Wireless network access on the beach here in Brighton is becoming popular – there are now 2 places where you can get wifi (for free). The first is at Bar de la Mer (operated by Loose Connection) and the second is Riptide (operated by PiertoPier).
PiertoPier have even been mentioned on BBC News.
I had an interview last week for which I had to do a pyschometric test. Yesterday I got to see the results of it. And they’re pretty accurate – which is scary. Apparently my descriptive words are:
Dependable, persistent, patient, kind, thorough, loyal, supportive, sincere, logical, systematic, steady, deliberate, communicative, friendly, persuasive, asks ‘why’, ‘who’ and ‘how’.
I’m going to try to get a bunch of geek stuff out of my system in one blog…
I’ve thought that Apple ibooks were more-or-less toys which could just about manage to do a bit of word processing and perhaps surfing. I’ve just finished renting one for a week, to see if I could possibly do my job with a Mac and hopefully shake off my maclust, and my perceptions have changed. I’d now happly recommend or work with an ibook: I was able to do some software development on the machine and it was about the same as working on my Pentium III 800Mhz Linux laptop.
Oh, I rented from Microrent — if you’re looking to rent hardware, these people are great. They initially sent me a machine with the wrong version of Mac OS on it. In fact, the machine I was renting (cheapest possible) wasn’t capable of running the latest and greated OS. So they posted me out the CDs and a nice big chunk of extra memory and talked me through the upgrade. Thanks guys!
You may have guessed by now, but I’m hooked. I’m now the owner of a shiny new powerbook. I’ve switched.
The other geek thing is that I’ve written up some notes on my trip to JavaOne 2003, San Francisco.
I applied for this project at Freelancers.Net the other day. Last night I got an email from the company asking if I could look at some emergency for them on the Clix site. I did, and sorted it for them, but whilst we were chatting the guy said that they’d had 120 responses to that advert, and that some people were offering to do the work for free just so they could put it onto their portfolio. I guess that’s why I hadn’t heard anything from them about that work. Time will tell if I get any further work from them on the strength of my emergency-helping-out ability.
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Today Jeremy and I attempted our maddest plan yet, to cycle part of the South Downs Way from Amberley to Brighton. We’re both in our notice period having been made redundant last week, so we thought it would be a good opportunity to get out there and pedal. 26 miles later and I’m absolutely exhausted although nothing aches as yet. The photo above was taken at Chanctonbury Ring (probably the highest point on our ride at around 238m).
I had an interview on Friday, and among other bizarre questions I was asked if I planned to have children, and if so what was the timescale. Now I appreciate that I’m now 31 and that companies would have a concern about the children thing, but I’m not sure it’s an appropriate interview question.
Update: I’ve since discovered that it is legal to ask that as long as they ask the same questions of all other candidates. They’re not allowed to make a decision based on the answer though.
Go to Google, type “Weapons of Mass Destruction” into the search box and press the “I’m feeling lucky” button. It should take you to this mock error page. I particularly like the title of the page “Cannot find Weapons of Mass Destruction”.
Thanks to Joe for pointing out that you can now visit an underwater post office in Vanuatu. Could the first person to visit please send me a postcard.