Neil Turner

29th February

by

2016 is a leap year, and it’s the last day in February, so today is the rare occasion where you can enter the date as the 29th February into a computer and it won’t reject it. We don’t have anything much planned specially – I’m having an eye test for the first time in… um… longer than I care to admit, and Christine will be at home looking after our baby.

The last time it was the 29th February, back in 2012, it was me that was at home all day. That’s because I was ill with a stomach bug. It was enough to keep me off work for a couple of days, which is impressive as I very rarely have to take sick leave from work.

Going further back to 2008, I went on a walking weekend on the east coast. We stayed at a youth hostel north of Scarborough, and walked along the coastal path towards Robin Hood’s Bay.

And in 2004, I didn’t really write anything interesting, but that’s because we didn’t have Twitter or Facebook in those days and so my blog was home to more inane ramblings.

As I ‘only’ started blogging in 2002, I can’t quite remember what I would have done on February 29th 2000, but it was a Tuesday. So I was probably at school, preparing to take my GCSEs. Scarily, 2000 was half a lifetime ago for me.

Do you get the impression that I always aim to write something on the 29th February, no matter how pointless it is? It’s an opportunity that only comes around every four years I suppose. Maybe something interesting will happen on this day in 2020, but you’ll have to wait another four years to find out, I’m afraid.

Yorkshire Wildlife Park

by
Amur Tiger

Yesterday, Christine and I took our little cherub to the Yorkshire Wildlife Park, near Doncaster. It’s one of Britain’s newest zoos, having opened as recently as 2009. It’s been on our ‘to-do’ list of regional attractions for some time, but it’s not the easiest place to reach by public transport – from Sowerby Bridge, we’d need to get a train to Leeds, another train to Doncaster and then a bus, and then the same going back. Now that we have a car, it’s only a little over an hour’s drive away, and gave us something to do out of the house on Valentines Day.

Despite the name, the Yorkshire Wildlife Park is more like a zoo than a safari park, so you park your car and head in on foot. The park covers a large area, and unlike some zoos, has a narrower range of animals but larger enclosures with bigger groups of animals. Whilst one zoo might have one or two tigers, the wildlife park has six spread across two big enclosures. And there are some animals, like polar bears and an armadillo, that I haven’t seen in other zoos. No red pandas though.

Meerkats

Some of the enclosures allow you to walk through, but those that don’t usually have dedicated viewing platforms without metal railings in the way. Consequently it’s popular with photographers with some very large camera lenses and tripods around. As with most attractions, photography for personal use is fine, but commercial use requires a license.

My personal highlights were the tigers and the polar bears, although I also enjoyed the talk about the lemurs. Again, like most zoos, there are talks throughout the day, every half hour. Although we got there quite early, we didn’t get chance to see everything as what started as a very sunny (but cold) day turned to snow by the mid-afternoon. But I’m sure we’ll be back, especially as our little cherub gets a bit older and is able to appreciate it more. As it was, they were asleep in the pram most of the time.

Armadillo

Another thing that sets the wildlife park apart from its rivals is its range of food outlets; each one has a different focus and it’s good quality. We went to the Safari Cafe by the entrance and were impressed with the food and drink on offer, much of which is from local suppliers. Entrance to the wildlife park is, like many zoos, a bit pricey – we pre-booked online which cost £13.50 each for adults, but children over 2 will be charged £11.50. Tickets booked online are a pound cheaper, but make sure you check the weather first as almost all of the park is outdoors. And there are annual passes available for those who visit regularly – I expect we’ll be back quite a bit in a year or two as it’s our nearest outdoor zoo. We really enjoyed our day out and I strongly recommend it.

Unfitbit

by
A photo of a Fitbit Charge. It's on my wrist and shows the time as 19:16

One side effect of being on paternity leave is the lack of exercise. At the back end of September, I bought myself a Fitbit Charge, as a way of motivating myself to do just a little bit more exercise, and whilst at work I’ve been able to hit my 10,000 steps target most of the time. This is because I commute to work by train, and so that involves walking to and from the railway stations at each end of the journey. More than half of the total steps I take each weekday are through commuting.

So, take away the commute, and my step count plummeted. My daily average halved – whilst some days I could manage 6000-7000 steps, there were others when I wouldn’t need to leave the house. In fact, over the five and a half weeks that I was off work, I beat my step goal only four times. These were:

  • Boxing Day – I took myself off to a local supermarket to get some lunch
  • 22nd January – a trip in to work and an evening out
  • 27th January – travelling down to London
  • 28th January – travelling back from London

As it happens, between those last two days, I clocked up 35,000 steps, and the 27th was actually my most active day since September with over 20,000 steps. This was partly deliberate, as I had some time to kill in Leeds and so went for a walk.

Apart from my trip to London, I didn’t use public transport at all whilst off. Getting a baby in and out of a car is far easier than trying to manhandle a pram onto a bus or train, even if that would make me the ‘family man, manhandling the pram, with paternal pride‘ as per the Divine Comedy song. I’ve even driven to Leeds city centre a few times, which would probably shock the me of a year ago who wanted to drive but would still insist on using public transport where possible. It’s just easier when you have such a small person and all of their paraphernalia.

Now that I’m back at work, my step counts are returning to respectable levels. Since last Monday, I’ve only missed my target twice in eight days, and Saturday (where I had to work for a few hours) saw me overachieve by a few thousand steps. I’m hoping I can carry on meeting my targets from now on.

Back at work

by

Last Monday marked my return to work, following five and a half weeks of customary holidays and then paternity leave. I was expecting it to be hellish, as our baby hasn’t been the most consistent sleeper – which is to be expected for someone that age. A week on, and I’m actually coping okay – I’m getting just about enough sleep most nights, albeit in chunks rather than a contiguous block. My performance at work hasn’t been quite as good this week as normal, but I put that down to another major factor which I will talk about soon. Don’t worry, it’s good news.

The week I spent working abroad last year was probably worse than last week in terms of tiredness. Back then, I had several nights with minimal sleep – or none at all in some cases – and very long working days. At least we’re getting some sleep, and I have had regular work days without any late nights or especially early starts. I did have to work for part of the day on Saturday though.

Going back to work has meant that I’ve needed to step back a little from my parenting responsibilities. So that I can get enough sleep for work, I’m not doing any overnight nappy changes. We’ve also stopped doing top-up feeds with formula (which was mainly my responsibility), so our baby is now almost exclusively breast-fed. This was our intention from the start; top-up feeds were only really a stop-gap because our baby wasn’t putting weight on initially. Now, Christine’s able to produce enough milk.

I’m glad that I was able to take off more than the minimum amount of time for paternity leave. Going back after two weeks would have been painful, and would have put more pressure on Christine. Those few extra weeks have made a positive difference and – most of the time – Christine has been coping well whilst I’ve been at work. Unfortunately, I only have a couple of weeks’ holiday allowance left, to last me until the end of July, so apart from some accumulated time of in lieu of overtime, I’m not going to be able to spend much more time at home during the week before Christine returns to work in the summer.

Big data and data analytics Seminar

by
A photo of the interior of the Glazier's Hall

On Thursday, I was lucky enough to be invited to attend Big data and data analytics: commercial opportunities, privacy and effectiveness, one of several seminars offered by the Westminster eForum. It took place at the Glazier’s Hall, on London’s south bank next to London Bridge.

The four hour session, split into two halves, was chaired by two members of the House of Lords, Lord Inglewood and Lord Witty, and the speakers represented various users of big data in the UK. These included the ABPI, whose members carry out research and development into new medications, Dunnhumby, who worked with Tesco to launch the original Clubcard in the 1990s, academics and industry partners.

The talks given by the speakers were interesting, and focussed more on policy and high-level overviews, rather than technical details. For example, whilst Hadoop was passively mentioned on some slides, there wasn’t much about deployment and how it works. But there was some discussion about database design, as companies move away from traditional relational databases to big data capturing solutions.

Privacy implications came up several times as well, an irony not lost on one of the speakers who noted that the event coincided with Data Privacy Day. In particular, there was a focus on how to design systems with privacy in mind, but also that the UK’s and Europe’s more restrictive privacy laws may be part of the reason why the world’s biggest data users – GAFA (Google, Apple, Facebook & Amazon) – are all based in the US.

I came into the seminar essentially wearing two hats. My main reason for attending was as a blogger (or ‘freelance writer’ according to the attendance list), but data analysis is also one of my roles at work. However, we’re not yet at the stage where we’re using ‘big data’ – most of our data is all within standard relational databases and I can’t see that changing any time soon.

As always, such events also offer a chance to network and it was good to speak with some of the other attendees. As you’d expect from a more high-level seminar, this was an event for people with suits and ties, and not t-shirts and hoodies. Many were from government departments, regulators and other public sector bodies, as well as large organisations such as the BBC and Arqiva.

I came away with plenty of notes, and some action points to perhaps bring up at work. Channel 4’s Viewer Promise video was mentioned as great example of best practice for explaining their privacy policy – far better than pages and pages of legalese. Maybe universities could do something similar to explain the student contract at enrolment.

This day was made possible by Dell, but all thoughts are my own.

App of the Week: Laundry Day

by
A screenshot of the Laundry Day app on an iPhone

When you’re a child, your parents are usually kind enough to wash your clothes for you. This means that, when you become a responsible adult and have to wash your own clothes, it can be a bit of a shock. Especially if you own clothes which can’t be shoved in a standard mixed load wash at 40°C.

Most clothes include written washing instructions on the label, but will usually also have 5 symbols on which tell you what temperature you should wash it, whether the clothes can be bleached, tumble-dried or ironed, or whether you should take them along to the dry cleaners. These symbols are essentially a de-facto international standard, which is handy if you’ve bought clothes overseas and the care label isn’t in English.

To help you decipher these symbols, there’s an iOS app called Laundry Day. Give it access to your iPhone’s camera, and then point it at the care label of the garment in question. It’ll do its best to identify the symbols, and, with a tap of the screen, it’ll explain what each symbol means in plain English.

I found that the camera struggled a bit, especially on labels where the text had faded following many washes. In most cases, it wasn’t able to correctly identify all five symbols.

A screenshot of the Laundry Day app on an iPhone

Fortunately, the first tab of the app shows you every possible symbol, so if you’re having no luck with the camera, you can manually select the symbols and still get the information in a readable format. The last tab, ‘Help & About’, also offers some general tips for working with certain types of fabric like silk and wool. There’s a checklist as well – did you empty the pockets first?

It’s a handy little app and I could see many students wanting to use it when they first go to university come September. For years, our student magazine at Bradford used to have a page about washing clothes, with an explainer for the various symbols, in the freshers week issue. I suppose this is the more modern equivalent of it. And it’s more accurate than this list.

Laundry Day is 79p, and available on the App Store for iPhone.

Tell me why, I don’t like Mondays

by

Does anyone remember a channel called Sky Travel? It was a satellite TV channel in Britain that showed various documentaries and advertisements for travel destinations, which ran between 1994 and 2010.

Why am I mentioning this? Around 10 years ago, Sky Travel commissioned a dubious piece of ‘research’ to find ‘the most depressing day of the year’. Which turns out to be the third Monday of January, and that’s today. It’s been called ‘Blue Monday‘. Ben Goldacre calls it ‘churnalism’.

Note, this blog post used to be longer, but the original version was lost and isn’t in the Web Archive.

14 years of blogging

by

Today marks 14 years since my first blog post. No, I can’t quite believe it either.

Considering all of the things that have happened in my life over the past 14 years, I’m pleased with myself for finding the time to keep the blog going, even if I do go through periods of not writing anything for a while. I’m hoping to be able to continue for some years to come.

I’ll save the big retrospective for next year, when hopefully I’ll be celebrating 15 years.

Netgear WN3000RP Wi-Fi Range Extender review

by
A photo of the Netgear WN3000RP Wifi Range Extender plugged into a wall socket

Today, I’m reviewing Netgear’s WN3000RP Wifi range extender (sponsored link) – a plug-in device to improve your home Wi-Fi network’s range.

You may be thinking, ‘wait a minute, you only reviewed a Netgear range extender a few weeks ago!‘. And you would be right. I was sent a Nighthawk EX7000 Wi-Fi range extender to review, but unfortunately I had to send it back to the PR company after I’d written the blog post.

I still needed a Wi-Fi range extender though, as my BT Home Hub 4 can’t reach the whole house. The WN3000RP model had some reasonable user reviews on Amazon, met my needs and was reasonably affordable, and so I put it on my Christmas list. Santa, or rather my Dad, obliged and so I’ve been using it since Christmas Day.

It’s a much smaller than the Nighthawk and simply plugs directly into a plug socket with no further assembly required. As it’s equipped with Wi-Fi Protected Setup (WPS), configuring it is dead simple – turn it on, press the WPS button, press the WPS button on your router, and then wait a minute or two. A new Wi-Fi network will appear with ‘_EXT’ appended to it and it’ll use the same WPA security key (password) as your router.

That’s probably all most people will need to do, but a few configuration options are available using a web-based control panel. There’s also a port for a network cable to connect a device which lacks its own Wi-Fi connection, although you’ll need to provide your own cable.

The Nighthawk I reviewed in November was a premium model with lots of additional features, such as extra network ports, a USB port for a hard driver or printer and faster connections. This is a much simpler model without the bells and whistles, but it does the basic job well. It has certainly alleviated our wifi signal issues and seems to perform as well as we need it to.

If you’re looking for a simple solution to extend your Wi-Fi router’s reach, at £27 from Amazon, you can’t go wrong with the Netgear WN3000RP. It’s a fifth of the cost of the £140 Nighthawk EX7000 (although Amazon had it for £100 before Christmas) which offers extra features and performance, at a price.

Hello 2016!

by
Figureheads

Happy new year!

Christine spent the new year apart for only the second time since we met. Unfortunately, our little poppet had to go back into hospital on Wednesday, and so Christine stayed on the children’s ward overnight. They should be coming back home again today hopefully.

As is traditional, I check to see if I achieved my goals for 2015, and what I expect to do in 2016. So – how did I do?

  • Buy a house – yes, even if it did take most of the year!
  • Pass my driving test and buy a car – yes!
  • Go to the gym more – nope. In fact my gym attendance was even worse last year.
  • Go to two weddings – yes, and they were the two that we were expecting, unlike in 2014.
  • Go on an overseas holiday – no, although I did get to travel abroad for work instead.
  • Visit London and Bristol – we managed London in October, but Bristol eluded us this year.

Not bad, on the whole. I’m hoping that I’ll have time over the next four weeks to go to the gym during the daytime whilst I’m on paternity leave, when it’s a bit quieter, and be able to make it a habit again. We could also do with an overseas holiday, although our baby will need a passport first. We can’t order one until we register her birth, which we haven’t been able to do as the local register office has been closed over the Christmas period. We have an appointment booked for next week though.

Another thing Christine and I both need to do is clear our credit card debts, which together amount to a four figure sum. Once clear, we can start rebuilding our savings. Christine also needs to re-start her driving lessons, which she paused when she got too pregnant, and pass her theory and practical driving tests.

And we need to continue to work on our new house. There’s still quite a bit of painting to do downstairs, for which we’ve already bought the paint for but haven’t had the time to actually apply it to the walls. And we still have a lot of unpacking to do. Once we’ve saved up enough money, we’ll then look into turning our spare downstairs room into a cloakroom with a toilet and basin, and consider re-wiring the upstairs of the house.

But the main thing we want to do is spend us much time we can with our new baby.

Creative Commons License
Except where otherwise noted, the content on this site is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.