Somehow I managed to read 134 books in 2011. I guess this may be related to how little running I did, especially in the second half of the year. I signed up for a Goodreads account recently and I am putting ratings there at this time. (I may start adding reviews at some point.) Favourite [...]
I watched the BBC’s Frozen Planet recently and it reminded me just how good the BBC are at making such programmes. The seven episodes took the viewer on a tour of the polar regions. The team went to great lengths in the filming and the episodes showed some of the methods they used to film [...]
A cooking day – vegetable thai curry and bread! Life and happenings I went off and visited my nephew and my parents last weekend. There was orienteering and roast pheasant. Work has been quieter these last two weeks – mainly due to there being no time spent in the server room. I finished my 111th [...]
I’ve been a bit busy these last few weeks. Life and happenings The Sirens 2012 website went live on the first of the month. The theme is tales retold. The new cluster has been keeping me busy at work. Or, rather, one node has. The problem child node has consumed lots of time in diagnosing [...]
‘I have a tortoise in the garden.’ (Ilya Gavrik in Spooks.) Life and happenings The Ocelot has bounded onto my netbook and work desktop. My first impressions are positive – especially the kubuntu-low-fat-settings package, which aims to reduce memory and processor usages on older machines. Links Sounding the Deeps – here comes the depression. A [...]
This covers two weeks as I have been too busy to post recently. Life and happenings Last weekend I took Friday off work and visited family. This weekend I watched TV. Our new cluster turned up in work and I also have a new desktop. With the Rugby World Cup being in New Zealand all [...]
Still busy and getting busier. Life and happenings In work, the code I have been working on for a while appears to be close to finished. Just in time for our new cluster to arrive next week. There was a lack of exercise this week. I do wonder if some new websites/services give any thought [...]
Busy, busy bee. Life and happenings Lancashire! The Rugby World Cup is on. One impressive win for Ireland, over an Australian side who still do not seem to realise the value of a good pack of forwards. Beyond that there has been little excitement. I managed one run this week. The good news is that [...]
A short post this time, as I’m a bit busy. Life and happenings My parents visited over the weekend and we went to London for a couple of orienteering races. More on those at some point. I have a new phone. It is one of these fancy new ones where making phone calls seems to [...]
Athletics on the TV! Life and happenings I spent much of the week trying to get rid of the remains of the cold I had. Monday was a public holiday and I took Tuesday off work. I decided against exercise until the cold has fully cleared. There was athletics on the TV – the World [...]
I am ill. Life and happenings I got back from Wales and developed a cold. Really, really unimpressed. I went to the Reading Festival on Saturday. I’ve lived here ten years and decided it was time to go along. Links Book Piracy: A Non-Issue How to get $12 billion of gold to Venezuela Books The [...]
A busy week, with only one day in work. Life and happenings I visited my nephew on Wednesday! I went away to Wales and raced a train. There’ll be more about that soon. Links We’ve been warned: the system is ready to blow. (The system in question being the global financial one.) Flickr Not Dead, [...]
A good week. Life and happenings Work is quiet at the moment. It is that part of the summer where many are away on holiday. I am still trying to decide what to use Google+ for. The mess they are making with the real name policy is frustrating and does not encourage me to set [...]
August is here and the second half of the year! Life and happenings The physio cleared me to get back to more training, but while keeping on with the stretching and going back to see him if there are more problems. On Friday I rearranged the furniture in the lad. We now have a sectioned [...]
It is the summer and some warmer weather is here. Life and happenings Last week the physio suggested I try some running, while keeping on with the stretching. I ran three times, with Sunday being six miles in about an hour. There are some hopeful signs that the injury is clearing. I took Wednesday off [...]
More watching cycling, but little exercise or books. Life and happenings I took myself off to see a physio last Monday. The good news is that there is no big problem. It seems that I will have to do more some stretching. This means that there was little exercise during the week. One evening out [...]
Not much to report this week – I spent a good chunk of time watching the Tour de France. Life and happenings There was Thai green curry and beer on Friday evening. My race number went round a half marathon in sub-100 – sadly it was not attached to me. I did not run at [...]
Life and happenings There is lots going on in work at the moment. Yet again there was only one run – that is three weeks in a row now. The core work and strength and conditioning are going well. Link A new complexion for the Tour and a serious day of crashes – talks about [...]
A wedding! Life and happenings I went to a wedding on Saturday. A rather good day was spent next to the river watching friends get married. I then spent Sunday recovering! There was one run last week. There was also core work and strength and conditioning. There is a rumour that I am running a [...]
We are having a mini heatwave. Yesterday and today are hot and then it will be much cooler again. Life and happenings I seem to be gaining plants. From having none a few months ago, I now have: tomatoes, peppers, and three types of mint in tubs on the balcony; and basil and a chilli [...]
It appears I forgot to post last weekend. Life and happenings Last weekend my parents visited – to deliver a few items to me. We went out for a curry. Yesterday I baked some bread. The fresh bread for lunch yesterday was good and I intend to continue baking my own bread for a while [...]
It seems that I forgot to post last week. I lost track of days of the week, due to the holiday weekend and work being busy. Life and happenings Over the holiday weekend, I went up to the fens to met up with friends I had not seen in a while. We barbecued and there [...]
I seem to still be failing to catch up on my race report writing. One day soon I will catch up! Life and happenings I took Friday off work and visited family. Friday was spent out on the Dorset coast – I took my nephew to the beach and on a steam train. I ran [...]
Just a little late in updating. Life and happenings Work is currently giving me the chance to ‘hunt the needle in a haystack’. Oh joy! Over the weekend I ran 20 miles, including a 5k race and a 10k race. There was also lots of cycle commuting and some strength and conditioning. Books Breaktime by [...]
Three weeks in one post. Yep, I’ve been away on holiday! Life and happenings I have spent eleven days in Ireland – part staying on the edge of the Mourne Mountains and part staying in the Wicklow Mountains. Sitting eating meals while overlooking mountains is rather good. The main reason for the time away was [...]
I see a holiday approaching! Life and happenings There was absolutely no training last week. I am still feeling the effects of being ill and decided that some rest and recovery was needed. (Though I still have to catch up on my race reporting!) Work was interesting and time was spent discussing some of the [...]
A week that started well and ended with me being ill. Life and happenings It was the British Sprint and Middle Orienteering Championships over the weekend. I did a lot less running than I would have liked due to being ill. Work was quieter than it had been for a while and the students are [...]
A busy weekend leads to a late update and there were several babies around. Life and happenings On Thursday I went into town with a friend and we had a rather good brunch of Samosas. Before going into town I said hello to my friend’s ten month old. On Friday I went and spent the [...]
I do not remember much of the past week and my calendar and to-do list are not providing any useful information to help me out! Life and happenings I spent most of the week playing with CUDA. The general theme of the results was that some impressive results can be generated, but the problem has [...]
There was rather a lot going on last week and that has caused this post to be delayed by twenty-four hours. Life and happenings On Wednesday evening I went to a talk, by my boss, on The evolution of language – past, present and future. On Thursday I went out for drinks with the lads [...]
I am writing this at a far too early time in the morning, having failed to remain asleep for very much of the night. Life and happenings This weekend saw my first orienteering of the year. It was a struggle at times, but generally good fun. More detailed race analyses will follow. Italy beat France [...]
I had a long weekend away and I am writing this while waiting for a software to install. (Though I was then distracted and took several hours to get back to finish the post.) Life and happenings I went away for Thursday to Sunday. I visited my nephew and took him out to play. There [...]
An earlier post this week. I’m feeling rather tired and I envision an early night. Life and happenings It continues to be busy at work, though at least I have now seem to have finished benchmarking computer systems. I ran just under thirty miles this week, including a ten miler this morning. There was also [...]
There are fireworks going off outside as I post this. No, I have no idea why, though I suspect it may be something to do with the local teenagers. Life and happenings I spent many hours in work this past week as I benchmarked yet more computer systems. The high point was arriving home in [...]
Ouch. This was a week in which I learned that overdoing the strength and conditioning work is not a good idea. Life and happenings Work was busy. At the moment I am benchmarking the performance of several different computers. I watched the second round of Six Nations games this weekend and the skills on display [...]
February arrived this week. Life and happenings Friday night saw a pizza and beer evening with the lads. I watched the first round of Six Nations games this weekend and was disappointed with how bad some of the basic ball handling skills were. I then got up early this morning to watch the Match of [...]
The end of January has nearly arrived and it has been a good start to the year. Life and happenings I forgot to mention last week that I had sorted out my long Easter break. I am going to Northern Ireland and Ireland, to go orienteering. This week I entered a fourteen mile multi-terrain race [...]
A busy week, ending in a long weekend away for a first birthday party. Life and happenings I took Friday off this weekend and went to see family. The main reason for the weekend away was to celebrate the first birthday of my nephew. There was cake! At work I started several experiments going and [...]
This week was quieter than the first week of the year. Life and happenings In work it was all about the dark arts of code optimisation and obscure compiler flags. Both seem to be giving us small improvements! Sunday early afternoon was spent cooking lots of Thai green curry and Panang curry. In to both [...]
The first week of 2011 has been rather busy. I have added the first couple of days of the year in this week, to push the weekly update that I am intended to do throughout the year to the weekend. Though, in what may well prove to be typical fashion, the first one is a [...]
So, it comes to that point in the year when I review my reading for the year. Over a hundred books read this year. I said last year that I did not expect to read as many in 2010 as I had in 2009 and then read more. So I’ll not predict higher or lower [...]
A couple of weeks ago I took Wednesday off work to go out orienteering. On getting to the train station I said hello to a friend who was waiting, with some of his family, for a steam train to go past. I nearly walked straight past them in my rush to catch my train. With [...]
So, it comes to that point in the year when I review my reading for the year. Over a hundred books read this year! I expect that I will not manage as many next year. Non-fiction Books of the Year In a category with very few entries it is a tie between Six Degrees: Our [...]
In my previous post I talked about running the Walt Disney World Marathon. Obviously, I did more than just the marathon in my time away. In this post I talk about the rest of my trip.
A good amount of reading this year – 83 books read! The best ones, in no particular order, were: The Book Thief by Markus Zusak Airman by Eoin Colfer A Quiet Belief in Angels by R.J. Ellory Lucas by Kevin Brooks
This past weekend I travelled down to near Brighton for the SE Sprint and Relay Championships. We stayed at Blacklands Farm Campsite, which had basic toilet and shower facilities and a large camping field. The weather over the weekend was reasonable, except on Sunday morning there was a thunderstorm that started just after we had [...]
A couple of weeks ago I travelled to Chicago for Terminus. The Narrate Conferences team put on a terrific event – combining an extensive academic program with wizard rock, Quidditch, and fan exploration. I was out to meet with friends and also was one of the volunteers – registration and information were my main areas, [...]
WordPress 2.6.1 has been released. Upgrade went smoothly and everything seems fine – if you do notice a problem with the site then let me know. I got back from nine days in Chicago on Wednesday. While there there was an impressive thunderstorm. I’ll post more about my Chicago trip at some stage.
As I live in Reading I usually fly out of Heathrow or Gatwick airports. Both of these are busy airports and, often, flights are delayed and the queues long. To go to the British Orienteering Championships we were flying Bristol to Inverness. Both are small airports and it was so much easier and peaceful. I [...]
Terry Pratchett is one of the best selling UK authors. During my teenage years his books were some of the few I read. Recently he announced that he is suffering from Alzheimer’s. Recently he pledged $1 million to the Alzheimer’s Research Trust. In response to this pledge a group of fans have created the site [...]
In a poor start to the year I went down with flu on the second day. I had arranged to run a 10k road race with a colleague, but had to give it a miss. Also the 10 mile race I had pencilled in for next month has had to be cancelled. Combined the means [...]
As the year draws to an end I looked through the lists of books read and orienteering event attended this year. While looking through the lists thoughts turned to favourites. Books Mad Dogs by Robert Muchamore – the latest book from a very good teenage spy series. The Financial Times Guide to Investing by Glen [...]
A while back I posted about the Web Trend Map 2007 Version 2.0. Since then I have seen a few more interesting web/internet maps: e.maps – This site has a selection of web maps. I particularly like the World Web Map, which is a world map based but with the countries replaced with internet sites. [...]
Over the past week I have been following the Rugby World Cup and the Twenty20. Some good games, some good performances, and some bad. Certainly England fall into the bad category after a fairly dismal performance yesterday – a comment that can apply equally to both the rugby and cricket team yesterday. Overall the Six [...]
The Rugby World Cup started with a ‘shock for the French’. I do not understand why it is being labelled as a shock. Yes, the French have been playing well recently, but Argentina have been steadily improving for years now and have now beaten France in five of the last six games. It was always [...]
I know that some in the orienteering world are also into hashing. Well it seems that the authorities in New Haven, Connecticut, did not like the flour trail that two hashers had put out. This link from Schneier on Security, where there is discussion of this incident and other ‘terror scares’.
In the best traditions of the ‘rest’ day I kept fairly busy. I did not, however, take part in mountain bike orienteering – which sounds to have been fairly epic! Tomintoul My day started with a trip over to Tomintoul to visit the Whisky Castle. There I tasted a few, before picking up a bottle [...]
While browsing the blog world I saw some links to the Web Trend Map 2007 Version 2.0. This is a rather cool tube-system like map of the ‘200 most successful websites on the web, ordered by category, proximity, success, popularity and perspective.‘ I did a quick check through the map and found only a few [...]
… for a few days. Sweden was good and I will write about it at some stage. Also found time to read the new Harry Potter, along with many others at the campsite!
For the past week I have been near Beijing, China. The primary purpose of the trip was to attend the International Conference on Computational Science 2007 (ICCS 2007). At the conference I presented, on behalf of Professor Ivan Dimov and Rayna Georgieva, Complexity of Monte Carlo Algorithms for a Class of Integral Equations. This is [...]
The plan, mentioned in my last post, was to update from New Orleans. However, a combination of poor hotel internet and lack of time meant that I completely failed to do this. My main reason for going to New Orleans was to attend Phoenix Rising, though meeting lots of friends came a close second. During [...]
Today starts a month of travels and conferences. The first, is in New Orleans. Plans are to do some updates while I am away, but that, as usual, depends on free time and computer access.
This past weekend I was in Wales for the 2007 British Orienteering Championships and British Relay Championships. However, the early May Bank Holiday weekend also means the Reading Beer Festival.
On Saturday I went up to Malvern to meet up with a group of friends from my undergraduate days. Due to complicated scheduling this was our 2006 Christmas meetup! A rather good day On Sunday I was at Inside Park for an a local orienteering event. The photos from the event are here. I had [...]
On Saturday I went with friends to the theatre to see Terry Pratchett’s Feet of Clay: A Discworld Murder Mystery dramatised by Stephen Briggs. Rather good it was.
