C Jan 2010 or 15 st
K Feb
M May
J Apr
£20
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
Sunday, November 30, 2008
24x24 ...
It has been 2 years since our last 24x24 (a season of 24 in one shot, starting with Jack and finishing with Jack). With the delay to season 7, and my generally chaotic calender we have only just gotten to season 6.
This season is another tough one. Starting, and therefore finishing, at 6am. Much like the season 2 24x24 we made the mistake of staying up far too late last night. So with 3 hours sleep behind us we embarked at the appointed hour, I'll mention it again, 6am!
As always, because episodes are not actually an hour long, we bank a bit of time for some longer breaks like lunch or for a bit of Rock Band.
Right now is the hardest part. It's 4:47am local time. Jack has just hit 5am. In order to finish with Jack we cannot start the next one till 5:22am.
Mike crapped out about 1am, Jon has drifted in and out since 3am and now, in the 40 minute break they are all asleep.
So sitting here alone I write this. Marking our 6th 24x24 and my (unconventional) stag weekend. Even though they snore around me, I know I have the best friends in the world.
This season is another tough one. Starting, and therefore finishing, at 6am. Much like the season 2 24x24 we made the mistake of staying up far too late last night. So with 3 hours sleep behind us we embarked at the appointed hour, I'll mention it again, 6am!
As always, because episodes are not actually an hour long, we bank a bit of time for some longer breaks like lunch or for a bit of Rock Band.
Right now is the hardest part. It's 4:47am local time. Jack has just hit 5am. In order to finish with Jack we cannot start the next one till 5:22am.
Mike crapped out about 1am, Jon has drifted in and out since 3am and now, in the 40 minute break they are all asleep.
So sitting here alone I write this. Marking our 6th 24x24 and my (unconventional) stag weekend. Even though they snore around me, I know I have the best friends in the world.
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Who's doing QA on iPhone podcasts firmware ...
Much as I love my iPhone I am begining to feel like a second class user in Apple's eyes. You see I don't listen to much music, according to some my taste is so bad I don't in fact listen to any music. Mostly I listen to podcasts.
Lots and lots of podcasts. So unlike some I have become very familiar with how awkward the combination of iPhone and iTunes can be when dealing with podcasts.
Firstly there is the annoyance that each firmware update manages to set all the most recently listened to podcasts to an unfinished state thus re syncing them rather than removing them. The whole new, started and finished status issue is confusing enough without randomly resetting some of them.
The 2.1 firmware update showed an attempt to improve things. New indicators showing whether you have unlistened or partially listened to episodes within a podcast were introduced. Great but then they set the ordering to be latest first and to automatically play through the full list. So on finishing the latest episode the iphone would start playing the previous one!
In the recent 2.2 firmware the date ordering is correct but the indicators are gone from the podcast level and are only visible at the episode level. Also video podcasts are still in the wrong order.
Podcasts are obviously a bit of a loss leader for Apple, but come on. This is basic stuff and if you are going to start trying to fix things then you should pay a little attention to checking in all areas. My guess would be they either didn't look at the video section because they were only looking in podcasts? Or they needed to protect the ordering of videos to support TV series in some way. Really annoying is that the video podcasts do appear in the podcast section, in the correct order but will only play the audio part!
Normally the details of user interface design is one of the things us Apple fans can hold up high. What is currently failing in the iPhone QA team to let these issues past?
Lots and lots of podcasts. So unlike some I have become very familiar with how awkward the combination of iPhone and iTunes can be when dealing with podcasts.
Firstly there is the annoyance that each firmware update manages to set all the most recently listened to podcasts to an unfinished state thus re syncing them rather than removing them. The whole new, started and finished status issue is confusing enough without randomly resetting some of them.
The 2.1 firmware update showed an attempt to improve things. New indicators showing whether you have unlistened or partially listened to episodes within a podcast were introduced. Great but then they set the ordering to be latest first and to automatically play through the full list. So on finishing the latest episode the iphone would start playing the previous one!
In the recent 2.2 firmware the date ordering is correct but the indicators are gone from the podcast level and are only visible at the episode level. Also video podcasts are still in the wrong order.
Podcasts are obviously a bit of a loss leader for Apple, but come on. This is basic stuff and if you are going to start trying to fix things then you should pay a little attention to checking in all areas. My guess would be they either didn't look at the video section because they were only looking in podcasts? Or they needed to protect the ordering of videos to support TV series in some way. Really annoying is that the video podcasts do appear in the podcast section, in the correct order but will only play the audio part!
Normally the details of user interface design is one of the things us Apple fans can hold up high. What is currently failing in the iPhone QA team to let these issues past?
Saturday, September 27, 2008
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Deadlines stacked but not loaded ...
Looks like August is going to be a crazy busy month. 3 deadlines each either just before or just after the big trip to Vegas with the lads.
A holiday is definately required, and going to Vegas with my best mates from all the way back in high school is something I've been wanting for ages. But also sometime away from normality with C would be amazing. The next holiday we have planned is the wedding which is not till December so I need to come up with something else before then. Even if it's just a nice weekend away somewhere quiet for just the 2 of us.
Down time is important and there's not been enough of that this past year. We need some to get through the next one.
A holiday is definately required, and going to Vegas with my best mates from all the way back in high school is something I've been wanting for ages. But also sometime away from normality with C would be amazing. The next holiday we have planned is the wedding which is not till December so I need to come up with something else before then. Even if it's just a nice weekend away somewhere quiet for just the 2 of us.
Down time is important and there's not been enough of that this past year. We need some to get through the next one.
Friday, July 25, 2008
Monday, April 14, 2008
Current frustrations ...
In no particular order;
The aftermath of the Hollywood writers strike
It's not that I was opposed to the strike in any way, I fully backed it. But being somewhat addicted to TV it is now very frustrating that so many shows have either been a) dumped, b) curtailed or c) confused through a large season break. The next autumn season cannot come round quick enough.
A frustration that was good to write but on reflection removed
Writing things down, or typing them up (why is writing "down" and typing "up"?), is a very cathartic thing to do. But looking back on the one that was here (work related) I felt it best that I remove it. Will write about it at a later date.
My bowling scores
Since I started my current project I have missed many weeks of bowling and it shows. Recent nights have shown and improvement and my 4 Week Moving Average is now almost back to pre-project levels, although that's still not great. I really do feel like I am improving but that I just can't get past a certain point. It's also a downward spiral in that my frustration has an adverse effect on my game. As with life in general I find it hard to push work out of my head and focus on what I am doing. It's hard to bowl with code compiling in your mind.
Conclusion
All in all there's not much there really. Life is pretty good at the moment, although there's a couple of frustrations that I don't want to write up here (inevitably the bigger ones). If I can get my current project complete, my personal project moving and one or two other things finalised then life will be sweet. Not much to ask for is it :)
The aftermath of the Hollywood writers strike
It's not that I was opposed to the strike in any way, I fully backed it. But being somewhat addicted to TV it is now very frustrating that so many shows have either been a) dumped, b) curtailed or c) confused through a large season break. The next autumn season cannot come round quick enough.
A frustration that was good to write but on reflection removed
Writing things down, or typing them up (why is writing "down" and typing "up"?), is a very cathartic thing to do. But looking back on the one that was here (work related) I felt it best that I remove it. Will write about it at a later date.
My bowling scores
Since I started my current project I have missed many weeks of bowling and it shows. Recent nights have shown and improvement and my 4 Week Moving Average is now almost back to pre-project levels, although that's still not great. I really do feel like I am improving but that I just can't get past a certain point. It's also a downward spiral in that my frustration has an adverse effect on my game. As with life in general I find it hard to push work out of my head and focus on what I am doing. It's hard to bowl with code compiling in your mind.
Conclusion
All in all there's not much there really. Life is pretty good at the moment, although there's a couple of frustrations that I don't want to write up here (inevitably the bigger ones). If I can get my current project complete, my personal project moving and one or two other things finalised then life will be sweet. Not much to ask for is it :)
Tuesday, April 08, 2008
Rolling scores update for 2008-04-08 ...
Here is an automated post of the latest bowling scores. 3 Game Weekly Average 4 Week Moving Average
Update: You'll notice that I have fixed the calculations behind the 4 week moving average chart. They were way off and not showing the latest results. All fixed now, as you can see by the way I am rapidly catching up to STS (Seven Ten Split) Onepin! ;)
Update: You'll notice that I have fixed the calculations behind the 4 week moving average chart. They were way off and not showing the latest results. All fixed now, as you can see by the way I am rapidly catching up to STS (Seven Ten Split) Onepin! ;)
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
Back in the code playground ...
It's been a very long time since I wrote anything substantive on this blog. Even the rolling scores updates have been far too few, gaining me a not insignificant amount of complaints from my fellow rollers, well deserved of course.
The reasons for my absence have been many, and all totally uninteresting to you dear readers. Well all that is except one. My current project at work which has been most consuming for me. It has been on a crunch timescale since day one, and client extensions have not helped. However, the interesting point is that it has finally got me back to, officially, coding at work.
Like a long lost friend with whom I have been reunited, coding and I have had much to catch up on. But, also like seeing a close friend after a long break, most has stayed the same and the familiar rhythm of friendship is soon resumed.
This has all been helped by some great personal projects that I am also undertaking in my, somewhat limited, spare time. One of them I cannot speak about just yet, expect more some time in the summer. The other though, might have come to your attention tonight if you read this blog via a feed reader like Google Reader.
If so you may well have notice an auto generated post for the latest rolling scores. It was a test, and a nicely successful one at that. I have finally admitted that I am never going to be organised enough to keep up to date with adding the rolling scores to the nasty spreadsheet I have and generating/posting the graphs to my blog. So instead, like any good developer, the desire to be lazy is the mother of invention.
I have written a little web app which will allow me to post the scores from my mobile phone, on the lane! It then saves these in MySQL, generates and posts the blog entry which includes 2 links to on-demand generated graphs of the 3Game Weekly Averages and the 4 Week Moving Averages.
The latter will be a little different from how they were before as they are now a true moving average of the raw data, rather than a moving average of the 3 game averages.
It's taken about 5 hours work to put together so far, most of which was learning the API's for JFreeChart and ROME. Obviously this is not the end. Time allowing it will eventually allow for some analysis of the scores, e.g. lowest deviation etc. Plus access to the all important, and embarrassing to me, raw data.
All going well the first live post should come after tonight's games, which are doubly important as we have decided to reset the no-show average to our personal 3 game averages from tonight. Not looking good for me, the current no-show is 120 and I've been scoring under that for some weeks (mostly the reason we are resetting them). Ah well, enough of these warm up games, on with the real deal ...
The reasons for my absence have been many, and all totally uninteresting to you dear readers. Well all that is except one. My current project at work which has been most consuming for me. It has been on a crunch timescale since day one, and client extensions have not helped. However, the interesting point is that it has finally got me back to, officially, coding at work.
Like a long lost friend with whom I have been reunited, coding and I have had much to catch up on. But, also like seeing a close friend after a long break, most has stayed the same and the familiar rhythm of friendship is soon resumed.
This has all been helped by some great personal projects that I am also undertaking in my, somewhat limited, spare time. One of them I cannot speak about just yet, expect more some time in the summer. The other though, might have come to your attention tonight if you read this blog via a feed reader like Google Reader.
If so you may well have notice an auto generated post for the latest rolling scores. It was a test, and a nicely successful one at that. I have finally admitted that I am never going to be organised enough to keep up to date with adding the rolling scores to the nasty spreadsheet I have and generating/posting the graphs to my blog. So instead, like any good developer, the desire to be lazy is the mother of invention.
I have written a little web app which will allow me to post the scores from my mobile phone, on the lane! It then saves these in MySQL, generates and posts the blog entry which includes 2 links to on-demand generated graphs of the 3Game Weekly Averages and the 4 Week Moving Averages.
The latter will be a little different from how they were before as they are now a true moving average of the raw data, rather than a moving average of the 3 game averages.
It's taken about 5 hours work to put together so far, most of which was learning the API's for JFreeChart and ROME. Obviously this is not the end. Time allowing it will eventually allow for some analysis of the scores, e.g. lowest deviation etc. Plus access to the all important, and embarrassing to me, raw data.
All going well the first live post should come after tonight's games, which are doubly important as we have decided to reset the no-show average to our personal 3 game averages from tonight. Not looking good for me, the current no-show is 120 and I've been scoring under that for some weeks (mostly the reason we are resetting them). Ah well, enough of these warm up games, on with the real deal ...
Tuesday, March 04, 2008
More rolling scores ...
Big update, depressing for me though. Really need to improve as I only have a month before the company bowling night.
Here are the 3 Game Average and here is the 4 Week Moving Average charts from the last couple of weeks.
Here are the 3 Game Average and here is the 4 Week Moving Average charts from the last couple of weeks.
Friday, January 04, 2008
Rolling scores finally updated :) ...
Here are the 3 Game Average and here is the 4 Week Moving Average charts from the last couple of weeks.
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