Drive Through…

But I was wrong.

I’ve just purchased a Garmin Nuvi 270. It is part of the entry level range of Garmin devices. No bluetooth, fm transmitter, traffic data, teasmaid or any other superfluous features. It just does a good job of directing me from point a to point b. It is also very small and unobtrusive.

What’s more it works in most of Europe and the US/Canada as well thanks to the built in maps of both continents, something you don’t get on TomTom save for the top of the range 930. US coverage is very useful given the fact we are currently on holiday in New England, in Washington DC in December and I also have the odd work trip out here. Garmin’s Irish mapping is also meant to be much more up to date than TomTom’s and they have loads of Mac friendly software for playing around with.

So, why did I get one after previously saying I wouldn’t? Well mainly because I have come to find them useful outside of the UK or Ireland. We’ve had Hertz Neverlost a few times in the US and mainland Europe and it is very useful for finding your way around somewhere strange. The ability to find points of interest is also useful.

I really can’t see me using it much at home as I can always pull out the iPhone with Google Maps there to so some quick route planning. However given that the iPhone doesn’t do turn by turn and data access whilst roaming is an expensive no-go, having a full fledged GPS unit for travel is worthwhile.

Today, 11th August marks the first full month with my new iPhone. Thoughts so far:

• The back is proving to be very resilient to scratches, more so than my metal backed iPod Touch proved to be
• Battery life is reasonable for me now that the novelty factor has worn off. I mostly get away with charging every other night
• Having data access everywhere is fantastic. I love being able to check Twitter whilst standing in a queue for lunch
• Having data access everywhere is a curse. I’ve been told off by my wife a number of times for checking email etc.
• I’ve only used 28MB of data in a whole month.
• GPS and Google Maps whilst not true sat-nav can be very, very useful. It navigated me around a number of flooded roads on Saturday.
• Not having data when roaming is really annoying (unless you want to pay the huge roaming fee)
• The length of time that backup takes when syncing is annoying
• Twitteriffic, Facebook and Texas Hold ‘Em are my top three apps.
• It does seem kind of slow to draw/refresh/respond to touch when doing some tasks such as opening contacts or the settings page.
• All in all, I love it.

I’ll be out and about over the next month and a bit doing a few talks on Lotus Connections:

First up I’ll be at the IBM Lotus Premium Support Seminar in Boston, MA on Wednesday 27th August where I’ll be presenting with Heidi Votaw, Program Director for Social Software. We will be talking about “Leveraging Social Software to Boost Innovation and Productivity Today” with an obvious focus on Lotus Connections 2.0. Unfortunately this is an invite only event.

Next, I’ll be at the IBM Lotus TechJam event being held at IBM in Staines, UK on Wednesday 2nd September where I’ll be doing a dive on Connections 2.0 with a definite technical slant. I’m not entirely sure how people can sign up for this event, but you can try contacting Dave Hay via the blog link above.

Finally (for now I guess) myself and my colleague Karim Heredia will be at the UK WebSphere User Group meeting in Edinburgh on Wednesday (why are they all on Wednesday?) 17th September. This talk will be titled “Lotus Connections - the WebSphere perspective” and will focus on deployment and administration considerations as well as how you can extend the social computing power of Connections out into other applications. You can join the WUG and sign up for the meeting on their web site.

Was actually a week ago, but I’ve only just got around to this and #8 is tonight…

The most notable thing was that I played my first round since starting these lessons last week. A work colleague is a member at Ashbourne Golf Club, North of Dublin and invited me out for an evening round. He plays off 18, so it was always going to be interesting, and the course itself is a step above anything I’d played before - with some very challenging holes and a fair bit of water about.

Needless to say things didn’t go well. My 3 wood off the first tee set the tone, skying almost straight up and landing short of the fairway. From there the slice came back big time and I found every bit of water and OOB going. I think I went through nearly ten balls. I was analysing my swing too much and ended up overswinging and not relaxing. There were some higlights however, some of my drives were pretty good, and there were a few good shots around the green. It was certainly a lesson in the fact that the game is easily as much mental as physical/technical. As such I’ve been reading Golf is Not a Game of Perfect by Bob Rotella.

The good news is I had a lesson the next day, so it was a case of back on the horse.

The focus of this lesson was very much back the the beginning and the swaying out movement in my right leg on the backswing which had returned. The drill this time was to place a small rubber block (or a ball works as well) under the outside of my right foot to get the body used to feeling the weight shift onto the inside of the right foot, encouraging the knee to stay put. This worked almost immediately (along with a smoother, more relaxed swing) and the shots I were hitting were lovely. I’ve since been on the range almost every day working on this and things have definitely improved.

I also treated myself to a couple of new clubs at the weekend.

When I first got my set of irons they came with a couple of hybrid/rescue clubs as replacements for a 3 and 4 iron. However they were heavy (75g shafts) and never inspired confidence hence never came out of the bag. After reading up on some magazine reviews I decided on getting a TaylorMade r7 CGB Max 19° rescue club, which TaylorMade claim is as easy to hit as a 7 iron. So far on the range it has proved to be lovely, with shots from the mat soaring out.

I also bought a new putter, in anticipation of spending at least one lesson on the putting green. Again, I’d had a cheap and cheerful blade putter which I knew wasn’t helping my alignment and instead splashed out on an Odyssey White Hot 2 ball SRG putter instead.

So often, something you’ve been anticipating for so long leaves you a little flat when it arrives. Expectation isn’t fulfilled, hype not lived up to.

I’ve been looking forward to The Dark Knight ever since the final scene of Batman Begins when Lt. Gordon tantalised us with the description of this new criminal with a taste for the theatrical. I’m not a comic book fan, I’m not that knowledgeable about the Batman universe even, but the 1989 TIm Burton Batman was one of my favourite ever films. Returns was good, but let’s not talk about the Schumacher efforts. Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins blew me away and I literally couldn’t wait for The Dark Knight to arrive. Lana has put up with me repeating lines from the trailers to her for months. “Why so serious?” “Evening Commmmmisioner.” “You’re just a freak, like me!” She must have thought I was insane.

But with Nolan’s incarnation of The Joker, immensely played by Heath Ledger, I think insanity has been redefined. This Joker must be one of cinema’s most purely psychopathic evil geniuses. The pure opposite of Jack Nicholson’s portrayal. Whilst the trailers and various interviews whetted the appetite, nothing prepared me for how intense the character was, and that speaks volumes for the skill of the sadly departed Ledger, but also to the Nolans’ screenplay. There’s no origin story for The Joker here, bar some hints at paternal issues, there’s no reason for his actions - he just is. From the first meeting with the mob and a game of hide the pencil (not really a spoiler) you know that this is no joke(er)

It also sets the tone for the rest of the movie. This is no sugar coated violence flick. Whilst the camera might cut away at the crucial moment you are left in no doubt as to how brutally some characters are dispatched. Whilst previous Batman films were basically family friendly, and even Begins was fairly tame, The Dark Knight contains more than “fantasy violence” and is all the better for it. How it got a 12A certificate I do not know.

This is no more true than in the eventual reveal of Two Face. One of the film’s most closely guarded secrets, the build up to the first view of Harvey Two Face is full of expectation as to what he will look like. It’s fair to say that (without spoiling anything) they went far further than I ever expected. This is no Tommy Lee Jones that’s for sure.

This film also goes further than any other comic book film in plot terms, giving viewers a complex, question laden 2 hours and 32 minutes. There’s no lazy reliance on action sequences to carry the third act, it doesn’t resort to a duel to the end between the two main adversaries. In fact one thing that I noticed was that Batman and indeed Wayne himself received relatively little focus despite being the main protagonist. The film allowed it’s incredible array of strong characters to be developed to the full, none more so than Dent. It also poses difficult moral questions that tax more than just the hero, but when it does, it does it in a deep way that makes Peter Parker’s troubles in Spiderman 2 look, well, comedic.

Criticisms? Well right now, I don’t really have any. Yes, Bale’s Batman voice is a bit overdone, but quite honestly there aren’t that many lines to get too bothered about it, after all Batman has always been measured by actions, not words. Length? It seemed fine to me and I didn’t notice it dragging out.

Does it deserve the huge acclaim it is getting? Right at the moment, yes. Time will tell whether it becomes a true great, as opposed to just the best comic book film of all time but I reckon the odds are short. I’d say Nolan is a cert for a Best Director Oscar, and it has to be in the running for Best Film I’d imagine. If Ledger was still alive then Best Supporting gongs would be in the bag for sure, but we will have to wait and see how various awarding bodies handle that one.

It’s jumped straight to the top of the IMDB top 250 with a score of 9.3, pushing down opposition such as The Shawshank Redemption and The Godfather (and Part 2) Again time will tell, but what I can say personally is that it exceeded my expectations and hopes, and for that I stick it right up there.

I read recently that Hamleys, the famous Regent Street toy store, are to open a three storey shop in the Dundrum Town Centre shopping mall in Dublin. As I live in Dublin this is nice for me.

However, I take issue with the claim that this is:

its first standalone store in Europe besides its Regent Street flagship.

When I was a kid growing up in Luton I clearly remember the opening of the first ever Hamleys store outside of Regent Street in a two storey shop attached onto the side of the Arndale Centre by the town hall. As a kid it was kind of a big deal, and a must-stop destination on the Thursday after school shopping trips with my Mum. It was there for a good few years in the mid to late 80’s. Checking Wikipedia there is no mention of it, but my memory does not deceive me. I might go and edit the entry but as Google isn’t turning up any references to the existence of the store somebody will probably take the edit down for lack of citation or something.

So, hard luck Dublin you are not the first to get a proper Hamleys Store (Airports and concessions in House of Fraser don’t count I’m afraid) you were beaten by the proud former holder of the worst town in Britain title. As a salutary reminder of the looming recession it is worth noting that the next tenants of the Luton Hamleys store when it closed down were no less than Poundsaver.

Two lessons this week. I didn’t have any chance to get in any practice after #4 due to a wedding, a football tournament in the UK and a dodgy stomach.

As has become custom, I turned up a little early and warmed up with a few chips from around the practice green. Joe then got me to warm up with a few 7 irons off the tee before introducing me to his new toy, the Explanar.

The theory is quite simple, but surprisingly effective. You stand in the middle of a circle that represents your ideal swing plane (once it it set up for your height etc.) You then swing a fairly heavy roller back and forwards, following through as you would normally. As the “club” is fixed to the right plane your body and muscles “feel” the movements they should be making.
You just keep going back and forth continuously, not making individual swings. On a hot day it certainly gets a sweat on as well! Joe got me concentrating on how it forced my wrists to hinge on the backswing, something he had noticed I was weak at from the beginning but waited until now to introduce. I had a tendency to let my wrists flop back and used the arms to get a full swing rather than hinging the wrists properly.
Back on the mat, the 7 iron felt as light as a feather in comparison to the roller and shots became effortless. It all felt natural. Moving to the 3 wood was the same, but of course I then started to think about things again, trying to make sure my shoulders and hips turned well and that broke the rhythm. I guess just getting the muscle memory to give a consistent effortless swing is the key to success. Nevertheless, my shots were going very well, even when we broke out the driver. I hit a couple that carried well past the 200 yard mark with a range ball (which typically cuts length by about 30% anyway) which was very pleasing.
Lesson 6
Again, a few pitches and chips before the lesson started on a sweltering day, just two days after lesson 5.
This time we changed pace a bit and started off with the short game, pitching shots onto a green over an obstacle (a nicely placed fence) from light rough. However Joe made sure to give me lies which bedded the ball down more than I’d been doing when practicing, giving me a harder time. I still had a tendency to try to help the ball up into the air too much rather then relying on the club to do the work (a sand wedge in this case) and to not hinge my wrists enough. Joe also showed me a bad habit I have of opening up the club face by changing my grip (basically twisting my hands to the right) rather than twisting the club within my usual grip. This caused a number of the shots to shoot off to the right thanks to the weakened grip.
We then moved onto the flop shot. The stance is slightly more closed than I was doing for the pitches with the sand wedge, but the ball was placed more forward in the stance and weight more centered (rather than back in the stance with weight on the left foot) The swing involves a big wrist hinge and a committed strike through the ball. The forward position of the ball in the stance combined with a lofted club face results in a nice high lob that will clear any obstacle and have very little roll when it lands. It took a lot of getting used to and I struggled with anything other than a very good lie. We tried a few off the main surface which was rock hard and it was near to impossible! Joe also said that this type of setup is also the basis of a good bunker shot, which we will no doubt get onto soon.
The rest of the lesson was back onto the mat, after a couple on minutes on the Explanar. Concentrating on the 3 wood but raising up the power in the swing a bit, whilst still trying to keep it all in good rhythm and keeping my legs working in the right way. I hit some ok shots, but to be honest I was feeling it on such a hot day and it probably wasn’t a good idea to have another lesson so soon after the first. Still, there’s a golfer in me trying to get out, I’m sure.

I managed to get to the driving range on Sunday - the first time I’d picked up a club since the first lesson. I decided to hit off the grass area which unfortunately was very bare and rock hard. The first few hits from the grass with my 7 iron were awful, so I tee’d up and got out the 3 wood. This was a little better but my slice was as bad as ever. I hit a few with the driver and then tried some chipping - trying out the techniques Joe showed me last time. It was awful. I moved inside onto an artificial surface and things improved. My chips with the sand wedge were going brilliantly - lovely high lobs consistently.

I arrived a little early for todays lesson so went out onto the practice chipping area and hit some more from the rough. These were ok, but I found it hard to judge length to the flag well. I found myself starting to stop my backswing too early rather than committing to the shot and letting it go naturally.

Onto the lesson itself.

After hitting a few with the 7 iron Joe decided to try and sort out the slice. He set me to work with a drill that involves placing a head cover under my right armpit. The aim of this is to stop my right elbow from splaying outwards on the backswing which takes the club off plane. Joe was awaiting the delivery of his Explanar device but the head cover would suffice in the meantime and is something I can do at the range anyway.

The first few hits of my 8 iron with a three quarter swing were sweet as a bell and straight up the middle of the range. We moved onto the 3 wood and again with a three quarter swing things looked ok, though there was still some slice there. In an attempt to keep the shoulder in I was taking the club off plane towards the vertical too much - basically overcorrecting the initial error! I was now trying to think about and control two variables and that got me thinking too much, to the point where I took a couple of air shots.

I got it back together again however and struck two of the sweetest shots I’ve ever hit. They flew straight and true on a fairly low trajectory and carried nicely past the 200 yard marker with a range ball. Not a bad way to end the session.

I first had golf lessons about ten or more years ago whilst working as a student at Ford in Essex. They had a brilliant scheme whereby any salaried employee could obtain a yearly grant of around £200 to use for pretty much any learning you wanted. Brick laying, snowboarding, you name it (there was a list of approved activities but it was very wide.) I used mine to have six golf lessons. I’d never played before and unfortunately didn’t really start playing after. Thus, over the next few years I maybe played once or twice and lost the memory of everything I’d learnt.

When we moved over to Dublin I started playing with my father in law Bruce. At first we just made visits to the local par three course. It’s 18 holes and most are around 130-150 yards. There are two over 200 yards and four very short <100 yard holes. I would normally shoot about 85-90 for a round. There was obviously lots wrong. Over the last winter (yes, winter!) we progressed to the local pay and play full courses and whilst I could enjoy a round I was still really poor, never getting under 120.

Unfortunately, Bruce broke his wrist recently, so without a partner I’ve been wondering what to do. I don’t feel confident or ready to even think about joining a club and knew I needed to improve.

So, I’ve recently invested in a set of lessons. It was obvious to me that I needed to get the fundamentals right, so this seemed like the best approach. I went with Joe Murray at Hollystown Golf Club mainly because it is near work and it’s also where we’ve played the most. It occurs to me that I should probably be blogging about my progress, so here’s a recap on the first three lessons:

Lesson 1

On turning up Joe asked me what my handicap was. I replied Golf Actually I didn’t, but I did get a bit embarrassed when saying I was a novice. He looked at my bag, complete with Nike Sumo driver and 3 wood and I said “All the gear and no idea!”

Joe started off just telling me to hit some balls with my 8 iron from the tee. About 20 balls later after watching from various angles he stopped me. He then proceeded to demonstrate my swing as-is and made a rather exaggerated backwards movement with the whole body bending as his hips shifted to the right through the backswing. At least I think it was exaggerated for effect, but then maybe not! The rest of the lesson focussed on position and posture through address - tucking my knees inwards and concentrating on keeping the legs still through a half swing with the aid of an inflatable beach ball.. I was soaking up the advice and put it into practice straight away. A lot of focus was put on getting the right address to the ball for the club length. I’d previously been standing way too close it turns out.

Inbetween

I hadn’t had any chance to put things into practice between the first and second lesson, but I had been doing the posture and swing exercises Joe had left me with.

Lesson 2

The initial hit of ten or so balls showed I’d retained the advice given. I was still finding a tendency to slice the ball, but Joe said he knew why and didn’t want to overcomplicate things at this stage. This lesson concentrated on the backswing and getting the correct takeaway, hip and shoulder rotation. Working with a 7 iron and 3 wood mainly. On a few of the balls there was some evidence starting to emerge of a ‘natural draw’ which encouraged me. I could feel a well hit ball, it’s a case of being able to replicate it consistently.

Inbetween

Between lessons 2 and 3 I made a couple of trips to the par 3 course over the weekend. On the first I went round in 74, never hitting more than 5 shots in a hole and getting par on a handfull. No birdies yet, but I hit the green in one a few times, including on the 212 yard 12th with my 3 wood. My shots off the tee were a hundred times better than they used to be, but my achilles heel was chipping around the green and putting. My chips were very inconsistent and either coming short or running off the back of the green as I topped them. They never got any height either. Putting from distance I tended to under-hit them and mis read the green.

Either way with scores of 74 and 76 there was marked improvement.

Lesson 3

Lesson 3 started with chipping after I’d told Joe about my scores (I neglected to mention the bit about the course being par 3 at first though ) It was immediately apparent where my chipping was going wrong. I was too square in the stance whilst trying to open up the club face. My backswing was stilted and I was trying to force the ball into the air (causing the topping) All classic errors. Joe opened up my stance, put my weight more to the left foot, choked down on the grip and got me to swing more naturally. They were better and with a sand wedge there was some backspin on them as well. The ground was very wet however so it looked better than reality!

We moved back to the full swing for the second part of the lesson and got the driver out for the first time. We worked on getting more of a full shoulder turn and keeping the club on the right plane. To be honest I wasn’t at all happy with the swing and put in this lesson and could feel it going wrong. Whilst it was a bit of a come-down to not feel myself moving on in leaps and bounds it’s a case of keeping practicing and getting the right feel. When I feel it going wrong I have a tendency to over swing and try and force the ball too much, losing the natural swing and rhythm.

So, that’s it so far. Lesson four is tonight and from now on I’ll blog about each of them. If anything it acts as a handy review of what I’ve learnt - helping to keep it fresh in my own mind.

• It wasn’t hard to get one if you were prepared. I pre-ordered early the day the pre orders started and was ok. There was a bloke in front of my in the O2 Blanchardstown store who pre-ordered a 16GB and was only offered an 8GB, despite his protestations about being ‘the first person’ to pre-order.
• O2 ported over my pre-pay number right there and then. I’m used to this taking days in the UK.
• Sign up and activation was painless. I think mainly because I had it all done by 10am Dublin time and Ireland is a small country anyway.
• The device is noticeable heavier and fatter than my 16GB iPod touch, which is not a criticism, just a difference to be expected and gotten used to.
• The Home button seems to require more of a firm press than the Touch.
• The multi-touch screen seems like it has been slowed down a bit from the Touch. Presses need to be a bit firmer and scrolling seems slower.
• Love the volume and silent buttons. LOVE the speaker and not having to find a pair of headphones just to watch a quick video or listen to a song.
• It makes and receives phone calls.
• No visual voicemail - now I have one I honestly don’t care. I maybe get 1 voicemail a month and never have to trawl through any others to get to it. I can understand the value for heavy users, but that ain’t me.
• It sends and receives text messages. I honestly cannot remember the last time I sent or got an MMS - not bothered about that.
• Wifi with enterprise access at at last. However I haven’t been able to get it to work at work, due to the fact that there is a rogue unprotected adhoc access point somewhere with the SSID I need to use and that’s all the phone will see.
• I need to get over the mental hurdle of being stingy with using cellular data. So far I’ve used 244K of download. I still get a slight panic when I tap on Weather or Stocks and it just goes off and gets data. So I only (only?) have 1GB per month, but I need to just go with the flow and treat data access as a normality.
• App Store - immediate downloads: Twitteriffic, the light saber thing, Facebook and Exposure.
• App Store - there’s lots missing from the Irish store. No games at all, and certain other apps are not there. I WANT SUPER MONKEYBALL!!!
• The Remote app is teh awsomeness. It may just make me get an Apple TV just to show it off!
• There’s lots of crud and no way to get through it other than scrolling. More evident on the iPhone interface than iTunes. Let me ignore the app developers producing ebooks or bible stuff please!
• I’ve not paid a penny for an app yet. I want to hear the wisdom of those who have. I want a good weight of reviews.
• GPS - well I went outside and it knew where I was, so it works. So does cellular triangulation.
• Maps - tried to search for ‘Hotel’ when located at home. It gave me three results. IN THE WHOLE OF DUBLIN! I know this isn’t a phone issue, it is a data issue. Come on Irish companies, start advertising yourselves - your market just got a whole lot more mobile.