Recent Posts

You want a more reliable machine?

Manuel Marques April 4, 2013 No Comments Uncategorized , ,

image

My office computer, and elderly 2001 Pentium 4 PC running Fedora 17 with Xfce. 30 days without a reboot (only hibernating it at night), used daily! (unfortunately I’ve installed a new kernel and that will require a system reboot, so my uptime will be lost! ๐Ÿ˜› )

Easter extended weekend!

Manuel Marques April 3, 2013 No Comments Uncategorized , , , ,

It is always nice to have a bit of a break from work, and have a nice time with good friends and great food! Around here we have Bank Holidays on both Good Friday and Easter Monday – even though I actually spent part of the break coding and fixing my ragged piece of software, I had plenty of stuff to keep me amused!

Starting with Saturday – we had the Spring ICC! I remember fondly the last year’s ICC – it was great fun, the weather was lovely and sunny and we had a really good time (also, it was my very first race! Well… not a “real” race, but still counts as one for me!). Err.. not this year!

Boathouse, 7:30 AM on Spring ICC day. Can you spot the snow flakes falling? (I should have used the flash!)

 

This year’s weather has been very, very disappointing (in fact, it actually snowed today, April 3rd! ๐Ÿ˜› ), and the Spring ICC was no exception. We got out of the minibus in Plucks just to get greeted by a blizzard of snow gushing through the bus’ side door!

Gladly, it wasn’t like that all morning – there were periods of sunshine! – but I still raced under a bit of a blizzard on my first race (I raced twice, first on a single – ooh! – and then filling in a W4+ with another guy – there weren’t enough girls in the boathouse to have all-female crews, so we had to fill in for them! ๐Ÿ˜‰ ). My time on the 1x was quite miserable – 4:06 for a <1k race!! – and, predictably, I came up last ๐Ÿ™‚ . But then again, I don’t know how to go fast on a single, as I normally use them for leisurely “strolls” of 10k+! ๐Ÿ˜›

src=

Having fun!! And at least I managed to keep the boat relatively balanced for the photo… (photo credit Ben Zeng)

 

Sadly, there was no barbecue this year, and we managed to finish the whole event quite early (probably the nasty weather contributed a bit to that!) – I was back at my place around 1 PM!

2013-03-31%2014.30.15

Easter lunch: Great company, good food and wine – what else can I ask? ๐Ÿ˜‰

On Easter Sunday I also had a great time – a lovely lunch-which-was-then-extended-to-dinner with my Portuguese friends living here in Canterbury, with a gap in between to get to the pub to watch the Boat Race on telly with the guys from the club (Oxford won quite cleanly – quite a change from last year, rowing-wise, and I also enjoyed being in the pub with a pint in hand watching the whole race, instead of freezing to death on the banks of the Thames! :P).

A great time, indeed – I now fully recharged my “batteries” for some weeks’ worth of hard work!

Outch!

Manuel Marques April 1, 2013 No Comments Uncategorized ,

I am really out of shape! Just finished a run which was not even 11k and my calves are killing me! ๐Ÿ˜›
Well, now with longer days and (hopefully) warmer weather I’ll try to improve things! ๐Ÿ™‚

The test!

Manuel Marques March 29, 2013 No Comments Uncategorized

The test! by Manuel Jorge Marques
The test!, a photo by Manuel Jorge Marques on Flickr.

Via Flickr:
Today I really tested my new pannier bags, as my food supplies were getting low and therefore I had to do a somewhat demanding shopping expedition.
Everything was packed up properly in the bike, and its handling was still quite all right (of course, you could feel the inertia of the extra load – I tried to avoid going faster than 12-13 mph for that reason!).

Obviously the weight is something to be considered, especially when living on a hill! ๐Ÿ™‚

My corner office!

Manuel Marques March 28, 2013 No Comments Uncategorized

Via Flickr:
According to some I might be progressing in the office hierarchy by having a corner office. I think that does not apply here… But I do like my little corner! ๐Ÿ™‚

And slowly I’m making it my own: the old PC was salvaged from old lab equipment, I got a combination whiteboard/corkboard from Amazon and plenty of box files to organise everything!

Oh, but I won’t tell you where I keep my cookies… ๐Ÿ˜€

Page 16 of 27