Ryan James O'Sullivan

Manchester United are now on their summer North American tour which helps them train and get ready for the new season with a series of friendlies.  The tour started in Toronto and I was able to get some tickets (they weren’t cheap but they worth every penny, I would have paid double easily).  It was their first game of the pre-season AND the first time the team wore their new jerseys (which were announced yesterday).

The Gate 5 Line Up

This was also the first time that I attended a live professional soccer match (I’ve been wanting to see Toronto FC play but tickets are not easy to get a hold of).  I had bought two tickets (I didn’t want to be that guy alone at the sports event) and I had a lot of trouble trying to figure out who to bring with me (needless to say I had a lot of people insinuating that oh you know if I had a spare ticket they’d love to come) but I caught wind my little sister wanted to come along and I was very happy to extend the invite (she had really enjoyed the world cup, so thanks for that FIFA!).  She had a blast.

I was very excited in the build up (as my twitter feed will attest) but that excitement did not begin to capture the experience itself.  My title above (90…best minutes.. of my life) seems like it could easily be an exaggeration but not a word of the lie the actual experience blew away my expectations.  I’ve seen friendlies on TV before and sometimes they can be below par but man Celtic and United have a history of not liking each other and it showed in the play.  Both teams gave maybe not their best but pretty damn close.  There were also enough young guns trying to earn their spot on the starting bench which helped elevate the quality of play.

The Quality of Play Did Not Disappoint

The final score was 3-1 and I did.not.want.to.leave.  The United players were a class act.  After the game they walked the field waving and occasionally talking to the crowd.  Edwin Van Der Sar stayed out on the field after everyone else had left and signed autographs eventually even returning and giving a little kid in the crowd his game gloves.  Another player (I think it was Ryan Giggs) gave his shirt to a little girl and spent some time talking to the crowd.

Sadly it Did End

I wish I could see these boys play every weekend – I’d pay any amount of money for season tickets.

Merchandise wise I picked up a scarf (I’ve been looking for one for months, for whatever reason it is hard to come by in Toronto) and the new kit!!!  It cost me some cash money but it is awesome!

Toronto Loved United

Now to nerd out, if you aren’t a soccer fan you can stop reading now.  Some thoughts on the game.

Chris Smalling is going to be huge for the team.  He was like a wall at the back, towering over pretty much everyone on the field.

Paul Scholes is key member of the team when you watch him on TV, but when you see him in person you realize just how important he is in and out of play.  When you have a full view of his play you realize he is a genius AND he ties the whole mid field together.  It was beautiful to watch him control the flow of the ball.  I was very sad when he left after the first half.

Dimitar Berbatov… I want to say nice things, I want to say bad things.  Those I talk soccer with know I am not happy with Berby and am of the mind he should pack his bags and go elsewhere.  There were moments tonight where I could have throttled him but he scored the first goal of the game and it was beauty.  The man is capable but just can’t seem to finish when he needs too.  And honestly watching him in person – he’s lost the mental game.  He was so peevish on the field.  He was mad at himself, he was mad at his team mates, he was mad at the ref.  I think the last half of last season (which wasn’t great for him) has really got to his head and the off time was not enough to figure out whatever was wrong in his mental game.  I feel more than ever he needs to go and figure out his game somewhere else.  He did get man of the match and I think he was deserving but he’s just too far gone with United I think.

Ryan Giggs.  Didn’t score, would have killed to see that happen.

Edwin Van Der Sar.  As I said before he was a gentleman on a level I didn’t expect but watching him in warm up that dude could stop anything.

Macheda.  He was only on the last 15 minutes, and didn’t see much of the ball.  But the two touches he managed were brilliant and I have a good feeling about where he’s going to with the team.

Nani.  Didn’t play, injury continues to nag.  But he was out there warming up the goalies and was really engaged with the crowd.  Was impressive to see him as an ambassader for the team out there despite injury.

The new kit!  I managed to snag a jersey (don’t hate) and I actually kind of like it.  I wasn’t sure how I felt about the retro kit but I like the collar and you grow to like it on the players.

Celtic.  I don’t see much of the Scottish league but these guys were impressive.  They fought like the game meant something and you could tell the rivalry with United was real to the players.

I listed as part of my winter avoid-cabin-fever goals I wanted to do a bit more geocaching and I actually did better than I thought.  I got out on 5 different days finding 8 different caches.  Not bad since I had taken a long post knee injury break from caching (according to my caching stats program I went 1274 days because of my knee injury – man that injury fucked up all things physical in my life).

This summer I’ve decided as part of my desire to get more active I’m going to pursue a very ambitious caching goal.  In the months of July and August I want to DOUBLE the number of caches under my belt.  I ended June sitting at 36 so I’m hoping to hit 72 by the end of summer.  Ambitious you say?  Nay nay.  This weekend I got things started off and clocked 7 caches.  That ties the month to date with March 2004 when I first started caching.

My geocaching goals for the summer:

• Find 36 caches
• Place 2 caches (one up north and one here in the city)
• Launch 1 travel bug
• Design my own geocoin for placing in caches

I’ll post back as I progress… Looking forward to it!

For my complete caching stats check out my geocaching.com profile page.

They say you can tell a lot about a person by what apps they have on their first tab…  So here’s me:

Upgrading from iPhone 3.* to iOS 4.0 has reduced the number of page tabs for apps I have from 7 to 3.  The folders system is brilliant and a real joy to use.

So my apps:

• Twitter :: Obvious.  I’m tempted to add this to my bottom bar
• IM+ :: Instant Messaging with Push notifications.  I use MSN, Skype, AIM, and ICQ
• Messages :: Obvious
• Calendar :: Since syncing with Exchange at work this has become a key piece of my iPhone use
• Maps :: Obvious
• Games (folder)
  
• Contacts :: Obvious
• YouTube :: I don’t use this as much I would expect, but it’s good on long bus rides
• WeatherEye :: My favorite weather app
• CIBC :: Mobile banking, it is a great piece of business
• Evernote :: I still haven’t managed to get Evernote in my day to day workflow… I do use it occasionally but not near as much as I’d like
• Facebook :: Good for keeping in touch – also if friends have entered their phone number you can use your friends list to make calls – can be very handy
• Kobo :: I do most of my reading on my Sony Reader but when I’m on the go I like having my library (which is 90% kobo sourced) in my pocket
• Foursquare :: While I wanted Gowalla to win the check-in war it didn’t pan out that way amongst my social group so 4sq it is
• Calculator :: Yep
• Geocaching :: I had two games on my home screen previously so when I put together my main games folder I got a slot on the main page back.  Geocaching won out.  I’ve been using this to find caches while I on the road and I’ve been doing a lot more caching…

There it be… what’s your main page look like?

The new version of Apple’s iOS (the new name for the iPad/iPhone/iPod operating system) went live this afternoon and I rushed home to get it… sadly I am now looking at “Backing up…” screen and have been for almost an hour now…

It seems like this is not an uncommon issue so I’m just patiently waiting taking in as many reviews and bits and pieces of info as I can on the upgrade while I wait.

Things I’m looking most forward to:

• Folders – some argue this should have been a day one feature of the post-app era iPhones (and I agree to an extent) but I’m just glad it is here now
• Spell checking through out the OS – I type at about 140 or so WPM and I can assure you I type faster than I think most of the time.  The result of this has always been a trade off in the spelling department
• Upgraded Mail Client – Unified inbox anyone?
• Apparently the upgrade has a tonne of polish and who would turn down some polish?

Now all I need to do is hope this actually works… The upgrade is going.so.slowwwww

On Friday afternoon I arrived at work and had a strong urge to A) find a way to watch the England Game (I will not weep, I will not weep, I will not weep) B) Get out of the city ASAP.  The only problem was I was at my office with a full work day ahead of me.  So I decided noon was high time to get the hell out.  Confirmed it with the Boss and I was outtie.

We hit the road super quick and managed to get up north before the England game was too far in (20 minutes in if I remember right).  My Grandparents and my sister Amanda were already up there and we got right down to having a blast.  The Saturday forecast was calling for rain (of the thunderstorm variety) so we decided that Friday should be beach day.  We spent a few hours down there and had a blast.  Paige isn’t big on the water (we are working on it) but I managed to get quite a bit of swimming in since Tammy wanted nothing to do with a cold lake (silly Arizonian).

For dinner we BBQ’d some Sliders which were surprisingly fantastic and had some french fries (which I thought were terrible, but everyone else insisted they are fine… so clearly they are crazy…).  Parents arrived up, we went to sleep.  Profit.

Saturday did not bring the rain that was threatened (until later, but we’ll get there) and we ended up having another great day at the beach.  This time my dad, my sister Jess and my sister’s boyfriend joined in on the beach fun.  I even laid out and tanned for a bit and needless to say I’m pulling off the Irish-Red-tan quite well right now… Last season I think I made it down to the beach 2 times all season and here I was pulling that off in one weekend, it was awesome.

After we finished at the beach we decided to head to the Kawartha Dairy to grab some shakes and ice cream.

It was then time for dinner… after dinner Jessica and I decided we would go ATVing.  The plan was to take a fairly short ride out to the main highway and come back.  We got about 75% of the way there and we arrived at a small intersection and Jess asked “what’s that way”.  Of course this type of question between siblings can only lead to crazy exploration and down the street we went towards Murphy’s Corners and Ridge Road.

We arrived at the Ridge Road church and I pulled over knowing that there was a geocache I had failed to find there last year.  We spent some time looking (and I knew where it was this time having asked someone…) and we came away empty handed.  Just as we were giving up the hunt for the cache thunder started to roar in the distance.  Looked up at the sky and holy crap it was black to the south-west.  ”Let’s get out of here dude…”.

We made it almost back home and ran across a deer.  We stopped to watch him eat grass and check us out.  Then it came.  BOOM.  HAIL.  ”Shit Jess, book it, book it”.  The deer was off in to the trees and we were doing the speed limit busting our asses to get home.  Hail and rain falling hard.

We quickly outran the storm (yes that is actually possible) and made it home unscathed.

Sunday we had father’s day pancake breakfast and we were on our way home.  Father’s day dinner was our usual trip to Swiss Chalet.

The above is around 600 words to say this:  This weekend fucking rocked.  I haven’t had that much fun or felt so fulfilled up north in a real.long.time.

Go England!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Now that that is over with – on to the post!  So it is world cup time and for the first time I am totally engrossed.  Over the last three years I started getting in to English Premier League soccer with this past year dedicating pretty much every Saturday and Sunday morning I was free to watching a few games (I even went in for the $15 a month specialty channel to ensure I could see any team I wanted play).  Needless to say the world cup going on right now is very exciting for me.  This is the first world cup I’ve paid much attention at all and I am loving every minute of it.

In the past I was the typical North American sports fan who didn’t quite get what was going on and would often call out the game for being too slow, or how this game or that game was more fun to play or watch… Not so much anymore as I’ve built up a real appreciation and love for the game…

One thing I didn’t really get in the past was people talking about world cup spoilers… “What the hell is a sports spoiler?  The game ends at 10pm EST and then we all know the result… WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE???”.  Even until two weeks ago I heard my soccer buds talking about not wanting to know scores until they got home to catch up watching the games and I thought they were crazy.  I went in to the first day of the tournament fully ready to refresh like mad sports sites and get my scores as soon as I could.  Within 5 minutes of the first game I had closed my web browser… and closed twitter… and closed facebook… and drove home without the radio on… and, and, and… it got bad real quick and for reasons I cannot explain I just wanted to completely unplug until I could see the game.

I really just love the game… I understand now why it is called the beautiful game and that slower pace is really something to be enjoyed live on the screen…

So if I don’t respond to a dm, twitter mention, facebook message, email, greader or other social network message you send me/intend for me to see just know I’m likely getting caught up on the days games and some time around 11 at night I’ll hopefully get to you

Also today I picked up tickets for Manchester Untied’s visit to Toronto and I’m soooooo excited to go.  I have to figure out who to bring with me now though…

Get off my lawn…

It is hard to resist the siren call and sheer geek-sexy of the Mac platform.  When it was the Mac alone running it’s own OS, using it’s own hardware and living within its walled garden it was easy enough to ignore but times have changed.  The iPod happened.  OS X, Intel, and ATI/NVIDIA video happened.  Most recently the iPad changed so many games we’ll still be figuring out the impacts of the shock waves ten years from now.  The Apple ecosystem is now a viable, accessible and exciting landscape.  It’s time for me to get on board.

The number one driver for me is I really want to get back in to making things.  “Creating stuff” to borrow the phrase from Steve Jobs.  Growing up I learned to program, did a little game design with the emulator community, started a blog years before a blog was a blog and it goes on and on.  So much of my personal experience until my mid 20s was based on just tinkering away with things in the early hours of the morning using various technologies – and I miss the shit out of that.

So I look around and I see the Mac as a great platform, a great outlet for doing exactly what I want to do.  Even more appealing maybe is that it is the unknown.  A new platform for me to learn where on the other hand I’ve discovered much of what is to be discovered with the PC.

There are other reasons why the Mac platform interests me, in no particular order:

• iLife.  Managing photos and other media is made mind blowingly simple and engaging.
• Hardware sex appeal.  Now that the Mac is on Intel hardware and the playing field is level how can you resist the design of the iMac?  You pay a little more but you get awesome in return
• *Nix.  OS X is based on Unix.  There is a lot you can do as a tinkerer with that.
• Web development dream.  Again.  *Nix core.  Tools aplenty.
• 27 inch display.  Ok I’m getting the iMac and it has a 27 inch screen.  Any other questions?
• The iPone changed my life; maybe the Mac can to?  It is no exaggeration to say the iPhone changed my life.  I’ve never owned a device that has so substantially changed my “lifeflow”, I dare say not even the personal computer.

I could go on, but there are a few of the highlights.

Can’t wait for June when I pick it up!

A time honoured tradition in the blogosphere: the lame excuses for not posting…

Work, family, an upcoming election, etc, etc.  The usual.

Work has been quite busy.  We are working on building a new warehouse to support our growing online business, we are implementing SAP’s EWM and on a more personal note I’ve been promoted to director.  Things.have.been.busy.

The above has led to longer days which has cascaded down the line of how I spend my personal time.  When I get home I rush to catch up with Paige before she goes off to bed (some nights while making dinner) and once she’s in bed I’m either hanging out with Tammy (we’ve now had to schedule a night a week to just sit down and watch TV, etc) or with my buds.

Weekends have become insanely valuable and Paige dominates the agenda 90% of the time.

I’ve paid for all of this far too much with my creative side.  I haven’t created a thing of my own in months (I haven’t typed a line of PHP since the fall?) and I’m starting to really feel the itch.  I’ve got some ideas about how to fix this but I’ll have to juggle time to figure it all out.  One of the ideas is to switch my primary computer to a Mac, but more on that soon time

Election wise – not much to say at this point beyond I’m back in the game this time around and working as a campaign manager again…

The last six months in a nutshell, I hope you’ll accept my excuses…

As mentioned in my previous hobby post I’ve been working on learning the Arduino micro controller.  Up until now I’ve been doing small projects that would work with a single component or two working on their own.

My first attempt at bringing a few different sensors and controls together is an LED Count Down Clock.  What does it do?  It is a single 7 segment LED that when a button is pushed counts down to 0 and beeps.  Pretty straight forward but a fun little learning project.  Here’s a quick video that gives you an idea of what it does:

Pretty simple, here’s what’s involved:

• 7 Segment LED
• Push Button
• Speaker

You end up with something that looks like this:

The wiring is a bit interesting – figuring out how all 10 of the connections coming off of the LED map is an interesting exercise but with the datasheet isn’t terrible to figure out.  Hooking up the buzzer and the button is two wires a piece and straight forward (one to power, one to a controller port on the Arduino).

The basic program is pretty straight forward.  I wrote two libraries – one to control the rendering of numbers on the LED and one to drive the sound options.  Here is what the main program looks like:

// Main Program
int val = 0;
int oldVal = 0;
int state = 0;

void setup()   {
// initialize the digital pin as an output:
pinMode(8, OUTPUT);
pinMode(1, OUTPUT);
pinMode(2, OUTPUT);
pinMode(3, OUTPUT);
pinMode(4, OUTPUT);
pinMode(5, OUTPUT);
pinMode(6, OUTPUT);
pinMode(7, OUTPUT);
pinMode(button, INPUT);
pinMode(speaker, OUTPUT);
}

// the loop() method runs over and over again,
// as long as the Arduino has power

void loop()
{
val = digitalRead(button);
renderClear;
if ((val == HIGH) && (oldVal == LOW)){
state = 1 – state;
delay(10);
}

oldVal = val;

if (state == 1) {
renderCountdown();
buzz(speaker, 2500, 1000);
state = 0;
}
}

So there’s version 1.0 of my LED countdown clock.  I’m already starting to plan for my second version of the project which will have the following feature set:

• Two 7 segment LEDs powered by a multiplexer
• Two buttons – one to start the countdown and one to allow you to select how much time you want on the countdown (I’m thinking of having it selectable by 5s or 10s)

I have an odd relationship with winter.  On the one hand it is a season I truly love; to me there is no moment on this earth more peaceful then when it snows and the temperature is just around the freezing mark.  There is this beautiful silence and it has a restorative power to it.  On the other hand it is dark, cold and a season where motivation to get off your arse can be hard to come by.

To help cope with the drawbacks of the season I resolved this winter to focus on a few hobbies to keep me from wasting away hours.  The three primary hobbies I am focusing on are: micro controller programming, geocaching and model railroading.

Micro controller programming

Micro controllers are super small and low powered computers that drive many of the things you have in your homes – DVD players, clocks, televisions, and on and on.  My dear consumer whore friend Jim started working with the Arduino micro controller platform a few months ago and he was doing some seriously cool stuff.  I’ve never worked with networked devices before (that is devices that can talk to one and other by various means) and my head is full of things I want to try and make.  This hobby is a learning hobby for me – it is something completely new (although pulls heavily on my programming experience) that I’m super excited to be learning about.

My sort of end goal with micro controllers is to make a GPS device that will connect to my cell phone while I am ATVing that will report back my position and possibly allow me to send messages back through twitter, etc!

Geocaching

Geocaching is an old hat hobby for me – I’ve been geocaching since 2003 but because of my knee I haven’t been able to dedicate as much time as I’d like.  Now that my knee is kinda-sorta-thinking-about-it better-ish post surgery I’m excited to be getting back in to the swing of things and clocking some finds.  My goal here is to get out whenever the weather is nice enough (like this past and coming weekends!) to get some exercise and work the knee a bit.  I think everyone needs to find a good excuse to get out of the house in the winter and geocaching is that excuse for me!

Model Railroading

I’ve loved trains all my life.  Between my dad spending his life working on electric powered trains and growing up about a kilometer as the crow flies from the CN line that cuts through North-East Toronto and listening to the trains as I fell asleep at night.   I feel some deep and powerful connection to trains whenever I see one go by I feel the need to stop and appreciate the awesomeness and masterful human innovation of these monster machines.

So as a way channel to play out this love affair I’ve always had an interest in model trains.  About 7 or 8 years ago before I got married my dad and I built an initial lay out but between getting married and moving out we never got to complete it.  I’ve now picked up where we left off and together with my Dad we are working on building the layout we’ve always talked about.

I’ll have pictures of the layout to share soon and I’ll be posting updates here on the blog.

So that’s my winter coping strategy!  I’ll be posting updates as I work through these.