domdavis.com

I know a lot of people complained that there was no summer but we did actually have a typical (and quite nice) summer this year. Helped that I was off for the whole of it as many of the nicer days were weekdays. OK, there were no major heatwaves lasting for ages, but you’d all be whinging about it being too hot anyway.

What we haven’t had is autumn. The trees are just turning and yet we’re getting cold, crisp nights that, combined with the smell of wood fires, put me in mind of bonfire night and onwards into winter. It’s cold, wet and miserable. I’ve got my first cold (although that’s going to be more a function of commuting and being in a big air conditioned office again), I’ve closed all the windows in the house and the heating is likely to come on a month early. I even had the bathroom heater on this morning. Is it too much to ask for the gradual decline into winter that we usually get rather than this whole ’sod it, summer is over’ rubbish?

There is a big unmarked grey warehouse type thing (king of thing where you’d expect to find a large Comet, Homebase and the like) by the side of the track just outside Norwhich on the Sherringham line. It’s got large black double gates to get in and out, black double fence surrounding with barbed wire and two loading bays that are always closed. Nothing seems to be parked outside it ever and the only people you ever see are security patrolling the perimeter. Sounds very secret basey to me

I got a call today from a friend I’d not spoken to in ages which was great. The timing was perfect as I was stuck at Norwich station for 45 minutes and I had time to talk and catch up. During the conversation my phone went beep to tell me I had a text. Fine, probably my mum just replying to my text about being late and the new time to collect me. 5 minutes later beep again. And again 5 minutes later. Hmm. I’ve confused the phone as it was on hands free and it isn’t any more so the screens locked and I can’t see who’s texting so incessently. Thinking it’s my mum asking where I was because shed got to the station when I was supposed to arrive I cut short my conversation and go find out what all the fuss is. Turns out it was only one text. I keep forgeting the latest version of the Jesus Phone software keeps bleeping at you when you get a text until you aknowledge it and it gets me every time. I wish you could turn it off because sometimes I just read the text as it’s flashed up when I receive it and don’t do anything else. 5 minutes later it’s beeping and I’m thinking I’ve got a new text. If anyone has worked out how to stop it fe doing this please let me know.

Spent some time last night actually tidying the spare room and finishing plugging in stuff so it’s now tidy enough to take photos off. So, my new setup

I hate the fact that in OSX 10.5 when applications have installed they make the same sound as the iPhone does when it gets a text. I keep thinking I have a text, get my hopes up and then realise it’s just the computer telling me MySQL is insalled

I do a lot of typing at work. Behind sitting on my butt, talking to other people, surfing the web, using MSN, popping out for food, emailing people and reading it’s probably one of the largest portions of my job. Of course, with much typing comes the risk of RSI which is why I use my own keyboard. Unfortunately my old logitech keyboard (which was very much like a laptop keyboard) seems to have died on me so I had to get a new one. I went for a similar one (the diNovo Edge) which again has laptop like keys but also has many nice things like a built in trackpad (if I knew it would work with my mac mini I’d get one for home) and shiny chav lights. Ironically enough, if I was sure Apple keyboards would play nicely with work PC’s I’d have probably got one of those instead since they also have nice keys with very little travel, and they’re a lot cheaper Hmmm… perhaps I could take in the Apple keyboard to work and if it works I could bring the diNovo keyboard home and try it on the mini…

Much as I am enjoying my job there are down very real downsides. It’s a small company so a lot of the ameinaties you’d expect from a larger company just aren’t there. For example, while we have free cans of soft drink and a water machine, there is no chocolate dispensing machine. This means that at 7pm on a Wednesday with a code freeze looming the next day and absolutely no clue how I’m going to write what I need to write (turns out it was impossible so I didn’t have to in the end, which was nice) as the stress levels are going up there is no way to get chocolate (vital for coding in these types of situation) without leaving your desk, heading out of the building and finding some form of chocolate vending establishment. I would keep an emergency supply in my desk but I’d just eat it

It’s important that I keep you all up to date with what I am doing. Sometimes I feel I should tweet that I’ve just updated my facebook status [in fact... just have, god I'm a sad little minkey at times]. Anyway, the nice people at Facebook have given me a new iPhone app to do just this. I can now comment on status updates, see the same news feeds as I can on the site and a whole host of lovely niceness which just means I can be even more Web2.0 on the move than I already am (yes, I MSN while walking, the is no hope). There are a few bugs, such as other peoples status updates seem to start at 8 hours ago and then count down or something strange like that, but I’m sure that’ll get sorted soon. In the mean time Dom is blogging about tweeting about updating his facebook to say he’s tweeting about blogging or something like that

Saw my first ever Zune this week. Being a die hard Jobsian with a need to always have the latest and greatest iPod the whole Zune thing is completely alien to me, plus I’d never actually knowingly seen one. Turns out my boss has one. Not entirely sure how I feel about this. He’s also very proud of it. Seems to think that and a crackberry is better than a single Jesus Phone. And yet he uses (and swears at a LOT) a macbook at work. Odd