My Fifty Eighth Week as a Budding Author

Testing. That final overlooked element of many failed IT projects. Usually left to the last minute and carried out in haste. Testing is usually carried out by “testers”, wonderful people whose sole role in life is to present developers with a list of things that are crap about the project to which they have dedicated the last three months of their life. In order to become a tester you need to enjoy delivering bad tidings, in fact there is a clear career progression from tester to TV News presenter. I believe that Moira Stuart enjoyed nothing more than repeatedly crashing web browsers in a previous career.

I’ve worked with many testers over the years and whilst they are often perfectly friendly out of work, as soon as you enter the office the gloves are removed. Nothing is ever allowed to be “just about OK”, everything must adhere to the “spec.” or a defect report will be issued. This is essentially the same as grassing you to headmaster as these defect reports are added up and presented to monthly meetings, where you are verbally caned for being a naughty boy.

As per everything at work it occasionally gets out of hand. I’ve had defect reports raised for a missing full stop in some customer facing text. This has created a chain of bureaucracy, delay and reporting akin to a court submission for corporate fraud. Made worse by the fact that the tester had access to the live system and could have made the change in a click. But processes are processes.

Cycling has “testers” as well. These individuals share many personality traits with IT testers. They often have “issues”, speak in curt but cutting sentences and occasionally dabble in serious drug abuse. The cycling testers work in a different way to their IT counterparts, instead of trying to break computer systems, they attempt to break themselves by riding against the clock as fast as they can. These freaks enjoy nothing better than a good time trial. They don headgear that makes them look like an alien, add airfoils to their bike and hammer up and down dual carriageways in search of the perfect “ten”.

I’ve always been pretty crap at “testing” in both IT and cycling careers. Impatience has been the enemy of the former and a lack of muscles in the legs the later. My cycling time trials have mostly been over a distance of ten miles. A perfect distance for me to get it completely wrong. My usual approach is to hammer off the line in a quest to get to lactate threshold as fast as I can. For those who are unaware of this measure, it is basically 0.2 miles per hour slower than the speed required to make you physically sick with exertion. Common knowledge is that you can hold it for about a minute. But that doesn’t stop me trying to stay there for ten miles.

Hitting lactate threshold has the downside of telling your body that it’s time to stop and get off. It’s not really very efficient when time trialling, as your speed graph climbs to an impressive high and then rapidly drops to that of my Mum pootling idly to the shops on her Puch. Which is about the average speed I end up with at the end of the ten. Therefore, I gracefully retired from time trialling many years ago and stuck to simply messing about on the bike instead. Until this year that is.

An internet posting alerted me to an attempt to set a new cycling world record. JOGLE 2012 is a team of riders who will set the fastest time from John O’Groats to Land’s End riding stages in relay. There are to be twenty stages each one of them 42 miles long and the aim is to complete the ride somewhere near 50-55 hours in total. This captured my attention having just completed my second Lands End to John O’Groats. I’d love to be part of that team and 42 miles is much more suited to me. It allows for 2-3 hours to complete each stage which in time trialling terms is more marathon than a sprint. I sent a grovelly type message to the organiser and foolishly she’s opened the door and let me in!

I am rider number ten. On the 11th August I’ll be sweating buckets as I climb over Shap and hammer down the other side. It’s a long way off but the training has started already even in the depths of this harsh weather. Earlier this week my friend Andy and I took on a few of the Devonshire hills. The biting easterly wind came along for the ride as did a vast selection of long 20% gradients. We braved it for twenty miles before a gallant retreat to the cafe where Andy elected for a full english and I very nearly stole it off his plate in envy. Andy’s in the team as well and like me has a stage with some hills.

We sought solace in the knowledge that our dedication to the task is unquestionable. Very few others ventured out on bikes that day, even fewer chose to ride roads that required ropes to climb and only the committed sit next to the mad old woman in the cafe who wants everyone to “shut the fucking door”.

Now seeing as you’ve read this far I have you trapped. No buggering off and pretending that you’ve something else to do. The relay team are trying to raise some cash for the NSPCC. Our fundraising page is here https://www.justgiving.com/2012JogLEWorldRecordRelayTeam.

Now, I have sponsored many people reading this. I know it’s austerity Britain and all of that but PLEASE can I have £5 of your very finest cash to help raise some money for our charity. That’s all I want, £5. You’ll get it back as I’ll sponsor your next twenty four hour chocolate fountain relay orgy of whatever it is you choose to undertake. I haven’t asked for sponsorship for nearly ten years so please help me out a little here. If nobody does then I am going to sulk. The blog will be written on paper and posted only on my toilet wall. Also, some of you reading this are highly salaried rich bastards and I have no job. You’ll spend £5 on a text from the ski slopes, my kids might be needing the NSPCC if I don’t get my act together soon!.

If you do happen to chuck us the odd quid or two then put DB in the comment so I know who you are and can issue a grovelling but heartfelt “thanks”.

Right, that’s the begging over with. Let’s get back to testing. Not only am I testing for JOGLE 2012. I’m testing for the book. In previous blogifications I’ve mentioned the torment between publishing via a traditional publishing firm or doing it myself. Both are complete unknowns and the first option will always be an unknown until I’ve done it once. My old testing colleagues will hold their heads in their hands if they see me going live without having some form of test. So I’ve created one.

“Obsessive Compulsive Cycling Disorder”

Or OCCD for short. Now you have to admit that it’s catchy as hell. Only Duncan guessed it from last week’s blog. It’s my publishing test vehicle that’s almost ready for launch. What I’ve done is a little bit cheaty but should allow me to gain the test data I crave. I’ve taken thirty articles previously written by me and wrapped them into a book. It’s not just a cut-and-paste job as I’ve written a whole load of new text as well. But it is a quick avenue to publish something myself and understand how the whole business works.

I’ve written a long rambling introduction to the book and then a series of shorter pieces that introduce each article. The content is all cycling based and much of it has languished un-read on the website you are now staring at. The short pieces attempt to put it all in a bit of context and you get a view of this idiot who bumbled into cycling, got a bit obsessed by it and then forced his obsession on others by waffling on.

The book will be out in the next week or so, firstly as an eBook that can be purchased from Amazon. Northern readers should not fret as it will be priced less than a cup of tea. Then I’ll publish a paper copy via a few of the on-demand self publishing services. These will be a bit more expensive and I suspect I’ll be the only customer. But it will allow me to see how much effort is involved and more importantly what kind of quality can be achieved.

Finally, the new bridging text that I’ve written follows the style I have used in the “proper” book that is yet to come. Hopefully, some readers out there will feedback what they think which in turn allows me to “tweak” the other offering against these defect reports.

I read through it again last night and it is a bit of a Frankenstein’s monster. Rest assured that there are no other authors out their polishing their CV’s in anticipation of this groundbreaking text hitting the market. It’s pretty personal and selfish as most of the text centres on me and it’s one hundred percent cycling focused, so will only appeal to weirdos. Nevertheless I am excited as the big project moves into the testing phase. There is potential that it could elongate things a tad but it’s a price worth paying in order to get the end product right.

In the meantime I’ll get back to plodding along with the rest of the book. I’m about to end the blog text, but can’t resist one final link to our charity page. In fact I’ll give a free paper copy of OCCD to the largest donation, I hope that’s an incentive, I’m worried that it’s not.

Dave

10th February 2012

WEEK 60>>>>>>>>>>>>