Year: 2015

2015 in review

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It’s time for my annual review of the year just gone. The theme for this year is ‘when I grow up’, for two reasons. One, it was the name of a song that I sang in a concert in April, but also because some major grown-up things happened to Christine and I this year.

You can read my previous posts from 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010 and 2009.

Anyhow, without further ado, here’s January.

January

We decided that 2015 would be the year that we would buy a house, and January was the month when we started looking at potential properties in earnest. However, it would take until much later on before we’d actually buy a house, and then even longer before we’d be able to move in.

As usual, the 14th January was my blogiversary, marking 13 years since I started blogging. I was also sent a UPS to review; that’s now been passed on to a friend who could make better use of it.

The Bradford Brewery

February

February saw the first big step forward in the house-buying process – we had an offer accepted, for the home that we ultimately bought. I also visited the opening of the Bradford Brewery, which later became famous for a Twitter spat with the then-local MP George Galloway, and got a new iPhone after my previous one started to give up the ghost. We went to see the comedian Josie Long in Leeds, and the cabaret act Fascinating Aida in Bradford in the same week.

February also saw the blog move to a new server, for the first time in a few years. I’m now running it on Bytemark’s flexible BigV platform. The server move also meant that I could more easily add an SSL certificate for the site, which went live in the same month.

March

March was a busy month, by comparison. The first week was taken up by being a theatre technician for Moby Dick! The Musical, for which Christine was the producer and also a performer. This was the first of three shows that I worked on this year, all at the Bradford Playhouse. I then had a busy couple of weeks at work, followed by a week away in the Middle East for work. This was my first overseas trip for work, and saw me visiting Amman in Jordan and Muscat and Salalah in Oman, via Dubai and Bahrain. It was a great experience and allowed me to visit countries that I will probably never have chance to see again, but the days were long and I had to work hard out there.

On a sadder note, it was a year since my good friend Dave Jennings passed away suddenly. Christine and I still miss him but we’re able to move on now.

The busy month meant that I didn’t get chance to write about much on the blog, apart from how I wouldn’t be buying an Apple Watch. I still haven’t bought one.

April

The big news in April was me passing my driving theory test – a key milestone in learning to drive. I’d taken and passed the theory test before, back in 2006, but they’re only valid for two years and as I didn’t subsequently pass my practical driving test back then, it expired. Still, it was a big step forward.

Over the Easter weekend, we went on a day trip to Fountain’s Abbey, with my parents.

I don’t often sing in public but I decided to take part in a small concert, at the very end of April. As Christine was organising it, I decided that being part of it would mean that I get to see her more often, rather than spending two nights a week apart due to rehearsals.

May

In early May, we discovered that Christine was pregnant. At the time, we kept it mostly a secret, telling only close family and our respective employers.

I had a fun day out at the Foxfield Railway with my family. My dad turned 70 at the very end of 2014 and his birthday present was to be a train driver for the day, so we spent the day trundling up and down the short preserved railway near Stoke on Trent. His birthday present this year, from Christine and I, was a photobook of the photos that I took on the day. I haven’t seen the finished photobook yet but I gather it has come out well – I ordered it from Apple through the Photos app in OS X.

May is my birthday month, and this time I became the rather unremarkable age of 31. We went to Tropical World in Leeds.

June

We finally completed the house purchase in June, and so we were able to start work on renovating it. We’d originally expected to be able to move in after around six weeks, i.e. early August, but the more work we did, the more we realised that additional work would be required. Ultimately, it was late September before we moved.

I did the second of the three shows in June – a production of Our House, the Madness musical. I got called in at the last minute, but it was a great show to work on.

June was the month when we went public about Christine’s pregnancy (although I didn’t blog about it until July). We kept mostly schtum until after the 12 week scan, mainly because there’s a higher risk of miscarriage in the first trimester, but also because we wanted to be able to show the ultrasound image. Until then, we didn’t have anything really tangible to show, apart from a positive home pregnancy testing kit.

A day out in Manchester gave me the opportunity to write about the renovation of Manchester Victoria station, which was nearly complete in June. I also finally started writing about my middle east trip, over a couple of weeks.

July

Cheers! #Instagram

I was back in Manchester in July, this time for a stag weekend where I probably drank more alcohol in 48 hours than I did for the whole of the rest of the year. Thankfully, a lot of this was at Brewdog, so it was good alcohol.

We had a free meal out at a local chain restaurant, in a role as a mystery shopper. It was a good experience, although sadly we haven’t had the opportunity to do it again, as none of the visits offered since have appealed to us.

I wrote my first piece on Medium. It got a few views, but I was a bit underwhelmed, if I’m honest. A subsequent post later in the year barely got noticed. I also belatedly updated the blog to comply with the EU cookie directive.

And I bought a selfie stick. I haven’t really used it much though.

August


I passed my driving test! It was technically my third attempt, following two attempts in 2007, but was the first time after a long break, and with only two minor errors. It was a big relief, as I think we would have really struggled with our baby daughter later on, had I not passed by then.

August is always busy at work, thanks to it being UCAS Clearing, so I didn’t get chance to write about much on the blog. We got to end the month with a trip to St Andrews in Scotland, for the wedding of two very good friends, over the bank holiday weekend.

September

A photo of my Nissan Note

Two big things happened in September. The first was finally being able to move into the house that we’d owned since June, albeit right at the end of the month. Since moving in, we’ve done some more painting but renovation work has been on the backburner whilst we got ready for the baby’s arrival. In any case, the work remaining is relatively minor and not urgent, hence why we were able to move in.

We also bought a car. This actually happened before we moved – and having a car made the house move a little more bearable. It’s not a great car but it meets our needs, and I haven’t managed to crash it yet I thankfully. Although the paintwork has gained several scratches and the front right wheel arch needs replacing after I got a bit too close to a metal railing whilst reversing. We need to get a little more money together before we get these issues fixed in the new year.

We went to a couple of stand-up comedy gigs in September – Justin Moorhouse played our local pub on one of the first dates of his UK tour, which was nice of him, and then we went to see George Egg in Bradford as part of the British Science Festival.

October

Although we were able to squeeze in a short, last minute visit to London in 2014, in October we made proper plans and spent a full weekend in the capital. This also gave me over a week’s worth of content for blog posts, which was helpful.

Whilst I’d decided not to buy a full-blown smart watch earlier in the year, I decided to splash out on a Fitbit Charge fitness tracker. Three months on and I’m still wearing it every day, as it’s a good motivational tool. It encourages me to take the stairs rather than the lift, and to move around more when waiting for things. I’ve even tried its sleep-tracking feature of late, seeing as how sleep is likely to be at a premium for the next few weeks.

I was rather disappointed with the Sunrise calendar app being discontinued. I’m managing with the stock iOS Calendar app for now but it’s not as good.

November

We picked an unseasonably warm and sunny day to visit the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, and specifically the poppy cascade that is there until early in the new year. November also saw the long-awaited opening of Bradford’s new shopping centre, which has been under construction for over a decade. I’ve been through it a few times since and it has always been busy. There’s a handful of empty shops but these seem to filling up quickly – a trend that’ll hopefully be repeated elsewhere in Bradford city centre.

I had a go at brewing my own beer. The beer was okay, although I never drank any more of it after writing the blog post. It’s almost certainly spoiled by now.

We went to two live gigs in November –Dara Ó Briain in Halifax, and Professor Elemental in Leeds – and made a second annual visit to the Thought Bubble Comic Con. And I was part of the technical team for Sleeping Beauty at the Bradford Playhouse, the last of the three shows this year.

December

And so to this month. Obviously the arrival of our baby was by far the biggest news, and we’re all now back at home now having recovered from the birth. In fact, our little newborn poppet was lying on my arm whilst writing part of this blog post, so any mistakes are probably the baby’s fault. As well as worrying about the birth, I was also worrying about the flooding that hit our town – thankfully, we weren’t directly affected but getting to the hospital for the birth was interesting.

We had a quiet Christmas at home, so that we could enjoy some time alone with just the two of us. Tentative plans for New Year’s Eve have been made, but these are very much weather-dependent.

Flooding in Sowerby Bridge

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Yesterday, saw some of the worst flooding in living memory in our home town of Sowerby Bridge. This report from the BBC shows some photos, and the Sowerby Bridge photo is taken from the flats in which Christine and I lived in until we moved in September. We lived in a third-floor flat, and so we would not have been directly affected, but the plant room for the apartments was flooded and that might’ve knocked out our electrical supply. The car park was almost completely submerged as well, so if our car had been parked there it would have almost certainly been written-off, as it would have been inundated by the flood waters.
Fortunately, our new home is on significantly higher ground and so isn’t at risk of flooding.

The main roads in and out of the town were blocked due to the flood waters, and so we had to drive along the back roads to get out. And although the rain has now stopped, I expect it’ll be some time today before the water recedes. There will be many people whose homes will have been flooded, and some businesses will have a race against time to re-open for the new year.

Elsewhere, Hebden Bridge has been badly hit again, after sustaining devastating floods in the summer of 2012. It’s going to be a grim new year for many in the Calder Valley.

You can donate to the Calder Valley relief fund here.

Merry Christmas!

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A photo of our living room, with a sofa, TV and Christmas tree

Merry Christmas everyone!

We finally unpacked the Christmas tree yesterday evening, along with the TV and its various set-top boxes. We’ve been without a TV set since we moved at the back end of September, and it has spent its time sat in the baby cot until now. Our living room still has some way to go before it’s finished – quite a bit more painting, along with some work to fix an incoming damp problem – but we’ve made a snug corner for watching Christmas telly.

It’ll be a quiet Christmas day for the two of us, as it’ll be our last Christmas solely as a couple, what with the imminent arrival of our future child. So we’re spending time together without anyone else today.

I hope you all have a good Christmas yourselves.

Birth bureaucracy

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Yorkshire Sculpture Park

Because humans are awful, after you’ve undergone ‘the miracle of birth’, you or your partner will have some paperwork to do. Whilst living in the UK means that we don’t have to go through any health insurance paperwork, there are some formalities that have to be completed after your baby is born.

Although our bundle of joy isn’t quite here yet, I have spent some time looking into what we need to do after he/she/they decides to arrive in the world.

1. Register the birth

Once the baby has been born, you or your partner has 42 days to formally register the birth. This makes sure that the child ‘exists’ from a legal perspective (I think – I’m not a lawyer). It should be done in the district where the child is born, at a register office run by the local council. For us, that’s with Calderdale Council in Halifax, provided that our child is born as planned in our local hospital.

Each council will handle things differently, but you’ll probably need to make an appointment, rather than just dropping in. I’d suggest looking on your local council’s web site to see what their arrangements are.

Traditionally, registering the birth has been the job of the father of the child, but in this enlightened age, either the mother or her partner can do so. Before you go, you’ll need to have chosen and agreed a name for the child. Don’t do what my grandfather did: he forgot the name on the way to the register office, and as this was the age before mobile phones, he just put down what he thought was correct. So my aunt ended up with a different name.

You’ll also need to wait until the child has been born – you can’t register a birth if the birth hasn’t actually happened yet. However, you don’t need to wait until a child has left hospital; indeed, if your baby needs special care, it may need to spend more than 42 days in hospital.

Once the registration is done, you will receive a short-from copy of your child’s birth certificate, which you’ll need for the next step. However, you’ll also have the option to buy a full certificate, which includes your details (and those of your partner, if applicable). I would recommend buying the full certificate, for reasons that will become apparent later on in this blog post.

2. Claiming child benefit

Currently, the British government will pay you £20.70 per week to look after one child, plus an additional £13.70 per additional child. Nowadays, this benefit is paid every four weeks into your bank account. The amount you get is fixed at one of these two amounts – it’s not income-assessed, so you will receive the same money regardless of how much you or your partner earns.

You can download the form from the gov.uk website. When you’re in hospital, you may get accosted by a representative from a company called Bounty who will offer the forms as part of a pack, in return for your (and your baby’s) personal details. I’d suggest asking the Bounty rep to live you alone, to give you time to bond with your new baby in peace, and then print off and complete the form yourself. The completed form then needs to be sent by post with your child’s birth certificate – this has to be the original, so photocopy it first before you post it.

If you’re well off, you can choose not to claim the benefit, but you should still send the form off. This will benefit you as a parent, as it will ensure that you get National Insurance credits during any time off work, thus avoiding any shortfalls when calculating your state pension entitlements at retirement. It will also benefit your child; completion of the form will mean that he/she/they will get a National Insurance number at age 16.

Although Christine and I are reasonably well off, an extra £89 per month will be very welcome. It doesn’t sound like much, but it’s effectively a small pay rise for you.

3. Informing your employer

If you’re working and taking maternity or paternity leave, you should have informed your employer long before the birth of your intention to take leave. And, if your baby arrives on time, you probably won’t need to do anything. However, if you give birth early – i.e. before the start of your agreed maternity leave, you’ll need to speak to your employer to get them to move your maternity leave forward.

4. Getting a passport

This third step is optional, and only necessary if you plan to go on an overseas holiday with your baby.

In ye olden days, children could travel on their mother’s passport. Nowadays, every travelling person must have their own passport, even if that person is tiny and very new to this world. Instructions for how to apply for a child passport are on gov.uk. You will need that full birth certificate that you should have paid for when registering your child’s birth at the council register office. You’ll also need to get your child to stay still long enough with their eyes open to get a photograph. Unlike adult passports, child passports are only valid for five years.

5. Do a benefits check-up

The arrival of a child into your household, especially your first, can affect your eligibility for various benefits. Some, like Child tax Credits, may become available to you for you for the first time, but your eligibility for others may cease. When you register the birth, your registrar may mention a service called ‘Tell Us Once’, which allows the council to pass your details to various other government agencies, to re-calculate any benefits payments. If not, you may need to speak to your local Job Centre, and HM Revenue & Customs.

I would also use the Benefits Calculator on MoneySavingExpert.com, to see if there’s anything else that you can claim, however, it won’t cover everything.

If you’re on a lower income or already receiving some benefits, you may be entitled to a £500 Sure Start Maternity Grant to help with the costs of buying equipment for your baby. It’s a one-off grant that doesn’t have to be paid back. You can download the form, print it off, complete it, and then return it by post, or to your local Job Centre. If you need any more help with the cost of parenting, I would recommend booking an appointment at your local Citizens Advice Bureau.

Becoming a parent seems to be a rather daunting thing, and when faced with the prospect of looking after a tiny, helpless human child, the thought of completing paperwork is probably the last thing on your mind. Sadly, in the modern world, it’s something all new parents have to do, and that’ll include us soon.

App of the week: Carrot Weather

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A screenshot of Carrot Weather on iOS

There’s no shortage of weather apps for the iPhone – indeed, it ships with one out of the box. But Carrot Weather is probably the only app that also insults you as well.

Carrot Weather is one of a suite of five apps which are primarily focussed around productivity. There’s a to-do list app, an alarm app, a fitness app, a calorie counter app, and this weather app. What the Carrot apps have in common is a sadistic, judgemental artificial intelligence feature that rewards you for good habits, but insults you if you displease it. So if you don’t complete your tasks on time, don’t meet your fitness goals or sleep in, then Carrot gets angry, and you’ll have to work hard to make her happy again. Her AI is not too dissimilar from GLaDOS, the antagonist of the Portal games series.

Because Carrot Weather isn’t based around objectives, you don’t need to worry too much about upsetting Carrot, but she will still make wry comments about the weather.

The app defaults to showing the weather conditions based on your current location, and the home screen shows the temperature, wind speed, conditions and an overview for the next hour. If it’s raining, it’ll indicate when it’s due to stop, or vice versa. It’s possible to set various other favourite locations, if you want to see what the weather is like elsewhere.

You can also swipe left to see the conditions over the next few hours, and again for a three day summary. Swipe up, and extra detail such as air pressure, visibility, humidity and UV index are available. This information can also appear as a widget in the notification centre, and you can customise how much data is shown.

As long as the mute switch is off, Carrot Weather will also use your phone’s text-to-speech function to speak her comments to you. She will also get angry if you keep tapping on her ‘ocular sensor’, which is the glowing circle that shows the current weather conditions, so, you know, don’t do that.

As you use Carrot Weather over time, various hidden features will unlock. This includes the weather for various fictional locations, such as Mount Doom, where it’s apparently 47° Celsius. I thought it’d be a bit warmer, personally.

If you like an app that’s a bit different and has a sense of humour, then I can recommend Carrot Weather. It’s certainly more fun to use than the weather app that ships with the iPhone.

Carrot Weather costs £2.99, and is a universal app available for iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch.

Baby update

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It’s been a few weeks since I wrote about Christine’s pregnancy. We’re now into week 33 of (up to) 40, so the baby is due to arrive in less than two months time.

Christine has had quite a lot of scans and tests, due to her being deemed ‘high risk’, but so far there have been no major issues. Her latest scan was yesterday and thankfully there was very little to report. Her hospital bag is packed and ready, just in case our little bundle of joy decides to make an early entrance into the world.

We’ve also got most of the things we need at home. We picked up the car seat last weekend – quite important as hospitals won’t let you drive the baby home without one. We also have a pram, a moses basket, changing mat and some clothes. In other words, we should have most of what we need, at least for the first few days. Hopefully.

Netgear Nighthawk EX7000 review

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A photo of the Netgear Nighthawk EX7000

Since we moved into our new house, we’ve had a few wifi issues, so I was pleased to be contacted by Netgear to review their Nighthawk EX7000 wifi range extender.

Our house was built over 100 years ago, with thick stone and brick walls. Whilst our router (a BT Home Hub 4) is in the centre of the house, the signal is very weak in places – especially the kitchen at the far end of the house. So a repeater, like this one, will allow us to extend the range of the Wi-Fi signal.

Setting up

In the box, there’s the extender itself, a stand (so that the router stands up vertically), three detachable aerials, an AC adaptor and a quick-start guide.

The Nighthawk EX7000 supports Wi-Fi Protected Setup (WPS). Fortunately, so does my router, so I just had to press a button on each device to configure the connection. Once set up, two new Wi-Fi networks appeared – a 2.4 GHz one, and a 5 GHz one – each following the same naming convention as my existing router. They even used the same Wi-Fi password.

Improved signal

Once I’d configured my iPhone to connect to the extender, rather than directly to the router, I found the signal much improved. At the extremities of the house, it dropped to two out of three bars, but this is significantly better than before where it’d lose connection altogether. It now means that everywhere in the house has a reasonable signal, which is a big improvement.

Extra features

The Nighthawk EX7000 isn’t just a Wi-Fi extender, however. On the back of the extender are five gigabit Ethernet sockets, so you can attach any devices without their own wireless connection using a cable. This will be great for my Raspberry Pi, for which I haven’t bought a wifi adaptor, but I’ve also plugged my Mac in as well. So far, the connection seems more stable than before although I’ve yet to play World of Warcraft on it – that will be its biggest test.

At the front, there’s a USB 3.0 port (type A). This can be used for sharing either a printer, or a USB storage device. As my printer is a multi-function device, I’ve kept it connected to my computer (although it is shared with Christine’s laptop using Bonjour anyway). Instead, I’ve plugged in a USB hard drive, and its contents are shared across the network using DLNA so that smart TVs and similar devices can access it.

FastLane

By default, the EX7000 uses both the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz bands simultaneously, but you can enable ‘FastLane’ mode to increase speed. I turned this on, so that it uses a 5 GHz connection to the router but a 2.4 GHz to my connected devices. As only my iPad and iPhone support 5 GHz, I decided that it would be best to use 2.4 GHz.

All in all, the Netgear Nighthawk EX7000 is a very powerful device that fills several roles. It can extend your wireless signal, but it can also share a printer, files on an external device, and connect devices without a wireless capability of their own. This explains the £130 recommended retail price, as it’s a premium product, although Amazon sell it for around £100 at present. There are cheaper devices out there that can do one or two of these things, but if you want a powerful, fast Wi-Fi extender that combines several features in one box, then I can recommend the Nighthawk EX7000.

Update (January 2025): This model is no longer on sale.

Professor Elemental

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Professor Elemental

Sunday’s visit to Thought Bubble wasn’t our only Steampunk-related outing last week. On Thursday, we went to see Professor Elemental, again in Leeds at The New Roscoe.

Christine and I have been fans for a while, but this was our first opportunity to see him perform live. His music is in a rather niche sub-genre called ‘chap hop‘ – imagine hip-hop, but with moustachioed English gentlemen rapping about tea and splendid trips to the seaside. Consequently, Professor Elemental has a major following in the steampunk community.

Biscuithead and the Biscuit Badgers

Local band Biscuithead and the Biscuit Badgers were the support act, in somewhat reduced circumstances as their drummer had a family medical emergency. Their music is wonderfully whimsical, with songs about David Attenborough, model railways, tweed jackets, and the folk who live on their local street. Whilst a rather different style of music to the main act, it fitted the offbeat nature of the gig.

Professor Elemental came on later, having sat in the audience for the support act; this was a small venue and there were only around 50-60 attendees. After powering through a medley of songs, he improvised a rap based on word suggestions from the audience, which included ‘antiquity’, ‘flange’, ‘antidisestablishmentarianism‘ and ‘nipple’. It was an impressive feat. Audience participation was also requested for his newer song Don’t Feed The Trolls.

Christine and I had come straight from work, and the weather was inclement to say the least, so we had left our steampunk outfits at home to save them for Thought Bubble, but many others were dressed up in appropriate attire. At one point, someone dressed as a giraffe crawled across the stage, and that probably wasn’t the strangest thing that happened.

Whilst it helped that many of the audience were genuine fans, it was a great, intimate gig – equal parts enjoyable and amusing. Professor Elemental isn’t on tour, per se, but he has a few more live gigs coming up around the country in the run up to Christmas – I’d definitely recommend going to see him.

Thought Bubble 2015

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Christine and I at this year's Thought Bubble

After enjoying it so much last year, Christine and I made a return trip to the Thought Bubble Comic Con at the Royal Armouries in Leeds yesterday. I wore basically the same steampunk outfit as last time, but Christine had to wear something rather different as she’s now seven months pregnant. Sadly, her octopus headpiece (called Derek) was not playing well with her and so it was left in the car this time.

As with last year, we spent rather a lot of money, although our most expensive purchase was a babygrow from Genki Gear, so technically it wasn’t for us. We also picked up a couple of books, some comics, some decidedly bizarre Christmas cards and a few small pieces of artwork that we’ll frame and put on the (still mostly barren) walls of our new house.

We saw some great costumes – the £4 entry discount for cosplayers once again acting as an incentive to get people to dress up. I saw at least three female Thors, suggesting that Marvel’s decision to pass Mjölnir to Jane Foster has been well-received, several Starlords and a small boy dressed as a TARDIS. There was also a Hogwarts cosplayer with an actual owl, although I understand she was a paid professional. And the owl later did a poo on the floor.

It was great fun, and I’m sure we’ll be back again next year – all three of us.

20 is plenty

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20 is plenty

Across my home town of Sowerby Bridge, small white discs with red borders and the numbers 2 and 0 are appearing at the sides of the road. It’s the latest area in Calderdale to receive blanket 20 miles per hour speed limits on all suburban side streets, plus some major roads where required.

In Sowerby Bridge, this includes the main road through the town, the A58 – variously called Wharf Street, Town Hall Street or West Street depending on which bit you’re referring to. This makes sense; the road is quite narrow in places with parked cars and lots of pedestrians – particularly in the evening due to the town’s high concentration of pubs and bars. Although at peak times, 20 miles per hour is something of an aspiration as the traffic is regularly nose to tail in both directions.

The signs started to appear last week, following a consultation process. However, as yet there isn’t complete signage coverage and so it’s probably arguable as to whether the new lower speed limit is actually in force yet. I’ve been driving at the lower speed just in case, and to get used to it, since it’ll be the norm soon.

Although I’m now a driver myself, I’m in favour of the lower speed limits. I actually credit them with helping me pass my driving test in August; being able to get away with driving more slowly meant that I had more time to do my observations at junctions. Where the main roads remain at 30 mph, but the side roads are 20 mph, it discourages rat-running through housing estates. And where people actually obey the speed limit, it’s safer; as anyone who has recently taken their theory test will know, cars can brake more quickly at slower speeds. On residential streets, that’s very welcome.