going to try to

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.

applied for this project

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.

Today Jeremy and attempted

View from Chanctonbury Ring

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).

More Photos

had an interview on

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.

Yesterday we were at

Jane and Kirsty Pitch

Yesterday we were at the Beach Soccer stadium which
has been temporarily built in Brighton for the Kronenbourg Cup
with the help of 400 tonnes of sand.

The rules are different from the football we’re used to, in that there are three periods of 12 minutes, a blue card which sends players to the sin bin and there must always be a winner, via extra time or penalties.

We saw Italy v. Portugal and France v. England (and yes, Eric Cantona was there for the game).

Entertaining stuff, and I’d certainly go see it again.

Shark and Kirsty

I don’t know what this shark was doing there.