Andrew Birkett's blog » Edinburgh

Maps + Gigs

Andrew — Wed, 27 Apr 2005 17:02:35 +0000

I now have very useful maps of Edinburgh City Centre from the 1930’s, scanned by the National Library for me. I’ve georeferenced them, so I’m now looking at the best way to extract the information for routefinding.

Of course, this all takes a back seat over the next 24 hours, because of The Gig on Thursday. Yesterday, my bass guitar had a minor falling-to-bits event … it has been duely wood-filler’d back into shape. Glad it happened yesterday and not tomorrow.

Little rays of happiness

Andrew — Sun, 02 May 2004 21:47:45 +0000

I finally got around to buying a replacement axle for my bike today to replace the quick-release one which some eejit took from my bike a week ago. (When I texted Susan to tell her what’d happened, my predictive text didn’t know many of the words I used to describe said person). So, I went to the Bicycle Repair Man (a shop in Newington) and the bicycle repair man (the man who works there) said “Ah, this is what you want” and pulled a packet containing front+rear spindles from the shelf, marked with the princely sum of twelve pounds. Now, I thought “that’s going to be expensive, given that I only have a use for a front spindle”. But, before I said anything, the guy had already opened the packet, took out just the front spindle and said “that’ll be six pounds”.

Yay! How nice is that? Most shops would’ve used that as an opportunity to extract maximum money from me … “I’m sorry sir, they only come in packets of two”. Instead, I got the part I need, the other spindle will get used to fix someones bike eventually, and the guy has got one happy customer who’s going to back there in future and tell all his friends about it. Yay for the Bicycle Repair Man in Newington!

Hello again, Bjarne

Andrew — Fri, 23 Jan 2004 17:06:45 +0000

Yet again, I can write the words:

I started my new job this week.

Everything has gone very well – nice people, good location, good conditions. It’s a C++ shop, so this will probably revitalise my interest in C++ tools all over again. It’s a pleasure to be using Qt as well. It’s a very nice GUI toolkit.

This week also saw the birth of #deved on freenode, an irc channel aimed at (but not exclusively) software developers in Edinburgh. As I’ve recently discovered, you can play a Kevin Bacon game between IT companies in Edinburgh, and you end up with a very small number. That’s something to keep in mind if you’re considering telling your boss exactly what you think of him/her! Anyhow, #deved is a place for people from the Edinburgh IT industry to witter endlessly to each other about code and beer.

Teleworking

Andrew — Tue, 16 Dec 2003 22:18:24 +0000

I have finally written about my teleworking experiences. It’s just an ascii file tonight, straight out of emacs, but I’m too tired to make it look pretty just now.

My cool sounding job with the small startup fell through, due to them suffering cashflow problems. I feel quite sorry for them actually. Startups produce some of the coolest new ideas around. Financially, they often live a hand-to-mouth existence in their early stages. All it takes is for a big company to fail to pay on time, and that can throw a small companies financies into disarray, and sometimes on the road to bankruptcy. It’s plain wrong.

I’ve got several new interviews lined up over the coming week. I have really enjoyed taking December off to recharge my batteries. Part of the plan was to spend time doing non-computer stuff, and I’ve achieved that admirably. However, I’ll be a lot happier once I have something concrete sorted out on the job front.

Moving on …

Andrew — Thu, 20 Nov 2003 23:35:08 +0000

After three months, I’m going to be leaving my telecommuting adventures with Ergnosis and returning to working in Edinburgh. I have enjoyed my time there and they’re great people, but in the end living 400 miles away from the office meant more travelling than I can handle. I’m just not built for getting up at 6am and hanging around in airports, regardless of how good the job is. I’m glad I tried it though, and I plan to do a little writeup of my telecommuting experiences sometime soon.