My Running Log

Posted by Annie on Dec 28, 2011 in General, Opinion | 0 comments

I’ve been a member of several gyms over the years but in all honesty, I’ve never been very good at actually going to them. I start off pretty good but after a few weeks I lose interest and like most people, my gym gear sits in the corner of my room gathering dust. Excuse after excuse, the end result is that I just don’t go often enough.

Anyway, in October 2011, Jason and I joined a gym literally around the corner from our flat in Amsterdam. It’s more expensive than other gyms around the city but considering it’s about a 2 minute walk for us to get there and it’s really well equipped, we figured it was worth it. At least this way we wouldn’t really be able to use the ‘Oh but it’s cold and the gym is so far away, let’s just stay at home watch TV instead..’ excuse.

So far we’ve been pretty good – going to the gym between 2 and 3 times a week, most weeks. Every time I go to the gym, I try to run on a treadmill for at least 20 minutes and I also do some weights. We did go on holiday to Santiago, Chile for 2 weeks during November but we managed to get a couple of gym sessions in while we were there and I even took part in a 5km race with my dad and brother!

SantiaGo Run Skechers, 2011 – 5km – http://www.santiagorun.cl/

In an effort to force myself to keep up this good habit, I’ve also halfheartedly agreed to run a half marathon sometime late 2012. This gives me a goal – to be able to run 20kms (without passing out). In order to track my progress, I’ve been keeping a note of my running. Every time I’ve run at the gym, I’ve noted down how long I’ve run for (minutes), the distance (kms) and from that I’ve calculated my average pace (minutes/km). I thought it might be cool to graph these numbers and watch my progress over the months.

Anyway, I’ll keep updating these graphs as I go. Perhaps having these numbers out there in the wild will encourage me to keep getting fitter, stronger and faster!

mFlow – the new way of discovering music through people

Posted by Annie on Jan 11, 2010 in General | 0 comments

It’s been so long since I posted anything on this blog, I thought it was about time for an update.

First off, I’ve moved to London. Jason and I decided on a whim to come over and see if we could find work – which, as it turns out, wasn’t all that hard. Can’t believe we’ve been here for almost 5 months already (wow, time really does fly by when you’re having fun!!).

Even though the economy was going down the drain and everyone was stressing about the lack of work, Jason and I managed to find work within only 2 weeks of starting to look. Jason scored himself a job at Virgin Games as a Senior .NET Software Engineer and I landed a contract also as a Senior .NET Software Engineer at a small start-up called mFlow. mFlow is actually a desktop application that mixes the music side of iTunes with social networking. The social networking side of it is quite simple really – as a member, you can follow other members and see which tracks and albums they’re buying, as well as which tracks and albums they’re recommending. And the best bit? If someone who is following you buys a song that you recommended, you get paid for it! Great huh? ;)

The atmosphere at mFlow is really cool – we work in an industrial loft style office where everyone sits together. That means everyone interacts with everyone and nobody feels excluded. They’re super well equipped in terms of technology – lots of really grunty servers and well spec’ed dev machines. I personally love my twin 27” monitor set-up drooooool :D.

All the developers at mFlow are incredibly smart and there has been a heap of stuff for me to learn. I work with a couple of other guys on the back-end services whilst a team of other developers work on the front-end. Overall it’s a really cool place to work and it was awesome to be at mFlow when they first launched the application. It’s currently in beta invite-only mode but I hear the ‘real’ launch will be soon. It’s all very exciting because it’s a really neat idea, it’s been well designed and looks reeeeally sexy, and it has the potential to be really big. Fingers crossed eh? :)

Exercise? What exercise?

Posted by Annie on Nov 14, 2008 in General, Mapping, Technology | 4 comments

Summer is pretty much here (well, in Brisbane summer actually never really wasn’t here), and the thought of being able to cruise on up to the beach with our new car (wooohooo!) has got me thinking about just how little exercise I get on a day to day basis.  I sometimes walk to work, but let’s face it – when you have a fairly regular train service, multiple buses, and now car at your disposal… you know where I’m going with this.

TravelStash is LIVE!

Posted by Annie on Aug 18, 2008 in General, Mapping, Technology, Travel | 0 comments

About a week ago, Chris and I “launched” TravelStash.  By “launched” I mean we have now opened it up for general consumption.  Anyone can join TravelStash and use it just like Rheanna and Sanjay did on their recent South Africa trip, Margaret and Alan have on their trip around the South Island of New Zealand and of course, how Chris and I have consistently used it to keep our friends and family updated on all our travels over the past couple of years.

A few changes for… Me.

Posted by Annie on Apr 20, 2008 in General | 0 comments

Last time I posted about “Me”, I mentioned that Chris and I were moving across to London. I was due to start my new job at Next Jump in a few weeks time, and Chris was looking for work by sending out dozens of emails every day. Well, that was over a month ago now and during that time, we started realizing that things really weren’t looking good for Chris to find someone to sponsor him for a work permit in the UK (you can read all about his feelings re this here). We waited about as long as we could before making an inevitable decision – forget the UK for now – let’s go to Brisbane (Australia) instead. Because Chris and I are both NZ citizens, we are entitled to live and work in Australia. This means we should, in theory, have no big problem finding work there. The stress and tension created by not knowing whether Chris was even going to be able to stay in the UK for more than 6 months (tourist visa) was awful and so we had to make a call. It wasn’t an easy decision to make because I was really looking forward to my new job at Next Jump and we’d already shipped 4 boxes of personal effects across to London as well, not to mention the $2000 price tag attached to my UK HSMP visa (which is now all sorted out and stamped in my passport, doh!). But it felt like the right decision to make.

Since then, a few things have happened. Chris flew back to NZ (yay!), we spent a week in Wellington applying for roles in Brisbane on SEEK, we both did a few phone interviews for potential jobs, and right now we’re in Brisbane for about a week, doing a few face-to-face interviews with companies that are interested in us. We’re staying with Rheanna and Sanjay, friends from Wellington, which has been so great. (Thanks guys!!)

I’ll tell you what – I have done so many interviews over the past couple of years it’s really quite ridiculous. Including the 10 or so interviews I did with Google, I guess I’ve done about.. 20 or so interviews… mostly technical. I’m kinda tired of doing them, but hopefully I won’t have to for much longer. The stupid thing is that most of those 20 or so interviews have actually ended in job offers, but for one reason or another I haven’t accepted them. Dumb eh? Anyway, right now I’m focusing on the mining industry because it seems like a really really interesting industry to be involved in and there is lots of work for software developers in mining here in Australia. Sweet. I had 1 interview + 1 meeting with a recruiter on Thursday and 2 interviews + 3 meetings with recruiters on Friday. Wowee. Another couple of interviews scheduled for Monday and Tuesday. Busy busy busy!!

The plan is to secure a job for at least one of us while we’re here, fly back to Wellington mid-next week then come back about a week after that, after shipping all our stuff over and saying goodbye to everyone all over again. Hopefully then we’ll find us a nice place to live and settle down a bit! We haven’t had our own place for more than 6 months now and it’s getting a bit tiring living out of backpacks, suitcases and other people’s kindness.

So yeah, it’s been a bit of a stressful and confusing time but I think we’ve made the right decision. The last few days in Brisbane have been really cool – it’s a really nice city, the weather is wonderful (I LOVE the sunshine!), there are beaches near by and it looks like we’ll be able to afford to live in a neat apartment with a pool and gym in the complex. I’m not complaining :P. Oh, and it’s also a bit closer to NZ too, so hopefully friends and family will be able to come and visit us more often than they would’ve if we had ended up in the UK!

Anyway, I’ll post again when I have some more definite news on where I’ll be working and stuff like that :)

A new look, a fresh start…

Posted by Annie on Mar 16, 2008 in General | 2 comments

After close to 3 years on www.mindtrip.co.nz, I decided to try something new, perhaps something more relevant to my field (technology). Boy it’s hard thinking of new domain names that haven’t already been taken!

Since I was choosing a new domain name anyway, I figured I might as well try a different blogging engine too. To date, I’ve been a true Textpattern fan. However, everyone else I know that keeps a blog seems to be using WordPress these days. I couldn’t help but wonder what I was missing out on. So I’ve taken the plunge and I’ve switched to WordPress. We’ll see how it all goes!

Things will probably be a bit broken and won’t look finished for a while, but hopefully that won’t last for long. Please bear with me in the meantime!