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Wednesday, November 5th, 2008
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Yes, yes, I know that I've completely smashed any hopes of writing an entry a week for a year, with my 2 month hiatus from journaling. I've done stuff, seen people, been places and worked a hell of a lot. That about sums it up, really.
I do, however, have a sort-of urgent request for any and all londoners who might chance across this entry, though. A friend of mine is coaching it to London from Edinburgh this coming Monday, and is flying out to a conference thingy in Bulgaria on Tuesday morning from Gatwick. I'm hoping someone may be able to put her up on a couch or something just for Monday night.
Please lemme know ASAP if you think you may be able to help out!
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Thursday, August 14th, 2008
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The last week or so has been quite quiet an uneventful. Work is going well... I got a pay rise (!!!), I'm settling in to the pattern of work, and after being here for a month I now feel like I'm starting to get on top of python and django. Huzzah for that.
I went out shopping on Saturday and ended up spending far too much money on a whole bunch of books, and I picked up a NES gun and duckhunt for ubercheap! Now I just need to get a NES to play them on...
Anyway. Onto the title of this post. Tim and I discovered that Bill Bailey was performing in Edinburgh as part of the fringe, but his show (on today) was all sold out. However, we discovered that he was compèring part of a Guilded Balloon 21st birthday gala celebration the previous day (yesterday), so we decided to get ticket to that instead. It was actually really fun, a whole bunch of comedians had 10 min slots, and the show went from 8pm to midnight, so there was a whole lot of comedy. And, of course, Bill Bailey was there. And he was good. And, of course, I have now completed that task I set to see Bill Bailey! And after the show, Tim and I went down to the stage entrance and waited for him to leave, and I got him to sign my guitar hero guitar. Because, y'know, that's an awesome thing for him to sign. He did look a little bemused by it, but hey. Rawk.
So that was fun. While we were waiting for Bill Bailey to come out of the theatre, we bumped into an old school friend of Tim's, and we ended up going to a bar with her and her friend. Cue far too much beer and a 5am bedtime. Needless to say, work today wasn't particularly fun! But. Bill Bailey! I met him! And he signed my guitar! Woo!
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Lots of stuff done this week! Been busybusybusy. My parents did the long trek up from Southampton on Monday with all my boxes, and I took the afternoon off work to unpack the car, then wandered around Edinburgh for a bit with them, as they had never been up here before. Mosied on over to IKEA a bit later to pick up some shiny new bookshelves, then had a bit of a DIY construction party with Tim, Rebekah and Roh where we built everything and unloaded a few boxes of books onto them. Hooray books.
The rest of the week was pretty normal, then Silje came to visit on Thursday and stayed through until early Sunday morning. So Friday and Saturday involved alot of drinking here at the flat. We all went into town during the day on Saturday though, and caught the very start of the fringe... *lots* of street performers and people all the way down the Royal Mile. After doing a bit of touristy sightseeing we went to Frankenstien for some drinks and stuff, and met up with Lena, a swedish friend of mine from California who now works in Switzerland, and Drew, another friend from California who Lena was visiting here. I hadn't seen her since I left Cali 2 years ago, so it was nice to catch up.
Oh, Tim and Silje and I went to see Wall-E on Friday evening. Awesome movie, loved it to pieces. So cute and cuddly and awesome. If you haven't seen it already, go and watch it now!!
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As I mentioned in my last post, yesterday consisted of watching Prince Caspian and The Dark Knight. And oh my word, was Batman good. Heath Ledger played Joker to perfection and Morgan Freeman and Michael Caine were their usual spectacular selves, even in supporting roles.
My parents are trcking up to Edinburgh from Southampton tomorrow with all my boxes of books and dvds and stuff. As such, I am currently pondering furniture solutions, as I don't have any bookshelves or storage units. Thinking that the Flarke bookshelves from IKEA might do well, if I get 3 or 4 or them. Also need to pick up a TV unit and a desk somewhere.
In other news, the Edinburgh/Fringe festival is coming up fast, and I should probably start looking to see if there are any shows I want to see before they all get sold out. Is anyone thinking of coming up for the Fringe?
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Thursday, July 24th, 2008
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So. What have I been up to over the last week. Hmmm, lets see.
Thursday, meal at T&R's. Some sort of Dutch meal, very tasty.
Friday, Tim came over and I cooked a strange mushy mash of a meal. Tasted quite good though. Watched a few Black Books episodes.
Saturday, mooched around all day then headed over to T&R's for pizza and The Incredibles.
Sunday, mooched around some more, then cooked an awesome Corned Beef Pie for Tim and Rebekah and Roh while they played Guitar Hero, then we played Monopoly. Which was fun. Tim won hugely, even though I conned him into giving me half the board (at the end of the game I had every street property on the first half of the board. I even had hotels all of the first 5 properties, but I got assessed for street repairs, which scuppered me :( ).
On Tuesday Joanna (Tim's sister) came to visit, and we all went out to an awesome Italian restaurant where I had a mahoosive pizza. Then Tim and Jo and I went for a walk around the Shore area (very pretty waterfront area about 2 mins from my flat), then Jo and I watched movies until stupid o'clock. Which, considering I had work the next day, might not have been the cleverest idea.
Wednesday was a little mindnumbing, although I met up with James and Pete (two of the guys who interned at Sun with me in California) for lunch, which was nice.
Ummm. Let's see, that's about it for this week. The plan seems to be to try and watch Prince Caspian and the Dark Knight in the cinema over the weekend, and I really want to try and fit Wall-E in there too somewhere. Hmm. Oh yes, and my parents are driving all my stuff up on Monday, so that will be good too.
I'm currently abusing my Virgin XL TV package by watching lots of (don't ask why, because I don't know) Abba music videos. And oh my word, but does their video making skills leave a lot to be desired. Funny though.
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Wednesday, July 16th, 2008
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So, in celebration of getting internet connected here (a zippy 20Mb/s cable connection, woooo!), I decided to answer all the calls for photos by filming a short walkthrough of my new flat. Nothing special, but it beats a bunch of photos.
Enjoy!
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After spending the last few days trying to settle into the flat (largely unsuccessfully, due to feeling rather ill and not being able to sleep much. Boo.), I woke up nice and early this morning, ready to start my first day at work! Woohoo.
It was, as you'd expect, full of all those fun introductory stuffs like health and safety talks, best practise things, and general orientation thingies. I spent the afternoon wrestling with svn (version control, how I hate thee) and managed, eventually, to get a dummy "blueprint" Django site up and running. Hurrah. Now to learn Python and Django uberquick.
ION, my Virgin Media stuffs appear to have not arrived yet; No internet/phone/tv for me means no photos of the flat for you. Sad. If they don't deliver today, it'll be at least a few more days until I get the stuff because they'll likely deliver when I'm not in tomorrow, so I'll have to arrange for redelivery to work or somesuch for another day this week. Which sucks.
IOON, I've completely messed up my budgeting and am mega strapped for cash. And I still need to get my stuff up to Edinburgh from Southampton somehow. At least baked beans on toast is somewhat healthy, eh?
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Thursday, July 10th, 2008
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Following on from my last entry (over a week ago now, shocking!), not only do I have a job (which I will hopefully start on Monday) but I now also have a flat! It's a large place with a huge lounge, 2 double bedrooms (one ensuite), an awesome box/computer room complete with free computer, nice kitchen, a big bathroom with a spider-shower.
I found it on Thursday, after 2 days of frantic flat hunting and about 7 other property viewings. Paid the holding deposit that evening, and put the rest on my credit card on friday. I'm now very poor, seeing as how the advance payment was deposit (one month rent + £200), first months rent, and an admin fee of £120. Still, the reference checks all went through at the start of the week, and I picked up the keys this morning. Wooyay! I get proper internet on Monday (this is going through my phone at the moment), so I'll post some photos once the 20Mb broadband gets switched on :D
In other news, it was the wotmania Edinburgh Gathering this weekend, and I met Paul and Angie in addition to Tom (who's floor I've been staying on since last monday). Met up with them first on Thursday along with Roh and Camilla at the National Museum, and mosied around there for a while before going to the Frankenstein pub. Showed Roh the video I took of the flat place (as Roh is going to be my flatmate), she liked it so I payed the holding deposit.
Friday involved beggaring myself by putting £1200 on my credit card, then meeting up with everyone for meals and stuff in the evening. Saturday was the "main meet day", and we did a walk up to Arthurs Seat (big hill just outside the main but of Edinburgh) where I got a massive hayfever attack and my eyes swelled up to the size of cannonballs. Not nice. And then it started raining. Awesome.
After the wonderful views and picnic lunch (it didn't actually start raining until we were heading back into town, thankfully), we headed back to the musuem thing where we went to a hands-on sciencey area, and totally pushed lots of buttons. Highly amusing, then went to the Jekyll and Hyde pub for food and drinks.
Sunday was nice and relaxing; Tim and Bekah's for champagne and strawberries in the afternoon (along with a 50 hour long game of Once Upon A Time), followed by Wetherspoons for drinks and food.
Monday and Tuesday I mostly spent reading books in Costa Coffee, with a spectacular view over central Edinburgh. It's really rather a pretty city. Oh, and I signed my work contract on Monday.
Today I picked up the keys for the new flat, moved it, got registered for council tax, got TV/Phone/Broadband from Virgin Media set up for next monday (seeing as how the house was already ready for it, it made sense to go with Virgin. Less setup fees), and then cooked an awesome chocolate chili con carne. And chocolate brownies. Except the chili didn't really work that well, and I burnt the brownies. :(
But Tim and Rebekah and Tom and Roh all came over for a mini flatwarming, and they all ate it, and at least said it was tasty, so that makes me feel a little better.
So yes. I've spent far too much money already, and shall probably spend more tomorrow on duvets and bookshelves and drawers and stuff.
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I guess that all this time I was just looking in the wrong place, because on my first day here in Edinburgh, I seem to have found myself a job. Who would've thunk it?
The job is Web Development, using the python-based platform Django, and although the salary isn't *quite* what I had hoped it would be I'm aware that what I wanted was quite high, especially for my first "real" job. The office is nice, and the people seem fairly friendly. So yeah. I'm really quite happy.
The job starts "as soon as possible", and while I'm doing Wotmania stuffs this week I'm thinking that I could start work next week, and then come back home once my parents break up for school, then pack all my stuff into boxes and drive a van up. Mammoth journey though.
Now I have the enormously fun task of finding a flat. And the first task seems to be getting references. Anyone have any suggestions as to who to get them from? I don't really have a previous employer/landlord. I guess I could possibly get one from the temp agency I worked at. Maybe University for the other one?
Also, what's the deal with council tax? I mean, seriously... an extra £100 a month?
Oh, and I get to start repaying my student loan now. And with inflation the way it is, the interest is getting quite big quite quickly. Yikes.
I can stop worrying about not having a job, and start worrying about not having any money ;)
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I quite randomly found myself in Canterbury this weekend, all thanks to the wonderfulness that was Jen and Matt's birthday celebrations. Caught a train with Dave on Friday afternoon, and arrived in Canterbury around 6pm. Dropped in on Mike and Jen (first time I'd ever been to their flat, strangely enough) for a couple of games of the new Smash Brawl game for the Wii, then went to the Dolphin for drinks with various people I hadn't seen in ages. Was good.
Saturday involved lots of pubs and lots of people in fancy dress. Started off at East Spoons, then went to Seven Stars, then the Dolphin, the finished up at the Penny Theatre. Around 12 hours of drinking in there. Was very good to see everyone again, and kinda made me wish I was back in my first year at Uni again. Canterbury really is an awesome little place.
Anyway. Back home now after a 3.5 hr train journey back to Sotton. Now I've got to back my bag and get ready for a 7hr journey to Edinburgh tomorrow for an interview on Tuesday and a Wotmania Gathering next weekend. Hoorah \o/
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Wednesday, June 25th, 2008
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As I posted a while back, my old Acer laptop that I got in my second year at Uni broke. The screen decided to go on the blitz, rendering the laptop pretty much unusable. Well, my wonderful mother ran it through the house insurance, and it's been replaced with a shiney new Acer Travelmate 5720. I really must commend Abbey for the hassle free house insurance they provide. I filled in no forms, they picked up the laptop next day, and I had a brand new laptop just over a week later.
And, compared to my old one, what a laptop it is! It's pretty much quadruple the specification of my old one, and (despite my inital hate) I'm growing to like Vista. The graphics card is *much* better than my old one (and much better than the one in the main PC!), which means that I've *finally* been able to play Portal.
And finish it. Such a great game. Funny, too. The song at the end is brilliant. Except, of course, now I'm hungry for cake :/
In other news, I'm off to Edinburgh for a week to do some jobhunting. I've already got one interview lined up, with a web development company. Hopefully something will finally work out :)
Now off to play through HL2: Ep 1 & 2...
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It turns out that today is Download Day. Firefox 3 will be launched in about 15 minutes, and Mozilla are attempting to set a new world record for number of software downloads in 24 hours. You should get Firefox anyway, seeing as it's a much better browser than Internet Explorer, and you get a special certificate if you help contribute to the record.
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I've had discussions with several people recently about having my blog open to all and sundry while job hunting, and about how it might be hurting my chances. Specifically about how employers might either A) read my blog and dislike its content or B) view the fact that I have a blog as a bad thing.
It's true that there have been several cases of people being fired because of their blogs, even for quite trivial matters. Does this mean that I need to start censoring myself, limiting myself to the most innocuous of subject matter?
I think the most important thing to realise is that this is primarily a journal, not a blog. What I post here is primarily about my activities, allowing my friends and family to keep up to date with what I'm doing, and to give me something to look back on when I'm old and decrepit. What I do is no different to what anyone else does... I simply talk about it online!
The main point, however, is one of discrimination. I believe, although I could be wrong, that applicants can only be judged for a particular position through the information they submit on an application form, and later through interview. For an employer to hunt down extra information about a person, either from their blog, personal website, or social networking profile on sites like Facebook or Myspace, without the applicant's permission is discriminatory. (It's another issues altogether, obviously, when you're actually employed by a company)
I don't intend to start censoring myself any more than I normally do, so, rest assured, you can all look forward to more thrilling entries about a single, unemployed 24 year old man who still lives with his parents and is trying without much success to find meaningful employment.
Enjoy!
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Happy Birthday Dave! I hope you have a fantastic day :) And congratulations on becoming all Grown Up and getting your own apartment. C'est tres bon.
Now to sign you up for a whooole load of junk mail... ;)
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After a long journey back home from Canterbury yesterday, it's time to really knuckle down and carry on playing computer games job hunting!
I had a great few days in Canterbury, it was nice to wander around the place again a year after I left University! Silje and I arrived on Thursday, and spent the evening with Tim and Joanna at the Ingoldsby 'Spoons, catching up with each other. I tried to dissuade Tim from the madness of marriage, but he was resolute. Ah well, at least I tried!
On Friday Silje and I wandered around Canterbury, doing the sightseeing stuff and finding shoes and a shawl to go with her dress. I even bought some purple ribbon and made an awesome sash to go with her dress! My sewing skillz are just as great as when I made the wotmania flag all those years ago...
Friday was finished off with a wedding rehearsal, where I practiced the photography gubbins for the real deal the next day, and a curry with Tim's family the others who had arrived that day, i.e. Roh, Camilla and Tor.
Saturday was the Big Day, and after squeezing myself into a suit (Note to self: eat less, exercise more), Silje and I moseyed on over to the church. One beautiful ceremony later, and Tim and Rebekah became man and wife. How lovely. The reception was also quite awesome, although most of it was spent taking photographs of various groups of people. The food was delicious, and the speeches were pretty good too. Well, people laughed in all the right places during my Best Man's speech, so I'm assuming it went rather well!
And, after Tim and Rebekah and departed for their honeymoon, there was the obligatory polishing off of wine and pubbage. Quite a long, but thoroughly awesome day!
Yesterday was basically "let's get home" day. Met up with the remaining wotmaniacs left over from the wedding (Snoop, Roh, Camilla, Tor, Monique, Silje and myself) and Joanna to grab some food at the tastytasty Nandos before getting the coach back to London. Turned out the ever awesome Monique was on the coach with us, so I entertained her with the Black Ping-Pong Ball joke for half an hour, much to her dismay. Upon arrival in London, the next available coach to Southampton was 3 hours away, so Silje and I retired to a nearby pub for a last meal and pint together, then sat in the sunshine for a while before being thrown out of the park by a grumpy parksman.
To cut a long story short, I arrived back home at around 10pm last night after a brilliant 2 weeks in London having great times with great people.
Now, I need to edit 700 photos. Oh, and get a job too.
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Just a quick update, as Silje and I are off to catch a coach from Victoria down to Canterbury this morning, for Tim and Rebekah's wedding this weekend.
Last few days have involved wandering over lots of London. Went to the British Museum and watched lots of movies on Monday, went to the Natural History Museum on Tuesday before meeting up with Kim, Alex, Becky, Matt, Dan, Chris and Rince at the Porterhouse which was nice. Went to a little Mexican place nearby for dinner, was very tasty and quite cheap too!
Yesterday was dress shopping for Silje, as she doesn't have anything to wear for the wedding. Except she does now, because our scouring of London's charity shops was successful! Pictures to follow, of course. Had a nice walk along the South Bank in the afternoon, after going to the Tate Modern (which I was thoroughly unimpressed with), to the Telectroscope thing. Didn't see New York though, as there was a bit of a crowd.
Then went to the Waterstones at Picadilly Circus, and spent a very pleasant three hours there, during which I accidentally managed to read a book, Replay by Ken Grimwood, and had a bit of an epiphany. Which was nice.
Yesterday evening, Silje and I made the most of our last night in London by spending a while down at Trafalgar Square with our cameras. Sadly, my photos didn't turn out too well, but Silje got some awesome time lapse photos. I gave my torches to some rollerbladers out the front of the National Gallery, but the lightpainting didn't quite work how I hoped it would.
Anyway, off to Canterbury now! Ciaociao!
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Well, what an exciting few days! I came up to London on Wednesday to hang out with the two Camillas for a little bit, spent the afternoon/evening with them and Snoop, and was met in the evening by Monique, so that was a fun day. Spent Thursday morning with the Camillas again at the British Library, before their train to Edinburgh in the afternoon.
Silje arrived from Norway on Friday, and she, Snoop, Monique and I all went to see Avenue Q that evening. While the first half was a little more punchy than the second, it was still very enjoyable and incredibly funny. And I was able to get cheap £20 tickets on the day, straight from the theatre! All the "half price" booths were selling tickets for £25+, so I think that worked out well.
We mooched around on Saturday before meeting an old school friend of Silje's, Caroline, for drinks in the afternoon. We went to the Porterhouse in Covent Garden, and spent a pleasant few hours there before heading to the Leicester Square Yates for foodage. Back to a pub for some more beer, then off to the Circle Line party!
We got on a party train at Westminster, but it was *very* rowdy, lots of banging on the ceiling and tearing posters off the wall, so we got off at Liverpool Street at about 2050 so we could join in with the main group of people at 9pm. One quick loo break later, and we came back to find the underground station closed off! So we stayed at Liverpool Street, amid the chaos of about 3000 other people. It was quite a jovial atmosphere until people started getting a little more violent, throwing beer cans and the like. So we moved off and got back to where we were staying via Old Street. All in all, an enjoyable night!
Today's been, understandably, a fairly relaxed day. Lots of movies, with more on the way. I've been introduced to The Fountain, which I enjoyed tremendously while not really understanding one bit of it :P
Rest of the week is going to be mostly touristy stuff, I think. I've got my lightpainting stuff with me, which I hope to do in Trafalgar Square while I'm here.
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Although, I almost feel like I would have been better *not* getting the feedback from my TeachFirst application, because it's made me annoyed about it all over again :P
Essentially, they have several "core competencies" that they look for demonstration of throughout the assessment center. I scored very highly, apparently, in everything but Planning and Organisation where I got an average score (because I gave a duff example in my interview and my 7-min mock lesson wasn't interactive enough) and Humility, Respect and Empathy where I got a below average score (because I talked over people during the group exercise... something I only did to get the group back on track and on time, which I was praised for under the Leadership section!!). And that made me a "borderline case". I just ended up on the wrong side of the border.
I really don't want to be looking and applying for jobs just for jobs sake, but it's already now been a year since I graduated and I'm running rapidly out of options.
Ah well. It'll all work out *eventually*.
P.S. Send me an email or a message on facebook or something if you're in London and want to meet up over the next week and a bit. I'm not going to be able to make it to Canterbury for TagLAN this weekend, but Kim mentioned something about Tuesday or Thursday evenings, which sounds good. Yarrrr.
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I can't say I wasn't expecting it, but the way the interview went really did make me think I might just have clinched it... but no. I didn't get the Technology Associate position at the Press Association.
I'm beginning to wonder whether I'm looking for the right kind of job here. My CV seems to be holding up well, as every company who has seen it has given me interviews. It's those interviews that I'm failing at though, and I don't know why as *no one* seems to be willing to give any feedback to me at all. I'm finding it really difficult to critically evaluate my performance when I get the same result every time.
Still, trying to keep positive about it. Rosie's being absolutely marvelous and forwarding me various job opportunities, and I'm starting to look at various agency positions. And I'm spending the next week and a half in London, so hopefully I'll get some interviews while I'm there.
On a related note, if anyone Londonish fancies meeting up for drinks/food during the next week or so (I arrive tomorrow and head to Canters for Tim and Bekah's wedding on Friday 6th June) by all means let me know. I'll have a friend from Norway with me, but she doesn't bite. It'll also be great to see people again, as apart from Dave who lives sorta close, I haven't really seen or spoken to *anyone* who isn't family or, recently, work in *ages*.
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Accenture decided that they didn't like me all that much, and I can't say I'm too surprised. I didn't think the interview went as well as it should have done, and besides; it's their loss!
However, the interview I went to on Wednesday, for a job with the Press Association, went much better. I was much more relaxed during the interview itself, answered the questions well (although I spent the whole journey home on the train thinking of more stuff I should have said, but I guess that's always the way), and I had a really good vibe from the whole thing.
The interview wasn't the whole thing though, there was a technology quiz before; 7 questions in 30 mins. I hadn't been worrying too much about it while I was preparing for the interview, as I'm pretty much on top of technology stuffs.
Except these questions weren't really *about* technology, but rather design principles. Here they are, let me know what you think!
- What do you know about design patterns, which ones have you come across?
- Explain your understanding of a UML use case and explain at which stages it would be appropriate to use it
- Say what you understand by metadata and explain the significance of the Dublin Core
- What do you understand by Information Architecture? Why is it important?
- Give three areas in which content management can be used to improve the effectiveness of an organisation
- What are the main features of MPEG4, MPEG7 and MPEG21
- What is RDF and why is it important?
Now, with the exception of the MPEG stuff, I know I covered all that in my degree. I particularly remember learning about Dublin Core and RDF in the Mobile and Ubiquitous module, but I couldn't for the life of me remember anything about it! I was completely unprepared for these questions, and although I gave the best answers I could in the time, I think that it might detract from my performance in the interview.
I also had to give a 10 min ppt presentation on "What evolving Information Technologies will multimedia publishers need to master so that they are competitive in rapidly changing digital markets?" which also went quite well, I think.
I should hear back either tomorrow or at the start of next week. Here's hoping!
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nebhead's journal
awake.
jubilant.
pleased.
accomplished.
determined.
tired.
disappointed.