http://www.lenholgate.com/ Len Holgate's thoughts on this and that... Mainly test driven software development in C++ on Windows platforms... - Get a life en-us Len.Holgate@JetByte.com 2008-03-18T09:12:39+00:00 hourly 1 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00 http://www.lenholgate.com/archives/000767.html I've been away skiing for a couple of weeks in Davos and St. Anton, the snow was pretty good in both places but Davos won out as a more civilised skiing experience. St. Anton was just too busy for me,... Posted by Len at 09:12 AM | Comments (0) | Categories: Get a life ]]> 767@http://www.lenholgate.com/ Get a life 2008-03-18T09:12:39+00:00 http://www.lenholgate.com/archives/000734.html Once again Rands hits the nail on the head with The Nerd Handbook...... Posted by Len at 09:45 AM | Comments (0) | Categories: Get a life ]]> 734@http://www.lenholgate.com/ Get a life 2007-11-12T09:45:25+00:00 http://www.lenholgate.com/archives/000668.html I'm back in the UK briefly on 28th and 29th December and then I'm off to Davos for new year... I'm back in the UK in early Feb and then ski guiding for the Ski Club of Great Britain in... Posted by Len at 06:09 PM | Comments (1) | Categories: Get a life ]]> 668@http://www.lenholgate.com/ Get a life 2006-12-25T18:09:49+00:00 http://www.lenholgate.com/archives/000667.html Meanwhile, I'll continue doing slalom training in Tignes in the French alps... Beware, those poles are addictive!... Posted by Len at 08:14 PM | Comments (0) | Categories: Get a life ]]> 667@http://www.lenholgate.com/ Get a life 2006-11-30T20:14:53+00:00 http://www.lenholgate.com/archives/000662.html Well, today I discovered that I had passed the BASI Ski Instructor course that I've been taking in Argentina, so I'm now a Ski Instructor... We fly back from Bariloche to Buenos Aires on Friday and then onwards to the... Posted by Len at 07:06 PM | Comments (8) | Categories: Get a life ]]> 662@http://www.lenholgate.com/ Get a life 2006-09-26T19:06:58+00:00 http://www.lenholgate.com/archives/000642.html I've been looking at my web server log analysis and I have three peaks in my graphs for the last few days. The first big peak, 6,000 hits per hour, was on 28th March when my relationship break-up post was... Posted by Len at 07:11 PM | Comments (4) | Categories: Get a life ]]> 642@http://www.lenholgate.com/ Get a life 2006-04-01T19:11:36+00:00 http://www.lenholgate.com/archives/000641.html My relationship break-up posting gets linked to from CNN.com... And, of course, they put their own spin on it... However, as I mentioned in a reply to one of the comments on the original posting... "Actually, I wrote a much... Posted by Len at 06:51 PM | Comments (7) | Categories: Get a life ]]> 641@http://www.lenholgate.com/ Get a life 2006-03-29T18:51:58+00:00 http://www.lenholgate.com/archives/000638.html Sorry about the lack of technical postings for a while, this last month or so has been rather hard for me. On 13th February I became suspicious that something wasn't quite right with Michelle, my partner for the last... Posted by Len at 08:26 AM | Comments (213) | Categories: Get a life ]]> 638@http://www.lenholgate.com/ Get a life 2006-03-22T08:26:16+00:00 http://www.lenholgate.com/archives/000631.html I've been skiing for the last couple of weeks and now I'm back in London; normal service will resume soon.... Posted by Len at 03:11 PM | Comments (0) | Categories: Get a life ]]> 631@http://www.lenholgate.com/ Get a life 2006-02-05T15:11:59+00:00 http://www.lenholgate.com/archives/000618.html I scored a 28, which is "above average", so considerably nearer to Asperger's than it is considered to be "normal". Which, to be honest, seems about right to me. If nothing else, it might make you think... Via Steve Pavlina's... Posted by Len at 11:31 PM | Comments (7) | Categories: Get a life ]]> 618@http://www.lenholgate.com/ Get a life 2006-01-10T23:31:58+00:00 http://www.lenholgate.com/archives/000557.html I guess it's a combination of wine, Pink Floyd and the fact that this week the world wants to remind me that I'm older than I feel. Thoughts drift back to the past. Times past and friends forgotten. A long... Posted by Len at 11:30 PM | Comments (2) | Categories: Get a life ]]> 557@http://www.lenholgate.com/ Get a life 2005-10-25T23:30:01+00:00 http://www.lenholgate.com/archives/000510.html Sometimes I think programmers find the wrong things "cool"... This cartoon kinda sums it up ;)... Posted by Len at 12:17 PM | Comments (2) | Categories: Get a life ]]> 510@http://www.lenholgate.com/ Get a life 2005-09-19T12:17:16+00:00 http://www.lenholgate.com/archives/000411.html I'm currently based in Megève and my blogging (over here) has tended to be more about the skiing that I've been doing than the technical stuff. I expect I'll write a technical post or two later in the week... Perhaps...... Posted by Len at 01:55 PM | Comments (2) | Categories: Get a life ]]> 411@http://www.lenholgate.com/ Get a life 2005-01-31T13:55:22+00:00 http://www.lenholgate.com/archives/000410.html Today we had a second Christmas celebration. Michelle and I and my sister and her boyfriend went to my parent's house for a meal. Michelle and I had spent Christmas with Michelle's family and my sister was away over Christmas so we'd planned to have our family Christmas today. This was all fine until Boxing Day when we saw the news about Asia. My sister and her boyfriend were spending Christmas in Sri Lanka... Posted by Len at 11:36 PM | Comments (10) | Categories: Get a life ]]> 410@http://www.lenholgate.com/ Get a life 2004-12-30T23:36:37+00:00 http://www.lenholgate.com/archives/000395.html Our trip is now only 2 months away so I thought it was about time that the trip's blog went live... Meg&#232veSki, because we can... Posted by Len at 11:06 PM | Comments (2) | Categories: Get a life ]]> 395@http://www.lenholgate.com/ Get a life 2004-11-01T23:06:20+00:00 http://www.lenholgate.com/archives/000388.html Preparation for the ski season continues. Yesterday my latest purchase from amazon arrived; Waxing and Care for Ski and Snowboards. As we'll be putting down a few more tracks than normal this season I thought it wise to try and avoid having to pay for servicing the skis too often and finally learn how to do it myself. Luckily I have plenty of old skis laying around to practice on... Looks like I need to buy lots of new tools; cool! Posted by Len at 08:54 AM | Comments (4) | Categories: Get a life ]]> 388@http://www.lenholgate.com/ Get a life 2004-10-15T08:54:36+00:00 http://www.lenholgate.com/archives/000380.html As I mentioned last week, we've just got back from a week in Saas-Fee with Warren Smith. We've did this course last year as well, but due to the way the course is structured this didn't really matter much; for us this year's course built on last year's. The aim of the course is to develop the skills required to ski the whole mountain, regardless of conditions and terrain... Posted by Len at 07:44 PM | Comments (1) | Categories: Get a life ]]> 380@http://www.lenholgate.com/ Get a life 2004-10-05T19:44:23+00:00 http://www.lenholgate.com/archives/000373.html Looks like it's going to rain today... Posted by Len at 08:34 AM | Comments (1) | Categories: Get a life ]]> 373@http://www.lenholgate.com/ Get a life 2004-09-10T08:34:17+00:00 http://www.lenholgate.com/archives/000361.html The 2004/05 ski season starts for us in mid September when we're off to Saas Fee with Warren Smith again. Today we got our boots out and spent some time stomping around and practicing some of the jumping exercises that Warren had us do last time. We both have different boots to the last time we skied with Warren and they're more flexible and should work better with the kind of stuff he has us do. Since the ski season is approaching we've pulled the Skier's Edge machine out and we both spent some time on it today. Miche spends much more time in pre ski training than I do and last year it paid off so well I've decided that I should follow suit or soon I won't be able to keep up. It's potentially much more important this year as we're planning quite a busy season... Posted by Len at 10:56 PM | Comments (1) | Categories: Get a life ]]> 361@http://www.lenholgate.com/ Get a life 2004-08-22T22:56:43+00:00 http://www.lenholgate.com/archives/000304.html We managed to get in two skate sessions this weekend, which was nice. The weather was lovely and on Saturday we spent some time at Kensington Gardens. This was our third skate this year and we finally started to feel we'd got our legs back. On Sunday we were in Ilford, visiting my family, and just happened to have the skate gear in the car... We skated in Valentines Park for an hour or so; it was good. The path surfaces were pretty reasonable, better, in general, than Victoria Park. There was quite a lot of variety in paths, with some nice up-hill sections that really made you work. Posted by Len at 04:50 PM | Comments (0) | Categories: Get a life ]]> 304@http://www.lenholgate.com/ Get a life 2004-05-17T16:50:02+00:00 http://www.lenholgate.com/archives/000285.html Those of you who are interested in the Warren Smith Saas Fee ski training sessions you might like to take a look at Warren's latest DVD, Warren Smith Ski Academy Lesson 2. The first two sections, carving and steeps, were filmed during our course in September 2003. As you can see, the snow was pretty good and, as I said at the time, he had us doing some pretty interesting stuff. I think the freeride and moguls sections are from the course earlier in the year. With the whole group to choose from he had quite a lot of "don't do it like this" footage to exploit; I'm the guy in the carving section with the black helmet who's dropping his inside hand too low during the turn, quite pleased with the angle of both my skis though ;) We're off again for more of the same this year; but before that, a week in Megeve... Posted by Len at 10:40 AM | Comments (0) | Categories: Get a life ]]> 285@http://www.lenholgate.com/ Get a life 2004-03-20T10:40:44+00:00 http://www.lenholgate.com/archives/000273.html My birthday lasted all week, which was good. I celebrated on the day at Strada in upper street, on Friday at the Almeida and on Saturday at Curry Special. Thanks for all the wonderful presents. Right now the most "interesting" is probably the Vew-Do balance board that Chris and Hilary bought me... I'd really noticed a big improvement in my skiing from the extra balance work that I'd done during the summer on roller blades. The balance board could take that to the next level - at present the next level appears to be laying flat on my back... Posted by Len at 10:16 AM | Comments (1) | Categories: Get a life ]]> 273@http://www.lenholgate.com/ Get a life 2004-03-01T10:16:51+00:00 http://www.lenholgate.com/archives/000256.html We've just booked up with the Warren Smith Ski Academy again for another week of training in Saas-Fee. Not until early next season though :( But it's the first trip booked... Now, where and when to go this season... Posted by Len at 01:36 PM | Comments (0) | Categories: Get a life ]]> 256@http://www.lenholgate.com/ Get a life 2004-02-20T13:36:40+00:00 http://www.lenholgate.com/archives/000221.html Today's job is putting up the Christmas tree. That involves climbing around in our storage space "loft". We didn't use the tree last year, so it's now got 2 year's worth of stuff in front of it. I feel like I'm digging back through my past to get to it. I've just pulled out my previous pair of skis. 2m+ Salomon Superforce 2S. Straight as a very straight thing. Towering a good 8 inches above me (I know... but I was young, and keen, and they were wonderful at the time). How I ever skied them I don't know. How I ever came down the moguls of Gunbarrel at Heavenly on them I don't know (poorly and with no style, I think are the words I'm looking for). Even my current Salomon X-Scream Series look long now at 187 (just over head height), but it was hard to change down from 2m+ to 17xs which is what the shop recommended back then. But given that even guides and instructors are skiing skis that are below head height now, I expect that next time around I'll be buying those 170s... Posted by Len at 12:22 PM | Comments (0) | Categories: Get a life ]]> 221@http://www.lenholgate.com/ Get a life 2003-12-21T12:22:23+00:00 http://www.lenholgate.com/archives/000175.html I've been editing videos on a PC for far too long. It's a lot easier than it used to be, but it still feels like it's not quite ready for prime time for non professionals. At least it's now reasonable easy to find room to store the masses of data that you need to manipulate when editing DV video, and the editing programs are better, and the special hardware is cheaper or no longer special. It's still very time consuming though, and don't mention DVDs... Posted by Len at 07:08 PM | Comments (0) | Categories: Get a life ]]> 175@http://www.lenholgate.com/ Get a life 2003-09-24T19:08:28+00:00 http://www.lenholgate.com/archives/000171.html The 2003/04 ski season has started. Well, for me at least. We spent the last week in Saas-Fee, Switzerland, in the hands of the Warren Smith Ski Academy. Great fun, hard work, highly recommended. Posted by Len at 10:22 AM | Comments (0) | Categories: Get a life ]]> 171@http://www.lenholgate.com/ Get a life 2003-09-22T10:22:41+00:00 http://www.lenholgate.com/archives/000168.html I'm editing a wedding video at present. I'm using Pinnacle Expression to write it to DVD. I have a dual xeon 2ghz machine with hyper threading enabled and it insists on using no more than 25% of my cpu... Posted by Len at 07:17 PM | Comments (2) | Categories: Get a life ]]> 168@http://www.lenholgate.com/ Get a life 2003-09-12T19:17:15+00:00 http://www.lenholgate.com/archives/000160.html Michelle and I had a skate lesson with Ben Roberts on Saturday morning. It was a group lesson that ended up being just the two of us and which was really good and great value for money. Posted by Len at 10:34 PM | Comments (0) | Categories: Get a life ]]> 160@http://www.lenholgate.com/ Get a life 2003-09-08T22:34:04+00:00 http://www.lenholgate.com/archives/000157.html I have a dream. I've just done coding for the day and I'm sitting in a hot tub on the deck of a glass fronted chalet overlooking the slopes; glass panels around the deck so that nothing obstructs the view. Think the really expensive places in Whistler and you're on the same page. Posted by Len at 11:11 AM | Comments (2) | Categories: Get a life ]]> 157@http://www.lenholgate.com/ Get a life 2003-09-05T11:11:45+00:00 http://www.lenholgate.com/archives/000151.html We first saw Catherine Purves' work at a Hoxton art show, both of us loved the colour and texture of the pieces. We saw more of her work whilst visiting other local art shows but none of the pieces were... Posted by Len at 09:09 PM | Comments (0) | Categories: Get a life ]]> 151@http://www.lenholgate.com/ Get a life 2003-08-18T21:09:17+00:00