Took part in the Wimborne Long-O in the New Forest today. At the start the sun was shining but there was a chill breeze blowing across the open moor. The navigation wasn’t particularly technical and the only major mistake I made was at the third control. I’d just spotted Christine and must have run straight past the control in my haste to catch her up. Took me a while to figure out that I had gone too far down the hill.
Burley West Long-O
March 5th, 2006Chartered Engineer at last
March 3rd, 2006Finally received a letter from the Engineering Council today confirming my registration as a Chartered Engineer. Now I just have to work out where the letters CEng fit in between MEng(Hons) MBCS CITP MIEE! I can’t imagine registration will make any difference to my life (other than having to fork out the annual registration fee) but somehow it still feels like a significant milestone in my life.
WebSphere User Group
February 28th, 2006Attended the WebSphere User Group meeting at IBM’s Bedfont Lakes location today. I was presenting an overview of the High Availability Manager that was introduced in WebSphere Application Server V6. I have to confess that I was quite surprised by the size of the audience I had for this subject given that there were six other tracks running in parallel. Perhaps customer take-up of this version has reached the point where the availability of solutions going in to production has become of interest. After lunch wasn’t perhaps the best time to launch in to the intricacies of topics such as the core group bridge service and there were a few heavy eyelids in the audience! Hopefully the examples around the transaction service, WebSphere XD and the Service Integration Bus proved a bit lighter going.
Varsity Match
February 26th, 2006Spent the weekend at the Oxford-Cambridge orienteering Varsity Match. Usually we have the individual competition on the Saturday and the relays on the Sunday. Unfortunately, the organiser (Phil Marsland) was soon receiving phone calls from the CUOC minibus saying that they were stuck in traffic on the M11. OUOC were dispatched to wait at the nearby accommodation (Holmbury St Mary Youth Hostel) whilst the alumni were let lose on Leith Hill.
Burnham Burn-up
February 19th, 2006We took a full car to the Happy Herts event at Egypt Woods and Burnham Beeches today. After our joint effort at the last National Event I harboured hopes of catching Paul Nixon four minutes. Unfortunately, it wasn’t to be. Instead, I made a beginner’s error on the sixth control, searching for the control one hillside too soon. A little later, having executed the long leg perfectly, I then wasted at least two minutes on the following control. I tried to cut a corner but then failed to find the path I was cutting the corner to! When I eventually located the control Roger Thetford was hot on my heels.
Valley Park Street-O
February 18th, 2006Unfortunately my last minute trip to Germany meant that I missed the SOC Street-O on Thursday. Roger Pleasant has surveyed our local area: Knightwood Park and Valley Park, so we decided to take the map out today and run round the controls together. Took us just under 50 minutes so, even in the dark, it’s not surprising that most competitors got all the controls. Roger is apparently now mapping the wooded areas in more detail which should make for a fun summer event.
Grouping messages using WebSphere MQ
February 15th, 2006Rather surprised to discover that developerWorks had published my article on Grouping messages using the WebSphere MQ Java and JMS APIs given that the last time I had seen it was when I submitted a first draft! Managed to persuade them to correct some of the more glaring errors that were introduced during the editorial process. I guess I’ll just have to put up with the revised writing style.
Military Millersford
February 15th, 2006Made the most of my flexible hours and nipped out to the Military League event at Turf Hill and Millersford in the New Forest. The 9.25km was a bit of a cross-country race – not because there were trains of competitors but because you could often see the next control from the one before and, with the area being so runnable, there was nothing to do but head straight for it. In the end I clocked up 54:05.
I fumbled the 13th control (unlucky for some) but the results show that I just don’t have the speed to compete with the likes of Dave Rollins. Good fun though and I should make an effort to get out to more of them. Paid for it later though – while working late to make up time my manager caught me and is sending me to Bonn first thing tomorrow morning.
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