I was using the Nex-7 with the Carl Zeiss 24mm f1/8 lens and headed down to Marina Bay in Singapore to get some night shots. These were all taken on the move without the usage of a tripod so whilst these images are pretty sharp at a small size their is some noise on the original sized files.

Each of the images will link out to Flickr should you want to view the original files or look at more of the images.

Night scene across the Bay

Looking across the bay at Marina Bay Sands

Looking across at the Esplanade

Bridge across to Marina Bay Sands

Same again

And again

Orchard “Thing” near Marina Bay Sands – Music Theatre I believe

Playing with some of the presets – focusing on the colour red inside Marina Bay Sands mall

I think this was a HDR preset looking across the Bay

Playing again with the partial colour preset on Red

It sounds pretty lame, but literally the only thing I needed at the time was an umbrella (since bizarrely enough I hadn’t got round to purchasing one in Singapore, and was therefore constantly getting soaked or stuck in coffee shops).

Ordinarily I’d just look for something cheap and cheerful that would get the job done, but since it was for Christmas I figured what the hell lets see what the options are (yes, it was a slow Christmas and I was a little bored).

After a bit of digging I came across a company called Blunt Umbrellas and after a little bit of reading decided their standard sized umbrella was the one for me.

Christmas day came and I wildly (as you can imagine) ripped off the wrapping paper to find my beautiful new blunt umbrella. Having been thoroughly impressed with the umbrella so far I thought I’d put together a quick review for anybody else considering a purchase.

The Benefits of the Blunt Umbrella

Look and Feel

Now usually I would baulk at the idea of paying ~£40 for an umbrella, but in all honesty that price feels cheap for the quality and design of the product. It just feels well made and extremely sturdy.

Blunt Tips

Ok so the key is the name, but another great advantage to the umbrella is the blunted tips which unlike standard umbrellas means you aren’t going to take someone’s eye out. This might not be a hugely appealing feature to someone who lives out in the sticks, but for those of you (like me) who spends time in a close quarter, city environment this is a major benefit.

Apparently the blunted tips also increase the life span of the product, but I’ll save you from listening to me attempting to explain the science behind that conclusion.

Radial Tensioning System (RTS) & Double Struts

Blunts very own “revolutionary” (their words not mine) radial tensioning system, coupled with double struts from handle to canopy creates a very strong, unflappable umbrella which has been tested up to speeds of 70mph.

I’ve honestly not gone looking for gale force winds, but nevertheless its been a pretty gusty 2011/12 in the UK and I can honestly say that the Blunt is as stable as a rock in heavy wind and rain.

Check out the video below for additional evidence:

Conclusion

Forgetting all the technical mumbo jumbo available from the Blunt website this is a very good product that I would highly recommend to anybody living in a wet, windy location. Its extremely well made and unlike your £3 throw away umbrella, its going to last a considerable length of time before you’ll need to replace it.

There is a number of models currently available and whilst you can order them directly from Blunt I would recommend you order from Amazon (some links provided below) as the delivery is quicker and far cheaper than buying direct.

Standard Sized Blunt Umbrella – £35.99

Extra Large Blunt Umbrella – £54.00

Blunt Lite Umbrella – £39.00

Firebox.com also have the standard sized Blunt Umbrella in stock at £35.99 for the black version.

If by any chance anybody having read this post goes and buys a Blunt umbrella, please do let me know what you think.

Sony also announced that the Nex-7 would go on sale to the general public in October later that year, but with the terrible flooding in Thailand hitting the Sony production chain they were unable to meet this original time frame. Across the web there was widespread disappointment, but obvious understanding of the unforeseen circumstances.

Since then however Sony have consistently demonstrated their ability to alienate and frustrate their loyal customers. As we approach the end of January only a small fraction of customers have received their Nex-7, but the real issue is the total lack of communication from Sony on when additional stock is due or inconsistent statements from service staff and retailers alike.

Many customers who pre-ordered the Nex-7 back in October are still waiting for their item to be shipped. This in isolation is not what is most upsetting to people, its the fact that Sony have constantly failed to deliver on their commitments and aren’t providing a regular communication (of any kind) to help people understand when stock is next due.

With social media being such a strong force on customer sentiment and brand perception Sony have really missed an opportunity to side step a major PR fail here. Instead they’ve really annoyed a lot of people and damaged their brand significantly.

The leading forums and websites in the photography industry are awash with criticism and negativity aimed at Sony. What have Sony done about it? absolutely nothing, except continue to add further fuel to the fire by their lack of communication and conflicting statements from employees in their own organisation.

A classic example in the last few days was in Canada where the Sony Canada site suddenly changed their stock status of the Nex-7 to “in stock” prompting a general flurry of orders and hope that a number of items were available. As it transpired, they actually had no stock and once again let down a ton of customers who now have to choose between cancelling their order or sitting on a pre-order wait list without any clarity for when the product will actually be in stock.

There is even some people questioning whether this was simply a tactic to generate pre-orders in the midst of a pending release of the Fuji X-Pro early in 2012.

What Should Sony Have Done?

Sony should be tightly managing their own communications around Nex-7 availability right down to their individual Sony Centres, rather than allowing rumour to drive excitement and then ultimately disappointment.

Sony also need to consider their own internal communications carefully because retailers and service centre support agents are all quoting completely different time frames. I called Sony UK recently and they told me the next shipment was due at the end of January, but then many other retailers  and local Sony support contacts are saying February or March – which is it?

Sony should have stuck up a blog or a single global location where updates could be provided about Nex-7 availability (hell, even Twitter or Facebook could of been a start). Not only would this have appeased the vast majority of customers, it would have benefited them in terms of direct web traffic and brand interaction.

A good example of this in practice would be at element14 where they launched a single group dedicated to providing information on supply as a result of the recent disaster in Japan. This single source helped to collate individual responses from all of the leading electronics companies and ensured that customers had the information necessary to understand any further impact to their own supply chains.

How difficult is it for a large electronics company such as Sony to replicate this rather simple technique and keep its customers informed?

People aren’t looking for cold, hard dates….a simple, yet semi-regular set of updates giving some rough estimates with lots of caveats would probably appease the vast majority of people.

Sort it out Sony….

Stock Check Links:

WEX photographic (Warehouseexpress.com)

Jessops

DigitalRev

I Personally love these kinds of tools and communities for a number of reasons:

1. I like having my training and workout information online, so I can access it from multiple locations and devices.
2. Making something public (like your training or a specific challenge) reinforces most peoples desire to not fail, increasing the likelihood that you aren’t going to miss sessions and let things slide.
3. Niche communities in particular allow for interaction with others, participating in similar activities. This allows you to share workout ideas and compare your performance against others, which further adds to that sense of motivation to out-do someone else and not let them out-do you.

I currently use 2 main sites: Strava (which I am convering here) and Garmin Connect. The following article is a personal review of Strava, which in my opinion is massively under marketed at the moment given its functionality and the opportunity.

I am nothing more than a paying member who has a great appreciation for what Strava has produced – I am not affiliated with them in any way, so this is an honest reflection of their product from my own personal viewpoint.

Strava

I joined Strava just over a year ago when I moved to Singapore and found it under fairly heavy usage across the individuals I cycled with. Initially I used it purely for cycling, but around 6 months ago they really upped the product by introducing Strava for running.

This was really important for me as I run a lot and wanted to ideally sync all my workouts into 1 single tool.

Its a globally accessible product, so as long as you can get a GPS signal you can join and upload your activity anywhere in the world.

Its completely free to use, but you do get some additional options for a small fee of $6 a month or $59 a year. These additional features are largely focused on extra filtering options, which you can read more about further into the article. For $59 a year – its worth it in my opinion.

How It Works

In order to use Strava you’ll need to have a Garmin GPS product (I currently use an Edge 800 for riding and a Garmin 410 for running, but most models are perfectly workable) or an iPhone/Android application, which can be downloaded from the App Store. Once you’re all set on that front you just head out for a ride, run or walk allowing your GPS to record the relevant data for that workout.

Once you’re finished you log into Strava and upload your activity directly into their system, which then breaks down your workout appropriately based on the activity type. Below is an example of the automated upload process for my Garmin410, which just uses the standard ANT+ agent you’d use to upload data to Garmin Connect.

There is time stamped information on the workouts as well as the ability to select and de-select which workouts get uploaded.

Once your data has been uploaded Strava really starts to shine. Your main dashboard will provide a view of all your recent workout data, plus a snapshot of what your connections on Strava have been up to. In this example I can see a few of the guys I ride with have obviously done a group session recently and no doubt given each other some “kudos” (aka the online high-five).

I can then click on my workout and take a more detailed look at the route and my performance across the entire session. For the running in particular Strava have added GAP analysis (grade adjusted pace) which estimates your equivalent pace when running on flat land. This is pretty useful when assessing your performance if you’ve been running on a particularly challenging route with lots of hills.

As its using Google Maps functionality you can zoom in/out and in most locations utilise the street view for a better look at your route (or someone else’s route). You can view this page here for a closer look.

Another great feature of Strava is your individual profile page that nicely summarises your activity over a customisable time period. At the top you see an activity summary for the last 4 weeks, which is broken down by the activity type (cycling or running). I’ve been in the UK recently without a bike, so my activity has been all running of late.

Below this you see your recent achievements, which is defined by pre-created and community generated segments (more on that in a minute). As an example though, you can see that I am the current segment leader for a particular stretch of road that has been called “The Close Climb” in essence meaning nobody has ran that segment quicker than me (at least nobody that is on Strava).

The final segment allows you to keep track of your total distance, time and metres climbed over the course of a month and year. If you click a single month it will then display all of the individual training sessions you completed, such that you can dig into the detail if required.

Its really all about the segments….

Aside from the fact that Strava just works bloody well, its real differentiator is the segment functionality, which is just flat out awesome.

The basic idea is that Strava have pre-created thousands of “segments” of road or trail that can then be added to or edited by the community. These segments then become challenge hot spots where individuals can in essence compete for the fastest time in those individual segments (they are separately handled for cycling and running). Of course if you’re less interested in beating other individuals then it still provides you with information about your own personal records.

When you complete and upload an activity Strava will pre-populate the segments you passed through and provide a snapshot of times and any achievements. The example above is from a standard Saturday morning ride and you can see multiple segments. Two in particular stand out though as achievements highlighted with the gold cups. You can view the screenshot in more detail here.

This is not only a great motivation tool, but it also drives a real sense of fun competition across the community. I can for example click on “NTU Climb” and look at the segment in more detail: where was it, where am I on the leader board and so forth. This particular segment is not hugely competitive with only 29 riders having ridden the segment and uploaded the workout to Strava, but there is other popular segments where you’re in competition with thousands of other individuals.

If you’ve taken the subscription route, which is $59 per year then you also get access to additional filtering tools that allows you to monitor your segment performance by age group and weight. I noticed as I was writing this article that they are offering two pretty amazing subscription options right now:

1. A Garmin 410 + 12 month subscription for $278
2. A Garmin Edge 500 + 12 month subscription for $278

Now granted both the Garmin models are second generation now (replaced by the Edge 800 and Garmin 610) but that is a great deal in anyone’s book – so get your butt over to Strava and sign up now.

A final note on the segment functionality is the recently added ability to also explore segments, which in essence allows you to find routes and segments that you could challenge yourself against. The below screenshot is showing all segments in Singapore, for cycling that have a hill specified as 3-4 (which basically means its steep!).

Some Negatives on Strava

As a product Strava is fantastic and constantly being improved with new functionality that I haven’t seen on similar products so far. The only negative I have against Strava at the moment is the size of the community and location of individuals using the product.

If you’re in a country where Strava hasn’t seen good adoption you still benefit from the many good product features it has to offer. Crucially though you’ll find most segments aren’t competed for, and thus you end up competing for segments with yourself which takes some of the edge off it.

If I owned Strava – I’d be putting a lot of dollars and time into marketing the product and increasing its adoption outside of key locales like the US. Obviously this is blue sky thinking, but I think the product is good enough to generate massive adoption if pushed harder.

Still, I have no doubt that its own organic growth through word of mouth will continue to see its adoption rise over time and I wish the team the best of luck in these efforts.

If you’ve read this review and decided to join, please feel free to follow me. I mainly ride and run in Singapore, but from time to time I head to the UK and US.

Any way, I thought I’d take the time to write a little review on the product as so far we’ve all been suitably impressed with its output.

The Philips Airfryer follows in the foot steps of the Tefal Actifry offering a healthier alternative to deep fat frying, as they both utilise minimal oil in the process of cooking your food.

From the reviews and forum discussions I observed prior to ordering the Airfryer a lot of people seemed to utilise them for cooking chips, but it’ll do plenty of other items as well including chicken nuggets, fish fingers, steak, pork chops, hamburgers, sausage rolls, drumsticks and chicken breast. To cut a long story short, if you can put it in your oven then chances are high it’ll be fine to go in your Airfryer.

At the point of writing we’ve used it on probably 10 separate occasions, but so far only to cook potato based products like wedges, roasties and chips – the results have been good on all.

This review will touch upon the process and quality of the chips that are produced as I think that’s what most people would purchase an Airfryer for (please for the love of god, don’t cook a steak in an Airfryer – even if they are good, that’s just criminal and you deserve to be locked up).

Step 1 – Having chopped up a couple of potatoes we soak them in water for about 30 minutes, which is recommended in the mini instruction card.

Step 2 – Having dried the potato thoroughly you add your oil to the bowl and shake the potato around to get a good coating on them. Below is a picture highlighting the required oil – as you can see its really not a lot (1 table spoon to be exact). Top Tip: the instructions suggest using olive oil, but using vegetable works much better in my opinion.

Step 3 – Once you have coated the potatoes with the oil its time to bung them into the Airfryer drawer as shown below. We were only making enough chips for 2 people, but as you can see its got plenty of room to take a lot more.

Step 4 – Once the potato is loaded its time to set the Airfryer in motion. Philips provide a basic instructions card (over and above the detailed instruction manual) which gives you guidance on temperatures and timings for various items. Given we were cooking potato we set things in motion for an initial 10 minutes at 180°

Step 5 – The reason for setting the timer at 10 minutes initially was to act as a reminder to shake the chips halfway through cooking. After 10 minutes we remove the chips, give them a shake and then put them back into the Airfryer for a further 10 minutes at the same temperature.

Step 6 – The buzzer goes after the second 10 minutes and the chips are ready to go. Whilst cooking time, temperature and amount of oil will depend somewhat on your personal taste and volume of potato in the drawer the Airfryer does push out tasty, healthy chips.

Despite such a small amount of oil they do still have a shine to them, so if you’re feeling particularly healthy you might still want to dab them down on kitchen roll before serving.

In Conclusion

We are genuinely very happy with the Philips Airfryer but thus far have limited its usage to potato based products (chips, wedges and roasties). I doubt it’ll ever get used to cook anything more exotic than chicken nuggets, but its good to know that if push came to shove (and your oven, hob and grill die) then you could technically use the Airfryer for most items.

Whether its better than the Actifry I wouldn’t like to comment having not used the latter to date. All I can say is that as a standalone product the Airfryer lives up to its billing and will be getting plenty of usage in the Rush household.

I’ve also recruited a number of individuals into SEO roles over the last 3.5 years, so I like to think I’m well placed to advise on how to become a highly desired SEO candidate.

In all my time recruiting SEO candidates and talking to others in a similar boat, two consistent themes have been ever present through the identification and interview phase:

1. There is lots of people who claim they do SEO, but get found out very quickly.
2. There is very low supply and very high demand for those who clearly do know how to do SEO.

The beauty of the SEO industry today is that learning SEO will broaden your skill set into many other areas that you may specialise in at a later point in time. No longer is SEO simply about knowing the technical requirements that should be embedded into a website, now its about social media and participation, graphic design, content generation and so much more.

How to Get an SEO Job

As someone who has and still does recruit SEO’s take it from me that a standard CV is no longer my primary interest when reviewing candidates. I’m happy to receive a CV, but I’d be just as happy to receive an introduction email that simply points me at a personal website or blog.

If you’re looking to get into SEO and grab yourself an SEO role, these are the steps I would follow:

Get on LinkedIn, Twitter etc

The first thing I’m going to do when reviewing an SEO candidate is search for them on Google. If you don’t show up at all on the first page…..you’ve started badly.

At the very least take some time to fill out a strong LinkedIn profile and build yourself some kind of Twitter background (followers and tweets). These two things alone, if executed effectively will tell me you’re at least slightly web savvy.

Start Your Own Website

Even if you’re completely new to the idea then get learning about the basics of setting up a website because its your best bet for building your personal brand and getting a foot in the door for an SEO gig.

If you’re remotely web savvy then you’ll be able to pick up the basics pretty quickly – this is exactly how I started to develop my own skills over and above my full time job. I’d then take those newly acquired skills and utilise them in my full time role on a much bigger scale.

In order to get started you’ll need to take a few basic steps:

1. Buy a domain name such as www.ben-rush.com preferably from the same company utilised in step 2 for increased simplicity.
2. Buy a hosting package – you should look for one which allows for instant wordpress installation (I’ve used a few and find Bluehost to be decent enough). There is plenty to choose from and instant wordpress installation is usually called out in the benefits pages of each hosting package.
3. Get a good WordPress theme from someone like Themeforest. Spend your time looking for one with good feedback that has strong support documentation so you can play around with some basic HTML/CSS editing in the future.
4. Start generating some content for your new blog and employ the basic SEO practices, which you’ll start picking up if you follow the next section.

Read SEO Articles and Apply Them

Some people might disagree (i.e., those who’ve published SEO books) but please don’t waste your money buying an SEO book. Everything you’d need to get started and develop your SEO knowledge is readily available for free online.

An excellent place to start would be the SEOMoz Beginners Guide to SEO which will give you an excellent introduction into the world of SEO.

Whilst there is many excellent SEO information sources I’d specifically pick out the following as additions to your reading list:

Search Engine Round Table - regularly updated SEO blog with a highly active community.

SEO Book - ran by Aaron Wall, SEO Book has been around for many years and offers plenty of excellent articles, instructional posts and tools.

Search Engine Land - The leading distributor of industry news on search engine marketing. If its worth knowing about, chances are it’ll be on Search Engine Land.

Google Inside Search Blog - Will allow you to stay abreast of any new functional enhancements or algorithm changes that Google publicly admit to.

Matt Cutts - Head of the Google Web Spam team and basically the public face of Google on all things search (at least the organic stuff any way).

I guarantee you’ll get asked a question something along the lines of “which sites, blogs or twitter profiles do you follow to keep abreast of the latest news and techniques?”. Don’t therefore head into an SEO interview without being able to reference the fact you read one or all of these resources regularly and be prepared to discuss something fresh that you’ve picked up and have an opinion on.

This shows you not only read content, but can analyse it and form an opinion on it.

Utilise Google Analytics and Understand How to Analyse and Action Data

As I mentioned in my introduction, learning SEO should drive you into broader areas outside of simply understanding the technical implementation steps. It is widely reported that web analytics skills for example are the most sought after and difficult eCommerce skill set to recruit for right now (as of 2011/12).

So learn web analytics not only because you’ll be a better SEO if you do, but because it makes you significantly more employable in general.

If you’ve got your wordpress site up and running then head over to Google Analytics and sign yourself up for a free account. You’ll then be able to implement your unique analytics code into your wordpress site, which can be done in your admin settings.

Once you’ve confirmed that the data is coming through into your analytics account spend some time playing around and working out what’s what. Head on over to Mashable.com and read their How to Use Google Analytics post for additional guidance.

Understand the Fundamentals of Link Acquisition

Acquiring links from external sites is a critical step in any SEO campaign, so you need to understand the fundamentals at the very least if you want to get an SEO job. If you’re really strong technically then you don’t always need to be a rock star in this area, but it certainly helps if you have a good grasp.

Finding individuals out there who’re good at link building is incredibly challenging. I find most candidates have a grasp of the technical aspects, but lack knowledge and creativity to build links in a natural effective manner.

You’ll pick up a lot of ideas from the sources I identified earlier in this post, but consider these ideas as some inspiration and get your creative juices flowing (there is a ton of other tried and tested methods):

• Generating high quality, unique content that people will naturally have a desire to quote or share on other sites/blogs/forums. Consider for example the links I have in this very article – everyone of those sites is now benefiting in some small way from those links.
• Outreach programmes – offering external influencers, suppliers etc a reason to naturally link to your content or products (think of it like word of mouth, but online!). A great example of this in practice would be offering your products to external bloggers for free, in return for a detailed product review.
• Infographics – taking mundane, heavily duplicated data and putting it into a more desirable, shareable format. Here’s 40 cool infographics to get your mind humming.

Identify and Utilise SEO Tools

Another common interview question I would ask an SEO candidate is what tools they utilise when practising SEO, so be prepared for this type of question and take some time playing around with various industry analysis tools that make the job of an SEO much easier.

There is a broad range of tools that cover all sorts of analysis questions. The most complete tool set is probably over at SEOMoz so I would check that out as a first port of call and just have a play with each of the tools to get a flavour for what they can provide and how you can use them effectively.

A specific area that I would focus on from a tool perspective is the link analysis arena. There is only really three tools worth considering in my opinion:

• Open Site Explorer – ran by SEOMoz
• Majestic SEO - much bigger index size than SEOMoz
• Linkdex – Uses Majestic SEO data, but re-crawls sites for fresher more advanced data output.

You will typically get asked questions around how you would analyse a site for SEO friendliness – being able to highlight specific tools that you’d use in the process will help your case and drive confidence in the interviewer that you understand what you’re doing or have least taken the time to read up and have a play around.

Join SEO Communities and Get Involved

Spend time where possible joining and getting involved with SEO communities because its by far the best method for keeping up to speed and honing your skills. Most of the sources I outlined earlier in the article have highly active communities that would be only to happy to provide knowledge, recommendations and support.

If you can point to specific communities that you’ve become an active member of you can bet yourself I’ll be checking out your profile, posts and comment history to get a flavour of your knowledge, skills and attitude.

Summary

The SEO industry is absolutely thriving – demand is high, supply is low and it is unlikely to be effected by down turns in the economy due to the relative payback that SEO can drive to an organisation.

SEO is absolutely not rocket science, sure there is some geeky aspects to it but you don’t need to be a full on techy in order to achieve in this industry. Take the time to learn some basics, join and read content from some of the more established communities and create your own website to play around.

With the right attitude and evidence of following these steps you’re putting yourself in an excellent position to get offered an SEO role. Just remember not every organisation is looking for people who are all singing and dancing straight off the bat, so providing you can at least demonstrate your enthusiasm for learning then you’ll stand a great chance of landing a role.

First of all I appreciate that for many its been a rather frustrating 12 months of waiting around, hoping that the game would come back to life in all its former glory.

Obviously that hasn’t happened and whilst that’s as frustrating for me as it has been for many of you, delaying our planned re-launch has absolutely been the right step to take.

In hindsight my biggest regret through 2011 was placing the site back live and opening slots for BETA so early. At the time we were confident that we’d have something playable by March, but with many unforeseen problems rearing their head we’ve ultimately failed to live up to those expectations. For that I apologise and thank those who’ve shown patience and understanding – I do promise (with much confidence) that your patience will ultimately be rewarded in 2012.

Some of the challenges we faced…

Let me open by just outlining some of the initial challenges that we’ve faced since I acquired WES at the end of 2010. By no means am I making excuses, but I want people to appreciate the scale of the challenge and the effort that has been put in over the last 12 months (mainly by the developer).

Without getting to technical, WES was built on some very dated technology and code. The database was Microsoft Access and the game engine code was Visual Basic – its about 10-12 years old!

These two factors alone caused issues with the game even when it was up and running smoothly. The version of Microsoft Access for example had a 1GB capacity, meaning every time it hit that threshold the game would completely stall. Those of you who played the game previously will also remember the relatively slow processing speed of match day results across all of the regions.

Another major issue after I acquired WES was the lack of source code for the game engine. Not having the source code basically means we had no idea how the game engine functionally works and we’d never be able to develop or bug fix it in the future. In essence – without that source code WES would have been completely dead in the water.

To add further complication to things we have no instructions to work with and WES is extremely complex – part of what makes it so much better than other games in this sector. Whilst I played the game for a good 5 years imagine trying to explain how everything works to a developer whose never seen or played it before? This is the same challenge that both Pat and Matt faced and I have to give them kudos for keeping things live as long as they did.

A Tough Decision….

Through the persistence of both Pat and Matt (who’ve been very helpful throughout) we made a major breakthrough in 2011 by obtaining the original game engine source code from Steve.

When I originally acquired WES I envisaged a three phase approach:

1. Get the original game back up and running.
2. Upgrade the original code to increase performance, scalability and generally future proof things.
3. Continuous development process including mobile, facebook, iphone/ipad/android applications.

After digging into the code and acquiring the original source code for the game engine we decided that step 1 just wasn’t possible and that’s largely why you’ve not seen WES make a working appearance to date. As such we took the decision to jump to most of stage 2 and upgrade the existing game engine and code base.

What has been done in 2011?

The main focus over the last 12 months has been on upgrading said game engine code and getting the site to work with SQL server. This does two main things:

1. It means our developer has a detailed understanding of how the game engine works. I don’t think anybody outside of Steve knew previously and this was a major issue if things ever went wrong or if we ever wanted to develop or bug fix in the future.
2. Moving away from Access and across to SQL dramatically improves the available disk space and performance of the site.  It also gives us much more freedom to expand and develop new functionality in the future.

The good news is that whilst there are still elements of the game engine that still need to be completed (i.e., the after match processes such as player training) we have successfully tested the match process and the performance was very positive. When we’re finally back up and running you will all immediately notice the speed at which the game process runs at vs. the previous site.

Below is a screenshot of some test matches we ran recently on the test server using the new game engine and SQL set-up. At this point you need to imagine me saying to the developer “Igor…ITS ALIVE!!” – although unfortunately the developer is not “currently” called Igor.

Next Steps for 2012

Whilst progress has been positive, particularly over the last 3-4 months there is still quite a lot we need to work out and upgrade. The good news is that the learnings from upgrading the code base over the last 12 months means we’re able to make progress on other aspects far quicker.

Our immediate next steps are as follows:

1. Whilst the game engine works and processes the match results we are missing additional source code that generates the match recap pages that allow you to review your teams performance. We’re hoping that Steve will be able to provide the source code for these recap pages otherwise we’re going to have to backwards engineer them which will unfortunately add significant delays to our work.
2. We also need to complete some code updates to the after match processes, including player training and improvement/decline, injuries and suspensions etc. This should hopefully be completed sometime in February. Amusingly when we ran the match process without this included we were getting rugby score lines of like 17-20 (I found a screen shot….)

Once we’ve finished those two key aspects our belief is that the game will finally be at a stage where we can officially open for BETA testing with basic match scheduling. I am not going to state a timeline at this stage because a lot is reliant on us obtaining the missing source code, but I’ll update everyone further as and when we get some news on that front.

There is no doubt in my mind that 2012 will be a great year for World Elite Soccer and I look forward to opening the doors to you all.

Thanks for taking the time to read this update and may you enjoy a wonderful 2012. If you have any questions on the above feel free to ask in the comments below.

Ben

Highlights from 2011

On the professional side of things I took a new role as Global SEO lead at Premier Farnell and recruited 3 remarkably talented SEO heads into the team. As a team we got a lot of great things moving in a very short space of time, with lots of functional and content enhancements as well as some excellent (totally white hat) link acquisition activities.

It was a tough year though as I often averaged over 15 hours a day trying to keep on top of things. Bit of advice here – don’t do a global role based in Singapore if your organisations revenue and headcount are primarily in the US and Europe.

Despite those successes I decided in December to resign from Premier Farnell after five and a half years at the organisation. I’ll be taking up a new, exciting role as Head of SEO for a travel company in February 2012.

I also project managed my underfloor heating client from their old website to a new flashy Magento based site. I took them from no where to page 1 for the keyword “underfloor heating” (amongst other keywords) helping them reach record levels of sales enquiries.

We made great progress on World Elite Soccer (an online football management game I own) completely overhauling the old game engine code (without any instructions) – thanks must go to the developer for all his hard work over the last 12 months. I’m sure we’ll have an exciting 2012 getting WES fully operational.

I flew over 60,000 miles (including an awesome long haul business class flight) taking in trips to the US, UK, Taiwan and Cambodia, where I got to spend 2 days touring Angkor Wat.

I did a few sporting based challenges including cycling round the outside of Singapore 3 times in one go with some of the other Team BlackHawk guys (~260km) 5 of them actually did it 4 times – pictured below at the start.

I completed the Tour de Bintan in Indonesia and ran 24.5 miles across the Yorkshire Three Peaks.

I totalled up my activity recently for 2011 and it can be broken down as follows:

Total distance covered: 4,837km

Total distance covered on bike: 4,324km

Total distance covered running: 511.59km

I got back into reading consistently and trawled through 13 books in the last 4 months. I moved into a new apartment in Tanjong Pagar (Singapore) and got my blog back up and running.

Focus Areas for 2012:

1. Start my new role and make a positive impact to the business
2. Get World Elite Soccer fully operational and build a player base
3. Complete the Sundown Marathon, ideally in under 3 hours
4. Cover over 7000km on bike and foot across 2012
5. Do some more travelling in Asia
6. Read at least 25 books
7. Get into Photography
8. Keep my blog going and get to 3000 unique visits per month
9. Learn some basic Mandarin

The attached plan, which you can download at the end of this post is designed for more advanced runners who are generally used to running a minimum of 60+ miles per week.

A less regular runner could utilise this plan, but should add additional base laying weeks onto the front in order to gradually build up their ability to handle high mileage.

For the avoidance of doubt I am in no way a qualified coach, but I have ran all my life and trained with some great coaches and athletes over the years.

I am an above average runner looking to run under 3hrs for the marathon so whilst this plan will be a challenge for me to complete I believe it will get me close to achieving that target time.

If you’re already a strong runner (i.e., you can do a 30 minute+ 10km) then following this plan could get you into the 2hr30m bracket.

First 4 Weeks – Build Your Base

Week 1 – 3 is all about building up your base with long steady runs. You can play around with whether these runs take place during the morning or evening depending on your individual circumstances, but be careful not to stack to many long runs without sufficient rest – particularly if you’re not used to this kind of weekly mileage.

The full rest day on Saturday is critical as it will allow your muscles to replenish their glycogen supplies, so you don’t feel completely flat for Sunday and the following week. Try to ensure you take a full days rest each Saturday or if necessary modify your schedule to incorporate a full day elsewhere in the week.

Across the full schedule it is recommended on a Monday PM and Thursday AM session that you incorporate hill efforts into your steady run, but again you can play around with when these fit in if necessary. Hill efforts are critical for building strength, so ideally add 10×8-12 second hill reps onto the end of your run.

The Tuesday PM session involves some short, sharper efforts that should total 10km. I recommend keeping it relatively straightforward by doing 10x1km but you could mix this up for a little variation. It would be fine to do this on a track or a specific marked out road, trail etc but stay away from slow surfaces. Each effort should be done at 10km pace with around 4-6 minutes recovery between efforts depending on how you feel. If you’e struggling with these early on then take a longer recovery but complete the set.

The 4th week contains reduced mileage to allow your body to freshen up prior to commencing the 13 week marathon training schedule between weeks 5 to 17.

Weeks 5 to 17 – Game Time

The standard week plan is much the same between weeks 5 to 17, with a few exceptions mentioned below. Where a single * is shown this is suggesting you add those additional hill sessions onto the end of your steady run.

** Friday involves a marathon pace run, which over the course of the schedule will increase in length. For this session you should be running at the desired pace you expect to maintain in your marathon. This plan sees that mileage move in the following steps, but you can modify this on a week by week basis depending on how you’re feeling: 10, 10, 12, 12, 13, 13, 14, 14, 15, 16, 15, 14.

*** Your long Sunday runs should also increase in distance over the course of the plan. The attached schedule in terms of miles looks like this: 18, 19, 20, 20, 22, 23, 20, 24, 26, 24, 18, 20, 18. The Sunday run can be manipulated somewhat based upon on how you’re feeling each week. If you’re feeling particularly flat then reduce the mileage or even skip for a different activity altogether (i.e., a long bike ride) but if you’re feeling great then perhaps increase it.

Whilst each week will differ slightly, it should typically look like below (this is week 10 from my full training schedule which you can download here or at the end of the post).

Week 18 – Taper for the Race

How much you decide to taper really depends on the individual in my opinion. Some people like to start tapering down with a couple of weeks to go, others don’t really taper much at all.

The plan I am working to begins to taper slightly in the prior week but largely in the week leading up to the race. I would continue putting in some mileage with morning or evening runs, but slow them down significantly and stay relaxed.

A weekly taper plan, that assumes you’re racing on the Sunday could look something like this:

In closing I would add that any plan can and should be manipulated over the course of its use to account for how an individual is feeling at any given point in time. If you’re feeling flat and demotivated then take a rest, but be wary of using that excuse to frequently as you’ll fail to get the desired base down before the start line.

I look forward to starting my own schedule in January ready for the Singapore Sundown Marathon and I’ll report back on how I am finding it and any adjustments I make as I go.

You can download the full 18 week schedule from the link below and please feel free to add your comments to the post.

Despite flying over 60,000 miles in 2011 across various carriers (Emirates, Singapore Airlines, JetStar and United) it wasn’t until recently that I got to properly experience a long haul business class flight with Singapore Airlines and to cut a long story short – it was excellent.

The flight was from Changi International Airport in Singapore to Manchester International Airport in the UK, roughly 14 hours of flight time with an hour stop over in Munich.

Airport Arrival

As a business class customer you’re able to utilise the business class check in facilities, which is usually a rather unnecessary full row of desks – maybe it gets busy sometimes. The benefit is that coupled with the amazing immigration speed at Changi airport you can rock up relatively close to your departure time without any worry about large queues. I had my ticket, disposed of my bags and wandered through immigration within about 15 minutes of arriving and headed to the KrisFlyer lounge.

As with most lounges these days it offers plenty of free computer and internet access along with free food and beverages. The KrisFlyer lounge (at least at Changi) also offers shower facilities which would certainly be useful on a long stop over.

Boarding

I’m one of those individuals who typically laughs at the people who queue up to board a plane when they already have a ticket for a particular seat. I mean seriously people….what are queuing up for? the plane isn’t go to leave without you.

That said, with business class you have the privilege of boarding before most and through a separate entrance at the front of the plane. I will admit that this does make the experience just that little less rushed and due to economy getting on through a separate entrance you don’t need to worry about letting others past as you get sorted.

The other benefit I found (which is a relatively small one admittedly) is that the overhead storage space is much larger meaning that you can store more (and larger) bags in the cabin.

It was also noticeable (dare I say) that the flight stewardesses are particularly “hot” in business class and I imagine that is something Singapore Airlines have purposefully put in place (rightly or wrongly).

After about 15 minutes of boarding I was offered a glass of champagne, which I gratefully accepted before settling down ready for take-off.

The Seat

The configuration and seat that you get in business class will differ greatly depending on the plane that you’re flying and the distance that is being covered. I was flying on the Boeing 777-300ER which has a 1-2-1 configuration that allows for access to the aisle from any seating location. The seats and configuration on the 777-300ER are shared across the A380 and the A340-500.

I would personally recommend that if you’re travelling alone then you should try and get a window seat location for additional privacy, but in truth it doesn’t exactly make a significant difference to the experience.

The seat measures 34 inches in width and is covered either in brown or camel leather. It has a pitch of 55 inches allowing you to really slump down and get comfortable.

The best part of the seat is the ability to convert it into a fully flat bed, which makes the whole long haul flight experience so much more enjoyable

There is a latch on the rear of the seat that you simply pull to collapse the rear of the leather seat.

Once folded down you have access to a mattress, duvet and additional pillow.

There is loads of storage sections built into the seating area, which is pretty handy if like me you carry a few gadgets and cables with you.

You also get a pair of SQ noise cancelling head phones, which are pretty good but I personally don’t use them extensively as I always travel with a pair of Bose Quiet Comfort 15.

Another handy addition to the seat is the multi-region power point, which also includes a USB and RJ45 input.

Entertainment System

The entertainment system in business class utilises the standard KrisWorld product that is also readily available in economy class. The system allows you to access a wide range of latest release films plus a catalogue of TV programmes and music at your own leisure.

The added bonus in business class is a 15.4″ high-res screen which compares to the 10.6″ screen in economy class. Having experienced both I can honestly say the screen size definitely makes a noticeable difference when you’re watching films.

I also liked the fact you could plug your headphones into multiple ports (one on the right, one on the left) which is a small touch but at least it gives you the option from a comfort perspective.

Now imagine lying down in your fully flat bed, head propped up with pillows, food and drink on call and a great movie playing on the screen. Perfect!!

The Food

If I’m honest the food was a little disappointing although it was pleasant to eat it with a proper knife and fork and have room to move rather than being stuffed in economy. The other big difference from economy is having the ability to select from more options.

 Conclusion

Flying long haul in economy class is in my opinion not a lot of fun, even if you enjoy the experience of flying. Flying long haul in business class however was a great experience and genuinely made the trip a fun, comfortable and relaxing experience.

I got at least 5 hours of uninterrupted sleep, watched 4 full length movies, ate 3 meals and walked off the plane 15 hours later with no aches and pains, ready to start my day.

Obviously you can expect to pay a premium for this kind of service, but with the right credit card and regular flights you can usually upgrade existing economy bookings for around 50,000 miles (depending on your departure and destination points). Its well worth it!

I’ll be flying Business class with Emirates from the UK to Singapore, so stay tuned for a separate review on them.