I appear to be employed again.
Which is nice.
false alarm, again
Categories
Month: June 2004
Categories
Productivity
It’s been a productive weekend.
LoneCat has done tidying, and I have assisted. I have made Pie (of all of Easter, Apple, and Chocolate derivations), read books, reformatted and reinstalled my Windows XP install, and even completed a project (The largely ignored Mockingbird’s Wish, below).
I’ve abstracted the data layer from the logic layer in AqWiki, and fixed all the bugs I could find that this caused, I’ve finished the SQL version of the Cantrip (Previously “PFD4-II”) data structure (more on that when I’ve actually used it). I’ve installed a Playstation Emulator, played Final Fantasy 8 for a while, and then dumped both on the grounds that playing a 60 hour game is bad enough, but having to play each second twice because the emulator crashes is beyond the pale. Especially if you have a working PlayStation downstairs.
I’ve archived four years of projects, sites and ideas into a new structure, cleared four entries off my “Long Term Tedium” todo list, fixed a number of logic bugs in my mail setup, written the outline for the second major section of the Novel Known As Final Frontier and named some of the the ships within it.
I’ve even worked out the motive for the protagonist of Toffia, and that’s been bugging me for years.
I’ve half written a LotR parody in which the ringwraiths visit a lost property office.
But mostly this weekend I have been obsessively compulsively worrying about how I did in the interview on Friday, and checking my mail every three to five seconds to see if an offer got lost in the post.
But that was just displacement activity, obviously.
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Mockingbird's Wish
A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away…
No, hang on a sec. That’s Star Wars.
It was a dark and stor…
No, that’s not right either.
I made a promise to Shelley ‘Burningbird’ Powers over a year ago that I would read her magical parable The Mockingbird’s Wish and post it.
I recorded it once then deleted it, because it was crap. Then I eventually Recorded it properly
and have been in the process of editing it since then.
Now it’s finished, read the tale and listen to the file.
The Mockingbird’s Wish (MP3, 5mb)
Oh, and it appears Shelley likes it too, which is aways nice
What is a bookmarklet? Basically it’s a javascripted bookmark that, when you click on it, performs an action. Some might validate the page, some might highlight all the passive verbs in the document, there are loads of them.
This one searches the current site using Google. Install it by bookmarking the following link:
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Interview
Today, I had two interviews.
Tuesday was a day of Recruiters. I was woken up by a recruiter, I was then phoned by two more in the next hour, one of them set up an interview for a Helldesk role for the following day. I pointed out I already had an interview for that day, but she said I could come in later, which was nice of her.
Wednesday was a day of researching, where I spent most of it learning why I hate Active Directory, which is a simple idea that someone has tacked ‘functionality’ onto in the hope that one day someone will shout “Jenga” so they can start all over again.
Thursday was today, and began early.
I arrived an hour early for my interview. This was almost deliberate. I’d aimed to arrive half an hour early, because then I’d have half an hour to find the place before I needed to be there. The job was at HIBT to be, basically, network admin, help them develop the network, and bring my l33t linux skillz to the department. I think I did fairly well (I hope I did, I find out in a few days).
Then I went to London to talk to the recruiter. The recruiter told me that I should get a suit and a haircut, and rewrite my CV slightly, but that my interview technique was good and the CV was well written (apart from the missing bit). They didn’t put me forward for the Helldesk role (overqualified) but they’ve another coming up soonish.
Then I bought tea (Drury is great) and came home. More stuff to write, but pizza is here.
My life hacks, how I work from day to day, etc.
Daily
My life is run by an aqwiki which contains all my contacts, projects and events (And is both hidden behind a http auth system and backed up daily to several locations, natch). I’ve put an edited, static copy of the front page up here as an example. Note the “TODO” list is just an inline search for “TODO:”, to add something to my todo list I create a wiki page of the problem and put “TODO: do this” which gets replaced with “DONE:” when completed.
The comics list is a aqwiki macro which reads the wikiPage “ComicsData” and generates a list of webcomics I should read today. The table of contents is generated using Javascript (And doesn’t work sufficiently to stay, unfortunatly)
OS
Most of the time I’m working in Windows (XP-SP2b), because it’s far more responsive and I can play games without rebooting. The server (atoll) runs Debian GNU/Linux sarge (testing) branch (probably sticking to sarge when it gets released).
Applications
AqWiki, obviously. Browser is Firefox (Couldn’tLiveWithout extensions: Linky, Tabbrowser Extensions, Web Developer Toolbar (Or just EditCSS).
Workrave sits in the taskbar whinging at me every 10 minutes, 45 minutes, and eight hours respectively to get off the computer and do something more interesting.
I use Bloglines for keeping track of syndicated sites, gaim for the myriad of messaging services and IRC, slrn for usenet (Meaning, obviously, PuTTY to connect to my Linux server, which is running leafnode2
Graphics with Paint Shop Pro
Atoll, the server, runs exim and dovecot as an imap server. All mail is filtered though procmail. Each mailing list is then sent to a usenet group under Leafnode, anything remaining then goes though Spamassassin, and then if it survives that hits my inbox, where it’s read with Thunderbird if I’m at my computer or mutt over ssh if I’m at someone elses. I have squirrelmail installed for web-based email should neither of those work.
Text editor
Edit+ or gvim under windows. Vim under linux. Anything else is Just Plain Wrong.
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Thread Needle
I’ve been mucking around with Aquarionics’ commenting system for a while now. As much as I tend to whine about my Driving Test article becoming a mecha for all people who have failed their driving test, it’s become invaluable as an example of what happens to E2’s threading model, display and comment navigation once you get to ten or twelve comments deep. Amazingly the model’s holding up well, but the display was confusing (You couldn’t see which post a reply was to) and the navigation was confusing (People clicking ‘reply’ thinking they’re commenting on a post, when in fact they’re replying to a comment).
So, I’ve mucked around to it to make it a little more obvious (the aforementioned article being the best place to see the effect).
What do people think?
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Job Centre
Today, I visited the Job Centre.
Although I have the interview on Thursday, and should really be spending most of my time bringing my Active Directory skillz up to scratch, I’m obliged to visit the Job Centre a couple of times a week to see if they have anything new. I can do this online, but I wanted the exercise.
The touch-screen terminal asked me a number of difficult questions (“What industry”, “Do you have a car”) before giving me both of the possible jobs on offer this week for a l33t Web Developer with sysadmin skills.
I could either work in Scotland (Which is, apparently, within 10 miles of Letchworth or London) as a VB Programmer.
Or I could work as an assistant for a marital aids mail order catalogue.
Somewhere in here is a lesson about meta-data, and it only being as good as whoever types the document in, but to be honest, I can’t be bothered.
So I’m baking a fruit cake, before I become one.
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GMail
If anyone has a spare gmail invite they’re not using…
Mission accomplished, thanks