Journal: December 2007

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Bumper festive update
Thu 27/12/07 (Link to this entry)

OK, I've finally found some time to sit down and write a journal entry, so here goes with a major catch-up...

First up, my last day at Sun. This was a lot more relaxing than I thought it was going to be; I'd managed to finish most things up beforehand, so I was mainly tying up loose ends and saying goodbye to people. Paul organised a little gathering in the afternoon to celebrate my passing, which was touchingly rather well-attended. Perhaps they'd all heard about the magnificent cake:

After saying my goodbyes and arriving home in Camberley, it was time to pack and take my leave. My parents duly arrived the following day in a hire van and we spent the whole day travelling back up north, singing along to a rather silly amount of Great Big Sea, Deaf Shepherd and Queen (among others). We didn't get back till very late, and it was after midnight by the time we managed to get everything out of the van and up the stairs. Worth it in the end, though :-D

On to the thing that's been keeping me so busy lately: my room. The wonderful thing about being back home is I now have a decent-sized room again - in fact, it's pretty damn big, which is good because I have a lot of stuff. My parents had done their best to get the place redecorated before I came back up, but weren't able to finish it off. As a result, we had some work to do before I could get all of my things back in.

So, much of the rest of my first week back was spent wallpapering, humphing furniture about, taking old junk to the dump, and generally putting the room back together. The good news is that we were able to make the place really cosy and welcoming. I'm rather proud of how it's turned out. Here's a before-and-after panoramic shot (the strange dull tide marks are because my camera gets confused when you point it at windows, and I wasn't able to get my photo stitcher to blend it in nicely). Hover over the picture to see the 'after' image.

As regular readers might have come to expect, I've filmed a little video tour. My usual stuttering and warbling is in evidence, so please ignore that and instead focus on how nice and cosy it all looks. Please also ignore the camera making the lamp on my shelves look like a minature sun. It sucks at high-contrast light sources :-/

We finally got the place finished just before Christmas - in fact, we hung the last pictures up on Christmas Eve. It was really nice having the place done before the 25th, almost like an extra present. The day itself was very nice; as usual, we went for a wander during the day before coming home for dinner, Doctor Who and presents. We went for a walk around Baron's Haugh, an RSPB reserve, so while the others pointed at birds I got to play around with my camera:

I'll be making a gallery page of photos from the Haugh when I get a bit more time, so watch this space. If you're wanting something to look at in the meantime, though, I can recommend I Am Legend, which I went to see with Gus and TC today. They didn't much like it but I thought it was really good, especially the dog (it's a better actor than Will Smith!).

I was planning on writing a bit more, but it's late and I have to be up early tomorrow - we're going for another walk before my sister has to head back out to Edinburgh. More updates soon, I promise, but in the meantime I hope you all had a great Christmas (or Yule, or Giftmas, equivalent festive celebration, whatever) :-D

F*** me, it's cold up here
Thu 20/12/07 (Link to this entry)

Apologies if it seems like I've fallen off the face of the earth, but it's been pretty hectic over the past week. The move went ok, even if it was after midnight by the time we managed to get everything up the six flights of stairs to the flat! I'm currently a bit run off my feet decorating and organising my room, doing christmas shopping, etc, so I don't really have time to write a proper entry yet. It's coming, I promise (with pictures!).

One more day
Thu 13/12/07 (Link to this entry)

Tomorrow is my last day in the office at Sun - although it's not my last day as a Sun employee, as I'm being kept on the books in the hope that the campus ambassador thing works out. It's gonna feel pretty wierd clearing out my desk after eighteen months. I've come to quite like the place, even if it is in south England...

We had a meal out at Pizza Express on Wednesday to celebrate my passing, followed by a gathering at Lewis' house where much alcohol was consumed and much shit was talked (these are correlated, but it's not entriely a cause-and-effect relationship :-p). 'Twas a most enjoyable night, made more entertaining by the periodic firing of my new USB missile launcher (cheers guys!).

I probably won't have a chance to write an entry tomorrow night as I'll be busy packing, so I shall now put out a premature goodbye and thank you to everyone I've worked with at Sun. It's been an excellent eighteen months, I've learnt loads and met a lot of great people, and I'm sad to be leaving. So long, and thanks for all the fish (and whisky)!

And then there were three (again)
Tues 11/12/07 (Link to this entry)

The past couple of days have seen the return of a couple of nice things to my life. The first is the ability to once more wreak havoc with my newly-repaired trebuchet:

... or I would be able to if I hadn't lengthened the sling strings, thereby increasing its range with the unfortunate side effect that it now launches its payload into the office ceiling. Bah.

The other nice thing is that I now have three monitors again - I was sufficiently frustrated when my freebie monitor broke last week that I went looking for a replacement. I couldn't resist picking up a really rather nice 20" widescreen TFT that was ridiculously good value for money. At 1680x1050 with a 1000:1 contrast ratio and 5ms response time, it's perfect for my videos.

The plan is that eventually I'll replace my two CRTs with a pair of 17" LCDs at 1280x1024, giving me a set of monitors which are fairly evenly-matched for vertical height and resolution. I'm pretty happy with it as it is, though. My high-res copies of Heroes look bloody excellent on the new panel :-D

Ambassador Lamsey (maybe)
Tue 04/12/07 (Link to this entry)

I had an interesting day at work today - so interesting, in fact, that I hardly got any of my normal work done!

Recently, Sun has been recruiting a number of students from universities around the country to act as 'Campus Ambassadors' - people whose job it is to promote and generally enthuse about Sun technology. Given that I do a fair amount of this anyway, I thought it might be an idea to see if Strathclyde wanted one, so I asked if Sun were interested.

Well, I was told today that if Strathclyde want an ambassador, then I'd be considered for the position. This is good news, as I've been looking for ways of getting some part-time work with the company whilst at uni. It would be good to be able to keep using the skills and knowledge I've picked up here, and it'd be far better than going back to working part-time in the fruit'n'veg shop!

Other highlights for the day included: helping out when the name services broke on our production servers, leaving everyone unable to log into any of our systems; doing more work on my placement report (which is now over 50 pages long); attending what might be my last-ever JLT developers' conference call; and successfully making a triangle out of a crisp packet for the first time ever. Oh, and I did a bit of coding too.

With all that in mind, I rather think it's time for bed.

Reports suck even more than I previously thought
Sun 02/12/07 (Link to this entry)

Over the course of this weekend I have written 7,800 words (oh, and two diagrams too). If I'm lucky, some of it might even be readable. I never want to look at a text editor again (although I'm going to have to, since I still have my fourth and last section to write).

Scary thought for the day: what, in the name of all that is good, did people do before computers existed? The mere thought of having to do all that by hand is enough to make me curl up in a ball and whimper gently (although I have to admit I'm around halfway there already...).

Even scarier thought for the day: there are people out there who would have used vi...

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