« May 2006 | Main | July 2006 »
June 22, 2006
June 21, 2006
Storm Damage
So the predicted tropical storm was worse than expected, I will have to eat my words.
I spent a sleepless night boarding windows and preparing the house and garden for the onslaught. It was a bad few hours before we got in to the quiet lull at the eye of the storm. When the calm descended I ventured out to see how badly we were hit. It's pretty bad so those of a nervous disposition beware....here it is.
June 20, 2006
Foyle Fishing Permits & Licences
I really do not know how tourists manage with the mess that is the permit and licence world of fishing in Northern Ireland, particularly in the Foyle area.
I have booked a trip with foylefishing.com for some salmon fishing at the beginning of July. We both have game rod licences, we also need a Lough Agency Short Licences, and I think a DCAL short licence. Both those pages are confusing as hell. To top it off the permits from each of the different angling clubs cost different prices based on which licences you have.
Danny that runs foylefishing.com often talks about the mess of the set up on his website. It really needs to be revamped and the process simplified. I decided to book Danny as a guide for a few reasons, but I admit one of the main ones was to guide me through the maze of permits and licences.
The licence and permits websites are a disaster, a real lack of joined up thinking or and valuable information.
June 19, 2006
is and are
I'm adding a new category called snippets, for all those little things I often find myself looking for over and over again.
I must admit I am often lazy when it comes to making sure my grammar is correct if there is only 1 item in an array or a hash.
So in order to ensure that my text reads,
there "is" one item in bar or
there "are" items in bar.
my $foo = ( scalar @$bar > 1 ) ? "are $num items" : "is $num item";
lack of -r flag in grep
Saved for later, if like me your version of grep lacks the -r flag like mine under Solaris, and you wish to do a recursive search you can use find and xargs like so.
find /path -type f |xargs grep 'foo'
tropical storm
Batten down the hatches, BBC weather have a tropical storm forecast for tomorrow. ;-) Fingers crossed this isn't like Michael Fish's infamous hurricane prediction.
June 16, 2006
Brainstorming
John Clark, a former university dean of engineering, says brainstorming sessions come in handy to distribute blame in the event of failure. But in his experience, most often someone hijacks the topic at hand, tries to prove everyone else wrong, works to impress the superiors who are present, or just plain blathers for his own enjoyment. "I can't remember a single instance where a group produced a really creative idea," he says.
Cubicle Culture: How brainstorming works best
June 11, 2006
moving on
For the last six months I was working with the BBC, based in Belfast but spending one week in three in London. I left a permanent job to risk a one year fixed term contract. Tomorrow would have been exactly half way through this contract.
I start a new job tomorrow, a permanent job again, so the instability of a temporary contract has gone. This makes me a lot more content, and I am really looking forward to the new challenge.
I feel a lot of guilt changing jobs, there was a lot of time and money involved with recruiting me, inducting me and employing me.
I took the risk of leaving permanent employment to get experience working on a major project in my area of interest. This experience was a little different to what I was expecting to get from the job, so I thought it wise to apply for other jobs rather than get frustrated.
The people I met whilst working the BBC were undoubtedly the highlight of my 6 months, some really interesting characters with some very interesting stories to tell.
My final hotel room picnic was consumed;;
The hotel of choice was the fabulous Hilton Metropole on the Edware Rd, apparently the hotel offers some of the best panoramic views across the city of London, I just had to capture the beauty from one of the "BBC rate" suites. ;-)
My London team organised a leaving do in the BBC Club on the fourth floor of the Television Centre, it was one of those memorable warm summer's evenings drinking alfresco in good company, a thoroughly enjoyable evening.
The beauty of being employed in two locations means two leaving dos and the Belfast team organised a lovely send off on Friday complete with a totally unexpected gift which was exceedingly generous for such a short innings.
So it is with a slight regret that I move on to the next job, I have some nice memories from my second stint working for the BBC.
June 02, 2006
sunset
A sunset taken from Sydenham.
belfast ATARI WORLD CHAMIONSHIP
June 01, 2006
World Atari Championship
I came in the top 8 of the Belfast WORLD ATARI CHAMPIONSHIPS last night. Photos to follow shortly. Keith my colleague managed to reach the semi finals, there was a pretty stringent qualification procedure, so we were pleased with the result. ;-)
http://www.visonic.org.uk/artists/visonic-special-events.htm#atari