DREWspective

At the Sound Bar in Leicester Square.

My friend, who came with me to the last event I went to, pulled out this time because he wasn’t feeling up to the job. Given what happened at the last event, I don’t really blame him.

The night started off unusually: for once there was a shortage of guys, so most of the girls were left sitting on their own for quite a while. There were 24 girls in total, compared to just 19 guys.
The general consensus among the guys was that there was a greater chance of being chosen by the girls, since there was less competition. As a speed dating “veteran”, I know full well that’s bullshit. Most of them were in groups anyway, so they would definitely influence each other.

There was a good mix of girls at the event; many of them were from abroad, somehow finding themselves in the cut-throat city. There were a couple of Canadians, one Polish girl, a Russian, three French girls and at least one (rather loud and suggestive) South African. I didn’t have much trouble talking to anyone, as I’m used to the format and found myself gaining confidence.

Apparently many of the guys weren’t very good at talking to the girls, and some were apparently rude and obnoxious. One of them - allegedly - marked a girl as a ‘no’ right in front of her, despite her efforts to make things comfortable for him.
Though this would theoretically put me in a good light, as I felt I did a good enough job maintaining a conversation, you have to remember that some people find it easier to tar everybody with the same brush. Everybody except, of course, for the ones they pay attention to.

I’d only met two of three of the guys, so I can’t say for sure what the others were like in general. Unfortunately, as always, not all of the girls were very pleasant. There were reports of certain girls not actually being single; I’d heard that one mentioned she had a boyfriend. Unfortunately you get those kinds of people - I call them ‘bait‘ - and they’re not really worth knowing anyway.

One deliberately blanked me as I’d said something to her during the mingling phase - surprise surprise, she was the one with her tits on display. I can’t for the life of me what her name was, but she was probably the only one - with her friend - whom I said ‘no’ to. Apparently, it was either her or her friend who was rude to at least one of the other guys.

The South African girl, as one of the guys attested, tended to switch: one minute she was being flirty and friendly, the next she didn’t want to talk. She seemed to be dead keen on an Australian guy I got talking to, and made sure everybody knew it, but personally I’m not sure if she’d make a good friend or otherwise. Even in a speed dating environment, you must remember that some people - girls especially - might just be putting on an act, whether they’ve been drinking or not.
Besides that, the South African girl had made a few comments about my colour, which I wasn’t sure how to take. I sensed that colour was an issue for her in some form; from experience it’s been an issue for South African women in general.

There were a lot of girls there, however, that I’d have liked to have seen again; unfortunately I didn’t get to talk to many of them after the event. I hope they get in touch or something, otherwise it would be a rotten shame.

I did manage to leave with three numbers: one from a recruiter, one from a potentially interested party and another from her [male] flatmate. I’ve yet to call any of them, but we’ll see what comes of it.

On a final note: I am really unimpressed with SpeedDater’s (yes I’m calling them out) system for entering ticks. It’s very bad for the heart.
You can only enter a handful of ticks at a time, and you’re greeted with a bold “Sorry no ticks yet” message every time you fill one page in, or the surprise is ruined as you’re instantly shown a list of immediate matches so far.

More importantly, I had a hard time remembering who each match was: that’s mostly to do with the people themselves, because they should have put photos of themselves up. It was to do with me as well, because I hadn’t made any notes. Usually it’s not a problem as I remember vaguely who I want to tick, but because there were an unprecedented number of girls it was difficult.

So far I’ve had one “match”, and it doesn’t look like there’ll be any more.

It’s becoming more and more official; I can’t stomach the soups or the shakes for much longer.

On Sunday (day 73) I’d tried the new tomato soup for the first time. Someone in the men’s group had made a comment about it “probably tasting like ketchup”, which I thought was in poor taste (no pun intended), so I had no idea what to expect.

There are special mixing instructions for the tomato soup, due to its “high protein content” and “acidity”. You basically have to mix it with cold water before adding hot (not boiling) water, otherwise you end up with a powdery mixture that doesn’t taste as good.
Well, I got that powdery mixture, despite my efforts and following the instructions. The soup didn’t taste as bad as I thought it would, but I was reminded of just how much of an ordeal it was to eat; I generally don’t like soup.

As I don’t have much time in the mornings, it’s a challenge to prepare shakes - even using a blender, because it has to be clean. I had to quickly prepare a double strawberry shake before I left the house yesterday, and I couldn’t finish it.
Hours later, I was purging record quantities on the john. That’s another seven pounds lost this week!

This morning I was in a rush again. The good shaker that I usually used was still smelling of musty old artificial shake, so I had to use another one to mix a raspberry shake. Because of the obligatory lumps, I don’t think I managed to get halfway before deciding, “screw it, I’ll have a coffee. And a doughnut.”

But I will make up for it by going to the gym - just not today, because I’m still sore from Sunday’s workout. Arguably I should be exercising my legs, as I focused on chest exercises last time.

As a Windows-based developer, I was really enthusiastic about using Bazaar as a version control tool. At the time my SVN repository was on my home computer, and with being out of the house 13 hours a day there was no scope for making regular commits.

Unfortunately, Bazaar’s Windows interface - TortoiseBzr - is still in the experimental (read: alpha) stages, and DOS doesn’t exactly make it easy to make partial commits, because of its awkward copy and pasting functionality.

TortoiseSVN in Windows is far more complete, and allows me to do all the useful things I couldn’t do with TortoiseBzr (like adding and removing files from version control!). So, I decided I wanted to go back to SVN, using a repository on my laptop instead.

It would have been simple to just do export what I had so far, and create a fresh branch in SVN. Unfortunately, I wanted to keep the 96 revisions I already had. Tags - which I began to use for version numbers - would be useful too.

There are widely-known tools for migrating to bzr from SVN, such as svn2bzr. But unsurprisingly there’s very little about going the other way around. Actually, I had to do a lot of searching to find the tools themselves.

The answer to my issue of migrating commits from Bazaaar to Subversion came, in cryptic form, via someone else’s bug report. For your convenience, here is my explanation, in plain English.

• You will require:
  • Bazaar (bzr) version 1.4 or 1.5 installed [windows installer for 1.5]
  • Subversion (SVN) installed, with a repository created ["one click SVN" windows installer]
  • Python 2.5 (or possibly greater) installed [windows installer]
  • the bzr-svn plugin [windows installer].

    If you’re using Windows, you’re limited to Bazaar 1.5 - for some gay reason, the only available installer for the bzr-svn plugin is only compatible with 1.4 and 1.5. Unix users should be okay with the latest version of bzr, as long as you can build the bzr-svn plugin.

    Bazaar should be installed before installing the bzr-svn plugin.

• At the command prompt, type in

  > bzr help commands

  and make sure you can see the svn-push command, which is usually near the bottom of the list. If you can see it, that means the bzr-svn plugin is correctly installed.

• Navigate to the Bazaar branch you want to migrate to Subversion: this would be the folder with a hidden .bzr folder in it.
• If you haven’t yet got a Subversion repository to copy everything to, create one now.
• Now for the main event! At the command prompt, type in

  > bzr svn-push [path-to-non-existent-svn-branch]

  The svn-push command (at the time of writing) will only copy a Bazaar branch to an SVN branch that doesn’t exist, so you can’t point it to the trunk. Instead, we specify the path to our SVN repository and a name for a new branch to export to.

  So in my case, I did the following:

  > bzr svn-push file:///C:/svnrepos/Foley/branches/bzr-import

  The bzr-svn plugin creates a new branch in my Subversion repository (file:///C:/svnrepos/Foley) called bzr-import, and then starts copying all the revisions from the Bazaar branch. Of course, you can call the branch whatever you want.

• Once it’s finished, you should be able to pick up where you left off using SVN (or TortoiseSVN).

This doesn’t appear to copy tag information over, so I’ll have a look into that myself. Hopefully this article has been useful for you.

A bit of a mixed weekend, this weekend.

On Friday I went to my 12th speed dating event, at a venue somewhere in Leicester Square. I’d started a little bit late - firstly because I was certain the event started at 7.30 rather than 7pm, and secondly because I had to use the loo for a significant amount of time.
The turnout at the event was unprecedented: 24 girls to just 19 guys. Unfortunately most of them looked a lot better than their revealed personalities, as is usually the case.

The event was significant because it was the first time I drank anything other than water, black coffee or black tea. The taste of Jack and Coke - the drink of true playaz - was just too irresistible… but I kept my intention of making up for it at the gym.

Saturday was an eye-opener as well. I treated myself to a meal at the Fine Burger Company in Finchley Road, having not had anything apart from a bar that day.
I wasn’t sure what to expect, but one thing was certain: I could not eat much of that meal. Back when I was grossly overweight, I’d have been able to devour the whole thing without a second thought, and go for dessert. This time around, I could taste all the grease and fat in the food, and I was conscious of being full.
I began to think: do I really want to eat this kind of food? If I did, I’d be far better off cooking it myself.

Yesterday I hit the gym as I’d promised myself, and am proud to have completed 1km on the cross trainer. It took just over 16 minutes, so I’m not sure whether it’s good or bad.
I also had a go at chest presses as well; having done some strenuous chest exercises at an embarrassingly low weight (of around 20-30 lbs), it was a little bit of a struggle. Today, though, I feel somewhat pumped up.

A very unexpected result this week at the weigh-in: I’d somehow managed to lose 7¼ lbs over the last week. That’s a damn sight better than the 100 grams I gained last week, and it also means I’m back on track.

That means I’m just under three pounds away from being under 15 stones: a weight I haven’t been since I was a kid.

On a more serious note, last night I was given a few pointers on another disturbing aspect of my life; learning how to be assertive. It’s one incredibly important skill that I’ve been denied and haven’t been able to grasp, and probably the one thing that stands between me and a successful, lucrative career.

I tend to get down on myself for not being able to speak my mind as freely as other people. I guess my main reason for it is being made to feel like I’m responsible for everything that goes wrong, or that my requests/demands are unreasonable or arrogant, whether it’s true or not.
There have been times where I’ve had to fight my corner - because let’s face it, nobody else has or would - only to get knocked back and humiliated. Sometimes it happens so often that you start to think, maybe it’s better not to bother.
Though I was incredibly low this time last year, as anyone can attest, being in this situation has made me shrink even further. My voice is going by the day, and I can’t seem to maintain eye contact for very long.

Fortunately I’ve picked up The Assertiveness Workbook by Randy J. Paterson, and am working my way through it. While I don’t appreciate the typical “it’s your fault” staple suggestions I’ve come across so far, it has proven to be useful already.

Fingers crossed.