July, 2008
You are looking at posts that were written in the month of July in the year 2008.
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Just stuff
Posted on July 29th, 2008 by ray.
Categories: General Blog.
I purchased a roller-blind for our back bedroom (that we use as a computer room) to replace the old bamboo one we had in there. This new one is a total black-out blind, so I can now go on the computer without getting a headache and eye-strain from having the sun blinding me through the window behind. I now need to get a fan though, as if I have the window open then the breeze blows the blind turning the room into a flashing disco like strobe.
Took the bike out for a spin last night around some of the surrounding areas for an hour. Running very nice, but it’s just not really possible to go for a leisurely ride in a city, as there are traffic lights every few minutes, boy racers and just too much traffic in general. I think I need to plan a day out somewhere a bit more isolated at a quieter period. On the subject of my boke, I also need to strip the fairing down to replace the bolts from the current mish-mash, to the new marine-class stainless steel ones I got (designed for boats, so very strong and very resistant to salt and other crap). It will be bliss having decent bolts, as I’ve lost count of the times that they are so corroded I have to use a hacksaw rather than a spanner.
My mate Mike got married to his good lady Tracy on Friday, so went down to Gloucster for the reception. Great to catch up with some old faces there, as ‘ve known the bunch down tht way since my late teens when I went to Chetenham for martial arts lessons.
Knackered last night and this morning, so skipped the gym this morning for sleep insead. Best go after work instead and not be a azy arse
How not to run a gym
Posted on July 28th, 2008 by ray.
Categories: General Blog.
I arrive this morning and get forewarned by a girl in the car-park just leaving that the air-con is not working, so it’s sweltering inside.
I walk in and the drink vending machine has an out of order sign on it (nevermind, I never use it anyway)
I get into the gym, walk to the water cooler to fill my bottle up and there’s an out of order sign on it
I go to get some tissue paper from the dispenser to wipe a machine down and it’s empty.
I go to the pool afterwards, walk to the steam room and there’s an out of order sign on it.
So why exactly do I pay £52 a month again?
Birthdays
Posted on July 22nd, 2008 by ray.
Categories: General Blog.
T’was Lisa’s birthday yesterday, so we celebrated with a meal at Tonic in Nottingham.
Never been there before and picked it as it won the best newcomer award last year. Nice decor and atmosphere, food was quite nice, good enough wine list. All in all we’d try it again.
Up a notch
Posted on July 18th, 2008 by ray.
Categories: General Blog.
I decided my routine at the gym was becoming a bit too comfortable, and as I go daily I had just got too used to it so wasn’t really getting as much benefit as I could. As such, I skipped my morning visit and went in the evening to try a new routine out:
Cross trainer (max settings) - gone from ten minutes to twenty
Rowing machine (max again) - gone from 2000 metres to 5000
Sit-ups - gone from 30 on the bench to 60 on the floor in a few different positions
Weights Machines - scrapped altogether to do reps on the free weights
Suffice to say I have a dull ache this morning, however nothing major and I’m sure I’ll get used to this after a few sessions. Just need to work in some other work when I’m there and get back into the treadmill.
Decided to keep up with the Yoga as well. Enjoying it more now.
So then, physical differences thus far:
Body Weight - nothing major changed there. Put on a bit in Ireland, so I’ll imagine I’ll have my normal crap rate of weight loss irrispective of diet and lifestyle
Body Strength - Picked up a bit from the weights. However, you build muscle in the kitchen, not the gym! Might work on this more with some different food-stuffs at home.
Body Shape - Changed a bit from some toning, which is nice.
Stamina - Biggest difference here. Can now go allot longer with little to no loss of breath of feeling knackered. Even with the curse of hay fever. As soon as the hay fever season is over I’ll be like Superman 
Recovery Time - Wooo! When I do totally kill myself, I’m back to normal shortly after a rest, or I can ‘pace’ myself to recover whilst on the go.
So in general, my fitness level has increased significantly, however appearance is nothing major. However I’m only doing this for fitness anyway, so result!
Manslaughter
Posted on July 15th, 2008 by ray.
Categories: General Blog.
I’ve been having some chats recently about the laws when it comes to causing death whilst on the roads, and some of my recent posts are where people have been killed and their “killer” only got a fine. The maximum penalty for “driving with undue care” in England is a £5000 fine (means tested) and no custodial sentence.
Death by dangerous driving is more serious and carries up to a ten year sentence, but what most people consider as dangerous are very different to what the courts decide is just undue care. Personally I consider most actions which stop you looking where you’re going, be it arguing with the kids in the back seat, dicking around on your sat-nav, looking for a CD in the glove compartment, trying to find your lighter in your handbag etc. as dangerous as it’s a very logical sequence of events and certainly not ‘accidental’, however the law says otherwise.
This has sparked the debate of what benefit there is to putting people like this in prison, as they never intentionally meant to kill someone and it was literally a moment of undue care that tragically resulted in a death. Would locking them up with other criminals actually serve any purpose other than a sense of justice or revenge for the significant other’s of the victim.
I’ve looked at this more as it is an interesting topic for how we as a society deal with situations like this. People’s opinions vary greatly from public floggings and capital punishment right down to the do away with jails as the perpetrator is the real victim and needs rehabilitation and forgiveness.
I’ve also had mixed emotions when imagining a family member being on both sides of a situation like this:
1) A family member is knocked down and killed by a car driver having a lapse of concentration
2) A family member having a lapse of concentration and killing someone else.
Then I took a step back and asked myself a more simple question:
“There is already a crime of unintentionally killing someone, and that is manslaughter, so why are we singling out motorists and making them exempt?”
The cynic in me would say it is because the standard of driving is now so low and that deaths are that common then it is becoming the norm, and we don’t want to be locking too many people up.
I don’t expect a perfect law, but I do expect a consistent law. If we’re basically letting people off for one type of manslaughter then we should be doing the same for even more ‘accidental’ or indirect deaths.
Perhaps we should modernise our manslaughter laws and include in this vehicular manslaughter, and then decide how strict or lenient we want to be on the whole manslaughter law in general?
Hmmm.
Out with a shower of savages
Posted on July 15th, 2008 by ray.
Categories: General Blog.
I’ve spent the last week back in Ireland.
It was quite a busy week as I wanted to make sure I saw as much of the family as possible (i.e. the uncles, aunts and cousins who live in county Kerry as well as my parents) and thankfully managed to get to see everyone.
Weather turned out to be better than the UK, so made the most of the sunshine and did a but of travelling as well.
Main highlights:
- Watching the Kerry vs Cork match in a pub for the Munster Football Final, even though Kerry lost to the red bastards.
- A day out to see Daniel O’Connell’s house
- Finally getting out for a meal to a very good Italian restaurant in Killarney (had to cancel last time we were over as Lisa and myself were both full of colds)
- Restocking on Irish whiskey
- Drinking lots of stout
Back now though, so back to the gym to make up for a week or self-abuse
In other news, my PC at home is a bit screwed and think I’ll need to splash out on a new hard drive as it’s making horrible noises and my applications are all crashing. Thankfully I had the foresight to have a second drive for all my iTunes and other media so they are safe. Just need a new primary drive for the O/S
I have also found the wonder that is http://www.bagster.com/en/ that sells tank bags for my ZX10 (or the ZX10 Tomcat as the Yanks named it) . I’d been after one of these for ages as they look pretty cool on a bike and would do wonders for mine as my tank is painted by myself, so you can guess the quality of it.. Need to find out how much it is.
It’s Lisa’s bday on Monday so off for a meal at Tonic in Notts.
Anyway, I think that’s pretty much it.
Worthy of blogging
Posted on July 4th, 2008 by ray.
Categories: General Blog.
This afternoon, Cat taught me what CIM is.
Woman “only fined” for killing 21 year old
Posted on July 4th, 2008 by ray.
Categories: General Blog.
—–
A Driver will be fined after an accident in which a young motorcyclist was killed.
Ashra Bibi, 45, of Bathley Street, The Meadows, pleaded guilty to driving without due care and attention.
She was cleared of causing 21-year-old Christopher Lewin’s death by dangerous driving after a trial at Nottingham Crown Court this week.
Bibi had previously pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of driving without due care and attention, which carries a non-custodial sentence and a maximum fine of up to £5,000.
Mr Lewin came off his Kawasaki motorbike at about 3.30pm, on Friday, January 11, in Loughborough Road, near the junction with Boundary Road.
Bibi had her mother-in-law and two of her children in a Honda Civic. She had been travelling towards West Bridgford from the Nottingham Knight roundabout, near the fire station, when she turned right into a driveway, colliding with Mr Lewin’s bike travelling in the opposite direction.
Biba had denied causing death by dangerous driving.
After she was cleared, Mr Justice McCombe said his powers on the due care charge was a fine and he needed to see bank statements and ownership of property before making a decision at sentence on July 25.
—–
It’s wonderfully reassuring to know that if you really want someone dead, then you just have to kill them in your car. The most you can get is a £5000 fine. I bet that works out cheaper than hiring a hitman.
I wonder how many more people will have to be killed on English roads before we decide that “driving without due care” that results is a fatality should carry a manslaughter sentence?
Que Sera Sera, whatever will be will be, we’re going to Wem-ber-ly
Posted on July 4th, 2008 by ray.
Categories: General Blog.
I have yet to experience the new Wembley Stadium, so time to do it in style.
I have two tickets for the England vs. Czech Republic in August (which is four days before my 30th birthday)
And the seats are only three rows back from the pitch and behind the goal. Quality!
Now you understand the inner mysteries of yoga…
Posted on July 3rd, 2008 by ray.
Categories: General Blog.
I’ve had a revamp to this site and changed the templates around - however most of you probably read this on LiveJournal, so will be none the wiser :). For anyone that does go to www.supple.co.uk, then I hope this is more pleasing to the eye.
I tried Yoga last night for the first time ever. I didn’t know what to expect other than hopefully learning how to breath fire, levitate, teleport and extend my arms and legs to punch and kick people on the other side of the screen - however I think Dahlsim must have had different lessons. I will certainly go again and probably keep it up, however next time I will use a good decongestant first, as Yoga is about 80% breathing (from what I could make out) so not ideal if you are a Hay Fever sufferer and cannot breath out of your nose for three months of the year. I suspect now I know what it entails, I will focus less on the actual routine next time.
We have got the Ford Fiesta back now. For those that were not aware, it got battered (whilst parked up) due to another car opening it’s door as it was driving along our street, hitting our rear bumper and rather than stopping they instead carried on driving which meant the damage spread to the rear door, the driver door and actually ripped their entire passenger door off. I caught them int he act so it went through their insurance, but it’s still been stress and hassle we don’t need.
We had a hire car provided by the other party’s insurance, however they would not deliver it so had to go to Stapleford to collect it after work (they got us a taxi, but it’s still time that could have been spent elsewhere). The next sodding day the garage called saying the car was repaired (they initially said a week, so if I had known it was just a day I wouldn’t have wasted all the time with the hire car). They then tried to make me pay a £150 excess until I politely told them this was not going to happen as this was not going through my insurance but the nupmty who damaged our car in the first place). They then dropped our car back, however there still might be some damage to it (I can’t remember if it was like that already, as we had only had the car for a week and Lisa was using it so I never saw it much). I called the hire car company and they say to get the car back before half 5, which I point out is not going to happen as I don’t finish work until then so agree to do it in the morning (even though this involves cancelling my daily gym visit). This morning, despite being only 6 miles away, it took me 45 minutes as the F’ing M1 junction was closed so crazy traffic getting there. Still, finally dropped it off, got a lift back and that hopefully is that (but still need to check the remaining damage on our car).
As far as I am concerned, I am the innocent party here and my only ‘crime’ is that my car was the one this guy decided to trash. I should have as little inconvenience as possible, so should not be having to take 20+ calls from a hire company, garage and the other party’s insurance, should not have to trapse across Nottingham buggering about with hire cars and should not have to battle with the garage about what needs repairing. If I was the nonce who crashed his car, then I would accept I need a lot more involvement. Ah, damn my stupid ideas of customer service..
Anyway, I’m off to Ireland soon and the flights, airport parking and car hire is sorted so I can leave all my worries behind in merry old England and have week visiting the family, drinking stout and restocking on enough bottles of decent whiskey to see me through to October