So I’m going to try and do a thing. I’m going to try and publish at least one character folio per month. It forces me to write, and it gives something back to the community. Hell, I’ll probably even use them.
First up is a Ventrue Childer - King of the Tower Block.
Read On →I like to tell stories. Paradoxically I’m really not a big reader at all. Fiction anyway. Novels certainly.
I’ve been led to believe that the world’s greatest stories have all been committed to writing, and arranged into books. Of course, a book can come in digital format’s these days, and don’t always have to be printed on dead trees - but there is definitely more to stories than just the written word.
Music, film, spoken, television, and even computer games are all ways in which people are able to tell stories to each other. Some of these stories are big business - movies and TV earn mega money and have crazy budgets. Obviously I don’t have the means or money to tell the stories that fill my head in those ways, but I still love telling a good story.
In the past couple of years, I’ve picked up an old hobby, which has stuck with me on-and-off since I was 14 years old, perhaps longer: roleplaying games!
Read On →On the weekend (Saturday 11th Feb) I travelled along the coast to Inner Strength Gym in Hastings with my training buddies Dave and Shane - accompanied by my supportive wife, Emma and friend-come-coach Jon.
I never really intended to compete in this competition - when it came up on my Facebook feed and I saw Shane throw his name into the hat I took a look at the Intermediate level contest and while it sounded fun, it really looked a little too light. Certainly on paper:
I dismissed it and encouraged Dave to join Shane in the novice contest and figured that I’d travel down and support/help them on the day. But after a few weeks into the new year and I was already stressing about another contest not due to run until half-way through May - my wife urged me to register for the Inter’s contest and compete alongside my mates; in the name of fun. Fun was what it was supposed to be all about. This is a hobby. I’m a husband, father and software developer first and foremost and strongman is (supposed to be) a hobby. So reluctantly (I like to resist advice for at least a while) I took what I was told on board and threw my name in the hat.
Read On →I’ve been looking back on my training from 2016 like everyone probably does (or certainly should) - seeing what worked and what didn’t as I go about planning my programming for 2017.
As it turns out I hit a 100kg log clean & press for the first time on 6th January, 2016. Getting into triple digits was kind of a big deal, and the milestone had been playing on my mind for quite some time as I floated around the 90-95kg mark chasing the number and testing too often and not training to surpass if often enough. But yeah I finally hit it.
Closing in to a year later my gym log tells me that I hit a 120kg log clean & press for a PB back on 23rd November 2016 and then later 120kg for two repetitions on 2nd January, 2017.
One of my training partners also managed to put 20kg on his log press this year, using this programming. Going from a fairly unconvincing 75kg up to a fast and confident 95kg inside the same time period.
In this post I’ll try to lift and shift information from my training log and put it together in such a way that it’ll perhaps be useful to somebody struggling to get started with their log press.
I should warn you this probably won’t suit experienced log pressers and strongmen - things are pretty basic and involve a whole lot of volume that might be impossible with far higher intensities and the effects on the CNS. But for somebody just starting out in strength - or just starting out with log press… why not give this a shot? Maybe it’ll work for you as well.
Read On →On a cold, windy and occasionally wet August Sunday (bank holiday weekend) I took part in my second strongman competition down on Worthing’s seafront.
I put a lot of preparation into this competition and placed absolute rock bottom. Like 10th out of 10 bottom. But I’ve had a lot of time to come to terms with what I think is basically a worst-case-scenario, but also accept it and move on with some positives.
Read On →Another re-branding? Another new blog? I don’t know Matt - you’ve got some kind of identity issues or something!
Read On →Or rather: 10 excuses why I failed.
So today I took part in (and I guess, ran) my first full hackathon - IWDev Crimbo Coffeehack. We kicked off at 9am today, and finished at 4pm and apparently threw some code together in the middle of it. We had a random theme which we announced shortly after getting together and then flew at it. Since it was our first hack day at a coffee shop - we rolled with coffee as the theme.
So I learned a few things, and thought that I’d dump them down here:
(for future reference - duh!)
Read On →Lunchtime blogging strikes again - this post has probably been brought to you over the course of a few lunch times.
Like most of my posts on the subject of F# there really isn’t much I’m adding to the wealth of the community, but I feel as if contributing to the community in blog posts from an average .NET developer’s perspective does have value. F# is pegged and marketed as a great language for niche problem domains (just look at the Try F#: Learn page) - but I’m all about using F# as a great general purpose language, instead of C# or VB.NET.
This post is probably a long time coming since I’m really enthusiastic about both test-first software development and F#. I’ve been mostly prompted to write my thoughts and findings down in response to seeing RobAston’s blog post - On testing and the REPL in Clojure; who I’ve been following (which as I can see from Twitter, most of the developer community does!) while he adopts Clojure.
So what am I going to be writing about? Basically how using F# makes it easy for me to drop some of the dogma and get on with it. I’ve done a few projects now at work which involved writing F#, and this kind of outlines the how I work while doing it.
Read On →Back in January when I blogged Adopting F# - I didn’t really anticipate it being something of a series; but before too long I blogged again Adopting F#, part II. As it goes I think it is interesting to document the journey I’ve been able to take from C# to F# as my bread-and-butter language.
Since I started part II with a ”…what has changed since…”, I don’t see much of a problem in doing the same again: