Looking around, most places wanted 20 notes a tyre for anything decent … however wiggle had some tyres made by Vittoria for £20 a set, with tubes, so I thought I would give them a shot.

They are pretty decent … and also are apparently puncture resistant … I have had 2 flats in a month and a half, which I guess is quite good going. They are already getting sliced by glass etc though, although not all the way through (I don’t think). At 320g for a racing tyre, they are not the lightest but I thought that they would probably have extra material (which ain’t a bad thing in my book).

However I do use a fair bit of electricity, due to the shower, my addiction to tea, and leaving the laptop on all the time.

Last week, nPower announced some price rises (I’m with nPower, by the way) so I started thinking about how I could reduce my energy consumption. I get a shower and drink most of my tea at work, and also shower at the gym, which cuts down those expenses. It is handy to have my laptop on all the time due to cron jobs … so I started working out how much power my lights use. I added all the wattages up, which came to 1136W!!

Holy crap, if I have all my lights on for 3 hours a day, thats about 65p a day, almost £20 a month, £234 a year! My main sitting room light pumps out 300W, which is about a fifth of the kettle!?

So anyway, I went on a bit of a mission, wrote down all the lightbulb fittings and wattages in my flat, and bought a shit-load of energy saving bulbs. £95 of bulbs, to be exact (although I bought £20 of bulbs by mistake which didn’t fit into one of the customised light fittings, so I had to get more that would fit).

Most of the bulbs were pretty cheap (i.e the standard bayonet/screw bulbs, and candle bulbs), the real cost came in when buying the little GU10 reflector bulbs which came in at a fiver each (I bought £60 of these!!).

So, do they work? All the standard replacements are pretty decent, give off good light and start up quickly. There is a delay of half a second before they start at 50% bright, rising to full brightness after a minute.

The GU10 reflectors are slower to start up, however once they are going, they are just as bright as the halogens. The ones I have in my kitchen are “cold white” (by ignorance) … most lights in this country are “warm white” (2700K) which look a bit nicer in my opinion. Something to bear in mind if you go down this route.

So anyway, adding up the wattages of the new lights … 184W, about a sixth of the original output. Sweet, I’m going to be less skint later this year!

I went to The Hoog for Hogmanay, which was basically a Celidh/Big party in the assembly rooms. It was a great night, my mum, auntie, uncle and cousin came up from Englandshire which made it a bit of a special evening. I had a bit too much to drink, managed to rip my girlfriends tights with some dancing involving aerial maneuvers, which seemed a good idea at the time! Also managed to spin her straight into one of those huge event speakers … not the best!

So well, at this time its usually good to take stock of what has gone on, and what I could do better/achieve this coming year.

“Good stuff” thats happened in the last year

• Moved out of parents house, into my own place
• Switched jobs
• Met my girlfriend
• Took part in the Polish mountain bike stage race
• Started doing lots more road biking
• Tentatively started running
• Became a bit better with managing money etc (I was forced to)
• Increased my understanding of fitness, what works for me etc
• Continued to go to the gym, figured out some time efficient exercises, which mainly involve free weights
• Managed to only miss one Spanish class all year …

“Not so good stuff” thats happened in the last year

• Haven’t traveled as much as I would have liked to
• Missed a lot of bike events due to money and transportation problems
• Found it hard to make time for friends of mine
• Although I continued to take Spanish classes, I found it increasingly difficult to find time to do the homework and have not been getting enough from the classes
• Was issued with a statutory notice for roof repairs

So, looking ahead, what would I like to do/achieve this year?

• Work on career stuff
  In general, my new job has been going pretty well, however, like everything its all about time and effort and I feel the need to focus some of my efforts on this stuff, at least for the forseeable future.
• Redecorate both bedrooms in my flat
  In a world of procrastination, I think it would be prudent to have a specific yearly objective to redecorate both bedrooms. Number one priority is the second bedroom though, and I’m considering turning it into a study/spare room.
• Do a half marathon
  One of my friends has invited me to do the “Forthside Half” in April. In general if I can keep training occasionally I should be able to manage this. My longest run so far has been about 9 miles which took me roughly 65 minutes.
• Try a triathlon
  I’m sort of drawn to do a triathlon somehow. Currently I’m not too bad on the bike, my running is improving, and although I haven’t been swimming in ages, I think with a bit of practise this could be my real strength. This is a bit of a wildcard though and I’m not 100% sure I will actually do this.
• Do some other events I haven’t done before
  Rather than consuming time and money doing the same stuff year in year out, I may try a few new things. A friend and her boyfriend have invited me to do the Arctic Circle 24 adventure race as a trio, although that is in the earliest stages of organisation.
  Dougal took part in the Etape Caledonia last year, which he said was very good, and is something I have my eye on definitely. In addition both him and Tom have entered the Grand Raid Cristalp, something I have wanted to do for years but I think at the moment, may be a bit beyond me.
  I may also be doing the biking part of the Glentress duathlon, and may give The Mighty Deerstalker a go, however they are both in the same weekend!
• Continue with Spanish
  This will be my third year of study, and although its only once a week, it does stick after a while.
• Have a non/minimally bike related holiday
  I don’t know how likely this will be, both in terms of time and well, I always seem to pack a bike!? A spanish speaking country will probably be the destination so I can continue practising the language.
• Read some novels
  I read one or two books in the last year, and although this is a total time pit, its also fairly relaxing and probably good for my English.
• Get a TV
  Although I never really watched TV when I did have one, it is annoying not having one to watch films etc on. This is dependent on how good/bad the roof repairs are and how much money (if any) I have left over.

So, not a big list eh? Most of that stuff is a brain dump, and I probably wont achieve any of it. I hope everyone had a good new year, best of luck for 2008!

So what I have been up to? Hmm good question.

I went to watch the MTB world championships in Fort William last month, it was a great laugh, camped illegally, did the portaloo challenge - fitted 13 people in a portaloo (all piled in after some poor unsuspecting random person forgot to lock the door and was mid-dump). Oh, the mountain biking was good to watch too!

Had a week off work last week, and went up to Aviemore hillwalking with the gf. We were very lucky with the weather and it was a great few days.

I cycled down to my grandparents in Dumfries at the weekend to catch up, and more importantly … watch the rugby world cup final! It was pretty good to see England being all hyped up then smacked down even with their petty attempts to kill ball.

Otherwise, still going out on training rides with the ERC, but things are slowing down now which is good. I bought myself a pair of Asics running shoes last month which I’m very pleased with, most I have managed is about 7-8 miles so far as my muscles aren’t used to it … the last few runs my feet have been bleeding as well!!

The new job is going ok … apparently I have passed my probation period … woo! Its really forced me to raise my game though, there is a lot of peer scrutinisation and I am learning loads about mitigating risk when it comes to developing software. If anyone from my university course is reading this … there is quite a lot of SEOC stuff in there.

Anyway, I’m just in from a training ride and need some more food. Caio.

The most interesting (and to me, entirely alien) feature of this workplace is that everything is tested. Its like seoc on steroids (depending on the size of the project). Some of the guys I work with are very very sharp and definitely keep you on your toes. I’m constantly finding myself anticipating the feedback I might get for any piece of work … and the work I have done so far is not exactly overly complicated, but watch this space I started only 8 days ago! There is also more code than I have ever seen in my life, you could probably spend 5 years as a developer and still not know how some aspects of the system work!!

Overall I’m pretty happy, it seems quite a nice place to work, and the bike lockup has keyfob access which is ace. Its a 7-9 mile commute in the morning which takes about 30 minutes, and there are showers there that I can use so I don’t smell too bad.

In short:

• I’m a year older
• Traveling to Poland next week for the stage race
• I have a exciting new job and am currently working through my notice period
• Oli, Chris and I came third overall at 10 Under the Ben, second in trios
• Still doing Spanish but having a break for a month because I’m so busy
• Other stuff I wont talk about here

Oh, this post is coming from my new laptop, a Lenovo N100. Its a budget model but is pretty decent and does everything I require.

Currently sitting here eating natural yogurt, and am about to go to bed in 5 minutes for an early night. Have a training ride early tomorrow. Damn this week has been crazy busy.

Compared to the other 5 guys going from Edinburgh, I’m very unfit … Ken was the Scottish Road Race champion one year, Lawrence is of similar fitness, Dougal has raced the SXC for years, Tom has been doing 24 hour races solo (continuous riding!), and my partner Oli is just plain strong and races at junior level.

So for the first time in my life I have been forced to train for something, otherwise I won’t finish - pain now will mean less pain later. To be honest I have no idea what I’m doing either so I just go for different rides of varying lengths and intensities, but generally with a large emphasis on keeping going and continuous effort.

I have modded my mountain bike … its codename is now Jey-1 (Just winding Timbo up here!) … check out the fearsome bar ends!

Also went for a bike ride into the Scottish Borders yesterday afternoon, passed the spot where I saw a dead motorcyclist a month ago in Yarrow valley … there was only a bouquet of flowers by the side of the road to indicate the prior carnage.

I have been living here 2 weeks now, and I have to say - its awesome. I am really enjoying the peace and quiet, and being close to a lot of my friends (and further away from others). However, I miss having a dog and sitting down in the evening and talking nonsense to my mother/sister … I think they are missing me too, but I needed to do this (being 26 and all its a bit pathetic living at home!). I still don’t have a TV, computer > 300mhz, king size mattress or a microwave, still trying to get this stuff organised!

Anyway, I relented and got broadband from Virgin Media this week, just went for the super basic package and will probably just use some third party VOIP service over this connection, so for £18 all in its definitely not bad.

In other news I’m experimenting with going tea-total, that is, not drinking any tea. On Monday I had a headache but in general have been feeling good. Aye.

Decided to take the day off decorating, and went for a easy mountain bike ride round one of my favorite local loops, however the weather had really taken its toll on the trail and I had to stop on at least 10-15 occasions to push around natural obstacles. Anyway it was quite nice to get out on the mountain bike as I have only been on the road for the last fortnight. Also sped round a corner into a fallen tree which was interesting!

One thing PC users can do that Mac users can’t