Last Sunday myself and Frank competed in another sprint triathlon and managed to convince Alan to join us - the Fingal Sprint 2009 was a great success despite the weather and a phantom puncture.
Myself and Frank were in the same lane for the swim which was great as it gave me someone I knew to chase in the pool (he kicked my ass!).
Franks in the red cap, I'm in the white.
I managed to knock over 8 minutes off last years time and came a respectable 48th/280 with a time of 1:15:10.
I did get a phantom puncture which I only realised when putting the bike back on the car after the race - very lucky it didn't happen in the race.
Alan was so cocky during his first transition (wardrobe change) he even went for a tuna-melt bagel (I'm not too sure I believe this but it's the only way to explain the three and a half minute transition 
)
Till next year..
Thanks to Frank's wife Nicola for the photos
That's right over a Gig or RAM, this was after about 3 days and 2 hibernations. Still crazy to think it can get that high though.
April 20, 2009 – 10:33 am
Thanks to a comment on Cormac Moylans blog I can now use Spotify again . The comment is from Dec 31st so I've no idea ehy I didn't find it before.
Spotify is also available in Ireland now, so you may now use 00000 as the postcode and set Ireland as the country
Don't forget spotylist for some cool playlists. I've even got one up there [Cadbury TV ads] . If you are having trouble signing up in Ireland - use defilter.co.uk and you should be fine.
Sup,
I've been quite slack on the blog posting front lately but I have started to use twitter a bit more recently and I also use delicious alot. So if I've not posted here you can deffo see what I'm up @ twitter.com/philroche and you can see what I'm reading @ delicious.com/philroche.
There's a widget for both in the right column here too .
Now I am definitley not known for my interest in politics but yesterday's supplemntary budget absolutely baffles me. A possible extra €90bn more in national debt, tax everyone and help nobody apart from the bastards that ran our banks into the ground. I am personally down about €200 a month.
The worst part was that there was absolutely no incentive for stimulating growth in the economy or helping businesses to try and save jobs. I forsee an awful lot more tax evasion now... cash in hand, cash in hand!
Follow twitter tag #bludget for peoples reactions.
PWC have a great calculator for calculating how much you're down a month.
Overview -> Banks bail out Builders, Gov bail out Banks, Taxpayer bail out Gov. The End. - Mark Cahill on twitter
As part of my Masters I had to write a term paper for my Design pattern module. It's probably still being marked but I can't see anything wrong with posting it now.
It covers some of the patterns I've come across in my time developing web applications.
designpatternstermpaper-philiproche-08299234.pdf
March 18, 2009 – 10:26 am
Quote of the weekend....
I'm the only geebag here without polyphonic ringtones!!! ~ Enda Kane 14th March 2009
Saturday through Monday was spent in the crazy city that is Edinburgh. An awesome time was had.
I'm also off the booze until the same trip next year (apart from Grand Slam weekend this coming weekend of course).
Eh... No.
We'll be moving to Google Apps soon at Ticket-Text so I wanted to try out a few clients to see which would suit us best. I've used thunderbird but thought I'd try out spicebird too. Downloaded it and installed. I could not set up an email account at all. Wizard had a load of blank screens and never set up the account. I uninstalled the app and was going to leave feedback to them to tell them why I uninstalled but the feedback form was broken.
Potentially a great app but I'd need to be able to set up an account firt me thinks.. maybe waith till 1.0.
February 17, 2009 – 1:02 pm
Most of you won't get the title as it's a more of a programming joke . But suffice to say Enda and Tara are now married and it was one hell of a party.
Well done guys.... super chuffed you finally got around to it. In an effort to keep me relatively sober (I think that's why anyway) I was part of the wedding party and thankfully didn't have to speak but took care of the logistics of wedding cards and wedding book and also had to hold the microphone during the wedding ceremony. The best man Alan's speech was awesome as were all the others. I'm still suffering now and the festivities ended early Monday morning. Roll on the next wedding!!!
January 30, 2009 – 2:23 pm
I've been back in Wales for 11 months but the time has come to venture back to Dublin again. Various reasons led to my decision to head back, the commute for one was getting too expensive and with GAA season starting again soon I'd be going back every weekend again.
The biggest reason however was the opportunity arose to join Ticket-Text. A couple of friends for my time at Ammado are part of the core team there. I start on Monday and can't wait to get stuck into Python, Django and JQuery.
Before that though I'm off to Leeds for my buddy Enda's stag weekend... oh dear!!!!
