How old were you when you first started programming?

Now, that really would be telling and would give away my age. Let’s just say that I was lucky enough to get a Sinclair ZX81 for Christmas 1981, and never really looked back.

How did you get started in programming?

All my friends were getting Atari games console’s, but I got a stinking ZX81 with 1K of memory… actually a bit less than that, since a few hundred bytes were reserved for system variables, and had to write my own games.

What was your first language?

Afrikaans. Followed by English, and then Sinclair BASIC.

What was the first real program you wrote?

Mars Mining Corporation. After 6 months of typing in other peoples BASIC code from printouts in magazines, I acquired a 4K RAM Pack for my ZX81, and wrote a fun text only simulation for making money out of running a mining company on Mars.

What languages have you used since you started programming?

Chronologically, as best as I can remember:

Sinclair Basic, Z80 assembler, BBC Basic, 6502 Assembler, Amstrad BASIC, Pascal, LPC, MUF Modula-2, APL, Forth, C, YACC, Oberon, Occam-2, Modula-3, C-shell, C++, Prolog, Bourne Shell, sed, Emacs Lisp, AWK, M4, Scheme, Tcl/Tk, Cobol, PCL5, D, Brainfuck, C#, Java, Javascript, Python, SQL, PHP4, Lua, AppleScript…

And then there are a whole slew of XML based and inspired languages I’ve had the pleasure of becoming acquainted with over the years:

SGML, CSS2, CSS3, XHTML, XSL, Glade XML, YAML, RDF, DAML+Oil, JSON, DTD, RSS, Atom, SAX…

Plus some proprietary languages I can’t remember the names of, and quite probably several more languages that I’ve forgotten about.

What was your first professional programming gig?

My first job after graduating was fixing bugs in support software for Independent Financial Advisors, back in 1994.

If you knew then what you know now, would you have started programming?

I would have started sooner if I’d been able to talk my Dad into buying a PDP-11…

If there is one thing you learned along the way that you would tell new developers, what would it be?

Study other people’s code. Free Software is an education!

What’s the most fun you’ve ever had… programming?

Libtool, obviously. How could I not enjoy writing M4 code that generates portable Bourne Shell code on the developers machine, which in turn runs on the users machine to generate C code to interact with code libraries? I was meta-programming before I even knew what it meant

Who’s next?

James Urquhart

Even though my posts here have been, ahem a little thin on the ground since our Tennessee road trips a few months ago, I’ve been active on twitter and I’m now blogging professionally for the Haxor Network since the beginning of this month. Please, do have a look at Mac Haxor and Linux Haxor and vote for my Mac and Linux tips! Ogle at the sexy lady screenshot. Sign up for the rss feeds etc etc.

If you’re interested in being paid to post, or guest blogging for the Haxor Network, Pavs is still searching for contributors, so head on over and express an interest in the comments. The site gets over 15,000 page views per day, so posting there is a great way to raise your profile!

Although I’ll be posting shorter Mac and Linux tips and news articles at least twice a week for the Haxor Network, I’ll continue with travelogues, martial arts commentary, opinion pieces, personal productivity items, and the occasional more in depth article on computing here at Azazil.

Twitter for those who don’t get it

Much as I had vainly cast aside the notion that I just didn’t get it the whole while, everything finally clicked for me when I started following people who were referred to by others I was following. @bynkii posted a tweet for the benefit of @flargh, so I followed @flargh and so on. Before long I was watching a little network of people commenting about their day, and about each others’ days. People weren’t casting their 140 characters into the void without reason after all, there was interaction!

With hindsight, my problem was that I had been thinking of Twitter as blogging in the small. But with no followers, there was no-one to read what I was writing, and thus nothing to engage me to take part in it actively. Twitter isn’t like blogging at all it’s more like instant messaging… if I had set the @Replies setting in my twitter profile to “show me all @replies” sooner, I would have certainly noticed these little pockets of conversation and started following the people being addressed. And some of them would have reciprocated. And I would have being taking part instead of watching, bemused.

Twitter for those who do get it

And now that I have some followers to read my tweets, and occasionally tweet back at me about them, I not only mention the minutiae of my day to the annoyance of everyone else who doesn’t get it yet, but I take part in conversations with other people who are following me. It’s kinda neat!

Now that’s all very well, but I want to incorporate my part of the twitterverse into my online life. I want to build my blog readership by tweeting when I put up a new blog post. I want to build my twitter followers by engaging my blog readers enough to be interested in what I’m comment about with other like-minded people at twitter.

I thought I’d found a great way to do all of that (and more!) with [Alex King]’s Wordpress [Twitter Tools]. I have it set up to automatically tweet new blog posts on my behalf, and to collect summaries of my tweets into daily posts. Except that having my blog posts drowned out incessant trivia and my half of various out of context conversations is more likely to drive you, gentle reader, away from my blog that to turn you from a twitter don’t get it into get it over a few days.

The problem is that twitter conversations are essentially throw away, and don’t generally have enough substance to generate further blog comments. Essentially they don’t belong in a post. I think what I really need is a way to show my last handful of tweets in the sidebar. Any pointers much appreciated!

Over the next few days, I’ll delete the Twitter daily summaries, and search for a wordpress rss widget to integrate into azazil, so as to try to pique your interest in Twitter. I might even write a post to try and persuade you to sign up for a free account and follow me at twitter. I’m one of the many people who will reciprocate the follow bit on anyone that follows me, especially as I’m now painfully aware that twitter just doesn’t click until you reach a critical mass of followers to pull you into the never-ending twitterverse conversation…

After sitting up way too late last night, it was only the promise of missing breakfast that got me out of bed before 9am today. After breakfast, shower and packing we didn’t hit the road until after 11am

With a short stop at IHOP (couldn’t resist!) for a very late lunch, we had a very tedious 300 mile freeway ride covering half the remaining distance back to Orlando. The scenery from I-75 is flat and very much the same right the way through Georgia, except riding through the maze of exits among the skyscrapers in Atlanta.

I’ve never seen so many people pulled by the cops, we saw at least half a dozen cars on the hard shoulder with a red and blue interrogating the driver. Just south of Atlanta drove through the first speed trap I’ve seen in the States, with a cop pulled onto the central reservation pointing a radar gun into the oncoming traffic. It’s almost like being back in England! Having said that, the speed limit is 75 along most of the I-75, and the country isn’t awash with Gatso cameras every few miles to fine you £40 if you’re a touch over the limit…

We reached headed right for another Howard Johnson hotel in Ashburn, arriving just before 6pm. It was sunny throughout the whole day, and neither of us needed any of the cold weather gear we bought on the outbound journey 2 weeks ago (timewarp post forthcoming ~Al). Even so, 5 hours of squaring off the tyres at 70mph we were pretty tired by the time we stopped.

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1. Day 1: Cherohala Skyway

So, that’s it for our trip to Tennessee. Two weeks gone in a flash. For some reason we booked a condo in Orlando from tonight, but even with the best will in the world it is going to take us 3 days to ride back to Florida.

Luckily we had packed everything last night since we were supposed to check out by 10am, and I didn’t wake up until 9:12am. D’oh! I guess I should have hit “snooze” instead of “shut up, I’m still tired” on my alarm at 7am. With some running around, brushing of teeth while getting dressed, and skipping inessentials like breakfast, we managed to make it out by a hair…

The last couple of times we’ve ridden into the mountains this week, it’s almost induced hypothermia. Thankfully, the weather has held out for us today. Even though we needed a full complement of jackets and gloves, it was actually pretty warm in the sun.

As soon as we pulled out of the resort, first stop: Gatlinburg Mountain Grill, for a hearty ham and eggs late breakfast to see us on our way through the days riding. We were fed, watered and finally saddled up and on our way proper before 11am.

The first part of the route through the Smoky Mountains National Park and into North Carolina was all the better for being in daylight, with brooks and creeks at the roadside peppered with an occasional waterfall from the rock formations. The roads actually weren’t quite so scary now that the ice had melted, except in an occasional tunnel or a deep valley (that made my butt clench heart skip a beat a couple of times today!). Cherokee and Bryson City, however, we had seen before when we rode back from Deal’s Gap last week (March 3rd, timewarp post forthcoming ~Al).

We crossed back into Tennessee and started the gorgeous ride along Cherohala Skyway around 2pm. Unfortunately, we kept stopping to take a zillion photos of the panoramic scenery along the way, so we didn’t reach the first pit-stop at the other side for almost another 2 hours!

I don’t know where Tave has gone in this picture… but perhaps 4 hours without a toilet break was torturing her unnecessarily

We’d secretly hoped that we might make it into Georgia today, but we had been told not to miss the Cherohala Skyway by: the staff of Gatlinburg Harley (a weird dealership — it has no bikes!!); barstaff at the Hard Rock Cafe; ShawnKing; not to mention various bikers we’d run in to through the week, and we certainly weren’t disappointed. 7 hours and 168 miles later, we decided to call it a day at the first hotel we reached on I-75.

We can makeup the shortfall on mileage tomorrow when we hit the interstate. Here’s hoping we can miss the traffic through Atlanta.

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1. FL 2 TN Day 1: Sunburn Injuries

Last month I resolved to start each week with a timetable of how I planned to spend time for the coming week.

How’d it go?

Right after I wrote up the resolution, I got caught up in trying to get ahead of myself with paid work so that I could comfortably take a week off to move house again. That was two weeks of pure work, eat & sleep with just enough time in between to take a shower. The next week went into packing up all my worldly possessions in Manila, traveling across the international date line via Guam and Hawaii back into Florida. It would have been nice to take a day or two to recover from the 14 hour time difference, and unpack into a new apartment, but first of all we had a 5 day bike ride through 4 states… more about that in another post.

Result: FAIL

What went wrong?

In short, I didn’t even plan a timetable, let alone try to stick to one. Bah.

What to do about it?

Next week — when things are settling down again, and I’ve actually got some kind of chance of setting up a routine at the beginning of the week that I’ll be able follow for a week or two — I’ll actually write up a timetable.

So, next month, I’ll have something a bit more interesting to report…

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By 10am we were already well over halfway to Columbia, but it was starting to get pretty cold, so we stopped at a gas station cum diner for a coffee to warm up. Watching TV as we hugged our coffee mugs to get some life back into our chilly fingertips, the weatherman said there was a 50% chance of snow-showers in Knoxville, TN (about 30 miles west of our destination, Gatlinburg) overnight and into tomorrow morning. Squinting at the map, it looked as though North Carolina was going to escape… Tave and I were contemplating giving up and going back to sunny Florida, but since our condo is already paid we decided to press on and only turn back if the roads became dangerous.

No sooner had we made our decision than the heaven opened, and huge sheets of rain were blown through the forecourt, soaking our bikes, our luggage and our enthusiasm. I dashed outside to push the Harleys under cover, and I was drenched just a minute later when I got back indoors. Stupidly, I had figured that the weather wouldn’t be drastically different just a few hundred miles north of Florida, and we hadn’t brought winter gloves, or waterproofs, and Tave was wearing sandals and no jacket. D’oh! Couldn’t have been much more wrong there.

From USA Today Weather:

Severe weather threat – On the southern end of the storm system, thunderstorms are rolling through parts of western North Carolina, western South Carolina, central Georgia, western Florida and southeastern Alabama this morning. Severe thunderstorm watches are in effect from eastern Georgia through western Florida. The main threats from these storms will be large hail and damaging winds.

10:30 came and went, and the rain wasn’t showing signs of letting up. We’d seen some hotels a junction back down the interstate, so we decided to call it a day and make a run for Orangeburg for the rest of the day. I left the scale on the map this time, so you can see how pathetically short a distance we’d covered…

We picked a hotel with a laundry, and when the rain abated briefly later in the afternoon got directions to Walmart for some fishermans wet weather gear, and Applebys for dinner. Pretty stylish, huh?

Here’s hoping the snow doesn’t stop us from riding into Gatlinburg tomorrow!

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1. Day 20: Oak Creek Canyon
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4. Day 2: Carolina Steakhouse

Call me crazy, but I’ve really missed IHOP’s Eggs Benedict for the six months we’ve been away, and was itching for the chance to set things straight at our lunch stop near Riceboro, GA. As usual we were able to pick up a hotel coupons booklet on the way out of IHOP, and found a decent looking hotel in Hardeeville, South Carolina to spend the night.

The skies grew grayer, and the air colder, as the day progressed, but we still had an hour of daylight when we crossed from GA into SC, so we decided to press on a little further. At a shade over 200 miles for the day when we arrived at the next hotel from the coupon booklet in Walterboro, it was starting to get dark, and we were definitely feeling the cold set in. Amazing that the weather can be so different only a few hundred miles further North than yesterday’s blazing sun!

The Rice Plantation Inn, Walterboro was quite a treat as it turned out. Despite the low price for the night, the room was large, clean and well kept. Better still, there’s a fabulous Steak House right next door, where we enjoyed a very American steak and baked potato dinner.

The weather forecast predicts rain storms moving into the Carolinas around noon tomorrow, so we’ll have to make another early start to cover as many miles as we can, before an early check in at our next stop to avoid getting soaked in the afternoon. Perhaps we should have found out how much colder and wetter it is in these parts before we set off from Florida in our Summer biking gear?

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Wow, if it wasn’t already crazy enough posting from the past, it looks like I’m jumping around randomly in time to fill in on my earlier adventures. I hope you guys are following me in Twitter so that you don’t lose track… ~Al Torigo

I’ve really missed the freedom of the road, and sad as I was to leave Manila behind just as I was starting to get into the rhythm of the place, it’s really great to be back on the Harleys again. Using points from the timeshare we bought in Sedona 18 months ago, we’ve booked a condo in the Tennessee Smoky Mountains National Park for 2 weeks starting on the 27th. That gives us 4 days of riding time to cover the 657 miles from Orlando to Gatlinburg, via both South Carolina and North Carolina.

Although we want to take our time and enjoy the ride, there are flood warnings for South Carolina and storms are forecast for Tuesday, so we plan to cover at least 200 miles a day from the outset incase we are held up by weather later on.

We made an early start this morning to give us time to return our hire car to the airport before checking out of the hotel and enjoying a leisurely ride to Daytona Beach for a late lunch in Tail Gators Grill & Bar at the intersection of Atlantic Drive and International Speedway Blvd. I ate alligator for the second time, washed down with a Guinness while I watched the custom bikes chugging by in the run up to bike week.

As if my hands haven’t taken enough punishment recently, by the time we stopped in Jacksonville, FL for the night, I noticed that while cruising along the A1A on the Fat Boy in the afternoon sun, I had burnt the backs of my hands pretty badly.

Note to self: Even if there is a nice cooling breeze while I’m riding in Florida, I still have to cake any bare skin in SPF50!

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As soon as Octavia and I moved out of our hotel in Pasay City last month, I began looking in earnest for a Pekiti-Tirsia Kali instructor. I was very lucky that a friend-of-a-friend used to be involved in the URCC (more or less the Filipino UFC), and that he very kindly introduced me to his old instructor.

Following a month of progressively harder training, and despite the fact that I had carefully taped my thumb and forefinger beforehand, after 300 full power strikes to a stack of tyres with a heavy baston, my hand is a mess of blisters

Training Times

This isn’t a formal club, and training is at mutually convenient times in the instructor’s back yard. My hands can only hold up for a couple of hours at most, and my head is usually full to bursting with new information to process by then. I’m trying to make it twice a week, and leave enough time between visits to recover a little

Lesson Structure

Even with the informal atmosphere, and the steep learning curve, each session builds carefully on the last. So far the two hours generally consists of an initial warm up, with many repetitions of basic strikes and footwork leading into a new technique or two for the day. After a short break, the middle part of the lesson works on variations of the day’s new techniques, first in the air, and then with a partner (either as a drill, or defending against multiple angles). The final part of the lesson works on conditioning and fitness, either sparring or striking a dummy or stack of tyres.

Students and Instructor

Often there are one or two other students already training when I arrive, or who turn up while I am training, and when that’s the case it’s always interesting to compare notes on our martial backgrounds. Just as often I’m lucky enough to have the entire two hours of one-on-one learning all to myself.

Because training is by invitation only, I feel extremely privileged to have the opportunity to train here; the structure reminds me very much of my Jeet Kune Do Sifu, Andre Martin, with his real world experience and no frills teaching style. After years of study with several Filipino Martial Arts, what he teaches can’t be pigeon-holed as a particular style or lineage… it is a combination of techniques and principles that he has successfully applied and refined in real combat.

Style and Techniques

As Andre had already begun to show me, FMA has techniques that can be applied with a variety of weapons, or even empty handed. Had I not known this when I started training here in Manila, I would likely have been a little perturbed when 30 minutes into my first lesson I had to swap my steel pipe for a machete (a blunt machete, but a real metal blade none-the-less) and execute the swings I had just been taught.

Pekiti-Tirsia Kali proper takes this idea to its logical conclusion, where the swings and angles are shown to work equally well, and be just as damaging to your opponent whether you’re armed with an Escrima baston, a pen knife, a chop stick or even just a cell phone.

What I’m learning isn’t just PTK though, as all the flamboyant moves have been discarded, and the emphasis is placed very strictly on effectiveness in combat. Though I hadn’t thought so previously, I’m coming around to the idea that even though you can strike your opponent extremely hard with a wooden stick, if you don’t hit a vulnerable spot then it’s very unlikely to end a fight. Especially if your attacker is pumped on adrenaline at the time. The antidote to this is to develop a hugely powerful swing, and the accuracy to repeatedly hit those vulnerable points with it.

And that, in turn, is why I seem to be spending an inordinate amount of time killing tyres at the moment!

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