The Whole is Less than the Sum of the Parts

As Christmas approaches, it is again time for some reflection on the year behind us, and I am glad to say that it was a particularly good one.

New Home

The most significant event of this past year has been moving house. Our housing situation had increasingly been of concern for us, particularly as the prices of properties in the UK kept spiralling. But we are glad to say that after five years in rather abysmal accommodation, we succeeded this spring in buying a nice three-bedroom house in Banknock, a village on the western edge of the Falkirk council area. We are on the edge of open countryside of the Kelvin Valley, less than five-minute walk from the Forth and Clyde Canal, which is ideal for our running and cycling. In addition, the move has reduced the commuting times for both of us; my average journey to work is now around 45-50 minutes (envious of Linda’s 10 minute drive). The house also has a small garden, which I particularly enjoy.

Work

I continue teaching the Old Testament at Scottish Baptist College. In addition to that, I am going to be teaching an honours-level module in systematic theology this spring; it should be an interesting experience as this really is not my field. Teaching comes with its own joys and challenges, and provides an opportunity to reflect critically on one’s beliefs and attitudes, and my own theology has certainly been crystallising over the past couple of years. Otherwise, we are quite busy at present at the College, trying to get three new programmes validated through the University of Paisley for the next academic year. Overall, I am reasonably happy with my work, but I do struggle with the commuting, which I find incredibly stressful, but at present there is now way around that.

Climbing

I terms of climbing, it was not the greatest of years. Between the wet weather in the early part of the year and all the business that goes with buying new house, I only managed one day climbing this spring. I did, however, spend a week climbing on the Cornish sea cliffs this August (with the Christian Rock and Mountain Club), which has ranked among the best climbing I have ever done, and I am hoping to return there next summer (something rather appealing about the combination of the sea cliffs and Cornish cream tea). After that holiday, however, I have not managed to get out climbing until the first winter climb of the season this past Saturday (Curved Ridge on Buchaile Etiv Mor). I hope the next year is going to be better, I find few things as satisfying as a good climb.

Running

I am pleased to say that I have achieved my target for the year and broke through the 45min barrier for 10k this autumn. We both really enjoyed our running, and joined a handful of 10k races; our favourite was a small race at Laggan, with challenging, undulating, course set in the beautiful scenery of the Scottish Highlands – we have every intention to return there next May.

AbiWord

My involvement with AbiWord has entered into its fifth year, and over the years it has become a way of keeping my engineering brain sane. After six month of intense bug fixing, we have just released the next major version (2.2), with which AbiWord reached a serious degree of maturity, so if you are looking for a free alternative to MS Word, why not give it a try? Personally, I am particularly pleased with the excellent support for complex scripts we now have working in the Windows version, and fully expect to have similar support in place on Linux for the next major release (2.4), perhaps in next 6 months.

Well, that is enough ranting for one year.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year everyone!

Got the first climb of the winder season done yesterday, Curved Ridge on Buchaile Etive Mor. The conditions were not the greatest and I was reminded again how radically different the character of the same winter climb can be from outing to outing. Last year we climbed it very early in the season, covered by 2 inches of beautifult hoarfrost — we soloed the whole thing, took us no time at all.

This time it was different. The climb was covered with a thin layer of fresh snow, just thick enough to obscure cracks and holds, but otherwise of no use. The first pitch was positively dodgy, and so leading it I moved slowly and deliberately. That pitch does not have much in a way of protection even in the summer, and I ended up with two slings (both of which fell off as soon as I moved above them) and a dodgy hex as the sole protection on the full 50m. I also nearly run out of rope; just as well we started pitching not from the verry bottom. (In the meantime, a queue of 14 or so other climbers gathered at the bottom … that’s Curved Ridge.)

The next section of the climb, the steps below the chimney and the chimney itself was supperb (we had a climber, a member of the RAF Mountain Rescue, to fall on the three of us from the chimney; I was really glad that he did not stabbed me with his crampons. I do have bruise from the impact, though.)

Above the chimney the climb had disctinctly alpine feel; moving as a rope of three we topped out just as the dusk was beginning to set in. Had a nice bumslide in a powder snow on the way down. Really good to be back climbing.

Hurray. Last lecture of the semester delivered today.

Our back fence collapsed sometime last night, will need to do something about it.

I have decided to get a jabber id (see the right column). Spent about an hour trying to work out how to setup Exodus client to use SSL through proxy, but in spite of extensive googling, failed miserably. So I mailed the Exodus list for help, we will see.

I find Exodus to be a very neat application, but the complete lack of documentation is a serious turn off. This reminds me that I need to check that the documentation regarding bidi, revisions and document history in AbiWord is reasonably uptodate.

My legs have been really sore since Saturday afternoon. Linda and I went for a jog, and not having run since mid October we really overestimated our residual fitness and run our normal training distance of 12k. We should have known better and taken it easier after such a pause, and are both paying for it now.

I am somewhat suprised, for while we have not been running for a while, we have been cycling regularly, and did some hiking. I always suspected that cycling and running utilised quite different muscle groups, but I am really amazed how quickly specific muscle tone disappers. A couple of months back I had been running up to 21k and never was in such an agony afterwards.

The lesson is, I suppose, that we need to make more effort over the winter months to do at least some runing, so that when the spring arrives we will be able to step it up without major trouble. I would really like to break through the 42min/10k barrier next year, but shaving over two and half minutes of my best time (44:24) might be too ambitious. I have also been toying with the idea of running a half-marathon for the past year; I can run the distance, but want to do it below 1:45. Nearly pulled it off in the summer (got down to about 1:48 in training), but could not sustain the committment to clock in the necessary miles. That is what puts me of the longer distances, I have too many other interests to find the time.

Things have been bit busy at work this week; fortunately, the semester finishes next week.

Fixed three small bugs in AbiWord, I think we are ready for another release soon. Earlier this week I have been looking into the Pango graphics class that Daniel started and it seems that it should be doable for the 2.4 release. That and the Merge Documents feature are likely going to be two things I am going to concentrate on for the 2.4 version.