Matts Meanderings

Just been thinking about how a person with a smile, or even a half smile, on their face is a pleasure to look at, and just seems to cheer up people around them, and is just good to be around.

So, I've just been practicing smiling as I walk around Galway. I must admit though, walking down the street in Ireland, on a warm sunny day, well, let me just say that its not hard to smile...

Warning: deep, and possibly lacking in purpose...

On the odetocode blog, I found a pretty cool quote the other day. Its in slightly technical language, but i thought i'd share, and add my 2 cents (or is it pence?) to it:

Taking the thoughts, ideas, and emotions we have in our brain,
and encoding them into an audible form, or a textual representation,
is a lossy compression at best...

Its very true, cos so often, its almost impossible to get the stuff in your mind out, in a way that other people completely "get". You can get most of it out, but you always have the different connotations of things, and your past experiences and the like impact the way you interpret things. You can never completely understand or look at something the exact same way another person does.

In a book I was reading recently, The Chrysalids, by John Wyndham (good book, actually), the main characters deviate from the "true image", in that they can communicate telepathically. They talk of being able to know each other in a way that ordinary people cannot, a communicate, a link at a level where you can see & know what the other person is thinking. They go on to say they feel sorry for the people who don’t have this ability, living a life where you can only see the surface.

On an understanding people level, I think that without this kind of ability, we can never truly know what’s going on inside someone, unfortunately - damn it'd be useful sometimes. (Just thinking though, would this ability be a blessing or a curse?)

From a knowledge sharing/education point of view, I think it kind of means that we have to put a lot more effort into sharing knowledge than would seem apparent on the surface.  Or is that part of the beauty of the human race? That we take some knowledge and look at it all in a fractionally different way?

Okay, time for a quick update on travels...

Come this Friday morning, I'm heading over to Ireland for the Easter break. I'm heading out to a place called Inishbofin, a tiny little island off the west coast - population 200. A friend of mine, Holly, is running a hostel out there, with one of her friends, Tess. And seeing that Biscuit got a better offer for his easter break, i thought I'd head out there... 

Also, Biscuit and I are heading out to Turkey for Anzac Day, along with 10,000 or so other Aussies and NZers... We head over to Istanbul on the 21st of April, and fly back on the 27th. So, we get a bit of a tour of some of Turkey, and the Gallipolli thang, and also a day or so just to wander around Istanbul. Paul & Lyds are going to be there too (as they start on their travels), and also going to (hopefully) meet up with Bec (a friend I used to work with at Kmart). So, that should be fun.

I'm slowly sorting out other travel plans for the rest of the year - think I've got it kinda sorted now, but just need to finalise things, so I can let the boss know...

And I thought that Melbournes weather was odd.

Only a few weeks ago, it was snowing - pretty heavily even, and it was bitterly cold. Today, I was walking around in a t-shirt. Its warmed up a *lot*.

Apparently Fridays going to be 19° or so, and Saturday 21°!  Scary.

That said, I have been told that getting snow that late was very odd, and its now definitely well into spring.

Ahh, I can see it now. It hits 21°, and the streets will be filled with pasty skinned English guys, who've decided its a good idea to walk around shirtless... Gah!

Always knew those D&D playing people were weird:

The other day, ran across an article (via Bruce Schneier's Security Blog) which told of the Israeli defense forces giving people who play Dungeons and Dragons lower security ratings, as "They're detached from reality and suscepitble to influence". They even talk of sending recruits to "a professional for an evaluation, usually a psychologist".

Hmmm... Just goes to show...

(what it goes to show, i'm not sure, but hey, why not...)

ps - if you've got no idea what D&D is, go read the article anyway, it explains a bit about it...

<Rant mode="on">

I'd just like to rant about rubbish bins for a few minutes... Or more to the point, I'd like to rant about the *lack* of rubbish bins in London's streets and tube stations...

There are *no* rubbish bins near most tube stations, and none in the tube stations at all. If you ask the station staff, the official answer is to throw it on the floor.

And the dearth of rubbish bins on the streets means that there's a fair bit of rubbish on the streets - not s good look.

Now, while I can understand this is providing gainful employment for many a street cleaner, and tube station cleaner, it still pisses me off.

I know there was the IRA thing with bombs in rubbish bins, but that was quite a while ago. Now, of course, there's the whole al-queda thing, but as to how much of that is actually legit, and how much as scare-mongering, well...

Anyway, Corporation of London, and Transport for London, how about giving us some rubbish bins!

</Rant>

Just found out (okay, it was yesterday that I found out, but I forgot to post about it), that Andrea had heard back from the doctors...

Now, to backpedal a bit, Andrea and Mark went on a skiing holiday last week, over in France (I think). First of all, Andrea didn't really enjoy it too much, and was considering coming home early. But, she got more into it, and started enjoying herself. Andrew got a msg about midweek saying that she was enjoying herself, and just about to go down one of the slightly harder runs. A few hours later, there was another text message saying that she'd had a fun ride on a snow mobile to the doctors, and was now wearing a neck brace...

So, she's just heard back about what was actually wrong. She's fractured one of the vertebrae in her neck, which apparently means she'd officially broken her neck. Now she's got 3 weeks off to recover.

Freaky. Scary. But she's alright, so that’s good. But, breaking your neck 6 months before your wedding is a bit of poor planning...

Now, I'm just wondering how long it will take before it comes out that Mark pushed her...

Hmmm... Once again, on the way to work, standing on the train, no seats available again... Terribly exciting, really.

Had an interesting meeting yesterday - one of the project managers called me in for a meeting to chat about how long I'm staying around at mergermarket. General gist of it was that they want me to hang around for quite a while, and how does that sit with me.

The good thing is that I get along with the people there quite well, I'm enjoying what we're working on (well, as much as you can enjoy bug fixing anyway (but you need to do the bug fixing to understand the whole picture)), and it looks like there's some really cool stuff planned - stuff that I'd really like to get my dirty little mitts on. There's some really cool projects ahead, and also some of the processes we're looking at implementing (extreme programming, agile programming, etc), are ones that'd be really good for me. Also, from a pure mercenary career stand point, its in finance, so that stands me in good stead for the future (as you need finance experience for a lot of the jobs here).

So, all in all, its sounding good. But.

The thing is that I came over this side of the world to travel, bum around for a while, and all that. So, getting a permanent role was not really on the cards. So now, I have to make a decision. Do I want to just do a 3 month contract, or hang around longer.

I do have quite a few friends travelling around here over summer (Paul & Lyds, Bec, Kate, probably Biscuit, probably both Amy's, Sue, and a few others I've forgotten about). I did have plans to do a bit of travelling with each of them. I've also got plans at this point to be in Scotland in August/September, and back home for Christmas. Other than that though, I had no set plans.

I have been told that it'd be okay for me to take extra (unpaid) holidays - within reason of course. Less than ideal for them, but with enough notice, it shouldn't be a problem.

So, where we're up to is that I have to figure out what my travel plans are for the next 12 to 18 months are, and see if that fits in with the plan. I've also got to put some thought into how long I'm actually planning on staying in London for. Prior to this, the plan was something along the lines of "hang around till I get bored, then go home". Now, I have to put more thought into it, and firm up the plans a bit more.

This has just been a flow of random thoughts, cos I need to sort it out in my own brain. But, I've now got to the end, and I still don't know what my thoughts are. I think that I'm going to run with it, cos the benefits outweigh the negatives, especially seeing I can still do the whole holiday thing.

But, if you've got any thoughts on the matter, please either leave a comment (see that comment link at the bottom?), or email me (if you don't have my email address, use the contact link to the right).

Ran across this while reading Scoble's blog yesterday, and thought it was kind of appropriate...

If you like it, go check out the Gaping Void blog - very cool (warning though - can be a little rude sometimes...).

For ages, I've been getting extremely frustrated about XP's find functionality, especially with the 'find text in files' functions.

For some odd reason, it never seemed to find text that I knew was in the files that I was searching amongst. Maybe me seriously annoyed - enough to contemplate going looking for another app to do this (but, being lazy, never actually got there).

Today, I just happened to run across a site that mentioned that XP doesn't search in files that have unrecognized file extensions. This led me to a little reg file that will fix this issue, and allow the searching across unknown file types, by the inestimable Chris Sells.

The other thing I've found the other day is that Google Desktop Search now has support for plug-ins, one of which allows searching of lots more plain text file types. So, now, I've reinstalled it, having uninstalled it for this very reason. Now, I'm a much happier puppy...

<sorry folks - nerd talk over now >

Walking through Liverpool Street Station this morning, I walked past a guy dressed up as a cigarette, in a big cage, growling at people as they walked past...

It was just a Nicorette promotion, but nonetheless, it put a big smile on my face. And, I s'pose, its made my think about it, and talk about it, so its worked. The other guy, handing out brochures (or freebies, not sure which), was doing a brisk business as well.

Definitely a good way to start the day .

Well, what can I say. Biscuits definitely had an interesting week . And that is all I'm allowed going to say on the matter. You wanna know why, you'll have to ask him...

Right. Time for another long winded blog entry. I think there's been a lot happening that I haven't had a chance to write about, so here's a bit of a bash at it.

I'm currently sitting, well, actually, standing on a tube train, on my way into work. Terribly exciting - a distinct lack of free seats, so I get to stand again - just like every morning and evening. A bit annoying, really. Oh well, its only about half an hour on the train. Gets lots more annoying closer to work, as every man and his dog want to get on the train, so it gets kinda packed - an image of sardines comes to mind for some reason...

I think I've mentioned in passing that I managed to get myself a new place to live, but I haven't actually written about it properly. I now live in a suburb called Tooting Bec (which is such a cool name ), which is about 25 minutes from the centre of London. Its a 3 year old, 3 story townhouse, with 4 bedrooms, large kitchen and lounge. Its pretty nice actually. I've got the only room on the ground floor (there's also the kitchen). I'm living with Cath, a girl from Liverpool, and Ryan, a guy from somewhere I can’t remember at the moment. There's also Debbie, a New Zealander, but she's ducked back home for a 3 month holiday, so in the meantime, we're trying to find someone to move in for a few months.

I've now been working for mergermarket for over two weeks now, and its not too bad. Of course, there's the whole "I'd rather not be working at all", but I think that’s standard for everyone. I've started getting involved in some slightly bigger stuff now, rather than just bug fixing, but you pretty much have to do the bug fixing to get the knowledge of how it all fits together. Painful, but you cant do much about it. Still haven't entirely got the paperwork sorted out yet, but its getting there. Note to self - must get timesheets sorted, so I can get paid...

Anyway, this weekend just past, Holly came down to visit from up north, to catch up with people before heading to Ireland, which was good. We got a group of us together (Fish and Lyds, Andrew, Cath, Holly and me), and went and saw The Reduced Shakespeare Company with The Complete Works of Shakespeare (Abridged). All 37 plays in 97 minutes. Not too bad all up - could've been better, but was very funny nonetheless. Also went and saw the Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition, which was pretty good. Still have to get around to organising to do a digital photography course at some point.  All up, was a good weekend - too many late nights, and possibly a tad too much alcohol, but it was fun.

Only issue with the late nights was the fact that I'm now sick again. Last night, was pretty sure I'd be taking the day off, but I felt remarkably good this morning, so its off to work today... Yay. At least I don’t have to lose out on pay.

Okay, back again. This time, I'm on the train home from work, which is suprisingly not a sardine tin. But, no, wait, here's a whole bunch of people getting on. Oh well, so much for the concept of personal space...

Feeling much better now than I was yesterday, which is a good thing.

Hmmm... Cant remember what else I was going to say. Maybe I'll just ramble on for a while anyway...

Had a meeting today where we ran over the vague plans for what the team is going to be doing over the next while. Damn, there's some exciting stuff going to be happening. Makes me think seriously about hanging around for a while longer than I'd originally planned. Quite a few of the things they're getting into sound really enjoyable, and are things that I know a bit about, and want to learn more. So, we'll see how it goes.

I think I'm finally getting the hang of things as well. I spent a bit of time investigating some bugs late today, and I tracked them down quite quickly, and figured out how to fix them pretty quickly too. (Only thing was that I couldn't actually fix them, cos they're planned for the next release, but...)

Nearly forgot that I was supposed to be home by 7.30 tonight, cos we've got someone coming to check out the house. I think I might be late. Oops...

Went over to Biscuits place last night, where he cooked up some mexican, and Birte and Celine dropped round. (Birte and Celine are some friends we met via Eva, who we met via Margo, in Scotland. Confused yet?) A few hours of talking bollocks - was fun. Cath also dropped around a bit later on. Was a merry little party.

This weekend coming, Cath has invited me and biscuit to a complete strangers 40th birthday. Apparently, she's as mad as a hatter, so we should get along fine . Cath says that she's 40, going on 12 or so. Hmmm... Could be scary.

Anyway, I think that's enough rambling for now. I don't think I've got anything else exciting to share. I should have internet at home soon, so I'll be able to try and get around to replying to some of the emails I've got in my inbox - there's only 57 or so flagged for follow up...