A New Approach
Although I’ve previously mastered (some) distance in my running, my speed was distinctly average at a pace of 10:10.
Over the past couple of months my running has been patchy with the odd illness, general apathy, new tattoos (I’m up to five now), and - most recently - UDS Karmic and AllHands.
But yesterday seemed like a good day to start again, and I repeated it again today. Instead of my usual route of 4.6 miles, I opted for a shorter one of 2.4 miles and pushed myself. So far my average pace is 08:53 - a big improvement. I’ll keep going at this pace/distance until I can do it comfortably (or even faster), then add some more miles on.
It’s made me realise how much I missed running though.
SSiS (Surprisingly Still In Shape)
After not running at all (discounting a couple of goes on the jogging in Wii Fit!) for 5 whole weeks, I finally stopped making excuses and made the most of our good weather for a 4.5 miler today and - surprisingly - I’m still in reasonable shape. I ran only slightly slower that I did in my half marathon - which I blame entirely on having to wait for the dog to catch me up every so often 
- with only a couple of stops and one brief walk. Not bad IMO.
Now to keep up the training and look for some races post-UDS.
The reason for my break in training - which resulted in me skipping my second planned race - was that I was waiting for my new tattoo to heal. I’ve only recently (i.e. the last year-and-a-bit) started getting tattooed (any comments about a mid-life crisis will be directed to /dev/null - but it’s true what they say: it’s extremely addictive. I’ve already got about 4 more planned!
Photo of my tattoo at about 1.5 weeks old - the bruising is still evident!
The tattoo I’ve had done is a stylised Eye Of Ra, also known as the Eye of Horus. The design comes from Tattoo Tribes, and the basic meaning is protection although there are lots of other interpretations and meanings. I also have a few personal reasons for using this particular symbol.
Wordpress 2.7
Upgraded to Wordpress 2.7. Completely painless upgrade process. EOM.
Design Decisions
A comment in my recent post about letting the air out of Air got me thinking about some of the design decisions Apple have made with their new laptop.
Why pay more?
A couple of years ago my mother bought us a dedicated photo printer – a Canon SELPHY DS810. It’s a nice enough printer, and it does exactly what it says on the tin (i.e. print photos). Being able to connect it directly to my camera or just use memory cards can be so convenient. I’ve even printed via IR from my phone before, which leads me to…
The other day I wanted to print a photo from my N95, which manages to support every function under the sun except IR printing. In all fairness it is a 5 Megapixel camera, so the image would be a bit large (and therefore slow) for IR, but still. The N95 does support Bluetooth printing, but Canon only supports their BU20 Bluetooth module which retails for upwards of £40, and I’ve never cared enough to get one. Fortunately the N95 also supports USB printing, so my immediate problem was solved.
When I ordered my N95 (and N800) I realised I’d misplaced my Bluetooth dongle so I promptly ordered another one off eBay for less than £4 delivered (and then just as promptly found my other one). It arrived this morning and on a whim I plugged it into the DS810 – lo and behold, it worked. I’m sure my other dongle never worked (although I just tried it, and it seemed to), but I had let myself be brainwashed by Canon into believing that only their (overpriced) offering would work and didn’t bother to research alternatives.
Lesson learned.
I can has caffeine
AKA the tea thief
I wouldn’t mind, but I hadn’t finished drinking it!
My name in print
…and this time I’ve got the cover all to myself!
I’ve alluded to this several times, but now it is time to forcibly eject the cat from the bag.
In short: my book – Managing Software Development with Trac and Subversion will be available soon.
What everyone else says is true: writing a book is hard work, but it’s worth it.
Section feeds are back
As promised section feeds have returned. If you select a section from the list on the right, then click the RSS icon in your browser it will give you specific feed for that section.
Too make life easier though, here are the feeds most people will be interested in:
If you can’t find what you’re looking for…
…please ask a member of staff.
Although much better, my switch to Mephisto was not without its casualties. This can mainly be seen in three areas:
Close, but no cigar
Want to hear a couple of respected .NET developers talk about Open Source? Go and listen to the episode of of Hanselminutes entitled Open Source Options. I found it both infuriating and enlightening at the same time.
How can it be both? Because it’s two commercially-oriented software developers discussing a concept they don’t seem to fully grasp or understand. I sure this is in part due to the format and constraints of the show – Scott Hanselman seems to be an intelligent guy, and I’m confident he knows more about Open Source than came across but it didn’t come across that way. It was interesting to see how Open Source is perceived by them, and their take on some of the problems we face.
Go listen and see what you think.
look good