Demian’s Blog

Not all news sites allow readers to leave comments on the articles, thank goodness the FT does.  A recent article published attacking Google is a case in point of the comments, in particular the comment made by Barry Kelly, being more considered, informed and sensible than the original article itself.

I’m quite surprised the FT is giving a platform to this kind of spiteful, inflammatory propaganda.

Made an important discovery this afternoon - I guess I already knew this but it became really obvious again.  I think it’s better to run without music or, in my case, spoken podcasts, because it stops you from concentrating on decent running technique.

My footfalls were getting quite heavy and my knees let me know they weren’t happy.  Just today I managed to run twice the normal circuit and very little fatigue or pain afterwards.  Ipod and fancy armband will stay at home now.

Going to try shifting to 10km runs 3 times a week.

Van spam

Originally uploaded by demianturner

This van struck me as a spammy web page jumped straight out of the browser, onto my street!

Here are a couple of videos that give insight into how one culture’s values can be immensely different from another’s, even if separated by only a few kilometres.

and this one, Islamic religious experts on female circumcision, they don’t allow embedding so go see it on Youtube before they take it down

UPDATE: Here’s a very interesting commentary on women’s place in Islam, thanks to my dad for the video:

I was quite impressed with the following passage Aldona read me from The Monk Who Sold his Ferrari by Robin Sharma.  For anyone into improving their productivity this might be interesting.  Here’s how he organises a typical day:

• up at 5am fives times a week with naps on the weekends
• a 60 minute “holy hour” once I’m up, for self-development and personal reflection [DT: sounds like meditation ;-)]
• five big time workouts a week
• a 90 minute massage every 7 days
• a world class diet.  (But I eat one to two desserts every week — life isn’t meant to be too strict; and if I ever see “flourless chocolate cake” on a menu, I order it)
• a period of journaling most days.  Journaling builds self-awareness.  I also use my journal to write daily goals, plan and record what I’m grateful for, and capture and process new ideas along with lessons learned.  [DT: Journalling = blogging; daily goals = http://dorisapp.com]
• a period of reading each day (from Harvard Business Review to Travel and Leisure to Dwell and good books)
• affirmations or what I call Success Statements throughout the day - especially in the shower.  These keep my thoughts locked on what’s most important - and thoughts are the ancestors of actions.  Right thinking drives right action.
• a weekly planning session.  I also review my goals here.   Usually I do it Sunday morning.
• at least one conversation with an interesting person each week to keep my passion high and to surround myself with big ideas.  A single conversation can change your life.  In an issue of Business 2.0, management consultant Jim Collins revealed that one idea, shared in 30 seconds by a mentor, transformed him.

I always knew my cat, Klopsik, was a pretty smart fella but the above instant messenger conversation he conducted with Dmitri proves the point.  True that any cat could paw out a fairly random conversation on the keyboard, but notice how Klopsik selected precisely + and . characters.  Moreover there is evidence of his sense of humour, when Dmitri questioned whether he was conversing with man or animal, Klopsik, probably raising his eyebrows, responding with mysterious ellipsis, keeping Dmitri in the dark.

The above conversation is copy/pasted, I swear there was no intervention in any way.

Just got some great running advice from Paul Medcraft, a friend of mine from when we worked at iii.  I’ve been quite interesting in optimising my running as recently the knees, in particular my right one, have started complaining.  ”Snap, crackle, pop” they say, quite annoying.  I also went out and bought probably some of the more expensive running shoes on the markets, Asics with a lot of gel.  The gel part sounds funny, but salesmen in various shops insisted it was the main component of a serious running shoe.

Here’s Slicer’s advice:

Forefoot / midfoot striking, POSE, chi etc are all pretty similar. The key is to avoid heel striking, which is when you land with your heel out in front of you with your knee locked straight. This puts a huge shock through your knee and is obviously a braking force, so slows you down every step. 

With forefoot, POSE, etc, you lift your foot with your hamstring rather than lifting your thigh forward with your hip flexor, and land with your foot underneath your centre of gravity. You don’t need anywhere near as much padding in your trainers if you run like this - I did the Ironman marathon in Nike Frees which have no shock absorbancy at all. All the shock is absorbed by your foot arches and calves

You should aim to do 3 steps per second so you will find you need to take really small steps and to start with you won’t be able to do more than about 5-10 mins without your calves screaming! To go faster, you still take 3 steps per second but pull your leg up harder and try to minimise the amount of time your foot is on the floor for. 

Thanks to Ed for spotting this - what tube station is that?

My Dad recently had some of his poetry published in 10×3 Plus.  Unfortunately the material is not available online, however you can read some of his poems here.