A life more ordinary…

I’m doing (have done!!) the Coasts and Castles Bike Ride this weekend in aid of Sustrans. If you’d like to sponsor me for doing 170 miles from Edinburgh to Newcastle in 3 days on my pushbike (and a hardtail mountain bike with nobbly tyres no less – not even my super fast road bike), I’d be chuffed to bits.

The Justgiving page is here but remember to put that you’re sponsoring ‘Mark Wayt’ in the comments as there’s one page for everyone (which is why it says ‘Rich Cryer is raising money for Sustrans).

And to those of you who have already sponsored me – thank you – it means a lot to me.

Update – Completed the ride and total mileage for me was 182 miles. Will write it up in the next day or two.

Ego is a social fiction for which one person at a time gets all the blame.
Robert Anton Wilson

I’ve always found twitter a curious thing – interesting to read about other people, but to be honest, no-one wants to read about me. It’s like the modern day equivalent of showing off. Look what shiny new things I’ve got or look what I’m doing now.  This doesn’t gel with my outlook on things, so I’m going to undergo a removal from Twitter (apart from if I update this blog/diary) and I’m not going to update my Facebook status as to be honest who the hell is the slightest bit interested in what I have, do or want. I’ll keep this blog updated as not many people read it anyway and it’s like a diary online.

Watching the ‘Video Killed the Radio Star’ series on Sky Arts got me thinking.

Way back in the 80’s the music video was born. I remember getting excited about Top of the Pops on Thursday evening to see who had a new video on it – it was always the big acts who toured alot that would have a video on. Then in 1986 we got a new show on Channel 4 called ‘The Chart Show’ which was the first programme to have wall to wall pop videos. After a couple of years this then moved to Saturday mornings on ITV. In fact, I would go as far as to say that being featured on The Chart Show launched quite a few bands – the Milltown Brothers I reckon wouldn’t have sold as many singles as they did (although they were a bit short lived) without having been launched on The Chart Show. Same as the Divinyls. The other programmes that used to feature music videos were ‘America’s Top 10′ which used to be voiced by Casey Kasem and was always on in the middle of the night (thank god I had my own Video Recorder!) and also there was a heavy metal programme called Raw Power (or Noisy Mothers dependent on when you watched it) on through the night featuring a bloke called Krusher.

MTV didn’t really feature in my life much until we got Birmingham Cable TV in the early 1990’s – and then I just loved the amount of music video channels we had – I was always ringing in to request videos on ‘The Box’ – and sometimes you would only have to wait an hour or so for your video to come round (other times it would be 8 or 9 hours!). On MTV itself, I loved ‘MTV Most Wanted’ with Ray Cokes, and Beavis and Butthead’s appreciation of the music video. The golden days of MTV in my mind. When they actually played music videos.

The memorable music videos were those that were different – although in the late 80’s and 90’s even up until the early 2000’s, people really tried hard to make memorable music videos. In the early days, Kevin Godley, David Mallet and Russell Mulcahy (who incidentally directed Highlander and ‘Derek and Clive get the Horn’ which is a classic) were the trendsetters. Everyone was inspired by one of their videos. Kevin Godley pioneered the single shot music video (see U2’s Numb, for example, although Massive Attack also did it with the ‘Unfinished Sympathy’ video). They pushed the envelope and the video and song worked well together. In fact, there are some music videos that enhance the song so much you can’t hear the song without thinking of the video. Let’s Dance by David Bowie is a great example in my mind, or ‘I want to break free‘ by Queen. Then the world was changed by Michael Jackson with Thriller and his epic horror movie. I remember my Uncle having a genuine copy of the VHS video single!

In the 90’s, the envelope was pushed even further, with CGI and big budgets meaning the music video became an art form on it’s own. People like Chris Cunningham, Michel Gondry, David Fincher and Spike Jonze would make awesome videos, really inventive and ground breaking. Sabotage by the Beastie Boys,(Spike Jonze) and Come into my World by Kylie (Gondry) not only make you enjoy the song but also I would sit and wonder how they did it and be inspired and enthralled by the video. Windowlicker by Aphex Twin was a record that wouldn’t have been so successful had the video not been quite so surreal, bizarre and disturbing. And Jonas Ackerlund’s video for the Prodigy’s ‘Smack my Bitch Up’ which has a sexist and mysogenist theme until you hit the final shocking frame.

And then around starting in 2001 until around 2006 everything started to go downhill. We all stopped watching MTV because they didn’t show music videos any more. It was just all crappy TV shows like ‘My Super Sweet Sixteen’ and other trash. In fact, they didn’t even show ‘Jackass’ any more.  The BBC killed off Top of the Pops and the Chart Show was killed off in the late 90’s to make way for CD:UK which was just disasterous. In fact, them showing the frankly ‘porn’ music video ‘My Neck’ by Khia (see it here) at 10am in the morning that caused my kids to go ‘what are they doing daddy’ was the first and only time I have EVER registered a complaint about something on TV.

And that’s what has happened to Music Videos. There are so few original videos now it’s depressing. There isn’t any decent music TV programming any more. There is probably one or two a month that are just awesome – e.g.  OKGo’s This Too Shall Pass. But the downside is that the majority of the ‘popular’ videos are formualic. Take the current JLS video – lens flares, bling, bumped video, jumpy cuts (aping the fantastic NSync’s ‘POP‘ video). Nothing original. Sadly the current crop of music videos all seem to do the same thing. Sitting in a club, showing off your bling and ho’s.

So what needs to happen? Well, for a start, MTV should start showing music videos again, and we need some sort of mainstream TV music show (which would also help the music industry get out of the Radio 1 rut it’s got into) but also bands should make interesting and different music videos. Stop being formulaic and start pushing boundaries again. Some do – but they’re few and far between.

Otherwise we’ll have to hold a funeral for the popular music video sometime soon.

Monday / Tues / Wed / Thurs – After the weekend away in the Lakes, managed to get everything tidy and squared away again. When we put up the tent at the weekend we noticed one of the sections of pole had started to split, and when we were taking it down it was obvious it had got much worse. The strong winds we had in the lakes probably weakened an already weak pole (should they last more than 12 months?). Anyway, I ordered a replacement pole for the tent from Vango’s parent company AMG (it says something that it’s not covered under warranty – they patently don’t hold much faith in their poles), and it came very quickly. Have been interestedly watching Sky Art’s Video Killed the Radio Star season going over the birth of the music video in the 80’s.

My O2 broadband has been playing up the last few weeks, but O2 support won’t talk to me as I apparently emailed them from the wrong email address (even though I passed them all the other correct security details). Great. The line has been syncing at stupid speeds (64k anyone?) I had 128k the other day along with 800k – a quick reboot gets me anywhere between 1.8Mbits/s and 2.5Mbits/s which is crap compared to the 3.5Mbits/s I’ve been getting up until recently. Then it drops again. I’ve checked the cabling and the line all the way through to the line box and even connected directly into the master socket with no improvement. I wonder if BT are arsing around with my cross connect or in the dp. Sky is offering me free broadband and Samknows tells me my exchange is LLU covered with Sky (I’m on LLU O2) so I might go across to Sky instead and save us some more cash.

Friday – Only a couple of weeks until I do the Coasts and Castles 170 mile ride for charity, so I did a bit of fettling on the mountain bike. Most surreal evening ever – just idly had twitter open whilst flicking channels on the TV to see that Charlie Brooker had tweeted about the fact that the police had surrounded Raoul Moat and it was on Sky News. Flicked over to Sky and had BBC on the laptop and watched the most surreal and disturbing (yet strangely compelling) 3 hours of TV I had ever seen. The BBC news reporter who was listening in on private mobile phone conversations to gain more information, and the whole weird rubber-neckedness of the broadcast. The only time I can ever remember watching something quite as weird was lying in bed on a sunday morning a few years ago when they invaded Iraq a few years ago and Sky News had a live broadcast from the gulf of the US military attacking a position and blowing it up with tanks. The use that day of live war as televisual entertainment, where people have lost their lives, will never leave me and will always disgust me that I watched it.

Saturday – Obviously the news this morning was strange. Went out on my mountain bike and rode through town to make sure it was OK. Did just short of 19 miles. It rode perfectly apart from the creaky crank which I’ll just have to live with as I don’t want to tweak the bike now before the long ride in two weeks. I’m doing it on the mountain bike rather than the road bike as there are more spares available, some of the route is off road, and it’ll be more comfortable.

The vegetable patch is coming on nicely. Michelle spent the day weeding, and the kids played out in the garden. Mid afternoon we hopped in the car and went to Bridlington for some fish and chips, and also a play on the 2p slot machines. The temperature change was unreal – in York we had 27C and humid, and at the seaside it was 19C and cool and more overcast. Came home and prepped the race bike for a ride tomorrow morning.

Sunday – Bit of a lazy morning today – I was meant to go out on the bike but the person I was meant to be riding with txted me early doors as he’s not feeling well. No probs. More time for chillout this morning

Watched a few more of the Video Killed the Radio Star programmes, and then went out to get some bits and bobs and ended up getting a new set of SPD pedals. Why? Well, the mountain bike had started ‘creaking’. Every time I put pressure on the crank it would ‘creak’ alarmingly. I checked the crank arms and they were fine so the only thing I could think is the pedals or the main crankshaft.

When I got home, I took the 17 year old SPD pedals off the mountain bike, whipped the pedals off the road bike and put the new pedals (which were silver and went better) on the road bike with a tiny touch of copper grease on the threads.

Then using a crank extraction tool, I took both the crank arms off, and using a cloth covered in citrus degreaser, gently cleaned the crank arms (including the holes where they fit onto the crankshaft), the crankshaft itself, checked the bottom bracket (seems fine) and injected a little grease and teflon into it, cleaned up the front chainrings seeing as they were off the bike having taken off the crank arm, and then using a tiny amount of copper grease in key areas, refitted everything and put the newer SPD pedals on it (that had just come off the racing bike). A quick oil of the chain and a quick test ride and the creak has gone. Fab!

Cooked some tea (cranberry gammon joint) and then settled down to write all this! Can’t believe they’re showing the world cup on both BBC and ITV. I’ll be watching Top Gear anyway.

On the BBC News website here – ‘Depression Leads to Dementia‘.

The second study, meanwhile, followed 1,239 US people and looked at the number of times a person experienced depression related to their risk of dementia.

It showed that the more times someone experienced depression, the higher their dementia risk was.

Having two or more episodes of depression nearly doubled the risk of dementia.

Oh, great. So as a bipolar person what happens then! Makes you feel great.

Monday / Tuesday / Wednesday – Not much to put here really. Not feeling too great and no energy. A medical problem is keeping me downhearted a little. Orange thankfully ported my handset overnight Monday/Tuesday with no problems at all. Felt fairly down and slept very awkward hours (including an 8pm to sleep and a 4am to wake). (Sorry – boring entry!)

Thursday – A little better. Worked from home to catch up on a shedload of work. Packed the car ready for Friday’s journey. A success at work with a signed off project. However, this will be the last time I mention work in my blog (apart from saying I was there!).

Friday / Saturday / Sunday – A day off on Friday and we drove across the Yorkshire Dales and into Cumbria for a long weekend as the kids had a teacher training day. A last minute thing and we got a cheap deal at the Haven Lakeland site near Grange-Over-Sands. Well, it looked good in the brochure…

The pluspoints are that the entertainment complex itself is well appointed, there are some kids activities in the morning, the pools are really nice and the bar is good and the price is reasonable. However, once you’ve exhausted that, there’s not much to do and that the little bits they do have cost you a fortune. It’s really in the middle of nowhere, right out on the tip of the peninsula.

On the site,  you had to walk through the arcade to get into the bar/entertainments area, and they use the kids pester power as a conduit to try and get you to spend money (£3.50 for a small tub of Marshmallows? Almost nothing was included in the price. At least the beer was cheap – although two ice creams and two cakes costing £10 really is taking the mickey!! I wouldn’t mind if it was starbucks quality…). There’s also more than a little nod to our friends at Disney (hmm – I don’t remember Haven doing pin trading last time we stopped at one…) plus don’t expect to take a photo of your kids with the characters – they’ll stop you from doing it and get their own photographer to do it as they ‘own the copyright’. I love the fact they have a character called DJ Ned – it must have been a nod to the scots who call chavs ‘Neds’.

But we chose to camp instead of go in a static caravan, and that was a mistake – we learnt our lesson. If you ever go to the Lakeland site, never ever ever camp or take your caravan there unless you’re in a group of a few tents or vans. If you go as a small family on your own – only ever go in into a static caravan. Why?

The touring/camp site is a disgrace – where do I start? Maybe I’ve been spoilt with the generally first class Camping and Caravaning Club sites which are well laid out, well looked after and friendly. I’m sure this Haven site breaks fire regulations – we didn’t see any fire points anywhere! The tents were so heavily packed in it was like being at a festival, and cars were driving around anywhere as in the chaos with no organisation, people were being selfish and parking over the roads, so you couldn’t get through. If there were an emergency on the site, they would have no chance. I was worried because the youngest was running a temperature the first night we were there, and yet I’d been blocked in so would have had no chance of getting her out quickly. They put us right in the middle of the field between two rows of tents which meant our car was blocked in 90% of the time if people parked their cars badly. There were never any wardens around (and the one that was looked pissed off when he was there) so people were playing music really loudly and being bawdy until 2 and 3am even though there was a 12pm curfew for noise. It’s OK if you haven’t got kids, but when they stay awake all night because of the noise they tend to be fractious the next day as they haven’t had enough sleep.

When you tried to put your tent up, you would find that the ground was no more than 2 inches of soil over what seemed to be solid concrete, so you couldn’t put tent pegs in properly which worried me as I then had to angle them in shallow. It’s permanently windy, and forget it if it rains – it’s notorious for flooding as there’s almost no grass – just mud – so don’t expect a dry night if you are in a tent and it rains. We were lucky because we had two days of solid sunshine, and keeping an eye on the weather we upped sticks early doors sunday morning before the forecast rain. (There were a couple who had been there for a week and when they took up their tent, their groundsheet under their floorsheet resembled a swimming pool with the amount of water in it….)

The single block of toilets are also clean and new, and were well appointed, but sadly the clientele staying there when we were there didn’t clean up after themselves and the toilets degenerated within 3 or 4 hours post cleaning to a bad pub state. Enter at your own peril! (There are some reviews here that seem to back up our experience – I did feel like I was living in an episode of Shameless…)

The site notwithstanding, it worked as a base, so we ventured out into the lake district. First ever visit to Keswick (which is a lovely town) and went to the rather fabulous ‘Puzzling Place‘. A place to spend an hour enjoying some fabulous optical illusions including an Ames Room and an Anti-Gravity room! From there we then drove back down the spectacular valley to Ambleside and had a nice early evening meal at the Queens Hotel (I can recommend the ribeye steak) and stopping to get the Mark Beaumont book (and a couple of books for the girls) at the wonderful little Fred Holdsworth Bookshop (which has a brilliant cycling and geology section – so instantly becomes my favourite bookshop!)

Back along Windermere and back to the tent before coming home this morning, and just tidying out the garage, cleaning and packing away the tent (and ordering a complete replacement tent pole as one of the main pole’s sections has fractured) and tidying the garden. The wind is vicious today – although it’s glorious sunshine this side of the pennines. It’s good to be home – especially cos our veg patch has gone mental and the courgettes and pumpkins are taking over the garden! The tomatoes needed moving and restaking because they’d grown so tall.

Sat down and watched Avatar with the kids as they bought me it for Father’s day the other week. I explained that it’s a metaphor for what America (and the Western World as a whole) are doing to the rest of the world in our quest for Oil – and that the Unobtainium is just the same thing. First time I’ve watched it since seeing it on 3D IMAX and it’s not lost it’s charm – an astounding movie.

Oh well, back to the grindstone tomorrow. I suppose I should try for a bike ride or two too….

Well I’ve had my new phone for around 4 days now and I have to say I’m impressed. It’s a huge change when you’ve been used to an iPhone 3G for two years.

I’ve moved from O2 to T-Mobile and now to Orange. I am sad to leave T-Mobile as they were brilliant as an interim SIM to keep my handset ticking over for the first 6 months of this year. Their tech support were also brilliant and texted me the PAC whilst I was still talking to them. However, they (T-Mo) *still* haven’t announced their pricing or availability yet and the handset’s been out nearly a week already. I reckon they’ll lose a few customers (like me) who wanted the handset sooner. I wonder if it’s because they don’t mind people defecting to Orange, seeing as they’re both the same company now, under the ‘Everything Everywhere’ banner.

The PAC process was pretty painless too – although a minor quibble with Orange would be that their system said ‘We’ll send you an email to tell you when your porting date will be’ which never arrived. When I rang them to check, the Orange person I spoke to was like ‘Er, let’s try your PAC again’ at which point they said it failed. A quick chat to the knowledgeable people at T-Mobile (including a very helpful geordie lady) and they confirmed that the port was due to go through and was cue’d up ready to roll that night (which it did perfectly.) Shame Orange couldn’t tell me that.

Anyway, Some good things I’ve noticed;

• The screen is stunningly sharp. You really notice the difference side by side – but older apps suffer more because they’re not the correct resolution, so they look a little more jagged. It’ll tidy up in time. Those apps written for iPhone 4 / iOS 4 really shine. Godfinger, for example, just looks stunning whereas it just won’t run at all on the 3G.
• The handset is alot quicker. Night and Day comparing it to a regular 3G with iOS4. Much more responsive and tactile.
• Sat-Nav (in my case, TomTom, but even in the maps apps) is just spot on. Very quick to pinpoint location.
• Data handling seems faster. Even on Wifi – downloading or loading items seems very very quick.
• Like the multi-tasking although sometimes it can be a pain. When you’ve been used to killing an app with one press of the home button, it’s a frustration when you re-enter the app for it to remember where you were sometimes. I do end up going in regularly and clearing out the task manager. There maybe needs to be a way to get back to the home screen and kill  the app stone dead without having to faff.
• It works as an iPod with the JVC head unit in my car where the 3G wouldn’t play ball and threw a ‘You’re not a supported device’ strop and the head unit would just sit and wait. This one just worked straight off. A great pluspoint for me.
• Bluetooth playback seems to be better, although it’s still *very* choppy. (Of course, now the car supports me plugging it directly in then I’ll not be using the BT audio again.) I did notice it supports obex through my head unit now so there is an option to sync contacts to my head unit which I don’t remember seeing on the 3G.
• Sorry T-Mobile – Orange’s 3G network is muuuuuch faster than yours. Very fast data rates on the new handset – although that could be HSDPA vs regular 3G at work there.
• 720p video is great, as is the 5 megapixel camera – I won’t need to take my Sony W270 around with me so much now.
  

  A Sample Image taken by my iPhone 4 - Click for Actual Size

Some bad things I’ve noticed;

• More applications crash than before. Normally without warning too. On the 3G they used to just hang. Now they just go ‘pop’ and you’re back to the home screens.
• I’ve found some errors in the iTunes music store on the handset. Some podcasts throw up application errors but then start playing in the background invisibly even though they’re not in the iPod app. In fact, nothing is shown as playing but it’s definitely playing. The only way to stop them playing is to go to the home screen and then double click and kill the iTMS app which stops it playing.
• The antenna issue, obviously. I can replicate it perfectly every time. However, now I have a nice Griffin Graphite case on it, it’s more of a non-issue, but it is still a bit patchy dependent on how you hold it.
• More of an iOS 4 upgrade issue, but when iTunes does it’s restore and first sync, it forgets you had the 128K downsample option ticked, and then overfills your iPhone and either crashes during first sync, or just misses half your music off and throws a strop. To fix, you have to untick almost everything to sync, and then re-tick it all and it works again, resyncing at the amended bitrate and filling it up properly.

So is it worth upgrading to? If you’ve a 3G and you can do it, I would recommend getting one. I’m sort of tied into the investment now as I’ve spend money on loads of Apps, which I’ve now got to a closed set of a few I use daily.

Yes, that’s viewing an email from Orange to tell me that the iPhone 4 has arrived, on my iPhone 4, on Orange.

Saturday – Mum and Dad went home, and then went out on a fabulous 72 and a bit mile bike ride (in a story further down). Home and had a BBQ and a few Budweisers before going to bed pretty early before flicking around iTunes on my new iPhone, finding, buying and listening to the new Orbital EP (iTunes). Awesome choonage.
Sunburn kept waking me up though, so a bit of a restless night’s sleep.

Sunday – Up early(ish) and off to mother-in-law’s for an hour or so. They have a problem peacock that is tearing up the neighbourhood. I did offer to borrow a shotgun and despatch it (and then pluck and eat it) but she reckoned it would be a bit tough and all the locals like it anyway. Shame. Peacock curry anyone?
Back via Harrogate, trying to get a case to protect the shiny new iPhone I have, but nowhere seems to be open and those that are open don’t have any iPhone 4 cases yet. Aargh. I know it’ll get scratched if I carry on like this.
Home via Tesco (who also didn’t have any cases either) and we had another BBQ and a welcome surprise visit from sister-in-law, hubby and nephew so we sat and watched the England game. Actually, it was a day of slobbing out, drinking beer and BBQ as it was way too hot to do anything else. I reckon another day of riding my bike would have killed me!
Thank god for the return of Top Gear.

Met up with a fellow cyclist called Arti for a just fabulous day.

The wind was from the SE, so any ride out to the north of York would have been a killer.

So we set off from Copmanthorpe, out through Askham Richard and Healaugh and past Thorp Arch to Wetherby.

At Wetherby, we followed the A168 down to Aberford, (nice new bike path) and then up past Lotherton Hall. ‘Fancy a cup of tea?’ ‘No – Let’s carry on’ ’sounds good to me’ . So we went down past the crooked billet and then a new part of the route begins.

Turned left up through Saxton, Barkston Ash, Church Fenton (beautiful route) and cut up to Ryther. I wanted to stop at the Rythre Arms but it looked shut at 12:45 lunchtime on a Saturday (no cars / locked doors. how strange) so we carried on through Cawood and stopped at a lovely pub called the Castle Inn and had a fantastic lunch.

Left there and carried on through Selby and then up and across through North Duffield, Bubwith and Highfield. Very hot now – we’re drinking the water bottles quickly.

Left at Highfield and up towards Sutton on Derwent and our first snag. Damn. 53-odd miles in isn’t bad though. So we have to detour up to the A1079, and with the wind behind us get a decent pace up along the A1079 into York. Stopped to admire the bikes in the window of York Cycleworks (a rather nice Cervelo and a great full-sus mountain bike) and then into the centre of York for a pint at the Kings Arms.

Once that was consumed, we were off along the river down past Rowntree Park, up over the racecourse and then cycled the solar system up to the Fisher of Dreams. Had a bit of a chill out at the bridge, then rode back through Bishopthorpe, Acaster Malbis and then back home. Just over 72 miles and a joyous ride with great company!