Well I had my second run the other evening, that's Tuesday the 30th of June, and it was a lot easier. We actually ran from our house and discovered a short loop that comes right back to the front door which matches the first week's training run almost perfectly.

We'll see how it does for the second week, but we have plenty little side tracks to add onto it to make it a little longer, one's even off road and over a big hill, not looking forward to that one.

Continue reading "Running Training: Day Two" »

This was a shock to us that the night before Saturday 27th of June, during some wine partaking, we decided just to go for it the next day, no planning, no organisation, just doing it. I looked out the marathon training plan that my mate Dave Morrow had sent me and we continued with the wine.

Come the morning, slightly dodgy heads, we leapt into action and headed down to the beach at Silverknowes.

Continue reading "Running Training: Day One" »

I've been talking for some time about doing something for charity, a long bike ride, a virtual row around Britain, something to raise money for either the British Heart Foundation or some form of cancer care, however I've always talked about it and never really followed through.

My friend Dave Morrow kept talking about how I should try running, and slowly, over time, circumstances colluded. My bike, my second favourite form of exercise, is broken and while it is I'm piling on weight, a colleague, similar build to me, trained and ran a 10k, and then Dave sent me a training programme for a marathon.

Continue reading "Marathon training, me?" »

Companies need customers, customers buy their product, hand over money, and that money goes to pay the wages of the people working for it and make the company bigger and bigger. More than just getting the customers they have to retain them, that's a key to growing a company, that's what you see every major company from superstore to bank trying to do, keep the customers they have.

To retain them they need to do something really important, and that's address any problems or questions they have with the company as soon as they have them and make sure they don't arise again. How do they do that? They keep in touch with them, they open channels of communication with them and give them the means to contact them.

Continue reading "Companies, customers and internet contacts" »

For those that are still following my personal site thanks are due, thanks for continuing to follow me despite a long quiet period. There’s been a long time with nothing being written, but I’m hoping to start changing that and pick up the posting once again.

It’s been a tough time personally, although if you follow Filmstalker (the site, Twitter, or any social network I'm on) then you’ll be wondering why I haven’t been online here. Well, it's pretty easy, I just haven't wanted to write much about myself.

Continue reading "The Quiet Period" »

I couldn't believe what ITV have done tonight, it may seem trivial to those outside Scotland, but it goes to show how the country is treated when it comes to National versus English television.

It seems that while England are served their national team playing football, Scotland can't see theirs, nor can they see the programme that's usually on at the same time.

Continue reading "England dominates British television" »

I'm really getting fed up with the way the news is being presented these days, more and more it's short, sharp headlines, with reporters pushing people for something controversial or interesting whatever the story and whatever the real story behind it.

There's also the growing trend of leaping on a story that's “hot gossip” rather than doing some investigative journalism – why explain the failure of UN forces in the Congo and what the truth behind the problems there is when we can focus on the inane and blown out of all proportion story of Russell Brand, Jonathan Ross and Andrew Sachs?

Continue reading "Shock horror news reports from BBC!" »

Back in March we received a note through our door saying that there was going to be maintenance on the main runway at Edinburgh Airport. It would take place overnight, and would mean that the night time flights would have to be diverted to a backup runway. This meant they would have to fly over the south west corner of the city, and therefore our house.

I thought at the time it all seemed sensible and the period of time wasn't too bad, and to be honest we've grown to live the with sound of large, low flying jets over our house throughout the night. However now and again the noise is incredible, like last night.

Continue reading "Edinburgh Airport diversions and noise" »

I had to laugh, although I've been avoiding Formula 1 after I've just lost all hope of fairness in the sport after years of McLaren bashing and Ferrari winning, I've heard the news about the attempts at the Japanese Grand Prix to focus the minds of the fans on the environment.

In order to highlight the problem the tyre manufacturer painted the grooves in the tyres green.

Continue reading "Formula 1 pretends to be green" »

Just a quick bit of background before I had over to my father. For his entire working life he's been involved in Environmental Health, from the beginnings of his career as a Sanitary Inspector, all the way up to being second in charge of Aberdeen's Environmental Health department - everything from noise to water pollution, from food hygiene to dog wardens. Even after his retirement he was involved in food hygiene consultancy and pest control.

One day he sent me this little write up of how, according to official guidelines and laws, you are supposed to slice a loaf of bread, including all the pre-requisites that you should have in place.

Continue reading "How to slice a loaf, legally" »

No, I'm not seven, I'm thirty seven, but I've never been to a football match before, and only twice set foot in a football stadium. Surprisingly both times were Pittodrie, once was very recently for the charity zip slide, and the other was way back in 1983 to watch the team return with the European Cup Winners Cup.

However as a wonderful gift some very important people at Aberdeen Football Club had given the family something that might add a little bit of cheer to the terrible past few weeks we've had.

Continue reading "A day at Pittodrie, my first football match" »

When the two new Cadbury's adverts first appeared they caused a stir because they were utterly fantastic. The gorilla playing the drums to Phil Collins and the airport vehicles getting pimped up and racing each other in the middle of the night on the runway to Queen's Don't Stop Me Now, both were crazy ideas that worked wonderfully.

However now they've re-released them with exactly the same footage just different musical tracks, and suddenly the originals have been cheapened and you realise there is nothing more to this campaign.

Continue reading "Cadbury's advertising company out of ideas?" »

I've talked about the obvious bias and corruption in Formula 1 many times before, particularly when it involves Ferrari and McLaren, where McLaren are almost always penalised and Ferrari almost always get away with whatever has happened.

The last two events in the last two races have just sickened me of the sport and I think it's time that some of these teams walked away from the FIA and either dropped Forumla 1 as a “sport” or start a newer, more honest organisation.

Continue reading "Formula 1 proves bias for the last time" »

On Saturday 16th my brother David went on a charity zip slide off of a stand in Pittodrie Football Club down to the other side of the pitch, it was all to raise money for Macmillan Cancer Support, a charity that has suddenly become very close to our family since our mother has been diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer - you can read more about that in the original article.

I went along to capture the event on film so that we could prove to all the people who donated that he'd done it, and when he dropped down he persuaded me to jump just before he went for a second go. So we got photos of that too, and they're all here as proof.

Continue reading "Macmillan charity zip slide" »

John Hutton is the Secretary of State for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform for the UK, and just yesterday he said “The era of cheap energy is over”, and I couldn't believe he had the audacity to say that.

After all, what has his government been doing? Sitting on their arses ignoring the situation for the last umpteen years? I'm afraid so.

Continue reading "The era of cheap energy is over...tough luck says government" »

What do you do when your employees are blogging? What, you think they aren't? Even if you don't have technical people in your employ the chances are that some of them are blogging. Maybe not under their name, perhaps under a pseudonym, and maybe not about your company, but then again, maybe they are.

They might not be blogging solely about your organisation, but you can be sure that one of them has writing something about their working life, and mentioning your company, or perhaps even you.

So what do you do? Punish and threaten them to stop? Leave them be? No, there's a much better idea and something that will benefit everyone concerned, including your organisation.

Continue reading "Scared of employees blogging? Try using them." »

Recently my mother was diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer, there are two words you wish you'll never have to use in your lifetime about anyone you love, and since then both my mother and father have been through so much it's incredible.

She's really been through a lot in the past few months, and yet she's managing to stay extremely positive and she's just about always managing to raise a smile. Since finding out about the cancer it's been a tough journey for her.

Continue reading "My mother, cancer, and Macmillan" »

My MP was talking in the Commons yesterday about the Government's rise in the tax for owning a car and tries to explain it away by saying that this is to persuade the car manufacturers to make efficient cars.

That's despite the fact that it's penalising the individual and not for mileage or emissions, but for actually owning the car and never even starting the engine.

Continue reading "My MP defends car owners' tax" »

My local MP Alistair Darling looks like he'll be lobbying for a Nuclear Waste Dump in or around Edinburgh, or at least supporting it if he follows all of the Government's current policies for nuclear power.

Here's what he's been saying about nuclear power, typically falling within the Labour policy.

Continue reading "Nuclear dump for Edinburgh? - Labour's green nuclear" »

While jets fly back and forth from the UK, US and China for the G8 summit for Gordon Brown and the Labour party, some even empty, motorists here are facing what Labour call a "Green Tax" for their cars.

This is about as much of a Green Tax as their policy of Nuclear power stations is green. Quite bluntly, Labour are lying and this is far removed from anything to do with a green issue.

Continue reading "Labour lies about Green Tax" »