Ben's Blog

Snowboarding in Whistler & Blackcomb

I winded myself, I fell over flat on my face twice yesterday. You can see a map of my route here.

Flying Air Canada to Vancouver

12:10pm – We’re off.

4:17am - Goodbye Iceland, we’ve just flown past it. I’ve adjusted my watch to Canadian time, eight hours behind GMT. I’m sitting here with the latest episode of Lost on my laptop. The scene is  a plane much like this one, oops, it’s just crashed, not the best TV to be watching while in flight.

 

8:36am - They’ve turned the lights out, heading over Greenland. There’s eight hours time difference between London and Vancouver.  I’m having difficulty composing my thoughts, a migraine has just kicked in.

I don’t get migraines that often, I suspect it was due to something in the  ingredients of the beef lunch, I’m suspicious of palm oil. Long flights give me headaches anyway, arrrrrrgh!!!, I think I'm dehydrated, I've just taken a rehydration drink, please let this pass.

I’m now watching Mad Men, this episode  involves a plane crash too, chance has a sense of humour sometimes.

 

9:44am – Migraine is fading away.

 

10:06am – Before flying, I Googled ways to cure jetlag. Wikipedia states that studies have shown that hamsters on Viagra recovered 50% quicker. I don’t have access to the internet at the moment, but I remember reading once that hamsters deprived of food  for 48 hours would also recover from jetlag quicker, something about the desperate need to find food, resets the body clock. Poor hamsters, but on a positive note, I guess they’ve got lots of frequent flyer miles.

2:11pm – We’ve landed, I turned to my friend and commented that it seemed like the flight was much longer, considering it was only a two hour flight.

4:10pm – Finally in my hotel room, I’m making myself a cup of green tea, then I'm going to head down to the hotel bar. The flight was smooth, negligible, turbulence and amazing blue sky, gave me a chance to see how much snow awaits me.

9:45pm – That’s it I can’t stay awake anymore, I’m off to bed.

Born in the Seventies

Last night my sister was on TV with her fiancée. He had been asked to talk about the Little Princess Trust, a charity that he and his ex wife had founded in memory of their daughter, who lost her battle in June 2005. The charity provide custom made quality wigs for any child that may need one.

The show was called Noel’s HQ, live on Sky one; (Small side note: I found out this morning that the show’s homepage is part of the sky1 website, one of the last projects I worked on prior to leaving BSkyB.)

Lacking Sky, I had no way to watch the show, so I listened. I phoned home and asked that the handset was left by the speaker of their TV. The spot regarding the charity was brief, but I thought tastefully done, I hope the additional exposure proves to be helpful. Noel announced that  Gail Porter would like to be a patron of the charity.

I had arranged to meet up with them after the show. It had been the end of a long day, all were emotional, but happy about the outcome. I got a chance to briefly talk to Gail. I remember fancying her during her days on Saturday morning TV, she came across as intelligent, warmed hearted and funny. She’ll make an excellent face to promote the charity.

Lastly, I couldn’t miss my opportunity to say hi to my old hero. Just at the turn of the 70’s, Noel was one of the biggest stars in the UK, he was a radio 1 DJ and he hosted the biggest show on Children’s TV – Noel’s Saturday morning swap shop. Seeing Noel again, reminded me of when my grandfather managed to get me a signed poster of Noel lounging on a speed boat. I can’t stress how excited and proud I was to have that unique poster, I couldn’t believe it was real. In my five year old eyes, it was held in the same regard as a rare religious artefact. If the house burnt down, the only thing I'd want to salvage would have been the poster, I considered it priceless. So, obviously, I had to go up to Noel and tell him how infatuated I was. He kindly laughed, didn’t call security and said I must have been scared for life, I reassured him that no permanent damage was done and wished him all the best. Sadly, I’m not sure what happened to that poster.

Snow in london

Snow in london, originally uploaded by Ben30.

Took this shot round the corner from where I work in Liverpool street, it was outside a UBS building.

My perception comes from experience.

I have a personal and ultimately positive episode in my life, one that’s helped shape me, I’d like to share it, but I’m slightly worried I wont be able to express myself accurately and be incorrectly judged, oh well, I’ll give it a try…

I experienced what it was like to have the many things I thought I loved slowly destroyed or taken away; it painfully happened bit by bit. I lost my privacy, freedom and piece of mind. At the time I didn’t have the self respect and courage to fight against what was happening.

Finally something made me snap, I found the strength and support to break free from this situation. Being safe again, I found myself in a powerful and unique position, imagine clearing out your entire existence, complete spring clean, everything gone. It gave me an opportunity to assess what I truly missed, what mattered, how should I rebuild my life?

This happened a five years ago, I’m now in a mostly balanced, positive place, the experience has shown me what I personally consider valuable.

I value my sense of humour, my amazing music collection, learning and experiencing new things, my freedom and self respect. I’d regained the friends I thought I had lost and my aim is to make new friends wisely. I now make every effort to love, keep in touch and share my life with them; they give me strength and I hope they all know I’m there for them too.

It’s funny, some of the things that were painful to loose at the time, I quickly adapted and learned to live without. Most things are replaceable if missed. Owning a book isn’t important, it’s value is in the knowledge it contains. Any lost book can be borrowed from a library for nothing anyway. Without realizing it, having loads of useless possessions can be a home made emotional dungeon. For a long time I missed my pet dog, he was an intelligent, loyal friend.

It’s amazing to honestly feel free and not guilty about it either.

It’s a funny paradox, I wouldn’t have the strength and happiness that I’ve got now, if I hadn’t been bullied through the whole process in the first place. I know it’s an old chestnut of a cliché, but that’s what makes them great:

What doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger.

I do not want someone to judge me incorrectly and show me their pity, personally I think it’s a negative thing to offer, not very motivational. To put it another way, a similar thought could be expressed in two ways:

Oh, that’s such a pity, all that you’ve lost, don’t get too depressed.

I prefer this:
Oh, I respect the strength you must have after what you’ve been through, it’s inspiring.

I’m always open to criticism, but aim to dismiss thoughtless negative comments. It’s easy to get pity, but more difficult to get understanding.

I find that what I went through confuses me sometimes, an emotion I wasn’t expecting appears from somewhere, hits me off guard; I have to spend some time assessing it, getting to know it, understanding it, wondering where it came from, I can then normally deal with it.

Carrying lambs

One of my early memories, I must have been about four years old, was my Uncle's farm in the spring. I remember looking up and around me, a corrugated iron barn, in the eyes of child it was huge, hay on the floor and the sweet, rich, warmly comforting smell of dirt, mixed with compost and straw.

The bleating of animals,  It was lambing season, the barn was crowded with people, all doing what was expected of them. I was given a lamb to hold and asked to take it. I panicked, I didn't know what to do, I was holding this small, much smaller than me, scared living thing in my hands, I was sharing their fear. I felt an irrational burden of responsibility, I had no idea what I was meant to do. Yet, it also felt warm, soft, fluffy and comforting. We walked to another part of the barn and I handed that lamb over to someone else, uncertain that it was the right thing to do. I think it was the first time I felt uncertainty, responsibility, just a little stress.

It's cold here at the moment, -1 degree centigrade

I went to bed at 7:30pm last night, I ended up sleeping for 11 hours. This weather makes me want to hibernate.

The Grails JMS plugin and Tibco EMS

This week, work asked me to build an admin tool that could listen in on the messages of a jms topic, record them and output them in a web page.

I thought Grails with the help of the wonderful JMS plugin had the potential to deliver exactly what I needed.

The examples were great, but didn't deal with EMS, only activeMQ, Googling came up with nothing. So, I thought I'd make a note of how I finally got it working with Tibco.

Firstly, I followed the JMS plugin notes here, then I grabbed a copy of tibjms.jar and placed it in the grails app lib directory.

Finally, I placed the following code in resources.groovy:

beans = {
        connectionFactory(com.tibco.tibjms.TibjmsConnectionFactory) {                    
            userName     = 'blah'
            userPassword = 'blah'
            serverUrl    = 'tcp://server1:7019,server2:7019'
        }
}

And Bob is indeed my uncle, I have a grails app talking to a Tibco EMS. I got the messages saved via GORM and used the  scaffolding feature to give me an auto-generated application based around the GORM domain classes. It couldn't have been easier.

How was 2008 for you?

Buddhist Winter Open Retreat, originally uploaded by Ben30.

Now that 2008 is over, I think I’ve just had the best year of my life. I've taken up running, Capoeira, Tango, Salsa, lost weight, got fit, moved house, worked and became friends with some amazing people, learnt Agile, moved job, got a pay rise, learnt to meditate, become a vegetarian (I think I'll stick with it), attended a retreat, gave Buddhism some serious thought and became debt free.

I didn't plan any of this, it just sort of happened. This year I made no new years resolutions, I'm going to continue to be open minded, be fearful and do it anyway. Life is about change, I will continue to embrace it.

This last year has been one of personal growth. I have conquered fears, tried, seen and enjoyed many new things. It's been a year of self reflection, I've questioned who I am, asked what it means to be me, pushed myself and carefully thought about who I want to become.

This post wouldn't be complete without mentioning my break up with A, the girl that got away, I wish had done more to keep us together, I miss her. Even though we've been apart, no longer in each other's day to day lives, I will always consider her a positive influence. Our short time together has shown me a direction that I am both proud and happy to continue on. Hope guides me, hope that in the next year, the different paths that A. and I are now taking will lead us to what we are both looking for, personal growth, acceptance, understanding, warmth, peace, love and happiness.

How you get your adrenalin flowing?

I've been listening to this tune a fair bit this week, it's Signs (MMMatthias remix) by Bloc Party.

Download Signs

I saw Bloc Party at the London Astoria about four years ago, it was one of the best concerts I'd ever been to. There really is nothing better than feeling in tune with the atmosphere of the crowd, crammed in at the front, with no room to dance, jumping up and down, just letting go and loosing yourself. The band feeds off the crowd, then bounces the energy back at them, that symbiotic closed loop, it charges the room, everyone benefits, it's great to be a part of something like that, I love it.

Hey man, what's your style
How you get your kicks for living
Hey man, what's your style
How you get your adrenalin flowing now
How you get your adrenalin flowing

- Kicks by Lou Reed

What's your Kicks, how do you get your adrenalin flowing?