April 13th, 2008
517We were up early this morning for the hour and forty minute drive South to the Swedish border and our first big orienteering event since arriving in Norway. Although, like most events here, there was “kids parking”, this was only for those over two so we were subject to split starts – Christine off first on her D21 course and me last off on H21. Christine came back from her run a little slower than expected which she put down to speed in the terrain. Her report of a hilly rock strewn area with the odd impassable cliff thrown in for good measure didn’t exactly fill me with joy!
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Posted in Orienteering | 4 Comments »
April 12th, 2008
514It was raining when we got up this morning so we decided to head in to town for a bit of shopping. We finally gave in and bought a English-Norwegian dictionary. Up until now I’ve been struggling along with InterTran via the FoxLingo Firefox add-on but it’s pretty useless failing to translate most of the words that tell you what any sentence is actually trying to tell you. Many of these are compound words which, if you try splitting them up in enough different ways, eventually yield some meaning. Someone that’s just much easier to do with dead-wood though.
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Posted in Running, Travel | Comments Off on Shopping, sights and snow
April 10th, 2008
I failed to make it to club training tonight. I was going to blame it on the traffic around the city centre but once we’d got past the car broken down in the Ekeberg tunnel it was a clear run home so I was back in plenty of time. It wasn’t even really the pouring rain (which proceeded to stop as six o’clock came and went). I just felt tired…
Posted in Orienteering | Comments Off on Training slipping
April 10th, 2008
It was back to Sognsvann yesterday evening for my second crack at the lake. I had a chat with the organiser beforehand and he remembered my e-mail and said he would have another look for my time from last week although he looked a bit hassled. My legs weren’t as fresh as last week and it was bitterly cold (my hands didn’t warm up until after I’d finished). I didn’t have anything left for the sprint finish this time and slipped down in to fifth place. I looked at the results the next day as they weren’t giving out any times and could see why the organiser might have been a bit stressed. There appears to be just one guy listed! However, if I search the database for my name, then someone with approximately the right name, appears to have completed zero laps in 11:17. I timed 11:26 on my watch (as I wasn’t taking any risks this time) so presumably it took me just 9 seconds to do the one lap?
Posted in Running | Comments Off on Sognsvann revisited
April 9th, 2008
508The sun was out again yesterday evening for the first race of the Oslo City Cup, held at nearby Rikshospitalet. Emma had her dinner early and with split starts we both managed to get a run. The cup has an interesting format with everyone running the same course (3.1km yesterday). Start intervals of just 15 seconds meaning that the terrain was absolutely teeming with people, particularly as the course was squeezed in to a patch of woodland about 1km long by 300metres at the widest point.
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Posted in Orienteering, Travel | Comments Off on Oslo City Cup 1
April 9th, 2008
511To make up for last weekend’s snow bound picture, I thought I’d post another snowy one, only this time with the sun shining too. On Saturday morning we drove round to Hammeren on the North edge of Maridalsvannet (vann is water so that’s a lake). We then walked up the snowy path through the trees to the hut at UllevÃ¥lsetter. Unfortunately the clouds came over whilst we were sat outside enjoying our lunch and hot chocolate so we made a rapid retreat back down the road (the route everyone else seemed to be taking anyway).
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Posted in Family, Travel | Comments Off on Sunny walk to Ullevålseter
April 8th, 2008
IBM’s “Smart SOA” conference is taking place in Vegas this week as a result of which there have been a number of announcements pertinent to the product set that I work with…
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Posted in WebSphere, WebSphere Service Registry and Repository, WebSphere XD | Comments Off on Impact announcements
April 7th, 2008
As looking out the window doesn’t appear to be as reliable an indicator of the temperature here in Oslo as it is in the UK (probably just because there is a greater range and variation from day to day) I bought one of those all-singing all-dancing electronic weather stations last week. (OK – it wasn’t the super-duper model with rain gauge and anemometer but you have to draw the line somewhere.) I no longer need to experience that “oops I should have put more clothes on” feeling when I step out of the door.
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Tags: heat, oslo, temperature, thermodynamics, weather
Posted in Technology | 1 Comment »