Aug
15
2008
For breakfast: three fried egg sandwiches, with cheese, tomatoes, lettuce, fried onions and mayonnaise, followed by three chocolate-chip pancakes; a five-egg omelette; three sugar-coated slices of French toast and a bowl of grits a maize-based porridge, washed down with two cups of coffee.
OMG, I’m surprised Michael Phelps doesn’t sink like a stone! I’m thinking I might have a chance in the 2012 Olympics. I have the appropriate diet but am worried that my arms are too short.
Aug
14
2008
As I twittered this morning I’ve been suffering with blog writers block. I have plenty of things I could be blogging but I’m having trouble extending those ideas into decent posts. I recently moved house and I have a new (shorter) commute so I’m going to try and use those half hours to blog something, assisted by the offline features of the Wordpress iPhone application. So maybe there won’t be many links. That’s a source of discomfort for me because I started blogging back in 1999 when a weblog was a journal and commentary on great links the author had found. As a result I tend to judge blog posts by the number of new links they give me, and the opportunities for further discovery.
Tonight’s post is inspired by a conversation I had today with Michael, one of our senior Platform developers. Michael joined in response to my post a few months ago (we still have openings available hint hint) and we were talking about the recruitment process. He said a good way to judge a company is by how they interview and hire people. I thought back a bit to some of the interviews I’ve experienced on the past and found myself enthusiastically agreeing.
If you’re going for an interview I think you can tell an awful lot about a company’s attitude towards its staff. Sloppy, disorganised interviews invariably mean the company is a complete mess. Conversely regimented interviews often result in a dose of severe timeboxing.
Companies that use only a single interview clearly aren’t looking to hire a person with any character. Mediocrity is the order of the day. Similarly I suspect that those who insist on grading candidates with 30 question quizzes would be most satisfied with an automaton who never makes mistakes but can mechanise the development process as well as they’ve mechanised the recruitment process.
In short if you have a bad interview experience then you’re probably going to be very unhappy there. And companies that interview poorly end up with the employees they deserve.
(btw my plan failed - I couldn’t complete this post in the 30 minute commute and had to finish it at home!)
Jul
25
2008
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A grounded, semirelational, peer to peer replicated, disconnected, versioned, property database with self-healing conflict resolution. Perl + svn + http
Jul
22
2008
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US Patent Office is changing its rules to disallow patenting of processes unless they “result in a physical transformation of an article” or are “tied to a particular machine”
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An Amazon-S3 Clone in Ruby. Clones the API but stores the data on your own machine
Jul
21
2008
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Explanation from Google of why they dropped XMPP support in Android. Cost of session initiation is too high, bandwidth usage is too high (and compression eats more battery power), massive variety of carrier network issues.
Jul
16
2008
I’m writing this from the depths of the Tuscan countryside overlooking mountains and chestnut forests. I’m staying with Danny Ayers at his house in Mozzanella near Castelnuovo di Garfagnana. Danny has often invited me over to stay with him and I’ve finally made it but unfortunately it’s not a trip I can enjoy. Sadly I’m here because Danny’s wife, Caroline, passed away last Saturday. It was a real shock because it happened so quickly. She was diagnosed with Leukemia only about two weeks ago and died from complications arising from her treatment.
I only met Caroline a few times but even in those brief conversations she struck me as an amazingly intelligent and independent woman, with a depth of artistic talent. She was also a real rock for Danny.
Danny is doing ok, but I don’t think it’s really sunk in yet. The myriad dogs and cats that share this house are more than enough to keep him busy and the neighbours are incredibly supportive and helpful. In fact it’s pretty obvious that he and Caroline are much loved. I’m here for a few days and a series of family members are turning up over the next few weeks. However, I’m sure Danny would love to hear from his friends online.
