Let down by laces

May 16th, 2007

Miraculously I’ve now made it to two RR10s in a row. Tonight’s was at Wilverley Plain in the New Forest. Despite arriving in good time I was a little caught out when the race started two minutes early. The first third of the course round the plain was a bit of an all out sprint so it’s perhaps not surprising that I started to fade a little in the undulations of the middle section. This wasn’t helped by having to stop twice to retie each shoelace. (I should always remember: round laces = double knots.) I recovered a bit towards the end, although on the final long straight stretch I was slowing fast and the finish line couldn’t come soon enough. I ended in 22nd position, disappointingly a few places down on last time but I’ll put that down to the laces!

.Net access to WebSphere Service Regstiry and Repository

May 13th, 2007

The subject of accsesing WebSphere Service Registry and Repository from a .Net environment is one that crops up frequently on the newsgroups. It’s therefore great to see that John Colgrave and other members of the development team have released a developerWorks article on this topic.

Dead on arrival

May 10th, 2007

The battery in the chest strap for my Forerunner died recently but fortunately, unlike my old Polar, you can change it yourself rather than having to send it back to the manufacturer. I can’t help wondering whether it’s death may have coincided with the track I downloaded showing a route from the terminal building at McCarran International Airport to the end of the runway! I don’t usually pack the watch itself in my hold luggage and I don’t think I will be again.

Registry updates

May 8th, 2007

Another plug for the WebSphere Service Registry and Repository Handbook as a) it has been recently refreshed and b) that refresh saw my name added back in to the acknowledgements. And, while on this subject, I think I’ve probably neglected to highlight the Version 6.0.2 announcement that came out in the middle of last month. The key new features are undoubtedly UDDI synchronization, high availability through clustering, and binary document support. Electronic availability is slated for 25 May.

Eastleigh Freecycle

May 7th, 2007

Chris has previously blogged on the phenomenon that is Freecyle but I hadn’t appreciated just how big it was. I signed up this weekend looking to pass on our old breadmaker and the Southampton list has over 5500 members. It therefore probably isn’t surprising that in less than twelve hours I’ve had eight responses and it had been collected within three. Anyway, the point of this post was to advertise the fact that, as of today, there is now a separate list for Eastleigh. As this is probably the list I’ll use in future (and cross-posting is forbidden) then it’s in my interest to ensure it has lots of people on it!

Fly away Peter

May 6th, 2007

As Christine has already blogged, our free entertainment during washing up ceased yesterday when the blackbirds in our garden left their nest. I was pleased to read on the RSPB site that the young do make this strange dash from the nest along the ground although heading under the fence in the direction of the neighbourhood cat may not have been the wisest choice! Apparently blackbirds rear 2-3 broods a season so with any luck the nest may get used again.

Photo frenzy

May 6th, 2007

342Impending baby has been a good excuse to stay at home for the bank holiday weekend and catch up on lots of odd jobs. One of those has been sorting photos from the past couple of weeks. My shots from the Marwell Zoo photo challenge two weeks ago are now on flickr. The ones I submitted for the competition were the giraffe with legs akimbo, the friendly penguins, and the ostrich. Given the number of photos to chose from I was pleased to get a vote for each and two for the giraffe putting it in joint third place. I have also published some more shots from another trip to Hillier Gardens last weekend. The rhododendrons were absolutely superb.

Canon Cash Back

May 6th, 2007

Having just sent off for a £33 rebate from Canon on my 70-300 lens, my brother points out that there are some bargains to be had on Canon PowerShots if you buy this weekend. I think he may be tempted…