As anyone who has known me for more than three kilo-days can tell you I hate all sports, and once I got home from the Arboretum the first thing I did was to throw my trainers in the bin. The promise of a free t-shirt (offer now expired) however encouraged me to try running another 5K just under a week later – this time a muddy route around Perry Hall, sporting brand new £6 Decathlon running shoes.

The Decathlon running shoes went up in price, year after year they cost £1 more than the one before, until at the end of the Elizabethan age I started running in £17 Crocs instead (yellow ones). I do still have my original pair, which after retiring from running spent a season as my work shoes.

For the avoidance of doubt I still hate all sports, but I do enjoy some good stats. Somehow I managed to get out and run on some 2,382 of the last 3,000 days (and 1,364 of the last 1,364) during which time I have covered about 7,557 miles in about 1,276 hours.

I have completed about 90 races, at distances ranging from 400 meters (in 90 seconds) to 40 miles (in 11 hours, 11 minutes), including about 5 road marathons (three of them at the original Boston, but my fastest being 4:12 running away from Wolverhampton). My favourite distance being the 3K (especially the Glasgow ‘3K of the Green’ which I sadly don’t get to run much any-more because my new job gets in the way) which proves just as painful as a 5K but is over quicker. I’ve run races in England, Scotland, and Wales – I’ve even spent about 36 hours running around a lake in Yorkshire at night. Outwith races I’ve also found myself running in Ireland, France, Belgium, Germany, Poland, Sweden, Norway, and Denmark – often around parks.

One of the absolute best things about running over these past 3,000 days are the amazing, incredible, and often slightly crazy, people I’ve met along the way.

HB511

This Tri-axle LM166 trailer with sides comes fully serviced, and fitted with a spare wheel. 2020. £3,850 + VAT

TA510

This 14′ tri-axle TA510 with slurry tank, front vent and partitions comes fully serviced, and fitted with a spare wheel. 2006. £4,500 + VAT

TA510

This 12′ TA510 with 1 partition comes fully serviced, and fitted with a spare wheel. 2016. £3,750 + VAT

BV126

This 7′ high BV126 with door/ramp comes fully serviced, and fitted with a spare wheel. £6,450 With VAT

TA510

This 12′ TA510 with 1 partitions comes fully serviced, and fitted with a spare wheel. 2007. £2,750 + VAT

HB510

This HB510 in Blue comes fully serviced, and fitted with a spare wheel. 2001. £2,500 NO VAT

LM146

This LM146 with sides comes fully serviced, and fitted with a spare wheel. 2020. £2,750 + VAT

2020 TA510

This 12′ TA510 with easyload decks and partitions comes fully serviced, and fitted with a spare wheel. 2020. £4,950 + VAT

2020 TA510

This 12′ TA510 with easyload decks and partitions comes fully serviced, and fitted with a spare wheel. 2018. £3,750 + VAT

The 29th of February was the last day of normality for me. I had traveled over to Dublin on an overnight coach, I had a McDonalds coffee overlooking O’Connell Street, I ticked off The Silver Penny ‘spoons (my last ever new ‘spoons?), I parkraced at River Valley, and I spent the rest of the morning chatting over breakfast at the The Old Borough ‘spoons in Swords.

I had a wander around the town, including a nose around their castle. One thing I noticed was the number of signs in shop windows saying they had sold out of hand gel. This was when I started to realize the severity of what we were facing.

As I made my way to the airport and waited for a very storm delayed aeroplane I began noticing the number of people wearing plastic gloves. I don’t think masks were yet a thing.

I landed at BHX and jumped on a train home. Life mostly carried on as normal until the Ides of March when everything came crashing to a halt.

At the time Bluetooth was a new magic that was just starting to be included in mobile phones, and as more and more people were acquiring these bluetooth enabled phones (and not switching it off) the media popularized a new crazy called “Bluejacking”.

For more information on the phenomenon there is a wikipedia article but in simple terms it involved someone with a suitable phone creating a new contact with their message body as the contacts name and then using the send function to find another BT enabled phone to send it to unsolicited. The second party would get a notification of the incoming connection which would included the name / message payload. I witnessed the activity a few times on Valley Lines trains when the victim second party would typically look around confused.

A development in Bluejacking involved sending photos, but as they were not displayed until accepted and downloaded it was not so practical. If the media were top be believed it was frequently used to send explicit images and to arrange sexual encounters; but I never witnessed any of that.

So back to my part in this story, back then I did not have a phone with Bluetooth as it was an expensive new magic technology. I was rocking a Sony Ericsson T310, and whilst it did not have BT it did feature IrDA; a feature I often used with my PC to send SMS from a full sized keyboard.

At the time many laptops were fitted with IrDA, but needed to be actively switched into receive mode, so rather than the anonymous trolling that was possible with Bluejacking Redjacking required the consent of both parties – oh and a line of sight also.

So in one particularly boring class I worked out where to position my phone so it had a LoS to my friend’s laptop the other side of the room, and then proceeded to pass a few messages and memes (back then known as pictures) through the either.

Such a feat would have been completely unremarkable but for the media’s crazy over Bluejacking at the time leading to the obvious portmanteau of Redjacking.

Nowadays Bluetooth is better locked down, and infrared is practically extinct in consumer electronics limiting the opportunity for such fun, which is kind of sad.

Why you ask?

The main reason is because I can. I needed to set up a MySQL service for something else and decided I might as-well get my money’s worth by using it for WordPress at the same time, also having my own WordPress site would help me with testing things in a controlled environment when solving problems with client’s sites.

So that is the why taken care of, what about the what?

For that we must find a vaguer answer, as I simply do not know.

It is fine to start with grand ambitious plans, but it is with those plans that most blog die, so I’m hoping for something more organic. I’m not going to make any promises, or commit to a certain update scheduled, or certain topics. I’ll post intermittently, if I feel like it – and if I get any readers then I will be very much surprised.