Mark Grealish

Cats and wizardry.

August Skies

in ireland

Sunset-lit clouds over Harold's Cross, Dublin
Rainc clouds over the Irish Sea, seen from Howth

I’ve seen mountains and deserts and lakes and forests and ice caps and snow, but nothing in this world soothes my heart like the sea breeze, the cry of gulls and clouds hung low o’er the horizon.

Race Report: DLR Bay 10k 2018

in running

  • Time: 00:47:24
  • Distance: 10.00km
  • Pace: 00:04:39/km
  • Finished: 223/1229 (18/100 normalised)
Anxious pre-race face
Myself with my medal after the run
Running route and timing per Fitbit

Previous race:Kinvara Rock and Road 10k 2018.

In comparing my experience on the DLR Bay Run with the Kinvara Rock and Road, I get the feeling of being prepared. For the DLR Bay Run I followed a running schedule, watched what I ate, and arrived fed and rested on the morning.

As an experience, I have impressions of up, down, straight, feet, and cheers, the finish gate, my medal in hand. Every runner deals with runs in their own way; in Running with the Kenyans for example, Adharanand Finn talks about how he fell back on the love for his children. I away in my head and focus on my feet and breathing, pace and form. It’s a mostly internal flow of thoughts punctuated with vignette moments of outside. Have I kept pace? What the kerb! Have I extended enough? When’s the next hill? Can I pass these other runners?

As a result: training pays off. Time and hard work on the road every day pays off. My pace per kilometre went down by 37 seconds. Even though I know these gains don’t persist, it felt incredible to finish higher in a bigger race.

Dublin Bay Cloudscape

in ireland

Although the sky around the sun got blown out to fuck, I’m really happy with this spectacular cloudscape from over Dublin Bay.

Dublin Bay cloudscape from Howth

Going to work in the Baily Lighthouse has become a high point in my career. Every day something about the job lifts me up, like on Friday when we spotted a porpoise on the way down the hill to the office, or later in the morning when my boss spotted two otters playing right outside our canteen window. Coffee and otters cannot be beaten. Even beside that the views are magnificent in every direction, in every weather.

The Kitties of Harold’s Cross

in animals

Lookit the lil whiskers!

Doorway kitty receiving scratches
Doorway kitty receiving scratches

🐱

Coffee is Good

in code

Currently writing a client < => server HTTP service and added some test code along the lines of “When the application starts, please GET a list of all records from the server. After you receive them DELETE the first item in the list.”

Promptly forgot about it.

Why ever, I wondered ten minutes later, does the server spew 404 and RECORD NOT FOUND errors at me when I try to get the recor-oh.

☕

Set Zsh Tab Title Automatically Based on Folder

in code

Pre-determined tab titles

My current task at work sees me rewriting an old application from scratch. A good part of this involves me going back and forth between the old and new project folders-call them “wigwam” and “spaklepony”-to compare code. This can be difficult to keep straight in tabs as a terminal user.

A quick walk of Stack Overflow and the ZSH chpwd hook led me to a two-step solution:

  1. Add hook function to set tab title.
  2. Add chpwd hook to evaluate folder name on shell initialisation and subsequent cd calls.

Set Window Title

# set-window-title 'Neenaw weewoo'
function set-window-title {
  echo -ne "\e]0;${1}\a"
}

Set Title on cd

function -set-project-folder-title {
    if [[ $PWD =~ "Projects/sparklepony" ]]; then
        set-window-title 'Sparklepony'
    elif [[ $PWD =~ "Projects/wigwam" ]]; then
        set-window-title 'Wigwam'
    else
        set-window-title $(basename $PWD)
    fi
}

chpwd_functions=(${chpwd_functions[@]} "-set-project-folder-title")
-set-project-folder-title