Inchoate

Bali bali

On a modem up the side of a mountain so this'll be brief... Business school was intense, not at all what I'd expected: partly a deliberate course design decision (the notes handed out bore no resemblance to what was taught at all) and partly my expectations of something more linear. In essence the course was about team dynamics, and working under pressure (9am to 11pm posted times, often later in practice, for example) in a changing environment. Glad I did it but can't exactly say I enjoyed it. More on this when I'm back...

Hotel was amazing. 5-star. I'm going to have to let the photos do most of the talking, when I can upload them. Since then white water rafting with a fun 2m drop. Reptile and monkey parks today. Have had iguanas, tortoise, mosquitoes, and several monkeys physically on me; half of those intentionally. Right now in Lake View Hotel overlooking Mt Batur, a spectacular semi-active volcano with a lake at its base. 7:30am cycling trip around the lake & volcano finishing with hot springs. After that, Candidasa for snorkelling and then some island huts on Lembongan Island.

Phew! Hope everyone's well!

...via Singaport airport

12½hr flight passed painlessly after the previous night's 2hr sleep. OK, not totally painless - this crappy film I actually stopped watching after an hour, something I can't recall ever having done.

Changi airport is definitely the flashest airport I've ever seen, and at S$9/hr internet not a bad deal (£3).

Jazz bar

Promo eye candy

There's even a gym here. The airport lounge features a 2mx3m projector screen, the seats all having their own personal speakers. Too bad all that technology was wasted on American mid-league basketball... blank South-asian faces looking nowhere in particular.

Off to Bali

So I'm off to Bali primarily for Roger Hamilton's Entrepreneur Business School and a whole load of lounging on beaches and scootering about villages.

In other news, danced for a few hours on Saturday night which included 13km of cycling to get there/home too, so good news there. My feet absolutely f'king killed but hey, it's all good, and they feel well solid today.

I benchpressed 105kg on the machine today hitting my 100+ target two weeks early. Leg extension also saw 105kg lifted yesterday (there's only two more plates left on that one, ha). Gonna have to get onto the real weights soon...

And I'm doing so much work I can barely think straight (no sleep for Paulie tonight, that's for sure). £250K House purchase target: Jan 2006.

BBC English grammar test

The BBC Magazine has this grammar test on intermediate grammar and spelling. I scored 20/20 in about a minute... but then I'm a grammar and spelling nerd.

Perl Brainbench test

[Re-instating this entry after a database glitch!]

Brainbench is a company that provides online tests primarily aimed at employee assessment. Since I write software primarily in perl I've been curious about what I'd manage on it for a while now. The Perl Brainbench test has been around for years and has a good reputation in the perl community in terms of fairness, accuracy, wording, and scope of questions. Many, many perl programmers have taken it.

I finally took it today and scored 100% putting me in the top 5% of other test takers which I'm pleased with. One thing I didn't realise was that how fast the questions are answered has some bearing on the final grade; ah well. Anyway I'm particularly pleased with the score since I didn't cheat e.g. by taking a practice run at it. It's certified against my jobs(at)paulm.com address.

Brighton beach BBQ burn

Awesome weekend in Brighton with the local Burning Man folks who put together a fairly impromptu beach BBQ party for those of us (40 at the party!) who aren't at the festival proper. We even burnt a man! This is the traditional end of festival ceremony that has been the centre piece of the event since its inception in 1986 on Baker Beach in San Francisco. A couple of guys brought quite a decent sound system that was built into a stage coffin, complete with ornate handles and slightly demonic flashing lights...

That's one really impressive aspect to the Burning Man folks - when someone says "let's do an event" it always happens, and invariably with flair. Any event that requires total self-provision for a week in a desert environment tends to attract people who Get Stuff Done. Not having to worry about whether someone is going to flake or not when organising events is a real treat. Just do it!

A very large mailbox

In some cobwebbed recess of cyberspace there is a machine running, and I happen to have god privileges on it. Dusting off a route into the box, I logged in and found what seemed to be rather a lot of system mail; about 90MB or so. Opening it, and watching the progress counter glacially increment, I quickly realised it was much much bigger than 90MB. I'd missed a digit, it was nearly a gigabyte. That's nearly half of what gmail offers, all in a single folder. It's not often you find that kind of thing lying around...

Proper actual walking

Today for the first time I have been walking around the house in ordinary shoes (trainers) without use of crutches or any other support.

As it happens, it was the same shoes I had on when I fell three-and-a-half months ago. It was a bit of a squeeze getting into them but I managed it and they feel fine now they're on. It was an odd melancholy moment putting on these particular shoes, whose inshoe and heel was subjected to, and transferred enough of a force to burst inch-thick bone. The shoes seem OK :-)

Quite surprisingly, I'm not shuffling like I was a few days ago, and have been making a reasonable approximation of normal walking gait. Even took myself off to the grocer's. My heel pads were starting to hurt a bit later in the evening.

Overall though, very encouraging!