Just wanted to wish everyone a Merry Christmas, just going to be taking it easy myself. Have to work a couple days next week as well.
Monthly Archive for December, 2003
Went to the British Musuem and the Tate Modern, haven’t been to either in a while. Was basically taking my cousin Faisal around to see things while he is here in London. The highlight for me was the Weather Project which sits in the Turbine room of the Tate Modern. Did not bother with the paid exhibits since we where short of time and getting around the other galleries was going to be a difficult task in the first place.
Will be seeing Return of the King tonight a little later than expected due to people being delayed from completing their Christmas shopping on time. So the plan is to now make the 8:30pm showing, will run down there now and grab the tickets.
Update
Looks like it will be the 9:30pm showing, the remaining seating for the 8:30pm showing was just the 2 front rows which are out of the question, managed to get good seats. Means I will not be out before 1am which is okay I guess.
Well the first round of fair well drinks proved to be quite good, had a larger crowd show up than expected. My thinking was that a majority would not show because they had other plans or where travelling out of London for the holidays.
Some of the folks I have not seen in a couple of months and some for about a year, others are pretty much the Friday night regulars, some of the Cambridge crew even made it. We had tried to reserve an area in the pub however because it’s the last Friday before Christmas everywhere was packed, fortunately our strategy of just hanging around and grabbing tables as they became available.
Towards the end of the evening it was the just the hardcore set left as expected. The social aspects of life at APR is probably one of the biggest things I will miss, however the friendships I have made there are definately beyond APR, the high and the lows of the last 3 1/2 years will definately not be forgotten either. Thanks to everyone for coming last night, and for making the past couple of years so much fun and interesting. We will be having another mini-bash before I leave for the States, hopefully you will be able to make it then.
Well I have been quiet the last couple of weeks, now that things are a little official I can say a few things. I resigned from APR on the 3rd, my last official day will be the 31st of the month. Work wise I have nothing amazing planned I have a few things lined up for the later end of January and early February. The plan is to concentrate on Linux, I’m going to aim to get RHCE in the next couple of months in the mean time I’m going to be focusing on getting contract work. Me and my brother are going to get our own company off the ground, initially we will be doing all sorts, websites, networking, databases, installations and consulting. We both have been doing small things on the side for a while and since we have nothing to lose we thought we might as well give it a try. That said I’m all ways on the lookout for interesting projects to get involved with so I’m talking to a few people about a few things.
Actually I’m celebrating my leaving tonight at the Euston Flyer, have invited a fair number of people from work and old friends that have already moved on. The reason for picking tonight was because people are disappearing for the Christmas holidays, and basically I’m away for pretty much all of January.
On the 4th I’m off to San Francisco to attend MacWorld and New York for LinuxExpo. I’m back on the 24th so it should be a interesting 20 days. Might try to fit Los Angeles in as well since I have not been there before.
As for stuff I have been up to for the last couple of weeks, I went to the Design Musuem and H.M.S Belfast last weekend, basically tourism duties since my cousin is visiting. Will probably have to do more in the coming weeks, have not managed to go to the Lord of the Rings exhibit either. Speaking of which Return of the King came out on Wednesday, I’m going to watch it tomorrow, hopefully will be able to get tickets for an early evening showing.
Life with the new Powerbook is great, actually Panther is excellent Expose is still amazing, had a few issues with using my external DVD drive for the purpose of making backups, however now that I have upgraded Toast things are working like they should.
Technology wise have been playing around with Python, and also improving my regex know how, I actually know more than I thought which is always good. Got the Spidering Hacks book recently and have been playing with Perl for the purposing of scraping web sites.
Just got an IM from my brother telling me he had just signed for my Powerbook, yipee!!!!! This week is looking really up, now I just need to get rid of the cough I have left over from the cold that I’ve had for the past couple of days.
Had that meeting in Cambridge as planned today, can’t say much at this stage though most people that know me will already know the score, I’ll put something up once things are calm. But it’s all good I swear.
I managed to get a 20GB iPod from Virgin a couple of hours ago, apparently they have plenty. Virgin only recently started stocking iPods, however I don’t think they are not doing the greatest job of promoting this fact. In the store they only had one sign advertising the iPod. However there are a few problems, I was talking to the manager guy there, firstly the numbers they where able to get in the Christmas run up was not great. On top of that only the big stores are carrying them, the smaller shops are only able to order them. Apple really need to sort out their relationship with big UK retailers if they want to build a bigger brand, part of that is matching anticipated demand, Virgin reckon they will be sold out come the weekend, then they have another 2 week wait before getting another batch.
but at least I’m feeling better than Saturday. Managed to get to work in Cambridge. Just found out Richard’s quest for a 40GB iPod was not fruitful, just as well since I had heard some bad things about the battery life, and another colleague of mine Kevin who has a 40GB iPod was saying the same thing. Will try to get an iPod tonight from the Mac shop on Oxford Street since they had loads on thursday when I last passed by there.
Another bit of good news, my shipping status on the Apple Store changed today, my Powerbook is now in Luxembourg. So maybe I’ll have it in the next couple fo days.
Had an important meeting booked with my bosses today, but I get the feeling with the rush on for a big client meeting tomorrow I don’t think things are going to work out as planned for today.
