Month: June 2011

InSync11 : 16-17 August 2011…

A few weeks ago one of the AUSOUG committee asked me to submit some abstracts for InSync11. I got the official acceptance through today, so travel approval permitting, I’ll be in Sydney on August 16-17 to speak at the conference.

I’m not looking forward to the flights, but it will be really cool to see the Aussies again. I was teaching some Oracle University courses in Australia last year, but it’s a couple of years since I’ve spoken at a conference down there.

Cheers

Tim…

Getting Fit: Another Update…

It’s a little over a month since I joined the gym. In that time I’ve had 4 days off, so it’s been pretty full on. I had my weekly personal training session today and I’m staggered with my current level of fitness compared to where I started. The trainer is pure evil and he really put me though it today, but I did way more than I thought was possible.

The daily interval training has worked wonders for my recovery time. Towards the end of the today’s session I finished one circuit, puked and was ready to start again in a minute. Pretty phenomenal by my standards.

The weight is coming off very slowly now. It’s hard not to fixate about the scales, but I am aware that I’ve put on a lot of muscle in this month, so the scales are not a very good indication of what’s going on. Even so, it’s kinda tough when people ask how much weight you’ve lost and you tell them you’ve killed yourself in the gym for a month and only lost 7 pounds.

So the journey continues. There is still a very long way to go, but I’m still moving in the right direction so that’s good news.

I’m hoping to speak at the InSync11 conference in Australia in a couple of months. It would be nice if I can drop a some more weight before then. It would certainly make the economy class seats feel a little better. 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

Fedora 15: Further Observations…

I’ve mentioned Fedora 15 a couple of times recently:

A couple more things I’ve noticed along the way:

  • Lots of the early press complained about the “reduced productivity” of the GNOME3 desktop. Having used it for a while now I can safely say it doesn’t impact me at all. When I’m using my MacBook Pro I have to move the mouse down to the bottom of the screen to activate the doc. It’s like a reflex reaction. I’ve found I do much the same thing with GNOME3. If I’m using the mouse to switch to Activities (rather than the Windows key), I make a circular anti-clockwise motion with the mouse so it touches the top-left corner of the screen. That switches to Activities without a mouse click, so on the down move of the circle I’m over the doc. It’s really pretty stress free. A single mouse move with no extra clicks. Sorted.
  • I did an upgrade from Fedora 14 on one machine. Fedora 15 includes LibreOffice in place of OpenOffice. As a result OpenOffice was not “upgraded”, and the existing OpenOffice installation stopped working. It wasn’t a problem, I just installed LibreOffice, just an observation.

Cheers

Tim…

Pirates and X-Men…

I started to write a quick review of the latest X-Men film and I realized I hadn’t written anything about that pirate film, so here goes a double whammy…

  • Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides – This is just more of the same as far as I’m concerned. Some of the cast are back. Some new people have been brought in, but my overriding feeling is that I’ve seen it all before. It just doesn’t feel like they’ve brought anything new to the table here. That’s not to say it’s a bad film, I just feel like I could have stayed at home and watched a DVD of any of the previous films instead. This film is not going to sell you on the franchise, but it’s also not going to make you vow never to see another PotC film either. Good harmless fun, if a little uninspired.
  • X-Men: First Class – I liked the first three X-Men films. The Wolverine film was quite cool too. I was really unsure what I would think of this prequel. Sometimes stripping things back leaves them exposed. Sometimes it reveals something new. In my opinion X-Men: First Class really works well. I guess I had not really though about how little I knew (or cared) about Professor X and Magneto as characters. This film fleshes them out a bit more than the previous outings and it worked well for me. There are some really lame characters, like Banshee and Darwin, but I guess this also adds to plot as this is a very immature X-Men team. Probably my favorite character from this film is Azazel, who Bamfs like Nightcrawler, but is not so annoying. What I would give to be able to bamf and avoid plane flights. The cast have been signed up for 2 sequels to this prequel (provided this film makes money). I’m looking forward to seeing them.

Cheers

Tim…

Paralyzed by a Full To-Do List…

The subject of to-do lists has come up in conversation a few times recently. I am a big fan of them. In fact, I find it kinda difficult to keep track of stuff without them. Over the years I have observed a specific trait in myself, which is a kind of mental paralysis brought on by an overly full to-do list. It doesn’t relate to the complexity of the tasks, just the number of them. Put enough silly little things together and I start to go into meltdown. My current to-do list is getting very full and I’m getting close to critical mass…

The trick for me is to move a few quick things to the top of the list. It sounds dumb and I know it’s not going to affect the total amount of work that needs doing, but there is something so gratifying about ticking items off the list.

I think I can half the number of entries in a couple of days and then maybe I can deal with something that requires more substantial effort.

Cheers

Tim…