Boatanchor

I’ve been playing with the Google API on and off for a couple of days and have finally worked out how to request and renew tokens.

Next step is to start playing with the Mirror API and revive my Google Glass!

I am finding it really difficult to justify *not* buying one of these. We have a glut of pictures of our daughter that are trapped on our devices (or the cloud) *and* this thing does all the smart-home gadgetry I could want. Yes, my GooglePi has held up well and I still love tinkering with it but it’s not quite this.

I’m not going to risk pushing my Chromebook back to the Canary channel but hopefully this will drop on the dev channel soon!

I can’t remeber the last time I needed to clear these out but having just rebuilt my media centre (without getting the TV Hat to work..) I needed to resolve this exact problem.

Monday: T:20 min D:2.04 mi P:10:20/mi Wednesday: T:23 min D:2.33 mi P:10:05/mi Friday: T:32 min D:2.99 mi P: 10:40/mi

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p>I’m please with my progress again this week. Not so much the pace, which still needs work, more the lack of overall pain when / after running. I think taking it nice and easy at this stage is key, I really don’t want to over do it and hurt anything.

I’ve tried out a few other running apps this week and while I like Ghostrunner’s customisation’s I think I’ll be sticking with Strava, if for no other reason than the Google Fit support.

A couple of other things to touch on this week, nutrition and other training. I’ve been reading up on all things ‘marathon training’ and one message is clear, if I want this to be a lasting change then I need to do more than just run. For a while now I have been doing yoga “every day”, but now I am really doing yoga every day, whenever possible more than one session. At the moment I’m using Yoga with Adriene’s at home yoga videos but soon I’ll be heading up to the gym to get some in person lessons. The main reason is just to check my form, as I get more into it I need to make sure I’m doing the basics right. The second thing I’ve been doing is working on overall body strength and core, rather than just running. I haven’t worked out a full plan for this but once I have a better idea I’ll be sure to post it up here.

Now for nutrition. I’m really getting into my smoothies as you can probably tell from Instagram and this includes adding vegetables to the smoothie (something my dentist has always advised). This means a whole new world of healthy smoothies is opening up before me. I’ll publish any especially exciting recipes on this blog. So far the rest of my diet is pretty much the same, that’s to say, it still needs work.

The last thing to say this week is how little my calf muscles are hurting considering I’m trying to do this as close to barefoot as possible, at the moment I’m putting this down to all the yoga and the post run stretching. Again, once I get a routine planned out it’ll be published here.

Be well and keep running!

A post shared by James (@jeeves2001) on Jul 23, 2018 at 10:38am PDT

Monday Run: 15 min, 1.26 miles (Avg Pace: 12:00/mi)
Thursday Run: 20 min, 1.95 miles (Avg Pace: 10:35/mi)
Friday Run: 26 min, 1.91 miles (Avg Pace: 13:35/mi)

One run more than in my training plan and I’m not thrilled with the pace, however, this is week one of the training so I’m managing my expectations!

A post shared by James (@jeeves2001) on Feb 17, 2017 at 12:31am PST

It’s time to talk running shoes. I have invested in some Freet Meta 4+1 shoes, but I’m coming to the conclusion that these may be too minimalist. My calf muscles were pretty unhappy over the weekend, but that is an expected side effect of learning the new running style. I’ll persist with it this week and we can review next weekend.

Diet wise I’ve been taking a leaf (pun intended) out of Finding Ultra and adding plenty of veg to my smoothies which seem to be doing a good job of refuelling me and I’ve been doing plenty of yoga to warm down and to work on my core. Overall this should work hand in hand with the running to get my body ready for the challenge ahead.

Looking forward to next week!

Am I approaching my midlife crisis? Maybe. Maybe I’ve just go carried away reading Finding Ultra but I have just decided I’m going to do the London Marathon next year…

At the moment this is purely a theoretical decision, I haven’t actually signed up or decided which charity I’m going to support (something with an enviromental focus), but the main thing is that I have mentally committed to it, oh, and got buy in from the wife :-)

Given that its nearly a year away I haven’t had to commit a huge amount of time to training yet, but I have put together this training timetable, and I’ve even managed to stick to it so far!

The next step is to work out my ideal training heart rate, and find a way to get Google Fit to display that on my Android Wear watch, I have to make this techie after all.

Just too high. #kewgardens #fearofheights #trees #nofilter #swayinginthewind

A post shared by James (@jeeves2001) on Jun 2, 2018 at 12:02pm PDT

Wow its been a while. What can I say life is hectic when you have a “new” job and a two year old.

The “new” job:

The air quotes are due to the fact this is a very minor change to my role, and still within the same organisation, so its not new, new. That said it is much more strategically focused which is at least new for me.
Integration is the big buzz word and the thing that will occupy most of my time for the foreseeable future. While I’ve been kicking around the idea of going for something totally new, the Azure integration stack has really caught my attention. Its not as polished as some offerings (looking at you Mulesoft*) but it has real potential. The abstraction layer that has lead to LogicApps does run the risk that they have _over_ simplified the solution, but time will tell. As a result I expect a significant amount of my time will be spent playing around with and learning all the cool new tools, that is why I got into IT in the first place after all. So far the list is; SQL, Azure (generally), Python (more for data analysis), LogicApps and Data Factory. I’m sure there is more, but that’s enough to chew on for now.

Mindful..what?

Outside of work the vegan bug has been taken up a notch as I get more and more into yoga and mindfulness. Yes, I am turning into ‘that guy’.
Partly this is a reaction to the additional stress of the new job (and the fact no one is doing my old job, so, you guessed it, I am) and part is a realisation that I need to find a way to not be thinking about work all the damn time. Recently I’ve also started getting into the whole zero waste / low impact living movement which really appeals to the minimalist in me, but has some serious practical implications.

The Toddler

She is an ever increasing source of wonder to me. Not that long ago she couldn’t walk, now she can do up her own shoes (and walk in them), how, just how does this happen?

All this means there has been precious little time for reading so my Kindle is stacking up with a list of about 50 books that I keep hearing about, adding to my list, then never getting the chance to actually read.

What I need is a holiday….

*the shine has been taken off this product for me since their acquisition by SalesForce

As you may know I have fully bought into the Google ecosystem (yes, I still have my Google Glass) and am loving the versatility of my Chromebook. Being on the Beta channel I get some of the latest updates, recently I have noticed that the tabs, address bar and bookmark bar have been hogging some serious screen space.

I have put this down to the increase in touch-screen devices and the need to make Chrome more touch friendly. For general touchscreen use these changes may be fine, but for me, using my device mainly as a laptop, they are a real pain.

Thankfully after a bit of googling I’ve discovered a very simple fix, and learned a bit more about ChromeOs in the process.

The UI Layout flag has several options and I’d recommend playing with these until you find a style you are happy with. Personally I’ll be going with Refresh, which I believe is the Material Design look for Chrome.

There is also a touch version of this, but again that takes up more screen space.

A post to track my reading.

Done:

Ready Player One - Ernest Cline
Peace Is Every Step - Thich Nhat Hanh
Walkaway - Cory Doctorow

In Progress:

Sapiens - Yuval Noah Harari
This Perfect Day - Ira Levin

ToDo:

Peace Is Every Breath - Thich Nhat Hanh The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August - Claire North
Becoming a Supple Leopard - Dr Kelly Starrett and Glen Cordoza
Start Where You Are - Pema Chödrön Becoming the Iceman - Wim Hof