I work for a big games company as a senior programmer, and I’m a regular on the interview loop. While I’d love to hire candidates who are smart and get things done, the reality of the situation is that more often than not I also have to hire candidates with…
Recent Readings
Making Money by Terry Pratchett. (I seem to have missed Thud!) Old Man’s War by John Scalzi. Heinlein-esque SF that I first heard about at last year’s LA Times Festival of Books. Both quick reads – I finished each one in less than 2 days.
Backup Solution, Evolved
At the end of November, I invested in a NAS box with 500GB of RAID 1 space. This weekend I finally got around to another thing on my todo list: updating the firmware of said box and doing some spelunking. Using a marvellous thing called fun-plug, I now have some…
Journey to Bed
The house is quiet, completely dark Except for one defiant spark Which rails against the night’s embrace: The screen illuminates my face. The hour is late; my head is tired. The stimulants which kept me wired Have long since faded. Now instead I think of turning in to bed. I…
Rock n Roll Marathon & 1/2
Mini-Elbeno & I are sitting at an Einstein Bros Bagels at about the 26 mile mark of the Rock & Roll Marathon. Mrs Elbeno (doing the 1/2) has gone through 5K in 29:32 according to the live tracking.
Free digital camera
As I was leaving work today, my manager was chucking out a load of things that we didn’t want any more or didn’t have room for. I took a brief look through the stuff that was destined for the rubbish, and snagged a Nikon Coolpix 2500 with 4 batteries, charger…
French songs on the brain
Mini-Elbeno is taking weekly French classes, and has a CD of French children’s songs, which we have been listening to for the past several weeks. I now know almost all of them and find myself humming them through the day. Some of them have catchy tunes… In addition to the…
Soup up your Powershot
If you have a Canon Powershot series camera (hi Dad!), you must give this a go. The power of the Internet brings you the CHDK firmware: third party firmware that unlocks so many useful features! Start out by checking which firmware version you already have. Then grab the current king…
You never forget a good teacher: part 2
I got a reply from my former teacher! It really gladdened me to get home on a Friday evening, in the dark, with the rain sheeting as Pacific storms are wont to do, and find a letter postmarked “Exeter & Devon” and addressed to me in familiar, tiny, reverse-side-of-the-fountain-pen-nib scrawl….