Bird Stream

Premier Inn getting it so right

Stopped at the Premier Inn in Port Solent to break up the long drive back from France this weekend and am really glad we did.

We arrived at the end of a long day of travelling which was made longer than expected by very slow progress getting off the ferry and through passport control. Incidentally the immigration officer was in fine spirits given the knackered and undoubtedly surly holiday makers he was encountering.

The woman on reception at the hotel couldn't do enough to help us:

Parking was full so we were concerned about 4 bikes on the back of the car in the overflow car park - no problem we'll put them in a meeting room for you.
We were too late for food from nearby restaurants - no problem, here's a takeaway delivery menu
Takeaway won't take our order because there isn't a house number to go with the postcode - no problem, I'll speak to them.

The room was clean, a decent size with comfy beds. We all had a great nights sleep.

Breakfast the next morning was busy so we had to wait for a table, the staff member suggested we help ourselves to coffee and juice while we waited on the reception seating. There were about 10 families waiting but there was enough seating and because of the progressive approach of making sure we all had a drink in our hands everyone was happy waiting. When we had breakfast the food was plentiful and decent enough quality.

There were so many opportunities for the staff to turn our stay into a bit of a pain through going through the motions rather than helping. Instead every one of them were friendly, helpful and it worked wonders. We left refreshed, fed and pleased we'd stayed the night.

Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep

Just finished reading this for the first time many, many years after first watching and loving Bladerunner, the film it inspired.

It's a wonderfully dark and deep story, far more so than the film. The vulnerability of Deckard, subsumed in the naivety and beliefs of the post-apocalyptic world he inhabits, is a far cry from the cerebral, flawed hero around which Ridley Scott's film is centred. Philip K Dick's androids and humans are much less binary than their cinematographic counterparts.

They are both enthralling works in their own right and if you've only got round to seeing Bladerunner, you should definitely make time to read the book.

Ready to come home is sign of a good holiday

Traditionally, not wanting to come home is considered the sign of a good holiday. You never want the fun to end.

However, I reckon being ready to come home is a pretty good indication that you're refreshed, recharged and ready to take on the world again. Your holiday has done it's job. Assuming of course you've had a good time.

Knackered Mamil Syndrome

Competitive cycling is a demanding mistress. Couple that with a career and a family and you have a recipe for doing some serious damage to yourself.

I sit here after two months of enforced cycling lay-off through being repeatedly ill and am forced to reflect on what went wrong. Blood tests show me to be in super shape but I still can't do any exercise without developing some kind of illness. Sore throat, aching, headaches, etc, etc. The conclusion that my doctor has come to is that I've trained and worked myself into the ground. I'm just knackered. Unable to fight off the day to day infections we never normally notice.

I have a hard and demanding job and a wonderful, but demanding family (in a good way, obviously). Training happens in the early hours before the the rest of the family stir. Sleep and rest are something that fits in around everything else and generally I try and get away with the minimum.

My job also involves some long-haul travel and I have seen it as a fantastic opportunity to get some training in. Last time I was in San Francisco, I embraced the jet-lag so it was easy to get up for training at 5am, get 3 hours of hard miles in before spending the day working. Invariably catching up on emails from the UK before going to bed later than I should. Being away from the family though meant my time was my own and thus it was an opportunity to train, not to be missed.

Crashing in the Alps probably didn't help either but however much I try and rationalise it all and be pragmatic I can't help feeling I'm sitting here watching another season drift by with nothing to show for it. And that hurts, a lot.

I'm currently the right side of 40 but not by much and with coming to cycling late I'm desperate to maximise my achievements. Being driven helps me train hard but this has shown me that I need to actually act on all that advice that says rest is a key component of training. Being driven and dumb and is no use to anyone.

So next year is a new approach. Train hard, absolutely, but only when I feel up for it. Move rest and recovery to number 3 in the priority list, after family and work, and see what results materialise.

Mamil and proud

I read with some amusement the recent BBC article about Middle Aged Men In Lycra, Mamils (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-10965608). Yes much of it rang true but I can't help feeling that there is an element of cynicism and sneering that drives that sort of moniker.

It's the same in most sports-cum-leisure activities. The hard-core of 'real' participants look down their noses at these johnny-cum-latelys as some how not worthy of participating in 'their' sport. Turn-up on something expensive with which to participate in the sport like a carbon race frame or high-end clothing and this just fuels their derision.

As an owner of much high-quality kit and no points to my racing name I am truly a Mamil to be derided. It's all about the legs apparently. If you haven't got the legs you should know your place and let the real-men show you how it's done.

And they've done it the hard way.

Balls to the hard-way. I was never very sporty and spent my twenties abusing my body with booze and fags. So no school of hard knocks apprenticeship for me but I have reached middle-age with kids and a decent career. So now I'm short on time and have a bit of disposable income.

Being able to afford decent kit is brilliant.

Beating other people is great too but bike races only have one winner out of anything up to 100 entrants so chances are high it's not going to be me. With that in mind I intend to enjoy myself riding in the bunch, putting myself in the mix and seeing which way the dice fall.

Doing that in the best kit I'm prepared to afford just adds to the fun.

Yum-yums, marshmallows, choc chips and squirty cream to celebrate E's 100m swimming badge

A Development Team To Be Proud Of

We are going through a period of major change at Esendex. Not only are we moving to new headquarters, opening an office in San Francisco and rebranding, all in the first two weeks of September, but we're also hiring like mad. As result of this hiring, I'm spending a lot of my time at the moment explaining how the development team work to both people who join us and those that we interview.

I've realised tonight that as I, and they, describe how the team work, I've become really proud of them

We've embrace Agile development in a big way. We live and breathe TDD (Test Driven Development), BDD (Behaviour Driven Development), CI (Continuous Integration), Pair Programming and any other facets of the agile approach that help us deliver better solutions. 

The issue for many developers is that Agile can be bloody hard work. You have to review and critique what you're doing all the time, be it code or practice. It's about constantly striving for development bliss, knowing full well that true nirvana is a utopian dream.

Agile is not just a methodology, it's a state of mind.

The best developers are driven by this desire for self-improvement and I'm lucky enough to have a team of them working for me.

It's been 10 years since my agile epiphany when a fellow contractor on a job suggested I read Extreme Programming Explained by Kent Beck. For the first time since then I truly believe I have an excellent agile team. Some have learnt the skills over their years with us others have joined us with a rich set of experiences, but all have an overwhelming desire to be the best they can be.

The Esendex messaging platform is rock solid and has been the focus of our efforts and indeed the foundation of our success over the years. But to date, if I'm honest, we haven't really excelled in giving our customers the best web application experience.

Our new Echo product is a huge step forward from our previous Web SMS tool and has improved the experience for many of our customers but it does bear some of the scars of legacy practices. Elements of it are not examples of how good the development team can be and they are desperate to resolve these.

However, being agile is not about wholesale, sweeping and thus high risk changes. It's about incremental delivery and improvement. Targeting finite resources on those requirements that are most pressing.

The great thing for me, and you if you're a customer, is that that is exactly what the team are doing. Improving the applications every day, and I mean every day. Always striving for quality, always improving our solutions and themselves, always moving forward.

I'm truly proud of our development team, they know exactly where they are, where they want to be and have a damn good idea of how to get there.

I'm lucky to have them.

Beauty

All assembled, quick spin round the block for a few adjustments and I'm ready for tomorrow's inaugural run.

First impressions are that it is wonderfully responsive frame that is demanding to be ridden quickly.

Happy to oblige.

Internal cable routing on the Cervélo, easy

Wasn't looking forward to this aspect of the build. Was envisaging a frustrating evening of poking and fiddling but it was actually very easy.

The gear cables just appeared at the bottom and the only slightly tricky item was the rear brake cable in the top tube. A pair it needle-nose pliers had that sorted in no time.

Crankset and chain are going on tomorrow. Even without those it's starting to feel like a bike.

Boy it feels good.

Took the chance to admire an enormous penis this evening