Robert O'Callahan. Christian. Repatriate Kiwi. Hacker.
Monday 2 December 2024
At the end of our Queen Charlotte track trip, most of the group headed to Blenheim to fly back to Auckland or pursue their own plans. Five of us took a shuttle to Nelson for a day off, then joined four others for another five-day trip exploring southern Kahurangi National Park.
Wednesday 27 November 2024
Over the last couple of weeks I did my annual South Island tramping trips. This year we started with the Queen Charlotte Track in the Marlborough Sounds, which I previously did in 2014.
Tuesday 1 October 2024
This morning, I once again ran the Auckland Half Marathon — just under 2 hours.
Tuesday 1 October 2024
I spent most of September traveling, partly in order to deliver a keynote at the DEBT debugging workshop in Vienna (associated with ECOOP). My goal was to inform people that “advanced” debugging technologies like record-and-replay and omniscience exist, they are being used in practice, and that use is increasing; and to explain what has been successful and what has not, and what I think we need to do to be more successful. There was no recording and I can’t share the slides so here’s my summary.
Sunday 16 June 2024
Previously we’ve had some great trips during the winter to Waihohonu Hut in Tongariro National Park in the central North Island, so I planned another one for this year. It went really well!
Saturday 8 June 2024
If you’re building a browser engine from scratch just for fun, stop reading now and I wish you the best. If you want to build an engine that’s competitive with Chromium, and surpasses it in some respects, here’s my advice.
Sunday 2 June 2024
25 years on Settlers of Catan is still a fine game, but can be tedious when you have to wait for other players to take long turns. In our family we thought “what if Settlers had simultaneous time-limited turns?” We implemented it with a few rule tweaks and a free app written by one of my children. It turns out to work very well! Every experienced Settlers player we’ve played with so far has found it to be a great improvement over the original game. We can finish a six-player Cities and Knights game in about 45 minutes of intense fun.
Saturday 6 April 2024
I did the Auckland Waterfront Half Marathon again today. I didn’t have as much time to train this year, partly because of the canoeing trip last week, and I ran it slightly differently — starting at a slower pace and trying to make sure I could run the whole way. I’m pleased I achieved that. My final time was just slightly slower than last year — 1:51:35, with a nice steady pace throughout the whole run, so I’m reasonably happy with that.
Thursday 4 April 2024
The Whanganui River Journey is one of New Zealand’s “Great Walks” but actually a three or five day canoeing trip. We did it before in 2016, and I’ve always wanted to do it again. We have a lot of new tramping friends now so this seemed like a good time. We did the full five-day version from the town of Taumaranui, through Whanganui National Park and ending at Pipiriki.
Friday 8 December 2023
After the Caples-Routeburn trip, seven members of the group took a shuttle back to Queenstown and then flew home, and the remaining five stayed on in Glenorchy. Saturday 18 November was a rest day; the weather was excellent and we did some short walks around Glenorchy — the lagoon walk was lovely. We also rendezvoused with our sixth group member and prepped for the Rees-Dart track starting on Sunday. I always really enjoy these rest days: time to reflect on the previous leg and relax with friends while still enjoying the anticipation of another imminent adventure.