Mr-F.org

At least those were words from our club chairman after I attempted and achieved both of the National Pool Lifeguard Qualification (NPLQ) time swims.

For those of you that know me, you might think this isn’t anything out of the blue since I teach life saving virtually ever Wednesday.  However, what you might not realise is that because I generally teach the higher awards, I’m teaching for the whole session and therefore unable to actually train myself.  I think it would be fair to say that I have not managed to do any serious water based training for well over two years now, so to be suddenly told to attempt what could be argued as two of the hardest time swims in all of the life saving awards we teach, was a bit shock to the system. What added to the pressure was that one of my group who has just passed here Bronze Medallion; well done again Sophie, was also attempting the swims at the same time and was eager to beat me.   Well I’m happy to report that I managed to put the young whipper snapper in her place (sorry Sophie, maybe next time), by beating her in the first time swim and coming in at the same time on the second.  I do think I could have beaten her on both but I had a really poor start on the second and also I was towing the brick that is Alan, rather than the feather that is Katy.  Anyway, as you might guess I’m rather chuffed with myself, though I do feel being called an old man by a woman that is older than me was rather rich

The fifth day we had a really late start due to the three ladies in the apartment over sleeping. However, no-one wants to ski with tired and thus potentially volatile women, so I left them to there slumber. They finally managed to stir around eleven o’clock to yet more brilliant sunshine. Have to say that we were all hoping for some fresh snow, but alas we were not in luck. Anyway the rest of the day was pretty uneventful with Katy and Cara going off to do their own thing and Mrs F and I enjoying some runs on our own.

The final day, and we awoke to a misty outlook. Katy and I had decided that we would go for a couple of early morning runs, whilst Mrs F and Cara were still trying to rouse themselves from the land of slumber. Whilst traveling up the first of two gondolas to our start point, we slowly watched as the mist draw closer and closer in. We both hoped that we would rise above this mist, but were greeted at the top by only more mist and a light snow shower.

Having travelled all this way we decided to make the best of the current situation and headed down the other side of the mountain, to see if it was better the other side. The weather didn’t clear much, but the fresh snow was as Katy put it “awesome” to ski on. We took the chair lift back up and even though the visibility hadn’t improved a great deal decided to make another couple of runs before heading off to meet up with Mrs F and Cara.

We just had time to hit the green run we did earlier in the week and managed to complete the whole run in 15 minutes flat. I think this was due to the fact that Katy had the bit between her teeth and managed to get some good run ups to the flat parts. Anyway, after finishing that run we were just in time to meet up with Mrs F and Cara. As the snow fall was getting heavier we decided that we would call it a day and instead release the inner child and headed over to the an empty field to try out the new bum boards.

As you can see the inner child in each of us came out to play, and much fun was had by all. In addition to simply sliding down on these boards, we made a train linking legs around the person in front, and also made snow angels in the fresh powder. However, once you get these boards going there is much control on them, and several times we all ended up in a heap, but it was great fun.

Well after the long drive down and the first two days of skiing, tiredness has finally set. On the third day we all slept in longer than we planned. So whilst Mrs F and Cara decided to head into town to do some sightseeing and shopping, Katy and I headed for the slopes.

We decided to start the day with a speedy run down a particular green run in the resort. Last year at the end of the week here in Saint Gervais (before Katy hurt her knee), we managed to complete the run in about eighteen minutes. We thought we would be able to match this time, but not beat it considering Katy still was not back up to full speed on her board. However we managed to set a new speed for our run of around fifteen minutes. Though at the bottom I have to admit my legs were burning. I wasn’t sure how much the lack of exercise would really affect me, but now I know. It has been nearly ten months since I have done any form of karate training, or indeed any other regular sports, and boy was I feeling it in my legs. After that run we just explored a number of runs at a more gentle speed and ended up skiing to the very last minute of the day.

Yesterday was pretty gentle day. Mrs F and I flew down a run and then sat peacefully in the baking sun whilst we waited for Katy and Cara to catch up. It’s another one of those surprising things about ski/snowboarding holidays. Even when the slopes are busy, they are still pretty quiet and you can easily sit there and just enjoy the peace and quiet. That is unless you find yourself next to a French man who has decided to scream his head off to talk to his family who are just behind him. Anyway, after a late lunch, we all decided that we were still pretty tired and ended up heading back to the apartment.

I’ll post some pictures later from these two days.

Well we arrived safely at the hotel after driving through the night. There was a small mess up with the room that we booked, however, the room we have is ok for us, as the real reason we are here is not to spend hours in the hotel, but to spend hours playing in the snow half way up the mountain.

The first day of skiing was a pretty relaxed affair, morning coffee and croissants (pan-au-chocolate for Mrs F). Finally rolled out of the apartment around eleven and headed up the hill to the ski hire shop where a nice surprise was waiting for us. Instead of the normal nightmare of having to tell everyone your shoe size and weight again, plus the endless queue of screaming kids and harassed parents, we were told that all our equipment had been sorted, adjusted and put into a locker for us. All we had to do was sign some papers, pick up the key and leave. Ten minutes flat from entering to exiting the store instead of the normal half hour of wishing you had got there before those damn kids had. After that it was pack lunch on the side of the piste in the baking sun (Mrs F, especially happy about the baking sun part). I think it’s one of those misunderstanding about ski holidays. Unless you’ve been you think of them as cold holidays. Whilst it can get cold like any normal holiday, the majority of the time the sun is blazing away and it’s actually very hot.

Second day the morning started pretty much the same. Up early for stroll in town for an emergency pair of salopettes for Katy. Only problem was that the only ski shops that were open at 0830, didn’t sell clothes. Anyway, the day’s skiing went pretty well, with the odd fall by everyone.

Jen and I went for a walk in the fresh snow. Whilst out and about I spotted this:

Children, they are so great, and this one obviously though that the face should have a really large smile

Well this is just a bit of fun that I stumbled across whilst drinking my morning coffee. The weather forecast in terms of the star wars universe.

http://www.tomscott.com/weather/starwars/

At the moment Canterbury is currently being described as “It’s like Hoth out there…. cold, ice, freezing desolation”. Oh and don’t forget the little comment in the bottom corner “You may have to climb inside a tauntaun for warmth.”

How great!

In my new company there are only three full time employees and a pool of freelancers that we use when we have lots of work going on. This means that we are able to keep our month overheads down and be pretty agile when needed. However, this also means that in general each of us has to wear about three different hats depending on what is happening, unlike larger companies where you generally have a single role to fulfill.

One of my additional roles in the companies is to be one of the two sysadmin monkeys, the other being Damian. This is not something that is completely new to me as I did do a small bit of sysadmin work in my previous job. However, this is on a completely different scale. I thought that I’d loath this part of the job, but today proved that actually I quite enjoy crawling around the servers hard disk and finding solutions.

After finally getting my company phone, I was confused at being told that I couldn’t change the ring tone (except the ones that come on the phone). However, since the iPhone seems to be a very popular handset these days, it seems crazy that we should all be limited to using the same set of tones for incoming calls. Don’t get me wrong the sounds on the handset are fine, but it gets a bit much when you’re sitting in a London office and your phone goes off and four other people reach for their phones because they think it is their handset ringing.

So will a little bit of time and research I’ve come up with this list of instruction on how to create your own iPhone ringtone. However, the most important thing you should know is that your ringtone sound can only be a maximum of 40 seconds longs, which the phone will loop for you. Any longer than 40 seconds and it just won’t work.

Step 1: Load the original sound file into iTunes (I’m working with iTunes 9)

Step 2: Find out the start and end time indexes for the section of the file that you want to turn into a ringtone (Hint: just play it in iTunes and copy the time indexs from the bar along the top of the screen)

Step 3: Right click on the sound file and select “Get Info”

Step 4: Select the “Options” tab

Step 5: Fill in the start and stop time indexes from the values you noted down in step 2

Step 6: Click “OK” to dismiss the dialog

Step 7: On the general tab click the “Import Settings” button

Step 8: Set the “Import Using:” option to “ACC Encoder”, remember what you had set here before so you can change them back later

Step 9: Close down both dialogs boxes using the “OK” button.

Step 10: From within iTunes, right click on the sound file and select “Create ACC version”.

After the conversion process has finished a new entry in iTunes’ library will appear.

Step 11: Right click on the new version of the sound file and select “Show in Finder”.

Step 12: In iTunes, delete the new version of the file, when prompted if to keep the file or delete that as well select “Keep”
NOTE: You must do step 8, or iTunes won’t import the file back into it’s library in the correct place

Step 13: Move to the finder window that shows the converted sound file and you should see that it has the an extrension of “.m4a”, change this to “.m4r”

Step 14: Double click the file and it will be re-imported to iTunes.

Step 15: Go back to iTunes’ preferences, General Tab, Import Settings and change the options back to what you original set them as

Step 16: Right click on the original sound file and select “Get Info”. Go to the options tab and uncheck the start and stop times so that when you play song the whole track is played not just the forty second section you wanted as a ringtone.

Week 7
Nothing

Week 8

Sunday
Sea swim: 20 minutes

Monday
Cycle: Distance 5.46, Time 21:39.9, Average 15.1, Max 26.2

Tuesday
Cycle: Distance 5.46, Time 21:34.0, Average 15.2, Max 30.0

Thursday:
Cycle: Distance 6.35, Time 28:39.1, Average 13.2, Max 35.1

Saturday:
Cycle: Distance 5.20, Time 22:47.1, Average 13.7, Max 26.8

Well as you can see last week I did nothing and felt pretty pants for it. So this week I’ve tried to get back into the swing of things. Today’s cycle was more of a pleasure cycle rather than full on going for speed and distance. As a result I decided to venture down some of the roads which I haven’t been down before. Actually found what looks like a derelict building which might be cool for a photoshoot.

Monday
Badminton: 50mins, 3 games of doubles and one of singles

Tuesday
Cycle: Distance 5.46, Time 21:05.7, Average 15.5, Max 30.0

Wednesday
Cycle: Distance 5.45, Time 20:37.0, Average 15.8, Max 29.3

Thursday
Cycle: Distance 5.46, Time 20:33.1, Average 15.9, Max 25.2
Badminton: 50mins, 3 games of singles