I am very pleased to welcome you to my web-site.
I mainly do two things: I write and I run. My writing concentrates almost exclusively on the long form – specifically the novel. Check out my Who is Mickey Bosco? page for more on that.
I also like to run (in between injuries). I have one marathon under my belt and plan to do some more. When my body allows, I run five days a week.
import java.util.Scanner;
public class HangmanApp {
public static void main(String[] args) {
// Note: this version of Hangman doesn't like words with duplicate letters - can you make it work for duplicate letters?
char[] myWord = { 'd', 'a', 'n', 'g', 'e', 'r' };
// This is a "parallel array" which matches the length of the word, i.e. increase or decrease the word length and do likewise with this array
char[] myGuesses = { 'n', 'n', 'n', 'n', 'n', 'n'};
Scanner scan = new Scanner(System.in);
String response = "";
// Keep track of remaining guesses - reach 0 and you lose!
int guessesRemaining = 5;
System.out.println("Welcome to Hangman.\nYou have only 5 incorrect guesses left.\n");
// All 3 "conditions" below must be true to continue guessing (i.e. we do not want to exit the program, we haven't used up our 5 guesses and we haven't guessed the whole word yet
while (!response.equals("0") && guessesRemaining > 0 && !isWordGuessed(myGuesses)) {
// First we display the state of affairs for this round - show letters we have guessed and show blank for those we have not
for (int i=0; i < myWord.length; i++) {
if (myGuesses[i] == 'n') {
System.out.print('_');
} else {
System.out.print(myWord[i]); // otherwise there was a 'y' for the guess, so show the corresponding letter
}
if (i < myWord.length - 1) { // for the last letter, don't output the bar character
System.out.print(" | ");
}
}
System.out.print("\n\nGuess a letter (or enter 0 to quit): ");
response = scan.next();
int position = findPosition(myWord, response.charAt(0)); // with the charAt(index) String method, we strip out only the first character of the response and ignore the rest
if (position >= 0) {
myGuesses[position] = 'y';
System.out.println("\nGood guess 
");
} else { // incorrect guess
--guessesRemaining;
System.out.print("\nIncorrect guess 
");
if (guessesRemaining > 0) { // only display this reminder if the game will continue
System.out.println(" --- only " + guessesRemaining + " guesses remaining.\n");
}
}
}
if (guessesRemaining > 0) {
System.out.println("\nCongratulations! You guessed the entire word.");
} else {
System.out.println("\nBetter luck next time!");
}
System.out.println("Thanks for playing. Goodbye.");
}
private static int findPosition(char[] wordToCheck, char letter) {
// we must loop through the character array to see if letter exists and return its position if found
for (int i=0; i
return i;
}
}
return -1;
}
private static boolean isWordGuessed(char[] guessesToCheck) {
// look for any occurrence of the letter 'n' and if found return false, otherwise all letters guessed so return true
for (int i=0; i
return false;
}
}
return true; // if we got this far, then we must not have found an 'n', so must have guessed entire word
}
}
I don’t spend much time blogging here, to be honest. I mainly tweet, facebook, and tend to my new totaltone.ie website, where I will be blogging a lot. However, this blog will become the main focus for my Mickey Bosco novel(s), so keep an eye out for that.
I caught the homebrewing bug a few weeks back. What set the spark was when I climbed into our attic to retrieve the Christmas tree and saw an old brewing keg my father used some 25 years or so ago. I took it down, dusted it off and considered using it. It was virtually poisonous, though, with all manner of stuff growing in it. I wasn’t deterred, however.
I considered new rubber washers, a new lid, new floating tap, etc. But I instead opted for a kit that I would just bottle directly from instead of the hassle of maintaining a draught beer keg. I bought the Coopers kit from HomeBrewWest.ie. This came with a heat belt (just in time for the big freeze) and some food-grade sterilizer.
The beer extract kit that comes with it is Coopers Original Australian Lager. I followed all the instructions, sterilized my equipment, made the wort to the right temperature (using the supplied 1kg of Coopers Brew Enhancer 1), and pitched the kit yeast directly onto the wort. 6 or 7 days later, the final gravity had stuck on 1.018 – I didn’t take an initial reading, so had no idea about whether the original gravity was high also. I tried a few grammes of more yeast and that bubbled up nicely for a few hours, but made little impact on the gravity. After 8 days, I bottled my beer and put 1 Coopers carbonation drop in each 500ml bottle. I guessed the alcohol strength would be something like 4%.
I have to say, unfortunately, that this first batch wasn’t an entire success. After 1 week of conditioning, I tried a couple of bottles. It tasted like lager, looked like lager, but was completely flat. Very disappointing and not drinkable in my opinion. A couple of weeks later and there was thankfully an improvement. Still no head worth talking about, but CO2 gas was evident, with some large bubbles making their way to the surface from the bottom of the glass. Finally, something that was drinkable and meant that 40 half-litre bottles weren’t going to find themselves emptied down the sink. I think the beer will further improve with more conditioning time.
But I’m not a big fan of lager. If I wanted cheap lager, I could just go down the off-licence and pick up some Carling or Dutch Gold. My whole ethos for brewing my own is to have a supply of World beers. So batch 2 was going to be an English or Scottish style IPA (India Pale Ale). Again I used a Coopers kit: their Brewmaster IPA. To make up the wort, I added 500g of Munton’s Spray Malt and 300g of Dextrose (i.e. brewing sugar). I ended up mixing yeasts, with what I had left of the kit yeast (some of it ended up in the original lager) and Coopers ale yeast. Again I pitched dry onto the top of the wort.
3 days in and the whole thing had fermented like an anti-christ and reached a final gravity of 1.012 (alcohol strength of about 5%), which is about as far as it was ever going to drop. So I bottled – again with 1 carbonation drop per 500ml bottle. After just a few days, I tried my tester bottle (the last one filled from the dirty stuff at the end of the fermentation vessel) – it was surprisingly good and had a good head. Miles different to the original lager. A week later and I considered the entire batch perfectly drinkable – all the cloudiness had gone. It will, of course, improve with age. Definitely the IPA is a success.
I’m a big fan of strong Belgian beer, with Leffe (6.6% Blonde) being a particular favourite. Next up was Brewferm Grand Cru. This was where I first had to consider my ingredients … Belgian ales tend to be dry and use Candi sugar – which is inverted sugar that allows the yeast to work quickly since the inversion process does a lot of the work the yeast would otherwise have to do. I didn’t have the option of candi sugar, so I opted instead for 2/3 unprocessed cane sugar and 1/3 soft brown sugar. This ended up with a huge krausen (the head/crust that forms early in fermentation), as high again as the depth of the beer in the vessel. 6 days later and I bottled it, calculating the alcohol strength to be 8.1%. Because of the strength, the volume was down – just 16 500ml bottles. That was a lesson learned for batch 4.
It definitely had a lovely golden colour, as advertised, though was quite cloudy – approaching the look of apple juice. The conditioning time is at least 6-8 weeks and I tried a couple 2 weeks in. The beer had a nice head at that point and was quite drinkable. Strong flavour and strong smell, as you would expect, and it went straight to my head. With at least 1 more month conditioning, it should be a superb beer.
One thing of note with this batch was the priming sugar (what I add to the bottle for secondary fermentation). Having seen the result of the original lager, I suspected (wrongly) that 1 carbonation drop wasn’t enough per 500ml bottle. I opted for 2 with this batch. This despite the fact that I knew that when brewing strong Belgian beer, ordinary glass bottles would probably explode (I use re-usable plastic / PET bottles that Coopers make). I knew the potential for disaster, so I kept checking the bottles in my hot press daily. One day I noticed one of the bottles was not fully expanded – it gave when I squeezed it. The pressure had forced its way out and broken the seal. I had to go through each bottle and let some gas out, then retighten the cap. This seems to have worked, and though the bottles are now back to being very much expanded, they should hold just fine.
Batch 4 was another Belgian – the Brewferm Abbey beer. This time I opted for 2 kits so that I would not just have 9 litres. For the wort, I opted for a 454g can of Lyle’s Golden Syrup, which is 80% part-inverted sugar – as close as I could get to authentic candi sugar. For the remainder, I used unprocessed cane sugar. I decided to fill up to 19 litres instead of 18 to slightly reduce the alcohol content.
This batch bubbled and bubbled for 10 days. By the end, the gravity had dropped to where I calculated the strength as 7.8% – not too far below the advertised 8% for 18L. With the lesson learned from the Grand Cru, I decided to bottle with 1 carbonation drop and 1 or 2g of table sugar. This meant dropping in the drop with just the tip of a teaspoon of sugar. So far, the bottles have expanded up to where the Grand Cru is in terms of pressure, but look like they’ll all be fine. I can’t wait to try one of these 35 bottles in another week or so.
Batch 5 is the Coopers International Canadian Blonde, which I have just bottled – 45 500ml bottles, to be precise. This was made with an alternative yeast to the one supplied with the kit – Safale US05, which is supposed to produced North American-style ale – you would think ideal for a Canadian Blonde. I used a 1kg pack of Coopers Brew Enhancer 1 and added 100g of Dextrose when the gravity looked to be about 1.039 with just the Brew Enhancer. Unfortunately, my hydrometer was damaged in the meantime, so I couldn’t take an accurate final reading, but I estimate the strength somewhere between 3.6% and 4%. Tasting what went into the bottle reminded me somewhat of Hoegaarten, but there was definitely a light fruitiness of some kind – definitely seems like it will be a summer drink, as is suggested.
The initial fermentation lasted 8 days, but what surprised me was a relative lack of krausen. It barely grew to more than a centimetre in height, but fermentation was active continuously, so perhaps that was just the nature of the Safale US05 yeast. Only testing will tell if that makes any difference at all – though it did mean I could go for a couple more bottles than usual because there was so much less crud floating around.
That’s it for a while. 5 batches and over 170 500ml bottles is quite enough for now. Next post will deal with the final fully-conditioned products.
It’s not hard to set a PB when running competitively over a distance for the first time. My first 4-miler was the annual Turkey Trot in aid of Simon Community. 235 people took part and I finished 73rd, which is the first time I’ve finished in the top third of a timed race.
My time was better than expected at 28:50. I had expected to finish sub-30, but sub-29 was well beyond my expectations. That’s 7:12 per mile. This early in my training, it’s a target I should easily get under in a few more months.
Unfortunately, I have picked up a minor injury – a hamstring strain. It’s nothing major, but is still a little sore a week later. A 3.5-mile run today was a little sorer than hoped. I might have to think twice about fast races in the future – my focus has always been marathons.
First up is my first race since the marathon of June 7th – The 4-mile Turkey Trot race on 12th December around the Marina in Cork, in aid of Simon Community. This race is unusual in that it forbids the use of a watch. This will be something alien to many modern runners who rely on their GPS watches for time, distance, and heart rate.
As preparation, I did a 4-mile test run at about 95% effort, just to get a feel for what pacing myself would be like for the race (View on Garmin Connect). I ran the run with only the distance showing on the watch, but I did eventually settle into an even pace.
Coming off the back of a 5-month injury lay-off, and only 1 month into my marathon training plan, I was surprised to comfortably manage almost 7:30 pace. I expect to finish under 7:30 pace to set a sub-30 PB for4 miles. I think with 3 or 4 months more training, sub-25 is possible.
I just signed up for the Mallow 10-mile road race on Jan 9th. Interesting is the addition of pacers for 60, 70 and 80 minutes. I plan to tag along with the 80 minute group and hopefully just dip under 8-min-mile pace.
I got into the Ballycotton 10 race on March 6th. With more training, I’ll be hoping for a 70 minute run.
You’ve seen Aliens, right? Probably James Cameron‘s best film? Arguably the best horror film of all time. Maybe even the best SF film of all time. There’s the scene near the end where the mother computer is calling out how long there is left to reach minimum safe distance from the blast site. That’s what the last few days before a dissertation or thesis deadline sound like.
“You have 10 days to reach minimum safe word count.”
Oh feck! I’ll catch up tomorrow.
“You have 9 days to reach minimum safe word count.”
I’ll do a couple of words, put in a spurt towards the end, etc., etc..
I’m pleased to announce, though, that with just under a week left, I have now “reached minimum safe word count!!!”
The word count requirement for my creative dissertation (my Mickey Bosco sequel novel) was between 20,000 and 30,000. I now have reached 21,500. And the best part is that it is the beginning of a novel, so it’s not like I have to wrap anything up nice and neatly. All I have to ensure is that I leave my novel beginning on a knife edge… that great lead turns out to be bogus, but… there is one little revelation that makes the reader go… ah! I plan to stop at around 24 to 25,000, but the pressure is now off.
I’m pleased with how the sequel is turning out. Only thing is, after submission date, I have to drop it and go back to finish the first novel, which by the way is now smaller in word count than the sequel. How bizarre is that?!
Everything, when
Taken in isolation,
Has little meaning.
My first haiku in a long while. It’s a good habit to be in, to create a finished piece of work frequently. Remember, now, that “everything” has 4 syllables, not 3. Ev-er-ee-thing, not ev-ree-thing.
To make up for a recent dearth of daily haikus, here are 4 that I wrote in quick succession…
All of a sudden,
Hurtling from the deep jungle
Was a silverback.
Without any thought,
I wrote that lovely haiku
To amuse myself.
The glare on my screen
Makes it very hard to read
What I am writing.
Less than five minutes
To write four random haikus
Isn’t bad at all.
Confused state of mind
Makes it hard to write this verse;
This will have to do.
