iandick

Togaf

I’ve spent the last week in London on a TOGAF training course. It was an enjoyable course and marks a bit of a change in career direction which I’m looking forward to. Before that though, some thoughts on the course.

The four day course took place in central London, in fact a stones throw from Buckingham Palace in the wonderfully named Stag Place. The venue itself was on the 27th floor which offered fantastic views over London.

The hotel I stayed in was a wee bit way from the venue, right on Shaftsbury Avenue. If you’ve not been to London before you won’t know the location but it’s right on the edge of Chinatown, Soho and Covent Garden. This meant for great restaurants every night but my room was over looking the street and it just never got quiet. On the first night I hardly got any sleep and picked up some ear plugs so the next three nights were bearable. The room was also quiet small, with a tiny sink in the on suite. The worse thing is that four nights stay cost over £800. Shocking but I guess that’s London rates for you. It was clean and centrally placed – that’s about the best I could say as long as you take some ear plugs!

I have to mention each of the restaurants we visited. All very different and all extremely delicious and all found via Yelp on the iPhone.

The first restaurant was Punjab in Covent Garden. Despite the waiter spilling my beer over the table the meal was excellent and a good start to the week. Just look at that starter above – mmm – lovely.

The second night was at Patara – a great Thai restaurant. The mains were great but again my starter was a real highlight (picture above). Third night was at La Perla – a mexican pub/restaurant that did messy but tasty food with massive portions.

By Thursday I was stuffed what with the big meals at night and the great lunches on the course. We went into Taro which was a busy Japanese restaurant. I swore I wasn’t going to eat much but I did – just look at the sushi – fantastic! My weight will undoubtedly pay for this. It’s a shame that the view and food was let down by the heat in the room. Warm first thing, by lunchtime it was getting too hot but it just couldn’t be cooled. By mid afternoon, especially after no sleep, it was hard to stay awake. Dry subject, little sleep and a really warm room.

One nice part of the week was the distance between hotel and course. Far enough away that the walk was meaningful but not far enough away to force us onto the underground. That was only used on arrival and it was a pain due to closure of circle line – our train was swamped with people and it was so damn hot. While walking around I was surprised by how many Boris Bikes were in use. Looks like a popular scheme and one thats easy to use.

As for the course itself, it was good but TOGAF is a fairly dry subject – have I said that already? The best parts of the course were the group exercises although our team was helped by having a powerpoint and sales guru on the team – not my area of expertise! Our team even one the prize – a pen each. Easily pleased.

All thats left to do now is to do the exam in the next few weeks and I should then be TOGAF certified. Eh? Enterprise architecture is the path I’m starting to follow which will be heavily influenced by TOGAF. A long way to go and much work to do but I look to have a pretty interesting couple of years ahead of me. There’s a lot to sort!

Tracking My Weight

Anyone thats known me for a few years will know that I’ve recently lost quite a bit of weight. From Sept 07 until around Mar 09 I lost just under 6 stones. The weight has been pretty constant since then, if anything starting to creep back on. Crap.

Now when I say creep back on, I really mean a couple of kilo’s over the space of 18 months. When I say a couple, I mean 5-6 kg’s. Crapper.

This wasn’t part of the plan. I wanted to get down to under 90kg’s, which while still heavy would be a great weight for me and something I’d be deliriously happy with. But this year has seen me go from 92kg at Christmas to around 98kg a few weeks ago. I then started feeling sorry for myself, and also fell into the usual trap….these scales are wrong. Even as I write that I feel embarrassed.

However, there was no need – they were wrong! A sneaky weigh in on another couple of scales proved me right. I swapped over the batteries and it made no difference. So there you go – I need a new set of scales which was the perfect excuse to order the Withings scale – the first wifi body scale. I’d been itching to get it since I first heard about Withings at the turn of the year but the main reason had always been the fact I had a perfectly good set os scales already. Also they cost a pretty penny – I paid £107 including shipping. Ouch. I’ve now been using them for over a week and it really is a lovely gadget.

So as scales go, they look good but the really nice feature is that they are wifi enabled, automatically uploading your weight, fatty mass and BMI to the Withings website. The weight tracking works for up to eight people from one set of scales so your whole family should be covered. The website is Flash based and lets you track your weight and add notes when certain events (curry!) have impacted on your weight. So far, so good. There’s also a free iPhone and iPad app that allows you to track your weight from the comfort of your iOS device. These are pretty straightforward but give you everything you need to know.

As it’s all automatic it means I can track my weight daily. Total overkill but it’s part of the new weight strategy – track all inputs and outputs. Track weight, exercise and calorie intake. Withings also make sharing information really easy with a number of options available. I can publish my data on the web via a link or an iFrame. I can also share my data with other users who can access via an e-mail address. I can also link Withings to a number of other accounts – Google Health, Runkeeper, even WeightBot on the iPhone. Finally, I can auto tweet my weight after each weigh in. No where to hide 🙂

It had to be done – a new twitter account has been setup just for my weight. Special. I’ve also hooked Withings into RunKeeper. I track all my hill walks on RunKeeper and also now track my efforts on the bike. Having all that info in one place plus the weight is really nice. Also, I’ve paid for one years access to RunKeeper elite which gives me more detailed graphs, stats etc.

The final piece of the jigsaw is to now track calorie intake. Couple of iPhone app’s are worth considering and I had myfitnesspal.com recommended so I’ll give those a try. The up shot of all that is that I’m a couple of kilo’s heavier than a year ago which isn’t too bad as I’ve not been doing the same amount on the bike. I’ll be stepping that up between now and Christmas so hopefully I’ll lose a little in the next couple of months – not long until Santa’s here now.

As for Withings – great gadget, expensive and a bit over the top but I love it.

Beinn Luibhean

So yesterday should have been a walk up another munro – Beinn Ime, taking in Beinn Luibhean on the way down. It would have been quite a long walk but the views from Beinn Ime would be worth it. However the weather was quite a bit worse than we expected and our route following was crap!

Firstly we marched off from the car park down the wrong path, realising only when we’d walked a mile. So we walked back to the road and made probably our second bad choice of the day. We decided to tackle the corbet, Beinn Luibhean, first and then onto Beinn Ime. The ground was pathless, boggy and quite heavy going. After a couple of hundred metres it started to get very windy. In fact we were blasted by 40-50mph winds for the next hour before we finally made it to the top of Beinn Luibhean. We were wet, cold and faces were red raw from the wind. Welcome to summer hill climbing in Scotland.

We found some shelter and decided not to carry on. Ime, like Luibhean, was shrouded in cloud with zero chance of any view. We were also pretty bushed already as the heavy ground and fighting the wind had taken it’s toll. On descending the cloud broke a little and the rain went off so at least I got a few photo’s. Also stumbled across a muddy and broken path which helped but not by much. In fact it was a slog back down which was pretty slippy, especially with lots of small logs lying underfoot which I think caused all of us to slip/fall one way or the other. Thankfully no injuries!

The RunKeeper output from yesterday shows our mistake at the start and also the odd route we took up and the more direct route down. One app I might try for next time is Trailhead from The North Face which allows you to download routes to your iphone prior to the walk so you can track how close you are to the recommended route. Would certainly have helped yesterday. One other note – battery life on the iPhone 4 is much improved on the 3 and 3GS. Used just under 50% of the battery while using RunKeeper which is excellent for a 5 hour walk.

The full set of photo’s are available on Flickr. Used a new camera bag yesterday, the Kata H-10, which proved very useful in the rain and wind. I had it hooked onto the waist strap of my bag which felt quite comfortable and kept the camera fully protected. The rain cover that comes with the bag was invaluable!

So a couple of lessons learned yesterday:

Check your bearings before setting off. We had compass and maps but failed to use them properly.
Tackle the munro first, then worry about other surrounding climbs.
Respect the weather. Mountain Weather Information Service provide accurate forecasts, and winds gusting to 55mph are not to be sniffed at.
Weather in July and August can be cold, wet and wild in Scotland. We cancelled a walk at the start of July due to 90mph gusts and yesterday got pretty cold in the wet and biting winds. Be prepared for all weathers no matter the time of year.
I need a bigger bag 🙂

Just a shame we didn’t arrange the walk for today – glorious weather by the looks of it. We’ll keep Beinn Ime for one of those days.

Beinn Ghlas and Ben Lawers

It’s been a funny year for walking. The first few months was difficult due to the severe winter we had. So much so that we couldn’t do much walking at all without crampons and an ice axe – something I’ll be picking up before the winter season kicks in this time. The last walk was The Cobbler, which was excellent but a few feet short of a munro. So 2/3rds of the year gone and no munro’s…until now. Beinn Ghlas and Ben Lawers are two adjacent munro’s that can be tackled in the same day. Another benefit is that the starting point of the walk is 400 metres so your almost half way just by getting out of the car – excellent!

There is also an excellent path leading from the car park and now that I’ve done it, I can say it’s an excellent first munro for anyone looking to get into walking. As for the views, I’m sure on a clear day they are spectacular, but for us what looked like a promising day turned into one lacking any view at all. Low cloud rolled in as we climbed meaning we got zero view from either munro. In fact it got pretty cold at the summits so it wasn’t a day for hanging around. Just a quick mention on weather – we originally planned this walk for the first weekend in July but had to postpone due to 90mph winds. I’m glad we did as we got talking to a couple of other walkers who were trying Bheinn Ghlas for a second time as they had attempted it that weekend but had to literally crawl down the hill as they got near the summit – it was that bad. Despite it being summer, the hills can be still unpredictable so you do need to carry waterproof just in case and it’s also worth checking the mountain forecast rather than the MET office site as they give very different results.

Bheinn Ghlas is reached first and if your not careful it’s easy to walk by as it’s a tiny cairn that marks the summit. It’s then about a half hour to 40 minute walk to Ben Lawers summit. This is more substantial, marked with a cairn and trig point but as mentioned, zero views for us. Despite the easy walk you are now just 17 feet short of 4000 feet so quite a height. We decided to take the same route back to the car park although you can descend and go around the base of Bheinn Ghlas, but it did brighten up a bit so we wanted to keep some height…and it also meant that climbing back over Bheinn Ghlas counts as another munro climb, no?

As ever I used RunKeeper to track the walk and I’m pretty pleased with the pace we kept up throughout. I don’t really bother stopping the clock when I start taking pictures or we take pauses for breath so actual time walked is probably about a half hour less. I almost forgot to mention one thing. Fucking midges. The car park was swarming with them – I covered myself with jungle insect repellant and ended up with around 6-8 bites which is a lot better than on Ben Lomond last year. If you do go out walking around now make sure you take some sort of repellant. Can’t wait until it gets a bit cooler and they will be gone for the year.

So thats munro 5 and 6 done. Hopefully get another 2 or 3 done before the end of the year – weather permitting!

Lessons Learned

Thursday night was the best to try and view the Perseids meteor shower. I’d not tried the Canon at night – in fact I’ve not done any night shooting before. I’ve always wanted to take pictures of the moon, stars etc but been let down by two things. Firstly, having a camera and lens that could take good clear pictures. Secondly, and most importantly, is the light pollution in Glasgow. The orange glow from streetlights is only managed by that of the fake tan parlours in Partick.

So with that myself and Shakeel set off off for…where could we go to escape the light pollution. We ended up heading to Whitelees where we knew it would be dark and also we could have easy access to an open space. This was the first mistake of the evening – missing a glorious sunset. If we’d got there a half hour earlier we would have had some great pics…instead we missed the sun but still saw the fiery sky left behind.

We then waited for the sky to get dark which took another hour or so. I’ve picked up a remote trigger but no matter what I did, I couldn’t get it to work so I had to give up on that and use the normal shutter button. Frustrating as it introduced a bit of vibration and I wanted to use bulb mode on the camera, which keeps shooting as long as I hold the shutter button. For a couple of shots I wanted to have exposure lengths of 2 to 3 minutes but that just wasn’t practical without the remote. More frustrating – I realised the next day that I had the cable between the camera and receiver the wrong way round. Lack of preparation had let me down.

So the pictures we were getting were good but didn’t seem to be picking everything up that we could see with our eyes. Asa test we then tried capturing one of the turbines by increasing the ISO while keeping the exposures long. That gave us some pretty dramatic shots.

We then used the higher ISO settings on the sky itself. This seemed to give better shots when reviewing them on the camera screen but with hindsight the lower ISO settings would have given a clearer shot of the sky so should have varied that a bit more. Looking at the shots I managed to get of Perseids meteors, they are pretty faint against the not so black night sky. A wee bit more patience would have paid dividends here. I should have reviewed the pictures on the iPad to see more clearly the shots I was taking.

Compare that to these shots on Flickr – I’ve got a lot to learn. Another important lesson is location. We waited patiently for the last remnants of the sun to go but there was still a glow from Glasgow. Despite being well outside Glasgow the glow from the streetlights was getting in the way of some of the pictures. Wispy cloud that we couldn’t see appeared as orange streaks in our photo’s which was disappointing.

But let’s not be too negative. It was my first attempt, I did manage to get some shots of the meteors and it was a good learning experience. In fact I’m really pleased to have tried night shooting as we are planning to visit Galloway Park which is one of only a handful of dark parks around the world. We’ll visit during winter as it’s dark a lot earlier. I also plan to hire out a large lens to make the most of the visit. At least this time I’ll have a remote trigger that will work and also understand the impact of ISO settings a little better. Practise makes perfect.

Inception

So on Saturday I watched Inception. It’s the talked about movie of the moment and my initial reaction on Twitter was:

Inception – Good but not great

That was how I felt walking out of the cinema. Almost disappointed considering the hype. So I wanted to talk a bit about it which will involve some spoilers, but not yet. First, some general thoughts on the film rather than the plot.

As expected, the film looked gorgeous. The set pieces were HUGE but without the over the top use of CGI that is so prevalent in today’s film. To contrast, I watched the remake of Clash of the Titans just a few days before which was more akin to God of War on the PS3 with some actors placed into the CGI. Tosh. It was also an incredibly good looking film. Both sets and actors were of the highest quality. So much so it’s hard to really find fault with any technical aspect.

Leonardo DiCaprio turned in another captivating performance. To think that he’s come from Titanic to great films like Blood Diamond, Body of Lies, The Departed and now this – is he THE hollywood actor for this generation? For me it’s between him and Christian Bale as my favourite actor right now. In fact, are they this generations De Niro and Pacino? Other good turns from Ken Watanabe and Cillian Murphy…in fact the only actor sold short was Ellen Page. She was great in Juno but I felt her acting in Inception was a bit wooden – maybe being saddled with a script that sometimes made her the audience guide didn’t help – think the voiceover in Blade Runner. She always asked the obvious questions leaving the other talent with the job of explaining to her, and hence the audience, what was going to happen next. Something just didn’t feel right with her performance. Despite the great talent, Tom Hardy stole the show for me.

The British actor owned every scene he was in. Some of that was down to his character getting some great lines and being involved in the thick of the action. Mostly it was his sheer presence on screen. If you get the chance catch his performance in Bronson (showing on Sky right now). Future star, if not already one – he’s currently shooting a new Mad Max film and I can’t wait to see how that turns out.

Before we hit the plot, and the aforementioned spoilers, a word on Christopher Nolan. Momento, Prestige, Batman Begins, Dark Knight and now Inception. Some of my favourite films. Dark, clever and always require more than one viewing. Without doubt my current favourite director. I can’t wait to see what he does with the next Batman film in a couple of years. Also, if you haven’t taken in Prestige it’s well worth a watch although can be a bit….ploddy.

Yet I walked out the cinema on Saturday and was almost disappointed with Inception. That’s changed after some reflection. Firstly, cinema’s generally piss me off. Noise, phone’s, other people, crap seats and a really sticky floor don’t add to the cinema going experience. Yes you get a big picture but that feels soft when compared to what can be viewed at home. Audio is loud, but I can do that at home if I want to as well. All in all, not a stellar experience. I also felt a bit of plod around the middle of Inception but that’s more down to me. I wasn’t thinking. The next day I couldn’t get the film out of my head. What really happened in that film, what did that visual clue mean, am I over analysing? That’s what is so great about Nolan’s films. You need to think to get the best out of them, something I didn’t really do at the cinema, and with that, it’s onto the spoilers. You’ve been warned so if you haven’t watched the film, go read something else.

Spoilers
Inception doesn’t answer everything. It leaves you guessing at the end as to what happened. Is this the mark of a great film maker – not scared to leave it down to the audience to figure it out? Of course, that means there are a number of events open to interpretation.

The ending revolves around whether Cobb (DiCaprio) makes it home to his family or is he still dreaming. This is done via the totem that is referenced through the film which cut’s away before falling – falling would mean it is reality. Some points on this and my take are:

1) Cobb visualises his children in his dream at a very young age. IMDB list the children as 3 years and 20 months (don’t know how they know this but it’ll do for me). Yet earlier in the film Cobb is speaking to his kids and at least one of them sounds a lot older.

2) Sticking with the kids, when Cobb visualises them you never see their faces. You always see them in the garden of the house wearing the same clothes. When he finally ‘gets home’ at the end of the film you see their faces, but the clothes are the same (I think) and they haven’t aged.

3) The editing at the end of the film hints at one of the dream concepts mentioned earlier – the dreams feel real but how did you get there? It feels rushed between Cobb wakening on the plane and very quickly appearing in his house – is he dreaming, does he know how he really got there?

4) When we first meet Miles (Michael Caine – just wanted him to say never – see Dark Knight), I’m sure he says it’s time for Cobb to come back to reality…or something like that. Does that mean he’s dreaming at that point? Is the whole film a dream?

5) The limbo visit’s and the multiple levels, kicks and jumps. The age difference between Cobb and Saito (Ken Watanabe) at the end is due to Cobb dying (and hence going to limbo) in level 1 – Saito dies in level 3 where time travels at a far faster rate. The bit I’m not sure about – how do they end up in the same limbo – is it because they are sharing the same dream space? All the jump’s kind of make sense to me, although again I’m kind of hazy with Cobb and Saito – was that Cobb convincing Saito that this wasn’t reality?

So with those points, and I’m sure there are more but that would only come with a repeat viewing, was Cobb dreaming at the end? Was the whole film a dream? My take is that the did complete the inception and that Saito’s phone call on the plane was real. From that point on though was a dream. The editing, the age of the children and the setting all point to this being a dream. What I, or I think anyone, can tell is whether that dream takes place on the plane, after Cobb is reunited with his kids or at some point in the future. During the film Cobb said he couldn’t dream anymore – was completing this inception and facing up to his wife in the dream world his chance to dream again?

The best bit about these theories – it’s entirely plausible that there’s another way of interpreting the events, and maybe thats the whole point. Has the movie been constructed in such a way that there is no right answer? Is this Nolan playing with our minds, stealing our dreams? In many ways it reminds me of Life On Mars which ended with no clear answer and open to many interpretations. That made it so much better and the same can be said of Inception.

I look forward to a repeat viewing in the comfort of my own house with a crossed finger or two that it will come with a directors overview of what he wanted to deliver and all the twists and turns throughout the film.

Inception – just great

New Digs

Consolidation. It’s a wonderful thing. After much postponing it was time to not only move from current host A Small Orange but also move my domain from 34SP. No real problem with either service provider – I’d just rather host everything at the one place which is Dreamhost. Since setting up with them last year for the podcast, I’ve had a couple of issues when they went through a network upgrade and then suffered a pretty big attack in May. The service for me is good value for money for the features and speed that I get.

So last Monday I kicked off the domain transfer (still not complete) and managed to quickly lose access to my e-mail, website etc. One day I’ll learn! However it didn’t take long to get back up and running. Exporting/importing in WordPress worked extremely well and it didn’t take long to get plugin’s and the theme installed.

Scarily, it’s almost seven years since I bought iand.net and stared the blog and it was the year before (16th Jan, 2002) that I first blogged at shweepa.net. Time flies.

The Cobbler

It’s official name is Ben Arthur but it’s commonly known as The Cobbler and it’s one of the best known walks in Scotland. I’d done the neighbouring hill, Beinn Narnain, last year mainly because Narnain is a munro and one of the party had done the Cobbler before. However The Cobbler had to be done. It had been recommended by too many people, not just for the walk up but for the last 10 metres or so – threading the needle.

Yet again we were lucky with the weather. Setting off from Succoth car park we climbed steadily via the excellent path. I say excellent…it’s also pretty dull as it zig zags back and forth. You gain height but it takes a while.

Once the zig zags stop you join an old tramway path which takes you gradually but continually ever higher until you get to the south face of The Cobbler. You have two choices here – a scrambly route up to the summit or continue on the path for a mile or so and take a stepped route up to the summit. We took the former which made for a more interesting ascent and a far easier descent down the steps.

The ascent was pretty straightforward although we did lose the path from time to time and some scrambling was required to get towards the summit. After two and a half hours we made it to the top and were rewarded with some great views over to Ben Lomond and down Loch Long. While we ate lunch we some a couple of others thread the needle. Decision made – it had to be done.

Now the photo above doesn’t make it look to hard but it’s a tight squeeze through a small gap and then a short climb up to the top. You have a ledge around a metre wide to climb up on. Doesn’t sound too bad but there’s a drop of 100-200ft below and the ledge slopes away from you.

That picture gives you a better idea of the slope and the drop. Getting up wasn’t too bad. Navigating back down was more tricky. Some of the drops starting playing tricks with the mind and you had to be careful as you inched back down. I would hate to have done this in the wet. In fact, I doubt I would have. I think the ledge would have been far too slippy. Spare a thought for Danny who was described as ‘humping the rock’ as he made his way back to firmer ground. Bless.

The gap in the rock you clamber through is called Argylls Eyeglass – I’m sitting in it in the photo above. Quite unique in my minor hill walking experience and a nice climax to the climb. It’s also worth noting that the walk was on May 9th and despite good temperatures at ground level it was well below freezing due to the wind at this height.

We descended quickly down the steps on the north face. Couldn’t believe how quickly we dropped – a far easier way down than retracing our steps. It was then a walk back to Succoth car park. We took just under five hours in total which included around 40 mins at the summit and quite a few stops.

One last point – it’s a very popular walk so it’s advisable to set off early as possible. We passed by lots of people on the way back to the car park and the summit was busy enough when we were at the top.

The Cobbler is a great walk, one of the best I’ve done so far, and it should not be overlooked just because it’s 100ft short of being classed as a munro. The paths are excellent and there’s the thrill of threading the needle at the end of the climb. Hopefully you’ll have as good a day as I did.

Beinn Dubh Horseshoe

My latest walk was in glorious sunshine. We decided against a munro in case the summit was still snow clad, instead walking the Beinn Dubh Horseshoe. This is a just over seven mile route that starts from the small village of Luss on the edge of Loch Lomond.

We walked over the wooden bridge that crosses the A82 and were soon on the assent up Beinn Dubh. Although there was a chill in the air the fleeces were dispensed with pretty quickly as there was warmth in the sun. It was also a pretty steep and constant climb to the Beinn Dubh summit. The views over Loch Lomond were stunning and from the summit there were great views of Ben Lomond and down Loch Lomond to distant hills in the North.

After a quick lunch we followed the path and fence into more boggier ground. This took us around the horseshoe and then down towards Luss again, Loch Lomond swinging into sight. You take a small rough road back to Luss which isn’t always downward but before long your crossing the wooden bridge and your in Luss car park again. A wword of warning – we set of early and the car park was empty but by mid afternoon it was swarming with visitors so get there early to an easy parking space.

Looking at the Runkeeper timings indicate a four and a half hour walk but I never bothered stopping Runkeeper while we we stopped for breaks so it’s probably more like three and a half hours. Beinn Dubh horseshoe is a rewarding walk with great views all round and is strenuous enough to consider instead of a munro if the weather is against you. The full photo set can be found on Flickr. This was my first walk with the 550D. I was pleased with the photo’s although would have liked a bit more time to experiment. I took just the camera and one lens, leaving tripod and other bits and pieces. It was certainly more heavy and cumbersome compared to the point and shoot but the weather meant I had less walking gear to carry. The winter might not be so easy – I’ll certainly need a bigger back pack.

Murder

War isn’t easy. There is no black and white. In the heat of battle mistakes happen. With that in mind, watch this video.

This video was released by Wikileaks and shows an Apache helicopter killing 12 people. Two were Reuters journalists. The full details can be read in this Guardian article. For me, this was murder. Watching and listening and remembering this was real and not some video game or drama is sobering.

No side is ever innocent in a war but it’s how a government reacts after incidents that tells the real story. The cover-up’s are worrying. Watching The Pacific tonight and wondering how grotesque a 10 part Iraq would be.