Tuesday, August 29, 2006

 

Managing programmers is like herding cats

Platts Dictum :
"Managing programmers is like herding cats."

Grahams Corollary :
"Do not meddle in the affairs of cats, for they are subtle and will piss on your computer."

Concatenation : the process of glueing one cat's nose to another cat's tail.

 

1:59:00

One hour, fifty nine minutes spot on.

In a rain storm with a stiff headwind on the home leg.

Must be able to do it faster. :-)

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Sunday, August 20, 2006

 

Bicycle gears in easy terms

Bigger at the front and smaller at the back the faster you go for a particular cadence (peddling speed). Smaller at the front and bigger at the back the easier it is to climb a hill.

Now when you are peddling at different cadences you produce different power outputs and if you graphed it, it would look a bit like an upturned bowl. So for any particular power output there are two cadences that match and one in the middle which is peak power output, or optimum.

For going up a hill you would like the higher cadence as when you falter your cadence drops yet you produce more power and prevent a stall, and for the flat you would prefer the lower cadence as it is not so tiring and when you falter you can just push yourself a little harder or maybe not 'cause you're tired. Also if you would like varied riding every Sunday you would prefer overlap in your gears as it make it easier to change up and down without too much thought, but if you ride day in day out you would 'learn' where all your gears 'are' and so would prefer no overlap, just more gears and closer together so you can maintain your optimum cadence depending on road conditions and windspeed.

So, erm, no such thing as gears in easy terms, sorry.

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Sunday, August 13, 2006

 

Logic in the IT industry

Logic in the IT industry only exists in them funny things with lots of legs what hold the magic smoke to the circuit board.

Wednesday, August 09, 2006

 

Squirrels

I don't like squirrels. Not the ones with the pointy noses and bushy tails, they're just rats with a good press agent. No, I mean cyclists who wander back and forth on the cycle path making it difficult to get past them. By getting in the way they add, and I have worked this out proper like with my timing statistics and gadgets, about 15 minutes to my daily commute. i.e. when I don't meet any squirrels my round trip is 15 minutes shorter. You might think, what's a little delay? Relax! Which is true. The main issue is that more than once I've seen them force people off the cycle lane and into the road, which is positively dangerous, or more usually just cause a pile up. Me being a big bloke, lots of mass, means they bounce off. Hence the time is the personal issue, but I do feel for them that get their day ruined.

Interestingly København Kommune is wanting to shorten cyclist's journey times, so they might want to look at educating the squirrels. Considering the numbers of cyclists in Copenhagen I guess they could save immense amounts of time, it must add up to man weeks of delays every day due to the actions of an inconsiderate few.

Anyways I digress, there I was approaching one, at about 25 kph, you can't do much faster than that in the city, not safely, them doing something about 10 kph. I rings my bell. Do they pull over, even a little? Not a chance.

I start to slow down and ring the bell again. No effect.

I am now slowed down to their speed and right on their back tire, ringing the bell again. Some say insanity it repeating the same actions but expecting different results ... The other traffic behind is catching up now, starting to bunch up, and also ringing their bells, for a moment I fancied hearing Freddie Mercury starting to sing.

Eventually the lights change, I would have had it on a good green, but am held up by the squirrel and so everyone arrives as it turns red.

Pulling up next to them I go to strike up a conversation. I want to know why they wouldn't pull over and being the charitable type I always ere on the side of 'accident' than 'maliciousness', then a little devil in me noticed a look on their face indicating they wanted an argument, hence it was malicious, so said: "Sorry about ringing the bell like that. I've just realised it being an English bell you probably couldn't understand it."

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Tuesday, August 08, 2006

 

It was a very cold shower...

I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly dreaming I am a man.

 

Must be the cold shower...

I teach that the multitudinousness of objects have no reality in themselves but are only seen of the mind and, therefore, are of the nature of maya and a dream. It is true that in one sense they are seen and discriminated by the senses as individualized objects; but in another sense, because of the absence of any characteristic marks of self-nature, they are not seen but are only imagined. In one sense they are graspable, but in another sense, they are not graspable.

 

Just like school, except, no beatings!

There was no hot water in the showers again this morning.

It's healthy!

Yeah right...

Wednesday, August 02, 2006

 

New Client : New Cycling Record

Got the bicycle fixed. New bottom bracket, cranks and chain wheel, new set on the back, new chain, new bearings on the front wheel.

Anyways, now I have a new client, a few kilometers further out than the previous one, so the time has increased. 1st attempt, learning the route, yet still at speed: 2:02:07
Todays: 2:01:57, oh dear, not much improvement, but theoretically should get it below 2 hours.

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