2:21, Friday March 14th, 2003 • feeling reflective • no comments
I've been ill for the last few days. Fairly hefty fever, headaches and very sore throat. On Tuesday I was actually laid up in bed all day! I don't get ill very often and find it very frustrating when I do, yesterday I spent most of the day moaning.
I am very lucky to have Louise around though, she took good care of me by prescribing a diet of only fruit and vegetables (mostly in the form of soup) and dosing me with vitamin C and Echinacea and the odd paracetamol so I could sleep. As a result I managed to do some stuff yesterday and today I am pretty much back to normal, although I still have the sore throat.
The illness couldn't have come at a worse time. I was strapped for time before going away anyway. The projects I have been working on have just had to be cut in functionality. I doubt the Arena4 site will launch as anything more than a super simple site. Although there will be time to add more whizziness after I get back from me 'olidays.
How much time will be resolved tomorrow, when I hopefully find out whether I will be joining the team at Lateral. I'm still divided by whether I want to join them or not. I have resolved to take it if I feel the money is good enough, because I need money more than I need excitement at the moment. I can make my own excitement, but I have proved pretty solidly that I can't make my own money.
The irony of the Lateral position is that I was offered a large project for April that would give me some of the experience that I need to get myself into a middle-tier Java job, which is what I would be happier doing really. Thus if Lateral turn me down I will work through that project and hopefully get a "proper" programming job, not watered down with HTML or admin work, some time in June. We shall see...
1:14, Tuesday March 11th, 2003 • feeling reflective • no comments
I went to my interview. It was an interview as well, it said "chat" on the invite but never mind. Me and three guys who I would be working with if I got the job.
I think I did OK, we gelled at least a bit and I managed to break things down a bit by stumbling into discussions they were having and joining in. They were a fairly diverse group, one was clearly a programmer and asked me lots of tricky Java questions, none of which I really fumbled too badly, although it's hard to tell. The other two seemed more in the admin side of things. I think I was OK there as well, I admitted that although I was experienced as a Windows user I'm not the greatest Windows admin, which I suspect may cause weaken my chances.
Overall I think I came across as a developer who's a competent administrator in a small way. I made the point that IMHO a good admin is an internally focussed developer, which I hope went down well. I'm not sure if I will get the job, they have other candidates and they may be looking for somebody more on the admin side. The one question I did fail on was "Can you make network cables?" but how hard can it be? Fiddle fiddle, *crunch*, presto. I'd certainly be willing to learn.
Before I went I felt that whether I wanted the job or not would be decided by the level of opportunity for personal advancement. After talking to the programmer guy I feel confident that there's a lot that I could learn from him and in the setting he and the other guys are in. That means I think I would be happy to do the job, plus the it seems fairly varied which will make it easier to move into it from freelance. As long as they let me use Vi.
15:19, Monday March 10th, 2003 • feeling relaxed • no comments
It seems like a cycle. Depression and dispair at lack of money and time to make money comes at the end of a project, then I start to look at removing myself from the freelance scene by way of some kind of gainful employment. Then, before that really kicks in, things pick up and my optimism returns and blinds me to the fact that in another month I'm going to be fucked again!
Today I have arranged 2 meetings in April that may yield work, one looks about as certain as it can do on the first day. Also I should leave now as I have an interview at Lateral, a web agency.
Of course I haven't finished the work I must finish before pissing off to NY a week today.
4:13, Monday March 10th, 2003 • feeling relaxed • no comments
The Cybernetic Broadcasting System rules! They are currently playing some ultra-dodgy Euro-electro-pop classic with the repeated refrain "I want your sexiness!":
I wake up, I get dressed and you are on my mind!
I'm laughing, I'm loosing and you are on my mind!
When I can't be cool, when I'm feeling low
I want your sexiness!
When I sing my song and when I look inside,
I want your sexiness!
When I touch myself and think of you,
I want your sexiness!
Every day, all the time,
I want your sexiness!
Every day, all the time,
I want your body now!
And there's so much more I can't be arsed to type, including use of the word "wanking".
I'm going to do a mix of new school electro and lushness for the CBS, but it's never going to beat their collection of eighties monsters.
In other news, I've been hacking around with DOM 2 functions from HTML. They're neat. I'm used to DOM from Java and Flash for XML, but the possibilities are a bit more tangible inside the browser for a lowly web developer. I created a form that constantly reconfigures itself in order to let you specify filters to reduce a list of people to a smaller one, depending on what they've been up to. You can add new filter lines and configure each one to a reflect simple criterion. It works much like spam filters/classifiers in mail software. DOM 2 seems to be supported pretty well by the current crop of browsers, with the notable exception of IE 5/Mac, which fell on it's face creating form elements.
I'm sure there's a lot of potential for creating fun pages that just don't stop recombobulating and dance around like ponies on crack. I think I'll leave that for another day though. Special shout goes to BrainJar for being great at teaching things and W3Schools for being the best reference site on the net.
17:38, Saturday March 8th, 2003 • feeling enthusiastic • no comments
The "Friend of a friend" project is pretty self-evident (which is a good thing). They have a format and are encouraging people to create FOAF-formatted data (mine is here) but they haven't quite got to the point of implementing distribution and search functions.
A search engine is the obvious function for the data, though none seems to be around yet. It is early in the project at the moment. Also, that search engine really should provide it's data as a web service.
