WFH

Its 07:15 and I'm already 'at work'....well blogging anyway. I have to do something to get the old grey matter wared up. Why so early? 'Working From Home' this morning.

What's the 'O' stand for? Oh my god it's early!
Why? Because I have to!

Thanks to 'Good Morning Vietnam' and especially a huge hero of mine, Robin Williams for that little scene. Anyway, I have a leaky boiler so I am waiting around between 08:00h and 13:00h for the 'qualified engineer' to come along. Qualified or not, I don't care - they do it for very little money so I don't have to. I get to get up early and get on with important stuff and increase my productivity whilst only having to endure one rush hour (travel in to London on the tube after 10:00h and before 15:30h and its really quite a good transprt system...assuming nothing is broken of course...).

So thanks to the leaky boiler and a qualified engineer with a seemingly random unplannable schedule, I can get lots done today!

Falling off the wagon

Hurrah, back in the air again yesterday. A 90 min bimble out west, north east between Didcot and Oxford then north to Silverstone and back to White Waltham in time for a beer. Good times!

T'was brisk windy but nothing beyond personal or airframe limits! 110kt cruise dead into wind produced 66kt ground speed...following a 180 ground speed rocketed up to 160kt! But it was smooth. At least up @ 3500'. My approach suffered due to gusts so the landing was not a fastbloke 'greaser'. No photos unfortunately but the vis wasn't that great - just felt good to be back in the air.

Love and hate

Love

• Good Manners


• Unsolicited acts of kindness


• Knowkedge shared freely


• Open minds


• Spiced Rum

Hate

• Misuse of the 'reply all' button


• Ignorance


• Rudeness


• 'What you wanna do is...'


• My tech is better than your tech because you chose 'X'


• If you can't use vi you must be stupid


• Umbrellas on a windy day


• People with umbrellas on a windy day


• Windy days

Yes but....

Ok, this is a nice little device (understatement of the year) but my concern is - will the screen survive? I have a iPaq that is dead within weeks without the in-built screen cover.


Yeah, there is a natty cover integrated. One doesn't have to leave the shiney touch screen exposed but it looks sooo cool!

• So cool it pisses ice cubes


• Innovation rich


• Expensive


• Integration with non-Macs

Conclusion...
Wait for series 2...

Shameless regurgitation of viral mail content

Thoughts for 2007

• Life is sexually transmitted.


• Good health is merely the slowest rate at which one can die.


• Men have two emotions: hungry and horny. If you see him without an erection, make him a sandwich.


• Give a person a fish and you feed them for a day. Teach a person to use the internet and they won't bother you for weeks.


• Some people are like a slinky... not really good for anything, but you still can't help but smile when you shove them down the stairs.


• Health nuts are going to feel stupid someday, lying in the hospital dying of nothing.


• All of us could take a lesson from the weather. It pays no attention to criticism.


• Why does a slight tax increase cost you two hundred pounds, and a substantial tax cut saves you thirty pence???


• In the 60's, people took LSD to make the world weird. Now the world is weird and people take Prozac to make it normal.


• AND THE NUMBER ONE THOUGHT FOR 2007:
  
  
  We know exactly where one cow with mad-cow-disease is located among the millions and millions of cows in North America , but we haven't a clue as to where thousands of illegal immigrants and terrorists are located.
  
  
  Maybe we should put the Department of Agriculture in charge of immigration?

Watch the times tumble!

10K progress yesterday - watch this space. Cross training and longer distances beckon.

AJAX vs SOAP

For the most common denominator, the prospect of even a simple mash-up will set the ganglions a jingling (scary!). Google, having deprecated their SOAP search API are truly opening up slick content aggregation to the masses

Not the first though - Jetspeed opened up an AJAX API last year.

There is a lot of hand wringing and getting-knickers-in-a-knot over Googles strategic shift towards AJAX over SOAP with some (but not a lot) reason. Really, if changing a system to use AJAX instead of SOAP is such a big deal then maybe some refactoring is in order anyway?

Commercially the AJAX API makes sense for the vendor.

Technically the AJAX API (done properly offers as much power as would realistically be required by such applications as SOAP or remoting.

AJAX oriented dev tools are plentiful. this blew me away!

Watching this space closely

Happy New Year!

Thinking about new year resolutions I almost elected for a rather geeky resolution to have no resolution...hmm too ironic.

No - I'm going to eat better breakfasts and make more time for my friends. Previously I have resolved to be less tolerant of idiots which has resulted in fewers friends - they're muppets but they're my muppets!

Can I reduce my carbon footprint? Yup - send China, Europe and the United States back to the jurasic period.

Realistically? Maybe an iota or two but not in any meaningful way. Is that feeling of helplessness just reality biting for the first time in '07 or is it the arse-end of the last hangover from '06? No answers on a postcard pls...

Aha! Another resolution - form complete scentences and reduce usage of '...'

Those resolutions didn't last too long so I'd better go get some brekky.

ps. decided on '07 running targets - speed, not control darling!