Great Day Today Because…
- my PS3 arrived this morning
- we got a new front door this morning, courtesy of Hackney council. Thanks, guys! The new door is much.much.much better than the old one and now thieves and criminals finally won’t be able to break in!
- a friend told me that, after loads and loads of interviews while the months passed, Google had today offered them a fucking job! Yes, brilliant and 1000x congrats. I won’t say who as it might be sensitive information, but I’m just very pleased
- great weather today – sunny at last and I cycled to work in a really happy summer mood
- another friend told me about their great week-end and overall happiness/excitement, and love interests, so thumbs up to that!
- a guy I went to University with, and whom I’ve been sporadically in touch with, contacted me via Skype today. He’s in Canada at the moment which is cool. We took Computer Science classes together, including CS basics and Java (I dropped out after that
).
So, the overall vibe her at Diary of a Screenhead is gooooooooooood.
I’m ever so pleased that things are going well for people, as I can feel they’re buzzing inside, and it’s infectious! It also means that the collective network of good people, i.e. people that I like, are happy. Hence: I am happy.
That reminds me: *must* phone D&J to find out if J got the job with H&M!
edit: just phoned J. and had a short conversation, sweet 
– she’s got the interview next week so fingers totally crossed here.
Good people must be happy and they must get what they want.
/me considers driving up to Edinburgh and getting her thistle tattoo done.
/me adds Friends category
British dotcoms to watch
In case you live in Britain, and you want to read up on the current ongoing social networking and dotcom buzz, check out this article on the Guardian website, which features the 10 most promising British dotcoms.
This kind of stuff is actually highly relevant for my new job, and my colleagues and I are going to put a case forward for blogging on the company website about the latest developments. We all think it should be part of our JD, seeing that we work with social networks and online communities, so we need to illustrate that we engage with and are knowledgeable about the latest buzz.
Though it probably means that I’d run out of stuff to talk about on here
Facebook: No one from my Uni on it!
When reccying out Facebook the other day, I also used their classmate search to find anyone from my former Uni. And guess what: there were no results, zero, zilch! At first I thought it might be a technical problem with the search function, but then I tried some other Universities, and results were returned.
Curious!
Some of Facebook is too americanised, I mean that’s where it all started, but I just.don’t.like.it. I.e. in the education tab on my profile, the term ‘graduate school’ I think is quite an American term, I certainly haven’t heard anyone use it in relation to a UK PhD. Similar with ‘Concentration’, I mean WTF? I think it means subject studied.
Give me a UK web 2.0 social networking site such as last.fm anytime!*
At least I’ll feel culturally at home!
*Just noticed: you can now apparently put recently played tracks from last.fm onto facebook….
Facebook Groups Are Fucking Useless
Excuse the rather ranty and imprecise title there. I’ve been playing around with Facebook (andraco – join up!) a bit more today – I joined a few months ago but hadn’t really used it much.
Today I updated my profile and stuff, as I had some spare time to actually use the Internet socially, for entertainment, i.e. for what I want to do, rather than for work.
That’s the thing – if you work on the Internet/with the Internet every day, you hardly have time or desire to use it socially, for entertainment, or for the things that you want to do. Today, alas, I had some playtime
Anyway, I wanted to check out the groups on Facebook – in fact I joined one that was recommended on a list I subscribe to. I then started browsing the groups a bit more, to try and find any other ones that I might be interested in. But WTF? They don’t have any search advanced search function. Instead, groups are listed alphabetically. It’s really stupid. People have taken to calling their groups things like this (in the Gaming category):
AAAAAAA I PLAY FLYFF ALL DAY LONG
AAAAAAA UNREAL TOURNAMENT FANS
Aaaaaaa WOw needs to be easier to fnid hence the a’s
AAAA: original xbox rules!
They really need to sort it out. They need some quality control (what type of name is allowed), i.e. rules on names, as well as a proper search function to eliminate the need for users to call their groups annoying fucking shitty names.
I’m also very surprised by that – there has been so much hype lately about facebook (e.g. a Mark Zuckerberg profile here), that I can’t believe that they get something as basic as this wrong.
New Look Sites Everywhere!
I noticed the other day that The Guardian has updated its online presence. From web 1.5, they say, to web 2.0. Liking it!
It is interesting to see how the web is currently evolving aesthetically and socially, with more and more focus on individual-centred stuff (services almost, centred on the individual user’s interests). It’s definitely more engaging that only 2 years ago, where a more traditional, static relationship with clearly drawn boundaries between user and reader, or, content, was still predominant (though not as much as 10 years ago, when web pages were mainly static ‘representations’ of their offline counterparts – e.g. text published in electronic format).
Anyway.
The other site that’s just updated its homepage is WordPress. I really like WordPress, and many of my friends use it, and now my work colleague has moved her blog over from Blogger. I also like their new site, though it seems they’re moving away from listing blogs to a more ‘organised’ categorisation of top posts (Cars, Health, Politics, Science, etc.). Hm… and (WTF):
if you don’t have an avatar you won’t be able to make the top lists anymore.
w00t? That’s a bit mean, isn’t it!
Yesterday, I also created a new About page (About 2.0). It annoys me a little that in my current template I can’t have the About pages at the top, as an additional tab. I have far too many widgets anyway, but I like them all! Decisions decisions.
I’ve been Blogging for Over a Year Now
yes, I started on the 21st July 2006. I actually looked it up the other day, and I was sure that I started on the 27th last year, which is why I wanted to post some sort of ‘birthday celebration’ crap tomorrow. Only when checking tonight, I realised that my first one was in fact on the 21st 
Here it is:
automatthias was the first who commented – and look at my arrogant reply lol. FFS/WTF.
Anyway, looking back it’s become much clearer to me why and how it does make sense to write a post per day, and to keep at this even though sometimes it’s hard work. I’ve certainly learned a lot of stuff and met some great people
Thumbs up to Blogging!
Web Trend Tube Map
This is quite cool, especially on a day of slow news / overwork and not enough time to write anything myself
A Tokyo design agency has created a ‘map of web influence’ based on the Tokyo tube map. Article here.
edit: direct link to hot shot agency post.
/me thinks of getting one for the office.
Pic:
It reminds me a bit of Brit artist Simon Patterson’s Great Bear:
Working from Home = Overtime
It’s already started. It’s my second day and I’ve been teleworking today, with a predictable result:
I’m working far too long! I’ve only just stopped (10:44 PM) and I started at 10AM today
We can subtract a couple of hours or so where I took a break and ate, but that still makes it a whopping 10 hours 44 minutes, and if I add the one hour lunch break that by right I am allowed to take, it’s 11 h 44 minutes. w00t.
/me hopes my calculations are correct.
Either way, I can already see that going into the office yesterday, and leaving just after 6 and not do anything thereafter, was much better. I just can’t stop myself when there is work to be done. The good thing is though that in theory, I can just work *less* tomorrow, which I might well do, seeing that I’ve done plenty today that I could have done tomorrow (the reason I did it tonight is that I had to write up instructions for a task for my colleagues tomorrow, and I want them to have the task in their inbox first thing, so they can get cracking on it).
I’ll be working from home tomorrow, and I’ll be going in to the office on Thursday. Not sure if I’ll be staying the entire day – I guess I could! It depends on what there is to do, and how much distraction I can cope with.
/me yawns
First Day in My New Job
Today was the first day in my new job and, the first day that I ever spent in a regular ‘office’. LOL.
I promised myself when I was younger (probably in my late teens) to NOT work in a regular (office-based, 9-5) job till I hit 30. And I’ve succeeded – I’m 33 now :p
I have to say though that it was surprisingly pleasant. I didn’t take a lunch break (I really don’t see the need for a ONE HOUR break – WTF? It’s far too long), and overall I was productive despite the constant background noise, particularly, towards the later afternoon (from 4pm or so onwards). Some of the stuff that I’ll be doing really requires peace and quiet, e.g. a research task I’m doing tomorrow.
I’m back in the office on Thursday all day and I might even go Wednesday – it’s quite cool to be able to ‘leave the work at work’ so to speak, and have the evening off! I’ve never really had a clear separation of life/home/work. I think I was constantly switched on, and the fact that I’ve been working from home for the last 5 years also contributed to a blur between work and non-work (for instance, I always used to check my work emails, even on my days off).
First impressions: working in an office is fun!*
I think I’ll try to do 2 or 3 days a week from home, and the rest from the office. Or maybe 2.5 days from home, and exactly the same from the office. It’s good to stay ‘in the loop’ as it were, and to see my colleagues; however, the noise and distraction levels are quite high and for some of the work that I do I really need silence, and solitude.
*as long as you don’t have to go in every day.
Desktop PC Finally Set up
I’ve finally managed to properly set up my desktop PC down here in London. I brought it back from Edinburgh last week-end, but hadn’t connected it and set it up yet.
What I’m going to do is take my laptop into work tomorrow, and then possibly leave it there (I don’t particularly like the idea of cycling with my laptop on my back – even if it’s in one of those laptop rucksack bags, I don’t trust it 100% and I’m sure that, if I had an accident, my lappy would be damaged). Now all I need is some kind of system whereby the files I’m working on in the office will be accessible from my home PC. That means they’ll either have to give me dial-up access to their server (VPN); otherwise, I’ll just hve to carry files to and fro using my USB memory stick
The other great thing about this new job is that I’ll be getting a Mac soon-ish, and hopefully a new one! They all work on Macs and, while they have a ’spare one’ at the office, it’s an old, crappy one, which I don’t want to use. I’d rather work on my Vaio for now and then get a desktop Mac in a few weeks’ time.
Chilling out now, and going to bed soon, so that I’m all fresh and ready tomorrow
My new job starts at 10AM tomorrow which is great, given that it’s only 10 minutes away (by bike).
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