Tour de Farce

I have been into cycling since about 1995. I caught my first Tour on the T.V. around that time. I was captivated, awesome scenery coupled with the drama of the tour made for awesome T.V. I guess I was a little naive and really didn't know the dark under current that was perversive in the sport.

I watched year after year from then on. I loved Jan Ulrich's tour win taking the title of his team leader Barne Riis who was the defending champion. Richard Virenque winning 5 or 6 King of the Mountains in a row. Little Marco Pantani defying the odds with his awesome come back victory. Unfortunately, they were all caught cheating (well Ullrich "retired" before he could be found guilty but was implicated in a drug ring) the very sport they were supposed to love.

Then came Lance Armstrong and all was good with the world again. Even he, the most tested athlete in history, was tainted by the drugs. I firmly believe he was clean, but I'm an optimist. I want to believe.

After the on going fiasco with last years tour, it had to be squeaky clean this year. In every sense of the word. It was looking good. We had the drama of Vinokorov falling and then his heroic time trail victory and stage victory in the Pyrenees. Last year was almost forgotten. And then the bombshell. Vino and his team were thrown off the tour and he was found guilty of blood doping. Then today Rasmussen who was leading, was thrown off the tour for irregularities in off season dope testing. These two incidents are another slap in the face, in a long line of slaps in the face.

It's not the other riders, or the sponsors, or even the organizers of the tour that are hurt most. It's you and me, the cycling fan. The guys who will never make a bean from cycling, but race and train in the rain and the wind and the incessant attacks from Magpies in the Spring. All for the love of the sport. The drug cheats are killing it for everyone and have to be stopped.

What can we do?

We can hit the cheats were it hurts. In the pocket. We're the guys who buy the bikes and the wheels and the group sets and the team shirts, and show up to watch the pro's. There would be no pro cycling without us. So lets all make a stand. Let us agree, as cycling fans, to boycott the sponsors and teams of drug cheats. Lets not fuel the vicious circle any longer. We owe it to ourselves...

Old Code

As I have posted previously, I am modifying some old Delphi code I maintain. It is usually a yearly thing. The client has some requests I procrastinate and do it at the 11th hour. I am not a procrastinator as a rule, but going back to Delphi from C# is very very painful, and something I don't like doing.

Looking through my old code is painful too. Most of the stuff I did between 5 and 7 years ago. I thought I was good in those days, but well I wasn't as good as I thought that is for sure. It seems looking back, that I didn't fully grasp OO. Also I seem to put code in utility type files - just source code files with procedures and functions that don't tie in together. I see now that most of the code should have been wrapped up in classes but for some reason I didn't.

Would have made my life a lot easier now that is for sure.

It's a worthwhile and humbling experience to go through some old code. It makes you realise that there is always room for improvement and learning. I bet in 5 years the code you did yesterday that you thought was awesome will look just as bad 5 year old code does today.

A little reminder that taking a step back from your code and thinking about what you are doing is always a good thing...

ModelMaker Explorer

Recently, I have been coding in Delphi again. I have to take some code (mine) and refactor. In standard Delphi it's not a pleasure. I am using D7 which is getting a little old now, but I prefer it over 2006 which I also own.

I purchased ModelMaker Explorer to help out. It comes highly recommended. I bought it for refactoring features, but it has a ton of other useful features too, such as live metrics. I haven't checked out all the features yet, but at 95Euro it is a bargain. I wish I had bought it years ago.

If apple designed everything

Link Here

It appears to be in Italian, but you get the idea.