iPad, nay iPads

It's almost hard to believe that the iPad has finally reached our shores. Friday was a pretty exciting day in the office for those of us that either had a device ordered or planned to try their luck at the store. I eagerly checked the mail room for deliveries several times that morning before giving up to head out for a run. In fact while jogging through the luscious pathways of the botanical gardens I happened to glance at my phone nonchalantly, before sprinting the rest of the way back to the office at Queen Street. My delivery you see, had come.

Having had a few days to play with it my conclusions are unsurprisingly positive. The device is uncompromisingly attractive to the eye and unfortunately, fingerprints. I had the good fortune to play with one beforehand so the heft of the machine, due no doubt to the two oversized batteries, wasn't all that shocking. You do eventually learn how to hold it and distribute the weight of the screen with efficiency. Battery life by all accounts is absolutely amazing. I've hardly put the thing down and have used it for well over five hour stints at a time between brief charges and the battery indicator hasn't fallen below 56%.

The first thing that you notice after turning it on is how vibrant the screen is. It's marvelous to play games, read books and enjoy photos with other people as the viewing angle remarkably wide. I have no problem leaving it flat on the table to read something free handed, something I would not be able to do with the screen of the iPhone.

Applications of course are the real draw of the iPad. I've been doing a fair bit of research into the standout apps and loaded them up beforehand.

Evernote - I couldn't live without this at work. I'm even composing this post in it
iBooks - there's not much choice in the iBook store at the moment but it's ok with ePub support
Comiczeal - a great app for reading comics in cbz/cbr format is made infinitely better by removing the need to scroll to see the whole page
Numbers - I'm a bit of an Excel geek so I need my spreadsheets. Was a little disappointed that they didn't have pivot tables but the function list isn't too bad overall
Wired magazine - more of a gimmick and a tech demo but it's interesting to see where the publications may go in the future
Instapaper - brilliant for taking long articles out to read. Especially as I don't have the 3G version of the iPad

Typing on the full sized onscreen keyboard in landscape has been an interesting experience. It's certainly large enough that you expect to be able to use your normal touch typing skills, but the lack of physical keys means that you have to be a lot more cautious about accidental touches, not an easy thing when one is used to resting fingers on the home row of the keyboard. The layout is also certainly different from a traditional keyboard so that is taking some getting used to as well. I'd almost liken it to using a mechanical typewriter, where the timing the release of a key before typing the next letter is crucial to maintaining a consistent tempo and speed. The auto correction in iPhone OS is pretty useful once you start trusting it again.

I've been showing the new toy to everyone that exhibited the mildest note of interest so Alison has had to listen to me parrot on non-stop all weekend. She's had little opportunity to actually use it but had grudgingly admitted that she was impressed and could see herself getting one in the future. Since I knew we were going to be in Chermside to check out the Apple store, I decided to strike while the iron was hot. This would be the only way I could guarantee that my iPad remained solely for my use.



I also picked up a wireless bluetooth keyboard just incase I need to type longer reports, though in truth I really want to give the virtual one a good go first. Now that we've been a little indulgent and splurged for an iPad each I doubt we'll be using the laptop for much aside from downloading files and work. Still early though so it should be interesting to see how our habits change over time. All in all definitely no regrets.

Although, it would be nice to be able to watch Masterchef on the iPad which can't be done as it doesn't support Flash video. In saying that, the channel Ten website has been crap lately with streaming video so it makes little difference in the end. Story for another time perhaps.

Week Twelve and it's over!

The weekend came and with it my Everest for the 12 week challenge. A gruelling 20K walk from Currumbin to Main Beach which would serve as the last charge before the final weigh in on Monday. It didn't seem like a long distance numerically, but boy does it look like a long way on the map.



Imagine how crazy it would be then to walk the full distance of 30K from Coolangatta! That's what John signed up for along with Steve and Linda for company. Alison, Sheena and myself missed out on the elite blue bibs and reconciled ourselves to ordinary orange. There was also an option for the 10K distance, appropriately accompanied by yellow labels as this was obviously the choice for chickens and wussies - I jest of course.

We could barely make out our destination in the distance from the 20K starting line. There was a brief wave of despair as the enormity of the task sank in before we resigned ourselves to close the gap between us and a promised sausage sizzle, one step at a time.



The walk turned out to be a lot more pleasant and manageable than any of us would have thought. I think at some point around Burleigh, just past the 10K mark perhaps, my left calf started to feel pretty sore and tight from the strain. To stretch the muscle out I took to jogging in brief spurts which was unintuitively remedial. So much so that I bade my darling wife and mother-in-law goodbye and ran the last 5K to the finish, earning me the splendid honour of being the first to complete amongst the 20K participants. Being a glutton for punishment and wracked with the guilt of abandoning my walking partners, I handed my bib in and ran back to rejoin Alsie and Sheena for the last bit of their walk. As a result I think I would have travelled over 26K all up and I'm certainly paying for it dearly with sore legs. At least we got across the line in good spirits if somewhat battered by the ordeal. A total time of 3 hours and 50 minutes.



What's amazing is that John kept up a remarkable pace, passing us early on to complete his 30K in about 3 hours and 15 minutes. A stunning achievement really.

So surely this must have had some effect on my final results for the challenge. My initial goal was to lose 10KG in the twelve weeks and I still had quite a bit to make up the last time I stepped on the scales a fortnight ago. I'm terribly pleased to announce that the numbers I received on Monday didn't disappoint.



In the strictest sense I didn't achieve my target weight lost, but I'd say that 200 grams isn't worth fretting over. My other measurements that evening turned out to be pretty favourable too. Particularly chuffed about an 11cm reduction around my belly which I'm definitely seeing with my clothes.



So it's all over, I just need to put my final measurements into the system and hope for the best with the competition. Of course I already feel like a winner and fully intend to continue with the exercise. My discipline with eating may change a little though as I rediscover my love for all things chewable. I just so happened to have some left over lasagne from Sheena, that I rudely refused the night before the weigh in, and gladly demolished for lunch after stepping off the scales. Ah carbohydrates, how I've missed thee.



Oh... about those before and after photos, I'd say the improvement is startling and something to be proud of, but I'd feel like a right twit if I posted them online. Probably best given the longevity of internet documents.

Urgh, what a week

Well that was quite an interesting week. Things started with a bang on Saturday when I went to the shooting range with some of the guys from work. I'd never fired a gun before so this was certainly going to be a new experience. Everyone else seemed to know what they were doing and I was beginning to feel a little uncoordinated.



I found it pretty hard to actually get any feedback for where my shots were landing (perhaps because they didn't actually hit the target?) so I wasn't sure how to improve. The novelty of shooting a gun beyond the 22 calibre - which had the kick of a pea shooter - was pretty sweet at first but sharp recoil can only keep one amused for so long. In hindsight I probably should have worn longer socks too...



There were a couple of shotguns around so we got a chance to do some clay pigeon shooting too. I fired off two shots and managed to score a lucky hit on my second round. I'm quite happy to retire with a 50% success rate. Not a bad day to spend with mates but I think I'll stick to the driving range personally.

The week pretty much went downhill from there. I was supposed to have a new team member start on Monday which involved a bucket load of work to prepare for. Imagine my disappointment when I got an email at 8:00 saying that she had decided to take another job elsewhere - yes folks she did it by email. Needless to say this has put my whole plan for resourcing into a tailspin which we're still reeling from, not to mention slamming our recruitment efforts back to square one and wasting two weeks of lost interviewing time. Not that I'm bitter or anything.

Felt so rotten about this on Monday evening that I decided to forgo the weekly weigh in. Worse yet, we went out for pizza at Dominos which was probably not the best idea in the last week of the 12 week challenge. At least they were the healthy options on the menu.

Things are looking up though. Alison and I will be doing a walk with the family for the heart foundation this weekend, which should give me a final boost before the weigh in on Monday. My iPad should also be getting delivered in about a week and I've already started downloading apps in preparation. Just after that we'll be heading to Spicers Peak Lodge for a night of indulgence to celebrate three years of happy matrimony. Always helps when there are nice things to look forward to.

I Got Worms

I originally thought that my birthday this year would be fairly low key, especially considering that I'm supposed to be in the middle of the twelve week challenge and watching what I eat. In the end I sorta threw caution to the wind and that's ok. Because it's my birthday dammit! (29 if you must know)

As is traditional in our household, the special treatment started early I'm the morning with a shower of presents from Alison and family. Got some pretty darn cool gear including funky sleep mask (need my beauty rest as I age), a great set of steak knives, some gardening soap and a wine cooler. No real theme to the collection but all will be put to good use.



Had to turn up to work unfortunately as i've hit rock bottom in the annual leave bucket. We did manage to get out of the office for lunch to try out this place that does a four course degustation for $20 which is insane value. They are a hospitality training school so I guess the students need to practice their craft and they might as well sell the results to discerning customers. Overall there was a lack of polish but that's forgivable at such a great price.

On returning home I got another surprise birthday gift waiting for me. A little bit of well crafted misdirection had me guessing exactly what Alsie had bought but a quick trip out to the garden revealed that I'm now the proud owner of a trendy worm cafe. Our previous composting efforts weren't overly successful so I look forward to putting these little invetebretes to good use.



Dinner had us going out to Southbank to try out a new Taiwanese restaurant that we'd heard about. We've been hankering for Siu Long Bao since our trip back to Malaysia so we were pretty excited when we got there.



Alas the juicy morsels didn't live up to our expectations. Just too thick and dry with the skin and the meat was pretty coarse and gristly. Tasty meal nonetheless and we'll probably still go back if we're in the area.

Alison took me down the road to Gunshop Cafe for dessert. I ordered a poached pear with maple panna cotta and chocolate sauce, which my darling wife further adorned with a candle when the plate came out. Who ever said you needed cake?

Week Ten, Two To Go

I've been doing lots of running. Lots and lots of running, certainly by my standards. I've finally gotten fit enough to do the city loop comfortably (around a 6.25KM round trip) during my lunch break. Took me about 40 minutes today so that's an average 6:40 pace (about 9km/h). I'd like to be able to get that down to a 6:00 pace eventually.

Starting to really enjoy jogging around again, though this does mean that I've had less time in the gym to do weights. I think I've actually lost some muscle tone as a result, but at least I'm closer to my target weight.



Two more kilos to lose to get to my goal and two weeks to do it in. Should still be possible if I focus and keep up the cardio. It's also all in prep for the 20K that we'll be walking on the 23rd.

As an aside, I woke up early this morning and placed my order for a 64gig WIFI iPad, along with a camera connection kit and an iPad dock. Apple should hopefully ship it out to the office in time for the launch day on the 28th of May. I just hope that they don't have a problem with shipping as I'd be rather disappointed without an iPad for the weekend. Now I'm also looking around for new bags, this Tom Bihn one looks pretty good.

Landscaping and Week 9

Ah, another long weekend. I could really get used to this whole four day work week arrangement. We used our extended break for labour day to lurch back into the some work in the garden, once more with John and Sheena's help of course. There's not too much left to do aside from the eastern side of the house, not somewhere we usually spend much time but it's such an eyesore that we can't wait to tidy things up.



The dirt around the Hill's Hoist would need some attention too, as well as the run off from the gravel pit overflow.



A little bit of bedding sand and some 400mm tiles would give us stepping stones a path around the side of the house.



Then it's just a matter of piling on more hoop pine to cover up all those unsightly weeds and unused concrete drains. I love mulch, it hides everything.



Lots more mulch, a few more tiles to extend the existing platform, some more cement and a heck of a lot of river rocks later. Now the back of the house is pretty much complete. Though now that I look at it I think a few plants in the corner wouldn't go amiss, perhaps an agave or two.



Now the last section is under the balcony where the rubbish bins live. That'll need a bit more thinking with drainage, retaining walls and lots of paving to consider so we're happy to leave that for another day.

It's been a while since I've carted around the wheelbarrow so we were feeling pretty sore the next day. Seems like all that hard work (abstaining from drinking coke zero all day too) didn't make much difference on the scales. Guess I've hit another plateau and will have to take the exercise regime up a notch.



Only three weeks left and I'm beginning to tire of this whole process. Happy with the weight loss and enjoying the exercise, but the weekly weigh-ins are getting a little old. Look forward to finishing up so that I can down shift to something more sustainable.