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Pancakes en route home at Sal's flat.

OK, can someone explain this Duo thing? If I buy a big Snickers, I'm looking for a big Snickers, not two smaller Snickers pretending. Cos I'm smart, I know it's essentially the same amount of food, give or take a few millimetres of chocolate.

This weekend has been pretty busy for sport, in terms of doing and watching. On Saturday my parents came over, and I guessed we'd have a few beers whilst watching the rugby, so decided to get my LSD out the way on Saturday morning. My distance running seems to be going OK (touch wood) but my speed was letting me down, so I thought I'd give a little push and see what happened. Thankfully my legs didn't give up, and I managed the required 12 miles in 87 minutes, which I'm pretty happy with. Now, I just need to do that twice-and-a-little-bit at the same pace, and I'll be happy. Hmmm...

After a delicious lunch, dad and I headed off to catch the Scotland vs England rugby match with Rich. It was an incredible afternoon: Scotland pulled off their second win of this campaign, beating England 18-12. There will have been a LOT of sore Scottish heads on Sunday morning!

Today Hazel and I ate a lot, then had a quick march around the Pentland Hills. Tonight was the closing ceremony of the Torino Winter Olympics 2006. These Olympics have been brilliant, and I'm quite sad to see them finish. For 2010 in Vancouver, I'm aiming to be there for sure.

Now it's time to get a good sleep before the week begins again...

Hazel & I took a short march around the Pentlands. Despite quality sandwiches to keep strength up, the wind was too much for Hazel, even with her supercool Da Kine hat.

OK, this is a first here, but it has been OK'd. The company I work for (investment management) based in Edinburgh has a job for a Progress developer (I think this is this kind of Progress, but I'm not sure). The job is permanent and based in Edinburgh. If you're interested, let me know and I'll pass on a link to the full details.

Big disclaimer: I'm not speaking for my employer here; this is my personal blog. I'm posting here because I know there's a good number of Edinburgh-based technical people reading and it's a quick way to reach you.

Alright, that's a summary of what I've been up to. The London Marathon is on 23rd of April, and my birthday is the 25th, so there's a fair amount to plan. I think we're going away after the LM, although I don't know where, or for how long.

Apart from that, Hazel and I saw the BAFTA award winning Brokeback Mountain which is well worth seeing. I definitely plan to get the DVD when it comes out, just for Ang Lee's commentary -- I'm sure I missed a *lot*.

The Winter Olympics in Torino (Turin) are with us, and what fun they are! I've spent a good part of my day watching what's going on. If I'd thought about it, I really should have been there like Pro (when did you go all podcast?). Personal planning is something I'm still working to improve...

Today saw some great downhill skiing, the men's luge (truly insane), the 30km cross-country skiing that ended in a sprint-finish and the men's halfpipe. It's the first time in a long time I've been glad to have TopUpTV which has Eurosport.

Scotland seems to be providing a good portion of the medal hopes for Team GB, with our gold-medal winning curlers in action again and the Baxter brothers back for some skiing.

Oooooh -- Google has done some Torino goodness. Fun fun.

It's been ages since I posted about weekend antics. This weekend has been a lot of fun, so here we go...

During the week, Hazel surprised me with tickets to see Trainspotting (the play, not the film) at the King's Theatre. It was extremely well done, and well worth seeing if they are playing near you. Having been too late leaving work to make dinner before the play, we managed to afterwards at The Apartment. Previously when I've been, the place hasn't leapt out at me as a wonderful restaurant, but my opinion is changing now. The shared salad starter was fantastic, and both our main courses were very tasty. After a few quiet drinks in Henricks, we headed home for some quality chat into the wee hours.

On Saturday, I headed home to my parents. My sister (and current flatmate) is going travelling in about a month, so we all got together before she left. Dinner was at Sisters restaurant in Kelvingrove, which was truly excellent. The food was really delicious, and the service was impeccable. The impression I had was that the restaurant we were at was the sister restaurant of one in Jordanhill, but I'm not sure. We closed the night with a drink in the Old Fruitmarket which has been rennovated and must be a brilliant venue for music ... or a ceilidh.

After a solid 15 mile run this morning (yep, I'm back on the marathon schedule -- more on that soon), we had some visitors to the house and then a wonderful lunch, before I headed back to Edinburgh.

Add in a superb Six Nations win over France by Scotland, and all in all, it's been a rockin' weekend of fun, great food and fantastic company.

The last two days of Dilbert have been excellent. First up was Dilbert being asked to set up a wireless network (thanks to everyone who sent me that!) and today was engineers versus salespeople.

A short snippet of dad's interview did actually make it to the ScottishTV news last night. You can see the videos via this page, and I've also put local copies on my own server in case they disappear: video 1 video 2.

The HMS Daring launch was incredible today. The River Clyde is not that wide, so when 500 feet of ship comes sliding out it is quite a sight to behold. My dad and I both got some great pictures which I'll post shortly, but my dad totally won the day with an incredible video of the launch. It's an 80MB AVI file, but if you've got the bandwidth, feel free to download and enjoy.

Dad was interviewed for the Scottish evening news!

At 500 feet long, it was a close call to avoid the side of the river.

Starting to appear...

HMS Daring hiding in it's shed on the Clyde.