Had the letter through the post today saying a local examiner had been notified that I want to take an advanced test and that they would be in touch in the coming weeks.

Much as tests scare me, it will be good to do it.

Just did my mock test for my Car IAM. The Institute of Advanced Motorists are set up to carry out advanced tests, and local voluntary groups make arrangements to help prepare folks to test standard.

Part of the quality control of this in local groups is for Senior Observers to run through a mock test with the potential candidate to put them through the conditions of the test, sometimes the driving isn’t the problem – it’s the test itself.

I went through mine this morning with a Senior Observer from Edinburgh IAM who also happens to be a biker, which could be either a good or a bad thing – at least one comment related to my biking “background”.

To cut a long story short I would have passed if it had been the real thing, but as a flawed perfectionist I have to watch out for the way that the Observation programme works. The arrangement is a naturally critical one, based on watching what you do and how it could be done better. Both my bike and car mock tests descended into what appeared to be a lengthy list of what was wrong, whereas the throwaway line “the perfect drive/ride doesn’t exist” is important. Perhaps I give the impression that I’m not listening, rather than being totally gutted at falling short. I suppose I should take the encouragement from today that I know that if I work on the two or three points raised (nothing new either) that my drive would have been really good.

Give me a couple of days and my self esteem will come back a bit and I’ll be ready for the real test!

I’m still a bit wary about blogging stuff about going to the gym, it is still a bit of a 50/50 experience for me and it is like I am on the verge of stopping each time, but..

I progressed to the last column on my wee progress chart yesterday. Admittedly I had a gap of over four weeks in the middle, but Tony had written “10” in one of the settings in the last column to give me a target to work to. So having been going at the exercise machines on their setting 9 for the last couple of months, i went all the way up to 10 yesterday.

I survived, albeit was a bit sleepy for the rest of the day. So I’ll just have to stick on with it and see if Tony’s suggestion at my next review is to go all the way up to 11 – that bit extra on the LifeFitness machines they have in Leith.

For reference I go three times a week, and do four activities. First is 500 metres on the rowing machine, then 15 minutes on the bicycle doing the Hill+ Kiliminjaro, then 15 minutes on the cross trainer doing Hill+ Speed Training, then 15 minutes plus cooldown on the Treadmill. On the three latter machines I plug in the headphones and watch / listen to the Hits music channel pumped through the freeview connector.

Things have been incredibly busy at work, I’ve got a project overrunning into another project that is starting, not ideal but the juggle should settle down soon. Both projects are really interesting in their own ways.

The advanced driving continues apace, after a bit of a lull waiting for the final stages to happen I’m now confirmed for my independent assessment in the group on 18th November, which is the equivalent of a mock test. In preparation I had a catch up Observed drive with my observer Colin on Monday evening. Generally ok, though I’ve been advised that I don’t need to do my commentary for the whole drive – just ten minutes, and that the banter and jokes in my commentary will need to be toned down for the test. All fine by me, I just chuck in the comments to help relax things. Hopefully all being well I’ll be able to go for my advanced driving test before the end of the year.

Not much has been happening on the Motorbike front, hopefully I’ll get out on it soon.

We had our annual visit to the vet last weekend, ever since we inhertited Perdy the fat cat years ago we’ve taken her along each year to get her booster jag for some feline disease. It’s something needed if they ever go in to a cattery, something we’ve only ever done once in the time she’s been with us. This is mainly because I think we’ve never been away on holiday for years.

The vet takes it as an opportunity to check her over and this year she had a bit of a problem with her teeth. Knowing the nightmare it could be giving her the antibiotics for a while made me arrange immediately for her to get her teeth done, something she had done with no problem a few years ago. The vet explained the procedure, they do a blood test to check the cat’s health and that it is ok to have the general anaesthetic. If all is fine then the cat is anaesthetised and the teeth clean is done. Vets are brave but not brave enough to clean a cat’s teeth with it fully conscious.

I arranged to go in to the office late and dropped her off at the vets at 9am, all fine and headed in to the office, to get the call from my wife saying the cat had decided not to cooperate with the blood test. So I turned around and headed back to pick up the cat, apparently they get less cooperative when they are older. Thank goodness we had managed to give her the antibiotics and they were working.

Cue one slightly embarrassed vet, and a cat trying to appear invisible. She hadn’t scratched or bitten anyone, but I guessed she was either wriggling a lot or made her intentions clear – cat body language anyone?

I was looking around at the ultra-portable PC market when I stumbled across a special offer on the iGo Stowaway Ultra-Slim Bluetooth Keyboard. This is a wireless keyboard that can connect to my Orange SPV M600 by bluetooth. As my phone comes with Windows Mobile 5 and has the mobile office stuff, I saw great opportunity for writing longer emails and little documents too. I ordered it from Expansys and due to the recent Industrial Action at the Royal Mail, it took a few days to arrive.

Once paired up with my phone it worked ok, but I had a few problems with the latest drivers. You can install the drivers direct to the device by browsing to the thinkoutside site, but these didn’t work. I got errors in a couple of places. The install would start up, the progress bar would go along 5 blocks and then would bomb out with the error “Stowaway XT Setup – Install Failed” and bang. This I cured by checking the install log in the volatile subdirectory, and then manually deleting the stowaway files from the windows directory. I really do not like deleting files that way as you can totally mangle windows by playing around with dlls. Once I got the driver to install I then had a problem on restart – i.e. the driver would not initialise on the device with “The Keyboard driver (“StowawayXT.dll”) is not responding. please reinstall”. Any attempt to reinstall gave the above problem.

I eventually fixed it by going back in versions from the current version. Searching around the internet I found a support posting on one of the Expansys forums that pointed back to previous drivers which appear to be a version before the latest. Having cleared out the stowaway files from the windows directory, the driver loaded in ok.

I’m not superstitious or believe in fate, but when I got back to the gym (eventually) this morning I didn’t quite realise how many weeks it had been since I was last at Leith Victoria. My progress card’s last entry was the 19th of September, almost immediately after my “I’ve been going to the gym post”.

I don’t think it is Murphy’s or Sod’s law that declares that publicity about anything improves the liklihood of screw up, but shortly after that post I got a cold, it hit my chest, and a few weeks of coughing later I’m just back to the gym this morning.

And of course I was fine, didn’t die or collapse or anything, and I can still see, type and do the other stuff I need to do at work.

Next thing is to get the old R1100RS out for a wee run and get out of my nice comfy air conditioned car.

Out today for another observed drive, which went well again. Some points to work on are similar to habits on the bike, improve planning, slow down approach to hazards etc. Some things are specific to the car, like remembering to use the left hand mirror enough, and positioning in to the left for right handers. For some reason I have more of a habit of apexing corners in the car, perhaps a habit borne of the Passat SE’s softer suspension.

This post is as much for me as it is for you lot, but if you read these posts you may already have that suspicion about many of my posts.

With a switch in my working arrangements back to our offices in Leith, I restarted a regular habit of mine and started going to Leith Victoria every other morning. My plan has been to go three times a week before work, and didn’t post here until I was regular. I started in June and I’ve pretty much managed to keep going. I used to go swimming, but decided their gym would be better for me to get fitter and lose weight. Leith Victoria have a nice wee gym with machines from Life Fitness.

I did the induction session with Tony the gym supervisor, and due to my blood pressure and body fat percentages I’ve been doing solely “cardio” machine work. I’ve got my workout progress card with my programmes to pick, and do 15 minutes on the stationary cycle, 15 minutes on the cross-trainer torture thing, and 15 minutes + 3 minutes cooldown on the treadmill. The programmes all have various themes which I think are interval based, the resistance goes up and down through the 15 minutes.

Had my follow up visit on Wednesday 12th September 2007, and unfortunately I’ve lost the original numbers for body fat etc, but if memory serves me correctly I’ve dropped about 3/4%. The stats for my visit where 198cm tall, 134.Kg weight, 31.2% body fat. Lots of distance to go, but progress none the less.

So confirmed scientifically – I’m tall and fat, but if you make a big deal about it I will sit on you 😛

I’ve now got my new programme, which is tougher, and now adds a bit of rowing machine into the mix too. I’ve been through the new programme a couple of times and managed through ok, even if it is harder.

I’ve been watching the story about this unfolding on the web. First there was a report of a helicopter crashing near Colin McRae’s house in Lanark, then reports of a helicopter registered to him crashing, then confirmation that Colin McRae, his 5 year old son Johnny, Johnny’s 6 year old pal Ben Porcelli and Colin’s pal Graeme Duncan had all been killed in a crash at 16:05 yesterday (Saturday 16th September 2007). It happened while I was having a wind-buffetted ride home from the Scottish IAM Motorcycle Forum in Perth.

Rallying has always been a big tradition in Scotland, going back to Jim Clark and beyond, and in my lifetime Jimmy McCrae was in his peak in my early teens, then Colin McCrae started up. The RAC Rally, as it was called back then, was one of the big motorsport events that was televised consistently. And I watched while I was in hospital for two weeks during Rally time.

My sympathies go out to the families.

It is a reminder that as drivers, pilots, riders, sometimes things go wrong and it is not only us but our passengers that are effected. BUT!- Whatever you do, don’t hide at home and wrap yourselves in cotton wool, weigh the risks, and act responsibly.