Another year closes and I get closer to another birthday. More and more I feel like I've not done much with myself in recent years except the Judo.
I started entering the ballot for the London Marathon 5 years ago, well I finally have a place and in October I started my training for 2012 marathon. I am trying to raise funds for both WWF and Oxfam, both of whom do work that I would like to support.
The charities are not paying anything for me to run, I have my own place and will be paying for my own accommodation etc please if you can, sponsor me a few pounds. Links to sponsor me can be found on bensmarathon.com and info about my training. If you'd like the very latest, follow me on Twitter @bensmarathon
Enough of the chugging for marathon sponsoring now.
I shall be continuing to try and lose weight in 2012, I'd love to get back to the flat stomach I had in my youth but I fear it's too late for that. I can at least get myself to be a little less flabby. Current target is 89Kg which brings me down a weight group in Judo competition, but once I get there I shall review whether I can go further.
New Year = New Start ?
Certainly sometimes, for some they like to try and start something new every year and call it a resolution. A popular resolution is to find a new job. Well in 2012 that is being forced on me - I'm being made redundant in the latest round of re-organisation within Orange.
I think I'll try contracting for a few months to see if I can make it work before looking for a perm role again. So if you know anyone that needs some programming doing point them my way!
I work with Java, Oracle, PHP, MySQL, HTML, Javascript, CSS.
Need a website? ;)
Thursday, 29 December 2011
Monday, 25 July 2011
Back to the weight loss (again)
Once again I find myself trying to shed the flubber that has collected around my midriff over the last few years. So I've taken a 3 month membership of the gym, not the first time and trying to reduce amount of crap food I'm eating. Again, not the first time.
Why am I succeeding this time?
A combination of factors/motivations:
- feeling really unfit and noticing the lard more than I used to
- weight got to 105Kg, too much to lose pre (Judo) competition to get under 100Kg
- using software to track food/exercise helps monitor/motivate me
I have recently discovered a website (www.myfitnesspal.com) that helps track calorie intake/expenditure on a daily basis. Great, if you happen to be near a computer all day (just so happens I usually am!) but they also have an application for phones which is a real boon. The phone app synchronises your data to the website so you can build up a historical record of diet/weight loss.
Also on my phone I have a small program called 'libra'. A great little application that plots your weight as a graph. So what, a graph? Well the graph doesn't show a simple plot of daily weigh-ins rather it shows a trend line generated by analysing the data you give it. So while your weight changes day to day you can see how todays weigh in compares to the trend of weight change. Libra also provides a visual projection on the graph of your trend line which means you can see when you might expect to hit your target weight if weight change continues at the current rate. A fantastic little application.
I started this round of weight loss around the middle of June 2011 and after a month I'm still going strong and the weight is coming off. In no small part thanks to the motivation of these weight loss apps.
Why am I succeeding this time?
A combination of factors/motivations:
- feeling really unfit and noticing the lard more than I used to
- weight got to 105Kg, too much to lose pre (Judo) competition to get under 100Kg
- using software to track food/exercise helps monitor/motivate me
I have recently discovered a website (www.myfitnesspal.com) that helps track calorie intake/expenditure on a daily basis. Great, if you happen to be near a computer all day (just so happens I usually am!) but they also have an application for phones which is a real boon. The phone app synchronises your data to the website so you can build up a historical record of diet/weight loss.
Also on my phone I have a small program called 'libra'. A great little application that plots your weight as a graph. So what, a graph? Well the graph doesn't show a simple plot of daily weigh-ins rather it shows a trend line generated by analysing the data you give it. So while your weight changes day to day you can see how todays weigh in compares to the trend of weight change. Libra also provides a visual projection on the graph of your trend line which means you can see when you might expect to hit your target weight if weight change continues at the current rate. A fantastic little application.
I started this round of weight loss around the middle of June 2011 and after a month I'm still going strong and the weight is coming off. In no small part thanks to the motivation of these weight loss apps.
MyFitnessPal - Free Weight Loss Tools
MyFitnessPal - Free Weight Loss Tools
Tuesday, 8 February 2011
How much?!
I recently made a casual enquiry to the owners of the building we own a flat in about extending the lease. With 90ish years on it I was curious what it might cost to add another 90.
The response was surprising.... for £2000 plus £895 solicitor's fees we would get a new lease for 99 years (NOT in addition to existing 90 years, instead of) and they would increase the ground rent from £30 a year to £100 a year (with a proviso that it would increase to £400 pa by 2030)!
So for nearly £3k we would get a substantially increased annual ground rent and 9 years added to the lease, hows that for value for money?!!!
So a bit of searching online and it seems quite clear that in UK law, because we have owned the lease for more than 2 years and it is a long lease (more than 21 years left) we should be able to insist on adding 90 odd years to the existing lease AND not pay any more ground rent. That's a bit different to paying for the privilege to pay more ground rent and less than 10 years adding to the lease!
We should still expect to in the region of £2-3k all in, but that sounds like a much better deal to me than offered by the management company's solicitor.
The response was surprising.... for £2000 plus £895 solicitor's fees we would get a new lease for 99 years (NOT in addition to existing 90 years, instead of) and they would increase the ground rent from £30 a year to £100 a year (with a proviso that it would increase to £400 pa by 2030)!
So for nearly £3k we would get a substantially increased annual ground rent and 9 years added to the lease, hows that for value for money?!!!
So a bit of searching online and it seems quite clear that in UK law, because we have owned the lease for more than 2 years and it is a long lease (more than 21 years left) we should be able to insist on adding 90 odd years to the existing lease AND not pay any more ground rent. That's a bit different to paying for the privilege to pay more ground rent and less than 10 years adding to the lease!
We should still expect to in the region of £2-3k all in, but that sounds like a much better deal to me than offered by the management company's solicitor.
Friday, 7 January 2011
New car
Just before Christmas 2010 my 206 gave up the ghost. Having had it for 18 months and no end of problems in that time I was actually quite relieved to see it get carted away on the back of the scrapman's truck.
A couple of days of 2 hours commutes (each way) to work on the train and I had confirmed my feeling that public transport wasn't going to work. So with a loan to clear what was left of the 206 finance and to find another car the search began.
I ended up with a 1.8 diesel Focus Ghia (2003) with 57k miles on the clock. Last couple of cars have been small engined (1.3/1.4) petrols so thought I'd see if a diesel lump would put up with the 20k miles a year I do and hopefully provide better fuel economy.
My first tank returned 45mpg. A little better than the 1.4 petrol 206 (40-43mpg average) but not enough to offset the added cost of diesel fuel over petrol. Of course that tank included me getting used to car and playing with the much improved acceleration over the small petrols.
Refilled the tank and with the help of the trip computer I'm doing everything I can to keep the reported mpg up. 65-70mph on motorway feels sooo slow!
A couple of days of 2 hours commutes (each way) to work on the train and I had confirmed my feeling that public transport wasn't going to work. So with a loan to clear what was left of the 206 finance and to find another car the search began.
I ended up with a 1.8 diesel Focus Ghia (2003) with 57k miles on the clock. Last couple of cars have been small engined (1.3/1.4) petrols so thought I'd see if a diesel lump would put up with the 20k miles a year I do and hopefully provide better fuel economy.
My first tank returned 45mpg. A little better than the 1.4 petrol 206 (40-43mpg average) but not enough to offset the added cost of diesel fuel over petrol. Of course that tank included me getting used to car and playing with the much improved acceleration over the small petrols.
Refilled the tank and with the help of the trip computer I'm doing everything I can to keep the reported mpg up. 65-70mph on motorway feels sooo slow!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
