swimming in hexham

Started to go swimming more frequently with the kids now that Hexham has a new pool. The facilities are spot-on in my opinion. A good separation of lane-swimming for the serious-types, a versatile second pool with variable height floor and two tiny splash pools for the toddlers with fountains, bubbles etc. to keep them entertained.

The MPG Obfuscation

Petrol and diesel prices in the UK have been metricised to pence per litre for as long as I can remember (I would guess almost 20 years). Cars in the UK still use MPG in manuals and electronic displays. And the common language is certainly still in terms of MPG. Car manuals also quote efficiency figures in litres per 100km or similar - but that is still obfuscated by the fact that we use miles for judging distances.

I want to easily get to a pence per mile figure.

So here are the figures...

• 1 imperial gallon = 4.546 litres
• 1 mile = 1.609km

Using dimensional analysis you can see that to get to pence per mile you need to multiply your pence-per-litre by litres-per-gallon and divide by miles-per-gallon. Here's a table showing pence per mile for a few typical values (at the moment).

	20mpg	30mpg	40mpg	50mpg	60mpg
100p	23	15	11	9	8
105p	24	16	12	10	8
110p	25	17	13	10	8
115p	26	17	13	10	9
120p	27	18	14	11	9
125p	28	19	14	11	9
130p	30	20	15	12	10
135p	31	20	15	12	10
140p	32	21	16	13	11

There's a lot to be said for reviewing the 40p per mile tax-exempt approved mileage allowance (for business usage). This was set many years ago before the recent significant rises in fuel prices.

isp's rewriting email headers - spam is no excuse

ISP's rewriting email headers? I don't buy their "it helps to stops spam" line. They are just trying to tie people in. Forcing novice users to use the rubbish email address that they provide, and making the switch from one ISP to another even more of a pain. Many don't even allow the 'on behalf of'-type header sent by the likes of Gmail. They could easily implement a similar verification system like google (to check that you receive on the address from which you want to send from), but of course they dont want to offer the freedom.
Don't bother with their smtp servers. Get a domain name, get a pop box and use something like the outbound service provided by dyndns.com. The whole lot should cost under £20 per year. You'll have a pesonalised email address you can take with you.

Billy starts school

Billy started school today.

He was so proud and excited to put on his school uniform. He went into his new classroom like a trouper no worries just very happy and smiley. Not like his mum...I have to admit being a little emotional when I left him. I spent most of the day pacing around at home just waiting for collection time.

Pension Industry - on borrowed time

The pension industry is done-for. I had a personal pension (actually I still do, but only because I can't get at the money in it and then close it) I stopped paying into it a few years ago. I'm no financial advisor but here is my reasoning. Life expectancy is increasing. At some point (and if you believe Aubrey De Grey... some time soon) the rate of increase of life expectancy is going to exceed 1 year per year. At that point people are going to start living forever and therefore buying an annuity will be pointless. God knows what will happen to the state pension. My policy is to try to keep my money out of pensions (personal and state) for maximum current and future flexibility. Obviously I'm obliged to pay NI but I opt out of SERPS (or SSP or whatever) and get that money into my own pension... at least I have some control over what happens with that. I subscribe to Tim Ferris's mentality (in a less extreme sense) for lifestyle. I enjoy life now (rather than looking forward to retirement). I'll probably work until I die, and why not if you really enjoy what you do?

The obligatory first post

Like many I'm going to be using my blog for random rants on anything and everything that happens to be relevant to me at the time of posting. I've never kept a diary of thoughts before so it should be interesting... and you never know may prove useful/enlightening to someone somewhere.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm about a decade too late. I just haven't had the time or inclination to write a blog until now. I'm not even convinced I will be able to find the time now but I'm going to give it a try.
I'll use this post to describe myself: I'm a married freelance computer games and general programmer and IT expert (relatively speaking) with 2 kids + one on the way. I went freelance about 3 years ago to enjoy the kids, family time etc. Living a bit of the good life while I'm able to enjoy it.