After a fulfilling but slightly unhealthy summer touring around the US, I decided it was time to get back to peak racing form. My fancy new Garmin running watch has been watching me every step of the way as I’ve been ramping up the mileage over the last few months, so it’s pretty satisfying to see how far I’ve come since I got back home:
I’m really beginning to feel the difference too. Today I jumped in the lift to head down for a lunch-time run and by the time it reached the ground floor, my heart rate had dropped from 75bpm to 53bpm 
Last Friday I did a brutal hill session with the club and peaked 199bpm, which is pretty unusual even for guys in their 20s (though unfortunately that doesn’t mean that I’m naturally fitter than other people, just that I have a high heart rate and can push myself hard …)
I’m sitting on a plane from LA to Chicago. This is my fifth flight in the last two months, having already been to New York, Ohio, Florida, and California, and it’s probably about time I explain what the hell I’m doing, as I have friends and family who have seen various confusing status updates I’ve posted on Facebook and Twitter whom I owe the full story.
Just over two years ago, I blogged about taking a leap of faith and turning down two great jobs because they didn’t involve doing something I was truly passionate about. It was a gamble, but even after two months I could tell it was going to pay off. Sure enough, two years later, I found myself with a wealth of new experience and knowledge which I’d had a ton of fun acquiring, plus a healthy boost to my CV and set of friends and connections within the industry.
Then the stars aligned again, and I found myself with another life-changing dilemma: take an even more awesome job than the one I was in, or quit IT altogether and face an indefinite period of zero income. Pretty obvious what to do, right? I quit.
If that sounds crazy, it’s because it probably was – definitely another leap into the unknown. But I’ll try to explain my decision. Continue reading 'Rediscovering music'»
When flying, most cellists are faced with either buying an extra ticket or getting a flight case, paying oversized baggage fees, and praying. Experiences vary widely and are in places well documented and full of useful advice, e.g.
My situation is different because I have a Luis and Clark carbon fiber cello which is incredibly robust and generally does not even go out of tune when checked in as normal baggage and placed in the hold of the aircraft in a normal hard case. My case is a Bam Hightech measuring 54.5 × 21 × 88.7″. It seems virtually all airlines policies regarding oversized baggage operate in “linear” or total dimensions, i.e. by summing up the 3 separate dimensions together. This means my case has a linear dimension of 88.7″ which unfortunately is outside the 62″ standard limit, and even just outside Delta’s second tier limit of 80″. Having said that, so far I have always managed to get it treated as normal sized baggage simply by confidently pointing out that the height is 55″ which is under 62″. In my experience, most staff at the check-in gate are not familiar with the exact terms in their airline’s policies, so having the right attitude (confidently knowledgeable and up-front but non-confrontational) can go a long way.
I’ve done some research on the policies of some popular airlines and referenced the relevant extracts below, with one section per airline. The quotes I’ve taken are focused mainly on national flights within the USA, because despite being from the UK, I’m currently flying around the USA a lot. However the policies for international flights seem similar, although sometimes with higher fees.
Continue reading 'Flying with a (carbon fibre) cello'»
It continually astonishes me how often I see facebook status updates / group invites / tweets / emails from friends and acquaintances saying something to the effect of “ARGH my iPhone / Blackberry / Nokia phone has been stolen / lost / eaten by my pet donkey and I lost everyone’s numbers, please can you all send me your numbers!!”
People, it’s 2011 already! Whilst technology is still far from perfect, it landed a man on the moon 42 years ago way before mobile phones existed, and certainly solved this particular problem of disappearing phones several years ago. So for those of you who still haven’t figured this out, without further ado I will outline a solution which should only cost 10 minutes of your life and ensure you never have to broadcast a panicked message cursing your pet donkey and asking everyone to send you their numbers.
Continue reading 'How to never EVER lose your phone contacts again'»
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I’m currently on a musical pilgrimage around the USA. I brought my Digitech JamMan Delay unit with me, because I was attending Christian Howes‘ phenomenal Creative Strings Workshop in Columbus, Ohio, where I knew I would learn how to turn this gadget into a hugely useful practice tool. (Incidentally, I was not disappointed, and will blog more when I get time about how awesome Chris’ various educational offerings are. Until then, click the links!) Unfortunately at some point after leaving Ohio, the JamMan stopped working. I guess it didn’t like being surrounded by a bunch of smelly clothes and then getting thrown in the hold of a plane. (UPDATE Sept 22nd: actually it turns out that it was fine – the power adapter just needed the UK standard of 240 Volts, and the US standard of 110V wasn’t sufficient …)
So the other night I found myself desperate for a replacement. I do have a Boss ME-70 with me which has a built-in phrase looper, but it only stores 38 seconds which is barely enough to get to the bridge of Cherokee. Even worse, there is no way to undo/redo loop layers or store the whole thing after you power the unit off.
Then it occurred to me that I could potentially combine my laptop (a cheap Samsung N150 netbook) with a microphone, headphones (as a poor man’s substitute for an amp), and some software to achieve the same thing. At this point, those of you with a Mac will exclaim “sure – use GarageBand!” However, as shiny as Macs are, they are expensive and I also can’t stand Apple for philosophical reasons. (I can’t stand Microsoft either, which is why I use Linux, but I digress.) If you are interested in an alternative approach to looping with software, read on!
Continue reading 'Audio looping with Free Software'»
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