Moved over to shrix.co.uk

Heyup internet-peoples.

I've moved my blog over to http://www.shrix.co.uk and it's gone rather geeky.

Feel free to come on over and have a read.

Cheers!

Last time I posted we were 2 (Palmer and I). Then came along T, Chili (dog) and then #1 and #2! Have moved back from Chamonix to the Dorset countryside in order to do some very cool technical stuff and raise a family.

Which brings me neatly onto why to kick Palmer and Narg back into gear.

Well for the past however long I can remember, I've always been pretty geeky and into the tech stuff - particulary the web. I started off (back in the day) viewing the source of web pages and learning HTML (and back then trying to decrypt the mass of table tags to figure out what was styling what!). Nowadays I'm still doing pretty much the same thing but on a slightly larger scale.

I've never really done this before, but will attempt to piece together the very rough sequence of techie milestones since the beginning...

Black and white TV set was king as a monitor

Genesis was at 8yrs old (ish) regurgitating BASIC on an 8k Acorn Electron. My dad used to buy me books of code which I would copy manually (!) onto the machine so I could have a game to play. Yes - bonkers, hand code the entire game each time you wanted to play it. Pretty hardcore I like to think, even back then.

Progression from casettes to disk!

Then school stuff on BBC Micros (more games really and starting to figure out the network architecture and *ahem* "modify" the odd file we weren't suppose to.

...

Started playing, then coding MUD's online (learning C, sockets and protocols from the legacy codebase, passed down from programmers to programmer since the 80's - this is probably where where my love of funky code comments comes from.

Not many other choices of colour ont the old Macs...

Learnt a bit of Pascal during my brief time at uni on the old, old Apple Macs (Macs still amaze me now, cool back in the day and still cool now. The UI on them is very slick and everyone raves about it, but the fact it's a UNIX system with a console interface is just fantastic and is awesome to use).

...

Beginner's VB4 at a tech college for a very short while (there were fairly obviously some guys who already had serious programming knowledge and only there to try (and rather amusingly fail) at pulling girls). That pretty quickly led onto ASP (via VBScript) and the necessity to learn HTML/JavaScript by reading the web as code rather than text and images. Sounds all rather Matrix but I just remember these years as a blur of trying to figure out what the hell was going on.

Dial-up for the Interweb!

I jumped into paid programming when it was quickly becoming apparent that the seriously enormous phone bills (due to "paid per minute" ISP's and a rather noisy 33.3kbps modem) were sitting nicely alongside my knack of loading my snowboard/wakeboard/skateboard (depending on time of year) and disappearing for days on end. I didn't have any cash and my parents had amazingly (and very generously) moved up north and left me a cottage to live in. Hopeful, no doubt that the fearsome proprietere of the local village restaurant where I was intermittently working would encourage my focus and boarding energies into something a little more lucrative.

He did, David Waycott was his name and the ex-head chef of The George in Stamford (where I had been to school). He knew his stuff - the restaurant had a Michelin star and the two head chefs (Carol and French Frank) I worked under were serious operators. I had quickly gone from pot-washing and waiting to being a self-titled sous-chef (or cook number 2 out of 2). I spent enough time there to be seriously impacted for the rest of my life. I still absolutely love to cook, and that restaurant was an insane place to learn. The food was so good that I remember taking my mum there once to eat on my day off. I remember it for the awesome flavours, textures and ingredients but also really the incredible cellar - Marques de Caceras Rioja was the pick of the half of the wine list for my budget and it was deliciously oaky. I'm more of a whisky man these days but I'm still in the kitchen cooking/baking/kneading/marinading pretty much every day.

Cooking wasn't a payday though, so I gravitated my way north and pretty quickly got a contract at a 3D animation/design studio learning a bit of networking, basic CSS, design, JavaScript, browser plugins like QuickTime and Flash and and generally being a bit of a pest to the owner of the business. I also managed to knock out some pretty cool interactive web pages using HTML, JavaScript, CSS, images and 3d animations after coercing the in-house 3dsMax/Maya modellers to hand over their work. I was aware of standards at the time, but was still learning my chops and soaking up all the technologies.

By this stage I had to figure out what to do at the time and choose either the Microsoft or Java routes for my web server language. Luckily I chose Microsoft. I say luckily because as soon as I really learnt the language (VBScript/ASP), it was pretty obvious you couldn't program efficiently in it. That threw me full tilt into open source technologies and I've never looked back since. (Incidentally Java isn't as bad, I think I might have lasted longer with that).

I shot my way down to London and wanted to program the stock markets (biggest computer game out there!) and used a supplier to the trading houses as a stepping stone to get there. Immediately after this I finally got to work on the markets as a UI developer on trading platforms.

Trading platforms are awesome bits of kit - generally seriously huge, dynamic and expensive and maintained by fleets of programmers. I've worked on a fair few now and they never cease to amaze me. They are the epitomy of large scale distributed live systems with a myriad of technologies and complexity. I'm sure I'll post later about them, but for now it's enough to say that's where I really learnt how to be a systems architect, being exposed to every database under the sun and really honing my programming skills.

Whilst on the markets I really got into degradable scripting and the inner depths of JavaScript as well as the concept of zero plugin web applications using live data. I've never lost the love for creating really powerful web apps using the holy trinity of JavaScript (including AJAX and JSON), CSS and HTML. There's something intrisically cool about the simplicity of it all.

I spent a good deal of time working on trading platforms before deciding to leave London and move to the Alps - which was when I originally started the blog.

Out in the Alps I learnt PHP and MVC frameworks and the girl of my dreams. #1 became imminent so I tracked back to the UK with a heavily pregnant wife and ended up back on the markets in a (and probably the only) stockbrokers in the south west doing some pretty mental stuff with PHP being used for both internal middleware services as well as the front end. By this stage I was working exclusively OO right the way through the system (PHP, JSON, JavaScript) and abstracting everything and anything.

With #2 on the horizon and looking to move out of the city the stars aligned and an opportunity and new challenge came along to go and work for a very hi tech company in the country - I jumped at the chance.

Now, my day is filled with all manner of technologies with SVG and HTML5 canvas visualizations, big data databases and MVC and data modelling on both the server and client being the most prevalent. I've also seemed to develop a pretty good knack for system architecture and building distributed systems as well as robust development methods, processes and infrastructures. I'm lucky enough to be able to choose and use new technologies and guide a team of very talented developers.

I'm a fan of Agile development (probably a knock-on effect of being an OO enthusiast), the Allman style, hungarian notation and also trying to blend the requirements of the business and the exacting standards of geek.

My plan for the blog is to switch over to doing almost exclusively tech posts on whatever topic seems interesting at the time.

Winter 09/10 has started in the Ice Break chalet!

Awesome stuff, since setting up Ice Break (our classic alpine chalet in the Chamonix valley doing group and individual skiing holiday accommodation) things have been going pretty well. We've still got space left for this season around March and early January. In fact just give me a yell by having a look at the website linked above and make us an offer on the weeks! You can find the prices & booking stuff dead easily.

Anyways, lots and lots to do - getting the chalet ready for the first guests arriving. We've been out on the Grands Montets skiing and snowboarding already this year which was great. The Les Houches ski area opens this weekend which might tempt me into having a quick trip down there with a mate or two. Let's see if there's any powder about!

Blog changing and moving!

I've set up a new blog for the Ice Break business. It's going to be a bit more professional than this one but with loads of good reading about stuff we're up to. You can visit the new blog here and there's an RSS feed to subscribe to drop into your feed readers if you so wish.

I'll be posting up there after as many climbing, skiing, snowboarding and alpinism adventures as possible and should be really good for a read!

Thanks everyone! Please spread the word - we're taking bookings for the winter of 08/09 already.

Seasonnaire holidays in Chamonix

So we've set up a company called Ice Break that offers awesome weekly to full season seasonnaire and sabbatical skiing and snowboarding holidays in Chamonix.

The website is at http://www.ice-break.co.uk.

The chalet is fully catered with Abi (currently working as a chef in Le Delice in Les Houches) and cleaning and keeping the place homely. I'll be taking people out on the mountain and we'll be doing loads of snowboarding and skiing - powder, pistes, backcountry, hiking and more. We'll be rock climbing and ice climbing when conditions are good and generally having an amazing time.

Give us a shout through the website on the contact page if you're interested in coming out and staying with us!

Taking a break from blogging

Have decided to take a break from blogging for a wee bit. Just not really getting the time or inclination to document everything. The season is starting to build up in pace and there's less time available for unimportant extras, also Tinks is farther away than before so going to try and use the available time with her.

See ya soon!

Bringing it all up to date

I've been away in the UK for the past 5 days with Tinks meeting and greeting and getting in a general pre-season family reunion. It was really good - tiring but lots of fun with every night an event and every day filled with something to do. I was really, really pleased to see my Mum and Dad and Tink's family and have such a great time before jumping into the winter.

Before we left I managed to squeeze in a quick day up the mountain with Rosco and Emile, part of the riding fraternity who will be performing synchronized falling this season in our corner of the Alps. Again as before, the snow was good for this time of year. Most of the available powder had been tracked out but there was still only one lift open. Besides we're still finding our feet and it's not surprising that we'd probably butcher it anyway.

The good news is that it's dumping it down here. Like seriously dumping. I had to ease off Merv's snowy covering this morning before whacking his de-misters on full blast. Chris is back in the valley looking fit and well and ready for the rigours of the season. Everyone's beaming and frantically getting ready for the arrival of the tourists and generally stocking up and preparing for the already-arriving winter.

I moved Tinks and Katy this morning from their place in Houches to Servoz a little down the valley. It's an amazing, beautiful place they've got there - part of an old wooden converted barn in picturesque Old Servoz. They've leased it for a year and as it's full of mod cons and they're the first people in since it was done, I know it's going to be an awesome home.

So I'm in a meeting this afternoon, I'm moving house shortly as well and need to get ready for that. I'll stay over with Tinks for a night or two while I get prepared then it's time to call on Merv's carrying skills again.

I've picked up my season ski pass from the Montenvers station today as well and my winter boots are now a permanent fixture on my feet. The heady atmosphere of snow and excitement permeates the air and the mountains grow heavy with the ever-present precipitation. What we've all been waiting for is now arriving.

The Love

After Friday Frenzy - the traditional end of week gathering of the various boys and girls - of last night, I woke up this morning with a peacefully dozing Tinks. I got up and popped the kettle on for the first fruit tea of the day and sat myself in front of the computer to check up on breaking world events, the latest project developments, if someone had overtaken my iSketch and most importantly, the weather and snow conditions of the mountains in the valley.

The resulting information was good, very good - no natural disasters around the world, no panic emails reporting broken code, sitting atop the iSketch hi-score table and a solid half metre of snow topped with a beautiful layer of fresh on the Grands Montets. Things were shaping up well.

A few texts and phone calls around to the boys resulted in being picked up by Mark from the center of Chamonix and meeting up with various boys and girls up the mountain. We duly set off with Mark a little worse for wear as a result of the exertions the previous night and arrived at Argentiere as hyped up as if we'd consumed a heady cocktail of Red Bull and sugar cubes the entire journey.

No queues at the bottom cable car and small pockets of friends meant that an impromptu meet & greet session followed and with everyone beaming from ear to ear we jumped on the lift and headed up to Lognan. The only open higher lift from there was the Martmottons chairlift so up we went struck dumb by the incredible snow and shifting cloud dominating the passage upwards. There was pretty much full coverage of the mountain - thin off-piste but some really good windblown sections.

We ripped the thicker off-piste to the left-hand side of the piste initially from the top of the Marmottons lift before rejoining the route and riding on some really good soft snow back to the mid-station and then joined a late-arriving Crampons for another few blasts down the same route. It was really good - we all skied like shit, but hey - first full day back, what do you expect? The beauty was that for every bad turn, bad trick, bad jump, there were two great ones. And some of the powder to the side of the piste was really, really good. The summer drought of fresh snow was seized and broken in two and everyone helped themselves again and again.

It's a great feeling to ride on a really quiet mountain where you keep bumping into friends and laughing and smiling and seeing everyone beaming ear-to-ear, all enjoying the situation regardless of any external factors - very pure riding. It's great to be there with your friends who just love to be there. Conversations on chairlifts always conducted with a smile tugging at the corners of the mouth, laughing commiserations for those falling over underneath the lift, cheers ringing out for people on the piste really ripping it up or landing a slick trick. Just awesome.

Crampons and I joined up with another group of friends after a quick coffee at Longnan then had a few more runs before a final run down the Pierre a Ric home run right down to the mountain and onwards for an apres-ski beer in the Elevation bar. Just a perfect day. I'll admit the really low visibility that drifted in and out was like being in a horror film sometimes, some pistes were as lumpy as the mid-Atlantic and there were patches of seriously icy snow ready to catch the edge of the unwary skier. But I had an absolute blast. And all the guys we rode with had a blast too.

We're all going back out tomorrow with snowshoes to get some untracked powder. I can't wait.

Enough! It's time!

Got up, quick blog post before whacking on the snowboarding gear then head up to the Grands Montets with Mark to meet up with the MountainGoat, Sarah, Crampons, and many more of the local dignitaries and idiots for some communal sliding fun.

Made sure not to get too pissed last night, cup of tea this morning and a check of the interweb this morning (find out what's going on in the world in order to have conversational topics on chairlifts and checking the latest weather reports for the mountains) and we're just about ready to go.

Bring it baby, I'm revved up like a kid with attention deficit disorder. Shame about the unreal low visibility. Time to polish the yellow lenses.

4am revisited

*bleep* *bleep* *bleep*

Up again at 4am to take the muppet Fred to Geneva airport after the previous fiasco of him ignoring his alarm and missing the flight. He managed to get to the airport bang on time, with enough to spare to pick up a few bits and bobs through duty-free as well. Funky.

Things of note from the journey:

1) Today's trip was sponsored by "Dark Dog" energy drink. Any drink with the words "dark" and "dog" in the name must be seen as dangerous and not to be taken lightly. We didn't take them lightly either - 3 cans apiece to help the journey along. We went from being half-asleep to acting like a pair of ADHD teenagers in just under 0.03 seconds. Conversation flowed thereafter.

2) Fred's first name isn't Fred (I knew this already). In fact his first name is Ahmad. His second name isn't Fred either - it's Ferad. His surname is unpronouncable. This is why he is called Fred.

3) French drivers will drive at exactly the same speed and ferocity despite any one of low visibility, darkness, rain, fog, sleet and wind. They will drive at the same velocity even if all of these factors are present.

4) The Swiss are encouraged to take note of registration numbers of excessively speeding vehicles and report them to the authorities. There's some sort of bonus for doing this apparently. Yes, that was my first thought too - bastards.

5) French motorway toll booth clerks are just as chirpy at 5am as they are at 5pm. For a race of people who sit in cafes sipping their pastis a l'eau whilst muttering "you eenglish peoples make my ass tweetch" they are surprisingly chirpy when it comes to jobs like that.

6) Dark Dog lasts for a long time.