Francis’ Weblog

We received bad news last week. Tom Donnelly, the trainer that taught myself and Mike snowboard instructing died during the week, the day after his fathers funeral. He was the BASI examiner who I was training with most of the season in Wanaka.

I never forget when during heli-boarding in the Harris mountains in south island. The guide (a skier!) said that a ledge was fine to jump off, he ollied off it and found it to be a huge jump. It ended in his puffer jacked de-puffering, the cracking of his mobile and the destruction of an iPod… he always knew where the best hits were at TC, even down runs you’d been down 1000s times before and never even noticed!

He asked not to send flowers but to give money to his favourite charity (Angela Donnelly, 13 Harberton Park, Belfast, BT9 6TW).

You’ll be missed man!

I’ve uploaded the Heli-boarding out-takes from the 2006 Rookie Academy heliboarding trip…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkIj1lyNysU

The 2006 season has started early in NZ! They were expecting snow early and they got it! Here are a couple of pictures of Snow Farm in the South Island of New Zealand. Ok one of them isn’t! Its of the Bra fence! If you go to wanaka and travel towards Queenstown from Wanaka to go to Cardrona or Snow Farm/Snow Park you’ll see this fense. I just went on the snow farm website to see if they have any pics and I found the true story about it: The Cardrona Bra Fence true story. Its quite long and kinda tradition to leave a bra on the fence

Well as one season ends the next one begins. Europe had a couple of late snow dumps which extended the season a bit but the US season has now more or less come to an end. Those who did the Rookie Academy course and were teaching in the US are now heading to NZ to do another season… well some of them :). I’m hopefully going to head out to NZ for two weeks or so in August, so I can catch up and do a bit of snowboarding too

Here is quite an interesting article about search engine optimization. The guy who wote it has worked for a number of search engine companies, so you get some interesting insights to how the closely guarded algorithms work! http://www.webmonkey.com/06/16/index3a.html.

I managed to claw my ipod back from my little bro a couple of weeks ago! He managed to find it somewhere. He claims that I said I wasn’t using it anymore (shorly not!), anyway I got it back and i’ve REALLY got into pod casts in a big way. Kinda accidently really anyway found a couple of great podcasts to listen to on the train into work. Sync ma ipod in the morning and off you go!!

Techy:
Java Posse
A great podcast discussing java news and interviews, created by a guy from Kent University

The Twits
Technology chat

Security Now
Hosted by Steve Gibson and Leo Laporta they talk about personal internet/computer security. Its really for the home user wanting to know more about cryptography etc but they have some useful stuff. I did listen to one episode and they kept going on and on about one time pad encyption. They said it was 100% impossible to crack. Which … yes is “technically” 100% full proof, but you still have to transfer the plain text pad to the receiver of your encrypted message and if that gets intercepted without you knowing you code is broken. So I wouldn’t call it 100% myself… they did get around to mentioning this near the end but not after I had shouted at my ipod a couple of times saying “no it isn’t what about transferring the pad!… etc…”. After receving a couple of strange looks from people on Clapham Junction station I swapped tracks to the Simpsons

Info:
New Scientist Podcast
New Scientist has a number of articles and news from the mag in the podcast and has some really good interviews with knowledge matter experts.

FOXCAST: The Simpsons
Well think this one is quite self explanatory.

WOW what a year to go and do the Rookie Snowboard course! For those who don’t know I did a snowboard instructor could in new zealand last year and it was… AMAZING! really good fun and learned so much, not just snowboarding, which have really helped in my professional career as well. You can see all my rookie posts by clicking Rookie Academy in the catagories.

ANYWAY the reason I say its a great time to go is because the UK -> NZ exchange rate at the moment is amazing! Its currently cheaper than when I paid for it so you can get quite a good deal.

I’m hoping to get back out there this coming season. I did the course with my mate Mikal and he stayed out well popped back to the UK got a visa then went out

Todays cool site of the day: http://www.deviantart.com/
Some of the images on it are amazing my favouite sections are:

3d Wallpaper
Abstract Wallpaper
Icon Sets for programs etc
A mate from work showed me the site, he said most of the icon sets are on GPL but to get permission to use them usually only takes a quick email to say could I use them and the fame and recognition for the designers is enough

I feel a blog design update coming on which reminds Wordpress (the blogging software I use) has been upgraded to 2.0.2 so i’m now going to attempt to upgrade it. Wish me luck!

Well I had a great week snowboarding. Myself and my family were in Les Houches a small resort near chamonix. Its the first time my parents have actually seen me snowboard… ever! We were at a family friends chalet which was about 100yards from the main life (so it was tough in the morning to get up go :)). The resort isn’t 100% snowboarding “compatible” there are quite a few flat bits and not impossible. I hired a guide for the day to hunt out the off-piste and there happened to be quite a bit of snow hidden around, but by the end of the week some of the pistes were rock hard … oh and a couple of button lifts from hell too no wonder it wasn’t in my World Snowboarding guide My mum had a couple of lessons skiing but unfortunatly had a bit of a crash and crushed one of her vertibra so it now out of action for a couple of months.

Ok i’m off with my family and another family for 1 weeks snowboarding. Were driving down to the alps and it will be the first time that any of my family has seen me snowboard!! all the other trips i’ve been with mates etc… and before that I was skiing. Anyway, back in a week. Taking a load of my digital compositing books so I can read up before my course starts.

Ok someone has asked me for the vids from snowboarding… i’ll show you the short promos:

Large:
Media Player (10.2mb)
Real Player (11.7mb)

Smaller:
Real Player (6.9mb)
QuickTime (6.3mb)

I’ll put the “wipe outs” vid up once i’ve converted it.

Been a while since i’ve posted an entry. Well I got back all in one piece. After the Rookies myself and Mikal travelled around South island and up to north island for a couple of weeks to see the sights, originally were we not going to do it but things change :). Mike wanted to stop off in Wellington and Auckland to see what it was like and maybe find work. He did have a bit of a hunt for work but in the end came back so he could get a perm NZ visa. He came back to Ireland and got a interview for a job out in Auckland. The interview was in Guildford so he popped over and stayed with my parents while he had the interview. Anyway cut a long story short he got the job and he starts working in Auckland in January, he’s just waiting on his NZ visa.

Since i’ve been back i’ve been working on the rookieacademy.com website and producing some promo vids for them using the footage that I got while I was in NZ. I also setup a discussion board for them, which so far hasn’t been used that much, I think mainly because all the ex-rookies from this year have been communicating via mass emails… hey ho, give it time Also been getting back into Maya and creating a space station, should have some piccies soon.

I’ve also been working on a Travel website bit like Expedia.co.uk but a bit simpler hopefully that will be complete mid-january. I’m also getting a mate to help me out on it.

Just after I came back to the UK, and signed up to a Digital Compositing course at Escape Studios in Shepherds Bush. Now for all those who don’t know what Digital Compositing is… here’s the dictionary definition:

“The digital blending together of a background plate and one or more foreground elements to create one seamless, well-integrated film image”

It starts on January 9th and goes on for 8 weeks, part of which you work on your show reel which ends up being your CV really on how good you are at digital compositing and giving pointers on what to and not to put in your show reel too. I’ve been wanting to get into a more media role for some time to get out of doing constant programming. When I look back on the stuff i’ve done so far i’ve found working for media companies like the BBC or print/design companies more fun! Hense doing film & video work over the past couple of years.

Well after 3.5 weeks of filming ‘Harry Potter Goblet of Fire’ they managed to compress my bit into 2minutes… maybe which even for a multi $$$ movie is quite amazing, yes they were very tech shots but hey! well I supposed i’d better get used to it.

Well Christmas is a coming! so HAPPY CRIMBO EVERYONE!, have a great new year if I don’t see you!

Well we had our movement analysis exam yesterday and for some stupid reason I picked the movement I was worst at, DOH! … “broken at the waist” so the rider was hunched over anyway muddled my way through that but then he gave me the same thing for my teaching exam the day after and I fluffed it. My riding passed, my MA passed but my teaching failed… just. Anyway i’m off to remarkables (another mountain) to retake the teaching so fingers crossed we’ll see what happens! oh and we’ve just had some fresh snow so things are getting a bit better snow wise…