Manly points

A friend of mine has just moved into a flat. He's sharing with 3 women. I need to help him make this flat more manly. It's a desperate case. He wishes to remain anonymous, and so for the purposes of this post will be called Bob.

After procuring some amusing suggestions from Facebook, I have come up with what I hope to be a cunning plan. It's entirely possible that I am meddling with what is essentially a good thing, but I feel strongly that an intervention is required. I have invented 'manly points'.

The idea is that Bob will be awarded points for every manly thing which he does, and points deducted for every 'girly' thing. All activities which are 'gender-neutral' do not have points assigned, for example buying a pint of milk. Bob's points tally should remain above zero at all times. One of Bob's flatmates has kindly agreed to keep a tally of her own points to act as a control, and also to make sure that Bob's points are recorded accurately.

Here's the list...

• -100 Sending a text which involves Carly Rae Jepsen lyrics 
• -100 Using the lion joke. Consider yourself lucky that you don't know what the lion joke is.
• -50 Watching a rom-com/ girly film
• -50 Soppy literature e.g. Jane Austen
• -35 Gossiping
• -30 Baking. Caveat: unless Andy gets to try some.
• -25 Any drink which involves Malibu
• -25 Watching a soap opera.
• -25 Girly night out where Bob is the only man
• -20 Using girly bathroom products
• -15 Girly item purchased. Multiplied by 5 for major girly items e.g. shoe shopping
• -10 Making the bed
• -10 Apologising for burping/ belching/ farting/ swearing
• -5 'Poncey' cup of tea. Bob spent £20 on tea the other day.
• +5 Burping/ belching/ farting/ swearing 
• +5 Drinking a pint of Stella
• +10 Not showering for a day
• +10 Smoking a cigar
• +10 Having a dram of whisky
• +15 Chivalry
• +15 Manly item purchased. Multiplied by 5 for major manly items. Major manly items have yet to be defined, but he should know them when he buys them.
• +20 Procuring a woman's number. Caveat: must be from the owner of the number. 
• +25 Manly film
• +25 Manly literature
• +25 Blokes night out, where there are no girls except those encountered upon said night out.
• +25 Manly jobs which women don't want to do. E.g. dealing with spiders.
• +25 Asserting your manliness. Successfully.
• +40 Getting a dance 
• +50 A date
• +50 Visiting a "gentleman's venue". Bob's flatmate would get double points for this one, what with being a woman and all.
• +50 Any behaviour not already assigned a points value which pisses off a woman. Multiplied by the number of woman whose wrath is incurred. 
• +100 Scoring with a woman

What do you think? Have I missed anything from my list? Should I stop meddling? Is there another way to make Bob's flat more manly? Your suggestions in the comments box would be much appreciated.

-Andy

PS Now is probably a very good time to reiterate that the opinions on this blog are mine and mine alone. They are definitely nothing to do with my employer.

Get over it

The Eagles released an excellent song way back in 1994. It's called 'Get Over It'. I think they were on to something...

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I turn on the tube and what do I see
A whole lotta people cryin' "Don't blame me"
They point their crooked little fingers ar everybody else
Spend all their time feelin' sorry for themselves
Victim of this, victim of that
Your momma's too thin; your daddy's too fat

Get over it
Get over it
All this whinin' and cryin' and pitchin' a fit
Get over it, get over it

You say you haven't been the same since you had your little crash
But you might feel better if I gave you some cash
The more I think about it, Old Billy was right
Let's kill all the lawyers, kill 'em tonight
You don't want to work, you want to live like a king
But the big bad world doesn't owe you a thing

Get over it
Get over it
If you don't want to play, then you might as well split
Get over it, Get over it

It's like going to confession every time I hear you speak
You're makin' the most of your losin' streak
Some call it sick, but I call it weak

You drag it around like a ball and chain
You wallow in the guilt; you wallow in the pain
You wave it like a flag, you wear it like a crown
Got your mind in the gutter, bringin' everybody down
Complain about the present and blame it on the past
I'd like to find your inner child and kick its little ass

Get over it
Get over it
All this bitchin' and moanin' and pitchin' a fit
Get over it, get over it

Get over it
Get over it
It's gotta stop sometime, so why don't you quit
Get over it, get over it

A collection of kayaking stuff

There is a lot of kayaking stuff online. Some of it involves me, and quite a lot of it doesn't. Here's a little collection of stuff, most of which involves me. Wherever I appear I'm normally in an orange boat with a white helmet, and orange buoyancy aid.


Miscellaneous Youtube clips

• Trip down the river Etive. Possibly the most mental trip I've been on to date. My highlight is at 07:50.  
• Trip down the River North Esk. My highlight is at 4:00. 
• Trip down the River Nith. 
• I can't remember if anything exciting happens but here are a few surfing videos A B C D
• I organised a canoe & kayak slalom in 2011, and will do again this year. I'm not in this video, but we created the course. Darren Cresser from Tees Tigers blasting down the course at WLCC's June 2011 Fairnilee Slalom
• Leisurely paddle down the River Findhorn.

Flickr

Occasionally I take my digtal SLR on a kayaking trip. Extreme care must be taken not to destroy said camera, but now that I've got a Peli case that fits inside my boat it makes things much easier! Some of my favourite photos were taken on a trip where I wasn't actually paddling, but that's not as much fun!

• Let's go boating. I like this picture so much that I got it printed onto a huge canvas.  
• Me  http://www.flickr.com/photos/bigandyherd/4945676263/in/photostream and  http://www.flickr.com/photos/bigandyherd/4945673483/in/photostream/
• I'm especially proud of this photo. Over the Edge. 
• And this photo. Happy Kayaker. 
• I've got loads more kayaking photos, I'll get some of them posted up to flickr at some point.

Other miscellaneous stuff
The guys at Tribe Alliance do some cool stuff. Sadly none of it involves me:

• Rider of the year awards. A must watch if you haven't seen it before. 
• Whitewater Grand prix - highlight clip
• Whitewater Grand prix - tv show version. Make a cuppa first, it's about an hour long. 

It's worth checking out the website and facebook page of Aquaplay Scotland. Over the years I've done a fair few courses and paddling trips with Jim & co, and wouldn't hesitate to recommend their services.

Lastly... if you want a laugh
I did something very silly last Saturday. No matter how many times I watch this video, it still makes me laugh. Slide + Water fail.

Rules for a night out

I'm organising an afternoon off work for a few friends. As organiser, it is customary to impose any rules to be observed on the day. These are the rules I emailed out to the crew today. I'm a little proud of them! Thought I'd share.

(As background, my role as organiser is enough to warrant 'Captain' status. Previous organisers have been dubbed either Captain or Admiral. I'm not entirely sure why we do this, maybe just to instil a sense of authority. Number 6 will probably make more sense now you know.)

Rules:
1) The intention is an [insert area here] pub crawl. That said, any venue which we can walk, stumble or crawl to is fair game, but taxi journeys between venues should be avoided (caveat: unless the Captain rules that there is sufficient justification).

2) The visitation of ‘poncey’ venues is not explicitly forbidden, but will be frowned upon (caveat: unless the Captain rules that there is sufficient justification).

3) I will NOT be invoking the requirement of the ‘one and on’ rule. If we find a pub we like, I advocate we stay there for a few.

4) If anyone would like to be responsible for holding the kitty for the entire day, please step forwards. Assuming no volunteers, it will be passed between people every time we change venues. Those who have already been responsible for the kitty at any point throughout the afternoon/ evening are exempt from having to do so again.

5) The organiser for the next outing will be decided as follows:
Priority 1: Anyone who falls asleep/ loses consciousness/ is responsible for any of the emergency services being contacted.
Priority 2: Anyone caught b*tching about either the food or the planning decisions made by the Captain (including comments about the extensive list of rules).
Priority 3: Failing that, the first to leave will take this baton.

6) For the avoidance of doubt, the only people who are exempt from organising the next one are Admirals, Captains and previous organisers of brands awareness days who aren’t fortunate enough to have a rank in the Royal Navy.

7) Anyone who is caught communicating with the office via email or phone will have to pay a forfeit (unless they feel brave/ stupid enough to brag to the rest of the work force). I welcome any suggestions as to what the forfeit should be.

Smartphone pricing. Surely there's a better way?

Over the period of the last few months I've been pondering smartphone business models. A while ago I even had a little rant about O2. I've come to the conclusion that there has to be a better way.

(Before I go any further, I should probably state for the record that I love my iPhone. This post is a dig at the network providers, not Apple.)

My biggest bug-bear is contracts. It's not so much the total cost which puts me off, I realise that nice things cost money. What puts me off is that the pace at which modern smartphone technology moves is too fast for a fixed term contract of 18 months or more.

I have an idea. What if fixed term mobile phone contracts were abandoned?

Rather than tie a customer in to an 18 month/ 2 year contract, what if the mobile phone companies gave or faciliated a loan? This wouldn't actually make much of a difference on a day to day basis, you'd still pay £x per month of your loan, plus whatever network fees. The user would then sign a contract effectively saying "I will pay back this loan, plus network charges of £y per month in return for however many minutes, texts and data etc. I reserve the right to fully pay off this loan at any time (with no extra costs) and cancel or change my network contract (up or down) within 30 days notice."

Surely that's what pay as you go (PAYG) is? No. PAYG doesn't add up unless you're a low-user. Let me explain with data. Hypothetically, let's say I want to buy a 16GB iPhone 4s tomorrow. I could go to any network provider, but let's stick with O2 for the moment. Let's say I use about 300mins, loads of texts, 500mb of data, and want to keep it for 18 months.

• If I pay monthly it will cost me £170 up front, plus £37 a month contract. Total cost of contract £836. (Interestingly this total cost of contract seems to have gone down a smidge over the last couple of years)
• What about PAYG? For this it gets a little more tricky, as O2 charge 25p per minute for the first 3 minutes, then 5p/min thereafter. Let's take an average call length of 10 minutes and forget non-O2 mobiles which will always cost 25p. Up front it would cost me £500, then another £33 a month (for which they'll throw in the texts and the data). Total cost over 18 months £1,094. 
• What about PAYG with an average call length of 5 minutes? £51 a month, totalling £1,418
• But wait, none of my friends are on O2, and I rarely call landlines. This means I would have to pay 25p a minute for every call. 300 minutes at that price would set me back £75 every month. Total cost over 18 months would then be a staggering £1,850.

Ok, so the last example is unlikely to happen in the real world. My point is that PAYG isn't a practical alternative if you use even a moderate amount of the network provider's resources. This is deliberate. I mean, why let users leave at the drop of the hat when they have been so used to signing a contract since the beginning of time that they'll sign another one without even thinking about it? Why bother addressing a customer's complaint - however small - if they have to keep paying over their hard earned cash?

Continuing this specific example, my proposal would be for a loan of £500 up front, to be paid off over 18 months. Then there would be network charges of £18.67 per month. The monthly charge would be £46.44, and the total cost would be £836, the same as O2 are asking for pay monthly. Crucially, this could be cancelled at 30 days notice. At the moment the trade in price which O2 are offering for a 16GB iPhone 4s is £321.50. Doing the maths, you could trade this in and buy a brand new one after a little over 11 months at no extra cost - you pay off the £325 on your contract by indirectly selling your phone on to someone who isn't as bothered about getting it as soon as it's released. Maybe I would need to pay a few quid extra for interest, but essentially I would have paid £514 to keep my phone for a year. Then I would dish out even more money for the latest handset.

But wait, there's more! This would work for every kind of phone. No matter who makes it. It would mean that there was transparency over the cost of the device, and the cost of the network service. Is it just me who thinks that it's really fucking silly that 300 minutes on an iPhone costs more than on another kind of phone? Surely those minutes can't cost the network provider any more to provide? I know I'm paying more for the best phone out there, so why does the archaic and asinine pricing system make it so hard to benchmark phones against one another?!? Oh yeah, that's right, because if us consumers are baffled by seemingly similar deals, we'll probably be tricked into spending more money than we want to spend. They're hiding behind confusing pricing tactics, and I don't like it.

Of course, it doesn't make financial sense to end your contract until all of your 18 months sentence has been served. In the unlikely event of ending the contract after only 12 months you would still have to pay the full cost to the end of the contract. So in this example I would keep my iPhone 4S for a year, but still have to pay the full £836.

I know that network providers have started getting slightly better at sim-only deals recently. In particular, 3 seem to be offering some much better deals than O2 at the moment. Sim only is great and it's definitely a route I am going to explore when I renew my phone, it looks like I will be able to do exactly what I'm wanting to do. But it's not the default. You have to search a little before you find out that it's a plausible alternative, you have to find the rarely mentioned option hidden away at the bottom of the page, and even then you'll probably end up buying the handset from a different place than your network 'package'.

-----

What do you reckon? Is it unrealistic, or could it actually happen? I grant that my idea isn't perfect, but I think it would be a massive improvement on the what we've got now. I also think that it's totally achievable. I know people who drive cars that are worth less than the amount of money I've spent on my iPhone over the last 2-3 years, are modern smartphones really so different?

All it needs is for one network provider to give this a go. O2, Vodafone, Three, Orange - are you listening?

Surely we can change things.

Surely there's a #BetterWay.

I'm still here!

It's been mostly radio silence here at my blog for the last little while. It's not because I don't have anything to say, far from it!

I've been working on a few posts, but they aren't done yet. I'll post some of them soon. Honest.

Zen and the Art of Motorcyle Maintenance

What follows is an excerpt from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, by Robert Pirsig.

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He'd been having trouble with students who had nothing to say. At first he thought it was laziness but later it became apparent that it wasn't. They just couldn't think of anything to say.

One of them, a girl with strong-lensed glasses, wanted to write a five-hundred-word essay about the United States. He was used to the sinking feeling that comes from statements like this, and suggested without disparagement that she narrow it down to just Bozeman.

When the paper came due she didn't have it and was quite upset. She had tried and tried but she just couldn't think of anything to say.

He had already discussed her with her previous instructors and they'd confirmed his impressions of her. She was very serious, disciplined and hardworking, but extremely dull. Not a spark of creativity in her anywhere. Her eyes, behind the thick-lensed glasses, were the eyes of a drudge. She wasn't bluffing him, she really couldn't think of anything to say, and was upset by her inability to do as she was told.

It just stumped him. Now he couldn't think of anything to say. A silence occurred, and then a peculiar answer: ``Narrow it down to the main street of Bozeman.'' It was a stroke of insight.

She nodded dutifully and went out. But just before her next class she came back in real distress, tears this time, distress that had obviously been there for a long time. She still couldn't think of anything to say, and couldn't understand why, if she couldn't think of anything about all of Bozeman, she should be able to think of something about just one street.

He was furious. ``You're not looking!'' he said. A memory came back of his own dismissal from the University for having too much to say. For every fact there is an infinity of hypotheses. The more you look the more you see. She really wasn't looking and yet somehow didn't understand this.

He told her angrily, ``Narrow it down to the front of one building on the main street of Bozeman. The Opera House. Start with the upper left-hand brick.''

Her eyes, behind the thick-lensed glasses, opened wide.

She came in the next class with a puzzled look and handed him a five-thousand-word essay on the front of the Opera House on the main street of Bozeman, Montana. ``I sat in the hamburger stand across the street,'' she said, ``and started writing about the first brick, and the second brick, and then by the third brick it all started to come and I couldn't stop. They thought I was crazy, and they kept kidding me, but here it all is. I don't understand it.''

Neither did he, but on long walks through the streets of town he thought about it and concluded she was evidently stopped with the same kind of blockage that had paralyzed him on his first day of teaching. She was blocked because she was trying to repeat, in her writing, things she had already heard, just as on the first day he had tried to repeat things he had already decided to say. She couldn't think of anything to write about Bozeman because she couldn't recall anything she had heard worth repeating. She was strangely unaware that she could look and see freshly for herself, as she wrote, without primary regard for what had been said before. The narrowing down to one brick destroyed the blockage because it was so obvious she had to do some original and direct seeing.

He experimented further. In one class he had everyone write all hour about the back of his thumb. Everyone gave him funny looks at the beginning of the hour, but everyone did it, and there wasn't a single complaint about ``nothing to say.''

In another class he changed the subject from the thumb to a coin, and got a full hour's writing from every student. In other classes it was the same. Some asked, ``Do you have to write about both sides?'' Once they got into the idea of seeing directly for themselves they also saw there was no limit to the amount they could say. It was a confidence-building assignment too, because what they wrote, even though seemingly trivial, was nevertheless their own thing, not a mimicking of someone else's. Classes where he used that coin exercise were always less balky and more interested.

As a result of his experiments he concluded that imitation was a real evil that had to be broken before real rhetoric teaching could begin. This imitation seemed to be an external compulsion. Little children didn't have it. It seemed to come later on, possibly as a result of school itself.

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I like this excerpt. It fascinates me just how much the same concept can be applied to other things. Take photography, for example. I've lost count of the number of times when I know I've wanted to take a photo, but not known precisely what I want to take a photo of. I'm not going to say much more, the excerpt speaks for itself.

The best way to succinctly describe this book? Thought provoking. If you haven't read it, I think you should.

(Thanks to American Studies at the University of Virginia for kindly providing the text I was after,
and @Hogan_ for the spark of inspiration linking this to photography... not to mention recommending it to me in the first place!)

Master of my craft

OHAI! Remember me? Yeah, I know I've not been blogging as often as I could be. I don't know if that will change much any time soon, but here's a little post.



If I do something, I enjoy doing it well. I know this is fairly common, but today was a very good example of doing something well.

We were paddling the river North Esk, near Edzell. It's a grade 3, with a couple of grade 4 rapids. To the non paddler, that's lots of whitewater rapids with a couple of rapids in particular that could do you some serious damage... if you mess with them.

There are many reasons why today was a good day for me:

1. I paddled the entire river without going upside down. 
2. I got myself to every place I wanted to go. 
3. I paddled a rapid that I hadn't paddled before.
4. I realised that my fear wasn't always completely rational.

On point number 1 I'll grant you that if I went upside down I could have rolled back up. But in Scotland, in January, when the air is barely above freezing (let alone the water); staying above water is far more preferable. Paddling an entire river trip without going upside down isn't that uncommon for me these days, but it's still nice when it happens.

Number 2 has taken me a few years of experience to work up to. I'm glad I put in the effort. There is a satisfaction in navigating a river well which I find hard to describe in a mere blog post such as this. It's the feeling of being a master of my craft. If I were to simply float down the river without putting in any paddle strokes it is inevitable that I will bump into things. Today, I navigated a passage through the line of least resistance in the river. If I wanted to grab an 'eddy' (a bit of slack water), I got there. This all feels inexplicably fantastic.

Number 3 was a scary grade 4 rapid affectionately referred to as 'Rocks of Solitude'. Until today, every time I've looked at this rapid it has completely psyched me out. Why? Mainly due to the sheer speed and power of the rapid. When we inspected the it today, it looked good. I felt good. I saw a good line. I told myself to man up, and paddled it. I hit the line I wanted to, and had a clean run. It was fun.

Number 4 might take a bit more explaining. There are two grade 4 rapids on the stretch of river we paddled today. As you may have seen from the video, rapids can & will hurt if you get them wrong. Every single time I've paddled this river I have always walked around the 'Rocks of Solitude', but then run the 'Fishladder Falls'. My runs of 'Fishladder Falls' haven't always gone entirely to plan, but I made it.

Today's realisation was this: the grading system is merely a method of comparing rapids to one another. The first time I paddled fishladder, I didn't know it was a grade 4. Thus, I didn't talk myself out of it. As long as you're aware of the risks and how best to mitigate them (i.e. DON'T HIT THAT ROCK!) then there's no reason why you shouldn't go for it. I've proved to myself a few times now that I can cope with a grade 4 rapid, so now I've got no reason not to take on another!

Anyway, today I felt like a master of my craft in the environment I put myself in. It's worth nothing the importance of the second part of that statement, because there are many environments and rapids which I might not be able to take on with quite as much confidence.


There is one question which I haven't answered yet: what can I take on in my kayak next?

Resolutions? Pah!

Happy new year everyone!

The party is over, and everyone has gone home or gone to bed. Somehow I seem to be wide awake. This may be due to the fact that over the period of a couple of weeks off work I appear to be slowly becoming nocturnal. I was awake until 4.30am this morning, then slept for most of the day! What better opportunity to update my blog for the first time in far too long?

Anyway... I can think of many resolutions that I should probably make going into 2012:

- Kayak more
- Read more (I have an entire 'to read' shelf in addition to everything on my kindle)
- Lose a bit of weight
The list goes on...

But I won't be making any new year's resolutions this year. Why? Because I'll forget about them all. Even if I made a whole load of resolutions I can guarantee that I would have forgotten them all by January 10th. At the latest.

Instead I plan to continue life as normal. It's worked for me so far.


Actually, wait a minute. Isn't the world supposed to end this year...?