Kerry Buckley What’s the simplest thing that could possibly go wrong?

In an annoying turn of events at work, I’ve suddenly been asked to make some changes to an app that I wrote about ten years ago, and which was last touched about five years ago (it’s been happily working away in the interim). The catch is that there’s an actual legal deadline for getting the changes live, and it’s about a fortnight after they asked me to start working on it.

In theory it ought to be an easy change, but as you might imagine it’s using ridiculously out of date dependencies, and just getting it to build was quite a struggle. Rather than trying to work my way through a tedious upgrade process, I ended up creating a new Phoenix project (LiveView! No more NPM!) with the latest versions of Erlang, Elixir and all the libraries. I copied the business logic code back in, got those tests passing again, and finally rewrote the small web front end from scratch using LiveView instead of controllers, templates and channels. I more or less got a working CI build going, so now I just need to sort out building and deploying it, plus making the actual enhancement.

On Wednesday we had the annual club Two Rivers handicap race (Landguard Point to Felixstowe Ferry). When we got there Landguard was heaving with Eclipse watchers (not sure why everyone felt the need to go somewhere special to see the sun, which is famously in the sky and pretty much visible from anywhere). Maria had brought some eclipse glasses, so we got to have a peek every now and then, and marvel at a temporary slight reduction in light levels (probably quite a big reduction in reality, but eyes are pretty good at compensating). After the race people fragmented a bit, but our little group ended up in the White Horse, which I think I’ve only been to briefly once or twice before, and always on Christmas pub crawls. Seemed like a friendly place, and they had some folky-type live music going on.

I went down to Totton for the weekend, for Tim’s annual birthday barbecue. 99% of the journey there on Friday went OK, then I spent about an hour queuing in the 1.5 miles between junctions 3 and 2 of the M27, because everyone was forced to leave at 2 because the A31 was closed after a big fire, and I dutifully sat in the left lane, which seemed to come of very much the worst when it came to merging. Anyway, I got to Phil’s eventually, and after getting some chips for dinner we cycled to the New Forest Inn to meet Neil and Jeremy (deliberately) and John and Erica (by coincidence) for a few beers.

On Saturday we walked down to Bartley Park parkrun. Normally I just jog round parkrun chatting these days, but I had a streak to maintain at this venue of having finished in under 22 minutes and in the top ten all three times. I managed to do so for a fourth time, although it was hard work in the heat. In the afternoon Phil got his Land Rover out for a potter through the forest – it’s always funny how friendly everyone is to people driving round in a 60-odd-year-old vehicle with no roof or seatbelts, and with the windscreen folded down!

Saturday evening was the actual barbecue, which as usual is a chance to see people I haven’t seen since the previous year, although a few of the usual suspects were on holiday and missed it. Normally part of the fun is trying to destroy Tim’s chimenea by stuffing as much wood in at once as possible, but this year we sensibly skipped that, what with it being plenty warm enough already, and having been warned by the completely inappropriate use of the government emergency alert system that things might be apt to go on fire.

The journey home on Sunday was a bit quicker (just some traffic around Heathrow), and I had time to go for a little easy run when I got home before cycling into town for Dave’s birthday curry at the Sonar Bangla (followed of course by a couple of extra pints at the Cricketers).

Not sure whether I’m coming down with something, or it’s just the lingering effects of the blood donation, but running has felt really tiring for the past week or so, and my heart rate has been through the roof at what ought to have been an easy pace. I did get a chance for a refreshing dip in the sea before cycling home after Tuesday’s training session though.

The front brake on my old yellow bike (not to be confused with my new yellow bike) had been making an annoying noise, and I wondered whether it was related to the wheel being a fraction out of true after I replaced the spoke as part of the process of getting it back on the road. I took the excuse to switch the wheels for the Shimano ones from the other bike, that I’d replaced with carbon ones. In the process of doing that, I found that the spring on the front caliper (a nearly new Ultegra unit) wasn’t working, and the arm that the cable pulls basically just flaps around. I’m not really sure what’s going on there, but for now I’ve put the Tektro calipers that originally came with the bike back on.

I rode the (new yellow) commuter to work for the first time on Wednesday, having received the cheap DI-2 charging cable I’d order from AliExpress and charged the shifter battery up. Everything seemed to work fine, but on the way home it stopped changing gear, leaving me to pedal the last couple of miles in a low gear. Fortunately there was a massive headwind, so I wouldn’t exactly have been zipping along anyway. I assumed it hadn’t charged properly, but after I got home it seemed to work fine, so maybe a loose cable or something. I can’t help thinking a normal gear cable would be less hassle.

The correct sized spokes for the wheels I’m building for the Grinduro arrived (second time lucky), and I’ve got the wheels loosely laced up now. Just the difficult bit of tensioning them all up and getting the wheels true and correctly dished to go!

Last week my bread machine paddle seized up. I had a dig around in the garage to find my previous machine in the hope of cannibalising the bearing assembly from the pan, but it turns out they’ve changed the design. I managed to find one online for a bit less than Panasonic were charging, and now it’s fitted and all working well again. In the interim I tried baking a loaf the traditional way, with a tin in the oven, but it sunk horribly and I ended up breaking it up and putting it on the garage roof for the gulls. I’m not sure quite why I can make pizza, baguettes, naans and bread rolls and they’re always fine, but whenever I try a loaf it’s a disaster. I did make the dough in the mixer instead of kneading it by hand, so maybe that’s the problem.

Having completed my latest Buffy rewatch, I’ve now started on Veronica Mars. I’ve never seen it before, but it keeps getting praised on all the Buffy podcasts I’ve listened to (SlayerFest ’98 this time), so I thought I’d give it a go. Really enjoying it so far, although it took me a while to be able to tell any of the rich white boys apart.

I gave blood on Tuesday afternoon (donation number 67). As usual, they warned me to avoid strenuous activity for 24 hours, and as usual I ignored them, by cycling another 25 miles and running five during the rest of the day. Although the official advice is actually a lot more measured and reasonable.

As I set off to ride to work I briefly wondered why my headphones started cutting out, then realised that I’d completely forgotten to pick up my rucksack.

Looks like some kind of solitary wasps (mud daubers?) have been nesting in my lounge window frame:

I thought I was ready to start rebuilding the wheels for my purple bike. Originally I was just planning to replace the hubs, but after taking the old wheels apart (which turned out to have been a waste of time) I realised that one of the spoke holes on one wheel had ripped through, so I ordered new rims too. I started lacing the front wheel up, then when I went to fit the third group of spokes I realised that the ones I’d bought were far too short (this is my first stab at wheel building, otherwise it would have been obvious from the get-go). This wasn’t entirely my fault – I’d based my spoke calculations on the effective rim diameter quoted on the product page from the retailer I bought the rims from, not noticing that they’d just included one set of specs for both the 650B and 700C versions. Naturally the figure was the one for the wrong variant. I’m now waiting for another bunch of – hopefully correct – spokes to arrive before I can try again. These basic wheels have already cost more than the fancy (but admittedly very cheap) carbon ones I got for the road bike.

Another post-parkrun Cricketers visit on Saturday for second breakfast, then Robin got wind of a beer festival at Ipswich Transport Museum, and he, Jo, Neil and I cycled over for the evening. I’d never got round to visiting the museum before – it’s quite interesting, and nice to be able to get in for less than the usual price and wander round with a beer. Apparently it raised a decent amount of money for them too, so hopefully it’ll become a regular event.

On Sunday evening we were all back out again, along with Dave and Sally, for dinner at the Cricketers again and to catch up with Dave’s tales of his trip over to San Francisco to run the marathon and drive around on a Harley-Davidson.

A long-overdue week off work, during which – as predicted – I barely made a scratch on the enormous heap of queued-up chores. I did have some nice lie-ins (lies-in? Definitely not “lay-ins”) though.

I took the new carbon wheels out for a spin on Tuesday morning, then rode that bike to Felixstowe for Tuesday night training. Not sure they give me much advantage other than psychological, but they’re definitely lighter and more aerodynamic, and look nice! The whole bike pretty much has a matt black vibe now, which is obviously perfect for road safety.

I took the latest bike out for a little test ride (incorporating a couple of shop stops) on Wednesday. Not quite as smooth this time, as I had to stop and return home almost immediately after realising I’d forgotten to tighten the rear wheel nuts, then it turned out that the fancy electronic gear change battery wasn’t as charged as I thought, so I ended up doing the whole ride in one gear (fortunately something I’m pretty used to!). Nothing actually wrong with the bike though. I’m waiting for the unofficial charging cable I ordered to arrive (obviously Shimano wouldn’t just stick a USB-C port on it) before it can start its job as my daily (well, Tuesday to Thursday) commuter.

Lots of running this week, but no racing. Monday’s (easy 8 trail miles in the Fynn Valley) and Saturday (parkrun, plus commute and course checks) both felt horrendous, with my heart racing despite a very slow pace. I guess some combination of humidity and dehydration to blame. The other runs felt OK, and my heart rate was much more in keeping with the pace, so I don’t think I’m dying.

One of the few jobs I did actually get round to was cutting back the vegetation (wisteria and some other kind of climber) on the back of the house. As usual I’d left it longer than I should have, which entailed a trip up onto the roof to disconnect the bits that had wound themselves round the chimney and TV aerial mounting.

I spent an hour or two removing the spokes from the wheels from the purple bike, with the intention of reusing the rims with the new hubs I’d bought. Unfortunately after doing that, and while taking all the various measurements to figure out what size spokes to buy, I noticed that a spoke hole on one of the rims was ripped through. I’ve ended up ordering new rims too now, which means that these wheels are going to end up costing more than the (admittedly incredibly cheap) carbon ones I got for the road bike. Also that I wasted my time carefully disassembling the old ones into pieces that I’m no longer going to reuse. Still, they might come in handy one day …

This week was Robin’s 666th parkrun, so (given that it’ll be a while before the next proper milestone at 1000) he decided to run it in cut-off jeans and an Iron Maiden shirt. A few people joined in, but I decided that acquiring appropriate attire just for this one event would be a bit of a waste.

I lost my Stryd foot pod a few weeks ago, during the Stowmarket Friday 5. I was going to just do without like a normal person, but ended up caving in and buying a second-hand (but a newer model than the one I lost) replacement from eBay. One of the selling points of the newer (not latest) model is a more secure fit, so hopefully I’ll keep hold of this one!

I took a small step towards disconnection from the big surveillance capitalism giants by switching the browser on my laptop and phone from Chrome to Vivaldi. So far it’s been a pretty seamless experience (and free of any AI nonsense), although I’m yet to see how well it will work on my work laptop with their various random network blockages.

Catching up … hopefully I’ll remember to get next week’s written in time!

On Tuesday we a team “away day” (although only as far as another building on site). People had voted for various categories of award, and I was given the “Keep it Simple” award (“most creative problem-solver who finds surprisingly simple fixes to complex problems”), in the form of a trophy that Brad had 3D-printed (and some Haribo).

Then on Wednesday we had the software engineering community unconference, where people from various teams on site got together to discuss a wide range of developery topics (including, unsurprisingly, a lot of AI stuff, but fortunately only one per session, and all in the same room so easy to avoid).

I bought another bike on eBay, which I drove to Colchester to collect on Thursday evening. It’s a Genesis Day One Alfina Di2, with an 8-speed hub gear with electronic shifting and lots of braze-ons for mudguards, racks etc, and the plan is to make it my year-round commuter, allowing me to revert the Grinduro to more like its original spec (again).

The cheap Chinese carbon wheels I ordered for my road bike a while ago arrived this week. I haven’t had time to try them out yet (well I have, but notional past me that’s pretending I’m writing these notes on time hadn’t), but they certainly look good on the bike.

The last of the Friday races this week (and the last race of any kind for a while), with the Ipswich Twilight 10k. They’ve tweaked the route a bit this year to remove some tight U-turns, which is a definite improvement (although the new start line was a bit chaotic). It felt tough pretty much all the way round, and I was just hoping to keep under 45 minutes, so I was very surprised to approach the finish line and see a 42 on the clock! I guess it felt tough because I was going quicker than I thought. I ended up with 42:33 – I’ve gone quicker a couple of times over the distance, but it’s my fastest Twilight, and my best 10k age grade, so happy with that.

After Twilight we naturally retired to the Cricketers for food and drink, then were back there about 12 hours later to celebrate Dave and Sally both completing their 500th parkrun. Then we somehow ended up back there again on Sunday evening because Robin and Jo had got back from holiday too late to go shopping. The plan was to eat and leave early so people (not me) could get home for the world cup final, but they put it on the TV in the pub (the first time I can remember a TV in a ’Spoons having the volume turned up) so we ended up staying much longer then planned.

Oh dear. I remembered this morning (Thursday 23rd) that I hadn’t done last week’s notes yet. What I hadn’t realised was that I hadn’t done the week before’s either. So, let’s delve into the past and see what (aided by Strava, social media posts and timestamped photos) I can remember …

In a classic piece of questionable corporate motivation, I got a recognition award for building a tool in a week that an external company had quoted £100k for. The email described what the tool would enable them to do, mentioned the £100k savings, and came with a voucher for … £25. I’m nothing if not good value for money.

I also had what I can only assume was an initiative test, in the form of credentials for a service (basically a very long string of random letters) being sent to me in a “secure email”. This might seem sensible on the surface, but unfortunately what it means is that Outlook won’t allow text to be copied from the message, and prevents you from forwarding it. I certainly wasn’t keen on retyping the whole thing, and was considering taking a photo of the screen and having my phone OCR it, but it turned out the solution was to open it in webmail, then use the developer tools to inspect the element and copy the contents from there. I can’t help thinking this wasn’t the intention, but I still have no idea how I was expected to extract the text.

Tuesday was still hot, so in addition to cycling to Felixstowe for FRR training, we went for a swim in the sea before cycling home. Normally this is the kind of thing I only do on New Year’s Eve, and it turns out to be much more pleasant in summer!

The Friday 5 series may have been over, but as usual there was still one more five-mile race on Friday, in the shape of the Brantham 5 (not part of the series, although this year it was part of the Suffolk Grand Prix for the first time).

On Sunday I went for a long trail run with Holly, out to Witnesham, across to Claydon and back along the Gipping river path. As usual, it ended up being a bit longer than planned (especially for me, as I had further to go to get home), although we did stop for a quick drink at the Bramford Cock. The original intention had been to nip into the village to get ice lollies from the Co-op, but Holly mentioned that there was also a pub, and didn’t take much arm-twisting to go there instead. It was tough getting going again afterwards though.

At some point during that run I went through 1000 miles for the year, and noticed that I was also within a couple of miles of also covering 1000 on the bike(s). I mentioned this on a WhatsApp group, and got talked into joining Neil to ride a little ten mile loop including stopping at the Cricketers on the way home for food and a couple of pints. Incidentally I don’t think I’ve hit 1000 miles in the car this year yet.

Pretty sure this week consisted almost entirely of running, and cycling to places to do running (plus the normal three days of cycling to work).

I dragged all my working bikes out for a photo, and I rode all of them (apart from the mountain bike, which is very heavy and best avoided) at least once this week. The yellow one that I got back into working order last week had its first tryout on Thursday’s ride to work, and everything is working well so far. I do need to sort out some more organised storage than two or three in the garage and the others in the hall though, but that will entail some tidying.

Monday saw the first Run for Beer for a while, ending up in the Nelson to celebrate Claire’s birthday.

On Tuesday Neil and I cycled out to Felixstowe for training (to be joined by Ryan and Dave for the return trip), but mostly just jogged round the actual session on account of having raced on Friday and Sunday, with more coming up. Then the following evening we rode out there again for the club’s annual Run Bike Run event, which is basically a social fun duathlon (1.5 mile run, 6.1 mile ride, 2.2 mile run) with the twist that the “winner” is the one who sets off last and still finishes before the cutoff time. This was my first time doing the cycle leg on a bike with gears, which definitely sped me up, but I was never going to challenge for the title! Even if Ryan hadn’t been there to set what I think was a new course record then I would have been defeated by Robin’s tactics of setting off ten seconds after me and knowing that he then just had to finish before running out of time to beat me. Anyway, it was more about the chilli and beer afterwards than the actual competition.

Friday was the final Friday 5 race, at Great Bentley (I didn’t ride there!), then Saturday’s Christchurch Park parkrun was cancelled because they were setting up Music in the Park, so Robin, Ryan, Neil and I cycled to Alton Water to do that one instead. Dave (a different one) had also ridden there, and joined us for the journey back. Finally on Sunday a similar gang (minus Neil but plus Chris and Jo) rode to Woolverstone for the Ekiden Relays (basically loads of running clubs fielding multiple teams each running a marathon as a relay with 7.2k, 5k, 10k, 5k, 10k and 5k legs round a 2.5k course on the school fields). This year I had the second leg, and wasn’t also doing one for the coffee runners like last year, which meant I could relax fairly early, break out the beer and tuck into the snacks that everyone had brought. Highlight of the day was Ryan subbing in to do the final leg in our slowest team after one of their runners didn’t show up, and deciding to spice it up by downing a can of cider on each lap. He still managed to finish in about 20:30 – a minute quicker than me – despite having run a 36 minute 10k earlier in the day.

A horribly hot week, peaking on Friday when I measured 39.8°C in the shade outside my window, and a foot-searing 57.3°C from the paving slabs in the sunshine. I was working at home that day, but managed to keep things just about bearable by shutting all the windows and curtains and having a big fan running.

We had some work experience students at work this week. Brad did a good job of organising things for them, including shadowing people from all the team projects for an hour or two. It’s always a reminder of how many layers of things there are to know when you have someone like that working with you … OK, We’re adding a query to a GraphQL API, which means … Let’s start with a test. This is ExUnit … oh, and it’s written in Elixir … wait, writing a test first probably seems odd – have you seen TDD before? We’re going to mock this function, which we do when … and so on. No heads exploded, and they claimed to have found it interesting, at least to our faces.

I think I’ve now got my old yellow bike back into a rideable condition. I gave up trying to adjust the front shifter (the spring doesn’t seem powerful enough to pull the back onto the small ring), but unlike last time (2009) instead of giving up and buying a fixed gear bike I found a second hand 105 mech on eBay for a fiver, which works perfectly. I’ve not ridden it yet, but assuming it’s all good that takes me up to 4½ working bikes (the mountain bike is borderline).

Despite the heat, I managed to drag myself round the Stowmarket Friday 5 (33°C!) and the Kesgrave 10k on Sunday (ten degrees cooler, but still felt really warm). Then a bunch of us finished the week with the semi-traditional Sunday evening beers and food at the Cricketers.

Merry solstice!

I got an email from Anglian Water saying that I appear to have another leak (a mere one litre per hour this time). I assume this just means they didn’t do a great job of repairing the leaky meter last time, but I need to remember to turn the stop cock off overnight at some point to check. There’s no indication of any joined-up thinking at their end – you’d think maybe something would flag up the fact that there was a leak at the same property only a couple of months ago.

The weather’s been heating up (too much if you ask me), and after a couple of weeks with strong winds and/or threatened rain we had no excuse not to cycle to Felixstowe for Tuesday’s training session. Neil and I had a leisurely ride there with a bit of a headwind, and were joined by the less leisurely Dave and Ryan for a fairly speedy ride back, making the most of the wind at our backs.

Back to the Fat Cat on Wednesday for the delayed meet-up with current (Rupert) and ex- (Mel and Tony) colleagues. It was nice to be able to sit outside at last, and I also benefitted from a one-pound pint as it was the end of the cask (well it was Mel who benefitted really, as it was his round).

The heat had really set in ready for the Bury Friday 5. For some reason this one always seems to be warm – at least since the 30°C one in 2022 – and this year we were running in temperatures only about a degree below that. Unsurprisingly I was a minute and a half slower than a couple of weeks ago at Sudbury!

On Saturday I made a flying visit to Southampton for a celebration of the life of my brother in law Pad, who died suddenly in his sleep last month (my sister lives in Spain, so the funeral itself had been over there). As usual with these things, it was nice to catch up with some relatives I’d not seen for far too long, but we’d all have preferred it to have been in better circumstances. It was a happy occasion though, as he’d have wanted – they’d booked out the pub where they held their wedding reception, and one of Pad’s friends had but together a booklet full of photos and people’s recollections, in the style of a Southampton FC programme, and had copies printed up for everyone.

I decided to ignore the heat and go for an easy run on Sunday, and for some reason set out at the warmest part of the day for what I originally planned to be a loop out along by the Orwell and back through Nacton. Checking the route near Levington I realised that I wasn’t all that far from Trimley, and decided to head that way instead and get the train back. While making that decision a weasel appeared and dropped a dead mouse at my feet, which was exactly as weird as it sounds. Nearing Trimley I asked my phone to direct me on the shortest route to the Half Moon for a quick bit of pre-train rehydration, but Google warned me that it would be shut so for some reason I then decided to continue into Felixstowe. After a quick pint at the Owl and Pussycat I continued down to the pier, then along the front and up to the station. Apart from the heat it was a nice route, mostly on the new(ish) King Charles coastal path. Apart from the weasel I saw a couple of muntjacs, loads of dragonflies and some oystercatchers.