See also: More Mighty Ape HQ photos.

Mighty Ape offices

Mighty Ape warehouse

Mighty Ape warehouse, vertigo edition

More photos to come once we’re a bit more settled!

The big goals of the move are to allow us to hold a lot more stock so we can provide fast service on a wider range of stuff; to (of course) increase our orders-per-day shipping capacity; and to generally make the business a more professional and integrated environment for everyone involved.

The new location has over five times the warehouse space and over three times the office space of our old building, and for the first time we’re actually rivalling our suppliers for physical presence. It definitely feels much more “officey” (board room, anyone?) and it’s going to be a great environment for Mighty Ape to continue to grow.

The warehouse is a real hive of activity with people everywhere picking and packing orders, receiving stock, tidying the resulting mess etc… so it’s really nice to have so much more space for everyone to work in. Having the vertical space (and forklift) to store rarely-used stuff up high with ease is very cool, too, as is receiving palette-loads of goods with ease (Beatles Rock Band got our forklift off to a flying start).

It hasn’t all gone smooth, though. Two days into the move and we’re still shipping orders via a combination of iPhone 3G tethering and remote order processing. TelstraClear doesn’t seem to have the same definition of “urgent” as we do.

The Malazan Book of the Fallen

This is a truly epic fantasy series from Steven Erikson; I’ve been reading it for months and I’m only on the third book! Seriously seriously brilliant stuff though.

• Book 1: Gardens of the Moon
• Book 2: Deadhouse Gates
• Book 3: Memories of Ice

I’ve got another five books to go after those, and two more releasing in the future. (On that note, I’m still waiting for George R.R. Martin to finish Dance with Dragons…)

Fight Night Round 4 ~ Xbox 360

A worthy purchase but not without problems, Fight Night 4 is a lot of fun for the most part but becomes a little frustrating due to the too-challenging training mini-games which eventually result in your undefeated boxer being worse on-paper than your opponents. It’s still possible to win at this point, but you have to fight conservatively since it’s too difficult to knock the other guy out.

Born to Run ~ Chris McDougall

This is a really interesting read even if you’re not into running, although you will appreciate it more if you are. The majority of the story revolves around the Tarahumara, a near-forgotten Mexican tribe who, despite their isolation, live in a way that makes them world-class endurance runners.

Tales of Vesperia ~ Xbox 360

Felt like playing an RPG so picked this up recently, along with Eternal Sonata (which I haven’t played yet). I’m only a few hours into Vesperia, so it’s really still in RPG-introduction mode, but it seems decent enough so far.

Various cycling & running books

I’ve been doing a lot of cycling and running this year so have actively taken even more of an interest in learning about things like technique, physiology and nutrition than ever before. Here’s some of the better books I’ve been referring to:

• The Runner’s Body presented by Runner’s World
• The Cyclist’s Training Bible by Joe Friel
• The Triathlete’s Training Bible by Joe Friel
• The Lance Armstrong Performance Program by Chris Carmichael & Lance Armstrong

Stocks are crashing, so you turn on the television to catch the latest market news. But instead of CNBC or CNN, imagine that you can tune into the Benjamin Graham Financial Network. On BGFN, the audio doesn’t capture that famous sour clang of the market’s closing bell; the video doesn’t home in on brokers scurrying across the floor of the stock exchange like angry rodents. Nor does BGFN run any footage of investors gasping on frozen sidewalks as red arrows whiz overhead on electronic stock tickers.

Instead, the image that fills your TV screen is the facade of the New York Stock Exchange, festooned with a huge banner reading: “SALE! 50% OFF!” As intro music, Bachman-Turner Overdrive can be heard blaring a few bars of their old barnburner, “You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet.” Then the anchorman announces brightly, “Stocks became more attractive yet again today, as the Dow dropped another 2.5% on heavy volume – the fourth day in a row that stocks have gotten cheaper. Tech investors fared even better, as leading companies like Microsoft lost nearly 5% on the day, making them even more affordable. That comes on top of the good news of the past year, in which stocks have already lost 50%, putting them at bargain levels not seen in years. And some prominent analysts are optimistic that prices may drop still further in the weeks and months to come.”

The newscast cuts over to market strategist Ignatz Anderson of the Wall Street firm of Ketchum & Skinner, who says, “My forecast is for stocks to lose another 15% by June. I’m cautiously optimistic that if everything goes well, stocks could lose 25%, maybe more.”

“Let’s hope Ignatz Anderson is right,” the anchor says cheerily. “Falling stock prices would be fabulous news for any investor with a very long horizon. And now over to Wally Wood for our exclusive AccuWeather forecast.”

Taken from The Intelligent Investor revised edition, by Benjamin Graham with added commentary by Jason Zweig.

Chris and I got talking about Twitter a couple of weeks ago for some reason or another and I decided I’d register to see if I would use it.

I gained a new appreciation quite quickly once I realised that Twitter is, more or less, an abbreviated blog.

For someone that doesn’t have a desire to dedicate too much time to writing, Twitter is a great compliment to this blog. I can post summarised random thoughts (hoping that they are interesting) that I would never usually bother to write about in full because the effort required by me exceeds the reward to the reader.

So, follow me on Twitter – you’ll find that I’m alive after all.

Here’s some assorted statistics from my workouts so far:

Running:

• Workouts: 15
• Total distance: 89.36km
• Average distance: 5.96km
• Average speed: 11.27km/h
• Maximum speed: 24.9km/h
• Average heart rate: 156.33 beats per minute
• Total elevation gain: 3484 metres
• Average elevation gain: 232.27 metres

Cycling:

• Workouts: 7
• Total distance: 93.6km
• Average distance: 13.37km
• Average speed: 21.66km/h
• Maximum speed: 53.1km/h
• Average heart rate: 151.43 beats per minute
• Total elevation gain: 2051 metres
• Average elevation gain: 293 metres

From an individual workout point-of-view, here’s a few examples of the data yielded from one of my cycles a few weeks ago.

As you can see, the data is reasonably comprehensive, including things like heart rate, elevation changes, pace, distance and time. The watch records this information every four seconds I believe, which results in some really good data.

It’s all quite intriguing stuff, because as well as tracking progress with real statistical accuracy, you can use it to identify weaknesses. Comparing speed, distance and elevation may illustrate a specific difficulty with hills of a certain grade or length, for example, and you could use this information to make training decisions.

I’m not quite serious enough to worry about any in-depth analysis, however, but I am definitely enjoying the logging functionality. It’s going to be interesting to compare workouts this time next year.

If you’re after one of these watches in New Zealand, they are available online from Bay Marine Electronics amongst other places. The price at time of writing is a rather hefty $439; but if you’re a regular runner with a mind for statistics, I don’t think you’ll regret it.

A Song of Ice and Fire ~ George R.R. Martin

This is actually four books (with part three being split into two volumes).

• A Game of Thrones
• A Clash of Kings
• A Storm of Swords: Steel and Snow
• A Storm of Swords: Blood and Gold
• A Feast for Crows

Well. I was more or less addicted to each of these volumes whilst reading them, and am very much looking forward to the next edition, A Dance with Dragons. I’d go so far as to say that this series is probably my all-time favourite book.

The books are written in a way that each chapter is devoted to a certain character and yet Martin has an uncanny ability to make every chapter and every character interesting in its own right. The story is epic in nature and the important characters number in the dozens and yet it all feels effortless.

I recommended this very, very highly. The only downfall is that there is still three unpublished volumes to come.

50 Marathons 50 Days ~ Dean Karnazes

Running 50 marathons on consecutive days caught my eye as a rather extreme thing to do. Turns out Dean Karnazes is a rare breed of runner, one who partitipates in severe endurance events ranging from 50 to 200 and more miles. 50 Marathons chronicles Karnazes’ successful attempt at running 50 marathons in 50 days in each of the U.S.A.’s 50 states. It’s an easy and inspirational read.

Watchmen ~ Alan Moore

I’ve never read a graphic novel before, so Watchmen seemed like a good place to start considering its status as one of Time Magazine’s “100 English-language Novels from 1923 to the present”. It’s a definite read, but it came across to me as something that may have felt a lot more like genius when it was first released in 1987. Reading it for the first time over 20 years later, some of the novel came across as a little predictable; but that may not be Watchmen’s fault.

Ultramarathon Man ~ Dean Karnazes

More from Karnazes; this is actually his first book, but I read it after I read 50 Marathons. Ultramarathon Man tells the story of some of the extreme distance events that Karnazes has survived, including running a 200 mile relay race by himself. Again, an easy and inspirational read.

It’s not about the bike ~ Lance Armstrong

True to its name, It’s not about the bike is about more than just cycling (although cycling is covered too, and it’s quite interesting). Lance Armstrong was diagnosed with testicular cancer in 1997 and this book goes into great detail on his cancer treatment and manages to tell the story of a truly inspirational comeback to the world of professional cycling without ever sounding like a fairy tale. I plan to read the follow-up book, Every Second Counts, in the near future.

The Children of Hurin ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

I’ve read various other books from J.R.R. Tolkien including classics The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, but also the more biblical and complicated The Silmarillion. The Children of Hurin is probably a little more along the lines of The Silmarillion, in that it’s more of a tale than an adventure, although it is certainly an easier read than The Silmarillion is. There’s a lot of history and lore mentioned that could have potentially made it difficult to follow, but that isn’t really the case. Certainly worth reading for fans of Tolkien’s other work, if only to get a taste of the the early age of the world, thousands of years before Bilbo and Frodo’s adventures.

Before getting the bike home, I entertained in my head the possibility of biking to work. It would save petrol, it would get me biking-fit pretty quickly, and the roads between home and work didn’t look that bad for cyclists.

It’s funny how quickly your perspective can change.

After spending about 10 minutes on the bike, I realised that there was no way I was ever going to ride to work. A space a few feet across on the side of the road, whilst reasonably suitable for running, is rather terrifying on a bike if the road is busy. I’ve also started noticing how non-existent the cycling infrastructure is wherever I go. For example, it didn’t occur to me until I started cycling that there is no possible way to get from Northcote to Auckland City (around 5km) by foot or by bike; unless, of course, you prefer to go the alternative route via West Auckland which is around 60km. Less dramatically, I’ve realised it is also quite risky just to cycle to the shops a few kilometres from home.

It’s quite disheartening to realise that in the midst of obesity crises, global warming and fluctuating petrol prices, it’s not feasible to choose a simple method of transportation that would solve it all.

Does anyone in Auckland really cycle to work?

• View my MapMyRun.com profile

MapMyRun offers an iPhone application which utilises the phone’s GPS system, but I’m reluctant to run with a phone so I’m currently entering data manually. I’m tempted to get a GPS watch, like a Garmin Forerunner, so that I can track distance, time and such more accurately, but I’ll think about that in the new year. Being able to view your distance and speed whilst running sounds very cool.