Categories
Cycling Road Cycling Uncategorized

Only a week to go!

We’ve created a Strava club so you can see how much training we’ve been doing and also it shows our latest route plans:

http://www.strava.com/clubs/lejogon

We’re planning on getting out on our last proper training ride this weekend and then will be taking it easy to let the legs prepare for the onslaught that will be riding from one end of the country to the other!

Its fantastic that we have got to over £2,000. But if you’ve not sponsored us yet but would like to click here for our charity page.

Thanks for all your support – we are looking forward to it and slightly daunted in equal measure!

Cheers

Andy, Anthony, Nick and Ollie

 

 

 

Categories
Cycling Road Cycling Travel

Lands End to John o Groats (#LEJOGON) cycling adventure for Charity

So I thought I’d put up some more information about the charity cycling expedition I am taking on with Andy, Anthony and Nick from the 10th May.

We are doing it over 8 days so about 115 miles a day with some serious climbing. Even with the training we are doing its going to be painful! We are doing it unsupported – carrying minimal baggage and staying in basic B&B and Youth Hostel accommodation.

Quick link to our charity fund raising page is here.

So here is the route we are planning to take each day along with the elevation profiles! Yes we are crazy! Note that Day 2/3 has changed slightly – will update the maps below when I get a moment. Route is still the same just shorter day 2 longer day 3.

Route (Click for detailed strava route) Elevation (Click for detailed profile)
Day 1: Lands End to Okehampton
Day 1
elev-d1The first day from #LE is the shortest at just over 104 miles but the most hilly (9,160 ft).
Day 2: Into Wales
lejog-day2
elev-d2Further in distance (126 miles) but still a lot of climbing (7,526 ft) and a big chunk of it to get to the B&B (a Castle).
Day 3: Along the Wales/England border
lejog-day3
elev-d3As days go a reasonably “flat” one, although still quite lumpy (5800ft)! We briefly skirmish with Wales before heading back up into England. 108 miles
Day 4: To the Lakes!lejog-day4 elev-d4Looks quite punchy! 5820 ft of climbing over 113 miles.
Day 5: Windermere into Scotland!lejog-day5 elev-d5Reasonably flat despite the stats saying otherwise! 6561 ft of climbing over 112 miles
Day 6: Island hopping!
Ride then Ferry to Arran:lejog-day6a  Then ride across the island of Arran:lejog-day6b
Then ride to Oban!lejog-day6c
 elev-d6a

elev-d6b

elev-d6c
Quite a big day in the saddle – 190KM – 118 miles and over 2,500m (8200 ft) of climbing, suspect we’ll be needing our lights towards the end of this one!
Day 7 – Oban to Invernesslejog-day7 elev-d7Most of the climbing (6591 ft) is near the end of day 7!!!106 miles for day 7.
Day 8: Inverness to John o Groats
lejog-day8
elev-d8The final push to #JOG. 6850 ft of climbing over 122 miles

Total distance = 1,474 KM or 916 miles!

If you can please do support our charities – we are riding for St Mungos Broadway (a homeless charity) and Royal Marsden Cancer (who provide world-class care for cancer patients, and undertake pioneering work in cancer research and education).

You can make a donation via our fund raising page here. All donations help motivate us to go through the pain of training and it will be good to know we have your support when we are on the road doing it!

Many thanks for reading!

Ollie

Categories
Gadgets Road Cycling Technology

Sony Xperia Z1 initial review

So I’ve finally upgraded my mobile, after having stuck it out with an iPhone 3GS for far to long I feel like I have moved into the 22nd century with the Sony Xperia Z1!

So first off – size. Yes it is big, a lot bigger than my old iPhone, even bigger than the S4. But I’ve got used to it easily and it doesn’t feel too big in most cases. It does poke out of some trouser pockets though!! However the advantage is that I will be reaching for a tablet or PC far less as the screen is amazing.

Camera is very good and has some great modes – Timeburst is very useful (Google photos creates animated GIFs automatically from this mode as well it would seem!) Augmented Reality is pretty fun as well. Image quality is very good and the lens offers a decent wide angle.

The things that I didn’t expect but have really impressed me is the audio quality on calls. Its also a brilliant speakerphone good enough to do meetings with (the 3GS was shocking in this regard).

Battery seems good – as a comparison a 1.5 hr bike ride on Strava (screen off) on the 3GS killed 40-50% of battery. It only takes 6% of the battery on the Z1! In generally usage I have about 50% remaining at the end of the day, and thats without using the Stamina mode which claims to boost the longevity by about x2.

Only glitch I have found so far is that if the phone gets too hot it will stop you from using the camera with a warning message telling you it needs to cool down!

So overall – so far so good!…

Categories
Cycling Road Cycling Travel

My next cycling challenge

Will be Lands End to John O’Groats! (LEJOG) with 2 friends – for a Cancer Charity.

Over 8 days in May 2014.

Training regime must therefore continue…

More details to follow!

Friends and family – if you are interested in joining me then let me know!!!

Categories
Cycling Road Cycling

RideLondon-Surrey 100 post ride report!

Wow what an experience the RideLondon-Surrey 100 was! Riding on  closed roads was such a blast. Completed the course in a much quicker time than I expected – 5 hours 3 minutes!

20x30-RLFC0271

Full pictures: http://flickr.com/gp/67554089@N00/g5ShR5/

I am very appreciative of the support that colleagues, friends and family have given me for my BHF charity fundraising. My fundraising total now stands at £532 so thank you. UPDATE: with work match funding the final total was over £1000 🙂

Some observations are as follows:

Generally really well organized, although there was a lot of moaning online about various things – like having to pre-register the days before the event etc. But I guess that is to be expected.

Quite a few people were waiting just after the depart fictif (where the waves were released but not actually timed from – that was 2 miles down the road) I guess for their friends or club mates to they could ride as a group.

I underestimated how effective my training would be and/or the effect of riding as a big group – when I originally entered I put myself down as 6hr30 but completed in just over 5hrs.

Make better use of the baggage drop off and pick up – put a change of clothes and shoes in the bag so once finished you can take advantage of the changing tents etc

There was a real split of riders wanting to complete in a fast time versus take in the ambience and not taking it (or their training/preparation) too seriously. As a result there was a bit of a conflict in latter waves (I was in wave G) as you had slower riders and people like myself trying to ride as efficiently and fast as possible by avoiding braking, cornering wide using a racing line and descending quickly. Many riders stuck to the left (ingrained in everyone from riding on public roads when open!) – in some respects this was a good thing as it allowed faster riders to overtake down the right side – but it did mean many were braking too much and having to pedal after the corners to get back up to speed.

I think due to the last point they should ask you how seriously you will be taking the ride – will you be plodding around or taking full advantage of the closed roads (and have experience of riding in larger groups) so these groups of riders can be better separated from the start.

20x30-RLBF3271

Sprinting down the mall at the end was such a buzz (although as you can see from my face I dug deep!), in fact I had such an endorphin high most of the ride to the point that I was getting quite emotional – had to calm myself down on many occasions!

Not sure how folks did it in just over 4 hours – did they not stop at all for water? I am guessing not!

For those who want to see more data on my ride:

Strava: http://app.strava.com/activities/72194864

Official Stats: http://bit.ly/cronkyrl

And there is of course still time to donate to BHF!!! http://www.justgiving.com/olivercronk

Nice Article from the Guardian on the RideLondon weekend and general observations relating to cycling:

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/bike-blog/2013/aug/06/cycling-ridelondon-100-ten-thoughts

 

Categories
Architecture and Strategy Random Thoughts Technology

The importance of being courageous in IT; balancing between strategy and responsive delivery

Disclaimer – this doesn’t really describe a single organisation that I have worked at – it’s a collective summary of my experience of working in IT (and that of present and former colleagues) working in medium and large sized organisations. Also the core message probably applies to many other business areas and not just IT in  the value of thinking strategically (and the value of Enterprise Architecture).

Many of you reading this working in an organisation over a few hundred people will recognise that IT is often not able deliver effectively. Either in its ability to provide what the business needs today or its ability to be adapted quickly to the demands of the markets it operates in. Often IT systems are fragmented, silo’d and un-able to share data with each other. This leads to horrible/bizarre manual processes (such as manual re-keying of information) to allow business units to work effectively with each other, cross-functionally. It often seems too much of a bold move to take step back and plan or focus on internal IT improvements when there is so much demand for business driven change that needs to be done yesterday.

The key thing that needs to happen to most organisations IT landscape is that it needs to be simplified. The horrible evolved mess needs to be analysed and worked through to understand how to make it simpler. Some technical teams may criticise architects for wanting to make the IT landscape “look prettier”. However I believe that simplicity = ease of understanding, ease of use, faster to change and crucially lower cost to operate. All good things surely? Sometimes a team mentality might be to keep things as complex, messy or misunderstood as possible – so that they are “indispensable”. But that also means they can’t really be promoted. In technical terms – just like you can have very bad messy programming code – the same applies at the IT landscape level across all the different systems and teams.

I believe a lot of the problems are down to the fact that IT systems tend to evolve rather than being properly planned. Of course there is going to be a degree of emergence when organisations are big and complex and not everything can be planned for; but to me if feels a little like many organisations are in a hole and keep digging themselves deeper. By this I mean that due to the lack of roadmapping and thinking more end to end about what data, systems, processes and skills are needed it results in more and more tactical workarounds to keep delivering. Each time a new solution is added it just makes things more complex and harder to change in the future.

Its easier to be reactive and been seen to deliver, deliver, deliver than think strategically alongside delivery. Also thinking strategically is hard work. It takes time to understand the bigger picture, abstract problems, create models and think about where things should go and how they should work. Not only that but its also hard to think about how to transition from the mess you are in today to your target state once you have come up with it.

I fear this is one of the reasons IT professionals can become reactive – simply responding to the next request from the business to deliver something as quickly as possible. And of course delivering for the business isn’t a bad thing –  just if its done in a way which doesn’t think about the future state of the organisation or the architecture where problems creep (or flood!) in over time.

IT personnel can promoted to recognise their loyalty (and because of the detailed understanding of the mess that has evolved, and they may even be a one man dependency) rather than their ability to take the next step up (and think more strategically). Sometimes this means that they still have to do elements of their previous roles and don’t actually have time to do their new roles properly. So all this compounds the problem – as they often created the problems in the first place they may not radically change approach – if they even recognise some of the problems they need to be brave to admit they made mistakes in the past that need to be put right. That is if they even have the time to think about them – their may simply be fighting the next fire.

“We’ll fix that in the next phase” – How often are promises made to unpick tactical work arounds and technical debt later on but then never happens.

“This is just how it works around here – we don’t have time to improve our processes and systems as we are too busy delivering”

“Our funding is based on a 12 month period – all work needs to deliver by the end of the year – we cannot have projects that go over multiple financial years its just not how the planning cycle works”.

“We don’t ever decommission anything – we just add new systems but as we don’t know if the old ones are still used for something business critical we leave them alone.”

IT costs then simply build up over time to a point where almost all the budget is spent on running stuff that the business is already reliant on and there is then less and less time or money to work strategically. Leading to a vicious cycle.

What is the answer? Well of course there isn’t a magic bullet but I do think some maturing is needed – becoming more confident in pushing back on certain things in order that a better long term path can be taken. Becoming confident in challenging not only the business but technology management. Making sure that business sponsors prioritise and not just claim that everything is top priority and needs to be done now. But also thinking about the full lifecycle of a solution – not just implementing it rolling it out and then letting it rust. Very few people seem to consider how long systems will be used for – 5 years? 10 years? When should you consider to retire an application? Talking about retirement of  a system you are just rolling out seems to be taboo.

Personally I believe you have to try and make time to consider the possibilities of new technology or process approach on your organisation or department – not because you want the technology on your CV but because you can see clear business value – that you can articulate to others. Sell your ideas, if you have to use some of your own time to create roadmaps – they don’t have to be long and complex they can be 1 or 2 page diagrams (showing as is and to be; along with supporting business justification).

Explain the risks of taking a reactive approach – one man dependencies are a massive operational risk for example. Not considering how a solution will scale to meet demand is a reputational risk waiting to happen – run through what if scenarios with your stakeholders to get them to understand why things need to change and/or why investment in internal improvement is crucial. The improvement to IT employee engagement can be a key selling point too – particularly if you have a churn issue in your IT team – ask yourself why people aren’t happy and engaged.

And of course its a balance between getting something out the door quickly which might open up a market opportunity, being engaged with the business and longer term simplicity. You can fall into a trap of being very academic by following architectural frameworks to the letter and getting very theoretical (although a dose of that – i.e. 1-2 determined, principled, purist architects to pull things in a different direction can be healthy for very immature organisations).

One thing I would say is don’t give up on trying to improve – even if its just incremental improvements – maybe to the data models to begin with, introducing a principle, improving documentation, making something more portable or secure (as its generally the non functional requirements like security and scalability that suffer). Think about what the biggest impact will be to the organisation (and in fact what will free up technology team time so you can pick off the next challenge?)

You should reach a tipping point where you can start to deliver things more consistently and with a high level of quality – and then it will then click with everyone else and people will wonder why they didn’t plan more and consider things over a longer time frame before!

Hopefully some food for thought anyway…

 

Categories
Cycling

Have cycled over 500 miles in April so far!

Have cycled over 819KM (508miles) in April so far! Training is going really well. If you’d like to sponsor me (go on you know you want to!) and donate to British Heart Foundation then go to http://www.justgiving.com/olivercronk Thanks and sorry to be an online/social chugger!

Categories
Cycling Life

RideLondon100 and a request for sponsorship :-)

Extremely pleased that I managed to get a place on RideLondon100 – not through the ballot as originally planned but through a charity place with the British Heart Foundation (BHF).

RideLondon100 is as its sounds a 100 mile bike ride that follows much of the London 2012 Olympic road race route (which I went to see near Box Hill last year). It will be on closed roads and there is a whole weekend of cycling related events in London the same weekend including pro races. Should be great I can’t wait – but it does mean a lot of training. To help I have been keeping my fitness going over the winter (which I don’t normally do) so I am already in decent shape – and as the spring comes I have booked myself on several cycle events with a friend to keep the training and motivation going. 2013 is going to be a big road cycling year for me!

Much like charities do for the London Marathon its means I have pledged to raise £500 for BHF. I selected BHF as I have supported them for many years at a number of cycling events – I like they way the positively support cycling and other fitness related activities as well as their other Heart related research etc.

My online fund raising page is here:

http://www.justgiving.com/olivercronk

If you’d rather give me cash or a cheque that’s fine too!!!

Anything you can give would be much appreciated and will help inspire me with my training. I am aiming to complete the 100 miles in around 6-7 hours – so an average speed between 16 and 18 mph!

In case you are interested in joining me here are the cycling events that I have signed up for so far:

  • April – Wiggle New Forest Sportive – 56 miles
  • May – Wiggle Jurassic Beast – 100 miles around Swanage / Jurassic coast area
  • July – Wiggle Magnicat – 126 miles from Newbury out towards Winchester and around the hills – going to be a tough one!
  • Aug – RideLondon100

Depending on how this year goes I may consider doing an etape type event in 2014 – or at the very least go and attack some alpine roads.

 

 

 

 

 

Categories
Baby / Parenting Related Cycling Life MS Windows Vista 7, 8 etc Technology

Its been a while – 2013 is here and the Cronk family grows larger!

Been ages since I last posted and suspect it will be while before I post again – new job, kids and the fact that twitter is easier!

Have added a Strava widget to the right as have now seriously got into road cycling – have signed up for a few sportives this year including a 127 miler!

Cronk family is now bigger with the addition of our son Alfie.

Just about to start a new job in a new industry sector which is exciting.

Quick Tech good bad and ugly:

Good – Yahama RVX473 amp – amazing bit of Hi-Fi / Home Cinema kit, particularly paired with Boston Accoustics speakers. Very much enjoying this – in particularly the Airplay feature and the Smartphone and tablet apps which let you remote control it over Wifi!

Bad – Not much to report on this front. Still remain a bit unconvinced by Windows 8 – think it makes most sense if you have a touchscreen / tablet type device (HP Envy looks interesting).

Ugly – Am I the only one that thinks the front of the BMW 1 series looks horrible?

Categories
Architecture and Strategy Random Thoughts

MDM, EA, KM – Too much IT terminology & Acronyms?!

Those of us in the IT profession (or Information Management as one colleague recently suggested as an alternative*) don’t do ourselves many favours when it comes to using complex terminology and also expecting business people to understand and embrace IT best practises…

Whilst adopting concepts/practises such as Enterprise Architecture (EA), Data Governance, Information Management (IM), Knowledge Management (KM) are all well and good, the sheer number of buzz phrases and concepts must be bewildering for most  non techies. I will admit that sometimes I struggle with the difference for example with Master Data Management vs Master Reference Data without resorting to Google or Wikipedia.

Of course some will argue that is what the Architect or Analyst roles are all about – to match business requirements to IT solutions. But if we ever want colleagues or clients or stakeholders to truly embrace the concepts of Knowledge Management or Data Management / Governance we need to break down these barriers.

Its all too easy to get DM/IM/KM confused if its not the way you think. Generally / at a high level its accepted that Data can be converted into useful Information and that humans (eg employees) walk around with a lot of Knowledge that often needs to be managed (and shared) more effectively. But often we don’t take the time to even explain these concepts – we just jump into enterprise IT lingo and expect others to know what we are on about (or why it makes business sense). Sometimes colleagues can get confused by products such as Sharepoint and what they do – as they can think they are the solution to Knowledge Management – when actually they are just the product or underlying tool that can enable Knowledge Management – its embracing the core concepts of KM that is key.

If we are not careful we will go start to regress back to the bad old days of IT where the IT guy was locked in the cupboard as no one understood him…. Ok maybe that’s going too far but you know what I mean!

Or maybe I am being unfair? After all every different business area I have worked in seems to have its own Acronyms (finance is a nightmare with IPOs, CFA, Swaps, Derivatives etc etc etc) – is it now accepted practise to just Google terms you don’t understand and be proactive about learning these things? Unfortunately in my experience some people aren’t prepared to do that (unless its in their area of expertise) – and you just switch them off or loose them before you can sell them the juicy or beneficial part of the story.

* Information Management was selected as to not confuse people with “plain old Information Technology” – the physical desktop PCs, laptops etc and kit that every business needs. Information Management it was argued is different as it is the leveraging of IT capability (where IM people are part of the core business team) to improve the way Information is managed (or processes are operated) and used as an Asset rather than something just delegated to IT to “sort out”.