Gash in head

There are those times in life, lying flat on your back in Wetherspoon’s with blood leaking from you head, when you think perhaps you shouldn’t have attempted to jump down those stairs.

Admittedly, these times are probably quite rare.

The circumstances leading up to this event are not really of interest, but suffice to say at around 10 o’clock on Friday night I was sat enjoying my beer “upstairs” in Winchester’s ’spoons. For those of you who haven’t been to the Old Gaol House, when I say upstairs I mean 2 stairs.

Events conspired such that I no longer wanted to be upstairs but needed to be downstairs in a short space of time. So, whilst running, I encountered the stairs and felt the quickest way to tackle them was a short jump.

Looking up from my position on the floor, the kindly chap at the table next to the foot of the stairs inquired as to my being OK. I rapidly surmised that there must have been a step in the roof. Arse. At this stage I figured I just had a bruise, but when taking my hands from my head, I observed not a small amount of blood.

As I was cleaning myself up in the toilet, the manager came in and asked if I was OK, and if I’d been drinking. At first I was a little offended at the implication that my accident was related to my drinking. That might sound odd, but I’m reasonably happy that I’m clumsy enough when sober to do something so dumb; I don’t think the beer was a major factor. As it happens, he told me has was going to offer paracetamol but thought beer + paracetamol wasn’t a good combination. Fair enough.

With the bleeding not stopping and the worst headache I’ve ever had rapidly invading, the decision was made to go to A&E; about 10 minutes walk. We made it there at about 10:30, and was triaged at about 11:00. The nurse asked the obvious question: what have you done?

How do you answer that?

Well… I.. Uhh.. Jumped into the ceiling…

It sounds pretty dumb, but I couldn’t think of a better way to phrase it. Seems the nurse couldn’t, either, as she pretty much wrote it down verbatim on the form. She did laugh at it though

The nurse asked if I’d taken any painkillers, and I mentioned the offer from the manager of the ’spoons. She asked how much I’d had to drink, and then wrote it down on the form. Had 4 pints.

No context.

And this is what bothers me most about the whole experience. I don’t mind making a tit of myself, I can cope with a bit of superglue in my hair and a banging headache. But those 3 words on the form, I’m fairly sure mean I’ve contributed to the alcohol-related incident statistics. And as I mentioned before, I really don’t think the alcohol was relevant.

4 pints of beer over 4 hours, including a curry for tea, is not exactly heavy drinking. Without that context though, the form just reads “Jumped into ceiling, had 4 pints”. The last thing I want is to provide ammunition for the statistics manipulation that goes in daily in Britain’s excuse for media.

Next time I see some story about the increase in alcohol-related incidents, I will experience a little more sadness.

Oh well, at least the superglue used to close my head up makes it look like I have semen in my hair.

30th November 2009.

Bugger.

You see, about 6 months ago I moved house. I phoned BT to cancel with them; they screwed up badly and cancelled my line too early. And then tried to bill me lots for it. I told Southern Water I wouldn’t be responsible for billing at my new address, they set up a new Direct Debit. I moved my bank accounts, my council tax, my power, my gas… I moved pretty much everything. Except the registration document for my car.

You see, whilst everything else could be done over the phone or internet, changing the address on your car requires actual writing and enveloping and posting. Faff. I had the document on the floor by my bed all this time, ready to fill in, I just didn’t get around to it.

The downside of not updating your address is that you don’t get the reminder by post to go update your tax, hence the expired disc. As it was a Sunday, there wasn’t really much I could do until the following day, except contemplate the potential fines.

The next day, I went to the Post Office; I couldn’t renew online as they’d send the tax disc to the old house. Sadly, the Post Office still lives in the dark ages; where the online tool automatically looks up your insurance/MOT the Post Office requires the physical documents. Trip home and back then.

Once armed with the appropriate documentation I paid my £120 and was legal to drive again. The lady in the Post Office also mentioned that if I was quick I could phone up the DVLA and pay the back-tax and escape a fine. This sounded good to me, but as the process of buying the tax disc had flagged that I’d missed a month I had to be quick.

A call to the central line suggested I /could/ pay the back-tax but had to send a cheque/postal order to my local DVLA office. More dark-ages. That meant actually locating my chequebook, and deciding which of the 3? chequebooks I had were valid.

You can find the begging letter I sent them here, should you need to do the same.

Yesterday in the post I received a receipt for my back-tax. Hopefully I’m in the clear :-/

Despite it being something like a 5 hour drive from here, I was also keen. Despite the nation whining incessantly about the “bad” weather, I for one was loving it. Conditions like this a pretty rare thing in much of England and getting out on the hills is even more fun than usual in the snow.

Chatting with Dave about the idea, I found he was less convinced about the driving part but still keen to get out and about in the hills. Remembering the slightly shorter drive but gorgeous scenery during our stay at Graig Wen last October, a plan started to form…

With Jen and Mark also in, we booked up the Mountain View holiday cottage at Graig Wen, and started looking forward to the weekend.

How, given the aforementioned hysterics the country’s been having over the weather, it was not surprising to find that most people thought we were a bit mad to head to Wales. Given that the whole holiday idea was largely spurred by Anna, it was a little surprising that she was a proponent of the you’re-not-going-to-get-there-you’re-going-to-break-down-and-die-on-the-road theory. Other backers of this belief were my mother (“I think you’d better cancel, don’t you?”), my father (“you’re sure that’s a good idea?”), and my boss (“you’re mad”).

The beauty of mass-panic, however, is that the roads were utterly devoid of traffic so we had a great run through, making it just in time for a couple of pints and dinner at the George III Hotel in Penmaenpool. Tasty Snowdonia ale and some great hearty food. A few glasses of whisky at the cottage then off to bed.

Possibly due to the whisky, it was a slightly slow start in the morning, and it was around 11 o’clock when we finally set off towards our objective for the day; Cadair Idris. The largest mountain in the region, Anna and I had walked up Cadair via the pony path on our last visit, traversing the ridge east to Gau Graig and then down. Because we wanted to do the ridge, we’d missed out on the Fox’s path; a steep scree-slope ascent of the mountain from Llyn y Gadair; the lake in the bowl to the north of the peak.

We trekked up the path to the lake, marvelling at the snow; it was not packed at all as in the lakes, but a fine powder up to about knee-depth in places. After some lunch near the lake, and some ice axe arrest practice, we set off up the Fox’s path. Or at least roughly up the Fox’s path. We were pretty much the only other walkers out, and had to forge our own path up the slope. Hard work, according to Mark; I wasn’t convinced though, as I had nice footsteps to follow . As we walked, we spotted others on the mountain, enjoying the winter conditions to climb the central gully, which we later heard was a bit “interesting”.

The snow varied in density, but was good-going for the first half of the slope. A thinning of the snow layer forced us to change course a couple of times, and probably took us off what is the path in summer, but we continued on and slowly but surely we made progress. After another path petered out with a thinning of snow, I broke out from lower down than Mark and took the lead on a new trail.

About a hundred metres from the top, the snow gave way to an icy crust. This made kicking steps a lot more effort, and progress slowed, with everyone being careful not to slip. Eventually, after a bit of back-and-forth and a couple of us wearing crampons the whole team made it to the top happy and safe. Conditions were windy on top, so we didn’t hang about, strolling up the final leg to the trig-point and rapidly continuing on. Underfoot, though, it was not too icy or deep and the going was good, and we found ourselves smoothly heading for the pony path and the car, a delightful sunset en route a beautiful finish to the day.

The Sunday was spent on a nice walk up past the Arthog waterfalls – sadly not iced up much – and Gregennen lakes – about 3-inch crust of ice – with a good cup of tea and a scone in a Dolgellau tea room to finish; cream first obviously!

Check out the photo album for more pics.

There are a few things, however, I do not like about it. The rampant racism of its readers, for example. That is easily avoided, however, and it’s occasionally fun to dip in for some sport.

I’ve typed about the bad use of language before, but that’s not as bad as today’s example. Today we have an excellent example of laziness or incompetence.

This article reports, through its headline, that

Three rescued after suffering injuries on Snowdon

It goes on to say

Three people have been airlifted to safety by an RAF helicopter in two separate rescues in Snowdonia.

So far so good. Snowdon is definitely in Snowdonia; the clue’s in the name. However, we read a little further and discover that the accidents actually happened on Y Garn (about 3.5 miles away, peak-to-peak as the crow flies) and Tryfan (just over 4.5 miles away).

It’s just so damn shoddy.

Nevertheless, Anna was keen to try and during a flying visit to Southampton we dove into paperchase, after wading past the throngs of people walking slower than slow people in slow land. With arthritis. And a broken leg. I hate going to Southampton.

Of course, by the time we actually got as far as making any cards I had only vague memories of the article. And, predictably, it was me that needed to make cards first. Thus, I became the self-crafted card guinea pig.

The only thing I could remember was that the article said to use simple shapes, as complex designs were the path to oblivion. We’d only selected a single wrapping paper for our card-creation, and so it was going to be somewhat hard to achieve delineation between parts of the design. I figured that by leaving gaps in between shapes I could achieve what I wanted.

So what to draw? My first thought was to draw a robin. Attempts were not successful. I drew the shapes onto paper first, to avoid wasting the wrapping paper. I’m going with the “robin too complicated” excuse for my failure to draw.

For my next effort, I went with a snowman. I tried to make a curved-top rectangle for a body, circular head and top hat. In retrospect, I think it needed either a scarf, or a 3-blob body approach. Either way, things weren’t looking good; my initial fears seemed to be becoming realised.

The next card I made was a christmas tree. Using the ol’ fold-the-paper-in-half-and-only-cut-one-half-of-the-shape trick, I cut the body of the tree with no trunk or pot. The tree was a standard school-level tree with ever-extending triangles and about 3 tiers. A simple trapezium for the bucket, with a few mm gap, and things were starting to look up. At worst, I now had 1 design that was passable.

Feeling a bit more confident, I stepped up my act and went for a christmas pudding. Re-reading the Guardian article now, I see that this is a shape specifically advised against. Oh well. I drew and cut out a reasonable-sized circle, but wanted to go for the icing-covered top effect. By cutting a squiggly line across the circle at about 1/3 height and spacing the 2 halves out on the card, I had what vaguely resembled a pudding. And as far as I am concerned, vaguely resembles == win. I topped off the pudding with 2 holly leaves and a couple of balls. Oo-err. I drew 1 holly leaf, and used it as a template for the 2nd… I was getting cocky.

For the next design, I had a brainwave; I could draw a present. I was scrabbling for christmas-sy ideas a bit at this point, and for some reason it seemed like a good idea. Armed with no ruler (I guess I could have got up and looked for one, but meh), I sketched a simple cube, and split all faces with a cross of ribbon. I then cut the pieces not only from the background, but also removed the ribbon sections. Reassembling on the front of the card, leaving space where the ribbon used to be, the design looked pretty good, but the odd line here, or width there didn’t quite line up. If you don’t look too closely, I think it was ok though, and if one took the time to use a ruler I think this one, though straying into too-complex territory, is actually a pretty workable design.

The final card (I thought) was a simple angel. Circle for head, tall trapezium for the body, simple triangles with curved ends for the wings and an oval for a halo. I cut the wings too thick, but ho hum.

Of course, having made the cards for myself, Anna then wanted me to make hers. I was having fun, so didn’t mind, but possibly fell into the trap of complication. My next effort was the most detailed I attempted. I started with a candle, drawing dripping wax at the top. This was fine, but a bit bare, so I added a light-halo and then a candle-holder. It looked good in doodle-form, but I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to transform it into a suitable likeness in the wrapping paper.

In the end, the only part which didn’t really work was the wax. The drips were too thin, and so when pulled apart there wasn’t enough gap in most places. I made a crown, which I pritt-stuck the wrong way on a card, which killed a card, and then a stocking. Finally a bell, which turned out a very bold and simple design; very quick and easy to draw, cut and stick.

All-in-all a reasonable success. Yes, it’s cheaper to buy a bumper 100-card crap-pack from Wilkinson’s in the January sales. And yes, trying to create a unique design for every card is probably overkill; you could save a lot of time by making 1 or 2 templates and being more production-line like. But I have to say, I’m suitably chuffed.

There’s a few more photos in the album. Let’s hope the recipients like them!

All 12 people that signed up were present and correct and a good time was had by all (I hope!).

At the moment, I’ve managed to put up details of the menu we went with, including links to all the recipes. There’s also a photo gallery, and a timeline of the day’s preparations. The (now updated) page on making the christmas puds is included, as is the new page on how I created the perfect turkey. Hopefully more details will emerge, but who knows.

P.S. There’s a great recipe for leftovers on BBCGoodFood. Mmmm.

But, with the best intentions, I’ve started at the beginning. With the dessert.

Rather than re-invent the wheel, I did a quick search on google for a Java library to take care of the feed processing for me. Sure enough, Rome seemed to fit the bill.

Merrily testing away in my Eclipse workbench, I quickly wrote the code to generate my atom feed. All was good with the world. The planets may or may not have aligned. And then I came to run it through ant.

Unfortunately, that’s where the problems started…

BUILD FAILED
C:\testAnt.xml:6: java.lang.ExceptionInInitializerError
 at org.apache.tools.ant.dispatch.DispatchUtils.execute(DispatchUtils.java:115)
 at org.apache.tools.ant.Task.perform(Task.java:348)
...
Caused by: java.lang.ExceptionInInitializerError
 at java.lang.J9VMInternals.initialize(J9VMInternals.java:222)
 at com.sun.syndication.io.SyndFeedInput.build(SyndFeedInput.java:110)
...
Caused by: java.lang.NullPointerException
 at java.util.Properties.load(Properties.java:267)
 at com.sun.syndication.io.impl.PropertiesLoader.<init>(PropertiesLoader.java:74)
 at com.sun.syndication.io.impl.PropertiesLoader.getPropertiesLoader(PropertiesLoader.java:46)
 at com.sun.syndication.io.impl.PluginManager.<init>(PluginManager.java:54)
 at com.sun.syndication.io.impl.PluginManager.<init>(PluginManager.java:46)
 at com.sun.syndication.feed.synd.impl.Converters.<init>(Converters.java:40)
 at com.sun.syndication.feed.synd.SyndFeedImpl.<clinit>(SyndFeedImpl.java:59)

Bugger.

A quick google only turns up 2 useful hits: here and here. Both links seem to suggest that Rome can run into problems with the way it loads its classes. After much hacking around, I found that a (somewhat hacky) way to solve this was by over-riding the Thread’s ClassLoader in my main class; e.g.

public class Test extends Task{

    public void execute(){

        ClassLoader cl = Test.class.getClassLoader();
        Thread.currentThread().setClassLoader(cl);

        // now do Rome stuff
        ...
    }
}

It’s not pretty, but it works. For now.

Being critical, it maybe suffers from too much description and not enough reviewing. I may well revise it at some point, if I find the time, but with so many other games, places, and who knows what else to writeup, it may just end up being a learning experience. Let’s just hope I learn from it Even if I don’t it’s still not /that/ bad .

This means that to test your code, you need to configure the code lookup in your runtime workbench – a pain if you have multiple runtime workbenches, or frequently clear your runtime workbench metadata.

An alternative approach, which I use, is to disconnect the debugger from the runtime workbench and connect it in your base workbench. This post details how.

The first step is to find out what port your server’s debug process is listening on. The default for WebSphere Application Server is 7777, but this might change if you’ve either customised it or configured multiple server instances. An easy way to check is to select the “debug” view in your Eclipse runtime workbench.

Debug View

In this picture, you can see that my WAS instance is running on port 7778. Make a note of this number, then select (in this view) the server (either of the top 2 lines), and click the disconnect icon (the red ‘N’ with 2 blobs icon). This disconnects the runtime workbench’s debugger from the server, freeing up the server’s debug port for another application i.e. your base workbench.

New config

Next, we need to create a runtime configuration in the base workbench to connect to the server. Open the debug configurations dialog (Run->Debug Configurations), and select “Remote Java Application”, then click the new button. All you really need to change from the default settings are the name (if you want to be able to remember it) and the port (to the port you wrote down earlier). Here’s mine:

Settings

Finally, hit debug and away you go.