Uncle Traveling Matt: May 2007 Archives

May 30, 2007

I Had A Dream

It was a few months ago now. I awoke at the presence of a man standing at the end of my bed, I felt an initial shudder of fear as I lay there. He said nothing, I didn't recognise his face but I realised it was my grandfather. He stood there briefly looking at me and then left. Next I am outside, it is summer, somewhere near the coast. The landscape is typical New Zealand, but not present day, like an old film. A car drives, I am looking in from outside, they are going to the beach. My granddad is sitting in the back with two others, he is young, they are happy, talking away, but i hear nothing. He looks at me and smiles, he is happy. My granddad died two years ago this month. I was on the other side of the world at time. I had lost other family members before, but that was the first time I ever really cried.

Great hall locations: Miscellaneous | Talked about by: 3 Fraggles

May 28, 2007

Busy Making Other Plans

...as John Lennon said. While due to the complete lack of entries here you'd think I haven't been up to much, quite the opposite is true. I have been a very busy beaver in recent weeks, far too busy to have time to write about it in fact!

Ok, let's see, I've just gone through the banking spanish inquisition to get second credit card. I don't actually need a second credit card, as the credit limit my on gold card is so high, I'd never be able to afford to pay it back if I actually ever used it all. No this card is my in lieu of an overseas bank account card, as getting a bank account in Italy is a huge pain in the arse, and their fees are really expensive too. It also happens to be from the one Visa card issuer in the country that doesn't charge for overseas cash advances and their currency conversion rate is a mere 1.8% above interbank. So I can use it like a normal debit card and not have to worry about the Italian system at all.

Next, I have been working some crazy hours trying finally to get this Business Manager software my company is developing completed. This project has been in the works for some time, but has always taken second priority to client work and hence is way off schedule. This weekend I managed to get one of the main UI widgets, the list view to code complete stage—finishing all the behind the scenes plumbing that make it actually work.

It was also good to see recently a show on CNN called Global Office that covers current and future business trends in the workplace and technology. The episode covered interestingly from the point of view of my project, Microsoft's technology labs showing a preview of what they're planning 5-10 years out. It was good to see they had come up with some of same ideas I'm rolling into this project, and their take on them—a nice validation in a way.

Next, I have been spending countless hours working on learning Italian. Apart from the Monday night classes in Auckland, I have been working through a book of Verb Drills I got from Amazon and meeting with local Italian's to practice the language. I'm also still reading the Harry Potter series in Italian. In all I'm spending least an hour per day on the language usually more.

I have also been learning to dance, which was initially quite outside my comfort zone. After the first lesson I wanted to quit, but I've stuck with it and it has turned out to be a lot of fun. The class is a diverse range of people in age from about 15 to 60, and you dance with several different people during each class. I've been making steady improvement and can now Cha Cha and Foxtrot with relative confidence!

In addition to all of this, I have still been doing some light training to kept up my fitness and flexibility level over the winter!

Great hall locations: Miscellaneous | Talked about by: 0 Fraggles

May 20, 2007

Songs Of The Week #4

My absolute favourite track at the moment is Franco Battiato's cover of "Insieme A Te Non Ci Sto Più". This song featured on the sound track to the film Manuale d'amore, and was originally released by Caterina Caselli in 1968. Also, in the playlist this week are two more tracks I really like from The Streets and The Shins.

Franco Battiato
Insieme A Te Non Ci Sto Più
(wma audio)

The Streets
When You Wasn't Famous

The Shins
New Slang

Great hall locations: Songs I Like | Talked about by: 0 Fraggles

May 16, 2007

Fixing Broken Virtual PC Networking

Originally posted on the Virtual PC Guy's WebLog. Since my networking seems to break all the time I'm posting it here so I can find it again.

1. The Virtual Machine Network Services driver is installed but not enabled.

On a Windows XP system you'll need to:

Open the Start menu and click on Control Panel.
Click on Network and Internet Connections and then Network Connections.
If you are using classic mode you just need to double click on Network Connections.
Locate your network adapter, right click on it and select Properties.
Check the Virtual Machine Network Services entry and click OK.

On a Windows Vista system you'll need to:

Open the Start menu and click on Control Panel.
Click on the Network and Internet and then Network and Sharing Center.
If you are using classic mode you just need to double click on Network and Sharing Center.
Click on Manage network connections, in the task list on the left side of the window.
Locate your network adapter, right click on it and select Properties.
You'll need to approve this action.
Check the Virtual Machine Network Services entry and click OK.

2. The Virtual Machine Network Services driver is installed and enabled, but does not seem to be working.

Follow the steps for the first solution to get to the properties display for your network adapter.
Select the Virtual Machine Network Services entry, and click Uninstall.
Reboot the physical computer (this step is critical)
Return to the properties display for your network adapter.
Click Install...
Select Service and click Add...
Select the Virtual Machine Network Services entry and click OK.

Great hall locations: Computing | Talked about by: 0 Fraggles

May 7, 2007

MySport TV Show

During the course of a most productive weekend, which included doing the pending maintenance work on my car and a whole stack of things around the house, I finally got around to copying the coverage of National Triathlon Series off our hard disk video recorder. Ideally it would of been better quality-wise to record it straight to DVD, as the hard disk recorder compresses the video quite heavily, but the coverage of the Whangamata race was shown while I was in Italy and the DVD recorder isn't ours.

I've edited the programme down to just the intro and the coverage of the Whangamata race (the title says Wellington, but someone obviously didn't proof read it before broadcast! :-P). The race shown is only the longer Olympic length triathlon, since they were covering 3 events rather than 2 like the earlier episodes they unfortunately didn't include the sprint length races. However both races covered the same course, just the number of laps differed, so it gives you an idea of what the course was like nonetheless. Something which was missing in the photos I posted which just covered the transition area.

The video is in Quicktime MPEG Format, so you'll need a recent version of Quicktime Player to view it—this is included with iTunes, so if you have an iPod you'll have it installed already. Right-Click on the link below and click "Save As...", enjoy!

My Sport - Whangamata Triathlon (Quicktime MPEG / 12.2MB)

Great hall locations: Triathlon | Talked about by: 2 Fraggles

May 1, 2007

Songs Of The Week #3

I'm really lovin' Sigur Rós right about now, it sounds soo much better on high definition headphones than the YouTube version though, but at least this clip gives you some idea. Fall Out Boy is also on heavy rotation on my iPod, as well as a few of my favourite Beatles tracks—the original simple stereo mixes, not that remastered bullshit.

Sigur Rós
Hoppípolla