Interesting times, interesting commentary
July 22nd, 2008There are two blogs that I read a lot of currently which I’d like to share very quickly today.
The first is The Devils Kitchen. The second is A Very British Dude.
Enjoy!
Back Home
June 30th, 2008Over the weekend I moved back home to Kent from Fleet. It’s certainly been an interesting and very enjoyable year living in Fleet with Matt and I’m really going to miss being in that part of the UK (not to mention the 6 minute drive to work).
I’m still recovering from moving all of my stuff. It’s truly amazing how much crap you accumulate over 3 years away from home and I spent much of yesterday making room for it all.
So I’m after a few things for my room at home. Firstly, I need a new TV. Secondly, I’m going to pick up a mac mini as a media hub which I’ll plug into said TV. Thirdly, I need a new laptop. I’m still using the Dell inspiron I’ve had for 3 years and it’s looking battered. I’d put up with this but keys have started falling off which makes typing next to impossible, and the battery has died. I’m thinking about continuing the mac trend and picking up a macbook, but probably not before they update the lineup. *fingers crossed for August*
Anybody have any thoughts / recommendations on TVs / Mac advice?
Back From Vacation
June 25th, 2008Wowwweee, What a week! On Monday Laura and I got home from 7 days in Dalyan, Turkey, and good times were had by all!
We stayed in a lovely little place called the Sultan Palas Hotel and to get into town every day we had to catch a boat. The weather was hot hot hot, usually hitting 40 degrees C by about 11am, and making us very thankful for the AC and swimming pool.
In other news, on Saturday I’m moving home from Surrey after a year of living here. I’ve still got 2 months of placement at Sun to do, so during July / August I’ll be commuting in every day. It’s certainly going to be strange living at home again but it will also be considerably cheaper, so I think it’s worth it.
A good few days
June 8th, 2008On Wednesday I popped down to Brighton for Lauras birthday celebrations and ended up clubbing in Oceana. Luckily I’d booked Thursday off of work beforehand because justifying coming in at 4pm would have been difficult!
On Saturday we popped over to Calais for some lunch at “Le Chanel” which was VERY good, although I don’t think the waiters made too much of me and my hair. Or maybe their looks of disdain were because I’m 30 years younger than the majority of their clientele. Or maybe it was my incredibly bad spoken french. Anyway we had a good time and even though the sun didn’t come out for us, the rain didn’t make an appearance either…
It has been a while
June 4th, 2008In between doing loads of freelance work, regular work and listening to this guy, nothing too much has happened as of late. It’s June and it’s still raining so I find myself still spending the vast majority of my time inside.
Today I did two things. The first one was that I got around to registering my university modules for next year. I’ve decided that I actually want to graduate with a decent grade so that means I have to choose modules that I can pass well. That also means I’ve got to forgo some of the more interesting topics (neural networks) that boggle your mind for the year then bite you in the ass come exams, and stick with what I know.
My uni project for next year is something I’ll briefly mention. I’ve managed to get a good team of 3 together and an interesting bit of code to munch on. We’re going to add some sort of torrenting ability to the UK Mirror Service. As I’m at Kent I figured I might as well try and take advantage of some of the more unique things they offer. The UK Mirror Service apparently shifted 154 Tebibytes of data in October of last year which roughly equates to over 200,000 CDs. Working on something that will be heavily used is very exciting indeed.
So in the end I opted to do a business module, a philosophy module, a networking module and two consultancy based modules. Conveiniently this is the area I’m keen to move into after uni anyway so it all looks good. Next year is shaping up to be something special.
Secondly, I changed the theme of my blog back to the Wordpress default. I guess I wasn’t terribly happy with how it looked in the end and I think that was keeping me from updating it. In the future I’ll look at reintegrating it with the design and how to best lay it out.
June is set to be a busy month. I’m off to Turkey in two weeks (I’ve got the new bond book to read, plus another Haruki Murakami) and at the end of it I’m moving back home from Hampshire. It’s certainly going to be weird moving back, I’ve really grown to like this place…
Oh, and one more thing that’s worth mentioning… Last month I stumbled across the newly formed Libertarian Party UK. Go check it out!
Website now complete
April 16th, 2008I think it’s fair to say that with the migration of my blog into the new design my website is pretty much complete for now. It’s been a bit of a slog but I’m generally quite happy with the results.
I’ll be tweaking bits here and there over the next few weeks. In the meantime if anyone has any feedback I’ll be glad to hear it!
Portfolio Executive now recruiting a coder
April 10th, 2008From Shazz:
The wheels are in motion on Portfolio Executive and we’re ready to hire a coder.
The project is still undercover - not quite “stealth”, as we’ve let some information out - but still somewhat secretive. We can offer some broad information which should be enough to spark interest from the right person:
http://www.portfolioexecutive.com/webdev.htm
Interested? Get in touch!
Alton Towers
April 8th, 2008Last weekend Laura and I went to Alton Towers just for the hell of it and it rocked! The weather held out on us mostly although we did have a bit of drizzle in the morning, but this kept away the crowds. Nearly all of the rides had reasonable queues, and for those that didn’t we had fast tracks which meant we weren’t waiting for any more than about 15 minutes (Fast tracks are well worth buying).
The rides were amazing but I was a little disappointed with Air. It’s a cool concept, but lying face down loses its appeal after about 5 seconds. The second time round we got on the front which made it slightly better, but I didn’t once feel like I was flying like they advertised. Now Oblivion on the other hand, that is a ride! On the way down I actually thought I was going to die.
So as the summer is coming up if you get a chance to go, do! It’s an amazing day out even if you don’t like the roller coasters… the grounds are beautiful and vast which makes for good walking.
More soon!
(Also, what on earth have they done to Wordpress? I’ve just upgraded to 2.5 and I’m wondering why they decided to ruin the admin area.)
Happy Birthday to me!
March 10th, 2008I made it to the grand old age of 21, hurrah!
Thank you to everyone for their birthday messages. I’ll be heading down the pub later for a few beers, however right now back it’s to work for me…

