Trains and (more) fjords

July 31st, 2008

637Next stop from Bergen was Gudvangen where we were staying at Gudvangen Camping in another hut. Sat on the balcony of our accommodation we had a great view of the waterfalls tumbling down the cliff face opposite – all the more so when the sunshine was replaced by an impressive thunderstorm in the evening. It was hard to believe that the road we looked out over was the main route from Oslo to Bergen, particularly as the traffic seemed mainly to consist of empty tour buses!

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In and around Bergen

July 30th, 2008

622Our first choice for accommodation on the outskirts of Bergen had fallen through and we picked Riplegården Sommerpensjon in a bit of a rush. We were a bit dismayed when the guy showing us around proceeded to tell us not to leave our car up the road otherwise the windows would get smashed and about the drug addicts they had to throw out in the winter. It also transpired that most of the accommodation was taken by long term residents so, poised ready to leave, we waited to see who came home from work. As it turned out, everyone was very nice and, although in need of a good clean, the pensjon actually made a good base for our four night stay in Bergen and did, as promised, have a good view over the fjord from the balcony.
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Mountains and fjords

July 26th, 2008

616Having waved goodbye to Christine’s Mum at Geilo station the next leg of our journey took us away from the railway and up on to the Hardangervidda plateau. Perhaps due to the bright blue skies overhead it didn’t look quite as bleak and barren as I had imagined it to be. It was a pleasant enough drive though with some nice white peaks in the distance and the odd glacier to add to the scenery.

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Sunny start to holiday

July 24th, 2008

610We had always planned to take some time off to explore Norway towards the end of our stay here and, with practically no-one left in Oslo to work with, the end of July seemed like a good time to go. We had thought about getting the train across to Bergen but practicality prevailed and we decided to drive the hire car across. We still intended to make the most of scenery though by taking the R7 throught the Hardangervidda.

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Oslo in the rain

July 20th, 2008

604Christine’s brother Ian, and his wife Sarah were our latest guests. They arrived on Thursday night on the late flight from Bristol. Fortunately they had a good day out at the beach in the sun on Friday (whilst yours truly was working) because come the weekend the weather wasn’t so kind. On Saturday it was just threatening and we managed a walk out to UllevÃ¥lsetter but the heavens really opened up on Sunday. Our Oslo itineries don’t cater for bad weather (unless you’re a fan of museums) so we just walked around the city centre sheltering from the showers when we could. This provided my first chance to take a good look at the new Opera House up close. It’s an impressive beast and I must try and get back there with the camera when the weather is better. Ian and Sarah timed their departure just right as we got soaked getting back to the car from seeing them off at the station. They took with them some of our belongings – a sign that it’s now less than a month to go before we return to the UK (and that we’ve accumulated a lot of stuff whilst we’ve been out here!)

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Locks and leaks

July 17th, 2008

I was called upon yesterday to review some WebSphere product code I wrote about six years ago. It was a bit of a shock to see from the change history the number of fixes that had been made in the intervening time! Many of these related to deadlock situations, often when I was merely taking a lock whilst I iterated over a set in toString or some such seemingly innocuous method. It is very hard to get the lock ordering correct when you are just a component in the middle of the stack. The lesson there is, I suspect, to only trace when entries are added or removed from the set and perhaps just give the size at other times.
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Sun shines for PB

July 17th, 2008

601My cunning plan to gain a personal best at this week’s Sognsvann Rundt Medsols was to run three laps for the first time. This nearly backfired when, at around five o’clock, the heavens opened. The rain was short-lived though and by the time we were running from the car (parked as close as we can get without going through the toll) to the start there was a wide expanse of blue sky.

As everyone lined up at the start it was clear that numbers were well down – no great surprise as we are now well in to the holiday season here. My legs felt fairly fresh on the first lap as they should have done having not run since the same time last week and having had a reasonable warm-up for a change. I resisted the temptation to race the first woman to the line only to find, as usual, that she carried on for the next lap. Given that she continued to pull away from me it was fortunate (for my male pride) that she then proceeded to stop at the end of the second lap. Indeed, everyone in front of me stopped at this point so I set out on the third lap in the lead.

Needless to say a stitch kicked in at this point – probably something to do with working at home in close proximity to Christine’s baking! Fortunately it eased after a few hundred metres and by half way round the last lap I was able to stretch out my legs a bit again. Perhaps just as well as the second and third placed runners were only about 20 seconds behind. So – a personal best both in time and position. Perhaps I should stop there!

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Configuring SIB J2SE client with SSL

July 16th, 2008

If configuring the service integration bus J2SE client for SSL is a topic of interest to you then make sure you register for next week’s presentation from Rich Montjoy in level 2 service.

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