Learning to ride a bike.

It’s true what they say, that once you’ve learned how to ride a bike you never forget.
Unfortunately whilst I learned how to ride as a kid, I pretty much stopped at the point that I could go forwards and not fall off. After which, having proved I could do so, I didn’t bother again until a couple of years ago. At that point I had a theory that I’d ride around the place I was living. And so rode enough to find I could still go forwards and not fall off, but for various reasons I did not keep it up and so never got much further.

Recently however Kat has gotten back into riding. She used to cycle a lot, and in a random conversation with a collegue at work, wound up in a bet that she could ride to work, 3 times a week for 6 consecutive weeks. This is no small feat as the journey to work is just over 7 mileas each way. And contains a fairly daunting stretch of national speed limit road, where cars zoom past and don’t always give as much room as they ought.

However despite the challenges Kat has managed her first whole week of this challenge and is giving every impression of enjoying it. At least whilst the weather is accomodating it seems like a good way to include some exersise in a normal daily routine.

All of which has gotten me back on a bike and trying to learn again. My main problem is that whilst going forwards and not falling off is a big part of cycling. I’m still far from a standard I think is required to ride around on busy roads. I can just about handle gears (something bikes didn’t have when I were a lad) But riding with one hand?, either hand, to enable signalling….erm not so much. And actually when I consider my cycling in terms of if I try to ride on a road, I’m not convinced I can manage a straight line that well either.
But practice is all I require so, I’ve spent some evenings in the last week cycling around a local bit of green, and venturing on to some quiet roads. And I am improving. Just need to keep at it and maybe I’ll get to the point where Kat and I can go cycling to places together.

Not sure whether I’ll also try to ride to work at any point. Maybe a little bit. But one thing that trying to learn to ride a bike has highlighted again, is that I really like driving. It comes much more naturally to me, and when I’m not stuck in traffic, I really enjoy it.

But it’s not good for the planet, or my pocket. So given that it’s been proved to me that cycling to work is not an unreasonable thing to do from where I live, I really should give it a try. At least in the summer.

One other thing I’ve learned, that had until this week completetly passed me by, is that there are girls bikes and boys bikes and the difference is more than just the colour. I still don’t understand why a boys bike needs to be different. I understand why having a lower middle bar, means that girls can get on and off in a skirt-friendly way. But why not make all bikes like that? Is there some advantage to the boys bike frame that makes it worth the difference? In any case I am for the moment using Kat’s old bike, and given that it is white, feel no shame in riding a ‘girls’ bike.

With frickin’ lasers!

For some considerable time I’ve been toying with the idea of laser vision correction. The idea of being able to fix my eyesight on a more permenant basis than glasses appearls greatly. However the idea of the treatment itself is a little scary. More worrying is the period after treatment when I will be to be super careful of my eyes.
For a long time this has been nothing more than idle speculation, since the cost of this treatment is significant.

However now for the first time I feel I can afford to get it done, and my glasses could really use replacing, Which sort of forces the issue. Do I buy new glasses and just live with it for another couple of years. Or do I take the plunge, and look to having my eyes ‘fixed’. At least until old age means I’ll likely need reading glasses.

I’ve spent the last week thinking more about it, talking to some friends and collegues that have had it done. Most interestingly one that had an infection after his treatment which caused him some initial problems. So when he says he’s happy to of done it anyway it really means something. He also aknowledges that his is a rare case to of had such problems.

Anyway finally today, about 20 minutes ago I decided it’s time to stop umming and arring.. And I booked a free consultation appointment for next Friday. And whilst there is no obligation or pressure, they also take the step of pencilling you in for a likely date to actually have the treatment. For which I chose Friday 22nd of May, since it is before the bank holiday Monday and gives me a free extra recovery day…
I may yet freak out at the idea of actually getting it done. But for the moment at least I’m on the path to ditching my glasses. I will no doubt post about the appointment next weekend.

Read on for part 2

Eastleigh’s new facilities

It’s been a long time coming, but at long last Eastleigh has its Cinema. When I moved to Eastleigh a few years ago, I was told that a cinema was ‘coming soon’ I then found out that there had been rumours of a cinema for several years and nothing had come of them.
The tricky part was that the council were actually denying requests to build a cinema complex anywhere *other* than the town centre. So they needed not just a willing developer, but one willing to build right in the heart of Eastleigh, rather than a convenient out of town location.

I’m personally glad Eastleigh Council stuck to its guns on this. Though it’s easy to say that now it’s finally built.

Originally the development was due to complete in October 08, this was later revised to ‘late in 08′ and finally announced that ‘despite bad weather and steel delays…would be opening Easter 09′ … Despite? This was annoying as the summer was not bad. It wasn’t a great summer for people. But it didn’t rain that much and it was probably a perfect summer for building. So a delay of something like 6 months from the original estimate seemed pretty steep to me. But I’m sure those responsible were in enough trouble for completely missing the Christmas period.

Not just a cinema, we now have AMF bowling, 20 lanes of bowling goodness. Plus a Frankie & Benny’s and a Nandos to follow sometime next month.

The bowling opened a couple of weeks back, along with Frankie and Benny’s. It’s nice to have a restaurant that provides a reasonable range of food. The existing places are basically Indian, Chinese, Turkish, Italian. These are all nice, but it’s useful to have somewhere that caters for a broad range of tastes in one place.

The bowling alley was an instant hit with me, I think they had some clever mechansim at work that could tell it was my first visit, and allowed me to bowl a 202 which is my best score ever… by far.
Of course this clever tactic means I’ve already been back a few times. Never to repeat such a feat. But, because I’m sad, I’ve been keeping track of my scores…115, 128, 131,145, 160, 167, 202. I like bowling, and luckily Kat does too. So I can see we’ll get some good use out of it. Shame it’s quite expensive, but I guess that’s bowling for you.
On the subject of expensive… Yesterday the Vue Cinema opened its doors. We went along intending to try it out for the first time. There isn’t really much on at the cinema at the moment, so the choices were not great. But I was interested in seeing Monsters vs Aliens…3D!! (The new cinema has 2 digital screens) However we discovered that Vue in their wisdom, think they should charge a £2 per ticket premium for weekends AND another £2 per ticket premium for 3D. This meant that to see this film would cost £10 each. Now maybe we’re just old and stuck in our ways, but that seems like an awfully large amount of money to watch a film.

When 3D started to make a comeback with cool sexy, polarised glasses that don’t give you a headache to use. I figured this was cinema’s big opportunity to justify the cost and bring in more people. They seem to be using it to justify even higher cost. And I just don’t think this is a good idea. They have a relatively small window before consumer electronics catches up with the technology and brings 3D to your living room. In the mean time it should be a good draw. But I personally don’t think it warrants a premium. I’m already at the point where some films just aren’t good enough to warrant me going to the cinema to watch them. I can wait a few months and rent them, or wait a couple more and buy them. I much prefer watching films in my living room given the choice. It’s more comfortable, I can pause whenever I want. And I can drink/eat without paying stupid prices. To entice me to the cinema it needs to walk a careful line of value for money and an experience I can’t easily get at home.

For the moment I shall stick to Orange Wednesdays and be happy that I have the facility of a cinema close enough to home to be able to make use of ‘off-peak’ pricing, and the Orange 2-4-1 deal whenever I can.

On the whole I am very happy to have some great new facilities on my door step. I’m really looking forward to seeing what other business it draws to the town. Already we have a J.D Wetherspoon opened in place of what had been something of a dive. So that’s a great start.

Dan’s top tip #1

Today I had a realisation, something I wish I’d thought to do a long time ago would of come in handy today. Now maybe it’s obvious and I am the odd one out. But just in case I thought I’d start what might become a series of Dan’s top tips

Sometime in the future you may find you are buying something for a room which you decorated, maybe a new sofa or perhaps…new carpet. When this occurs you may find your self wandering down isle after isle of carpet realising you have no idea how it will go with the walls. Wishing that you had some sample blocks with you that are the same colour as your walls.

Realising you don’t have any, you may hope in vain, that you still have the paint pots from all those years ago…but you probably won’t. At which point you really wish you’d written down the colours and the manufacturer.
So top tip #1 – If you redecorate a room, paint the walls etc. Then take a moment to paint some wood blocks and make a note of the colours you chose.

Agile is..doing only as much as you need

This weekend I discovered what I consider to be a massive design flaw in my Mazda3. The problem that lead to this discovery is actually something that has happened a few times, and I believed it to be an electrical fault.

I was happier in that belief.

Because so much worse is the realisation that this glaring fault, this stupid, damaging, security hole is a ‘feature’!

What am I talking about? Well, it turns out that if you press and hold the unlock button on the remote, not only does it unlock the car, but it also lowers all of the windows.

Yes, all of them.

Now you might be thinking this doesn’t sound so bad. But the problem with remotes, is that they work at a distance. Say…  the distance between me inside a house and my car parked outside.
And the problem with surface buttons on something in your pocket, is the ability to accidentally press those buttons.
And so I woke after a night of rain, to be told by a friend that my car had all the windows open. And was rather wet inside.

$£%*$^&£^$£*^$!!!

This got me thinking around to how such things happen. And I can easily imagine the development process. I can consider reasons why you might want to be able to shut all windows remotely. In much the same way, I realised, I can see why I want to be able to lock the car from a distance, i.e. “Whoops I forgot to lock the car and I’m now 50 yards away”.

I suspect the feature to be able to open all the windows was a ‘freebie’.  If you’ve done all the work to allow for up, why *wouldn’t* you do both?  – it’s free.

Well I’ll tell you why not, because shutting windows is secure. I don’t mind accidentally CLOSING the windows. Opening the windows is INSECURE and I do very much mind accidentally doing so. This also made me realise that what I really want is a remote that lets me lock my car at distance, but only responds to unlock when I’m within a meter or two.

This all brings me around to why I like the AGILE development process. It helps more than ever to focus on doing what your customers/stakeholders have actually asked for and NO MORE. Do just enough to meet the needs, and only add new things if someone actually wants it.

I often find myself  telling people to note an idea as possible, but not to progress it unless someone decides there is a good reason for it. Of course developers like to implement ideas. Sometimes ‘because I can’ is all the reason one needs. But what happens is you spent time and effort developing, and then testing a feature that no one wanted, and in bad cases people actively don’t want.

The other thing I’m a big fan of, is making things configurable. If I had found out about the horrible design flaw in my car, but discovered I could disable this ‘feature’ I would not mind. I guess there maybe some people in the world that really do see a need to lower all their windows at once remotely. But the fact that it cannot be disabled just makes it worse.

There is a lesson in all this somewhere. And I like to think that if I keep evangelizing the agile process to people I might get people to learn this lesson. Don’t implement something if the only reason for doing so is ‘because we can’ -  save yourself and your business time and money and focus on what people actually want, if you don’t know precisely what people want then let them configure.  And, of course, deliver it in the order they actually want it.