Needless to say that the end of 2006 and the beginning of 2007 has been a little hectic. Most sane people wouldn’t try to move house, start a company and have a baby all at the same time, but nobody in this household ever made many claims to sanity. 
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After keeping us in suspense since 3 AM Saturday morning, Alexandre Ralph Townley finally made his appearance in the world at 7:15 PM. He weighed ~7.5 lbs (3.5 kg) and was 19.7 inches (50 cm) long.
All of us are tired, but doing very well. We would like to thank Geraldine and all of the other midwives and staff who helped bring little Alex into the world.
For family and friends who want to keep track of how the little fella is doing, we’ll be putting up a separate site for the family soon.
The two of you who regularly read this blog may have noticed that I got kind of quiet lately–as unusual for me as that is. 
The last few weeks have been pretty manic, but I’m now starting to catch up and return to normal. The good thing is that it’s given me a few brief opportunities to practice with my new Canon EFS 17-85mm IS lens.
First off was a trip to Chambéry, France. Sophie and I hadn’t been there since the wedding and we had a few days off for Easter, so we decided that it was a good time to go. It rained a little bit while we were there, but for the most part, it was sunny and beautiful days, lots of food and walks in the mountains. A nice break, even if I did have to spend a part of the time studying for a certification test.
I spent about 2 hours walking around Barberaz which looks down on the city of Chambéry, so I guess, technically, this picture should better be titled “Barberaz in Springtime”. I discovered a few things about my lens, though. It really doesn’t like having both the UV filter and a polarizer on it when it is set to 17mm. You get dark corners from the polarizer. I haven’t tried it without the UV filter to see if that makes a difference, but it was somewhat of a surprise. Either way, with the clouds that were out that day, it didn’t make too much difference, so I ended up not using it for most of the shots.
After a short week back in Dublin, it was off to a BearingPoint training course in Frankfurt on Sunday afternoon. I had never been to Germany before, so I was looking forward to the trip, however I wasn’t really sure what to expect from the training course. My general experience with training courses is that you’re better off buying some sort of book about the subject and spending the time that way. Fortunately, this didn’t hold true in Frankfurt.
The course had several really good aspects. First and foremost, it was great to meet other people from BearingPoint from the Americas and Europe. While the majority of people attending were from Germany, there were representatives from the US, Canada, UK, France, Spain, Finland, Denmark and Russia (I know I’ve forgotten a few, so please don’t get upset). I think the course did pretty well on cultural diversity, and that was also one of the subjects of a session. Knowing the cultural assumptions and grounding that may influence someone is a big help when you need to communicate with them effectively in both business and personal settings. It was actually interesting to see how many of the sweeping generalizations held true as you interacted with the participants. Another topic which was the subject of an entire day was Ken Blanchard’s Situational Leadership II. Ken is the author of the One Minute Manager series of books. I thought the sessions were quite good, but I’ll talk more about SLII in another post.
After the 4 late nights and early mornings of the training session, I was a bit wrecked. In order to unwind and to re-introduce myself to my wife, Sophie and I made some sandwiches and headed off for some hill walking in Glendalough yesterday morning. The weather was supposed to be sunny in the morning, but then start to rain later in the day. It turned out that the forecast was half right–from about 5pm until after midnight, it was steady rain.
Fortunately for us, we missed the rain. It only started after we got back to the car park. Growing up in the Alps, walking in the mountains is something Sophie enjoys quite a bit. The closest approximation we have in Dublin is the Wicklow mountains, which, if you’ve ever been there is not exactly the same definition of mountain as in France. We were looking for a half-day walk, so we decided to take the “white” trail this time.
The white trail starts at the bottom of the big, upper lake and goes up one side of the mountain, down around the back of the lake to the old miners village, then makes a circle through the pine forest back down to the bottom of the lake. The view of the valley is pretty impressive from the top, but both of us were chuckling a bit as we were walking along the path (two railroad ties bound together with studs and chicken wire for traction). I don’t think whoever labeled the white trail as “dangerous cliffs; for experienced hikers” has ever spent much time hiking in the Alps. Still, everything is relative. I couldn’t shake the impression of the 4-lane motorway though as we walked along.
Once you get to the top of the upper lake, there really is a lot of water flowing down the mountain. I’ve always liked moving water, and with a slower shutter speed, you can get some nice visual effects that capture the overall impression of the movement. Once we got this far on the trail, it was “waterfall day”, and I ended up taking lots of pictures of the literally hundreds of waterfalls in this part of the park. I like this one the best. It was taken at 1/12th of a second and f/11 at 33mm with ISO100 using the timer. I’m still trying to come to an agreement with my camera. There are a lot more crap pictures than there are good ones, but, it’s just a matter of practice. Hopefully, we’ll have a few more nice days and we’ll be able to make it back for more opportunities.
Next week is InfoSeCon in Dubrovnik, and then I’m back for a week before I head to Washington D.C. to present at the SOA for E-Government conference. Croatia will be a nice trip, and I’m looking forward to returning to DC. It’s been about 4 years since I’ve been there, and I’m sure that it’s changed quite a lot. I expect both trips to give me ample opportunities to tackle my current biggest challenge: indoor photography without a flash and without using ISO1600. I’ll hopefully be able to show you some of the positive results.
Once again, New Year’s Eve finds me in la Ville de Chambéry. Unlike last year when I was very, very sick until New Year’s Eve, this year has been fantastic. Yesterday, we managed to sneak in an afternoon of skiing at Margeriaz, which is very near Chambéry. It snowed a couple of days ago, so the slopes were brilliant. The only down-side was the hordes of people and the 2-hour wait in the queue to rent equipment. Other than that, it was a great day. I even managed to remember some of the stuff I learned last year at Les Menuires! For those who don’t know me, I’ve been skiing exactly 3 times. The first time was an afternoon in Andorra, then a week last year and yesterday.
New Year’s in France is a bit different than other parts of the world. In typically French fashion, a New Year’s Eve party is primarily focused on food and conversation. It seems like you can’t really have one without the other in this country. Maybe if you’re some kind of social outcast or something…. Of course, this is in dramatic contrast to the emphasis on alcohol consumption in Ireland and to a somewhat lesser degree, in the U.S. Still, it’s generally entertaining, and you can’t argue with the quality of the food and the wine.
Tomorrow will be a big dinner with escargot, smoked salmon, raw oysters, foie gras and a lamb roast. Did I mention that thing about food??? Of course the surprise will be what comes from la cave. It could be anything from a 1979 Bordeaux, a 1988 Bourgogne [it was actually a 1980 premier cru and fantastic! ed.] or something completely different. This is a long way from the all-day college football fest that I grew up with. I doubt the TV will even be turned on. Still, if you’re in the US, according to MSNBC there isn’t much to look forward to this year in that department either.
Nearly time to head out to the festivities, so I’ll wish everyone “Bonne Année” and Happy New Year. Hopefully, in the new year I’ll do better at keeping track of the people in the world whom I care about, release the 3.0 version of my SourceForge project and continue to be successful at work. As always, if you haven’t heard from me in a while and you’re wondering if I fell off the planet, I haven’t. I think about all of my (sometimes very extended) group of friends and family a lot more than I let you know. I just don’t always do a very good job letting you know how much I appreciate you being part of my life.
Roll on 2005!
