This was the view from the office today.
Going off previous updates, it will probably be eight years until the next one. I’m pretty happy with that, gives plenty of time to prep something. Plus, I think this blog is due a refresh!
This was the view from the office today.
A slightly damp but green looking patch of woodland somewhere in North Yorkshire, with Spring on the way.
So, two years, where did they go in between blog posts? Well an office move has happened due to lack of space, hence the change of scenery, but less than a mile or so away in distance. I spend most of my work time coding in C# now instead of Delphi as we gradually make the move across to .NET. I’m slowly learning that managing developers is like herding cats. And that cats may have longer attention spans…
My Apple addiction has well and truly took hold. From an iMac, a MacBook followed, along with a couple of iPhones and an iPad. Nothing quite compares to Apple gadgets.
In the meantime Windows 7 popped up and has made the land of PC’s somewhat pleasant again after Vista’s excrement shaped attempt. Almost tempts me into getting one to play Portal 2, but I’m still addicted to Xbox and I’ve got it pre-ordered for that… Dead Space 2 is currently consuming a lot of my spare time!
Formula One still entertains. Not entirely happy with the previous two World Champions, Button and Vettel. Still deep down rooting for Alonso to blitz them all. Will this year be it? Not so sure, those Red Bulls are damn fast. It’s gonna be great watching though.
MotoGP has certainly been interesting. Not so sure Rossi will conquer all at Ducati, as much as I would love him to. Lorenzo is just too good on that Yamaha and Stoner looks ominous on the Honda! Still, it’ll be a cracking year before the 800’s take a bow to be replaced by the 1000cc’s.
So yeah, pretty busy! Will I blog some more? Perhaps ;).
What a cracking start to the 2009 season. Brawn GP certainly kicked up a storm. Jenson put in a great performance with a pole and start to finish drive. Looks like his bright yellow helmet worked it’s magic…
Barrichello was pretty hap hazard and I’m amazed he managed to keep his second place, even with him lucking into it! He certainly had his fair share of shunts. The raw performance of his car, even with a dodgy front wing, kept him in it.
I’m particularly chuffed for them given the trouble they’ve gone through to get onto the grid. Whether their form will continue, it’s too early to say. I suspect the other teams will work on their own versions of the rear diffusers and so catch up on whatever performance gap there currently is.
The rest of the field was equally unexpected. Vettel and Kubica should have finished second and third had they not crashed into each other. I think Vettel was unfairly treated with a ten spot grid drop for the next race, given it looked to me to be a 50/50 incident.
Ferrari seemed to fall to bits as the race progressed and McLaren weren’t exactly on form. Lewis Hamilton snuck into third position after Trulli was given a 15 second penalty. But he did start 18th and would have finished top six without the last minute incidents. And it should noted Trulli, in his Toyota, started in pits, so did well to get up so high.
It seems the new regs have caused chaos. The cars look particularly odd with their large front wings and dinky rear ones, but I like them. Much cleaner looking. There did seem to be a fair bit of overtaking, but I don’t think that was down to the aerodynamic changes, but more to do with the large differences they now have in the compounds of tires. The super soft tires seem to go off really quickly and that caused the disparity.
That, and the KERS systems giving the drivers a power boosts on demand. It’s certainly an interesting addition but it’s disappointing that some teams aren’t running them (like Brawn!). It should be an all or nothing thing.
I must admit I had my reservations about F1 returning to the BBC (since the ITV coverage was better than what the BBC were previously doing), but I needn’t of worried! David Coulthard and Eddie Jordan did an excellent job as pundits. David’s knowledge of the sport really shone through and whilst Eddie was a tad waffly he put some good points across. Certainly better than the punditry on ITV and watching without adverts was ace.
Race commentary was also better than before, but I think Legard and Brundle need to work together more since they were interrupting each other a bit . The further added bonus is the new F1 website is top notch, much nicer than the increasingly advert strewn effort of ITV. Plus with iPlayer built in, its great for watching extra clips on.
So, all in all, a great start to season! Less than a week to Malaysia!
See exhibit A.
Which is Snitch, our fourth cat! Although Weebl has moved out so, we only have three…
Mobile Blogging from here.
Edit: I did this post originally with iBlogger on my iPhone but the HTML it created was such a frigging mess I had to go edit it afterwards. You’d think given they say iBlogger is based on ecto, it would create the same clean HTML. Obviously not…
No, not “My Precious” Gollum, but golem. At first I thought it was one and the same, but apparently not:
In Jewish folklore, an artificially created human supernaturally endowed with life.
In Jewish folklore, a golem (גול×, sometimes, as in Yiddish, pronounced goilem) is an animated being created entirely from inanimate matter. In modern Hebrew the word golem literally means “cocoon”, but can also mean “fool”, “silly”, or even “stupid”. The name appears to derive from the word gelem (גל×), which means “raw material”.
Picked this one up whilst reading one of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld books, The Last Continent.
So I blatantly nabbed this from bear in #terrafusion, but it’s worth a share me thinks:
Bucolic (adj):
Spotted this one whilst reading Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations by Clay Shirky. I picked up the book after reading about it on Coding Horror.
I’ve not finished reading it yet, but it’s interesting stuff, explaining how the advent of the Internet and social based software has helped previously disconnected groups of people communicate and the kind of other changes it’s creating.
Seems like I’m not the only one to have fun putting together a Yardmaster shed. A commenter on my previous post on our wonderful green monster of a shed, (it’s over a year old now and still standing, so we must have done something right!), lost his destructions and so, being the kind soul that I am, I’ve scanned mind in and uploaded them. The content has been OCR’ed so it is a searchable PDF.
They cover building:
Destructions download:
Anthony Hamilton’s Porsche Carrera GT:
Lewis Hamilton’s McLaren at the Montreal Grand Prix today:
Had to do one better, didn’t he?
He’s not the first, nor probably the last, to crash into someone in the pit lane when red lights are showing. At first I was pissing myself laughing at his stupidity, but then it dawned on me that the plonker had taken Raikkonen out so kinda put a downer on things. Still, it was a cracking race with Robert Kubica taking not just his first F1 race win, but BMW Sauber’s too (and a one-two at that).
Ramblings of a procrastinator
© 2006-2015 Paul Healey / Pauked.com
