Colin

So I have decided I need to start writing more stuff here following some gentle prodding from the Lady Friend and others.
Due to a recent spate of comment spam and a security issue in wordpress I also decided to upgrade to wordpress 2.0 to get access to features like akismet and some new plugins for doing tagging. The upgrade was painless and took only a few minutes.
So the current plan is to write two or three significant posts per week. I have a bunch of have written posts laying about which I will finish off and I am sure work will provide some inspiration.

The photo above was taken on the first day of the expedition during PEAK and is part of my experimentation with depth of field. I am impressed at how sharp the leaves are when the branch is out of focus. The photo is of a rhododendron, a plant which is slowly choking the native forest in killarney national park. If I could only get my hands on the person(s) who brought them into the country.

As part of my involvement in the Sionnach team I am off to cappanalea to help out with the running of P.E.A.K. which is a weeklong training adventure for upto 36 Scouts normally aged about 15 to 16. Going to be lots of fun and hopefully not too wet.

Just a quick update before I flee to visit the UK with the LadyFriend.

Many many old faces were seen and good time was had by all. Photos of the event are in the still being built photos part of the website.

Only noticed over the weekend that it has been awhile since I updated.
That is going to change this week as I have a bunch of stuff lined up ready to post. Also I have a pile of work related stuff I was saving for our corporate blog which has not arrived so I will post them here as someone might be interested.

Blackball. Who would believe Bowls could make such a good movie. Digital TV sometimes delivers little nuggets.

So over Christmas I noticed that I had become more “cuddly” than normal and decided I needed to lose some weight as part of a general get healthy policy. At the same time colmmacc posted this article on losing weight with gnuplot. He brought to my attention The Hacker’s Diet which is a great reference written by an Engineer and so it builds a systems model for the body and weight gain / loss.

So just by cutting out junk food and making sure I only had one dinner per day I have dropped 5Kg (11lbs) during January which is pretty good going. The January chart is below. I expect to do better in February as I have joined the company running team and so expect to be training a few times a week from now on.

So Warpcon XVI was on last weekend and so the LadyFriend and I decided to attend partly just to get a weekend away together following the madness of Project Delorean and my being on-call over Christmas and New Years. Also John and Janet were over following Johns return from his around the world travels. So Friday was taken off and plans to get the train were hatched. An important part of this weekend was to pamper the LadyFriend and so a detailed search was undertaken to find a B&B that would provide the level of service that is required to impress the LadyFriend. After much research Garnish House was selected and a suitable room reserved. Now the LadyFriend had enthused about the joys of Jacuzzi baths in the past so this was one of the most important criteria.

Now lets just say Garnish House was under a lot of pressure to deliver the “Disney Experience” which is what the LadyFriend refers to travelling with me as being like. Something to do with birds landing on fingers and stuff. Here is the list of things they did which impressed us.

• Served us fresh Scones along with Coffee and Apple Juice when we arrived on Friday.
• Upgraded us to our own apartment.
• Provided a weighing scales in our apartment for me to help maintain my diet. More on this in a later post.
• Coped with John and Janet showing up at the main building (apartments were a few doors down the street) and managed to direct them to us even though John and Janet could only describe us to them.
• Served some of the most amazing Breakfasts I have had in quite awhile.
• Had a Jacizzi bath.
• Kept our bags for us on Sunday and had Coffee and Scones ready for us when we came to collect them.
• Presented the LadyFriend with a TeddyBear as we were leaving. Now named Howard after H.P. Lovecraft.

Winners of an E.S.P.D. Seal of Approval. We will be going back that is for sure.

So enough about the B&B and more about the con. Was lots of fun, even though I managed not to play any offical games. Got to spend time with John and Janet along with lots of other interesting Scotish Gamers. Got to witness serveral people in advanced states of inebriation on the Friday night. All in all a good weekend.

So what were we looking at using the silly 3D glasses.

This was painted by people during the Customer Appreciation Event at Networkers with the help of some professional supervision. The blue and greens work really well with the glasses to give the impression of multiple layers somewhat like a Printed Circuit Board.

So I was testing our new EPG (Electronic Programme Guide, the menu system on the Set Top Box) at home and one of the nice features is you can view the channel listings with the channels sorted by popularity the data for which is gathered in real time. This is a really cute feature which shows the potential which an IP based system can deliver compared to traditional systems.

There is one downside. You get to discover that the most popular channel is showing Celebrity Big Brother. I despair for the general population, well at least 17% of them. I think I should insert lots of dummy viewers to skew the stats in favour of programmes that I know are good and therefore encourage people to watch better TV.

Thanks to Orly for the photo.