End of the year wrap up 2015

Frankly 2015 hasn't been my finest hour in terms of social media on a number of different levels.

Looking at the volume of posts here the content has dropped - whether the overall quality of the posts I have put up is worse is for others to judge although I suspect it may not be as good nor relevant as in previous years.

My business podcast (PMICast - the UK's only medical insurance podcast - www.pmicast.podbean.com and also on iTunes) has also dropped off the face of a cliff. It ran for over 60 episodes until Spring of this year and then, completely bored with the format I kind of lost interest. I have recorded a year end show and will be posting that in December but at the moment I can't see a way of re-invigorating the premise enough to want to put together a regular podcast.

I am going to try and tie in the year end show onto my business You Tube Channel :

www.youtube.com/channel/UCvecpE3OUT58rFNkskSykXw/videos 

So there will be an audio and video version of the podcast as well.

Regardless of my woeful updates and miserable attempts to entertain and or inform I would like to take this opportunity to thank my readers, listeners and viewers plus of course my loyal clients and productive professional introducers - you all know who you are, for their support and encouragement throughout 2015 and here's to a great and profitable/fulfilling 2016.

Merry Festivus !

The After Effects of Training

I'm 45 and have been doing a variety of training since very young : swimming, karate, weights, running, badminton and so forth.

In 2010 I restarted karate training and found it reasonably hard to get back up to a good level of fitness and now train for two hours twice a week) along with running three or four times a week if I have time. Generally I run two or three miles during the week and then six or seven if I go out on the weekend.

That said I am still 45 years old and recovery time following exercise is definitely longer (and more uncomfortable) than it used to be, although I do find that during training I don't have any problems.

This morning was a case in point. Woke up this morning and felt like someone had been kicking me in the base of the spine. This is really unusual and the pain was much worse than I'd expect following a training session normally. Took several ibuprofen and four hours before my spine felt more or less back to normal.

Then I remembered, I had been kicked in the spine several times during training last night (silly exercise involving roundhouse kicks in a circle of students) - was relived that I'm not actually getting old as fast as I'd thought.

Smart Phone Flip Flop

At the moment I am flipping between two phones. The iPhone 6 Plus and the LG G4.

I've had the iPhone since last December and used it pretty much continuously until the LG arrived in October. However the LG only lasted as my day to day driver for a couple of weeks before I switched back to the iPhone and IOS.

I really love both devices as pieces of tech but at the moment I'm loving the simplicity and ease of access of IOS. Having been an IOS user since the iPhone 4 and  the original iPad I am definitely at home in their eco-system. As far as Android goes I have dabbled over the years but the LG is the first up to date smart phone on Android I've used consistently.

On Friday evening I switched my main sim over from the iPhone to the LG to give it another go. The thing I like best about the LG is the screen - it's an IPS Quantum display and is simply brighter and clearer than the iPhone - that's the primary thing that has pulled me back to the LG, even with the iPhone on full brightness it's just so sharp or near to the surface as the LG. The other thing is that the LG camera is brilliant both to use and to update - slightly better images than the iPhone, more options and much easier to update live to flick or google photo's.

So at the moment I'm rocking the LG G4 but will probably switch back to the iPhone in a day or two - nice problem to have, two of the best smart phones out there !