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Showing posts from December, 2017

New Year's Resolutions

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In December 2016 I set a few New Year’s Resolutions. Like millions of others, I have tried and failed in the past. I am an advocate of changing your life today rather than waiting for tomorrow or a specific date, so why set NYRs? There’s something powerful about the changing of a year, I had intentions that just happened to arrive before the new year so I married the two together; I wanted to run and cycle faster and further, and I also wanted to be more consistent in my writing. 2016 featured a lot of manic writing (I wrote 40,000 words in a month) followed by uninspired periods of emptiness. So, with those motivations in mind, I set the following goals: Finish my novella ‘Blackout’ Log spending daily Run 1,000 miles Cycle 2,000 miles (+3 other run/cycle targets, all achieved.) I only failed the first goal. Instead of finishing Blackout I wrote Idle Riot , edited it multiple times and polished it. I’m happy with that. I wanted to know how much

Anoraks Rejoice: Southeastern Performance Review

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Last month I wrote a  blog entry  detailing a particularly bad day in which a Southeastern employee told me I'd be better off getting the bus. If you enjoyed that, you'll likely enjoy this. If you still shiver when you think back to that blog post, I strongly advise you to look elsewhere. I can't tell you how excited I have been to post this article. I have logged the lateness of my trains on a daily basis and, up until a few days ago, I was ready to go. Unfortunately, I suspect Southeastern hired hackers to take my computer down, leaving me no choice other than the dreaded "System Restore". So, rather than my excellently colour-coded spreadsheet (the beginnings of which can be seen in the previous entry), you'll have to take my word for Southeastern's tardiness. Alongside the daily entries of exactly how late my trains were, I created a formula to produce a running average of all journeys entered. The last time I checked, at the beginning of