy pop and never hit the same high. 2003s “12 Memories” was a dark, politically driven hodgepodge of ideas and concepts which fell a little flat.

There were rumours of them splitting and I figured that was that.

I figured wrong. It’s been four years, but they’re most definitely back and they’re back with a handful of stunning songs with their album “The Boy With No Name”. The titular boy being Fran’s newly born son who he referred to as “The boy with no name” while he and partner Nora deliberated over his name.

Their first single “Closer” was released on Monday and it’s a true return to form. It’s more mature, more confident but it is of the same pedigree as “The Man Who”. Check out the video which features a cameo by long term friend of the band, Ben Stiller.

The album is out on the 7th May and I can’t wait.

I came across this via a topic Rikki posted on our company forums.

Kiva is a website that allows one to invest in companies located in developing parts of the world. In a nutshell, you offer an interest free micro-loan (from $25 upwards) to pre-vetted companies registered with the website. When the company has enough lenders, they are given the money with a view to paying it back.

Personally, I think this is a break-out idea that can have a real impact on poverty in developing countries. Small donations to large organizations can be frittered away and make little impact into helping the cause they support but loaning money directly to people trying to start up or expand their small businesses will really help.

Selfishly, it also makes one feel good knowing that you’ve helped a small business and you may even get your money back to withdraw or re-invest. So far Kiva has a 100% repayment rate although you should accept that you may not get your money back.

I’ve invested in a few business and you can see my profile here.

Registration is quick and easy. All payments are done via PayPal who have generously waived all fees so Kiva can pass on 100% of the loan.

Brilliant.

In no particular order:

Six Days at the Bottom of the Ocean - from The Earth Is Not A Cold Dead Place by Explosions in the Sky.
Antichrist Television Blues - from Neon Bible by The Arcade Fire
I Can’t Feel My Hand Any More, It’s Alright, Sleep Tight - from Finally We Are One by Múm
A Wolf At The Door - from Hail to the Thief by Radiohead
Brick - from Whatever and Ever Amen by Ben Folds Five
We Haven’t Turned Around - from Liquid Skin by Gomez
Section 17 (Suitcase Calling) - from Together We’re Heavy by The Polyphonic Spree
Andvari - from Takk… by Sigur Ros
Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels) - from Funeral by The Arcade Fire
Ágætis byrjun - from Ágætis byrjun by Sigur Ros
Grace Under Pressure - from Cast Of Thousands by Elbow
Take Me Somewhere Nice - from Rock Action by Mogwai
Fjarskanistan - from Animamina - EP by Amina
In Church - from Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Ghosts by M83
Scattered Black And Whites - from Cast Of Thousands by Elbow

We (Debbie, Debbie’s sister Jacqueline and I) decided to take a trip to the cinema to watch “Premonition“. Although I’m not adverse to Sandra Bullocks admittedly aging ‘girl/woman/OAP-next-door’ charms, I wished we’d had a premonition and stayed at home.

Firstly, two things really stood out. Sandra Bullock’s nipples. Yes, her nipples were easily the best thing in the entire film. They stole every scene they were in. I wouldn’t be surprised if the DVD has an entire extra feature dedicated to them where veteran special effects guru Stan Winston goes into detail how he created them and the technical wizardry that went into remote controlling them. It should be noted that both nipples were never on show at the same time. Sometimes it was the left, sometimes the right. This may have been due to budget constraints. I guess we’ll learn more when the DVD comes out.

The rest of the budget may have been blown on Julian McMahon’s eye-brows. His overly plucked brows looked like two perfectly formed caterpillars sleeping snugly on his brow. It is as bizarre as his constant vest wearing in the film like some overly manicured lothario poncing for business.

Anyway. The film is based on the titular premonition Linda (Sandra Bullock) has which involves a one-on-one fight pitting her husband Jim (Julian McMahon) against a 400 tonne truck. He loses. She loses her mind. The end.

Well, not quite. You see, she appears to bounce around in time like an over-inflated space hopper in a plot that gets thinner by the minute and contains a few plot holes. We’re not talking about niggly little things your Star Trek obsessed friend would be too embarrassed to bring up at a convention, we’re talking huge cavernous holes that the entire story falls into and can’t climb out of.

Here goes nothing…

WEDNESDAY
It’s Wednesday. She takes her two girls to school. She’s putting cute bee stickers on the huge glass plated french doors in her house. She notices a message on her answer-phone. She plays it. It’s her husband. He blathers on about “meaning what he said in front of the girls”. She’s confused. ‘What could he possibly mean?’, she muses as she does her laundry.

There’s a knock at the door. The state trooper doesn’t ask to come in. Doesn’t offer to make her a cup of tea and doesn’t ask her to sit down. No sirree! He blurts out that her husband has DIED in a TERRIBLE CAR ACCIDENT. He then leaves her at the door as he whistles a nice tune on the way back to his squad car. OK. He wasn’t whistling but he clearly didn’t give a shit that Sandra Bullock has just been told that her old man has just bought, and moved into the farm.

It’s still Wednesday. She’s shocked. Who wouldn’t be. The policeman was plain rude. Her mother turns up. She takes a photo of their wedding day and curls up on the sofa for a nice little sleep.

SOME OTHER DAY THAT’S BEFORE WEDNESDAY
Linda wakes up and goes downstairs. Jim is downstairs eating Cheerios. Linda is confused. Is it a ghost? Has she gone mad? So relieved is she that her husband is still alive she barely mutters two words to him. The day continues. She puts out some washing on the line and falls into a dead bird. Honestly, don’t try and make sense of that - it’s pointless. She goes to bed and stares, like a crazy person, at her still-breathing husband.

SOME OTHER DAY THAT’S AFTER WEDNESDAY
Linda wakes up. There are blankets over all the mirrors. She notices crushed up lithium in the sink. She goes downstairs. It’s her husbands pre-funeral breakfast! He’s dead again! She’s confused. One of her children has horrific stitches over her face! Apparently the doctors decided to use black sutures and no dressings for amazing comical effect! How did she get those horrific injuries? I don’t know and neither does old Sandra who by now is flipping through the rest of the script in her trailer thinking why on EARTH did I sign up for this?

They go bravely to the funeral. Unfortunately for her, she chose the Chuckle-Brothers Funeral Home. She’s outside the church. The coffin is still in the car. She demands to see the body. The nice funeral-director lady tells her she can’t because her husband’s body isn’t too purdy. The Chuckle-Brothers unload the coffin and drop it! Yes, they drop it! In a hilarious black comedic moment the casket comes open and HIS UNATTACHED HEAD ROLLS OUT FOR NO REASON WHAT-SO-BLOODY-EVER! Sandra almost pukes, someone throws a coat over the head (boy, that’s gonna stain).
At the burial, she notices a blond woman half peering out from behind a tree like some kind of weird sexual pervert. She walks over and confronts her. Blond woman says they met the day before. ONLY SANDRA HASN’T. Yet. Possibly!

SOME OTHER DAY THAT’S BEFORE WEDNESDAY BUT AFTER THAT OTHER DAY I TALKED ABOUT
She wakes up. Jim is in the shower! He’s not dead again!
She goes to see the doctor who prescribed her the lithium. It’s whats-his-name-the-Russian-from-Armageddon. He blabs on a for a bit and tells her he’s never seen her before in his life.
Later in the day it starts to rain and Sandra tells her kids to help her get the washing in. One of the kids is too lazy to open the french doors and hurls herself through them cutting up her face on the smashed glass. AHA THAT’S HOW SHE GOT THE CUTS.
Jim meets her at the hospital and .. HANG ON A MOMENT. Jim is alive. Their daughter got all cut up. HEY! When Sandra told her kids that daddy has gone to play with the angels SHE DIDN’T HAVE ANY SCARS ON HER FACE! Didn’t anyone notice this when they read the script?

AUDIENCE STARTS LOSING THE WILL TO LIVE
This is where it gets really crazy. See, good films like “Memento” keep you guessing right up to the end. You’re there with the characters trying to figure out what’s going on. With this film it’s all I can do to stop myself from standing up shouting “Oh, what bullshit” before flouncing majestically from the cinema as I’m cheered by the rest of the audience for vocalizing their feelings.

Anyway. Sandra is now taken away by the men in white coats and sent packing to the looney bin where she’s held down and beaten repeatedly for allowing this travesty of a motion picture to be funded. The audience are miming every blow for wasting their money on this trite pile of crap.

This is never explained, by the way. She bounces around in time some more after this event but is NEVER AGAIN in the looney bin. It’s not justified anywhere in the rest of the film. The writer probably assumes most would have left the cinema by now and wouldn’t care.

Back to the film: Linda wakes up and Jim’s still alive. And quite honestly I can’t wait for him to die because I need to pee and I’m bored rigid. I’ve run out of Strawberry Starbursts and the lady next to me is eying up my pile of wrappers with disgust.

Sandra decides that the film is confusing everyone and makes a nice little chart of the week and completes all the events that have happened in an attempt to consolidate a plot which has totally crumbled into farce.

Apparently old Jim-boy was going to have an affair with the blond woman perving at the funeral. She’s his boss, we learn. It must be noted that he was only THINKING about it. They hadn’t actually done the horizontal mumbo at this point.
Sandra is now thinking “Hmm. If he did have the affair then perhaps it’s better that he died”. Her reasoning - and this was actually in the script “Well, imagine the pain it would have caused the girls!”.
Holy sweet Gingerbread-Jesus. Sandra Bullock’s character would rather have her daughters suffer the tragic pain of having their father BEHEADED IN A FATAL CAR ACCIDENT than learn that their daddy MAY have had an affair. What kind of sick bastard is she?

Anyway. She goes to see her Father. Not the man who helped conceive her, no - her priest. Father O’Stereotype. She explains that she needs help. I need to pee and get my money back. The lady next to me really needs to stop staring at my wrappers. Yes I really ate all of those - get over it.
Father O’Whatever has this book with all the pages he’s about to flick through marked with yellow post-it-notes. Why? Who cares. He goes on about people in the past having Premonitions - some were right, some were wrong. He injects some quasi-religious bullshit about “having to fight for what’s worth fighting for” whatever that’s supposed to mean. He says, and I quote this verbatim: “History is filled with unexplained phenomenon”, he then adds, helpfully “No one knows why”. BECAUSE THEY’RE UNEXPLAINED YOU IDIOT. Talk about over-egging the god-awful pudding.

Anyhoo. Sandra decides that allowing her husband to die really is a bit mean and decides to stop it from happening. She’s fighting for what is worth fighting for. Great. Just die already or I’m going to pee myself.

Jim is in his car. A rather sad looking Ford compact. He’s making a call. He gets his own answer-phone at home. He leaves a message. Aha! It’s the message that we hear at the beginning of the film - like anyone actually cares at this point. Linda is now behind him in her car. A huge 4×4 no-less. She probably has a bigger trailer than him too.
She gets him on the phone and tells him that she loves him. She gets him to pull over so they can “sort things out”. He does. She notices that he’s parked at the “220 Mile” marker which is where the accident happened.

Jesus. The audience didn’t need a premonition to see what’s going to happen next.

She looks scared. She tells Jim to turn the car around NOW DAMNIT. He does. He stalls it IN THE MIDDLE OF THE ROAD. A panicked Linda tells him TO MOVE IT DAMNIT. He can’t start the car!
In the distance we see a 400 mega-tonne truck coming!
Cut to Linda “Get out of the car!”
Cut to Jim attempting to remember how the door handle works.
Cut to the truck, still some way off.
Cut to Linda screaming.
Cut to Jim attempting to open the door still.
Cut to the truck. Still quite far away it has to be said.
Cut to Linda screaming.
Cut to camcorder style footage of their wedding day.
Cut to the truck.
Cut to Jim.
Cut to Linda.
Cut to montage elements from the film showing Jim as a good dad.
Cut to the truck still miles away.
Cut to…
You know, this is THE longest car accident I’ve ever witnessed.
Cut to Linda crying.
Cut to Jim still struggling with the door.
Cut to the truck which now starts to jack-knife for no good reason.
Cut to Linda screaming.
Cut to Jim frantically scrabbling at the door handle.
Seriously, just hit the damned car already.
It does. There’s an explosion. Bits of Jim fly in all directions. I made that last bit up.

Linda looks shocked and confused and hurt. She caused this! Oh the irony. Oh, we didn’t see that twist coming.

She wakes up. She’s pregnant with Jim’s child. As if that makes it all better. The end. Thank god.

Have you seen the Red Nose Day t-shirts?

Am I the only one who wonders why the owner loves randomizing? Does that make me a geek?

After the Action4MensHealth 5k race on Sunday I spoke with a reporter with the local paper on the phone who were covering the event as they were interested in the connection between me, my father-in-law and his surgeon who is also involved in the Action4MensHealth charity.

They asked a few questions, I said a few things and they took my race number as they had a photographer at the race taking snaps. They said that if it was going to be used, it’d be in Tuesday’s edition.

So we go into the local supermarket and grab a copy today and flip it open to be greeted with my ugly mug on page 11.

Here’s a scan of the article.

I like the fact that my name and photograph is now synonymous with having cold genitals.

Yesterday was race day.

First off, I want to thank everyone who donated money and those who wished me luck.

I’ve been running for a few years now but nothing really prepares you for your first race - even one that is designed to raise money for charity and raise awareness of men’s health issues over ultra-competitiveness.

As Debbie and I pulled into the car park I suddenly wished that I’ve trained harder, ran more miles on the road as opposed to sticking to a treadmill. I surveyed the competition warming up and picked out the lycra-clad beanpole thin experienced runners, the over-branded tracksuit posers and the recreational runners.

I pinned my race number (10) to my t-shirt after signing in and went for a quick jog to warm up. Thankfully it was a really clear and crisp day in Peterborough’s picturesque Ferry Meadows with very little wind.

It wasn’t long before we were asked to move to the start line. I was a little further away that most of the runners and ended up near the back of the field. After some brief instruction on the course that I didn’t really catch the starter pistol went and we started moving forward slowly.

It took a little while to really get going by the time the field thinned out and I finally managed to start my heart rate monitor’s lap timer which was on one wrist with my Nike+ equipped iPod on the other to measure my pace.

I had to slow myself down a few times as I was well ahead of the 5:00min/km pace that I’d set myself. I found myself running quite happily at around 4:30min/km but I didn’t want to get half way round and collapse.

In retrospect I would have done a lot more road running. I do 6km four times a week (two sessions being 7.5/10mph HIIT) on a treadmill but it’s not really the same as running outdoors. I would actually say that I found it much easier to run outside if only because you’re not staring at a wall trying not to think about the fact that you’re putting one foot in front of the other for a long and relatively painful duration.

I moved through the field quite quickly. I found myself passing a few of those over-branded tracksuit posers with beanie hats and iPod arm bands panting hard and struggling by the 2km mark.

Passing confused dog walkers was quite fun. “Chilly Willy?” seemed to be their only statement on surveying our race numbers. Thankfully they kept out of the way as I didn’t fancy tumbling over an errant Spaniel.

I had settled into a nice comfortable pace with my heart pounding away at a reasonable 175bpm and I felt I could do it all day which was probably because I was coming up to the 4km marker.

With the finish line in sight I picked up the pace and sprinted past it. I was handed my race medal and ‘goody bag’ which contained a bottle of water which I opened immediately.

I felt that I could have definitely done it a lot faster as I didn’t feel that I’d pushed myself hard enough even though I was happy to have finished in one piece and able to stand. The race times are going to be posted on the charity’s website in a few days but I glanced at the official’s clipboard and saw my time at 26 minutes which wasn’t too bad as it took a few minutes to hit my stride. The fastest runner on the day completed it in just over 16 minutes which is amazing. Apparently the pace cyclist had trouble keeping up with him.

I was greeted at the finish line by Debbie, her sister Jacqueline complete with her three boys and Jacqueline and Debbie’s dad, Ken, who came with his partner Yvonne. They had all given me fantastic support and encouragement before the race which really set me up and I can’t thank them enough.

I won a prize for raising the most money so thank you once again everyone who donated.

Life has a neat way of connecting disparate elements into a single whole. The charity, Action4Mens Health which organized the race is led by Janine Nethercliffe and Chris Dawson both of whom are consultant urologists at a local hospital. Chris Dawson was the surgeon that operated on Ken and Yvonne now works with him at the hospital.

The race was very well organized and the marshals did a great job of cheering on the runners. Hopefully the race will grow and we’ll see more and more runners attend.

They are holding another race later in the year and I’ll definitely do it again. I can’t describe what a buzz you get from completing a race no matter how slow or how short the distance. If you don’t already run, get a pair of decent running shoes and sign up for a 5k - you really won’t regret it.