Scorched Tortoise

Deadlines stacked but not loaded ...

2008-07-29T00:50:00.002Z

Looks like August is going to be a crazy busy month. 3 deadlines each either just before or just after the big trip to Vegas with the lads.

A holiday is definately required, and going to Vegas with my best mates from all the way back in high school is something I've been wanting for ages. But also sometime away from normality with C would be amazing. The next holiday we have planned is the wedding which is not till December so I need to come up with something else before then. Even if it's just a nice weekend away somewhere quiet for just the 2 of us.

Down time is important and there's not been enough of that this past year. We need some to get through the next one.

Done

2008-07-25T01:49:00.001Z

Lunch as it should be

Current frustrations ...

2008-04-14T00:38:00.002Z

In no particular order;

The aftermath of the Hollywood writers strike

It's not that I was opposed to the strike in any way, I fully backed it. But being somewhat addicted to TV it is now very frustrating that so many shows have either been a) dumped, b) curtailed or c) confused through a large season break. The next autumn season cannot come round quick enough.

A frustration that was good to write but on reflection removed

Writing things down, or typing them up (why is writing "down" and typing "up"?), is a very cathartic thing to do. But looking back on the one that was here (work related) I felt it best that I remove it. Will write about it at a later date.

My bowling scores

Since I started my current project I have missed many weeks of bowling and it shows. Recent nights have shown and improvement and my 4 Week Moving Average is now almost back to pre-project levels, although that's still not great. I really do feel like I am improving but that I just can't get past a certain point. It's also a downward spiral in that my frustration has an adverse effect on my game. As with life in general I find it hard to push work out of my head and focus on what I am doing. It's hard to bowl with code compiling in your mind.

Conclusion

All in all there's not much there really. Life is pretty good at the moment, although there's a couple of frustrations that I don't want to write up here (inevitably the bigger ones). If I can get my current project complete, my personal project moving and one or two other things finalised then life will be sweet. Not much to ask for is it :)

Rolling scores update for 2008-04-08 ...

2008-04-08T23:30:00.002Z

Here is an automated post of the latest bowling scores. 3 Game Weekly Average 4 Week Moving Average

Update: You'll notice that I have fixed the calculations behind the 4 week moving average chart. They were way off and not showing the latest results. All fixed now, as you can see by the way I am rapidly catching up to STS (Seven Ten Split) Onepin! ;)

Rolling scores update for 2008-03-18 ...

2008-03-18T21:19:00.001Z

Here is an automated post of the latest bowling scores.

3 Game Weekly Average

4 Week Moving Average

Back in the code playground ...

2008-03-18T01:48:00.003Z

It's been a very long time since I wrote anything substantive on this blog. Even the rolling scores updates have been far too few, gaining me a not insignificant amount of complaints from my fellow rollers, well deserved of course.

The reasons for my absence have been many, and all totally uninteresting to you dear readers. Well all that is except one. My current project at work which has been most consuming for me. It has been on a crunch timescale since day one, and client extensions have not helped. However, the interesting point is that it has finally got me back to, officially, coding at work.

Like a long lost friend with whom I have been reunited, coding and I have had much to catch up on. But, also like seeing a close friend after a long break, most has stayed the same and the familiar rhythm of friendship is soon resumed.

This has all been helped by some great personal projects that I am also undertaking in my, somewhat limited, spare time. One of them I cannot speak about just yet, expect more some time in the summer. The other though, might have come to your attention tonight if you read this blog via a feed reader like Google Reader.

If so you may well have notice an auto generated post for the latest rolling scores. It was a test, and a nicely successful one at that. I have finally admitted that I am never going to be organised enough to keep up to date with adding the rolling scores to the nasty spreadsheet I have and generating/posting the graphs to my blog. So instead, like any good developer, the desire to be lazy is the mother of invention.

I have written a little web app which will allow me to post the scores from my mobile phone, on the lane! It then saves these in MySQL, generates and posts the blog entry which includes 2 links to on-demand generated graphs of the 3Game Weekly Averages and the 4 Week Moving Averages.

The latter will be a little different from how they were before as they are now a true moving average of the raw data, rather than a moving average of the 3 game averages.

It's taken about 5 hours work to put together so far, most of which was learning the API's for JFreeChart and ROME. Obviously this is not the end. Time allowing it will eventually allow for some analysis of the scores, e.g. lowest deviation etc. Plus access to the all important, and embarrassing to me, raw data.

All going well the first live post should come after tonight's games, which are doubly important as we have decided to reset the no-show average to our personal 3 game averages from tonight. Not looking good for me, the current no-show is 120 and I've been scoring under that for some weeks (mostly the reason we are resetting them). Ah well, enough of these warm up games, on with the real deal ...

More rolling scores ...

2008-03-04T02:16:00.001Z

Big update, depressing for me though. Really need to improve as I only have a month before the company bowling night.

Here are the 3 Game Average and here is the 4 Week Moving Average charts from the last couple of weeks.

Rolling scores finally updated :) ...

2008-01-04T01:17:00.000Z

Here are the 3 Game Average and here is the 4 Week Moving Average charts from the last couple of weeks.

Happy Christmas one and all ...

2007-12-24T19:20:00.000Z

In the spirit of giving educational gifts that kids don't want, here is fun little quiz for all you Sci-Fi geeks like me.

	I received 72 credits on The Sci Fi Sounds Quiz How much of a Sci-Fi geek are you?
Take the Sci-Fi Movie Quiz canon s5 is

Rolling ever on ...

2007-11-13T16:41:00.000Z

Here are the 3 Game Average and here is the 4 Week Moving Average charts from the last couple of weeks.

Onepin is gaining on Rogue's, once thought unassailable, lead. As for myself, I take some pride in the consistency that can be seen in my 4 week moving average chart. Just need to take the next step.

Blogging from my iPod ...

2007-10-18T21:39:00.000Z

Loving the new iPod Touch. Does not take too long to get used to the on screen keyboard either. I have spent most of the last few days letting people in the office have a play. I think there will be a few more around there soon ;)

Rolling graphs updated ...

2007-10-14T23:00:00.000Z

Thanks all who turned out last Saturday, it was a lot of fun. Here's the 3 Game Average and here is the 4 Week Moving Average charts from last week, including our extra Saturday game which went well for me, shame I couldn't follow that through to last Tuesday. Maybe this Tuesday will work out better :)

Pre-poker rolling scores ...

2007-10-06T12:10:00.000Z

Before tonights monthly poker game here are the updated rolling scores. Here's the 3 Game Average and here is the 4 Week Moving Average charts. The charts will look a little different because I have not got MS Office on the new Mac, instead I am using the latest Beta of OpenOffice Aqua Native.

The decision is made, no iPhone for me ...

2007-09-29T23:04:00.000Z

At least not the first revision anyway.

This is something that I have been thinking about ever since the original announcement. I wasn't too concern about who would get it. Even though I have been with Orange since I first got a mobile, 6 years ago, I have no particular loyalty to them, just to lazy to change. I probably could have lived without 3G, I spend far too much time and money online with my current Sony Ericsson, at horribly slow speeds, already to start worrying about such things. The fact that it is an Apple first gen product didn't worry me, although I do have concerns that it's an Apple/3rd Party first gen product (Apple being notorious at bad partnering).

No what got me in the end was the fact that it seems far too inevitable that things are going to change for the iPhone, and change fast. I really think the situation in 18 months time, when the first contacts are running out, will be extremely different to the situation now. So I'm going to wait a while longer.

Saying all that though, I really want an iPod. Now I have a decent machine, one that spends considerable time downloading podcasts and NFL match commentary, I would like to be able to listen to these on the road.

I happened by the Apple store last Thursday, and after finding a £320 accounting error in my favour (seriously), I decided to pop in and grab a Nano. My needs are fairly simple, so the size is fine, not too much video stuff to watch. All in all I thought it would be the best value thing to get.

But the buggers had the iPod Touch out on display. I tried it, ran my fingers over it's screen and fell for it completely. The only thing that stopped me walking out with one then and there was that they were out of stock. I've ordered one online, which in a happy coincidence should arrive just before my birthday.

The only thing I would truly miss from the iPhone package is the excellent free Wi-Fi access deal O2 set up with The Cloud. I spent most of Friday trying to word, in my head, a letter to The Cloud to complain that none of their partners offer a simple plan to get such a device online and that they would be missing a major opportunity if they didn't do something about this. Last night though, my prayers were answered before I had the chance to put pen to paper.

Can't wait :)

Zooomer, Firefox and CoComment issue ...

2007-09-26T18:30:00.000Z

If you are a Zooomr user through Firefox you should be aware that installing the CoComment plug-in seems to cause a problem with editing of photo title and GeoTagging photos. Hopefully one or the other company will sort this out soon as both are excellent services.

It's alive! ...

2007-09-23T19:35:00.000Z

Finally the day arrived. That day was last Thursday. That day was the day my new iMac arrived. Those that follow this blog will know that I made the switch to Mac back in 2005. That was after a brief and totally unsuccessful flirtation with Linux for the year prior to that.

My switch came in the form of an iBook G4, the cheapest Mac available at that time. I knew the rumours were flying about the move to Intel chips, but I still felt that I needed to dip my toe into the Apple world and test the waters. People who know me will tell you that I am now a complete Apple bore.

Yet it is hard to be an Apple bore when you can only show a really slow, 256Mb RAM, 3 generations old processor laptop. Frankly it's been a little embarrassing. I came close to buying a 24" iMac earlier in the year, but then certain financial constraints stopped me, and then more rumours about an iMac refresh started circling. So I waited. But now I wait no more

All I can say is "Wow!". This is such a leap in performance from my previous machine that any comparison would be meaningless, but wow all the same.

Figuring that this one should last me quite a while I went all out. It's a 2.8 GHz Core 2 Duo Extreme with 4Gb of Ram. Looking at Activity Monitor I am yet to get even close to making it have to do anything stressful.

I am also happy to report that I ave managed to get someone I work with to switch too, and it was the new iMacs that did it. She could not believe that Apple have managed to squeeze such a powerful machine into the monitor.

Right now I am finding and installing all those little apps that are so important yet you forget that they are not part of the core system; Adium, Stuffit, Wire Tap, etc. Feels like home already :)

Big apologies to the guys from my old work that were meeting up last Thursday, I had been offline for a while and didn't get the messages till late in the day and then found out I had to go pick up the Mac and well, you can understand I'm sure.

Long overdue rolling update ...

2007-08-27T17:18:00.000Z

So here it is, the last 7 weeks of rolling scores updated. There's a week each in there for Onepin and I where we didn't go rolling and so were given a 120 average. Looking at them, the most interesting aspect is just how uninteresting they are. We're playing relatively consistently and to a decreasing gap of ability. This is most obvious in my 4 week moving average which has leveled out around the 123-125 region.

Hopefully this week we can all raise our averages a bit :)

3 Game Average

4 Week Moving Average

Update ...

2007-07-06T19:10:00.000Z

Rolling

Here are the latest graphs from our weekly rolling sessions.

3 Game Average
4 Week Moving Average

After a great week the week before you can see that some scores dropped off again. Still, I am keeping up with Onepin which is more than could be said a few months ago.

Life

The big news is that a little while back Carly and I got engaged! Something that I know many of you (or most if not all of you) thought would never happen. We had hoped to arrange a small wedding before the end of the year, both of us would like a Christmas wedding, but finding a venue and arranging things while so much else is going on just doesn't seem to be happening. We may well have to wait till next year. Still, gives my best man plenty of time to work out a stag party and write his speech.

One of the other things going on is that we are moving flat, not far. In fact we are moving to a flat about 100 yards from my first London flat. It's somewhere a little smaller, to try to save on rent and other expenses, but most importantly it has central heating and does not have the worlds freakiest neighbours (will tell you all about them another time).

Cats

I had the week off this week, simply because I had plenty of holiday to use before the end of November and it worked well for my current project at work that I take time off around now. Carly has spent most of the week up in Birmingham for a conference. It was lucky that I was around because I came home Tuesday night from rolling to find Dylan in a terrible state. After a quick taxi ride to the 24 hour Veterinary hospital near here (another good reason not to move to far away) I was told that she had a tooth infection which had obviously got so painful for her that she had been chewing on something really hard and cracked the tooth. She was clawing at her mouth when I had got home.

She had to stay in for a couple of nights because she was put under general anesthetic for an operation to remove the tooth. I am happy to report that other than looking a little silly (they shaved her chest and right leg for heart monitor and IV drip) she is home and doing fine.

Geekness

At some point soon I will bring myself to follow up on my overly optimistic post about the (at the time upcoming) WWDC Keynote. I wasn't as let down as most people, I think for once the keynote was perfectly pitched at it's primary audience, developers. Again I enjoyed it from work, a couple of computers following the MacRumoursLive and Engadget coverage while also listening to someone's live UStream audio feed.

One thing I must comment on, the release of Safari for Windows. There are many silly people out there hoping for this to be a lead into more Apple software on Windows, or even people buying into the Steve line about gaining more market share for Safari. It's all a load of crap. There is only one reason Apple released Safari for Windows and that is because they were forced to. By making the iPhone development environment web based apps only they had to release Safari for Windows so people could test their applications. That's it, the only reason.

Speaking of the iPhone, I followed the geekiest launch queue (in Palo Alto) through Kristopher Tate and Zooomr TV's live UStream feed. Looks like much fun was had by all (including an appearance by Steve himself). Cannot wait for the iPhone to be released over here, so long as the rumours about no 3G are not true.

Another rolling update ...

2007-06-21T22:05:00.000Z

As always here is the rolling update ... late (as always). Promise to do better next time :)

3 Game Average

4 Week Moving Average

Another rolling update ...

2007-05-30T23:35:00.000Z

A bit quicker on the update this week. Here is the latest.

Two weeks of rolling...

2007-05-27T20:13:00.000Z

Sorry for the delays again, here are the rolling scores with the last two weeks added.

Rolling downhill...

2007-05-11T00:24:00.000Z

As usual here is the latest rolling chart. I barely managed to keep my 3 game average above 100, throwing a horrible 88 in one game, the lowest score since records began (a whole 7 weeks ago)!

Next week will be a little bit different as it will be She-Ra's birthday so our little rolling trio will expand to a ... well whatever the right work for a group of 6 would be.

Props to Onepin who actually managed to increase his 3 game average by one point to 133, although that seems to me like that difference may lie in within the margin of error ;)

Rolling update...

2007-05-05T23:19:00.000Z

Here is the latest update to our rolling averages. Sorry for the delay. :)

Rolling ...

2007-04-25T10:46:00.000Z

Concentric clock...

2007-04-20T10:03:00.000Z

Ah, finally, a calendar/clock made up of concentric circles Polar Clock. Few would be interested in this, but you know who you are :)