Simon Pearson - minor9th.com

Saying goodbye to Velcro

posted in Life

2 Comments »

Last Saturday we lost our nine-year-old basset hound Velcro after a long battle with a faulty heart valve. She was a beautiful, loving dog, and most people who know me have at some point met her or heard of her.

Life since has been incredibly hard. I only knew Velcro for the last three years of her life but she turned round my fear of dogs into love, gave me rhythm, shared a lot of unconditional love and made me a very happy person. Obviously she liked to sneeze and fart and roll in fox poo, as dogs do, and I’ll miss those things too. Things are quieter now, too quiet. No claws tapping on the wooden floor, no howly yawns, no sleepwoofing, no wagging her tail against the radiator. It’s going to take a long time to get used to.

I know she’s busy chasing squirrels and rolling around in nice smells in her dreams. We’re missing you, lady V.

2010 in words and music

posted in Life, Music

No Comments »

Because it’s tradition, here’s what I was mostly listening to in 2010 (graph thanks to the LastGraph generator)

Was totally obsessed by Ellie Goulding’s debut album this year, as well as Gorillaz Plastic Beach and Underworld.

Over at Meish, for the tenth year running (!) Meg has asked folk to share their year in no more than 24 words for the Mayfly Project 2010. Here’s mine:

Ran a lot, broke hand, finished marathon, cried, burnt at Glastonbury, burnt in Nevada, no redundancy, new job, hard work. Content. Big challenges ahead.

How was your year?

London staycation

posted in Life

8 Comments »

After a few months of hard slog launching a shiny new website for one of them broadcaster types, I’ve rewarded myself with two whole weeks of unpaid time off before I start a super-exciting new job, in which fun must be had.

Here’s my to-do list so far:

• Sleep a bit more.
• Go and see the 2010 Turner Prize exhibition. It’s always more fun to balk at the madness / marvel at the wonder before a winner is selected.
• Play with the hound (which is also a good excuse for a gratuitous Velcro pic)
• Go to bikram yoga. Three reviews I’ve heard of it:
  “It’s like going on holiday”
  “You will feel sick”
  “I like bikram but you do get a lot of control freak moon worshipers. Fortunately it’s so hot you can’t think.”
• Show my arduino kit some love
• Finish uploading pictures
• Take some new pictures
• Start preparing for having seven people round for Christmas (wah!)
• Make Christmas puddings. Luckily I know how to do this already.
• Finish reading The Color Purple. I read the first half on a Eurostar journey so this won’t take long, but I need to buy tissues first
• Play balloonacy
• Find some circuit training / boot camp shenanigans to go to
• Enter another half marathon
• Write a bit about being a product owner and Scrum. This is what I have been doing for a living and over the last few years I’ve gathered a few thoughts to share.
• Fall off the productivity wagon by accidentally spending a day drinking gin and watching Trisha

What else should I add to my list? And can you help me achieve any of them?

Training for the London Marathon: Week 4

posted in Life, London Marathon 2010

No Comments »

On Tuesday, a chap next to me at the gym fell off his treadmill. He recovered himself pretty well and, after shooting off the back and into the cross trainer behind, got back on and carried on gingerly. Particularly impressive considering he was going at a fair lick of 12km/h at a hefty incline. It’s always been a big fear of mine – it only takes one wrong footfall to end up faceslamming the deck with significant force.

Obviously as the internet (and procrastionation) knows no bounds, someone has already created a playlist of You’ve Been Framed style treadmill capers. Watch and wince.

Things I learned this week:

1. Eating cherries can reduce muscle pain
2. 94% of runners are College/University educated, and 20% say their favourite restaurant chain is McDonalds. This and other statistics from the 2007 Running USA Conference in San Diego can be found over at Dean Karnazes’ blog
3. Whilst running long distances, the body cannot, in fact, reabsorb waste water from the bladder, as my dubious running book told me. However, Frogs can reabsorb glucose from their bladders.

Next week: it’s all about the sponsorship…

• Days to go: 84
• Miles this week: a lowly 13, as I missed my long run last weekend…
• Eating: an astonishing amount of pasta, and jelly babies (cherries aren’t in season)
• Listening to: Four Tet – There Is Love In You

Running through the night

posted in Keeping Fit, Life

2 Comments »

At midnight on midsummer’s night, I’ll be attempting the midnight sun half marathon in Tromsø, inside the Arctic circle. The sun will hopefully be shining. There will only be a few hundred other people running. We may have to run across a runway.

Inspired by David’s marathon blog (and success!), I thought I’d post up a few thoughts here in the run up to the race. This will be my second half marathon – I completed my first in Windsor last September in lush, green, sunny and sweaty circumstances. It was a moving experience – reaching the finish line to the sound of Fleetwood Mac was euphoric – so much so that the following 10 minutes is some sort of endorphin-fuelled blur before being fed some Guinness.

Training began in earnest a couple of weeks ago, and immediately I started I succumbed to pesky chest-infection from hell. Things have picked up again though now I’m better and last week I managed a 4k, 6k and 10k set of runs as well as a rather misty Body Pump class.

So it’s onwards and upwards for the next 6 weeks or so – with sporadic progress updates here. In the meantime, Mr Jones and his knees are taking part in the Helsinki half marathon this weekend – and he needs your sponsorship goodness!

Music to wash up to

posted in Life, Music

No Comments »

It’s Saturday, I’m resting at home recovering from evil cold from hell, and I’m avoiding chores by looking for good music to wash up to.

Here’s what I’ve got so far:

• Martika’s Kitchen – Martika
• The Boy Does Nothing – Alesha Dixon
• Dishwasher – Fujiya & Miyagi
• Soul Kitchen – The Doors
• Wash Your Face In My Sink – Dream Warriors
• I Get Wet – Andrew W.K. (remember him?!)
• Soft And Wet – Prince
• High And Dry – Radiohead

Got any suggestions? Add them to this spotify playlist.

And now back to the grind.

What I listened to in 2008

posted in Life, Music

No Comments »

Thanks to the awesome LastGraph, I’ve mined my last.fm profile in a very elegant and beautiful way to look at listening habits over 2008, with the output below. No big surprises here. Had a couple of weeks off in late October/November so big chunk of listening there. Intriguied by a burst of listening to The Who last January. Might be time for another Baba-binge.

What I listened to in 2008, originally uploaded by minor9th.

I’ve also created a playlist of things which I enjoyed or discovered in 2008, which is presented below with mp3 links where I could find them. I’m sure I can help you out if you’re after an easier-to-digest version of the below…

1. Feel the love – Cut Copy
2. Paris Is Burning (Cut Copy Remix) – Ladyhawke
3. How We Became – Jeremy Warmsley
4. Quiet Houses – Fleet Foxes
5. Falling out of Reach – Guillemots
6. Grounds For Divorce – Elbow
7. Ada – The National
8. Edith and the Kingpin – Joni Mitchell
9. The Rip – Portishead
10. Black And Gold – Sam Sparro
11. Bring It Home – Nitin Sawhney feat. Imogen Heap
12. Lump Sum – Bon Iver
13. Sex On Fire – Kings Of Leon
14. Bleeding All Over You – Martha Wainwright
15. Possibly Maybe – Final Fantasy & Ed Droste
16. Hiphopopotamus Vs. Rhymenoceros (Featuring Rhymenoceros and the Hiphopopotamus) – Flight Of The Conchords
17. A-Punk – Vampire Weekend

Who’d live in a house like this?

posted in Life, London

No Comments »

Over the last month or so I’ve been flat-hunting extensively, crossing the threshold of various abodes listening to the same estate agent spiel.

Sadly the experience was nothing out of the ordinary, and despite what anyone says, garden flats will always be a bit dark; rooms remain the same size regardless of which way around you put the bed; if there are bars on the window there’s probably a good reason why; 15 minutes walk from the tube normally means 15 minute bus ride.

But most entertainment has come from dodgy ads on Gumtree, where property marketing through exquisite photography is the name of the game. These pictures represent just a few of the classy pads on offer in London this August.

Being an estate agent places stringent demands on the memory – it’s a job where the turnover of faces is high. But our charming, gelled-up letting agent Dan should really have realised that when I’m about to part with a large wodge of cash I’d rather not have my hand shaken by someone who calls me Peter.

Luckily we’ve found somewhere a little more inspiring than the above. And this post is the sole result of acute procrastination from packing.

• Check out more bad property listings…
• I customised a basic Yahoo! pipe to filter Gumtree rental ads by location. With a bit of tinkering it should work for whoever wants it. Unfortunately their RSS feed isn’t sophisticated enough to also filter by price – if anyone knows how to do this I’m all ears!

Calvin Harris and the Cinzano debacle

posted in Life

No Comments »

And so that was Christmas. And what have we done? Well, bugger all other than eat and drink actually. On Christmas day alone I gained an astounding 5lb. This sudden weight gain combined with the sinking feeling that many of last year’s resolutions will have to be rolled over to this year, has kick started a new sense of urgency to Get Things Done (though so far I’m resisting the advice to sort my entire life into piles).

So I’m making only one modest addition to last year’s good intentions. After a brief trip to Paris at the end of November I half-resolved that it’d be bloody marvellous to live there for a while at some point. The city feels a little headier and more compact than London, and so I’ve been listening to the not-great-but-not-terrible learn french by podcast podcast, and I’ll be picking up a 12-week course from February to brush up on my “mais oui” and “bien sur”.

Incidentally, one of the things that amuses me about podcasts is that lots of them seem to have ever-so-slightly self-conscious theme music that doesn’t really seem to know what it’s there for. And it’s apparently a small industry in its own right – the creators of the Twit (This Week In Tech) podcast theme say “A theme song will make your podcast sound professional right from the start”. Well. That’s me told.

More incidentally – if you’re a bit of a geek and haven’t yet subscribed to the Guardian’s Tech weekly podcast, do so now. First episode was a little down on 2007 but was pretty insightful and very-well put together.

To finish, here’s a reassuring list of nice things that I lack the skill to weave into a paragraph:

• In a post very reminiscent of one I made well over six years ago, I can happily confirm that the bitch is back! Again! Hooray!
• Auto top-up. What a drunken queue-beating revelation. And the current promotion of having five free iTunes downloads when you purchase it has enabled me to jiggle around the flat to the sound of Acceptable in the 80s by Calvin Harris without feeling 79 pence worth of guilt (watch him move around awkwardly with a large reptile thing if you like)
• Cinzano: justsayno.
• Actually, there’s one more new year resolution, and that’s to make mushy peas. Just like Calvin Harris: so wrong, yet so right.

Merry Christmas

posted in Life

No Comments »

Baubles, originally uploaded by minor9th.

Hope everyone’s having a restful time of things today. I’m a bit drunk already. More soon.