Most people who know me, will attest to the fact that I love coffee. As you can imagine, when I stumbled onto a bunch of nifty visualisations by Lokesh Dhakar of what actually ends up in your cup when ordering espresso, I was suitably impressed. Not to take anything away from the wonders of coffee, the set of visualisations of the different types of baseball pitches was probably even better.
Monthly Archives: November 2007
Bringing The “A” Game
Last night was the first round of the next season of fixtures for the Robina Squash Club. The teams were reorganised in an attempt to increase the competition in each level within the different teams, which I always look forward to.
My first match was scheduled against a long time rival, who happened to be out of the country. As such, one of the players from a higher grade decided to fill in and it produced some great squash. There was a lot of shot variety, ranging from drop shots all the way to lobs and drives; which was really fun to be amongst. After all was said and done, I lost 3-1 however since the games where so close (2-3 points difference per game) – I ended up winning on points!
If that wasn’t enough exercise for the night and I can assure you, my body was telling me it was; I was asked to fill in for another team as well. With about 15 minutes of break between the two matches, I stepped back onto the court to play my arch nemesis from last season. I changed my game up against Steve to play to my strengths and his weaknesses and took the match 3-1, with strong wins in each game.
Not that it’ll come as a surprise to a lot of people, however after playing so well last night – the one thing that I changed was making a conscious decision to think while I was on the court. While that might seem like an obvious thing to do on a squash court, it is all too easy to just coast along hitting the ball back without applying a lot or any strategic pressure to your opponent.
I’m looking forward to next week already, with the hope that I can continue the form I showed last night forward into the season.
If you love squash or would like to learn, get in contact with the club:
Robina Squash Club
University Drive
Robina QLD, 4226
0427 627 229
Toowoomba Man Impaled On A Tree Branch
That was the headline on the five o’clock news tonight and it isn’t something that you hear every day.
When the actual news item was covered in full, I find out that it was from an abseiling accident. Next up they mention that it happened on Mount Tinbeerwah, followed by it being a 27 year old male and that he was from Toowoomba. All of these things start to hit a little close to home as a bunch of my friends regularly go hiking and abseiling in that neck of the woods. When the video footage starts rolling, who do I see laying flat on his back being winched into a helicopter other than one of my best friends.
After talking to another mate on the phone tonight, I find out that Anthony was abseiling down a 100m face on the mountain at pace. What he didn’t realise was that there was a branch of some sort sticking out from the cliff face that he couldn’t see coming and at great pace, he essentially ‘sat’ onto the branch. The branch was approximately an inch thick and it entered him through the groin and exited through his stomach. Incredibly, Anthony says he didn’t realise exactly what had happened at this point and could feel the stick in his pants but didn’t think anything of it – so he continued to abseil the next 50m to the base of the cliff face!
Nearly as soon as it happened, thanks to the miracle of modern technology – they were talking to him at the base of the cliff face and called through to 000 for assistance. In a very short amount of time, the emergency services were on scene and providing first aid while the Energex Rescue Helicopter was en route.
Anthony was flown to Nambour Hospital where he underwent various scans and ultimately surgery. At this stage, we’re told that while it was very serious it looks as though he might have escaped relatively unscathed.
Update:
After going into surgery yesterday afternoon, Nambour Hospital have confirmed that the surgery was successful. The branch has been removed and in an amazing act of good fortune, it has missed all vital organs as it passed through his body. To my surprise, he is already up and about but will remain in hospital for a couple of days for monitoring, to make sure that no infection takes place. I think a lottery ticket or three are in order.
Coverage:
- http://www.abc.net.au: Man impaled on tree in abseiling accident
- http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au: Abseiler impaled on tree
- http://www.news.com.au: Abseiler impaled on tree branch
- http://www.smh.com.au: Man impaled on tree
- http://www.theage.com.au: Man impaled on tree in abseiling mishap
- http://www.thedaily.com.au: Abseiler survives impaling, Impaled and lucky be alive
- Courier Mail: 1, 2
O Christmas Tree, O Christmas Tree
Since 2002, Claire and I have been decorating a five foot Christmas tree with much delight when the festive season comes around. For the last couple of years, we’ve been wanting to replace our Christmas tree with something a little newer as the old one was showing its age.
Last week while kicking around in Myer, we happened to go into the Christmas section and they conveniently had 25% off sale on. While we were there, we picked out a new seven foot Christmas tree and placed our order. We were a little nervous at first, as the sales man had just informed us that the last tree of that type was sold to the person on the opposite counter. Fortunately, he was able to track one down from a Myer in Brisbane and had it shipped down to the Gold Coast.
Someone from Myer called on Wednesday to let me know that it had arrived and on Thursday afternoon I decided I’d go down and pick it up. I was expecting it to be an enormous hassle to collect the fancy pants Christmas tree, however I was pleasently surprised that it took all of about 3 minutes and no I’m not kidding!
Decorating the Christmas tree this year is going to be a bunch of fun, we’ll no doubt pick up a swag of new decorations for it too – can’t wait!
Multiple Personalities
I’ve been blogging on this domain since 2004 on various topics ranging from technical to personal and everything in between. For quite some time now, I’ve been thinking that I’m not really meeting anyones reading needs, as the content on the site flip flops between technical and personal so often; such that people that only want technical are forced to filter out the personal fluff and visa versa.
To solve that problem, I had a couple of different options available:
- separate the current site in halves using a category, such as personal and technical
- move the technical content onto a subdomain, such as http://technical.lattimore.id.au
- move the technical content onto a completely different domain
I currently make fairly extensive use of categories within the site to organise my posts. I could have gone through and uncategorised the current posts and placed each post back into one of the two new categories or sections. To help with searching or stepping through the site, tagging all of the existing posts would have aided in that area. While it would have worked, it didn’t feel right to inject ‘useless’ categories into the mix to solve the problem.
Option number two would require multiple WordPress installations. There is nothing wrong with that and it’ll obviously work just fine on a technical level but without a little bit of upfront work, seemed as though it’d end in tears some point down the road.
In the end, I chose door number three and set about finding a new domain name that fit the bill. I wanted something that had a clearly technical inclination and after using a handy domain utility, couldn’t believe my luck when I found that ifdebug.com was available.
At the moment, I’m undecided as to what I’ll do with the existing content on the site. I’m inclined to just leave it here as it’s the simplest option, however there are benefits to moving it over to if debug; we’ll see how it pans out.
In the meantime, expect a steady stream of personal content to be published through this site and the technical goodies to land on ifdebug.com.