Cricket Training...

I don't know if I have experienced pain like it - I was totally incapacitated after having a 2.5 hour cricket training session yesterday.

I was just about unable to get out of bed. I am seriously going to have to get some fitness going before we have our match on the 16th December.

Fishing, Bowling and Dinner...

Well, yesterday was a fun day - I was a little concerned about the planned boat trip for fishing, after I saw the horizontal rain and hail on Friday night - but luckily for everyone the boat was canceled - this left us with bowling or go Karts - I love kart action, but not when it's 15 drive the other side of the city!

So bowling was it - I was pretty terrible, not cracking 100 (again!) for both of the games - although I did try a really nice beer - Leffe.

We scooted down to the Stokehouse, which was pretty fantastic - and promptly devoured dinner - starting with calamari, which was average - followed by Snapper, which was also average - and finished with profiteroles, which were pretty extraordinary! Along with that, there were at least a dozen or so bottles of red, and probably 5-6 bottles of white too. After the port came out, I left - as Jude was sick and hospital was awaiting!

I had a great time with the work guys, although it did kind of feel like a work day - except with jeans and t-shirts.

Vista Upgrade - Part II

Ok - it has not gone so well.

In hindsight, probably should have gone for the clean install - and get a hold of RC 2 rather than the much more unstable RC1.

Everything started out ok, and then the machine just randomly re-started itself... and then it was happening multiple times a day - and not when you were doing anything, just randomly, whenever. Tried turning on and off a bunch of different things, but no help.

Also, learned that the in-build graphics card looks like it's not going to be sufficient to run anything nice with the Vista OS. bugger!

Windows Vista Upgrade

Ok - here is the skinny. I decided to upgrade to Vista RC 1, and see what all the fuss is about. I did it on the home pc that we bought a couple of months ago. I have to say, I wasn't particularly hopeful, and spent some time checking I had downloaded installs of our most used applications.



I chose to upgrade from XP SP2 in place, with the fall back position being a clean install - but surprisingly, it all went really well. It started about 11:45am, and didn't finish until about 2pm. The major loss was my McAfee virus scanner, but was replaced with the Trend Micro product (which is a beta for the Vista beta!). Although, during the installation I did see a BSOD, the machine rebooted, and Trend Micro did it's thing. All worked well.



First major check was iTunes (7.0.1), and this performed fantastically. Like for like functionality, no problems with the existing music - although I have yet to connect to ITMS and download anything.



I also activated the Vista download, and that went through fine - I was slightly concerned after the problems we had with trying to activate the XP which was installed at purchase.



Anyway, I'm giving it the thumbs up - And Rach did to, which is a much bigger tick in my book - While I'm normally not too bothered by stuff not working perfectly, or things crashing every now and then (I'm looking at you FireFox 1.5), everything seems to be working great.





Paul Thurrott's SuperSite for Windows: Windows Vista Release Candidate 1 Review, Part 3: Upgrading from Windows XP



Oh - a minor thing - The machine's built in video card is not capable of enabling the funky Aero style interface, which is touted as the big improvement in Vista - I might have to nick a donor card from the old machine we have floating around here, and see whether that video card has the grunt required.

powered by performancing firefox

Ruby!

Spent the day at Reuben's place today - It was great to see him (and Jodie!) - but I was mainly there for 'technical support' - I sorted out some issues with the wireless (added a few new computers!), sorted out some licensing/installation/uninstallation stuff - and organised the scanner to be used through Irfanview - man, that's a bloody good application.

We also watched some of the horsies going around, before I had to dash off home.

The evening was all about impro - Mike's wife Kylie was performing with a group up in Emerald, which is a long way away, but I really enjoyed the night - the performances were a little patchy, but they seemed to be getting warmed up by the third act! :)

Firefox RC3

Upgrade to FF RC3. Checking that the performancing tool still works! :)



What is cool though, is the inline spell checker - which picked up 'performancing' in the first line.



So far, looks pretty funky.

powered by performancing firefox

Tomcat

How good is it?



Installed and running in about 5 minutes, new application deployed on to it in about 30 seconds. Tiny amount of tweaking of Java memory required, but otherwise, so fast and easy to use it makes WAS look like a joke.



Deployed and modified my Cruise Control web app so that it now picks up both the JUnit tests, and the Emma coverage tool into the automated build.



Awesome.

The Dukes of Hazzard

The Dukes of Hazzard (2005)



So, there wasn't really much to do this afternoon, after I'd decided that I'm going to forget about this study period's subjects. I'll go into that a bit more later.



I'd been curious how hollywood were going to do another 80's tv series movie, and this was pretty thin. Clearly with Johnny Knoxville and Sean William Scott it was not going to be a cinematic masterpiece - After seeing blanket media for it last year, and having it being soley focused on Jessica Simpson - I was not terribly suprised that it was shithouse.



And really, which self respecting aussie says 'chunder'?



3/10

powered by performancing firefox

Performancing

Ok - I've managed to get myself on the Performancing for Firefox dev list - I'm using the 1.3.5 build, so see how we go.



Anyway, I'll chuck some photos up here to test.

powered by performancing firefox

Open command prompt here

Ok - this might be old news, but something useful that I've not had access to for a while: A context sensitive way to open a command prompt window.

http://www.petri.co.il/add_command_prompt_here_shortcut_to_windows_explorer.htm

I took the first (idiot proof!) option, and it works a treat. Mostly useful for all the crappy assembler that I have to write for my Computer Systems subject.

Playlist

I tend to get new albums and then listen to them once, rate them and then never hear them again (unless a 5 star song make it to my 'not recently listened' playlist). I need to build a playlist which is made up of recently added songs which I've only listened to once or twice. Normally I need to give an album about 5-6 listens over a few weeks to really come to grips with it. Luckily I was jogged by an Angels & Airwaves track that happened in the aforementioned playlist.

Could I think of anything else to distract me from getting my assignment done? I don't think so.

Nerd stuff..

I did a presentation/rundown of how I implemented Cruise Control for the rest of my team. I think it went well, but I wonder whether a lot of the information really gets through - I suspect a lot of people just vague out when the projector comes on. Again, the usual suspect decided to be negative about it - and not suprisingly, this person has worked at the bank for about 12 years.

Anyway, I will put the text of the presentation here.

Continuous Integration

What is it?
- A methodology for helping developers - Standard caveats apply.
- A way to keep the source as clean as possible
- Gives developers constant feedback

It is not:
- A blame-o-meter.
- A methodology for not documenting requirements thoroughly
- The be all and end all - Refer to point above about being a tool.

Why do it?
- Benefits
- Teaches developers to use Source Control properly
- Adds discipline to development teams
- Increases communication between team members
- Improves visibility of progress for TL/PM
- Improves source quality
- Reduced risk
- Quicker to produce something the client can see
- Removes hack-y work around for build and deployments (SoX!)
- Identification/fixing of bugs is quicker (small changes!)
- Drawbacks
- None! (Kidding)
- Some maintenance overhead, although once done, self maintaining
- False sense of security (no emails sent due to other problems, not broken build)
- Changes to existing working practices

How?
Build Cycle
- Build Server which is production-like
- Automated/Manual Build
- Short/Long builds
- Automated Deployment

Cruise Control
- Download
- Build CC
- Configure (simple XML)
- Multiple Projects
- Can use existing ANT scripts
- Notification emails
- Build CC Web App
- Deploy on any Servlet Container (Tomcat, WAS, etc)
- View in a dashboard like structure

Further Information:
http://www.martinfowler.com/articles/continuousIntegration.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuous_Integration

Recruiter

I met with an IT recruiter yesterday - Interesting to get his view on what's happening where I work. There are at least two more people who are leaving to go where I interviewed. I did mention that I'd be happy going there, but only for the right price - I also asked for feedback about why I wasn't suitable for the first position. He told me he has a few other positions going, so I'll just wait and see. Hopefully I can cherry pick a good place.

Assignment still continuing..

All going ok so far, I've re-read the article for Task 2 (which is a 500 word summary of said article). I should have that finished by today, but you never know.

Task 1 however is quite a bit harder - I think it requires some time spent at work surfing around the Microsoft site to see what's happening at the moment. I had thought of proposing something similar to iTunes - a store which allows sale of individual music files for their new Zune music player. I have to put together 1500 words on a marketing presentation, so we will see how that all pans out.

Assignment Hell

I've got a 1500 Word essay and 500 word summary to write, by this weekend. I'm currently writing this on the train, so that might give you some indication of how close the deadline is getting. How much have I already done? Well, this morning's work is the first. That being said, I've done all of the reading, so that's ok - Unfortunately (or fortunately), this subject is totally assignment based for marking - So this piece of work that I'm chucking together in about 3-4 days is going to make up half of my total mark. Bugger. I don't know why, but I really thought that I had another week to get this assignment done.

BTC Podcast Ideas

1. Interview with PG
- History of BTC
- Champions League
- How does it work? (Stats, calculating results etc)
- What's happening in the future?

2. Interview 2006 Premiership Captains
- Introduction
- Results of GF
- Pseudo B&F for your team
- Attend Draft night?
- Tips for other coaches

Structure for during the season:
- Introduction
- Rundown of all results in all leagues
- 7 leagues, 6 games - Probably about 20-30 minutes
- Interview(s)
- Preview of big matches
- Coach Rivalry/History

I've asked some other podcasters for their feedback about hardware and that kind of thing. I think I'm a little behind the 8-ball trying to put together a podcast on a PC, rather than a Mac, which has all of the software required built in! I wonder if there is anything on Linux which might help? Hmm.. Mp3 is a proprietary format - scratch that thought.

BTC Podcast

Having a chat with Pat on Saturday night, it looks like he's keen to put together a Podcast (or netcast if you like!). Sounds like it would be the kind of thing where I'd be talking to a coach, doing a rundown of the week's results, etc.. Probably need to talk to Pat about some other ideas too.

I've been really interested in producing one, but obviously it's a bit hard for me to do something on my own - So this might be a good chance. I've been having a bit of a think about what I need to do, but there are a few things;
1. Software to record/produce the podcast
2. Rundown of segments
3. iTunes/Jellycast site
4. other bits and pieces.

Also, there's still the rss feeds to put into the BTC site itself too. :)

Your in...

I got the call that I've been waiting for so long for - to play cricket for Australia. Not the test team, the one day team or the 20/20 team.

This Australian team is made up largely of RMIT computer science people, and is a follow up match to the last Australia vs India match played a couple of summers ago.

As soon as I got the call, I was off home to check the kit, have a run and get my hands on a cricket ball again! :)

Results are in...

I ended up with a DI (75%), which is good and bad - I actually thought I'd got a slightly higher score than that. Oh well, what can you do.

I really thought I nailed that exam, given that there was none of that shit database language garbage in it (and i'm not talking about SQL!) :)

Interesting Article

Recovering from Catastrophes

:)

Grand Final Day

Went to Phil's place for GF day - a crackingly good match too. Turned out to be a really 'interesting' day though. Seems like lots of people are pretty fucked up - Stuart, who lives up in Shep seems to be pretty depressed - and the 12 beers he had that day didn't really help him. Aparently he was so down that he was sitting around with a shotgun in his mouth (!). I told him that he needed to go and talk to someone, quick smart, but that was rejected totally. I think it's that whole 'i'm a man, i don't need to see a doctor' mentality kicking in, and I'm sure that it's 10 times worse up in the country, where men are men.

Roy has been having some interesting times also, with John leaving about 3 weeks ago - he just walked out, leaving Roy's whole family. That's really bloody sucky. There are a couple of other things that happened to his family that I don't really want to go into here. It's no suprise that he's not been blogging very much lately. I also learned that Roy is on the Zoloft's too. At least he is doing something about what's going on in his life, and he seems to be pretty good with everything at the moment. It's a shame that he lives so far away, otherwise I'm sure we'd be spending a lot more time together.

We also heard from Adam, who's been over in London for the past 10 months - He is going gangbusters, and good luck to him - He was working at Sensis, and seeming not to really enjoy what he was doing - He managed to go to the World Cup, and took a bunch of really good photos. It happened that it was about 4 in the morning when the grand final was on over there, and he had to explain to half the pub how the game works! :)

Also - Don't talk to me about taxi's. A 2.5 hour wait is a bit much, even on Grand

Grand Final

Went to Phil's place for GF day - a crackingly good match too. Turned out to be a really 'interesting' day though. Seems like lots of people are pretty fucked up - Stuart, who lives up in Shep seems to be pretty depressed - and the 12 beers he had that day didn't really help him. Aparently he was so down that he was sitting around with a shotgun in his mouth (!). I told him that he needed to go and talk to someone, quick smart, but that was rejected totally. I think it's that whole 'i'm a man, i don't need to see a doctor' mentality kicking in, and I'm sure that it's 10 times worse up in the country, where men are men.

Roy has been having some interesting times also, with John leaving about 3 weeks ago - he just walked out, leaving Roy's whole family. That's really bloody sucky. There are a couple of other things that happened to his family that I don't really want to go into here. It's no suprise that he's not been blogging very much lately. I also learned that Roy is on the Zoloft's too. At least he is doing something about what's going on in his life, and he seems to be pretty good with everything at the moment. It's a shame that he lives so far away, otherwise I'm sure we'd be spending a lot more time together.

We also heard from Adam, who's been over in London for the past 10 months - He is going gangbusters, and good luck to him - He was working at Sensis, and seeming not to really enjoy what he was doing - He managed to go to the World Cup, and took a bunch of really good photos. It happened that it was about 4 in the morning when the grand final was on over there, and he had to explain to half the pub how the game works! :)

Also - Don't talk to me about taxi's. A 2.5 hour wait is a bit much, even on Grand Final night.