Beastie Boys

Over celebration

The Biggest Hypocrite In England

City populations

Must have been bored today.
Started looking at en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Europe then got to....

Different ways of counting city population....:


Largest_urban_areas_of_the_European_Union: Manchester is 7th largest area with 3.8 mill people.

Largest_European_metropolitan_areas: Manchester is 11th with 4.2 mill people. However in the Manchester City itself is only 440,000 (but that does not include Salford, Oldham, Trafford, Sale, etc).

Larger_Urban_Zones_(LUZ)_in_the_European_Union: Manchester is 14th with 2.8 mill people. The scousers keep interfering in the others, but this is perhaps the proper size of Manchester.


Ps. Looking at it differently

www.top500.de/cities/ranks/page000.php: Oslo is Europe's fifth largest city!

JavaZone

Another JavaZone finished. Two full days of geektime, but fun. Stressfull, as there were too many simultaneous presentations. But it is well planned, with a lot of renowned presentors.

Best presentations was:

* Tijs Rademakers and Jos Dirksen showing how to use Mule in a easy to follow style.

* James Coplien debunking some agile myths.

* Matt Raible comparing web frameworks.



My hands have been itching for a chance to test some the new tech and methods. A vaccine jab at the doctor today killed all that though!

ClubZone, the evening entertainment, while looked good on paper and probably a lot of effort to plan, was a disaster. The problem was the Norway-Greece footy match. Fitting 2500 people (okay probably some were not into football ) into the only place that showed the match was never going to work. So my group all went home to catch the second half. No free beer for us.

Now how can I introduce Mule into our stack, without a special need for it....

facebookerized

Ok. so Ive joined facebook a few months ago, and it now seems most of the people I know are members. Suppose the media attention of how dangerous it is, attracts more...

Can be a bit adictive at the start, and really nice to see what happened to old friends. But novelity will probably go down after a while. However if my core friends are on by then it is a nice tool to stay in touch and plan stuff.

Will knee spoil summer?

Was looking forward to the summer...

Had started cycling to work after the winter and planning long bike trips, prepared the golf clubs for finally some real usage and both football with mates and work was moving from indoor astroturf to real grass, then I go and blow up my knee!

So now Im hobbling like a muppet, with a knee which the doc recon may be jumpers knee combined with inflamed joint fat pads. Nice. However I hope that is the only problem as it is treatable.

Its not only sport thats affected, but also weekend trips and every tasks are restricted, so its not fun for Chloe either. But that may be mostly due to my winging.

Its been a month since I injured it and the kne had started to get better. We travelled to Gothenburg at the weekend, and it was no problem.

But yesterday I stupidly decided to walk home from work. Walk was fine, and I was starting to get optimistic about playing footy soon again. Then as popped into a shop it "clicked" and I was in total agony again. Depressing.

Missing Old Trafford

Moved away from Manchester last summer, and have not been at Old Trafford at all this season. And Im starting to really miss it.



Having attended 100+ matches over the last 15 years, being at OT was a normal part of my life. Week in week out, with 60,000+ others, cheering on United, shouting abuse at scouse, city, cockney opposition and when we got good tickets, which was quite often, this was all within a few yards of the players.



Now watching on TV, is okay. But as the season is hotting up it feels so remote. Not going to loose my voice watching it on TV, last time I did that was after the CL final in 99.



Over here they use long weekends to go over for a game, spend loads of money on flights and hotels and get crap seats. While before Id get a pair of 5th row tickets for £26 each, have quick pint in the Quadrant before kick off, and afterwards be home in half an hour.

Oh well, suppose its not much else I do miss from Manchester, (perhaps Didsbury pubs), and I can use my weekends to get into skiing and sailing again....

Spring

Held recently a presentation on Spring at TietoEnator and NetCom. It was a brief introduction to the Spring Framework and the IOC, MVC, JDBC, Hibernate, Acegi modules.

It was the same presentation , but the first one dragged on for 1.5 hours. At which point the audience was getting quite bored. The second wizzed past in 30 minutes. This time the audience probably did not catch a lot of what I said.

It is definetly not easy. Both times the projectors played up and caused a lot of grief. The first presentation included way too many examples. The second not enough.

If curious, the presentation is here, and all the examples are here.

Encryption stops linux?

Does work laptops which are pre installed with Windows, using full disk encryption software stop you from using Linux?

Well at least for me.

The problem I have is I have several laptops handed to me by clients that I have to use while working for them. No problem with that, they are much higher spec than my own pcs anyway. Pre installed with MS Windows is fine, it usually is company standard and most of their employees would insist on it. Previously I have just shrunk the windows partition and dual booted into linux.

But my current two work laptops have both got full disk encryption software, to protect lost laptops, from two different providers (PointSec and SafeGuard). And you cant run dual boots with them, nor resize partitions.

So this means for the past half a year I have had to use windows full time, as I rarely get any time at home to use my own linux pcs.

Okay it is not that bad, I am not suffering from starvation or illness, but it is annoying, feels like having a hand tied behind my back when I work. But I shouldnt complain, I am after all getting hardware and licenses for weblogic and oracle handed to me.

I do wonder though, how many others are affected by this? Does it have any effect on the amount of people using Linux?

Planning Poker

Attended a estimation seminar yesterday morning. Some fluff, but being exposed to the theories and practicalities of Planning Poker was worth the time.

Used it immitietly in the afternoon for a project that we were still struggling to define the tasks needed. Very effective, in just getting a discussion going, grouping tasks and assigning estimation units to each task/story.

Well worth a try, even if it made us look like we were playing poker all afternoon, especially as we sat in a tiny glass cubicle at a client.

Agile estimation book by Mike Cohn

Viet Nam

Back from two weeks in Vietnam, cycling from Saigon to Hanoi.

Fantastic country, brilliant people, too many motorbikes!

In the heat the climbs were hard, but otherwise the 500 km we cycled flew by.

In total we covered 1700 km, with some 500 by a sleep train, and the rest bussing through traffic or very hilly sections.

There were endless picture perfect beaches that was completly empty. Wont take many years before the beach bum tourists catch up though.

1-2-3 YO!

New everything

New Job, new house(soon), new country(well return to old)!

We have moved back to Norway, Oslo to be precise. Its a great summer, not looking forward to the autumn, but winter will be great again.

Flatsearching is a battle, as each one gets snapped immidietly as they come up for sale.

New job is good, Im now a senior consultant. More mature role, so no sleep-ins anymore.

But its all good.

Mostly offline this summer

Been mostly offline all summer. Well it is summer after all, but also because of moving house, jobs and country.

Not being in your own house for several months, do make you feel a bit cut off, especially when where you stay dont have broadband.

And when you cant enjoy the sun and sea because of 100 of property viewings, its even worse.

My new job starts soon, so no time to do anything then. But im looking forward to it, and at least I'll be online again.

30th + leaving do

Im 30 years old this month, so I am commiserating with a party. It will also be a leaving do for me and Chloe as we are leaving Manchester the following week.

Planning a long day of world cup football, resturant and plenty of cheap and nasty lager.

Click below to add the event to your calendar.