At the end of April I set myself the challenge of gaining a stone in weight and running a 5km race 2.5 minutes faster.
I ran the same race on Tuesday in 19:15, painfully close to my speed target of 19 minutes. However, I also weighed myself again but have actually lost a pound.
Gah!
Must try harder…
Having trouble rotating something you’ve drawn with GWTCanvas?
It took me a little while to work out, but GWTCanvas works slightly differently to Graphic2D in Java. It’s important to realise that with GWTCanvas, when you invoke “rotate(r)” you’re actually transforming the coordinate space that will be used for subsequent drawing.
canvas.stroke();
Produces:
In order to rotate it, you must invoke rotate before you start any drawing.
canvas.moveTo(50, 50);
canvas.lineTo(50, 10);
canvas.stroke();
Tadaa!
The same is also true for other transformation methods such as “scale” and “translate”.
Bristol have been trialling a bike rental scheme for about a year and I had high hopes for it. I paid my £20 in support of the scheme even though there were no bike stations in the places I needed them. I feel if there were more bikes and more stations it would have been ideal. (see my comment from back then…).
Unfortunately, they’ve decided to end the scheme deeming it unsuccessful:
Dear Hourbike Member,
It is with regret that I have to report that the bike sharing
pilot project that we started in partnership with Bristol City
Council, The University of the West of England and First Great
Western Trains is coming to a close. The intention of the current
pilot was to test the acceptance of the concept and determine the
potential demand for such a scheme with the hope of expanding it
beyond a pilot. Feedback from yourselves and from enquiries has
clearly shown that there is an interest in this type of scheme
but the Cycling City project has determined that it has more
pressing priorities and therefore cannot commit further funding at
this point in time.The support of Bristol City Council both in terms of finance but
also the credibility of the scheme is particularly important, and
though other funding was received from the other founding partners
- First Great Western and the University of West of England - the
significant majority of funding has come from private investment.
Without the support of the local authority the scheme is unable
to attract further private investment.My apologies to any of you that have noticed the recent reduction
in the availability of bikes at the stands. Our discussions with
the city council have taken some time to come to a conclusion.We are hoping to continue the rental stations at Parkway and UWE,
and of course your memberships are still valid at the growing list
of our other Hourbike operated schemes in the UK, so please keep
your card and membership number for future use. I am a strong
believer in the value of large scale public bicycle rental schemes
and we are being successful in other towns around the country that
are investing in similar services, and I believe you will shortly
be seeing other schemes becoming available across the UK. This is
not a decision that I have taken lightly, but hope you understand
some of the reasoning behind the change.If you would like further information from us I will do my best to
respond to you personally.Best Regards
Tim Caswell
Managing Director
Hourbike Ltd
I’m gutted 
More details here (the Hourbike website isn’t particularly useful).
Last night I ran a pretty shonky 21:33 (~7m/mile) for the Bridge Inn 5km. I used to be faster but haven’t really been running since last year.
I also need to put on some weight because at 6 foot I’m pretty puny weighing in at 10st 9lb. According to the NHS weight calculator I should be over 12 Stone.
I’m setting myself the challenge of knocking 2.5 minutes off my 5km time (I’ve never run it under 19 minutes before) and reaching 12st 2lb before the Bridge Inn 5km summer series finishes on July 27th (the website hints there’s one in August but I’m pretty sure it’s wrong…).
I’m not sure how hard this challenge is going to be since I pretty much plucked the numbers out of the air. I also don’t know how to find out if I’m on track. Should I aim for linear gains and therefore expect to be half way to each of my targets halfway through the challenge? Or is there some kind of curved graph in which I get most the way very quickly but it soon flattens out?
Anyway, I’m sure it’s going to be tricky since they are both conflicting targets. The heavier I get, the harder it will be to run faster, but the more I train, the harder it’ll be to get heavier.
I’ll track my progress on here as often as possible. It should be an interesting experiment…
Problem:
wmv file looks squashed when played in VLC or when uploaded to youtube but looks fine when played in windows media player
Solution:
You can change the aspect ratio of a wmv file without re-encoding it with vmarchanger
Ok, hopefully you just searched for this and you’re now sorted, but here’s some background on my problem in case it helps.
I made a small video (640×480 50fps) on my 7D and wanted to slap it on youtube. I didn’t have any video editing software so grabbed Windows Live Movie Maker. After exporting the video file I found it plays in the wrong aspect ratio in all players but WMP. The app that fixed it was written by this crypto fellow over here. Thanks Crypto!
The real cause of the problem?
I didn’t use a mac.
Your continuous integration server should stay green all the time. The odd broken test here and there means you get numb to the failed status on your build server, which in turn means it takes you longer to notice that the build has broken. When the build breaks, you should stop whatever you’re doing and make fixing it your top* priority. After you check in, the faster you fail the better because you haven’t had time to start thinking about your next task, and the thing you did to break the build is still fresh in your mind. That’s also why it’s so import to keep the builds fast**.
At work, we’ve just installed the Radiator View Plugin*** for Hudson which allows you to see the status of all your builds at a glance. We have a spare monitor displaying this screen in the middle of the office so that you can see if the build has failed while you’re stood around the water cooler chatting about your coffee cup metric.
There are two things that still bug me about this though:
The first point is obvious but the second is a little more subtle. To me, no news is good news. A green screen in the middle of the office will still get my attention, when what I really want, is to pay it no attention whatsoever. That is, unless it’s red, which is when it gets all my attention. To achieve both of these requirements****, I want the screen off when the build is fine, and on when it’s not.
Introducing… screenwaker!
screenwaker is a silly little java webstart app I knocked up that polls the build page and turns off the screen if everythings ok, but fires it back up again if anything fails. Perfect.
I’m not sure anyone else has ever faced this problem, or ever will, but there it is for you to use as you please none-the-less.
Matt
* Yes, top priority. I don’t care if you were going to the loo.
** I searched for a good article on why it’s so important to keep the build fast but couldn’t find a good one. Suggestions welcome.
*** I don’t really get the “Radiator” analogy. Surely “Dashboard” would be better?
**** Well, in an ideal world, I’d like the monitor to disappear but that is beyond the scope of this post.
Looking software companies are near you? Looking to switch jobs or perhaps your company is looking for a local consultancy to collaborate on that big contract?
I helped Dan make this map as a quick way to find those companies:
We’d love it if you could contribute updates. Just log in with your Google account and click the “edit” button on the left.
Canon have just released the 7D and although I can’t really afford it, I have to have one!
The price difference between UK and US is pretty crazy. Here, my favourite camera shop are selling body only for £1,399. £300 less than Canon’s SRP. In New York’s B&H store you can pick it up for $1,699 (~£1,014).
As luck would have it, I’m going to NY this weekend so if I’m going to buy one, now’s the time to decide.
I saw some people on flickr discussing whether or not it was worth it, or whether you could get it through customs and so I decided to call them myself. I rang the VAT, Customs and Excise helpline and was told that it being a digital camera, it was not liable for import duty and I would only have to pay VAT (currently @ 15%). I would just declare it on arrival in the UK by going down the red channel.
I think I can get the US sales tax (~8.25% ?) knocked off the camera when I buy it if I show them my passport and tell them I’m taking it home, but I’m not sure about that. Please comment if you know…
UPDATE: I contacted them about sales tax:
Purchases in our store (and all stores in NYC) are subject to an 8.875% local sales tax. This tax is not a VAT, and cannot be recovered by non-USA visitors when returning home. All prices are listed before sales tax.
This brings the total to $1,850 (£1106), it means I can still buy the 7D for about £1,270 when you add the VAT. A saving of £130.
However, I’m also not sure the Canon warranty covers me outside the US.
UPDATE: I contacted them about warranty too:
The warranty on this product is only good inside the USA. We offer the SageMax Protection Plan which is good for worldwide warranty and accidental damage protection…
What would you do?
Download Google Chrome 3D edition as created by CADIE.
But don’t forget to download and print your 3D glasses otherwise it’ll be all fuzzy:
You’d be a fool not to try it 
I’m no expert when it comes to DIY. Enthusiastic amateur I’d say.
I fumble my way along, guessing how things should be done, and generally learn the hard way.
I needed to do some more filling today to plug the holes I’d left from my poor skirting board fitting skills.
My filling knife however was caked in gunk after a few years of not being cleaned properly. I kept it clean when I first got it, it was new and I took good care of it. Somewhere along the line though I got lazy, and did a half-assed job of cleaning that knife. The first bit of dirt that stuck proved to be a perfect home for future gunk to bind and the effort of cleaning that knife just grew exponentially.
I spent a bit of time trying to clean it but it didn’t take me long to realise that I could spend an hour trying to clean it and there’s every chance it would still be too dirty to do a good job. I just had to bite the financial bullet and buy a new one.
I’m writing this as a reminder to myself that if I can just keep my knife clean, I may never need to buy one again.
Like I said, I’m no expert at DIY.
I’m a software engineer so I don’t face these kinds of problems.