People like Joel Spolsky have been going on for years about how paying a bit more money to get a better quality chair up front can make a massive long-term saving, combined with increased productivity and “cool” appeal (there’s a lovely comparison of the cost of a quality chair compared to toilet paper Joel wrote here). The sort of chair that the hip start-ups in the Valley choose to show how cool they are and how valued the employees are has always been the Herman Miller Aeron Chair.

Unfortunately I’ve never worked anywhere that values me enough to buy me an Aeron chair, so instead of shelling out £700 for an office chair they’ve preferred to shell out a tenth of that. And that’s been OK. However, since I started working from home it’s meant sitting in my 10 year old cheapo office chair for up to 10 hours a day. And it’s been painful.

Since it offers no back support, lumbar support, buttock support or any other kind of support that a chair should provide I’ve had more than my fair share of aches and pains. My good lady has had to give me numerous back massages to get rid of the searing pain in my shoulders. I soon decided this couldn’t go on and it was time to splash out on a new chair. At the back of my mind the Aeron chair was always there and no matter where I looked I couldn’t find anything good enough (even the top-of-the-range IKEA chairs wouldn’t cut it). So I decided, if it’s good enough for John Topley (who has one), it’s good enough for me - I’m buying an Aeron chair. And then, while about to shell out the requisite £700 I came across the Mirra chair, also by Herman Miller.

The Mirra chair, while £200 cheaper than an Aeron, is really the new Aeron chair. It’s more adjustable than an Aeron, more recyclable, looks cooler (IMHO) and has myriad colour options (unlike the Aeron). Since the thought of a black chair in my home office wouldn’t go down too well with my good lady (it just wouldn’t match the decor), I realised that we could customise the Mirra to perfectly match its surroundings. So with a deep breath and credit card in hand I ordered the most expensive chair I’ll ever buy. And a couple of days ago it arrived!

So, was it worth the money? Well, to be completely honest I’d have to say yes. It’s worth every penny. As soon as I sat down in it, without even making any adjustments, I found I was sat in a position that was really good for my posture (my posture is usually terrible) and I was completely supported in all the places I should be. I could sit literally all day and know I wouldn’t get the slightest bit of back or shoulder ache. Some tweaking later and the armrests are the perfect height so I can use the keyboard with no effort or strain. It is without doubt the most comfortable chair I’ve ever sat in and really, all office chairs should be like this.

So since I’m not knackered after a full day’s working it means the quality of my work will increase as I won’t be battling fatigue and pain. Instead I can concentrate on what I’m doing. If you too spend your working life stuck at a desk in front of a computer screen you owe it to yourself to get your boss to buy you one of these chairs. And if they say “no”, then sounds like you need to change jobs - it certainly worked for me, kinda! I just know that in 20 years time my older self will thank me for spending a bit of cash on a chair now to save the medical bills later.

I’ve always been fascinated with survival skills. From an early age I’ve loved the outdoors and the thought of having to survive on my wits and whatever natural resources are available. I’ve got a copy of the SAS Survival Handbook, I’ve spent many a night camping in the wilds of Scotland, can light a fire in a variety of different ways and reckon I’d do pretty well if I found myself in stuck in the middle of nowhere and had to survive (it’s not really optional to be fair). But if I could choose someone to be stuck with to increase our collective chance of survival and not turn it into an ordeal, then who would I want with me?

The way I see it, there are two choices. Ray Mears or Bear Grylls:

Both of these gentlemen have popular TV series that show you how to survive in the wilds of far flung corners of the world. They show you how to navigate without a compass, how to find food where none seems available, how to light a fire, where to get fresh water, how to build a shelter and survive the night and pretty much all you need to know. The difference between them however is in the delivery style. These guys are polar opposites.

The Men

Ray Mears is a mellow, laid back sort of a guy. He’s from the south of England and grew up exploring the countryside where he learned an appreciation of his surroundings and wildlife. He’s a worldwide expert in bush-craft having spent most of his life learning his craft, has travelled the globe and even runs his own school where you too can learn from his vast experience. His programmes are always interesting and filled with the stories of the people whose skills he demonstrates and are always set to a relaxed and easy tone.

Bear Grylls on the other hand is a former soldier who spent 3 years serving with the SAS. He’s an expert climber and sky diver and has partaken in a string of extreme sports. Following a free fall accident when in the army he broke his back in 3 places and spent a long time recovering fearing he may never walk or climb again. However at the tender age of only 23 he became the youngest person to successfully climb Mount Everest. He’s been on numerous expeditions pushing the limits of human endurance and has starred in several TV shows pitting him against survival situations. I’m assured by my good lady that he’s a rather good looking guy too!

The TV Programmes

One of Ray Mears shows is quite relaxing to watch. The music in the background will tend to be of the chilled out acoustic guitar variety. He’ll find himself out in the woods somewhere, or the outback or some similar absolutely-miles-from-anywhere situation. He’ll take a bit of time to show you some of the local plant life, what you can eat and what you can put in soup. He’ll spend a while making a shelter - but it’ll be so well put together that it would look like a home from home. He’ll show you a neat way to start a fire then he’ll head out and get dinner.

To give an example from a recent show he caught a salmon. He then showed you how to fillet it, got some wood and made a smoking stand, spread the salmon meat out over it then rested it above the fire - slow fade out with acoustic guitar music. Fade back in to show Ray taking the cooked fish out from the fire - music fades out. He took a bite out of the salmon and clearly it was delicious. So delicious that he passed some to the camera man to eat. He then relaxed in his shelter, put his feet up and the camera panned around to show the beautiful scenery while he told a story of some survivors who’d been stuck there in years gone by. You’d give anything to swap places with him.

Bear Grylls takes a different approach in his shows. Firstly, he’ll be on a helicopter or a plane explaining that he was about to show you what it’s like to be a tourist stuck in some remote part of Mexico (for example). He’ll jump out out of the helicopter / plane and sky dive his way to the ground. From then on he’ll be going flat out in an adrenaline packed hour that’ll leave you exhausted just watching! It’s all about getting out as soon as possible and doing anything to survive. If he’s high up he’ll try to find the most direct way down (usually a cliff) and scramble his way down. There’s a huge waterfall? No problem - he’ll just leap off the top! Feeling hungry and need some energy? He’ll eat anything! From camel testicles to live scorpions (quite crunchy and taste like rotten cheese apparently) to various grubs he’ll describe as “like a small packet of puss”. You never see him enjoying a meal - he’s usually trying not to vomit.

In one memorable episode Bear actually caught himself a trout (that’s a very tasty freshwater fish). Now trout are delicious but rather than do the Ray Mears thing of cooking it he simply gutted it, washed it in the river and started eating it raw there and then. There ain’t no time to cook! Stuck on the wrong side of a Siberian river? Easy, just strip off, throw your kit over and dive in! Bear’s shows are great and you know that if you were in a tight situation with him, even including hostile people around trying to kill you, it’d be a safe bet he’d get you out alive. But after watching an episode my brother said he’d “hate to be the camera crew” because it would be completely knackering trying to keep up - he’s a machine!

Who To Choose?

So in a choice of which one of these guys you’d be stuck with, I guess it comes down to what sort of experience you want. With Ray you know there wouldn’t be any rush. You’d be chilled, calm and relaxed. You’d have plenty of time to watch sunsets, think about life and learn a thing or two about the world around you and how to survive in it. Even though there wouldn’t be any music, you’d swear that someone in the background was twanging an acoustic guitar…

But find yourself in a survival situation with Bear and prepare to be tested to the limits! The only time you get to lie down and rest is if you’re dead! You wouldn’t have time to think as you’d be battling to keep up with Bear as he bounds up a cliff face or a tree or over a river. At least you won’t have time to miss home or wonder how you found yourself in this mess - you’ll be completely single minded about getting out of there. While one version of yourself in style on gourmet cooked food with Ray Mears, the other is scraping the bark off a tree looking for grubs to eat or wrestling a stag to the ground to make it’s fur into a hang-glider. (Note: when it comes to wrestling stags, you’re probably best leaving Mr Grylls to that one).

So I think it comes down to a relaxing holiday or a flat out race-against-the-clock-once-in-a-lifetime endurance event. I’m still not sure so I’m thinking…

The TV Series Pitch (to be read in a husky voice)

Two men. Both expert survivors. Both at home in any environment, friendly or hostile. Both with the same equipment. Both with the same goal - stay alive and get home. Each will have a camera crew to track their progress. Watch the split-screen action and press your red button to go interactive and choose different camera angles, see action-replays of life-or-death situations and vote for your winner. Who will get out first? Who will lose the most weight? Whose clothes will be the most tattered and mud stained?

So how about it BBC? Does the show get commissioned? Come on - if you don’t do it, Discovery or somebody else will! Since I came up with the idea I’ll want Executive Producer credits…

…because there’s a duck nesting in my garden again!

The first year we had ducks nesting we were like concerned parents. We’d be constantly checking to see if she was OK, wondering if we should put water and food out, on the look-out for cats all the time, panicking if she’d left the nest and hoping she was coming back and just generally worrying. Since this is the third year now we’re a lot more laid back about the process. We just leave her to get on with it. She knows what she’s doing and she doesn’t need us to do anything other than stay out of her way.

In fact the only thing we need to do is keep an eye out for when the chicks hatch since there’s no way for them to get out of the garden unless we leave the gate open! Shouldn’t be long now.

Since I made the switch from blogging platform Movable Type to Wordpress last year I’ve never looked back. Not only is it easier to customise the theme, easier to extend the platform itself in any way you can imagine and has an enormous user and developer community, but every version just gets better and better. The most recent release - 2.5 - comes with a completely redesigned administration section among a host of other cool things. Since everybody hates change (we all get used to doing something in a certain way and learning to do things differently is painful) there were quite a lot of negative comments about the redesign initially, but these have quickly quietened down - and I have no doubt it’s as a result of the user experience being a hell of a lot better. It’s amazing how a piece of software can make you feel more creative but that’s exactly how I feel when I log into my installation of Wordpress.

Anyway, I thought I’d take a moment to explain a couple of changes I’ve made to the layout of this site and how easy they were to implement in Wordpress. Firstly, snippets. You may notice some posts that instead of having a big banner with the title, the date underneath, the post itself and a link to the comments at the bottom, they have a blue bar to the left, no big banner and… Well, in short they look like this:

I felt the weight of expectation of my site’s design bear down on me every time I wanted to post something. If all I wanted to do was put up a link to something interesting I could hardly justify writing a full article about it and a one-sentence post just looked wrong. So I wouldn’t post. I saw that Matt (that’s Mr. Wordpress to you) creates mini-posts when he wants to say something briefly so I pretty much copied his layout (I hope he doesn’t mind)! What is it Picasso said? Good artists copy, great artists steal…

Next, I’ve wanted to post more of my photos to this site rather than over on Flickr but have never had a really neat way to do it. I had on my to-do list “investigate or write a photo gallery app” for ages. Well, fortunately Wordpress 2.5 supports image galleries and I could finally get my wish! Out of the box the image galleries don’t do much but since Wordpress is endlessly extensible it didn’t take me long to display a gallery as a single image with a description and link that takes you to the actual photos:

Each photo is a post in its own right so can have a description, has links to the previous and next pictures and can accept comments. It’s simple, effective and all I really wanted out of a photo app. Since Wordpress reads the EXIF information of all the photos I upload (that’s all the data your camera sets in the picture file like the shutter speed, date, time, etc.) then in time I can change my design to show more details about them as well as other related photos. In fact with only a few tweaks to my templates I could pretty much replicate your average Flickr photo page. Not that I will mind, I want to keep it simple and not spend all night every night redesigning my site!

Anyway, with Wordpress I was able to make these changes quite easily and only required a few lines of code added to my template. And the really cool thing is that whereas in my old Movable Type days (note that I used MT3 and MT4 is now available so my knowledge is out of date somewhat) if I had an idea for a way to change my site I’d likely give up as it would require a lot of investigation and work to get it implemented, but it feels like with Wordpress I can turn an idea into reality in less time than it took to write this article. Which in the case of snippets and photo albums is absolutely true.

Despite being ridiculously busy lately I’ve managed to find some time to work on my beloved John’s Background Switcher. I was originally going to leave it for a bit then over the Summer work on version 4 with some wholesale changes and major improvements. Then I had a few ideas and started fixing bugs and implementing some of these ideas and thought I may as well spend a few weeks putting together an interim release (which I’ll call 3.4). I’ve been working on features like this effect:

[Originals t-l to b-r: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19]

One of the coolest features of the previous version was Snapshot Scrapbook mode that made your desktop look like you’d thrown a bunch of Polaroid snaps onto it. I’ve built on this by adding the option to change the size of each snap (meaning you can get more on your screen - which is much better it turns out). I’ve also added a new option I’ll call ‘Postcard’ mode - which you can see above (this one’s a selection of ‘Interesting’ photos from Flickr over the last 7 days). I think you’ll agree it’s a pretty slick effect and again you can change the size of each photo to decide how many photos you want on each screen. While I may not be getting the time to go out and take landscape photos just now, at least I’m able to write some software that lets me appreciate other people’s!

In a week or two (if you’re a Windows user - I promise one of these days I’ll write a Mac version) - you’ll be able to do the same!