Author Archives: philroche

Will I move to Spicebird??

Eh… No.

We’ll be moving to Google Apps soon at Ticket-Text so I wanted to try out a few clients to see which would suit us best. I’ve used thunderbird but thought I’d try out spicebird too. Downloaded it and installed. I could not set up an email account at all. Wizard had a load of blank screens and never set up the account. I uninstalled the app and was going to leave feedback to them to tell them why I uninstalled but the feedback form was broken.

Spicebid uninstall survey

Potentially a great app but I’d need to be able to set up an account firt me thinks.. maybe waith till 1.0.

mates.marry(Enda, Tara) = mayhem.pure;

Most of you won’t get the title as it’s a more of a programming joke :). But suffice to say Enda and Tara are now married and it was one hell of a party.

Enda and Tara at the Alter

Well done guys…. super chuffed you finally got around to it. In an effort to keep me relatively sober (I think that’s why anyway) I was part of the wedding party and thankfully didn’t have to speak but took care of the logistics of wedding cards and wedding book and also had to hold the microphone during the wedding ceremony. The best man Alan’s speech was awesome as were all the others. I’m still suffering now and the festivities ended early Monday morning. Roll on the next wedding!!!

Wedding party

Homeward bound.. yet again

I’ve been back in Wales for 11 months but the time has come to venture back to Dublin again. Various reasons led to my decision to head back, the commute for one was getting too expensive and with GAA season starting again soon I’d be going back every weekend again.

The biggest reason however was the opportunity arose to join Ticket-Text. A couple of friends for my time at Ammado are part of the core team there. I start on Monday and can’t wait to get stuck into Python, Django and JQuery.

Before that though I’m off to Leeds for my buddy Enda’s stag weekend… oh dear!!!!

Using mencoder for my first youtube upload

I’ve been watching the BBC’s Gavin and Stacey series again and found just as hilarious as I did when I watched it first. I wanted to view the wedding speeches again but they weren’t on Youtube anywhere so I figured I’d upload my first youtube video with the speeches (probably violating all sorts of copyrights in the process).

I have used ffmpeg from the windows SUPER installer before but I used mencoder from the same install this time to cut the speeches from the episode. Just as ffmpeg is, mencoder is an awesome utility.

mencoder -ss 00:15:00 -endpos 00:03:20 -ovc copy -oac copy Episode6.avi -o ClippedEpisode6.avi

I love it when he whips out the toast – nearly wet myself when I saw that first. Enjoy – Gavin and Stacey – Wedding Speeches

29

Thanks to all for coming out on Saturday night to celebrate my 29th year on this god forsaken credit crunching land. It turned into a bit of a lads fest with a trip to the dog track and getting blind drunk in town. I’m only one away from the triocha now….. arghh!!!!!!

Lads showing off their Mo's

The lads were showing off their Mos too. Congrats to all of them

AIB….. Our survey says ehhh uhhhhh!!

My Irish bank AIB has recently launched a redesign to their site. I’m a devout Firefox user and the site used to work in Firefox. Today I tried to access it and got a blank screen. I viewed source to see if it was something obvious but it was blank. I then tried in IE7. Works fine (and does look well I might add). It also works in Opera 9.25. I had a read of their accessibility statement and saw this…

AIB accessibility statement

Sorry AIB.. you fail.

Update: I also sent them an email from their contact form and it now seems to be fixed… Totally redeemed yourself!!!

SMS goodness

Today I had to book a ticket so I can go and help my Dad with some building work he is doing. The wonderful Aer Arann have a flight from Manchester to Galway so I figured I’d get that. I found a flight for the Friday night and booked it. A few seconds later I received a text message with the flight details and my booking number. Super, no need to print anything.
I then had to book a train ticket to get to Manchester airport (which very conveniently has a train station), I searched National Rail and was able to SMS the itinerary to my phone, awesome. I  didn’t buy my ticket from National Rail as I already have an account with The Train Line so I bought my ticket from them instead. Shortly after I received a text message with my order details.

I think using SMS like that is absolutely brilliant, I don’t have to print anything, check my email or remember to bring anything at all with me. I do like to see progress like this. Good work

Dublin marathon October 27th 2008

Dublin marathon October 27th 2008As mentioned before I managed to finish the Dublin marathon last Monday. It was a gruelling experience. I wasn’t able to run at all in the three/ four weeks leading up to the race due to an injury sustained in the half marathon. 8 physio sessions later and with a wallet a lot lighter race day came upon me.

I carbed up the days before the race and got plenty of liquids on board too and felt quite good apart from the knowledge that my knee was still not 100%. My physio said that I should take 4 Ibuprofen before the race to help with the knee but I have a nervous tummy and didn’t want to risk ibuprofen, instead I took two solpadine and was going to take another two just before the race….. that stuff is vile!!!!! so I only managed the first two.

My mum drove me in on race morning and waited around with me while I stretched and warmed up (my warm up run felt great so I was gunning for a good race).

I bullied my way to about 8 rows from the front of the runners as there is nothing worse than trying to get by people on race start (as I found in the 10 mile race earlier in the year). I was crazy nervous but some Al Pacino “Inches” calmed me down just before the starting gun went. I tore off with the runners so I wouldn’t get trampled and soon settled into my desired pace which was between 6.30 and 6.50 minutes per mile. I felt great and was really flying with a 41:54 10km split.

However soon after 10 miles my knee (specifically the soleus muscle) started to flare up big time.
RaceStatisitics-PacevDistanceGraph

You can see from the graph (my Garmin forerunner 405 worked a treat) where it all went wrong. People talk of the “wall” so I thought maybe the pain was the “wall” and not my knee, I tried battling through but no such luck. My legs felt good so I was mega pissed off but figured if I stopped and stretched every now and again I would be OK and still get an acceptable time.

I battled on stopping every km to stretch and walk. I stopped for an aided stretch with my mates at 12 miles (cheers Paddy) and also with a physio about 13. My dad was at 21 miles so I stopped and took on some glucose with him, The sugars didn’t last long as I had to sit/ lie down on the kerb at 23. My sugar levels were very low and I felt very faint. A very VERY hot FM104 lady gave me three small bags of Haribo which I wolfed down and shuffled off again. She was really hot!!

The last few miles were pure agony with every muscle cramping up. I saw Brian and Carol at the approach to the finish which gave me a boost but then I saw my Mum’s Norwegian flag waving furiously which gave me a huge burst of energy and sprinted to the finish line crossing in 4 hours and 7 minutes and 52 seconds. Nearly an hour later than expected (my eventual goal is 3.15 to 3.30) but I was just sooooo happy to finish it.

To redeem myself I have signed up for a 10km before Christmas, a half marathon in March and I might have secured myself a place in the late April London marathon (I’ll be hitting you all up for sponsorship for that one).

The crowd were amazing and thanks to my friends and family that came out to support me… It really did help. Thanks to all the strangers that shouted my name (painted on my shirt) and to those who handed out sweets and drinks. It was a great day despite experiencing worlds of pain I had never even dreamt of.

Thanks to all and well done to all finishers!!!!!

Speed statistics for the race. The sharp increase around 1.5 miles has to be a GPS glitch as I definitely did not run at 4.21 pace at any stage. RaceStatisitics-SpeedvDistanceGraph

Race statistics, I would have thought I’d used more than 2880 calories, it certainly felt like it.
Race Statistics

My official results
Final race position

I also have the kml (Dublin_marathon_27th_October_2008.kml) and kmz (Dublin_marathon_27th_October_2008.kmz) files exported from google earth as well as my race on google maps.

What would I do differently:

  • Don’t get injured and make sure you get enough long run training in.
  • Running 15 miles once is NOT enough!!!!
  • 26.2 miles is a loooong distance, don’t underestimate it
  • From the graphs you can see that I desperately need to learn to keep a constant pace, that’s on my agenda now once I can start running again.

Dublin marathon October 27th 2008

Bring on London 2009!!!!!