New blog location

After a number of years without blogging I have decided to start up again under my own steam.

My new site can be found at http://www.adamstorr.co.uk

Please update your feeds so you don't miss out on all the new content!

Cheers

New Years Resolution Gym Goers; Don’t Join!

I am writing to all the people who’s new years resolution is to “get fit” or “lose weight” and this usually means they think they should join a gym … don’t! Well not initially anyway. If you’re already a member of a gym then I’m sure you can relate to this.

Let me explain why I think you shouldn’t join a gym …

The way this usually works is people think they need to join a gym, so they join at £xx per month and get locked into a 12 month starter contract. They then start to go in January with the aim to go 3 to 4 times a week and do this class and that class. They do it for maybe two to three weeks but then work gets in the way, they remember they want to go to the pub and socialise instead of doing squats and crunches and before they know it they’re paying their membership fees so they can say to their friends “I’m a member of a gym”.

Don’t get me wrong there are people out there who start in January, get fit, get ripped, be happy etc. but a majority flounder and give up.

So people end up paying a lot of money for not going to the gym and for January the people who take it up and stop in February just annoy and get in the way of regular gym goers.

Let me be fully clear I am a member of a gym and have been for many years; although it wouldn’t show looking at me. I dip in for a few weeks/months at a time and then something comes up etc. and don’t go for a while so I look at the issue from both sides depending on where I am.

So what can people do to get fit and save money?

To get fit you don’t need to join a gym although joining eventually can help. You can start off by doing free activities such as running. You can get a number of apps now a days which will help you train from couch to xkm and apps which will track you such as RunKeeper. If you want to run with people there are many ParkRuns world wide which you can sign up for and go to for free.

If you want to be more serious about training then look to get a personal trainer who comes to your house and can train you in the garden or local park. This way you are paying purely for their time and not paying the gym *and* a personal trainer.

If once you get to the point where you want to join a gym and you’re already getting fit and have built in the time into your weekly schedule then please do. When you do try not to feel self conscious about going to the gym if you aren’t model thin or can only lift a couple of kgs people are there for themselves and don’t care what others are doing. So take some music and lose yourself in the exercise.

It doesn’t matter if you train at the gym or not but you do feel better for doing exercise so I encourage you to keep with your new years resolution.

Happy exercising and money saving in 2014!

Feeling overwhelmed and like a phony? Chill out!

Do you ever feel overwhelmed by the amount of new technology which is coming out all the time? The new framework to do this, and the new improved way of doing that. The new blog posts about this and that, the never ending Pluralsight courses by John Sonmez? It can be too much!

Recently I’ve been feeling this way as well as losing the motivation I use to have to code. I’ve not lost the joy of coding or problem solving but the combination of being overwhelmed by all the bleeding edge technology and information coming out of the developer community and in contrast the recurring day to day coding on brownfield code bases running VS2010 (and every so often VS2005) can get you down.

Recently I’ve got to a point in my life/career where I feel like a bit of a phoney. I’ve worked very hard to get where I am today and at only 30 years old I potentially still get seen by some as the opinionated upstart when I’m not. I know I have a lot more to learn but I think everyone does whether that’s new processes in your day to day life, understanding ways of doing tasks in new positions etc. You should always be learning and adapting.

The realisation of trying to learn everything is just not practical. Reading code is a great way to learn new techniques which you can apply to your day to day developer life but learning the ins and outs of every framework is just not possible. The other aspect of learning is you can run through a Pluralsight course on this or that but if you’re not using it every day all day at work or at least a couple of hours in the evenings each week on a personal project you’ll very quickly forget it. This, I think, is my main frustration.

So as I see it there are a couple of ways to solve this issue which range from minor to life changing. You can ignore all new technology, carry on with your day to day life, not do anything outside of work; essentially put your head in the sand. This will however leave your skills becoming slowly stagnant and make future career progression hard. On the complete other end of the scale you can move jobs, go and work for a company where they are using the latest and greatest, always starting new greenfield projects, this will help improve your skill set and keep it up to date but that will impact your life completely which isn’t always the answer either. Changing jobs, whether forced through redundancy or by choice, is a big change!

So what can you do? Learn every 3rd new technology which appears on the Pluralsight new course listing? This isn’t practical. Maybe try and influence technology at work? Spend time during the day (lunch time, 30mins before heading home) reviewing new technology? Both of these are possible but will depend on personal situation.

I’ve been thinking over this conundrum recently, and the near future birth of my first child has helped my thinking on this subject, the biggest issue is I’ve been putting too much pressure on myself. Too much pressure to learn new technologies, too much pressure to read every blog post about every technology. Also when I do look at a technology and write pet/personal projects such thoughts as “it needs to be production ready code straight away”, “you need to get it done now”, “it needs to be perfect first time” aren’t the thoughts which will aid motivation but in fact demotivate.

So if you find yourself in a similar situation as I have recently and don’t know what the answer is then use the realisation that has only hit home to me recently; chill out! Don’t put yourself under unrequired pressure. Yes, continue to read blog posts. Yes, continue to play with new technologies as/when you can … just don’t pressure yourself into having to do it all the time as it can be harmful as well as beneficial.

Software Bucket List–Nov 2012

After reading Rob Maher’s blog post about the concept of software bucket list it got me thinking.

Let’s take a step back for a minute; what’s a bucket list? A bucket list is a list of all the things you want to do before you pass away. So a software bucket list for a developer is a list of software you’d ideally like to write before you retire. As Rob says it can be anything, not learn this or learn that etc. but what would you like to do?

So this brings me back to me, his blog post got me thinking. The whole idea of the list is that it will evolve over time but as of November 2012 this is my list:

• Integrated disc golf membership system with result submission with associated automated renewals etc.
• Work for and write software for a Formula 1 team
• Multi player strategy re-write (modernise) of an old game we use to play in the early 00’s – Europa
• Build <insert description here> to enable working from home for my own company – idea still hasn’t been thought of yet.

The last one doesn’t quite fit but it’s more a target to keep me inspired about moving forward.

Anyway, this is just a start and now it’s a seed that’s planted I’m sure I’ll come up with more but for now what’s yours?

February Update - “And the winner is … “

… beer this month!

Short update this month;

- Not much lost
- Big beer in take as it was a mates Stag do

Upside; Spring is on it’s way. It’s sunny, although cold, so can go and play disc golf after work. The summer is on it’s way! :-)

Current weight loss (since Aug ‘09) : 16 1/8lbs

Current Status : Bad! (-97.8)
Beers: 490 + 37 = 527
Miles: 183 (gym: 129.5; road: 33) + 7.5 = 190.5
DG Rounds: 75 + 8 = 83
Gym visits: 94 + 5 = 99
Lengths : 56.7 (total: 567) 

Key
Good => Exercise > Beers
Level => Exercise == Beers
Bad => Exercise < Beers

A device attached to the system is not functioning

I rebooted my windows 7 machine yesterday and could successfully remote desktop to it. I then disconnected from the session as I had some things running and wanted them to continue to run. When I try to re-connect tonight I get :

Any ideas what this means?

Edit: Tried running remote desktop from the command line with the /console option and that doesn’t resolve the issue either :-(

End of 2009 – General thoughts, musings and diet updates.

Well the end of the year is upon us and I think it’s time I reflected a little on what’s happened diet wise, fitness wise and a little in general.

First time in a while the exercise has been above and beyond the beer intake. With this and the diet that I’m undertaking with my wife the weight has gone down slowly yet steadily which is good. At least this way I am more likely to keep it off. I’m also feeling a lot healthier now that I have lost some weight and generally eating better. Improving what we ate (using Weight Watchers cook books) the food has been filling, tasty and yet not fatty or loads of points.

At least once a winter period I go down with a stinking cold, I don’t get the flu as I have the inoculation every year, and it hits me for 6 for a few weeks at a time. Since going to the gym regularly and eating better I have felt great for the past few months not being worse than a bit of a blocked nose, until now. Ah well, hopefully will start feeling better when I get back into the swing of things with gym, food and work on Monday.

I’ve been impressed that I’ve managed to keep the weight off as well and I feel good for it. Only downside is the bits they don’t tell when you’re on a diet like you’ll feel the cold more as you don’t have so much podge to keep you warm! Below is the graph of weight loss since the start of the diet. As you can see it’s been a bit poor over the festive period but will get it back on track in January.

As for work related stuff, it’s been up and down this past year as I’ve posted before, but I am looking forward to the new year and what it will bring. I’ve got a lot of things planned both work and external related and I look forward to implementing most if not all of it. Also in the new year I will be posting more disc golf related content as well as more coding and design posts. I hope you enjoy!

Right, last bit to do is the first thousand beers update …

Current weight loss (since Aug) : 13 3/8lbs

Current Status : Bad! (-94.8)
Beers: 386 + 75 =  461
Miles: 97.3 (gym: 64.3; road: 33) + 65.2  = 162.5
DG Rounds: 62 + 5 = 67 
Gym visits: 70  + 12 = 82
Lengths : 51 (total: 512) + 35 =  547 => 54.7
Key
Good => Exercise > Beers
Level => Exercise == Beers
Bad => Exercise < Beers

Health, Life and beer – Update

It’s has been a very long time since I last posted with regards to anything, so I hope you have read my latest “geek” post about Windows 7 on the eve of its full release to the public. From reading a couple of tweets from various people I can see that if it was pre ordered it has already arrived in some cases … so enjoy!

Well there has been a lot going on since my last post, so I’m going to give you a quick “run across the roof tops” to use a project management phrase :-)

July ‘09

First wedding anniversary, doesn’t time fly! Lau and I went to Barcelona for the weekend and did the tourist thing. Saw all the important sites. Walked around the outside of the Gran Familia (defo spelt wrongly) and the Gaudi style constructions. Went past the Nou Camp which is an impressive sized stadium!

August ‘09

Found out that I would be to take part in a consultation period at work to potentially be made redundant. This was a bit of a shock to the system to be honest. On initially being told I thought I’d be ok, but when we had a more detailed discussion it was made clear that, unless something big happened, that I’d probably be going at the end of the process.

Also, went to Beaminster to play disc golf and Lau and I went to Bulgaria for our proper summer holiday :-)

September ‘09

Played in the Croydon Cyclone disc golf event which was awesome. Avery Jenkins (Current Open World Champion), Val Jenkins (Current Open Women World Champion) and Nate Doss (2 x Open World Champion) came over from the Euros on the way back to the US, via London to play in the event. I had the pleasure of playing my first round in the same group as Avery. It was awesome to watch someone with that much talent for the sport play, it was also good fun with the banter between us all.

Unfortunately, I also found out I’d be leaving my employment in October as my role would be redundant. This was a bit of a kick in the teeth. Both due to the fact that I had put a lot of time and effort into my job for the past 2 years 9 months, but also as I wouldn’t get to see my all my friends which I had made every day. This was the biggest rubbish point!

October ‘09

Bit of an up and down month so far, obviously the down was the leaving my employment in Reading and nearly all contact with Reading. This is the first time in over 7 years which I haven’t had very regular visits. This in itself was a little sad. On the upside we had a pretty good send off, drank quite a bit, danced a lot … it was good!

On the upside, I have started my new job based in Warwick. Obviously this is a lot closer for me than Reading. It does however mean that I need to drive to work now, although toying with the idea of cycling in the summer (when I’m a bit fitter). Been here a week and so far so good, everyone is really nice. Yesterday I finished the first bit of development work to be used in the building and demo’d it. I’ve also started going to the gym for a run/workout a couple of mornings a week. This will help me loose weight, get fitter and recover from the shoulder damage ready for disc golf practice ready for next year.

As for beers and exercise I’ve kept a rough log of what has been going on, so this is now the updated “goings on” with the first thousand beer “challenge” (see below).

Also since August I have been kinda doing Weight Watchers with Lau (who is a member). As we both could do with loosing some weight and we are both very competitive, this has obviously turned into a competition which I was winning until we went on holiday and my redundancy etc. but now less than a pound behind, I will catch up!!

Current weight loss (since Aug) : 9 7/8lbs

Current Status : Bad!
Beers: 386
Miles: 97.3 (gym: 64.3; road: 33)
DG Rounds: 62
Gym visits: 70
Lengths : 51 (total: 512)
Key
Good => Exercise > Beers
Level => Exercise == Beers
Bad => Exercise < Beers

Sofa surfing

After a lot of talk I finally got round to moving my Mac Mini downstairs from the study and hooked it up to my tv over the festive period. It was good as it worked well at our new years party as we watched some youtube videos and played some of my music collection as we drank beer and ate vodka jelly :-)

At the weekend I decided I would buy a wireless keyboard / mouse combination so that it would be a better media pc in my livingroom and not have a random keyboard / mouse on the tv stand.

I found a reasonably cheap keyboard from ebuyer.com and its like a laptop layout without the monitor so I am able to type pretty fast without too many errors in a short amount of time. The keyboard I got is a KeySonic CK-540 RF. It was simple plug'n' play and worked within seconds of plugging it into my Vista install. Also today I booted into Mac OS X to do some updates and it recognised it and then had a couple of configuration questions to workout the keyboard layout but then worked first time. Very impressed with it so far, will post again when I've used it for a while and see how things go :-)

Windows Live Writer

Well I've finally taken the plunge and found the MSI installer so that Windows Live Writer installs on my windows 2003 server dev virtual machine. This way I can write my posts offline while I'm on the train and hopefully have better control of the layout especially as I'm in the middle of a couple of posts which have code in it and formatting that via the web interface I'm finding tricky so will see how this goes.

Happy Christmas!!

Happy Christmas!!! :-)

100th Post

When I started this I didn't think I'd actually get to the 100th post. I know there is a very limited audience to this blog but this has become a good place for me to just note things down and keep track of stuff - keeps me happy.

It's not quite turned out as I'd originally thought it would, having not posted any technical/coding related posts since starting this madness, but I think it will get there eventually especially as I start playing around with new technologies (yes I'm starting to find time for this ... kinda) and doing some other stuff and mainly catching up with everyone else in the world :-)

Well the week has started and the month is a new one (where the hell has 2008 gone?!?!?!) so will crack on with work and try and get as much done as possible before having some time off over Christmas.

Laters :-)

How is this September ... ??

How is this the weather for England towards the end of September after such a rubbish summer!

So glad I was in Egypt for 2 weeks over the summer so I saw the sun when not at work!! :-)

How do you know you're having a bad day?

After saving an existing word document as a new version ready for updating, and trying to change the version number from 0.4 to 0.5 on the front page and word does this ...



:-(

Speedy Stuff!!

I have finally had time to move some stuff about the house now the carpets have been installed. Lau has gone out to the gym so I thought after putting together the bed I'd setup my mac mini and see if it remembered how to work after being cooped up in its little box for a month. Once plugged in and attached to the wireless router it was time to test the speed ...

... speedddyyyyyy!!!

8000+ kbps download!! So literally just short of 1MB / sec!! :-o

We've gone for sky top broadband package mainly so we get unlimited downloads and theoretically we can get up to 16mb speed, but a solid 8mb will do for me!! :-)

Knight Rider Sat Nav

Its finally been confirmed that the Knight Rider style sat nav is being released ... altho in the US :-(

Details (well the limited info thats been released) can be found on the Register
with more details to follow hopefully. This will however mean that everyones childhood fantasy about having KITT as their own is coming closer to reality.

Ever wondered what could be build out of Meccano?

Well wonder no more as to what size you can make stuff and start thinking about what you can make on the grand scale from Meccano!

A new skyscraper has been built in NY, but even though its only 65ft tall its still a break through from artist Chris Burden.


The image above is from the Daily Mail (click) of the artist looking through some of the Meccano pieces.

Some footage can also be seen on the BBC iPlayer ... well worth a look!

Work lappy

UPDATE: Jon said I can't refer to Lau in the future as 'my wife' yet.

After travelling home the other week I enquired about getting a work laptop so that once I moved up to Leamington Spa I would be able to leave on time (if not a little earlier) and work on the train so I could get home to my wife the woman to be at a reasonable hour (also so I could play some disc golf after work in the summer ... woo!!).

Well last week I got given a new machine! Its not the latest from Dell, but its a reasonable machine and I am quite surprised by it!

The machine I have been given is a ...


...Dell Precision M65.

Spec rundown ...
2Ghz Dual Core 2 Pentium
2.5GB ram
NVIDIA Quadro FX 350M

The thing which has surprised me the most about it is the battery life currently at 88% while I write this and it claims it could do another 3 1/2 hours! I worked on the hour train home the other day, and back with a stop over in Leamington station as the train was running late, restored a 4gb database and worked on the train; and still had 25% battery life remaining. Along with the usual typing I also had music playing, 2 instances of Visual Studio 2005, sql server 2005 running , outlook and other stuff and still worked like a dream!

I hope this can continue and I get lots of work done on trains and the wife woman likes it when I get home from work on time :-)

PS. Only just over 7 weeks to go!!! :-)

Happy Birthday Lego!

Just a quick post, while I'm drinking a nice coffee before heading off to work, to say happy anniversary to lego! and on my birthday too!! :-)



Lego turns 50 and I turn 25 ... what a day!! :-)

Pandora is no more :-(

When you load pandora now you get the following message ...

----

Dear Pandora Visitor,

We are deeply, deeply sorry to say that due to licensing constraints, we can no longer allow access to Pandora for listeners located outside of the U.S. We will continue to work diligently to realize the vision of a truly global Pandora, but for the time being we are required to restrict its use. We are very sad to have to do this, but there is no other alternative.

We believe that you are in United Kingdom (your IP address appears to be xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx). If you believe we have made a mistake, we apologize and ask that you please contact us at pandora-support@pandora.com

If you are a paid subscriber, please contact us at pandora-support@pandora.com and we will issue a pro-rated refund to the credit card you used to sign up. If you have been using Pandora, we will keep a record of your existing stations and bookmarked artists and songs, so that when we are able to launch in your country, they will be waiting for you.

We will be notifying listeners as licensing agreements are established in individual countries. If you would like to be notified by email when Pandora is available in your country, please enter your email address below. The pace of global licensing is hard to predict, but we have the ultimate goal of being able to offer our service everywhere.

We share your disappointment and greatly appreciate your understanding.

Sincerely,

Tim Westergren
Founder

----

This sucks as its one of the only places where we can listen to music at work and its really a sad day when its completely restricted.

Its a sad day, hopefully it will come back to the UK shores ... if only the UK based record industry would pull their finger out and realise that these types of ventures make people go out and buy music!!

Peace!