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I’d previously written about my experiences with being cited for Jury Service here in Glasgow. I’m pleased to say that my duties have been absolved, and I wasn’t in the end required to actually sit on a Jury, although I did need to attend for selection.

Somewhat in contrast to my rather gloomy feelings about how the process “felt” in the lead up, on the day itself it all went rather smoothly, and I felt that the staff at the High Court in Glasgow were very understanding, polite, helpful and informative. After a wait in the restaurant, where not much was said by anybody, we were called and led through a maze of corridors to a waiting room, where we were then addressed and the process explained to us. We were checked off the list, and then addressed by one of the court officials.

I’m not going to go into details of the case, but I’d already discovered that it wouldn’t last more than a week (We’d have been written to in advance if that had been the case). Whilst the case was described in somewhat flippant terms, the details of the charges when read out in court sounded somewhat more severe, and not particularly pleasant.

We were called into the court, and sat in the public area. On arrival of the judge (and his impressive looking mace), 15 numbers were drawn from a glass bowl, and that constituted the selection process. No rejections took place. My number didn’t come up, but the numbers on either side did, so I rather felt I’d escaped by something of a whisker! We had to hang about in case those selected discovered some reason they couldn’t serve, but it was pretty much over after that. We were eventually advised we weren’t required again, and didn’t need to phone in at all.

A few observations of the process I observed before being relieved…

The policeman at the back of the court didn’t sound very amused at having to tell some in the public gallary to stand on the entrance/exit of the judge. It’s a slightly strange experience, but it signifies a respect for the judicial system. A judge is an important individual - but represents a great deal more - so that people didn’t think it necessary to stand seemed strange.

Getting dressed up in a fancy suit, and carrying a briefcase didn’t make any difference to one or two in the selected jurors. There seems to be an urban myth floating about (it was certainly suggested to me) that you’re guaranteed a rejection, but a jury is supposed to be random and balanced. Posh looking suits won’t make much of a difference. I just dressed up in what you might call “smart casual”, but others were even in jeans and t-shirt.

Affirmations are a minority activity. Before the selection process, we were asked to let the court clerk know if we wanted to afirm, rather than swear an oath to invisible sky pixies. Just a few of us raised our hands, and one of us was picked. He got to do it on his own, so atheists be brave!

The range of citation numbers was about 60, but by my estimation there were just over 30 jurors in the room. So a 1 in 2 chance of being selected for a 15 person jury, rather than the 1 in 4 I’d estimated. Perhaps cited jurors had lots of good excuses, or the numbers were just ‘filler’, or a lot of absconding occurred, but I was taken aback by the relatively small number. We were advised we may be needed again, due to a juror shortage elsewhere, so it seems it could be widespread. No wonder there’s only one person from Frances’ family who’s not been cited.

In the end, I’m glad I didn’t serve, but I’m still curious about the experience. I will, I understand, be eligible for citation in 5 years time. Whilst the impersonal process in the lead up to the actual requirement to attend court didn’t impress me at all, the experience on the day was interesting and intriguing. But do remember to take something to read. There’s a lot of waiting.

I’m pleased to be able to say that this Sunday Frances will be running her very first 5k race, in order to support her friend Maggie, who is currently battling cancer. Maggie has had a tough time of it, but is being incredibly inspirational, as well as brave, by fighting back and helping raise awareness all that she can. Indeed, this will be the second year she’s taken part in her local Race For Life event, and will be supported by Frances and a good number of her other friends.

You can read more about Maggie, and why she’s running, at her Race For Life sponsorship page. It’s a difficult read, but still very inspirational stuff. As with all the other Race For Life events, it’s for the excellent Cancer Research charity. So if you can spare some money to make a donation - of any size - it’d make a big difference, and really help Maggie, Frances and her friends on their run this Sunday.

Sadly though I’m not going to be there to cheer Frances and her friends on as I’m running in a different race that day, in the the MHFS 10K in Glasgow. This event is doing a great job in itself of raising awareness of men’s health issues. I’m sure she’ll do very well: She’s been putting in some decent training, but I’ve been told in no uncertain terms she’s not about to take up running, but I’m still quietly enjoying seeing her running shoes by the door

I’ve been a member of Liberty for a few years now. For an organisation of its size, it makes a considerable impact in any debate on civil liberties, which I feel have repeatedly under attack by this Government, most recently with the unnecessary proposal to increase pre-charge detention from 28 to 42 days.

I find this proposal objectionable in the extreme. It further undermines fundamental liberties we used to enjoy, and despite the concessions being offered by the Government (Which, to me, smack of political desperation: Just listen to the concessions supposedly being offered to “rebels”), gives the UK the longest period of detention of any comparable democracy. That Sir Ken MacDonald, the Director of Public Prosecutions - the man who will charge the people detained - is opposed to it’s six week period.

There is a survey that suggests 60% of the public support this measure, but I worry that this reflects a knee-jerk response to a question that draws on fears which have been built up (in my view rather cynically and with political motivation, rather than based on evidence) over the years. Put simply, try to imagine what it would be like to be locked up, without knowing the reasons why, for six weeks?

The desperately frustrating thing is that there are genuine and solid alternatives that appear to be being dismissed: allowing the use of intercept evidence in court, post-charge questioning and, if needed in a genuine crisis (which the Government makes such an issue with), using powers that already exist in the Civil Contingencies Act 2004.

Whilst my MP Tom Harris is almost certain to vote for these measure (he’s a minister), to ensure that he’s properly aware of my objections and the issues I hold important when I come to decide who to vote for at the next election, I’ve today written to him through the excellent writetothem.com website. My letter appears below. I’d suggest anybody else who cares about this matter to consider writing themselves.

Some other resources:

• Sign the petition on the Prime Ministers website.
• Read Liberty’s suggestions on what to do
• Review the campaign details (PDF)
• Join Liberty.

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Read the rest of this entry »

Today is the start of Apple’s Worldwide Developer Connference 2008, and the highlight of this is always the keynote from Steve Jobs, as he inevitably has product announcements. Given Apple’s innovation record, they’ve always been important in much of the tech community (where Apple has led by innovation, others have eventually followed), but since Apple entered the consumer marketplace with the iPod, and more recently the iPhone, the announcements have become even more widely watched. The event is always enjoyable given Apple’s intense secrecy (which doesn’t seem to have been particularly good this year!) about the products, Steve Jobs famous thoroughness, standard jeans-and-turtleneck outfit, and - of course - that he is a extremely accomplished speaker and presenter.

There are lots of predictions and rumours about what might be announced, but most attention is focused on the iPhone. It’s widely expected that iPhone 2.0 will be announced, and maybe even launched later this month, with the 3G technology and perhaps built-in GPS. Whilst that sounds attractive, it’s the launch of third party applications that I’m particularly excited about: Being able to run applications that help me do my job (OmniFocus for the iPhone is what I’m most excited about), and fill gaps in the toolset on the iPhone (where are calendar todo’s and central contact management?). Rumours also abound that Apple may relent at let mobile networks subsidise the iPhone, which together with 3G, could really help it’s adoption in Europe.

As for non-iPhone products, there are rumours of Mac OS X 10.6, although it seems too soon after Leopard, with no particularly key features being talked about yet. And a re-branding of Apple’s .mac, to make it focused more on the mobile user, is as overdue as it is welcome. I’ve never been particularly impressed with the pricetag or feature list of .mac, so will be intrigued to learn what they have in mind.

Certainly looking forward to it, and perhaps even watching (via the official video PodCast that now exists) the keynote on the train tomorrow morning

It’s not often you get to write about running and books at the same time. The few running books I have are quite technical books, dealing more with the actual process of running and providing a reference point for my questions. They’re not so much in them about what it is to actually be a runner. Consequently, they’re more functional, reference material, and there’s not much to be said for writing about them, much as I don’t really feel the need to write about dictionaries!

Saturday’s Guardian has an extract in the magazine from Haruki Murakami’s forthcoming book “What I Talk About When I Talk About Running” therefore jumped out at me. It’s an excellent piece - well worth a read by any other runners - and as a result I’ve got the book in my shopping basket already. There are some superb extracts about the joys of running: the thoughts you have, observations you find yourself making, routines and mantras you go through, and the challenges you face. One section jumped out at me, particularly in light of my comments yesterday about running being every bit a mental challenge as a physical one:

One runner told of a mantra his older brother, also a runner, had taught him which he’s pondered ever since. Here it is: “Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.” Say you’re running and you start to think, Man this hurts, I can’t take it any more. The hurt part is an unavoidable reality, but whether or not you can stand any more is up to the runner himself. This pretty much sums up the most important aspect of marathon running.

Click here for the full article.

Frances is coincidentally currently reading Norweigian Wood, by the same author, which I gave her for Christmas. I’ve heard great things about that book, and hoping to read it when she’s finished. I just hope she doesn’t finish it just before this book comes out!

I’ve been a big fan and customer of Amazon for years, and remember placing orders back in the late 1990’s, not long after they opened up in the UK, for (technical) books that proved hard to get hold of in high-street bookshops.

I find their selection hard to beat, and combined with frequently very competitive prices, and excellent service, they’ve simply slotted in as a trusted company for many of my purchases.

I was intrigued to read about Amazon Prime when it launched in the US, and later over here. For an upfront fee (currently £49), all your purchases are shipped first class for a year.

It didn’t appeal at first, I just figured I didn’t need to order that many things to justify it. But I recently saw there was a free one-month trial available, which I figured was worth a go at, given I did have a few items on my shopping list. Now I’m a bit worried it’s changed the way I buy books for good! I was recently browsing in Borders in town, and saw a book I quite liked. On returning home, I looked it up on amazon, and ordered the book, saving myself £3 on the Borders price. OK, the £49 divides out over the course of the year, but the convenience and speed with which items come (no more batching up big orders to save) makes it a whole different experience.

Well worth considering if you love books as much as I do. Take a look at the details here.

Next week is the MHFS 10k, which is my target race for the XT Wings Challenge. You can see my mug-shot on Salomon’s challenge website.

I’ve been a bit slow(!) with weblog posts over the last few weeks, so I figured an update was somewhat overdue. Mainly because I’ve been very busy, and simply not had the time or motivation to actually sit down and write very much.

I’ve been doing most of my training with my running club, which has had a focus on the 10k distance over the last month or two because of the Polaroid 10k series, the Women’s 10k and next weeks Men’s 10k. So in that sense, I’ve been getting on with it and doing the right things.

I’m starting to get a bit anxious that I’ve not done enough endurance work recently, and sustaining my target pace of at least 04:30s over the 10 kilometres might be a bit tricky. I’m not very good at pacing myself either - I frequently set off too quickly, and keep going at that pace for too long and then suffering, and dropping below my target pace, in the long-run.

Runners know what I’m saying when I say that this sport we do is at least as much a mental challenge as it is a physical challenge. Knowing you can sustain a particular pace, and then actually sustaining it requires mental effort to battle the demons. It’s often not - at the time - a whole lot of fun operating at high heart rates, so you need a lot of determination to push through the thoughts and doubts that it’d be really much easier to stop, walk or just slow down for a bit. The solution is endurance work, which is what a lot of winter training involves. Simply running for longer distances at a slower pace. Mixed in with plenty of pace work, involving exertion over shorter distances.

The reward in running for me, and I imagine most other runners, comes from pushing through the personal doubts and challenges, and going on to achieve goals and targets. Even simply completing a particularly hard training session can be just as rewarding as pushing a PB by a few seconds. Just the other week we were doing 8 x 800m sessions at 10k pace. It was a lot of hard work, and a few of us taking part weren’t sure we could manage it - largely because we’d made the mistake of trying to keep pace with faster runners in the first few repeats. So finishing it felt very good indeed (as well as a timely reminder about pacing!). The 3k run home afterwards wasn’t so much fun though - I didn’t have much left in me! But that particular session was, in hindsight, probably one of the most useful I’ve had in a while.

My doubts with the MHFS 10k are that the course isn’t particularly level in the Pollok Park (PDF course map here - Pollok park is the 3.5k - 7k section). It’s certainly not hilly, but it’s not flat, and my PB does come from a flat course (doh!). There’s only one nasty hill in Pollok park, and the race course takes us down it, not up it! But as the course through the park is then very gradually back uphill, it’ll be important to push hard in the main downhill section to compensate for the loss of time later on, and not let the change in pace through the park throw me off. The “average pace” indicator on my Garmin should help here.

So whilst I’m getting a bit worried it is probably more pre-race nerves and worrying about pacing. I probably have done enough training to put on a reasonable challenge on my PB next Sunday. I’ve been running to and from my running club (ok, our training is frequently in Pollok park, so not far to return from), so I’m averaging well over 10k in the weekday club sessions, and getting decent runs in over the weekend (a nice 10 miler at 8am this morning was especially enjoyable). I managed to get my current PB by being careful about pacing, so I’m intending to do similar this time and ensure I focus on being consistent. I know how I feel when I’m at the right pace (runner, know thyself!), so if I can find that “sweet spot”, I just need to hang on in there.

Bigger than the challenge though is that this race is the first anniversary of my very first race (the 2007 MHFS 10k, so the same course) since taking up running. I ran that in around 54 minutes, so to be even considering a 10 minute improvement from a year ago still feels like a huge achievement, and I’m looking forward to comparing my performance from the two race to see how my general fitness has changed. Fingers crossed for good running weather too!

Because I had a nasty fall against a table when I was small, I’ve got slightly odd shaped left ear, so I frequently find that the headphones that come with personal stereos (well, iPods!) quickly get uncomfortable after an hour or so of continual use. Some years back though, I discovered the joy that was bud earphones, and having non-white leads also, I thought, would make me slightly less likely to get mugged for my 2nd Generation iPod (ie. back when they weren’t ubiquitous, and quite the mugging target).

Unfortunately, choices for bud earphones the iPhone were somewhat more limited. There was a set of bud earphones available, but as they cost over £100, they was simply waaaay over my budget. I just didn’t need them that badly. So when I read on TUAW that a cheaper product was available, I jumped at it.

The product was the ProCable In-Ear Isolation Headset for iPhone, from Radtech. The product even boasts the strapline “Comfortable and durable audiophile quality in-ear headset with Sound Valve Technology.“. For $24.99, and just shy of $10 shipping to the UK, $34.93 amounted to somewhere around £17, which was also below the customs duty level.

A bargain. Or so I thought.

Firstly, it’s worth stressing that the service I received from radtech was excellent. The package arrived in about a week. It was all very well packaged, and no problems (or charges) clearing customs. I really can’t fault them there, and I’d buy something else from them again, quite happily. It’s just that the headset itself that proved catastrophically, thoroughly and entirely awful, useless and a waste of money. That the buds didn’t quite fit in my ear was one (minor) thing. The big problem was that the sound quality is truly awful. Cheap for a reason.

I’m far from an audiophile. I know a few of these strange creatures, and I’m afraid I’ve really no interest at all in optimal room conditions, gold-plated cabling, filtered power supplies and records vs CD’s, AAC vs MP3 and so on. I just can’t tell the difference, and largely don’t care: So long as the speakers or headset I’m using sounds reasonable and has a respectable range, I’m happy.

Unfortunately I could immediately tell there was none of that with these headphones. I was listening to Arcade Fire’s stunning album “Neon Bible”, and my favourite track on the album “Intervention” makes impressive use of a powerful church organ. If you’ve not heard it, go find it on iTunes, and give it a listen. It’s one of the stand-out albums in the last few years. But with these headphones, it was, I’m afraid, pitiful. Absolutely no punch. The song sounded poor on every level. I immediately switched back to my iPhone headphones, and the difference was profound.

Others might find them fine. Perhaps you care less about the sound, or don’t use the iPhone for music as much as I do these days (twice weekly trips through to Edinburgh). They’d probably make acceptable headsets for telephone purposes. But not music.

Ironically perhaps, I’ve found I’ve subsequently got quite used to the iPhone’s bundled headphones. Whether that’s because they’ve changed the moulding from the previous iPod earphones, or that my ears have become more used to the shape, I don’t know.

In short: Avoid. Put your money elsewhere, or stick with the excellent headphones supplied with the iPhone.

Because the iPhone supplied headphones have a small but noticeable microphone, you also get to take part in the “is-that-an-iphone-or-ipod-owner”. I’m spotting them more and more, and with the 3G phone, and v2 firmware due very soon now (next week?), I’m sure we’ll see more of them on the streets. It’s still the best portable gadget I’ve ever bought.

I don’t think I’ve ever encountered anybody who doesn’t like the Google doodle. Whilst I frequently access Google through my browsers search widget, I still visit the website directly (often when hunting out some of Googles other services), and enjoy looking at the variations on the famous logo that draw attention to various holidays, anniversaries and festivals. Previous doodles are available for browsing if you’ve missed them. Just a bit of a shame they’re not linked to the appropriate search, as they are when they feature on the front page.

So today, one of Glasgow’s most famous sons, Charles Rennies Mackintosh features. See Google.co.uk!

We didn’t have a wedding list for our wedding. We’d set up home together years ago, and couldn’t really think of things we really wanted to ask for. So instead of getting “best” crockery we’d not use very often or at all (we both much prefer informal meals), we instead encouraged guests to make a donation to either Macmillan or the Alzheimer’s Society. These are both causes that Frances and I support. Alzheimer’s and cancer has affected our families and friends, and supporting these causes through our “wedding list” seemed a great way to help.

This week we finally got around to sending off the donations, cheques and tax-efficient donation forms we’d received. We’re absolutely delighted to report that we raised a grand total of £572.50p for Macmillan, and £322.50p for the Alzheimer’s Society.

So a massive thank you to everybody for their generosity!

• www.macmillan.org.uk
• www.alzheimers.org.uk