(The title refers to the Delia Derbyshire play I’m listening to)
Christmas has been excellent. We had Louise’s parents and sister for the day. We did the dinner, although I did wuss out, letting Louise and her Father do most of the work. I did Chesnut parcels for Louise (being vegetarian) and they came out very well, apparently. Anyway, the food was good enough to precipitate an afternoon of sleeping and TV watching.
Presents-wise, Louise bought me a fucking Gamecube! I could not believe it and my face clearly spelled out my surprise to everyone there! It is the best present ever, measured as a function of Louise’s cashflow divided by the cost of the item multiplied by the quality of the secret-keeping.
Today (Boxing Day) has been really chilled, Louise and I wandered and watched TV. Tomorrow, my Father’s third wedding! It will be a very low key affair, Louise and I are in many minds as to what to wear.
Another invoice out of the door! WOO HOO! This one is sizeable enough that it should put me back on my feet properly until about February. Which is a fucking relief. The last month has been very lean and I’ve incurred a few nasty penalties from my bank.
Not only have I invoiced two jobs this week, I’m pretty sure that I can invoice another two next week. Yes they’ll be much smaller, but it’s the thought that counts.
Yesterday I went for an interview at a company called LShift. They are a mighty cool company and I really, really want to work there. They do a lot more interesting stuff than all the other companies I’ve visited and they have a suitably impressive client list.
The interview was just an informal chat, beer included. The MD, Andy Wilson, told me about the company and it’s structure and philosophy. Everything he said made me want to work there even more. The only drawback is that it’s Old Street, so not too near, but it’s flexitime (core hours style) so I could avoid the rush hour. I will hopefully be invited back for a technical interview next week. This bit I’m really nervous about, I’m going to be quizzed by a guy who is, by the sounds of it, a very serious computer scientist. I already have a lot of respect for him and I hope that my knowledge will be sufficient to convince him that I’m a good guy to hire. First I have to convince myself and I will be revising textbooks until then!
I pretty much completed my shopping cart although it has not gone live. I have also fairly much finished the allocated time budget for the email marketing software I’m building. I even wrote a man page for it! I know man is a bit out of date, but when you’re using a command line app, why not have a command line documentation system? I will make HTML versions as well.
In the interim period between today and my last post I also carried out my first usability test, which was an interesting experience. I got a lot of feedback and we’re having an interesting time making head and tail of the info. Thank you, Steve Krug. Krug is the author of a usability book that I was able to read in a few days and the man who’s wisdom powered my testing session. I think I gained a lot from talking to people and I think it’s a good idea to do it more regularly. It’s very easy to get warm and cosy in the up-to-date browser and skills ivory tower when my users are muddling through down on the ground. People of technical skill really do use the web very differently.
