It’s been three and a half weeks since I moved out of Plymouth, and two and a half since I started work at Mendeley, so I thought I’d post an update.

Work’s been interesting; as well as web development (which is my primary role, but not really something I want to do forever), I’ve been learning the server and network setup so that I can do some sysadmin work too (and stand in for our sysadmin when he’s on holiday, like he is this week). As part of that, it’s also possible I’ll end up writing Java for the datamining team; again, not something I necessarily want to do long-term, but improving my Java would be useful, I think, if only so that i can add it to the list of languages I’m comfortable coding in.

I’ve been reading a hell of a lot; it’s 35 minutes each way on the Tube to work, so I’ve had a lot of time with not much else to do. I’m half-way through my fourth book since moving; first was The Gathering Storm, the latest book in the Wheel of Time series. I was expecting it to be fairly mediocre, as the original author (Robert Jordan) died and a new author (Brandon Sanderson) was brought in to finish the series. However, it’s actually bloody good; probably better than a few of the previous books (towards the end, the series was starting to drag, in my opinion). So, based on that, I’ve been reading Sanderson’s Mistborn trilogy, which is again rather good. It has an original take on magic, plus some very clever plot twists. Also, Foyles bookshop on Charing Cross Road is awesome. I could live there.

At the moment I’m living near Grange Hill tube station, which means it’s a direct train to work with only a couple of minutes walking, but it’s a little inconvenient to be so far out (especially in the evening, when it can sometimes be nearly 8pm before I get home). This place is only temporary, though, so (hopefully!) next month I’ll be moving to Hackney, which will be within cycling distance of work (and walking distance, at a push — it’s only four miles), though not so great for public transport.

Hopefully at some point I’ll get around to going along to the local LUG and Python/Ruby groups, etc., but mostly so far I’ve been too lazy. I did go to a goth night with Loupie a couple of weekends ago, which was fun (it’s not often that I go out somewhere that actually plays decent music…).

As mentioned in a previous entry, I’ll be working in central London from the 14th. So, since the commute from Plymouth would be pretty horrific, I’ve moved to somewhere slightly closer: Grange Hill in Essex. This is only temporary: Loupie’s sister had a spare room until the beginning of August. That should give me enough time to sort out somewhere more permanent.

Currently my room’s a bit of a tip; it’s smaller than my old room and I have a lot of stuff. I’ve put some of it in storage (mainly the four boxes of books, two of computer hardware, three computers that I don’t use regularly, etc.) but it’s still a bit crowded. My bike’s also in there temporarily, as it’s a bit far to cycle to work (also, drivers around here are frankly scary, and I don’t want to be on a road anywhere near them).

I’ll still be down in Plymouth every so often; I have too many good friends there to stay away. I’m particularly looking forward to terrifying some newbies at the Freshers’ Fair, and I should also be around for Gem’s and/or Ross and Christa’s housewarming.

Current plans are to get to know the area and to brush up on my PHP before the 14th, get stuff unpacked (assuming there’s space to do so), and acquire more books.

On the 25th of February I was up in London for a job interview. Apparently I didn’t do as badly as I thought, because a few days later they emailed me to offer me the job. So, starting on the 14th of June I’ll be working for Mendeley as a PHP/MySQL developer.

Next obstacle: finding somewhere to live within a reasonable distance of Farringdon tube station. After that, I get the fun of trying to move all my stuff (including two bookcases full of books) 250 miles. Any volunteers?

Since Skippy, Loupie, and Natnie have all published their lists (among others) I thought I'd give it a go myself.

So. If I start counting from tomorrow (2010-01-10), I need to finish by 2012-10-07.

1. Improve my German and keep in practice.
2. Visit Germany.
3. Visit somewhere outside Europe.
4. Get a driving licence.
5. Write a program for a mobile phone.
6. Give up milk (and milk products) for a month.
7. Play guitar in front of people.
8. Learn to play two songs on keyboard.
9. Plan a week's worth of meals in advance, buy everything needed up front, and stick to the plan.
10. Make a budget and stick to it.
11. Get up at 6am every weekday for a month.
12. Start learning another language.
13. Complete Couch to 5K.
14. Complete the 100 pushups challenge.
15. Complete the 200 pressups challenge.

That's all for now. More will be added when I think of some.

(Incidentally, after Nick tweeted about Project52, I've decided to try and take part, with at least one meaningful update — not just “what I've being doing recently” — every week. My Twilight Review was Week One's submission.)

Finally got around to booking travel and accomodation for FOSDEM 2010; I've left it late again, possibly even later that last year, so it's a little more expensive than I'd like (also, I didn't particularly want to share a room in a hostel with stangers again, so my accomodation isn't as cheap as it could be). On the other hand, I've money saved from my placement, so what the hell.

One thing that did puzzle me, incidentally, was the booking form for the hotel, which offered a choice of rooms: “Standard Room +£0.00” (no additional cost, as the default selection) and “Standard Room (breakfast included) +£41.46”. That's per night.

I cannot quite grasp just how wonderful a breakfast would have to be to justify spending that much on it. To put it in perspective, that's approximately what the room costs per night (I think; it's bundled with the Eurostar cost, so hard to tell). It's also not much less than a return ticket to London. I could quite easily get breakfast in a hundred other places on my way from the hotel to the conference for less than a tenth of that. What the hell are they thinking?

The date for FOSDEM X has been announced: 6+7 February 2010.

I’m hoping to get myself organised to go well in advance this time, unlike this year’s somewhat rushed attempt (avoiding the sleeper service and getting there on the Friday evening would be bonuses, too).

More details once I know my timetable for next year; any Plymouth geeks who’re interested, let me know and we can try to organise getting there as a group.

I’m assuming everybody (everybody who cares, that is) has heard about the attack against SHA-1. Part of what this means is that 1024-bit DSA GnuPG keys are vulnerable; accordingly, I’m replacing mine.

The new key is as follows:

pub   4096R/166891C7 2009-05-07 [expires: 2010-05-07]
      Key fingerprint = B62D 05AE 65F4 DAFD DE2E  10E2 ABAE 113A 1668 91C7
uid                  Benjamin M. A'Lee <bma@subvert.org.uk>

My old key will expire in 90 days (or I’ll revoke it, one or the other). I’ll see about getting the new key signed (and resigning other people’s keys) at some point.

So, this weekend I’ve had four and a half days off (Thursday lunchtime onwards) and, given my usual lack of planning, didn’t have anything in particular lined up when I got home from work on Thursday. Well, other than fix my bike, which had been sitting in the yard for two weeks (the first waiting for me to get around to getting new tyres, the second waiting for me to find the well-hidden puncture). Incidentally, I did that, so that probably makes this a successful weekend.

Anyway. Friday was a waste. Saturday morning Dan texted and suggested a Dartmoor trip, so Gem drove us and Gareth (plus her sister and sister’s dog) up near Sheepstor. We wandered around a bit, but failed to find any letterboxes, then drove out past Princetown to have a barbecue. Then it started hailing. Seriously. So we went back to Plymouth, where it was actually quite nice, and had the barbecue in the back yard, then watched some Red Dwarf.

On Sunday, Gem, Dan, and I went up to Bodmin Moor — walked from Minions up around Cheesewring for a couple of hours, and this time I actually remembered my camera. Haven’t actually looked at the pictures yet, though, so I don’t know if any turned out particularly well.

Today I did bugger-all again; the nice (apart from the hail) weather apparently has given up, so going out wasn’t really tempting. Back to work tomorrow; at least it won’t take half an hour to get there or back now.

So, not all that much has been happening recently. Spent New Year coding, eating curry, watching Monty Python, then watching the countdown with Jools Holland and drinking, for some reason, amaretto.

I bought myself an Eee PC 1000 so that I can have a laptop that I can actually carry around, and I’m generally very happy with it — I’ve put a stock version of Debian on there, and it works pretty much perfectly. (The only issue is that when it comes out of hibernation after more than 10 minutes it immediately thinks "oh, I’ve been inactive for ages, time to go to sleep" and suspends, but that’s probably my fault…)

I had hoped to go to FOSDEM this year, but due to university stuff on the Friday I’d pretty much ruled it out. However, somebody pointed out I could get the sleeper to London then the first train to Brussels in the morning, so after some rushed booking I’m going after all. :)

And I’m still not dead, in case that wasn’t obvious. Though hills seem to have gotten steeper over Christmas.

I bought a new domain, godlessliberal.co.uk. The plan is to put all my posts related to politics and religion and so on there, and keep this for technical and personal stuff. If anybody else wants to contribute articles, they’re welcome to do so, assuming you’re not Tory scum.