I keep getting caught up on small world coincidences, since I started working at
the Bodleian Library last week. I know about selective biases, of course, and I’ve always said that coincidences happen nine times out of ten, but this is really
starting to feel like some kind of amazing conspiracy that I’ve somehow wandered into.
The most recent chain of connected coincidences is also probably the most impressive. But to explain it, I’ll need to take you back in time by almost three years. Back in the summer of
2008, I went to BiCon for the second time, accompanied by Claire and Matt P. Among the various other things we
got up to, we met a young lady called Ann (who, if I remember rightly, got along very well with Matt).
This morning I received an email from Ann. It turns out that she works in the Bodleian Libraries: she’s likely to be one of the very users who it’s now my job to provide training and
technical support to! She saw my photograph in the newsletter I mentioned in my last blog post and looked me up: small world! I emailed back, suggesting that we get together for a drink
after work, and she agreed: great! She also asked if she could bring a friend along, a colleague from the library. Sure, I said, sounds good.
This lunchtime I sorted out some of my holiday entitlement for the rest of this academic year. I booked off a few days for a Three Rings “code week” in the summer, and a couple of days around the time that I’ll be
moving house next month. One of these days clashed with a meeting that I’d had planned with the Web/Digital Officer of one of the libraries (I’m doing a grand tour of many of the
libraries that comprise the Bodleian, in order to meet all the relevant people), so I sent an email to this staff member to ask if we could reschedule our meeting to another time.
“Okay,” they said, “But I think I’m meeting you in the pub in 90 minutes anyway…”
It turns out that the person whose meeting I’ve asked to reschedule is the friend of the person who recognised me from the staff newsletter, having originally met me three years ago.
Out of all of the people (I’m not sure how many exactly – it’s probably in the staff handbook I haven’t read yet – but I’ll bet it’s a lot) that are employed by this, the largest
university library in the UK, what are the odds?
With all of the rush and busyness of this last week, wrapping up a great number of projects, it’s been easy to forget that these are my very final days as an employee of SmartData. As I mentioned last month, I’m soon to start a new job with the Bodleian
Library here in Oxford, and my time with SmartData must come to an end.
This, then, is my last day. It crept up on me. In a teleconference with my boss and with the representatives of a client, today (a regular weekly “check in” on a project I’ve been
involved with for some time now), we came to the point in the call where we would set an agenda for the next meeting. It took me a moment to remember that I won’t be at
the next meeting, and I had to stop myself from saying “Speak to you then!”
In accordance with tradition, we SmartData boys should knock off early this afternoon and go down to the pub to “see me off”. But, of course, I’m not with the rest of the SmartData boys
– they’re back in Aberystwyth and I’m
working remotely from here on Earth. Instead, I shall try to arrange to
visit them – perhaps on one of the upcoming long weekends – and we can go out for our traditional “goodbye pint” then.
I shall be knocking off early today, though! There’s nothing like taking a few days off between jobs, and what I’m doing… is nothing like taking a few days off between jobs. My weekend
will be spent in Lancaster at the North-West Regional Conference of Samaritans branches, representing Three Rings. Three
Rings now represents the rota management interests of over half of the branches in the North-West of England (and getting-close to half around the UK and Ireland in general), so I
managed to wing myself an invitation to go and show the remaining 47% what they’re missing! Then it’s back down here in time to start my new job on Monday morning!
It’s a good job that I’m of the disposition that would rather be busy than bored!
This will be the first time I’ve ever written an On This Day post where I haven’t been able to link
back to a blog post that I actually wrote in the year in question. That’s because, in 2002, I was “between blogs”: the only thing I wrote about online that I still have a copy of was
the imminent re-launch of AvAngel.com, my vanity
site at the time. In that post, however, I did mention that I’d re-written my CV, which was relevant to what was going on in my life in March 2002…
Looking Back
On this day in 2002, I first began working for SmartData, my primary employer for the last nine years. A few months
earlier, Reb – my girlfriend whom I’d moved in with in 2001 – and I had broken up, and I’d recently found the opportunity to visit Aberystwyth and visit friends there (the trip during
which I first met Claire, although we didn’t get together until a little later). On that same trip to Aber, I also met
Simon, who at that point had recently accepted a voluntary redundancy from the Rural Studies department of the University and was getting started with the launch of his software
company, SmartData. He’d recently landed a contract with the National Dairy Farm Assured Scheme and needed an extra pair of hands on board to help out with it.
Sorting out premises was coming along somewhat slower than he’d planned, though. As part of the SpinOut Wales scheme, SmartData had been offered cheap accommodation in a
University-owned building, but they were dragging their feet with the paperwork. On our first day working together, Simon and I crammed into his tiny home office, shoulder-to-shoulder,
to hack code together. The arrangement didn’t last long before we got sick of it, and we “moved in” to the room (that would eventually be legitimately ours) at Peithyll, a former
farmhouse in the village of Capel Dewi, near Aberystwyth.
The entrance to Peithyll, where SmartData established itself for much of the first six years of its life. It was quite a cycle to get out there every day, but in the summer it made
for a great office: not many people can sit at their desk and watch red kites hunting outside, or go for a lunchtime walk up a hill with a picnic.
Over the last nine years since, as the company has grown, I’ve always felt like a core part of it, shaping it’s direction. As we transitioned from developing primarily desktop
applications to primarily web-based applications, and as we switched from mostly proprietary technologies to mostly open-source technologies, I was pointing the way. By working with a
wide variety of different clients, I’ve learned a great deal about a number of different sectors that I’d never dreamed I’d come into contact with: farm assurance schemes, legal
processes, genetic testing, human resource allocation, cinema and theatre, and more. It’s been a wonderfully broad and interesting experience.
Looking Forward
When I began making plans to move to Oxford, I initially anticipated that I’d need to find work over here. But Simon
stressed that my presence was important to SmartData, and offered to allow me to work remotely, from home, which is most of what I’ve been doing for the last year or so. Thanks to the
miracles of modern technology, this has worked reasonably well: VoIP phones keep
us in touch, tunneling and virtual networks allow us to work as if we were all in the same location, and webcams help us feel like we’re not quite so far from one another.
But this wasn’t to be a permanent solution: just a way to allow me to keep contributing to SmartData for as long as possible. Last week, I was offered and accepted a new job with a new
employer, here in Oxford. Starting in April, I’ll be managing the administration and the ongoing development of the website of the Bodleian Libraries, the deposit library associated with Oxford University.
My new office, right in the heart of Oxford. It looks a lot less green, and a lot more prestigious, than Peithyll.
It’s a huge change, going from working as part of a tiny team in a West Wales town to working with hundreds of people at one of the largest employers in Oxford. I’ve no doubt that it’ll
take some getting used to: for a start, I’m going to have to get into the habit of getting dressed before I go to work – something I could get away with while working from home and that
might even have been tolerated in the office at SmartData, as long as I threw on a towel or something (in fact, I have on more than one occasion taken a shower in the SmartData offices,
then sat at my desk, wrapped in towels, until I’d dried off a little).
This feels like a huge turning point in my life: a whole new chapter – or, perhaps the completion of the “turning a page” that moving to Oxford began. My new job is a brand new
position, which provides an exciting opportunity to carve a Dan-shaped hole, and I’ll be working with some moderately-exciting technologies on some very exciting projects. I’m sure I’ll
have more to say once I’m settled in, but for now I’ll just say “Squeee!” and be done with it.
Oh: and for those of you who follow such things, you’ll note that Matt P has just announced his new job, too. Although he’s a sloppy blogger: he’s actually been working there for a little while
already.
This blog post is part of the On This Day series, in which Dan periodically looks back on years gone
by.
Early this week, I’ve spent quite a bit of time knee deep in the guts of Phusion Passenger
(which remains one of the best deployment strategies for Rack applications, in my mind), trying to work out why a particular application I’d been working on wouldn’t deploy properly
after a few upgrades and optimisations on the development server. Ultimately, I found the problem, but for a few hours there there I thought I was losing my mind.
This lunchtime, I decided to pull out all of my instant messenger logs (being out of the office, my co-workers at SmartData and I do a lot of talking via an IM system). I’d had a hunch that, so far this week, “balls” would be amongst my most-frequently typed
words, chiefly uttered as yet another hypothesis about why the development server wasn’t behaving itself was blown out of the water. A few regular expressions (to strip it down to just
the words I typed) and a run through a word-counter, and I had some results!
Here’s my top words of the work week so far:
Position
Word(s)
1 – 18
the, to, I, a, it, that, of, in, and, on, but, have, what, is, you, just, so, for
Positions 1 through 18 contain some of the most-common conjunctions and pronouns that I use on a day-to-day basis, as well as some common verbs. Nothing surprising there.
So far, so good.
19
Rails
Between the projects I’ve been involved with and those my colleagues are working on, there’s been a lot of discussion about (Ruby on)
Rails around the office so far this week.
20
IPN, do
One of the projects I’ve been working on this week has used a payment gateway with an Instant Payment Notification service, so it’s not surprising that “IPN” appeared in
the top 20, too…
22
was, this
24
my, know, at
27
up, don’t
Over 50% of “don’t”s were immediately followed by “know”: Monday was one of those days.
29
I’m
30
yeah, be, [name of troublesome web app]
Not unexpectedly, the name of the project that caused so much confusion earlier this week came up more than a little.
33
there, one, if
36
we, see, problem, get balls, back, all
These seven words never all appeared in a sentence together, but I sort of wish that they had. There’s the key word – balls – apparently the joint 36th most-used word by me
between Monday morning and Wednesday lunchtime.
Other common words this week so-far included “jQuery“, that great JavaScript library (there was some discussion about how we can best make use of the
new features provided by version 1.5), “payment” (again; a lot of talk of payment processing, this week), “means” (mostly where I was explaining the results of my investigations into
the troublesome server), “tried” (a disappointing-sounding word), “error” (I saw a few of those, to be sure!), and “somehow” (not a reassuring thing to catch yourself saying).
Also pretty common this week was “boiler”, as I explained to my workmates the saga of the boiler at my house, which broke down at the weekend, leaving us with no hot water nor heating
until it was repaired on Tuesday. On the upside, I did get to poke around inside the boiler while the repairman was taking it to bits, and learned all kinds of fascinating things about
the way that they work. So, a silver lining, there.
Bits of our boiler: the hip bone's connected to the... leg bone.
With the boiler fixed at home, and the development server fixed at work, it finally feels like this week’s turning into the right kind of week. But for a while there, it didn’t
look certain!
Between SmartData work, Three Rings work, freelance
work, strange new bits of voluntary work, and the rapidly-looming wedding between Ruth & JTA (along with handling
all of the crises that come with that, like the two mentioned on the wedding blog and the threat of rail strike action on the weekend of the
event, which may affect the travel plans of guests from Aberystwyth), things are a little hectic here on Earth. And I’m sure that I’ve not even got it the worst.
So in order to distract myself from it during this 5-minute moment-to-breathe, I’d like to share with you some photos on the subject of “living with Paul“. As usual, click on a picture for a larger version.
Paul – Single Lemon
Our shopping trips have become in different ways both more and less organised, thanks to Paul (seen here posing under a “single lemon” sign). More organised in that Paul does a sterling
job of making sure that our shopping list whiteboard is up-to-date, and less organised in that we’re even less likely to comply with it… not least because it’s cute the way that his
little head explodes when we deliberately and maliciously make minor deviations in our shopping plans.
Paul’s current status, according to WALL-E.
Well-known as somebody who outright rejects Twitter, Facebook and the like,
Paul’s come up with his own mechanism for sharing his current status with those he cares about: the low-tech alternative – note cards. Held up by a WALL-E figurine at the door to his
room, Paul keeps us up-to-date with a series of about half a dozen pre-written messages that cycle in accordance with what he’s up to at any given time. They’re quickly out of date
(right now, it says “In. Please wave.” but he’s clearly not here), limited in length, and mundane, just like the vast majority of Twitter posts… but at least he’s not attempting to
subject the world to them. I’m still not sure, though, whether this tiny protest against social networking (if that’s what it is) is sheer genius, complete insanity, or perhaps both.
Yorkshire pudding!
Paul is now officially in charge of all Yorkshire pudding production on
Earth, after we enjoyed this gargantuan beast.
Right: my break’s over and I need to get back to my mountain of work. If you’ve not had your fill of Paul yet, then I point you in the direction of a video he’s just uploaded to YouTube…
When ancient Roman typesetters or web designers were showcasing a design, and didn’t want the content of the (dummy) text on their mock-ups to distract the client… what did they use for
their lorem ipsum text?
These are the kinds of things that bother me most when I’m doing typographic layout. That, and Internet Explorer’s consistently fucked-up interpretation of CSS.
Since I’ve been working from home, things with my “day job” at SmartData have ticked along pretty much the same as they ever did before. But once in a while, something goes wrong. Like
this.
I checked my instant messenger, and saw a bit of text from my boss, Simon:
also, have you implemenmted a "message of the day" type feature as users login?
msg from [our contact with a client I've been working with]
[another requested feature]
[and a bug report]
That’s simple enough, then: our contact wants us to fix that bug and add two features: the second one (not listed), and a Message of the Day tool. Easy.
I implemented the MotD, first, because it’s trivial. It’s nice to implement the fast features first, because it gives the client something to play with, test, and get value from while
they’re waiting for the rest of their project. Plus, a “Message of the Day” feature was a nice warm-up activity this morning while my brain picked up steam in order to tackle some of
the bigger tasks of the day.
Later, I spoke to my boss via the instant messenger. The conversation went a little like this:
Dan: If you speak to [client name], let her know I've redeployed.
Dan: New version has [another feature] and the MotD tool.
Simon: MotD tool? For [name of completely unrelated project]
You see, the problem was that without a context of time (I’d ignored the timestamps on the messages), I wasn’t to know that the message “also, have you implemenmted a “message
of the day” type feature as users login?” referred to the previous conversation we’d been having. And didn’t apply to this project at all.
I just hope that my client likes the unsolicited “free” feature I’ve given them, because – well – they’ve got it, now.
Is an unsolicited feature a bug? I’m just not sure.
And while I’ve failed at hitting it, having scooped up my laptop and gone down to the beach only to have to turn around and come back when the sun disappeared behind thick, dark clouds,
Ruth seems to have grasped the concept quite well. She’s reading papers in anticipation of her final ever
exam tomorrow, and, well…
A bug report just came in from a client I’m responsible for at work. It reads:
…Main menu – home page – The ‘g’ of outstanding debts is permanently underlined.
Correct.
I’m not even sure what this message means. It looks like the client is telling me that the letter ‘g’ at the end of the word “outstanding”, which appears in the main menu of the
software I’ve been writing for him, is underlined. I’m pretty clear on this bit of his message (although I’m as-yet unable to get the same effect on my own computer). What I want to
know is, what does he want?
Is he saying that the letter ‘g’ is underlined but that it shouldn’t be? Or that it’s correct that it’s underlined (in which case, why is he filing a bug report?). Or is he asking, in a
convoluted way, for it to be made to be permanently underlined (in which case: why – it doesn’t seem to make any sense?).
I turned up to work this morning, bright and early, and the first thing I noticed was that my desk, the four computers and the UPS block under it, the KVM switch and Ethernet switch on top of it, one of the two monitors
on top of it, and both keyboards on it were all full of water. There was also a sizeable lake of water all over the carpet around my desk, which made disconcerting “splashy” sounds as I
walked over it, and my chair was similarly drenched.
“Shit,” I swore out loud. I looked above the desk and noticed that the skylight directly above it had been left open. “Oh, fuck,” I swore again. I’d been sure that I’d closed it before
I left the office on Friday: and I was certainly the last person out…
The good news is that it wasn’t my fault, in the end. My co-worker, Gareth (this
Gareth), had come in at the weekend “on his way back from the shops,” to use the internet connection (he hasn’t got one at his new home, yet), and while here opened the window to
let in some fresh air.
The other good news is that the damage was limited to totalling a couple of mice and keyboards and costing us the time to mop up the remaining water this morning. Gareth had a go at
using a vacuum cleaner to remove the worst of the dampness from the carpet, but failed when we later realised that the machine was simply ingesting the water and then squirting it out
through the vents at the back. I suggested a nappy was in order, and we briefly considered putting the vacuum cleaner outside the window and continuing to work at sucking up the
moisture, but we eventually thought better of it: now we’ve just got the office fans blowing across the damp patch in the hope that we can expedite evaporation.
My Gran’s been taken into hospital: we could’ve seen that coming when we visited while up that end of the country for my cousin’s
wedding. She’d protested about the possibility of being admitted then, stating that “she’d been in hospital three times before and they hadn’t managed to kill her yet,” which is an
interesting attitude to take. Nonetheless, she’s not in a particularly good state. We shall have to see.
And… my co-worker, Alex, didn’t come in to work today. He’s instead gone to the hospital to have his hand looked at, which he apparently injured last night. We know that he was at the
pub until late and that somebody stole his car keys and he needed to examine the landlord’s CCTV footage to determine where they’d been hidden, but apart from that, we know nothing: he
carefully avoided saying how he’d managed to hurt himself, which implies that it’s something particularly stupid or embarrassing. Let the speculation begin!
SmartData and friends (including our French exchange students and some of their friends from placements around the UK went out for a few drinks and a dance on Friday night. Here’s a piccy which I think pretty much sums up the theme for the evening:
Today’s progress – at work – has been stunning, compared to the problems of last week. This morning, I came in, plugged in, did the
mandatory e-mail and blog checks, read some news, then got down to work. I slapped on some Pink Floyd (Echoes and Division Bell) and the code… just… worked. By just after lunchtime I’d
finished everything I had to do today, and I’m now working on a quote for later in the week. Fabulous.
Paul M: fucking nutter. The most random person you’re ever likely to meet. But you’ve got to love his
sincerity.
This morning, I’m happily sat at my workstation, staring, as I do, at program code and pausing from time to time to check the RSS
feeds of the usual crew, when the phone rings: Matt answers it; it’s Technium reception – they’ve got a parcel for us. Ooh; that’s exciting, but
Matt’s deeply involved in some code so I offer to go and collect it. The arrangement here among us lazy folks is that the receptionist puts the parcel in the lift, and one of us toddles
along the corridor and takes it out of the lift on this floor.
I stood outside the lift and listened as it came up to the first floor. The door opened, and I lifted out the parcel… and that’s when I noticed the first strange thing: the parcel was
addressed to me, personally (which is very unusual) and the address was written entirely in marker pen (rather than being a printed label, as most goods delivered to us here are). I’m
not expecting anything; least of all at work: I never give my work address to anybody. Who could have sent this?
I opened it and laughed out loud. It took just a second to realise what was going on, as I recalled a conversation in the RockMonkeyChatRoom yesterday lunchtime…
[11:38]* Ava_Work goes to nuke food [11:38] <Ava_Work> Hmm… spaghetti hoops on toast for me, methinks…
[11:39] <Pacifist_049> You’re microwaving spaghetti hoops?
[11:41] <Ava_Work> Yup.
[11:41] <Ava_Work> Why?
[11:41] <Pacifist_049> Philistine
[11:41] <Ava_Work> So…
[11:41] <Ava_Work> …how else can I do it?
[11:41] <Ava_Work> And think carefully now…
[11:41] <Pacifist_049> Pan
[11:41] <Ava_Work> A pan. Which I don’t have. But let’s pretend I did. How would I heat it?
[11:41] <Pacifist_049> I know you don’t have a cooker at work, but that’s not the issue here. It’s the principle, damnit!
[11:42] <Ava_Work> So; as it pisses YOU off so much, feel free to bring me a pan and a cooker. Then I’ll do it your way, which is – in the end – preferable.
[11:42] <Ava_Work> However, it doesn’t piss ME off enough that I’ll go hungry rather than nuke spaghetti hoops.
Click on images for larger versions.
The parcel, as shown above, contains a pan, wooden spoon, loaf of bread, tin of spaghetti hoops, and a strangely familiar electric
hob.
Which is a fab gesture, although if I use it for my lunch today I’ll have to do so on the sly, on account of the fact that the Technium facilities manager is in today and this
particular piece of electrical equipment has not been electrically safety-tested.
…minding my own business, and some random guy walks in through the office door, looking lost. Nobody seems to get up to see to him, so I – in my new desk, which is quite close to the
door – go over to greet him. “Is there;” he begins, sounding a little unsure of himself, “Is there a ‘Scatman’ here?”
Oh; fucking hell, I think. For some reason, I’m reminded of the last time somebody wandered up and confirmed my identity by addressing me by my “blog name”, and it turned out to be a
scary stalker type. I try to think back about what libellous thing I might have said this week.
“Hi; I’m from Unigryw (another company in the Technium),” he begins, “I was looking at your web site
-“
“Scatmania.org,” I reply, pronouncing the hyperlink with surprising clarity.
So, I let him. Pretty much all the original content on my weblog is covered by a creative commons license anyway, but I
just told him he could do whatever he liked with it. And if only LocalTVi had an RSS feed, I’d keep an eye out for my review appearing on it, too. I thought everything had an RSS feed, these days. Ah well.
