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2004-04-20 14:39:14 Source: Web

OK - following the trend in a line from Rufus, Mike and Chris...

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 23.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.

"Fönstren kan vara fristående eller vara s.k. dockningsbara (som du ser ovan)."

Hmmm - not only Swedish, but also very boring as it comes from "Börja med Visual Basic .NET") (or "Beginning Visual Basic .NET" in English). Oh dear, a programming book - and a Swedish one at that!

2004-04-13 19:24:59 Source: Web

By popular request I thought I'd update on how it's going with the decorating.

Pulling down the wallpaper took 2 of us 3 days. That was 48 man-hours of peeling paper from a wall!

I had hoped to go for a long cycle ride on the Sunday, but after a few km I decided that I felt like crap and went home. Talk about tired!

Monday we were at least finished with the paper-pulling and were able to sand the walls (hurrah for electric sanders) and fill all the various holes.

Today (Tues) after work I went around all the corners in the walls and ceiling and filled them with like a kinda latex-ey filler.

SO that's where we stand at the moment. We need to sand down the areas we filled and then go over the walls with a damp sponge to get the residual dust off. Then maybe this coming weekend we'll be ready to actually hang some new wallpaper.

I was *so* hoping that it would all be over during the one long weekend, but no such luck! *sigh*

2004-04-09 20:26:31 Source: Web

We decided to do some decorating this Easter weekend. The living room has some old woodchip wallpaper which my GF hates, so we decided we'd strip the walls and repaper with some lovely wallpaper we found.

Well, we've been working for 10 hours straight and we're not even half-way yet.

*cries*

I even hired an industrial steamer to make the job easier, but it it so sodding difficult to get this crap off the walls.

I keep trying to convince myself that it will be worth it once it's all finished, but I'm wondering whether I'll lose the will to live first!

Oh well! Happy Easter to you all and I hope you're doing something more fun than I am :-D (I'm gonna get some photos tomorrow to share the misery ;-)

2004-04-01 20:40:26 Source: Web

I haven't written anything yet about the training camp I was on a couple of weekends ago! I guess because I've been snowed under (yet again) with a major deadline. On top of which there has been some substantial movement on the wedding plans front, I've been trying to squeeze in some training AND I have a secret-ops project underway! All a bit much really.

Back to the camp though - it was without a doubt the toughest couple of days training I've ever done. On the Friday evening we swam around 3.5km to get started. Saturday night it rained quite a bit, but luckily by Saturday morning the rain had stopped - though it was blowing an absolute gale! Excellent cycling weather :-/

Saturday morning led off with a run fo most people - but I went for some water-running instead. Sensible I reckon given my knee issues. Then after doing my turn at lunch duty, it was out on the bike. We took it quite easily for the first 20-30km. The sun came out and despite the wind (which was manageable when riding in the group) I have to say that my heart was singing! Some amazing coastal landscape and I felt so glad to be out on the bike.

After a while a group of us split off to do a little more extended run at a slightly faster pace. In total we put in about 75km and averaged about 23km/h which considering the headwind and the easy start wasn't too shabby.

The evening was spent resting (I *really* should have taken a slightly more confortable underlay than the simple foam camping roll that I had!).

On Sunday morning I was feeling pretty weary and the morning swim was pretty tough. I put in a good 3-3.5 km though. I must admit that I did find myself wondering how the hell i was going to cope with the afternoon's cycle ride though! But when I got on the bike, I felt fantastic. Funny how it can happen like that! The ride was pretty easy anyway, but we did some good training practising riding a two-wide paceline with regular changeovers. Very disciplined and very good practise. The ride came in at around 40km and didn't have the world's greatest speed, but that brought the weekend's total up to 115km, so that was some useful riding.

I even managed a quick .5km run after the cycling as a warm-down, which felt OK. (Since then I've also been out and run a couple of km near home which was also OK. But I'm taking it VERY gently to see whether anything had changed with my knee or not. It's way too early to tell yet.)

So it was a hell of a weekend! Lotta also had a good time as she was in London with her mum and my mum looking at potential wedding dresses! Nothing perfect found yet - but she did get loads of inspiration apparently :-D

2004-03-16 07:39:47 Source: Web

Comment from a friend of mine this morning:

"google returns only two responses for "jammy junket", and both of them are you. *sigh*. "

:-D

2004-03-03 21:25:19 Source: Web

It's a pretty hectic time at the moment (everyone seems to be feeling that it's hectic right now - I thought I'd join in!). I'm having one of those periods at work where the work I've got *planned* to do seems to recede further and further into the distance beyond the growing piles of work that must be done now! Plans for the wedding are slowly taking shape, but I feel like I'm not carrying my share of the load as I'm not finding the time to make important phone calls and get things booked.

On top of that I've been working on a new site for the triathlon club which we're hoping to launch any day now, I have some work to do on a site for me future father in law and I am programming an application for my own use (at the moment at least) as a training tool. I'm also trying to find a gym that suits me!

Yup I feel like I'm spread a little thin at the moment. Sure - I know I'm alive, but I could use a magic wand that would clear a project or two from the table ;-)

Actually, it's probably all going to calm down in a week or so - I'll have sorted out which gym I'm going to go to (the super-modern one I've peeked at, or the cheap n' funky one that has Pilates - or possibly a combination of the two!), the website will be launched and we'll hopefully be back on track with the wedding plans.

Then maybe I'll find myself a few new projects to keep me busy ;-)

2004-02-25 07:18:26 Source: Web

We had a training competition at the triathlon club last night - 1500m swim. My lap times are in the table below.

Distance	Total	Lap
100m	1:35	1:35
200m	3:21	1:46
300m	5:12	1:51
400m	7:05	1:53
500m	9:03	1:58
600m	10:58	1:55
700m	12:54	1:56
800m	14:53	1:59
900m	16:48	1:55
1000m	18:50	2:02
1100m	20:46	1:54
1200m	22:45	1:59
1300m	24:44	1:59
1400m	26:43	1:59
1500m	28:29	1:46

All in all I'm really pleased with my times, especially considering that my arms were aching so much from a gym session I did on Sunday (more about that in a moment) that I wasn't even certain I'd be able to swim effectively at all ;-)

Looking at the times, I think that with a slight improvement during the spring, I should be in position to swim a 13 minute 750m race. Not *too* shabby a time. If I can realise a similar improvement in my bike (quite likely) and my run (fat chance!) - then I should be placing respectably in the middle of the pack for an average sprint distance race.

As I mentioned, I tried out a gym at the weekend and I was pretty pleased with it. I've found somewhere that does Pilates classes which are great for core stability. I also got an introduction to the strength training machines. Man I can still feel it in my arms three days later! Although happily enough, my legs didn't complain at all! Shows where the bulk of my training activity has been going doesn't it?

Finally, I had my first proper training ride outside on the bike at the weekend. Cycled a lovely circuit of 67km and felt that my times were respectable there as well. With an average speed of just over 24kph cycling on my own, I felt that the time on the trainer this winter has definitely paid off.

It's going to be a fun spring/early summer - I've already got several bike races planned and I just need to work out which triathlons I'm going to aim for.

2004-02-15 19:30:48 Source: Web

Damn this cold! We were in Stockholm a week ago for a Kraftwerk concert (fantastic!) and I came home with a lovely souvenir - a stinking cold. I thought it was on the way out on Friday after work, but no... Valentine's day was marked by it's lack of romance as I sniffed and snivelled through the evening (though I did manage to muster up the energy to spend the afternoon cooking a lovely (even if I say so myself) meal!). Today it's all moved to my sinuses and I've managed just about, to lie on the sofa watching TV all day.

*sigh*

If it's no better tomorrow I don't think I can face work, but to be honest, I'm so hacked off with the whole thing I'd rather be feeling better and be at work than feeling like crap and being at home.

I'll let you know how it works out!

(Oh - and Kraftwerk *really* were great. Go and see them live if you get a chance!)

2004-02-02 21:48:04 Source: Web

This wetvest running thing is pretty good actually. I went again this evening and despite still feeling like a prat, I had a hell of a workout! I did intervals, running 30m down the pool in one direction (until I got near where it's too shallow to be useful) at a hard pace and then 30m back again recovering. After 5 intervals I had worked up quite a sweat (amazing how hot you can feel exercising in water when your head is sticking out!). I followed it up with a circuit of another 5 laps at a middling pace. So I covered around 600m and the workout time was 40 minutes.

Not too bad - I'm definitely going to try to keep at this for a month or two (building my sessions slowly) and then hit the ground running (so to speak) to see how it has benefitted my knee. With any luck, the muscles used for running will be stronger and more evenly distributed and my knee pain won't come back. I should also be able to get my repeat visit to the orthopaedic doctor and see what he thinks of my strategy.

2004-01-31 21:34:28 Source: Web

Mmmm - Saturday evening, I'm listening to a great French synth band (Celluloide - there's a free EP to download on MP3 under the "Audio" link) and life is good.

After two days of amazing snow, I woke in the middle of the night to the sound of torrential rain :-( There went my plans of doing lots of skiing this weekend. By morning, the half-foot of beautiful snow had turned into a deep morass of frozen slush. Terrible, terrible weather! I went for a drive today and at times it was like driving through a half frozen river. So no skiing, but having bought a new saddle for my bike I'm looking forward to a good trainer session tomorrow to see whether it's easier on my bum bones!

I went running yesterday for the first time in about 4 months! I ran for half an hour and covered about 500m in total. Yup, you read that right. The trick is that I went "wetvest" running. This is running in a pool with a flotation vest to keep you upright. As water has a density 1000 times more dense than air, the water provides a major workout - but without the impact that you get running on land. On the negative side, you look like a prat, but I'm going to keep at it to build up my leg strength for the next couple of months before I go running outside again.

I had a busy, busy week at work, but managed to get a couple of projects out the door. I also got a prototype of the new site for my triathlon club up. I'll post a link once it's ready for launch. Hopefully the beginning of March. In the meantime we're working on filling it with content. I've been using an Open Source, PHP-based content management system called phpWebsite for the site and I'm pretty happy with it. Some things have been a little counter-intuitive, but with some perserverence I'm getting to grips with it. The system is very flexible, there's access to a bunch of 3rd party enhancements and I think it's going to result in a very nice site.