Simon Callan

After my interview with InfoShare, I had a quick phone chat with them, to sort a few things out, and I was then offered a position as a senior developer, doing C++, python and automated testing stuff. As it seemed a reasonably interesting position, and better than anything else that appeared to be coming down the line, I accepted the position, and started work last Monday.

So far, the best description of the job is "blah". I've been there for over a week, and I've done very little. I haven't even got a decent PC to use - the current one I have has 768M of RAM, and randomly attempts to install software that we can't find the install discs for. My PC should have been there the day I arrived, but it was late, and was then given to someone else, and I'm getting their second hand system, which they have spent a week cleaning up. For the of the time I've wasted, they could have bought me 2 PCs. Hopefully, once I get a workable PC, I can get some serious work done.

The people are nice, and I have already been shanghaied in squash - in my first ever game, I lost 8-4 (the 8 points I lost were due to me missing easy returns, the 4 I won were due to me accidentally creating un-returnable bounces).

Travel is a bit of an issue. Getting up at 6:30 for the 7:20 train isn't a problem, but getting home at 7:15 is, despite not having much to do in the evenings. With a bit of thinking and planning, I should be able to trip half an hour off the trip home.

I've reworked my CV to try to make me look better, but I think it still needs a lot more 'bigging-up'. Would anyone like to comment on it?

( a CV )

I think fate may be playing games with me. I used to have some neighbours (OK, i still have neighbours, but not this pair). In all the time they had the misfortune to be my neighbours, I think I spoke seriously to them once, and that was to exploit them as keyholders while I was on holiday.
Since they moved out, I appear to be bumping into them on a weekly, and almost daily basis. I wonder if fate has something horrible planned for us?

As today is the first day of the year, I thought that I would set out my goals for the year. I'm not doing these as resolutions as they're a bit too fuzzy to be resolutions.

* Get a new job
This is a simple goal, but it's a matter of finding the right job, so that I don't feel that I'm wasting my time doing it.

* Be creative
A very fuzzy goal, but by this I mean do something like write or draw or something similar. I intend to do something like this every day.

* Get healthy
The measure of this will be primarily by weight, and the size of my waist, but other things like stamina will also be important.

* Get a life
How on earth you measure this, I don't know, but I intend to go out more and do things, especially things that require / cause me to interact with *small* groups of people (I.e., up to about 5-6, as more than this becomes very hard to handle).

I had my second stage job interview today. I think it went okay, with the usual exceptions.

Getting to the interview itself was a fun proposition. The first problem I had was the new shoes I had purchased yesterday. As with all new work shoes, the soles are so slick that I found it almost impossible to walk up the icy slope leading from my flat. Having managed to get halfway up the slope, I decided that I was slipping so badly that I would not make it alive to the Railway Station. I then quickly shot back into the flat, picked up my trainers, and changed into them, carrying my shoes in my hands. I then dashed over to the station, fearing that I might have missed my train. This turned out to be irrelevant, as the trains were running so badly that the train that should have left 15 minutes before I got there didn't turn up for another half-hour.

When it did decide to turn up, it took a lot longer than normal to reach London. As a result of the late arrival in London, I had a lot less time to get to Bloomberg's office than I had planned for, and I ended up arriving there a bit late. The interview itself was probably the second hardest interview I've had, at least on the technical side, on the personal side it was definitely the hardest. The interviewer had three main phases, a technical interview, less technical interview from management, and a talk with the HR person. I think I did okay in the interview, but I probably could have done better but I don't know how. With luck I did good enough that I will get the follow up of them offering me a position. If they do offer me it, I'm pretty certain I will accept.

The job and the company itself sounds like it's going to be very interesting, but incredibly challenging. I'm pretty certain I want the position, despite the fact that they start work at eight o'clock the morning. This would mean that I would have to do my sleepy hours around a bit so that I could wake up about six o'clock in the morning, rather than my current midafternoon.

After the interview, on the way back to the station, the snow really started in, and in the short walk from the office to the bus stop, I got severely plastered in snow. The bus journey back to station itself was very slow, probably due to the weather. When we got to the station, I got a bit lost trying to find my way into it, and got even more snowed on.

My train was at the station, as I arrived, but I decided to take a risk and grab some food for getting the train. I still managed to catch the train, but due to the snow, the previous train had been cancelled and we were packed out with commuters who would normally be on another train.

The journey itself was rather boring, as I was less than happy with the book I had taken with me, and O2 were having problems with their data network, and I couldn't catch up with the Internet. When I got to Fleet, the station itself was under quite a bit of snow, and the snow was still coming down.

Pausing to change my shoes and replace with my trainers so that I wouldn't slip over, I dashed home to the delights of a freezing cold flat.

At the start of last week, I decided that I was going to do one of the Christmas courses at the Central Martins College up in London. There were a number of courses I was interested in, mainly ones involving Flash and Photoshop. I decided to do the Photoshop course, as it seemed that it would be one that I would find more useful. It's a rather expensive course, but with five days tuition in a very small class, of just five people, I think that the money will be well worth it. While I could probably learn the stuff I'll be taught just from web courses, I doubt that I would actually get around to it.

The course itself is quite fun, and in two days I have already started cutting and pasting images around, sticking them back together and doing complicated things involving layers. The class itself is, as I said, small and most of the other pupils are quite young, probably in their 20s, though there is one other person of my age I would say. I am the only male in the class, though so far it does not appear to have made any difference.

Yesterday, I received a message from one of the job agents, the one dealing with Bloomberg, asking me to get in touch with him. I managed to phone him at about three o'clock today, only to hear that so far he had not heard from them and that he had phoned me to see if I had. As I hadn't, he decided to chase them up further.

He then phoned me back. As I was busy at the time, he had to leave a message on my voicemail, but it appears that the Bloomberg wants to see me again, or rather see me for the first time in a follow-up to my phone interview.

As I am busy on my course, I won't be able to see them this week, but I hope to arrange for a proper interview on Monday of next week.

Gig review: Jonathan Coulton

On Friday, 13 November, I went to see Jonathan Coulton, and Paul and Storm, at the Union Chapel near Highbury and Islington. I'm not sure how I found out about this, but I think I must have come across it somewhere on Internet. It's quite possible that someone else posted about it and I just thought I would go

Getting to the gig itself was a minor adventure, as the underground was half closed for various reasons, and I almost got lost on the way from the tube station. As the tube was half closed, had not realised this, I had to rework my journey on the fly, and ended up taking longer than I expected. Once out of the tube station, I had minor issues are lining the map with the reality and ended up walking down the street is a couple of times. Fortunately this did not delay in me significantly.

When I got at the union Chapel, I found that there was a lot of people will be queuing up for the gig. I think there were a lot of people in geeky T-shirts and hats of geek style. After working my way to the end of the queue, and doing it, I checked it out, and found that Aquarion was already in the queue but further ahead of me. at some point, I was joined by a few more people, I think they're actually five people in the group, but is only two of them showed up first. The couple were a rather cute gay couple, though I wasn't entirely sure about this at first. One of these was a largish gentleman, while the other was a rather androgynous person, who I wasn't entirely sure was male.

They tweeted that they are in the queue, and included my name in the tweet. This enabled me to identify who they were, and are subsequently found out that the person I was confused about what actually an F2M transsexual, which explained my confusion.
While we were waiting, a ticket tout went down the line trying to buy and sell tickets. I don't think he did very well, due to the geekyness of the audience and the way the tickets were sold.

At some point, they started letting people in, but separated into two groups, those who had bought the tickets and those who had bought electronic tickets. I don't know what happened to the people who had proper tickets, but we were checked in separately to ensure that we had valid tickets.

Once inside, I wandered around a bit, looking for somewhere to sit, but fortunately I was recognised by Aquarion and the other people I knew who were going. I ended up at the end of one of the pews, with nobody on my left. The union Chapel is a very impressive place-as its name suggests, it was, and possibly still is, a chapel. The stage is at the front of the chapel, where the pulpit is, and surrounded the pulpit.

first up was Paul and Storm, who are basically a humorous singing pair. Their first song what was once called Opening Band, which is about being the opening band on tour. After that there was a number of the songs, as you would expect. During the singing of "Opening Band", there was a line about maybe throwing knickers on stage, and a few people in the audience, obviously expecting this, threw some knickers on stage. These were mostly, as far as I could tell, men's knickers. There was something involving Jaffa cakes, that I could not understand, but this is obviously a part of their regular act. I think Paul and Storm were on for around an hour. There was a short break, during which myself and Paul Ellis went to get drinks.

After the break, Jonathan Coulton came on. Not sure I can say about him, but I enjoyed it.again he did a number of song,including one in which he rick-rolled the audience.

I think I preferred Paul and storm to Jonathan Coulton, but they were both great fun. I'm not sure I would be as much of a fanatic as other geeks are, but it was well worth going to.

After the gig, I purchased a copy of Jonathan Coulton's CD, and a three pack of the Paul and Storm CDs. On the way home, I had the usual issues with the trains mucking things up, due to the incoming train being delayed due to it being defective. However, I managed to get home okay.

Yesterday, I got a new toy. And it's a fun toy, for most of the time.

A few days ago, I saw a blog post about a blind person who writes a blog, and the tools he uses to do this. The main tool that he used was a voice recognition system called Dragon. This allowed him to simply speak his commands and blog text, rather than having to use a keyboard.

There was also a comment from an autistic person, or something in that area, about how he had found this system useful as well. This intrigued me, so I had a quick look to see how much a copy of the software would be. As a complete system was pretty cheap from Amazon,I decided I would give it a try.

I installed the system this morning, and I've been playing with it ever since. So far, it's an excellent system, and I'm finding it a little easier than typing away at the keyboard. It's not a perfect system, and it makes a few recognition errors, but as long as I keep an eye on what comes out on the screen, there are no significant problems with that.

I half wish that I had come across this system years ago, as it feels like it could be a lot easier to write the things that I need to write, even allowing for the errors, and having to go back to correct them.

I have also very tempted to recommend this to my sister, as my eldest nephew has problems with his writing, very similar to mine, and it seems like it would work for him as well.

I just read something that had the phrase "xxx doesn't believe in sex before marriage", and it just occurred to me - is there anyone who does actually believe in sex before marriage?

I mean, there are people who believe that sex before marriage is OK, but do they actually believe in sex before marriage?