There’s a whole heirachy of supermarkets here in the UK, from the posh/expensive to the more standard super super markets, to the mini marts and corner stores.  The major ones (that I know of) in their apparent order of goodness are something like:

• Waitrose
• Marks and Spencer
• Sainsbury’s
• Tesco
• ASDA (Walmart)
• Morrisons
• Somerfield
• and a whole bunch of smaller chains and corner stores that either aren’t in my area
  

As you can probably imagine, the higher up the list a store is, the better it’s produce and fresh food is supposed to be, with the down side that it usually costs a percentage more than the equivalent items in the store below it.  In all honesty (from past purchases), this seems to be the case.  In fact I’ve often noticed if we pick up dinner from our local Waitrose (for lack of a cheaper alternative), what might be £10 at Tesco, is almost always £25, and picking up lunch from Marks and Spencers (roll/baguette, yoghurt/fruit and a juice)  usually totals about £7, when the equivalent lunch from the Sainsbury’s around the corner is usually half of that.

In the same way, I’ve often noticed doing a weeks shopping, when actually in the store is often cheaper (or we get a lot more for the same price) when shopping at ASDA instead of Tesco.  I’ve wondered a few times if there’s actuallya noticeable difference between the larger super markets (Sainsbury’s, Tesco & ASDA) prices, or the price is made up by impulse purchases around the store.  There’s no question the two super markets on the top of the list are significantly more expensive then the larger stores, and I’ve often felt the pain of a overpriced dinner, or mid week shop, but we seem to spend approximately the same amount each time we do a big shop regardless of store.

As we move into the new place we’ll no longer have access to a car to do a weekly or fortnightly shop so we’ll be relying heavily on internet shopping and home delivery, so I took the time last night do the same shop from ASDA, Tesco and Sainsbury’s using their online shopping portal.  I was surprised by the results.

I did the initial shop through ASDA, and completed a £75 shop which comprised of about a fortnights food, as well as a few items such as laundry detergents, razor blades, bleach that were runnig low at the time.  This is about on par with our previous grocery habits, as when we lived in a group of four it was almost always consistently £70-£100/wk.  Going from previous experience, this figure should probably stay about the same as we run out of different higher-priced items at various stages throughout the month.  I did exactly the same shop at both Tesco and then Sainsbury’s, and the totals came out at £75 and £70 respectively with savings made from one store on discounted/multi buy items and on other items at the different stores.  On a week to week basis, depending on what was on the shopping list, these figures would be subject to change as different stores had different and/or better specials.

I’ll do the same test the next time I do a shop, but I have to say Sainsbury’s is the clear winner in the online shopping stakes, due to cheaper delivery, and a much better online shopping experience than the other two.  ASDA’s online interface was nothing short of attrocious and must have been designed by monkeys.  Not only was it difficult to find products (even when using the search function), the actual design and layout of the pages seemed cheap and pre 2000 looking, which unfortunately was not reflected in the sale price.  The reward/loyalty program offered by Tesco’s Clubcard scheme seems to be the best one with 2-for-1 one offers and £5-10 discount vouchers given out on regular basis (depending on amount of shopping done).

Happy belated New Year!  I’m a few days behind due to sheer laziness and the continued delicious nod of the remainder of the holiday period.  It’s been a great end to the year with pubs, parties, lunches and a great couple of days in the northern English town of York.  But with the fun finally coming to an end, I’ve spent the evening trying to get back into the swing  of things, cleaning the house, doing shopping, writing a budget, going through some photos and getting some New Years resolutions sorted out, all at the expense of my ever latening (if thats a word) sleeping pattern.  That’s something I’ll have to brave before work and fight tiredness for the first few days.

Yorkminster, York UK

We’ve just got a new rental apartment in the lovely London area of Clapham, which for the uneducated is spread over a rather large area which contains an area like Queens, and one which is a little bit more like the Bronx, thankfully we’re somewhere in the middle on the North side which is a short walk from just about everywhere, including the Thames, London, Clapham Junction, Clapham High St, etc etc with lots of links to transport as well.  The best thing is the large savings which we’re looking to make by firstly moving closer into the city (reducing transport costs), not living in Richmond/Twickenham (reducing bills and local council tax rates).

Clapham Area

I was looking through the list of New Years resolutions that I made this time last year and while some of them were a farce, I’ve managed to stick to about 50% of the valid ones, so I wouldn’t mind seeing this year improve a little on that.  I would say the major goals of this year are:

• Money Money Money - With the move to our new apartment we’re looking at a monthly saving of approx £200-300 with less taxes and transport costs.  If i’m a little more responsible to money and cut the £100+ dinners we should have the potential to save a big chunk before the end of the year
• Buy a house - I’m happy renting for now, but with house prices due to bottom out late next year, the obvious plan seems to be to use the saved money from above in a deposit to purchase a house.
• Pursue out-of-work work - I did alright with this last year, but with regular work coming in this has huge potential.  Just a matter of finding work consistently.
• Walk home from work, especially as it starts heating up.  With a walk of approximately 3 miles it shouldn’t be too hard.
• Drink more? Drink less?  We’ll see

Anyone else have New Years Resolutions?

I know recycling is an expensive process and its the responsibility of the recycler to put the correct items out (depending on what can be recycled in the local community), but around here, things are getting mad.  Over the past few months, we’ve had an ever increasing amount of recycling which has been rejected by our council workers, everything from some plastics, tins, milk cartons.

I got home the other day, and was confronted by this:

All the clear plastic is recyclable, as well as the milk cartons.  I can’t help but thinking they’re now probably spending more time sorting through my rubbish (and everyone elses for that matter) to reject stuff they don’t want, than they would if it was done down at a sorting/trash centre.  Gah

Note: Attempting to recycle wire coathangers might have been pushing it.. Maybe just a little.

I’m not sure what happened to me in the last six weeks, I got back from Greece and apart from a brief post a few weeks ago, I’d all but forgotten about HD911.  I seem to have been floating in some kind of bubble for the past 4-6 weeks and have forgotten all but a few responsibilities and I’m starting to go stir crazy in my own head at the boredom that i’ve created, in my head… Or something like that.

I figured I’d pick up where I left off, and give an after thought on the book I was about to read at the time called Playing for Pizza by John Grisham, and after reading the blurb on its cover, I sniggered and panned it like an arrogant film critic pans a Rob Schneider flick.  Well, shame on me for doing so, and I hate to be cliche’d, but there must be some truth in that saying, “Don’t judge a book by its cover…”

Quite frankly if there’s one author who can turn a short story about a failed NFL footballer who gets shipped off to Italy to play in their (minor) league and gets friends, a girl, a love for pizza and a championship trophy into a good story, even in my short experience in reading, I’d have to say it’d be John Grisham.

I’d love to say it’s taken me all this time to read and was a really complex story, it wasn’t, but I was interested from start to finish, and I liked not having to thnk about what I was reading.  So kudos to you, and shame on me for my quick judgement and poor form.

I’m almost 800 pages into the 1,000 page mammoth that is Shantaram Gregory David Roberts, which has kept me right on the edge of my seat since I first picked it up, until last Thursday, when I left it at the pub, moments before stumbling on to the last train home, only to pass out and wake up one stop from Windsor (yes, the place with the castle) in the lovely town of Datchet, to finally get home an hour later cost of £50 as a result of a late night cab ride from the outskirts.  But that’s a story for another day.

John Grisham does In a League of Their Own crossed with The Wiggles

I finished my latest book the other day (Andy Mcnab’s - Crisis Four), which ended dissappointingly I’m sad to say, but we’ll get back to that later, and my housemate handed me a book by the famous author, John Grisham. Not that I’ve read any of his wares, apart from about an hour spent trying to get into The Firm, but a world famous author with such titles (and Hollywood movies) as The Pelican Brief, The Rain Maker, The Firm and The Innocent Man I was expecting a top notch crime thriller.

The books title is Playing for Pizza, and this is it’s blurb:

“Rick Dockery was a quarterback for one of America’s most famous football teams when he gave arguably the worst performance in his league’s history.  Overnight Rich became a laughing stock and unemployable in his own country.

But somehow RIck’s agent finds him a job.  He is guaranteed a starting position and a salary.  The only problem is that the team that wants him is in Parma, Italy.  The American footabll league in Italy is tiny and unlike RIck, the Italian players only get paid in free meals.

Rick has never been to Italy, so it’s no surprise that the country has a few surprises for him.  What follows is a delightful, heart-warming storay of an innocent abroad.”

Now, I’m not one to judge.  I’m not a critic, and my experience with reading books for pleasure only goes back about 9 months, but could you think of a more boring (nor ridculous sounding) synopsis for a book?  It’s like every 80’s American sports movie (… You know the ones, underdogs fight hard to win all season, then drama, then the team wins in overtime), crossed with the likes of Home and Away (an Australian soap opera).  

I honestly thought I was being had, and the cover was indeed a satircal ploy to get you sucked into a book with all kinds of death and debauchery, but on inspection, its a real book, by a real author, and a good autor at that.  The top of the book even claims it to be, “The International Number One Bestseller”, though I’ll garuntee that has nothing to do with this particular title.

As I said though, who am I to judge?!? The quagmire of life experiences undertaken in the story surely leave my solid reading history of crime thrillers for dead, and put the reader at a new level of enlightenment.  At least I hope this is the case.  I’ll read it though, it sounds interesting enough, and I’m intrigued to find out if there’s something I’m missing like the short for a movie that tells you nothing at all about the movie in general.

Time for me to get started, and report back as soon as possible.

What a movie!

The Growing List

Since I started reading again I’ve notched up fair few titles on the literaty bed post, whatever that means, and I’m loving it so far.  I’ll be looking at branching out a bit and trying some new genre’s too.  Any suggestions?

The list so far, in the last 12 months:

• I Hope They Server Beer In Hell - Tucker Max
• The Alphabet of Manliness - Maddox
• Gun’s Germs and Steel - Jared Diamond

• Playing for Pizza - John Grisham (I’m looking forward to it now!)
• Shantaram - Gregory David Roberts (Sitting here waiting to be read)
• Freakonomics - Steven Levitt
• Digital Fortress - Dan Brown
• The rest of the Jack Reacher series by Lee Child
• The rest of the Nick Stone series by Andy McNab
• The Cuckoo’s Egg by Cliff Stoll
• Kite Runner
• One of Peter Hamilton’s Trilogies
• More Harlen Coben
• Try John Grisham’s more serious titles
• One of Len Deighton’s Non Fiction books (a recommendation)

I’m always open to suggestion though, so post any replies, please!  I’m turned off by girlie stories (Danielle Steel), middle earth Scifi (like Lord of the Rings, I’m not sure why) and Mills and Boon (If I wanted porno, i’d download it).

Afterthoughts

I said at the top of this post that I’d get back to why I found the end of Crisis Four (the third book in Andy McNab’s Nick Stone series), and it won’t mean much without having read the book, but I just thought it was too transparent.  I could see the outcome of the story after about the first 15 - 20% of the book, and it just ended so abruptly.  

I’d say this is a really good reason to space out these series I’ve been reading as I guess like anything else thats done repeatedly you get to know the author, and how his/her writing works, and can quickly weed out plot lines if they’re similar to previous titles.  Not only this, I found a dissapointing book a bit of a kick in the guts from what is so far such an awesome series, I’d imagine its better to space out the pleasure of the other books as long as possible.

It’s not quite as catchy a title as Enter the Dragon, nor does it pack the one-inch-punch shown off by Bruce Lee, as shown in the movie, but my new toy can take a fantastic looking picture.

It’s my new Nikon D40, an entry-level Digital SLR camera that’s small, light and packs a load of features that I couldn’t list, nor describe off the top of my head.  I’ve had what you might call a keen interest in hobby photography for a while now without good equipment or any real knowledge of what I should actually be doing.  Basically this has meant keeping my phone or our Sony Point&Shoot camera in my pocket and pointing it at anything (everything).

Nikon D40 - My new baby

I’ve had my eyes opened though, not just with the quality of the photos or beauty of the camera (yes, its awesome looking), but I’ve very quickly started to understand all the photographic terms and tools in a way that I’ve never been able to before.  Having full control (SLR helps.. a lot) over manual settings and seeing the result has helped to immediately see some of the places I’m going wrong and how to improve on these.

I can remember from a very young age my father (an avid photographer hobbyist from way back) explaining in super technical terms what exposure, aperture, ISO speed and shutter speed were, or what a light meter, polarising filter or macro lens does.  I felt I knew the basics, but it didn’t really help to understand when to use a high aperture, or change ISO speeds (an old Canon Powershot I own allowed manual controls over such things).

I’ve had a whirlwind introduction to the basics and I’m starting to understand how differing ISO speeds affect the shot in different situations (low light, speed/motion blur, etc), and how changing the aperture or f number (ooooh techy!) can give a different depth of field.  The main thing is though, just how good the photos come out as a finished product.  WIthout any post editing (though most still need it, I’m in no way perfect) or cropping here are some examples of a few shots:

Temple at top of Acropolis, Athens

Late Afternoon in Santorini

Dusk in Paros

The main thing I’ve noticed is the colour and clarity, (I know, I sound like a diamond salesman), in the photos, like nothing I’ve ever seen before.  The detail that comes out from a closeup portrait is nothing less than amazing, and this is all from the basic entry level Digital SLR with the standard kit lens (18-55mm) taking 6.1 megapixel photos.  And crazy enough, the resulting JPEG image is smaller than our previous camera, the lower resolution and MUCH, MUCH lower quality Sony Cybershot.

So much to learn, but I’ve found the main thing I’ll have to master first is how to compose each shot, as I found from almost 900 photos taken over the week in Greece at least 90% of them are either completely wrong (out of focus, wiped out exposure), or are just taken incorrectly with the wrong amount of information in (or out) of the photo.  Learning exactly what to photograph in a way that actually looks good is the first hurdle.

It’s going to be an expensive hobby though, as upgrading the lens (to a much higher zoom such as the 18-200mm) costs almost three times as much as the camera did to start with!

Check out Ken Rockwells site for some D40 lovin: http://www.kenrockwell.com/nikon/d40.htm

An exciting new app was bought to my attention recently, and it goes by the name of Tagggit.  Tagggit is a social networking application where you add friends and build communities, and then tag locations with photographs to share with the public or those within your communities.

The interesting part comes when you add it as a mobile application (avaiable as a Symbian application), using the inbuilt location finder (GPS, Wifi), geotagging your current activity is as easy as pressing a button.  From here, your friends, family, and the public around you can see where you’re currently located, or the event/location/highlight you’ve just tagged, depending on your desired privacy level.

Some obvious uses for this are listed on the site, such as:

• Tagging points of interest around a city (Streets on the Monopoly Board anyone?)
• Tagging a location for a party/dinner with photo/directions on how to get there
• Telling your friends which pub you’re at for after work drinks

I was thinking some other idea’s could be:

• A digg-styled tag system where users can Vote Up/Vote Down other tags
• Location finding game where small snapshots are taken around a city and have to be located by other players (like naming a movie or product from a small cut-out of a bill board or poster).
• Non vandalistic Graffiti?!  Maybe not.

Clearly the best thing is the Symbian application which works perfectly on my phone (yes, the same Nokia N95), and is a welcome addition to the growing library of apps I’m using on a daily basis.

Tagggit is in private beta release stage at the moment, but is soon to be available to the public, so stay tuned.

I was reading my book on the train on the way to work today, Remote Control by the British author (and ex-SAS soldier) Andy McNab, and came across a line that made me laugh.  It wasn’t just any laugh though, but a sudden outburst, the kind that makes you look like the special autistic child or some kind of greasy pervert, the kind that directs eyes toward you.  Hundred’s of the beady little f$%kers.

I should prefix this with a bit of background, after about thirty or forty pages of the authors build up to an action scene, the main character, Nick Stone,  describes in detail how stealth is the key to any subtle operation.  He describes in full the surveillance required in the stake out, and how each part of the target (IRA headquarters) was broken into without extreme force.  This goes on, and on, and as you’d expect thing’s eventually go hay wire as Stone is discovered and is seconds away from death via handgun down his throat after being taken out by a fire extinguisher to the back of the head.

By this point, I’m engrossed, the build up was enormous, and I’m literally hanging off the end of my seat wondering what on Earth is going to happen next.  There’s a small scuffle and Stone jams the gun, temporarily disabling it and a scuffle breaks out eventually resulting in the enemy being shot in the head.

This was followed by:

“He was going to die soon.

Tough Shit.”

It’s a pillow, what a horrible prank!

In hindsight it doesn’t seem anywhere near as funny, but it blew me away at the time.  After such an enourmous build up with everything and every moment described in such precious detail, the climax was abrupt, like a kick in the guts.  I have to liken this to getting amazing sex, mind blowing passion with the ultimate build up:

"mmmm...."

"ah..."

"MMMMmmmmm yea!"

"Oh.  Job's done"

"Yea, would you like a cup of tea?"

I’d half expected another ten pages describing the blood as it made its passage from the chest driven by the last few beats of the heart, up the arteries, and out the convinient new escape vent in the head.  But no.. He was dead, and that was it.

Bloody good book though, both Andy McNab books I’ve read so far have been an excellent read, which makes them incredibly hard to put down.

Here I am, the summer-seasoned Australian wishing it was Winter again, because the English summer may have got the better of me.  I’ve been away from Perth for a while now, but I can feel I’ve got a relatively good memory of what the 40o+ celsius days were like, and even going to work in those temparatures for weeks on end didn’t seem as bad as this last week has been in London.

I still feel like a nance, especially as I keep seeing others wearing long sleeves, and even layers (one thing I will never understand about English people, their ability to layer clothes is second to none), but I can’t wait for the winter to come back again.  It was nice being able to walk to work without sweating, and sit at the office without sweating, though that is partly due to the terrible quality air conditioner we’ve got in our basement Nike factory, despite the fact its in most expensive area for office/business rent in all of the European Union.  Perhaps that’s the reason the air conditioner doesn’t work.

Here comes the worst part, it was only 28 degrees today, which is only just bordering on acceptable swimming weather in Australia, but I’d have happily taken a swim in the Thames to cool down.  Yesterday was a little hotter again, at 31 celsius, but its a different kind of heat, and there’s a whole lot less air conditioning.

What have I become? My sweetest friend…

Johnny Cash - Hurt

Johnny Cash - Hurt (Nine Inch Nails Original)

At the office, we, the Web Services team form a team of four people who handle the core data storage and communications centre for the companies main application.  It’s by no means the most complex (it’s extremely simple in fact) or even the most important, but none the less, it forms the glue between each of the client applications and hosts the file/data store for all shared information used throughout the system.

As part of the build process we’ve done a recent refactor which improves performance and security and aims to generally make our service easier to consume by every device that uses it.  This process has taken the better part of six weeks next to full time work by four of us and at least two weeks work from a fifth person that left recently.  I don’t want to say I’ve poured my heart and soul into it, that would be lieing, but its definitely been something that we’ve become immensely proud of.

Anyway, today the decision was made to drop all the work completed toward the new version, and continue where we forked off on the previous release, which really is a huge shame.  Now I feel like we’ve taken a step backward, erasing a bunch of work that would have ultimately made the project a lot more stable and laid a few of the foundations for future-proofivity, if thats even a word.  I shouldn’t get too aread of myself though, in reality it was months away from the final goal, but at least there was move towards that goal.

I shouldn’t be surprised though, there seems to be many examples of this and far worse (mal)practices in the IT industry around the web, and it seems to me to often be the way the things work, especially in smaller Software Development situations.  I’ve even seen it before at previous jobs, and its never pretty.

The thing that gets me though, is the absolute waste of resources and man-hours that goes into a mistake such as this.  Assuming we worked two thirds of the week each, I’d put the time spent at:

4.5 staff x 27 hours x 6 weeks  = 729 man hours

By my crude calculations this is just about enough man hours to build a small skyscraper, or the Titanic if you will, but… That’s Life, after all!

Who knows, in another month, the project will probaly take another path altogether requiring a complete rewrite, refactor or perhaps disbanded altogether!