Away again.

Away till next Friday.

Symbols.

Great doc on latex symbols to be had from here.

I find OO2 excellent, downloadable from here.

Maybe I was wrong?

A while ago I posted about being unhappy with my iBook. After using it for a few weeks I am changing my mind on how I feel about it. Perhaps it is just the small form factor or it's stability, not sure yet. I find that I just use it and not really think about it. I have no more gripes, I am used to the noisy, warm hard disk.

Must go to the gym today.

Book worm.

If you like reading and buy books online then this might be of use to you. It lets you enter a book's details and then get back the total cost of purchasing it from the various Amazons. As expected it almost always cheaper to buy and ship from the US or Germany, than the UK. Pity really.

Sore....gently does it.

SWMBO (She who must be obeyed) is laughing at me because I am still sore from the gym. I should go today but I will linger on the "light duties" list for a while longer, maybe tomorrow. It is really weird but I always hurt more the second day after a session rather than the day after.

Anyway, enough bitching, a need to get my CV in order!

New job

I am looking for a new job. I have contacted some agencies and outlined what I am looking for. I was hoping it would be an easy process, but it has its fun parts too.

I am seriously thinking of going the contracting route. Off to find out more about it.

Back at it.

I am busy at the moment and am not likely to be free of current stuff till the beginning of February.

I went to the gym today and ahhhhhhh....met some customers! I normally like anonymity in the gym, it find it more relaxing and will be less distracted. I shouldn't over react; i don't like mixing my private and work life.

Away for so long.

I can't believe it has been so long since I posted. I need to get my house in order.

Small changes, big effects

They say if you make one small change every day (surely they mean week) then big effects are on the way. I read this in a magazine in a doctor's surgery.

The basic idea is to change one small thing each week. Not something big like give up smoking this week and cure world hunger next week. Something small, personal and not too discomforting. So, I thought, I will think what are the small things that I wish were not so each day. Now, I will choose one and change it. In a months time that will be four done and I will see how it has gone.

So much so quickly.

Went to the gym this morning and I can't believe how much I have slipped by not going regularly for the last while. I probably over did it today. Must get routine going again.

Crazy time.

No gym and no fun for the last few days.

Crazy work time.

Late, late...night,night.

Pat just wrecks my head. Nice guy and all that, but he really does me in. I think people will look back in years to come and laugh at how ridiculous & farcical it all seemd.

I think poor old JC was close to blowing a fuse. Very poor to treat such a serious and topical subject so flippantly.

Very odd topic.

So I went to an actual farm and got real vegetables. Eh? Real vegetables? Have you ever noticed how the vegetables in supermarkets are all remarkably similar? All the carrots are the same size, shape and colour. Parsnips are generally slightly larger than carrots and onions are typically about the size of a tennis ball. Shocked as I was when I saw onions about twice their normal size and ditto for carrots. The shapes varied too, not always prefect cones.

Ze farmer explained to me that the supermarkets will only buy vegetables that fit a certain specification and are not interested in any deviations. They prefer smaller size vegetables as they look younger, fresher and healthier.

Anyway, I took a consignment and cooked them, they were fantastic. I don't know if it was because I literally dug them up and ate them within 2 hours or because they were so big and varied. By the way, I got them for free. It was as much a novelty for me as it was for the farmer who couldn't believe that I thought all vegetables grew to a perfect shape and then jumped into a plastic bag.

So...the bottom line. Where should I get my vegetables next? I believe there is a farmer's market in Dun Laoghaire shopping centre (the old one, not Bloomfields) every Thursday and there is a farmer's market in Leopardstown race course every week too. I checked out the one in DL and they seemed to have some nice home cooked stuff and organic vegetables. The home cooked stuff was nice (I scoffed a pie) but the vegetables were very pricey. The vegetable (and fruit) shop in the basement is also very dear. I will try to get to the one in Leopardstown.

Home Sweet Home

Home at last! Wrecked.

Heading home.

I am starting the long journey home later today.....I am really looking forward to it. After a little experimentation I am going to stick to one of two runs, the 8km or 5 km.

Old dog, new tricks.

So I tried this new idea of running/walking at a fat-burning pace. It was very frustrating, because in order to stay within the fat-burning pulse rate I had to walk at a brisk pace. It took approximately 20 minutes to do 2 km. I didn't do anymore as I was bored. I was going to do a 5km jog but could be motivated to do it.

I have been clicking on the next blog link to see what goodies are out there. Some sites come and go very quick!

Can't wait to get home!

Always tomorrow.

I am off to a gym tomorrow. Somebody warned me that there may be a time limit on the machines. Eh? I am reliably informed that the maximum you can use certain machines for are 15 or 20 minutes. This is to allow everybody have a fair go. Okay, no worries, I understand.

CV template hunting is not going particularly well. There are billions for Word but few for Latex. I will keep going.

Slower running.

I am going to try to run at the "fat burning" rate. I am told it is 60% of (220-your age). So, 220-35=185, and 60% of this is:111. So I should keep my heart rate below 111 but above my resting heart rate. This could be hard because my resting heart rate is quite high (~90). My buddy's is 45. Smug git.

I need to get a good CV format in Latex, I am looking for a good example that I can adapt and use.

Nice site.

I found a good website, CoolRunning seem to have some good advice for beginners and some training plans that would suit me. I will read on and may adopt one of their plans. I opened up a running log so I could keep track of training there.

Tick...gym done.

It feels a bit like that, tick, chore done. I will get back into a regular routine and that will make it more enjoyable. I ran 8km in 55m55s. Again, no world record but I am happy for two reasons, first I am hitting the 8km (or 5mile) mark and secondly because I did it without slowing down. Some people have told me that varying the speed is better (as in required) and I shouldn't run the whole lot at the same pace. I don't know and for the moment don't care. My goal was to be able to run 5miles, without expiring and I have done it. Now I want to be able to do it regularly. I am going to go searching for a proper training schedule, Google should help. I am getting a bit tired of doing more or less the same thing on the treadmill (is that the correct spelling?). Next week I am going to alternate between a 8km run and a 4km run, the 4km being at a much better pace.

I am going to take the plunge and join WestWood in Sandymount.

Zulu and Mia Cucina

Went to Dun laoghaire to take some snaps, ate in Mia Cucina and came home to watch Zulu.

Been working all morning.

No gym yet, but I will get there today.

I found Michael Moore's site on somebody else's blog. I click on next blog every now and again to see who is out there and what do they do. Anyway, I read Michael's letter to president Bush and sympathised with it. I thought it might be funny to e-mail Michael that a good proportion of helicopters etc are probably down in Shannon. I was thinking of nipping across to the airport, taking some snaps and posting them to him. No, no.....must be a good boy so I won't be accused of moral turpitude.

Anyway, I am off to find a good place to store my pictures. Since Google supplies my email and blog, they must also have a picture service.

Later.

Long day.

I just caught some of the news videos of Katriona, wow! How could people be waiting since Monday to be rescued? I wonder how many people will die or suffer needlessly. I am starting to sound like a politician. I just can't get over how so many could suffer in a country which should be the best equipped. I wonder is it true, because the majority of people are black and poor that there was no big push. Again, sounding like a politician.

I am really enjoying Eddie Hobb's Rip off Ireland on RTE. Saw this site, interesting enough.

I am definitely going to the gym this weekend.

Good book has been returned.

2 years late, somebody has returned Machine Learning to me!

Tempus fugit

I had to get one of those clocks. Every blog on here seems to have one. Very nice.

All talk.

Great, finally got some comments! Okay.....thanks for the spam.

I am definitely going tonight. It's been too long since I have been to the gym and completed my workout. I feel I am in danger of becoming a silent member, someone who pays the monthly membership but doesn't go anymore.

The only mitigating plea I can offer is that I have been busy. I have been looking into J2ME. Vikram Goyal's article on getting started with J2ME is an excellent walkthrough.

Still busy.

Terrible excuse, I know. I am still working and it is Saturday! No running, just some squash. I will rest from now until Monday and resume running then.

Need a simple but good webpage in 2 minutes? Then visit OSWD and you won't be disappointed. They have many options and choices.

I updated the template but haven't changed the colours for AdSense yet. Another todo task!

Java, java and java.

Mad rush today to get some old code together for the current project. This means bringing the code up to 1.5 and making sure it is commented properly. A good Ant build.xml is worth its weight in gold!

I didn't run after last night but I did play squash this morning. I should buy a decent racket, but I haven't played in so long I know I will bash this one a few more times. I would like to get my skill level up before I commit to a decent spend, I don't want to break a good racket just yet.

Anyway.

Back to the gym this evening. I am going to try a slower pace again and see if I can do the whole run with less or no slowing down. Up till now I have been running for 5-10 minutes and then walking for 2 minutes. I run for longer at the early stages and I typically run twice as fast as I walk. I want to get to the 8k mark without slowing down, so tonight I am going to try to get to 6k at the same pace (i.e. without any slow down). Then I will try to build up the distance, once I hit the 8k I will try to speed it up. I reckon my 6k times are very slow, but with a little time all will get better.

Have been looking at buying some new hardware. Prices in Ireland are very expensive. I normally wait until I am in the US and get what I am looking for there. The benefit is threefold, the currency exchange is currently very much in my favour, most shops in the US are selling newer stock (i.e. if a 1Mb memory key is the mid point here, them a 2Mb will the midpoint in the US) and prices are lower (actual competition). Most shops also have some rebate option when they are trying to shift stock, which can save me anything from 20-80%. I normally go to Frys. But this time I went with Amazon (.co.uk) for my goods. Get this, Amazon was cheaper than buying from the principal distributor for this product! I don't mean reseller and I am including shipping! True, it could be a case where I am not getting special pricing, but further investigation reveals that the price I was quoted is the best available. So I pity any mugs who are buying from a reseller thinking they are getting a better deal. I accept though that this may not be the case for every product, but, this is the rule and not the exception.

On yeh......ever notice there are no phone numbers or contact e-mail addresses for Amazon? Go to there help pages and they say click on the left......bet you won't find one. Well, I wasn't able. But it seems somebody else has had the same issue and found a solution.

I have to stop being so negative and tell the good news stories.

Xenix!

I was pretty close! A quick Google reveals Xenix's history.

.........

6k in 41m45s. Quite happy with this. I thought it would be worse as I actually went a little slower than usual, but took less walking breaks. I also went an extra 0.7k. I would like to get to 8k everytime now, so I might pull back the pace a shade more, though I know I am not exactly burning rubber. Weights went fine too.

I have switched to FireFox & Thunderbird on all machines now. I am seriously impressed. Not just the tabbed browsing but the extra features/themes/plugins etc. Very happy and nice to have the same application across all platforms (Fedora Core 4, Windows XP and OS X).

There is a Linux war raging locally.....the old "Which is best?" song. As far as I am concerned if you weren't around when it was distributed as a set of floppy disks or you don't remember Microsoft's version, you should listen more and shout less. Fair dues to the people who really stuck at it and have brought it (all versions/distro's) to where it is today. I remember writing a version of find as a project, am I showing my age? Probably. Anybody know what happened to Microsoft's version? I would love to know. Wasn't it called Minix or something like that. I got it wrong, Minix is the Tannenbaum operating system. I found this while looking, very funny. But it (the MS version) was something like that. I keep hearing this rumour that he (Tannenbaum) is dead. I heard it years ago in college, when we were using one of his books. Don't know who started it but it keeps circulating around TCD. Oh....and I have tried most....I have settled on Fedora, why? Well, it does what it says on the tin (or website) without a lot of issues. These days I am trying to focus on using my computers rather than getting sidetracked into how can I get some old SCSI card working.

Anyway....enough for now.

Early start today.

At a family event yesterday, good time had by all.

Off to the gym today, for the first time I don't feel sore. Usually pain and stiffness creeps in on the second day after a session. I did more stretches after the last session, maybe that helped.

I played an old squash pro last week, we bashed about for about an hour. The game got good after 30 minutes, I guess it can take a while to bring it all back. The next day I was fine, but he was very stuff and sore. I was delighted, not at his pain but because the running must be paying off!

No weight loss, not even a pound! In fact if anything weight gain. I don't know why.

Name change.

To avoid problems and issues, new name was ordered. Sorry.

Nice one...Friday at last.

Gym this morning, 6k in 42m20s, which I am proud of, started with 6k in 54m10s three weeks ago. I would like to get up to the 8k mark and just build up speed slowly.

NIB are my gripe for today. I have a FreeBank account. I let it go into below the zero balance twice. The hit me with a referral fee (~20Euro) twice. Now they are hitting me with the fees for the quarter! Ahhhh........my own fault really.

No comments yet....I should make more of an effort to add someusefull/entertaining stuff.

Getting back on track

I have been a bit busy and a little lazy. I have played squash as an alternative to running and weights.

Work has taken over again, but, I am slowly bringing it all under control. I hope to go to the gym tonight to get things going again.

I have a lot to get done this weekend, especially organising material that is spread across three machines. I should really do a backup too!

Must remember to watch this a week from next Monday. Eddie is more or less on the ball, most organisations, institutions and people are ripping anybody they can in Ireland. Never mind government and the commercial sector, I think we get very, very poor return for our investment in other areas (education, medical and security). The times they are a changing though, thankfully. More and more people are thinking, "Hey, this is crap" or "If I have to work hard, why should you get a free ride". I wonder how many parents of Leaving/Junior certificate students are thinking how much of the low scores are their kids fault?

Anyway.....

P.S. Please visit WAG!

Ahhhh Apple.

Apple are driving me mad. I got a new iBook recently and have two issues. They told me when I was buying the iBook that you could add memory to the existing memory later, as in there is a free slot. As it turns out, there is only one slot. So I have to buy memory and what is in the iBook is useless to me. Ahhhhhhhh.........

Anyway, my hard disk drive is hotter than hell. It is located in the bottom lefthand area of the iBook and it gets very warm. Phoned Apple. Over a crappy line the support guy explained to me that this was normal. Solution, turn the iBook off for 30 minutes every hour or so. Nice one. I guess this will be my first and last Apple product. And yes, I am one of those people who bought an iPod and then decided to try another Apple product.

What annoys me now is that there is nobody to complain to. The support people say there is nothing they can do. There is no contact information for customer care, either locally or globally. Messages to the Apple website never get answered. Anyway, that is life, my only regret now is that I recommended two friends to buy the same product and they have.

I have been looking about. I am guessing the hard disk in the iBook is just the standard 2.5" laptop disk. I believe the HDD has to be under 9.5mm in height. Next year I will get a 7200 rpm 80GB or maybe a 100GB. The HDD in the iBook is 4200 which is crap. I know from swapping in a faster disk with a regular laptop that this usually has a big impact. I see from various sites that this is a complicated process on an iBook as the HDD is buried deep.

Anyway......you live and learn (or get burned).

P.S. I found a tool called APM Tuner which has enabled me to stop the HDD from constantly trying to go offline. Reduces the noise to nothing!

Back again.

After the 300 mile round trip we were both a bit wrecked. A good weekend all in all.

We booked a room at the Markree Castle in Sligo to attend a wedding at the same venue. A few days before, we rang to make sure all was well, and it was not. They had lost our booking. To cut a long story short they apologised and made a reservation for us in the Sligo Southern hotel in Sligo town. The Markree paid for our rooms for the nights we had originally booked with them to apologise. This was very generous and mistakes can happen, so we were very happy (plus a saving of 300€).

The wedding reception was at the castle and the venue itself is very beautiful. We had a peek at the rooms and immediately felt sorry we weren't staying there. Some people said they felt their room was a little old and maybe damp in places but most got that this is what a castle is like!

The Sligo Southern in an experience we won't be repeating. Nice room, but filthy and noisy. I think we got the spare room that each hotel keeps for emergencies, so I suppose we shouldn't complain too much about the noise. We were over a generator or there was one just outside our window and that purred (or clunked very loudly) all night long. There was urine and pubic hair in the bathroom when we arrived. We complained, they cleaned, same result afterwards. The staff were very nice and helpful, they did they best they could. Nice (small) gym and pool though.

I should really be off to the gym today, but I have to head off for a work related meeting. I will definitely go tomorrow and make amends. I bought some new kit in JJB Sports in Blanchardstown Shopping Centre. They have better prices than LifeStyle Sports and carry a wide range of kit. This means no more running in a regular t-shirt.

I am also looking at getting a home wireless access point. I want to replace my existing DSL cable modem with a new box that includes all, rather than buying a second box to give me the wireless capability.

Away for now.

I am off for the weekend. So no gym, maybe while I am away. There is a leisure centre and pool at the hotel but I would rather take the weekend off and then go back full-steam next week. Maybe a dip in the pool would be a good compromise.

So far I am at 6k in about 40 minutes. I want to get to 8k as that was the original goal (to be able to jog 5 miles).

I finally completed one of the weights sessions, only one machine was very difficult. Weird thing though, I feel sore two and three days later, but not the next day? And I mean very sore, restricted motion and sore while resting. Aspirin or paracetamol have no effect.

Still off the smokes. Including all relapses (about 1 month) that is 10 months. I feel way better for it. Sleep better and don't feel so tired. I have tried most cures (nicotine chewing gum, Zyban tablets, nicotine tablets) and found the patches to be the best. Not very easy to start off with, the first three days are a bitch but after that all goes well. Only thing is that they can fall off very easily and they are very hard on my skin.

First post

hello world!

I know, I know. Not very original, but at least it is a start.