Category: Uncategorized

And, finally!,…

Manuel Marques February 3, 2013 No Comments Uncategorized ,

… I had what I can properly call a “rowing weekend”. Had outings on both Saturday and Sunday, and funnily enough I’m actually getting up earlier on weekends than on weekdays! (well, my lab is only a 10 min bike ride from where I’m living now, so I can afford to take things easy while getting ready for work – eg I can have my breakfast calmly whilst looking outside and admiring the wildlife that seems to be attracted by the lovely garden! (can’t blame them, though, I’m also attracted by it!))

Anyway, I’m drifting from my original topic at an alarming rate (I normally notice that when I have to close two separate sets of brackets… 😉 ), let’s get back into what I had initially planned, OK?

Back to the rowing… on Saturday it was absolutely terrible. I filled in for an absence on a novice men’s crew and we took a 4+ out – we actually spent more time in the bank trying to set ourselves free from the overhanging tree branches, since the wind was continuously blowing us against one of the banks (the Stour runs to the East, and sadly that day the wind was blowing from NW… and quite strongly as well!).

2013-02-02%2012.11.56
This photo is quite deceiving – it does look calm and perhaps a bit bucolic, but have a look at the rippling on the river’s surface: it was *really* windy!!

So, yes, we did 3k and called it a day (outch). During the afternoon we had the aforementioned capsize drill at the pool and I came back home feeling a bit tired and all (definitely not due to physical exertion, as I had done absolutely nothing that day! But my sleeping levels were quite low as the day before I had been watching Silent Witness and the episode in question was actually quite thrilling 🙂 ).

This morning I had to get up at 0600 and we arrived at the boathouse with the day just breaking. Much nicer than the day before, not only was the wind noticeably milder but it was also blowing from the west – it was a bit tougher on the way back but much, much better than being stuck in those tree branches!! 🙂 Ended up taking the very same single in which I capsized the day before out for a 10k outing – quite nice, indeed, even though I still miss “my” old Aylings (bah, I know it isn’t mine, but I’ve developed a bit of an affection for it and I tend to be a bit overprotective when someone else is using it… 😛 ).

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And here’s a proper pict of UKent RC’s blades. I like the design! 🙂

OK, I think this basically sums up my weekend: plenty of rowing! I think I’m probably compensating in advance for next weekend, given that a pile of reports to mark is looming ahead!…. 😛

Today I capsized on a single…

Manuel Marques February 2, 2013 1 Comment Uncategorized , ,

… but I did it deliberately! 🙂 Apparently for security & insurance purposes British Rowing has some guidelines on simulated capsizing drills the clubs must do with every new member. Here at the University’s boat club they hosted it on a public pool: we had to do a 15-second underwater breath test, swim two lanes and finally capsize a single (they brought two singles to the pool, it was quite a sight to have two rowing boats right in the middle of the pool! :P).

It was quite interesting, and I managed to learn a few things (even though I’ve already capsized twice in the whole of my rowing life – both them unintentionally and in one of them the water wasn’t as nice as the one in the pool! :P). Apparently one has to double-tap the boat hull (to signal others you’re still down there and trying to set yourself free, I suppose), and when resurfacing it is important to hold one’s arm above the head in order to prevent injuries, should one hit the head on the boat’s rigger (I found this quite important, I had never thought about it!).

Dynamic wallpapers in a GNU/Linux desktop (or, for the record, anywhere!…)

Manuel Marques January 26, 2013 2 Comments Uncategorized , , ,

Well, this is a bit of a script I wrote one year ago or so: I wanted to have the feature of rotating wallpapers back in GNOME 3.x (I’m pretty sure it existed back in GNOME 2.x! 🙂 ), hence I wrote a bit of Python that reads a list of images in a given folder, randomly picks one and sets it as the desktop wallpaper – pretty simple stuff!

[sourcecode language=”python” wraplines=”true”]#!/usr/bin/python

import os
import random
import mimetypes
import time

myBackgrounds = ‘~/wallpapers/’

def prepareList(pathname):
items = []
for item in os.listdir(myBackgrounds):
if "image" in mimetypes.guess_type(item)[0]:
items.append(item)
return items

def randomizeWallpaper(listOfFiles):
randomListIndex = random.randint(0,len(listOfFiles)-1)
#~ os.system(‘gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.background picture-uri "file:///’ + myBackgrounds + listOfFiles[randomListIndex] + ‘"’ ) # for GNOME session
os.system(‘xfconf-query -c xfce4-desktop -p /backdrop/screen0/monitor0/image-path -s %s’ % (myBackgrounds + listOfFiles[randomListIndex])) # for Xfce WM

if __name__ == "__main__":
listOfWallpapers = prepareList(myBackgrounds)
randomizeWallpaper(listOfWallpapers)
[/sourcecode]

In order to keep it running automatically every # of hours, I’ve just edited my crontab file (/etc/crontab) to run it periodically (in the case below it is configured to run every 6 hours…):

[sourcecode language=”text”]
SHELL=/bin/bash
PATH=/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin
MAILTO=root

# For details see man 4 crontabs

# Example of job definition:
# .—————- minute (0 – 59)
# | .————- hour (0 – 23)
# | | .———- day of month (1 – 31)
# | | | .——- month (1 – 12) OR jan,feb,mar,apr …
# | | | | .—- day of week (0 – 6) (Sunday=0 or 7) OR sun,mon,tue,wed,thu,fri,sat
# | | | | |
# * * * * * user-name command to be executed

0 */6 * * * manuel DISPLAY=:0.0 /home/manuel/bin/rotate-wallpapers.py > /dev/null
[/sourcecode]

And since my dynamic wallpaper folder is synced with Dropbox, I can have the same wallpapers in every computer I have access to (even – gah – Windows machines!). Furthermore, I also have all my wallpapers on my Android phone, courtesy of DropSync (which pulls the images from Dropbox whenever there’s a change in there and downloads them to a folder on my memory card) and a dynamic wallpaper thingy called Wallpaper Slideshow. Both are free of charge at the Play Store, and the latter is extremely configurable!

A final note regarding my collection of wallpapers: all of them are photos I took, I want them to remind me of places I’ve been to… and places where I want to be! 🙂 It really brightens my day whenever I see a lovely photo of River Douro on my work desktop, for instance… 😉

And tomorrow, finally: a rowing outing!

Manuel Marques January 25, 2013 No Comments Uncategorized ,

It has definitely been a while since I last rowed in the UK… Thankfully, I still trained a bit whilst in Portugal, therefore I reckon it is not going to be too bad tomorrow morning! 🙂

The big problem: I have to (partially) cycle to the boathouse! It wouldn’t be that much of a problem if it wasn’t 10 miles away on hilly terrain with strong winds against me, though. Oh well, one has to endure certain sacrifices in order to get one’s rewards, right? 😉

Snow in Canterbury

Manuel Marques January 20, 2013 No Comments Uncategorized , , ,

It is been snowing non-stop since this morning around here – everything is completely covered in white, and the thickness of the coating is now quite sizable (more than 5 cm, definitely!).

This morning I walked (yes, I did not want to risk my chances by cycling, since only the really major roads are gritted) to the University and took some photos of the campus and its amazing Canterbury views completely covered in white. It was quite a sight… and everyone was enjoying themselves, I saw a lot of families with kids playing in the snow and going down the hill on sledges – good thing that is reasonably hilly around here! 🙂

Some photos (you can, of course, check the complete range on Flickr):
Canterbury cathedral
And this is a footpath...
Top of Eliot footpath, looking below

Hmm.. I wonder what is this for?

Manuel Marques January 19, 2013 No Comments Uncategorized , ,

image

Vodafone UK has some free SMS-based services such as this one, in which you text a given number and it returns you your approximate location (I reckon based on cell tower location services..). This seemed like an interesting service, but I was failing to see the point of it – until I saw the rest of the text. Of course! The Brits and their drinking habits… 🙂

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