My former colleagues have done a great job with the v1.0 release of ammado. I was briefly involved at the beginning of the redesign before I wandered back over to Wales. They’ve got a blog that is updated frequently and a podcast too. It’s a great redesign with plenty of very nice aspects to it. They’ve also had a lot of feature updates such as videos. Good work guys.
We had a support ticket at Karova which resulted in me having to look at the http data being sent between two servers via Soap over http. I’d read about Wireshark before and had it downloaded already. I installed it – found a way to filter the captured data by IP address and logged all traffic between both servers. All in under three minutes. It’s a awesome piece of software, I’ve been meaning for so long to re-visit the workings of the http protocol but always let it slide down my list. With Wireshark you can at least see what you’re learning in practice.
I’ve been an ericsson/sony ericsson fanboy for as long as I can remember so it was a bit of a departure from the safe confines of my Sony when I got an n95 8GB for work (we needed a GPS phone to test on). I’m absolutely in love with it.
Pro’s
Cons
I’s great, I’ve got Gmail, Gmail For Google Apps, Opera Mini, Google maps, Nokia Sports Tracker, Fring, Youtube and Skype installed. It really is a joy to have. I’d easily recommend it. Apart from the touch screen of iPhone I think it would kick it’s ass.
Since coming back to Karova, I’ve been doing ALOT more management of projects than I did before. Usually what happens is I get the projects once they’ve been spec’d (and prototype’d if appropriate) and then I manage the completion of the project from dev->staging->live and then pass it back to billing.
We always have a good number of projects on the go and my stack is always packed full of project details. The problem I’m having though is being able to step away from the code. I love coding and I know of no other feeling (achievable in an office environment) better than being in the "zone". With so many projects on-going it’s imperative that I delegate rather than try and get stuck in too much even if I know I am most familiar with a piece of software or technology.
It’s a great opportunity for me to step back from code and focus more on managaing and looking at things from a technologist point of view rather than a coder. Under that role I have already been able to play with Linq, ASP.NET 3.5 and SubSonic. Has anybody been in the same situation and have some advice?. For now I just know I need to stay disciplined and step away from the urge to start ‘xslt’ing and coding my ass off.
On Sunday last myself and big Frank borrowed my mum’s car (as it has a hitch) and drove across to Leitrim with our bikes and butterflies in our bellies. Frank did the same race last year and said he really enjoyed and it was my first open water race. This was meant to be my first race but I managed to get a place in the Fingal Sprint in the last few days.
It was a great race but I was very very nervous before it as I had never swam that far in open water before. Even the swim to the starting line seemed daunting. The klaxon for the start of the swim went and pandemonium ensued. Most people were forcing their way forward but I think I was the only one pushing people in front of me to try and get as far back as I could. I took it very easy stopping to breast stroke every 30-50 metres to catch my breath. I finally made it to the bike transition (somehow managing to take a minute off my Fingal swim time). It was no wonder the swim was so sluggish when you consider my wetsuit filled with water – thanks Lidl!!!.
I danced and fumbled my way out of my suit and onto my bike and and off down the road. It was a tough bike ride with plenty of hills but I got a good time (taking a minute off Fingal again). The transition from bike to run was easier this time as I had remembered to tie my laces before the race this time. I had a good week of running training before the race and knew I could make some time on the run. That I did – coming tenth over all on the run leg of the race.
0:19:12 (Position in the swim leg – 143rd /152)
0:01:31 transition from swim to bike
0:39:56 (Position in the run leg – 64th /152)
0:00:43 transition from bike to run
0:21:05 (Position in the run leg – 10th /152)
1:22:26 (Overall position 63rd /152)
As you can see my swim needs ALOT of work.
Frank came 34th overall, only 4 outside his personal goal for this year of being in top 20%. The bottom photo is Mark – Sarahs boyfriend who did his first official tri coming an amazing 33rd.
One thing I did learn from the race was that I didn’t eat enough carbs after as I got a little too tipsy too easily on Sunday night and I had a huge sugar low on Monday morning (I was the laughing stock at training) which was quickly fixed with two lion bars, a moro, a pack of skittles and a bottle of Pepsi – I still feel like crap two days later. I haven’t eaten that much sugar in months.
3dtri took 444 photos of the event and they’re all up on flickr.
I’ve come to the crazy decision that I need to sacrifice my EEPC in favour of a Garmin Forerunner 405. Why?
What I found great about the EEPC –
I’m looking for £190 ono excluding delivery (perfect condition with original box and all manuals/cds). That includes a 2GB SD card. I’m putting it on my blog first before ebaying it. I’ve also got an unused Matrox DualHead2Go Digital Edition for sale (£110 ono excl delivery).
Anybody interested?
From the Planet Ubuntu feed I saw the meme "geek poll: what do you have open?"
What do I have open?
As you can see – I am definitely making use of my dualies 🙂
This year Frank convinced me to join him in training for a sprint triathlon. I agreed and last weekend was my first (fingalsprint.3dtri.com). It was tough – real tough. I’m not a strong swimmer and I was punished severally in the swim – somehow I was placed in the fast group and ended up being the very very last person in the pool (funny when you look back on it).
I then ran out and after numerous failed attempts managed to get changed (at one stage I had my head and my arm out my head hole on my shirt). I jumped on my bike and cycled as hard as I ever have all the way from the NAC to Kilbride (near where I live) and back. Then it was attempting to change again and with adrenaline racing through me, it wasn’t easy.
After the 20km bike is the 5km run and it is the weirdest feeling ever, to run after pushing yourself on the bike – it’s like floating on air but really really slowly and it took about 1km before I managed to get anything like a reasonable pace going.
The official results are not out yet but I’m very chuffed with finishing and especially finishing the swim (I’d never done the 750m before with the pool in 50m mode). Frank got his time and it was a whopping 9 minutes or so faster than his time last year – well done dude (watch out next year – maybe I’ll be able to dress myself properly by then).
I don’t know how people do Iron Man competitions and the like, my hat goes off to them. Awesome stuff.
We’ve got another one @ Lake Garadice in a couple of weeks so it’s back training tonight. After that it’s all about the Dublin marathon. ps. The photos are courtesy of my mum who waited at the bike turning point for both myself and Frank.
I’ll update later with my official times.
Official Times
Overall Position 133 / 269
Swim 0:20:42 (236th)
Swim to Bike transition 01:28
Bike 0:40:07 (134th)
Bike to Run transition 0:00:54
Run 0:20:12 (41st)
Total time 1:23:23
Woohoo!!!!
Do you Really Want to Be a Development Team Leader? When you become a DTL you work balance is up for a bit of a change.
A very good article on the differences between a developer and a Dev team leader. It’s very true.
When I started back at Karova I treated myself to a new and very awesome dev machine. I bought it myself so was very careful that I got best value for my money. I’ve been using it for three months now and I have to say I am very very very pleased with it.
I regularly have 5 or six instances of Visual Studio (2003,2005 and 2008) running as well as Firefox, Jedit, Thunderbird, iTunes, FileZilla, SPE etc. etc. and it doesn’t even bat an eyelid. I could have waited until I could afford a quad core but I can always upgrade the motherboard and processor another time. I bought the machine and monitors (not at the same time) from ITCSales who have great prices and very good customer service. All in all including monitors I reckon I spent about £1400 which considering the spec is a steal.