Writing - the return!

So another full year has passed and I note my previous decision to start to blog more frequently. Ofcourse equally obviously there hasn't been a post in that time frame, so much for good intentions.

This time around I'm not going to make any bold claims, but I'd like to get in the habit of writing an essay a month so I'll see if I can keep up with it. Perhaps sitting down and having to formulate an article or chain of thought will spur me on to write smaller snippets more suitable to a blog, we'll have to see.

art

I stumbled across this article today. Definitely worth a read and it resonated very strongly with me. I can still remember arguing with my math teacher about the value of what we were being taught and how we were being taught. Actually I'd go so far as to say it sums up why I have a problem with our education system.

Upgrade path

As most technologist will tell you, the first thing to do when you get a new gadget is to upgrade it to the latest software and bios version. So this was in my mind when I recently upgraded my phone to a new Nokia 6500 classic. I promptly downloaded the software to manage the phone and at the same time downloaded the software to update the phone itself. I started off by transferring the phone numbers on my old phone to it's sim card, then i put the old sim card into the new phone and moved the numbers from the sim to the new phone. Then I put the new sim in my new phone and moved the numbers from the phone to the sim card. My idea being that I prefer the numbers on the sim card rather then the phone in case something happens to it (reasoning that it is more likely the phone would get broken then the sim card inside of it, besides I'd be able to put the sim card in another phone and still have access to my numbers). So there I was with my new sim card in my new phone with all my numbers on it. At this point I decided to back up my phone using the supplied software from nokia. That done, I decided to try and finally fix all the spelling mistakes in my address book and update some numbers. I was a bit annoyed to discover that while the software on my computer was able to manage other aspects of my new phone just fine, when it came to getting the numbers out of it and allowing me to edit them on the software on my computer, it just wasn't working. There appeared to be some bug, so before I started to try and solve that I decided to upgrade to the latest version. Big mistake.
I downloaded the new software for the new phone and updated it. I once again tried to manage the names and numbers in the phone with the software on my computer only to find that the bug had persisted and in fact got worse. Now instead of seeing maybe 25% of the numbers that were in the phone, I could see 2. I decided to try and create a new number and push it to the phone to see if that would help. I promptly added a number and asked it to synchronize. Just as promptly the phone deleted ALL numbers on the phone and synchronized the new number. Annoyed but not panicked, I thought I'd simply restore from backup all of my numbers, because I realized at this point that by moving the numbers off my old sim to the new phone I had ofcourse deleted them from the old sim. The only copy of my numbers now resided in my back up of the phones configuration. Well I'm sure you can guess what happened then. I restored from backup but the bug seemed to have taken residence in no uncertain fashion and ate all of the numbers. When it was done restoring I had 2 numbers in the phone. Thanks Nokia, thanks very much.

If you're reading this please drop me a line with your contact details because chances are I don't have them any longer.

Spot the techie!

Uncertain if the person in front of you is a techie masquerading as an investment banker or the real thing? Then I have the solution! Simply look at his cuffs. If he's got cuff links on, then he's not a techie but a real investment banker!

How do I know I hear you ask? Having just started at an investment bank and turned up fully suited for my first day, I was quite dismayed to find out how hard it is to type with cuff links on, they basically make it impossible to do any real computer work.

Economical media

I recently decided to grow my movie collection buy purchasing all the old classic movies that I've wanted to watch on and off over the years but had never bought. I was spurred to do this because while looking around for a few things I'd noticed that the cost of dvds had fallen to ~5 pounds. So I dutifully hopped on my computer and went to play.com to start putting in a big order for all the classic movies. It was only because earlier in the day I'd inadvertently wandered through a HMV store and seen some sale dvds for 4.99 that I thought I'd quickly check their website as well. Much to my surprise, pretty much EVERY movie I checked was cheaper on HMV then play! Now let me put that in perspective for those readers that don't really know the two companies involved. Play was a company setup in Jersey because of it's tax breaks when selling to the UK mainland. As a result they were able to offer incredibly cheap prices on cds / dvds that I don't think it's too far to say, probably led the charge in lowering prices on the high street. HMV on the other hand is the polar opposite, it's the largest dvd / cd selling in the UK with stores on all the high streets and, till recently, high street prices. It gives you an idea of how far things have changed when a company like Play can't beat HMV on price.

Keeping things cold

After almost 5 years living in England you'd think that I'd be used to all the little differences here from back in Australia, however, even after all this time there are some things that still have the ability to wind me up and cause me to shake my head. One I just ran into again was trying to buy a cold drink.

I accept that growing up in Australia my perspective is a bit borked, after all most Australians are taught at a young age that if you get something out of the fridge, you use it, then put it straight back as it's too hot to leave anything out for too long. That aside though europeans (it's not just the Brits that suffer from this) have real issues at the other extreme. For some reason, I'd guess it was initially to save on power or perhaps floor space, shopkeepers over here have traditionally decided to not buy refridgerators, but rather, to buy "cool shelves". This idea was questionable at it's inception but certainly after I'd guess 50 odd years of evolution has now reached a state of complete and utter uselessness. For those of you that don't know what a cooling shelf is, it is much like a fridge, but sawn in half and with the cooling element at the base rather then behind. The result is a completely open air contraption that tries to cool from the bottom. Now physics aside about hot air rising and all that, it's curious that the concept of keeping a static amount of air in place and cooling it to a set temperature seems to have escaped my european brethren, and not surprisingly the cooling shelves have a net effect of, IF you're lucky, lowering the temperature of items placed in them by about 1 degree. Unfortunately the state of most cooling shelves is fairly abysmal, most are broken and filthy, few actually work as they should at the best of times. What's the issue I hear many euro readers thinking, well the issue my friends is that it doesn't COOL the damn drinks!

The issue with temperature is not limited to drinks though. It was with initial surprise, followed by amusement and then outright incredulity that I met the assertion that Air Conditioning is bad and makes you sick. As every Australian knows, life without AC in Australia is unbearable, trying to work in stifling heat is just a nightmare, yes now and again if you're in the habit of walking in and out of AC'd buildings hundreds of times in a day, and you're run down, and you're stressed and the first 4 moons of gemini align, you might get sick from the temperature changes. Yes it's also possible that you can get outbreaks of legionaires disease and a few other air bourne nasties, but given that a large chunk of the worlds working population in the first world works in Air Conditioned buildings, it seems a little far fetched to think that they are a death trap, talk to the average european though and you'll get a completely different picture. Almost without exception every european I've met, when the subject of AC comes up, they cross themselves to ward off the devil and start swapping stories about how one of their friends got sick from it (almost how aussies swap stories about how close they've come to being attacked by a shark / croc). Try to point out that they might be exaggerating the risks or that AC is actually good, and you're immediately excommunicated from the conversation, but back to my drink.

Now again I can only assume that in the past europe was actually a REALLY cold place, so cold in fact that inside a store, on a cooling shelf without real refridgeration it was reasonable to expect things to be kept at 4 degrees. I'm dubious that this was ever the case but I'll give it the benefit of the doubt (I don't know too many shops that don't run a heater inside the store during Winter). That was the past, possibly, now though I can assure you that most of Europe and certainly not many parts of London actually even get that cold let alone consistently. Instead, like today, it was about 15 degree's and I was after a cold drink. I walk into the local store and low and behold all their drinks are actually HOTTER then room temperature as their cold shelves don't work and they've got a heater going in the store. It took me going to about 4 local shops before I found one that actually had a fridge and consequently was able to serve me a drink that was cold. Europeans are a worried lot, they are panicking about global warming more then most other groups of people, now I understand why, it's going to be damn hard to get a cold drink in this part of the world in the future.

Recruiters and the job hunt

The last two weeks since I've come back from Italy have seen me spending the majority of my time looking for a new job. This in turn has meant that I've spent the majority of my time each day chatting to recruiters. It's funny what proximity will do for perspective, normally recruiters are reviled by most people and while I have my issues with them, which I'll deal with later, on the whole I mostly feel sympathy for them right now, let me explain.
Currently most of my effort is going towards getting into the financial sector, in particular investment banks. Now investment banks typically have a fairly hefty dose of self importance at the best of times, but when it comes to recruiters I get the impression that they basically think of them as being scum. It's an unfortunately reality that most people, at least in IT, think of recruiters as scum and when you combine IT, with investment bank attitude you end up with no respect for the recruiter. What I've discovered is that it directly effects me. An example of this is where I'll get contacted about a role. The recruiter will go through it with me, come to the conclusion that I'm perfect for the role and put me forward. At this point the recruiter tells me that they normally hear back within 2 days whether the company will want an interview. Two days go by and the recruiter contacts me, telling me that he's talked to the HR department of the company and they are busy, "you know still sub prime fallout", and that they'll review my CV in the next two days and get back to him. Two days go by and the recruiter contacts me and tells me that HR are still busy and .... you see the pattern. The problem is that the poor recruiter has to deal with me calling him up asking what the status is, has he really put my CV forward, why haven't we heard anything back, is it really HR and not someone technical reviewing my CV etc. At the same time the recruiter is strung along by the bank giving him false information which they, unbeknowingly, pass on to me causing me in turn to get frustrated. All in all it's hard not to have some sympathy for the recruiters, they cop it from both sides and generally don't get much respect. Of course there is the flip side as well.
I understand that recruiters are not technical people, and that HR at the company you're applying to is equally not technical, but you'd think if it was your job to assess people with a certain skillset that you might learn how to do it with some level of accuracy, after all it helps everyone involved. You can imagine my surprise then when time after time I have to sit there and explain that I do know how to install linux right after I've explained that I'm a linux developer. You can view my resume here and see if it comes across as someone who has little to no knowledge about unix or security. In the last 2 weeks I've had to create 5 versions of my CV to "emphasize" different aspects of CV so that it will get past the recruiter / HR filters before going to someone that will actually understand it. Emphasizing sounds reasonable enough, until you realize what this actually entails is not rewriting it with a particular focus, nothing so complex! No, emphasizing simply means replace all occurances of "implement" with "build" because the client wants to know that you can build a linux box. Another tip for recruiters or HR is to google your candidates. If you're going for a serious IT role, by serious I mean any role that involves you having years of experience or a senior level of understanding, then googling their name will turn up hits on them, from emails they've written to mailling lists through to articles that they've published on different topics. If there isn't any hits, then you should be concerned, of course on the flip side if there is then it's a good indication that they are the real deal and not making up their skillset. Finally something that I understand but that annoys me is the insistance of people asking "so what was your package in your last job?". Frankly what relevance does this have if the recruiter / HR department is doing their job properly? What they use it for is to get a base from which to judge what kind of salary they should offer you for the role you are going for. Funnily enough it was my understanding that HRs point in life was to assess peoples suitability for a role, on the assumption that they are suitable then they are worth what the budget for the role is worth.