Matts Meanderings

Messenger conversation with Dan:

Ah, well in that case, its time for you to go to bed and dream of an entire colony of fairy penguins bowing down to you as King Matt and feeding you pilchards while you recline on a bed of kelp, being fanned and looked after....

It’s been an interesting week at work… It’s been pretty stressful, and moral hasn’t been the best, and it all came to a head this week.

The head of software development (my boss) sat down and some pretty honest meetings with us all individually, and we had a chance to get our grievances out. It seems that it’s all being taken very seriously by the company – to the point the day after my meeting (which started this whole process), it went all the way to the CEO…

So, things have started to change (only small things as yet), and there are big changes coming… We’ll just have to wait and see if it all works.

Just because I can, here’s another one for you:

Seems that I’ve been away from good old sunny Melbourne for quite a while now. Pretty sure it was August 17th, 2005 or so when I left Aus, so I think that means I’ve been gone for just over 14 months…

Since then, I’ve been to quite a few different countries (Scotland, Italy, Austria, Germany (twice), The Netherlands (4? 5? times), Greece, France (twice), Turkey and Belgium) and  learnt lots of phrases in lots of languages, some of which I can even remember! . I’ve been on *lots* of flights, and generally bummed around a lot.

In the meantime, back home, my dad hit a bit of a rough patch (and things still aren’t the best – not good ), and my sister is now pregnant (definitely good ).

Over this side of the world, some friends got married, some friends got engaged, some friends buggered off back home, some friends come over (most of which left again ), and I’ve made quite a few good friends. Also quite a few acquaintances that I’ll be able to drop in on at some point in random cities around the world .

All in all, its been a pretty good time, but I’m definitely missing family and friends… Will get my fill this Christmas, and be ready and raring to go again next year. Not ready to head back to Melbourne permanently, but it’ll be good to get some decent food and coffee and culture in .

Hmmm… Seems I’m on a roll here with the posts… Just trying to catch up with all the things I’ve been meaning to post about for a long time…

As of a couple of weeks ago, I’m now a lot poorer, but also a lot more planned up… I booked my Christmas holidays…

Here’s the plan

• Fly London to Melbourne (via Sydney ), leaving December 8th, arriving December 10th
• (lots of time with family and friends in melbourne, enjoying the beautiful Australian summer )
• (some kind of trip up to Queensland to go diving, as soon as Allison and Jeremy sort something out)
• Fly Melbourne to Christchurch (NZ), leaving January 8th
• (a week or so with Eva, bumming around and checking out a tiny bit of NZ)
• Fly Christchurch to Los Angeles, leaving January 15th  (arriving 7 hours before I leave…)
• (Tour with Trek America across the southern US to New York, leaving January 18th, arriving February 5th)
• Fly New York to London, leaving February 8th, arriving February 9th

So… roughly £2000 later, I’m sorted. It’s gonna be great fun.

If you’re in any of those places (and most of you will be (that’s why I’m going there)), holler out, and we’ll do something.

Had a very foggy morning yesterday – definitely seems that winter is looming round the corner…
On my way to work, managed to take a half-decent photo (if I do say so myself… ):

You like?

(once again, another post that I’ve been putting off for a while…)

Jonny, the part-time tester in our team at mergermarket, was in an advertisement the other week for pcworld… We’re all just hanging out to see him on TV… Its almost as good as knowing royalty!

He’s also the proud bearer of a t-shirt I quite like:

In case you cant quite read it – it says "My mom thinks I’m cool".

Update: found the advert online. If you're really bored, you can go check it out here.

Been meaning to post about this for quite a while, but me being me, I got slack and didn’t

A while back, Hugh Macleod, of gapingvoid.com fame, started offering free bottles of Stormhoek wine to bloggers… There was no catch to write about it or anything – he just wanted to get the name out there. And, I think, amongst bloggers at least, its worked… Not sure how well its worked outside of that, but it means that when I open it tomorrow night (we’ve got guests round for dinner), we’ll talk about it for a while, and maybe they’ll think of it next time they’re buying

So… Cheers, Hugh & Stormhoek

I ran across a few interesting articles in the last little while, both from the same site, haacked.com:

First one is Going into Design Debt, which is a great way of explaining to management how (lack of) proper design now impacts the project.

Second one is The Poor Management Epidemic, which highlights management short-sightedness.

Both very well written - go read them, even if you aren't a techy (okay, maybe some of you wont be interested at all, but they're a good insight into developers pain...)

I love the Bunny comics, and this one especially, entitled "no more teabags":

Depressed.

Dont ask.

According to a news item I saw on BBC news earlier (here's a link from the guardian website), apparently the European court of human rights has ruled that those in prison should be allowed to vote, which will apparently force Britain to review its laws. The ruling says that the right to vote is a basic human right.

However, I'm seeing a slight issue with this. Haven't we established that the offender has, by their actions, proven that they cannot be trusted to live according to the laws of society? Yet, we have to trust them with the vote?

...you're at a party and you look around the kitchen of the dingy little flat, and realise there's a 2 Russians girls, a Russian guy, a Polish girl, a German girl, a French girl, and 1 English guy...

Then again, the English contingent is optional...