As I suspect every other Jabber/XMPP using person on the planet has done, I feel I’d better make a post about Google Talk. Release this morning, it’s an xmpp service running on talk.google.com using gmail addresses for accounts.

What things do we need to know about it?
The Google Talk client itself supports voice chat, I’ve not tested this. Google say they’ll be releasing open specs soon, so we’ll enjoy seeing those I think.
Apart from this, both the client and server are fairly basic at the moment, possibly as you’d expect a few hours into beta. The server doesn’t support s2s, disco, offline message storage. However, as it’s xmpp, all the jabber client->client extensions work fine as long as you’re using clients that support them. So using Psi, as I obviously am, typing notifications work fine, even though the GT client doesn’t support this (yet?).

Psi is one of the listed clients, which is neat. Unfortunately the instructions google give for setting Psi up for google talk appear to not be perfect, and they link to our old documentation, as the new stuff is still a couple of hours away from release. IceRAM’s writing a Google Talk/Psi howto at the moment, and hopefully by the evening we’ll have the new documentation like, a test release of our new version (so that’s Psi-0.10-test1) and lots of happy bunnies.

If anyone would like to write my thesis for me while I’m involved in all this, please feel free.

On the personal side, I’m finally back at training (TaeKwon-Do) again after two months forced rest (I broke my foot) and I’m feeling the effects of my lack of training, both in my general fitness and my technique. I don’t think I’m going to be entering any half marathons again soon, nor making great progress towards my next grade for many months. To rub salt in the wound, the foot still hurts.

/K

Categories: Jabber, Psi, TaeKwon-Do
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This post for a change isn’t about Psi, isn’t about Jabber and isn’t about anything anyone will care about: it’s about me selfishly advertising my happiness.

As some of you will know, last weekend I undertook the delightful 250mile trip to Manchester to take my next grading in TaeKwon-Do. The grading panel consisted of Mr. Doulton, a 6th degree and Mr. Iqbal, a 5th degree. The grading itself was tiring and stressful for me but I didn’t underperform as much as I had expected to, which is very pleasing.

Results were in for training last night; I passed the grading, so have been promoted to Black Tag/Black Stripe (insert whichever terminology you’re happy with. If you practise another martial art, insert your final colour belt here).

Now I have to look to the future; the next step for me to work towards is 1st degree black belt. While it’s far from certain I’ll ever reach the level of fitness, technique and understanding required for the grade, I’m looking forward to the improvements I’ll certainly see while I try. Only recently have I begun to understand how far I have to go from techniques that hopefully look approximately correct, to the performance of techniques that comes from an understanding of their basis and a great deal of practise. It’s going to be a long road but in this case the journey really should be as rewarding as the destination.

Categories: TaeKwon-Do
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Been playing a great deal of the open beta of World of Warcraft this last week or so, and it’s the greatest thing since pre-cut baked products.
Reason I’ve had so much time: Managed to pick up a strain in training and haven’t trained in a week, and had a filthy cold so have been off work. ‘Great’.

Categories: Games, Personal, TaeKwon-Do
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Forgot about my blog. As such, all the disinteresting things that haven’t happened to me have been lost. This is a shame, so they’re provided here

Last Thursday was the first TKD demo. Went well enough. Dosed up on caffeine and sugar beforehand so I was sufficiently hyper. All good.
Saturday was back to the traditional Seven Stars lunch with Dave and Gareth. Sunday was the fresher’s squash, which involved me standing outside in the rain for *far* too long. Went home and read a book in the evening. Today was work, and that’s going reasonably well for a change.

On average: good few days.

Categories: Gadgets, Personal, TaeKwon-Do, Work
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Goods from Amazon finally arrived yesterday, taking a mere 3 days for ‘next day delivery’. Anyway. Both are very shiny and appear to work, which is a Good Thing(tm).
Hurt my knuckles a bit by failing to put my fist through a breaking board last night. Yes this was probably foolish, no I won’t do it again (for a while). I thought it was a good idea to get some breaking practise in, in advance of next month’s competition. I was wrong. I shalln’t be as silly again
I now have a dual-head (two monitors) setup at work, which is nice, although one of them is a rather fuzzy old monitor that I need to find a replacement for quite soon.

Categories: Computers, Gadgets, TaeKwon-Do
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