With the beginning of a new week I thought I’d round out the last.

New Toys
I found a voucher for Everything Linux that I received in my bag at LCA this year. I had a look at their webiste and bought a vi reference mug, an O’Reilly pocket book on vi, some crappy gum and a half golf-ball USB iPod holder thingo.

For my running I bought a heart rate monitor, which I’ve talked about already. I’m loving it!

Today I bought an MSI Mega DJ. Sounds pretty impressive, hey. It’s a device that plugs into the cigarette lighter in your car and you plug your iPod or other audio device into. It has two USB plugs, one for the iPod and one for the FM transmitter. It then charges the iPod and broadcasts the iPod’s audio on one of four FM channels. The sound is good, considering my poor stereo and lack of antenna.

Exercise
I started the week with a run on Tuesday. We were in a big group and went from Rich and Dan’s place out to the Burswood golf course and back. It took us just over 40 minutes and we did about 6km.

On Thursday I did the same run again, after a gym session. Later that night I also had soccer!

Yesterday a bunch of us went and played Red and Blue (ask Rich about it - it’s like hockey but better :) and then climbed a wall. The idea was to get everyone from the bottom to the top and we did it. We all have ideas on what to do next, which is planned for the 13th of August. It was stacks of fun.

Today I went for a run in the hills from my folk’s place into Kalamunda and back. On the way back, about 1km from the finish, my shiins were hurting again so I walked the rest. I hope this is just because my body’s not used to so much exercise. I also went to the gym for a 30 minute workout in the afternoon after lunch at my parent’s.

Movies
Saturday night I watched the Family Guy movie with Mags. It was great hearing the characters swear.

Tonight I watched The Fantastic Four. I thought the dude from The Shield who plays Ben Grimm/The Thing was well cast, but the film wasn’t very deep. It was what I expected, and was a bit of fun.

For the last two weeks I have been running with Ben, Al, Mark and Ben’s sister Elise (and this last week, a bunch of other people including Rich with Dan and Andrew on their bikes) on Tuesday nights. The goal is to build up the the 12km City to Surf on Sunday the 28th of August.

I first started running about twice every three weeks in March. I was going with Mark or on my own and found it a bit boring when I was alone. Running in a group is fantastic! As Mark said, it’s much more motivating. Anyway, Alex said he would lend me his heart-rate monitor to see how I liked it. I love gadgets and knew I wanted to get one myself (Mark let me use his the first time I went running). From Tuesday’s experience, as well as Mark, Ben and Al’s advice I had a list of features that I would like in a monitor, so I went and bought one today.

I bought a Polar F11, and to be fair it’s not really a heart-rate monitor; It’s a frickin’ personal trainer!

I wanted something with a backlight, and Ben suggested that it would be good to see both the exercise time and the heart rate at the same time. He also recommended being able to monitor my recovery time. I’ve had a quick flick through the booklet and here’s some interesting (though certainly not exhaustive) features I’ve found.

First up, it can talk to my computer. I though “yeah, whatever” and expected a little asterisk indicating that I need some special receiver. I don’t though, and it seems to talk R2-D2 style to a mic, and listens via a speaker. I haven’t tested it, but I expect that the software will be Java and hence platform independent. Otherwise I have a project - work out what the beeps mean and make my own application :)

It has a feature called HeartTouch, which means when I move my arm to my heart (moving the two bits together) it activates some cool things. If I am exercising, and I’ve used the backlight, then it will engage automatically. It also switches to show the time, from the heart rate. I thought that was a cool interface design idea.

It knows my details (weight, height, date of birth, sex) and can test for my maximum oxygen uptake (VO2max). This is what I measured on the exercise bike when I went to the gym the first time with the trainer at an induction session. Based on this reading and some variables I set like how often I want to exercise, it will determine and exercise plan. It suggets the days and the types of exercise I should do to keep my heart-rate within one of the three zones it measures.

It records your progress against what it has suggested and will tell you if you are on track or behind in what you should be doing. It would be cool if it said motivational phrases like “you can do it” and “keep up the good work” every so often :) You keep a training diary of the different types of exercises (I think for example I can label exercises as “Indoor Soccer” or “Tuesday Night Running”) and save it all to the watch. You can use the comms function (R2D2) to upload this to a web application which crunches the data and says how wicked you are.

Because I like training in a group, I made sure that I got one that is “coded”. What this means is that if 100 people all buy the same monitor as me, we can all train together and they won’t interfere with each other. This means that the City to Surf won’t make my monitor go haywire :)

Lastly, it has an alarm which tells me if I stray out of my target heart-rate zone, though I think this is a fairly standard feature.

The other different thing I noticed was the heart-monitor attaches to the strap in a different way, and has some “pads” that creep out, which will make a better circuit with my skin.

All in all I’m really happy (so far) and excited to take it out for a spin. I hope I’ll be glad I spent a bit more and got a top-model in the coming months. I’m thinking I might “charge” myself 10 bucks each time I exercise and pay it off like that :)

I’m going to do a run with Mark and Rich this evening, and then have soccer at 8:10PM! Talk about commitment. I’ll keep you updated.

I got this email from Jonny Lanzon:

Westnet are looking for some good Microsoft and Linux Administrators to join our Systems Administration team.

Windows Administrator:
o Windows 2000 and 2003 Server Administration
o IIS5 & IIS6 Administration
o NTFS Understanding
o Knowledge of Mail protocols
o Networking skills

From all accounts, Westnet is a good employer. If you want any more information, get in touch with Jonny direct (I can give you his details).

Here goes:

“If the bitch is green, there’s gotta be something wrong with the pussy.”

Here’s some things that are on my mind, or have been in the last 24 hours.

Mark Shuttleworth
Go watch this video and then tell me that he’s not the best thing that has happened to the IT industry since its inception. I rate him as my biggest idol right now. It’s not about the money. Just watch the video. It was taken at Debconf last week. Debconf is the annual conference for Debian developers and users.

The Beach Boys
I grabbed the 3-CD platinum collection and it’s belting out through my headphones. Their tunes always remind me of my childhood - The Beach Boys were one of the first bands that I remember getting dad to make a tape of for me. They only sing about girls, surfing and cars, so I understood it from an early age ;)

I used to sit in our lounge room in Roleystone with dad’s massive headphones (the ol’ skool style with mad puffy earpieces) and listen to them for hours, normally on a Saturday when he was ironing and mum was working at Myer. I would have been about 6 or 7. I used to listen to the Top Gun soundtrack too, but that would’ve been later on. Of course it was records I was listening to.

It’s a shame Mags doesn’t “appreciate” this music (or the Bee Gees) and doesn’t like it on when she’s home.

Finally, the Beach Boys remind me of Flight of the Navigator. I’m not going to link to what that is, because you should know. If not, Google it, but never tell me you didn’t know.

Plans comin’ together
As Hannibal says, “I love it when a plan comes together!” Yesterday things were not looking good with a wireless project we’re working on with PACC. We’d put our gear in and it just wasn’t working. Today we did some re-jigging and re-working and devised a plan. I’m confident that our new approach will be better, because it was my idea. With Peter it was always my idea, and that’s a good feeling to know that if I said something he’d listen. He might not agree at first, but I always got/get my own way.

Fitness
This week has been a pretty healthy one. I went running on Tuesday with Ben, Al, Mark and Ben’s sister Elise. I went to the gym Wednesday evening and had my appraisal with a trainer. Last night I played indoor soccer and I plan on hitting the gym either Saturday or Sunday. I think Sunday is more likely.

I want to work up to the 12km City-to-Surf by the end of August, and with my training schedule and Ben/Al/Mark’s help I think I should make it. Right now I’m running about 6km comfortably.

The big thing I need to remember is how frickin’ great I feel after exercise.

Magazines
This weekend I will hit the pile of magazines that’s been growing over the last month. There’s three I bought yesterday: Hyper, a game mag that has a feature on the next-gen consoles; White Dwarf, a model and minature gaming mag that I enjoy flicking through. The little men are cool and I like the tactics that they use in battles. I’ve talked about it before. I also bought another video game mag from Planet Video (when I bought twin packs) which is pretty arty. It’s focussed on the culture rather than what’s the latest game on the market, so I think I’ll like it. On top if this I have a Dr. Dobb’s Journal and several Linux magazines - a Linux Format and three or four Linux Journals. It’s gonna be a wordy weekend.

Books
Maggie doesn’t let me read in bed - she can’t call asleep even when I have a tiny single-LED light on! I swear it’s all in her head, but anyway… I have been reading books more lately. It started with my finishing When Wizards Stay Up Late, which was a gift for my birthday from Mark and Gordon. It detailed the history of the Internet as we know it and was really interesting, but a bit slow in some places. I’m reading my Batman manual and Geek Chic which is a nice change from computers-computers-computers. Next in line is Joel’s book that I got from Mark and Em for my birthday too. This will be good, I know it. I also bought Snow Crash simply because I want to read a Neal Stephenson novel. I think Hale’s read it before, and I’m expecting good things.

And my half hour break is up. Back to the coalface/codeface.