Stuart Herbert

Just a quick test to see if I can post using the latest Opera beta. If you can see this, the answer must be ‘yes’

The new job continues to go extremely well.

Work News

I’m still wrestling with the problem of taming the department’s TODO list, and so far I haven’t decided whether or not MS Project Server is a help or a hinderance. It’s fair to say that some of us have had trouble believing that it’s a product someone would actually want to charge money for.

But it is nice being able to sit down and put together a comprehensive technical plan. It’s no secret that I’ve no time either for the vast majority of online project management tools (of which Basecamp is the poster child) nor the people that these tools are aimed at. Project management is, by necessity, a rich and detailed skill. It can be simplified to stop it becoming the Ministry for Administrative Affairs, but it can’t be glossed over. I was horrified when certain folks I’ve worked with in the past used to laugh about being unable to create project plans. I’m a great believer that if you don’t want to do the job properly (whatever your job is), get out the way and let someone else do it right instead.

And what I love about my new job is that my boss is on my back all the time to get the job done right. That’s how it should be. We’re building something special at Gradwell, and you can’t do that if things aren’t done right.

Tech News

Rather than buy a 3G iPhone, I decided to get a HTC TyTn II instead. Unlike the iPhone, it has a removable battery, and it can be used as a 3G modem by my MacBook Pro – extending the battery life of my laptop by a good 45 mins. It also has a very usable slide-out keyboard, making it very easy to use as a way to get at my email when I’m out and about.

The downside is that it runs Windows Mobile. You think Vista is bad? Windows Mobile is worse. It crashes daily, comes with the second worst browser around (Internet Explorer for Windows Mobile), and doesn’t seem to have an equivalent to Apple’s App Store. The email client is quite good – except that this week it has decided to freeze when syncing email with work’s IMAP server. Tomorrow’s job is to snag someone else’s TyTn II at work and do some testing to see whether it’s my device, or the IMAP server.

Turns out that the TyTn II is also surprisingly affordable. If you try and buy an unlocked one, the cheapest I’ve seen was over 450 pounds. Nowhere seems to stock one either, so I’m not sure how easy they are to get hold of that way. Instead, I signed up for a 12 month contract with Vodafone. For 30 pounds a month, I get the TyTn II and a 5GB data allowance. At the end of the 12 months, I can cancel the contract, I get to keep the TyTn II, and I’ve saved a hundred pounds. Bargain.

Sad News

Last Friday was Rob’s funeral. The service was held in St Mary’s Church in Butetown, and it was standing room only. I thought it was a lovely service, and a great send-off for him. He was buried in Thornhill Cemetery, where we watched as mourners grabbed shovels and buried the coffin there and then. After that, a lot of folks headed down to the Wharf, but I couldn’t face it. I came home and locked myself away for the rest of the day. I just wanted to be alone with my own grief.

I think Corina said it best when she described Rob’s passing as a bad dream that we all wish we could wake up from. After the wife, and being at work, I probably spent more time with Rob than with anyone else the nine years that I knew him.

Teaching News

I had the all-important bit of paper through from Barry College. I’m now formally qualified to teach adults in Lifelong Learning programmes. I passed the teaching assessment with a grade ‘A’ too, which gives me a bit more confidence as I try to turn the Tai Chi class into a more structured two year programme. The whole point of the changes is to build on what Rob figured out about learning Tai Chi, to put it into a format that’s more accessible yet again and also into a plan that’s well paced for the students.

I’m also hard at work with the camcorder, experimenting with the best way to record Tai Chi lessons. This is something I must work harder on

It’s the end of the fourth week in the new job, and after an overnight stay in Bath and trips to London, Somerset, Sheffield and London again, it’s good to have a bank holiday weekend to look forward to. And then next week it’s off up to the North East to meet another colleague for the first time and do some coaching.

The time has flown by – I must be having a lot of fun

It’s a shame that this First Great Western train I’m on atm (the 19:15 from Paddington to Swansea) isn’t going as quick. For once, it’s not the fault of First Great Western or their (in my experience, all too often unprofessional) staff, but after two hours we’re just pulling into Didcot Parkway, and not Cardiff where we should be. Hopefully we’re past the latest problem to plague this service, and it’ll be a much quicker second half of the journey!

This job is full of pleasures both big and small. One of the small ones today was to introduce one of my colleagues to the joy that is the Foyles bookshop in London. If you’ve never been to Foyles, it’s difficult to explain why this wonderful shop is different to all the other bookshops in central London (and, I believe, in the UK as a whole), but every time I get to show someone this mecca of books, the reaction is always a good one.

I managed to escape with just three books: one of the Wu style of Tai Chi, a replacement for my loaned-and-never-to-be-returned copy of the Principles of Effortless Power (another martial arts book), and the new book from Packt on OpenSER. That last one is going to live in the office, me thinks.

I also managed to escape the Apple store without a new Macbook Pro, but only because they didn’t have a 4GB RAM model to hand for me to take with me there and then (they normally do the upgrade in the shop on demand, but I didn’t have the time to wait the three hours they quoted for it). As much as I love my current Macbook Pro, I’m finding the short battery life (<2 hours on average) to be a bit tight on the longer journeys I’m now doing. The later generations can manage double that, which I’d find much more convenient. Ah well, maybe later in the year as a Christmas treat to myself.

The worst thing I’ve done so far was totally self-inflicted. I managed to brick my Nokia N82. As wonderful as Parallels is for running Windows on the Mac, never ever try running a Nokia firmware upgrade using it. I tried; the whole virtual machine died partway through the firmware upgrade, and the N82 was toast. (Wouldn’t it be great if Nokia had A/B firmware slots like digital cameras do? They could release firmware upgrades much more regularly and not be worried about silly folks like me bricking their phones). It had to be sent back to Nokia, and I’m missing it greatly. I hope it comes back soon! Then I can start loading Ordnance Survey raster data onto it

Oh, we’ve just made it to Swindon. Maybe I’ll make it home today instead of tomorrow after all …

I smell of train, that horrible recycled stale-air smell you find on British trains these days. But I don’t care.

The first week in the new job has been great. I’ve got this big silly grin on my face (even though I’m thoroughly knackered from all the commuting). There’s a lot of hard work ahead, but it’s exactly the sort of work that I find fun. I guess there’s something wrong with me

The travelling hasn’t been too bad. Monday was the worst, when the 18:35 from Bath Spa didn’t turn up at all. I finally got home just after 21:00, thoroughly shattered. Lesson learned; I need to be out the door in time for the 16:35 where possible, or for the 17:35 at the latest. Any later than that, and a hotel for the night is worth serious consideration.

Working on the train out from Cardiff on a morning is a real luxury. Most managers never get – or take – the time on a morning to review the day ahead. At the moment, the time’s mostly going on all the new stuff I have to learn, but it’s going to be a real godsend as I’m more involved in the day to day. Amusingly (to me, anyway) this is the same train I was catching down to Southampton during my secondment to the OS (albeit an hour earlier), so it already feels like I’ve been doing this routine for months.

On the train back, it’s a bit more hit and miss. Most days, I’ve been able to snag a table seat, or one of those seats at the end opposite the space for the wheelchairs (those spaces are the best; the table seats on these First Great Western commuter trains are quite cramped), but when FGW forget to stick the right number of carriages on the train, it’s standing-room only all the way back to Cardiff. Thankfully, there are plenty of excellent audiobooks one can buy and listen to when this happens. Management audiobooks are very popular, but I’m seriously thinking of getting all of the Harry Potter audiobooks for when distraction is the better approach.

I have to give a special mention, and a huge thank you, to everyone for making me feel so welcome. Most places make an effort for new staff, but this is different, because I don’t think they’re making a special effort. It feels a lot like my time working at the University of Sheffield – and those were without doubt the happiest years of my professional life so far.

I definitely owe Aled a beer for putting me onto this job in the first place.

I ran into Richard from Box UK on the platform at Cardiff a couple of times this week. It’s nice to hear that I’m being missed, and I certainly miss the sort of work I wanted to do there, but right now I don’t miss the work I ended up doing there. Everyone tells me that I’m great at consultancy, but it doesn’t give me the personal satisfaction that working on products, services and systems does. I guess it’s why I took to Tai Chi; I’m a natural observer, and I love that iterative polishing and improving something release after release after release. You just don’t get that in consultancy. Consultancy all to often is like a one-night stand. As some of you who are married will understand from your own experience, there’s a much more meaningful fulfilment to be had from a deeper commitment.

I bumped up the RAM on the MacBook Pro this evening. It’s now at the max of 3GB; shame it won’t go to 4GB like the later generation MBPs will. It’s mostly to speed up Aperture 2, and to make things a bit quicker when I’m running a couple of virtual machines at a time (CentOS and Ubuntu for work).

Tomorrow is toy day. Got to send the dead Cisco router back for a replacement, and the new phone and GPS navigator should arrive too. I’ve bought the Garmin Mobile XT product and an unlocked Nokia N82 to run it on. The N82 is mainly to play with VoIP over Wifi, although it does have a 5 megapixel camera too, which I’m looking forward to. Bath is a very pretty place after all, and I’m learning the virtue of travelling as light as possible.

Hopefully Sunday I’ll make it out to get some more Merthyr Road photography done. There’s some old railway tracks in the woods at Treforrest that I wouldn’t mind taking a careful look at.

… and I’m really looking forward to starting the new job on Monday.

Most of Thursday went on a nice walk around Pontypridd, taking photos for my next Merthyr Road article, which I’m calling Bridging The Rivers At Pontypridd. I also wrote up blog articles for two older photosets from my travels … Winter In Eden, and Back in Brighton. That brought me almost up to date (but not quite) with my backlog of work. Spent the evening processing the bridge photos, and went to bed unhappy with the results.

Friday was a lazy day, after tidying up the house that is! Two more photography blog articles to clear the backlog: The Towers Of Brains Brewery, and Easter In The Malvern Hills. Took another look at the bridge photos. Decided to keep the HDR versions after all, but to tone down the colours to make them look much closer to LDR (ie normal) images. Figured out how to fool Aperture into backing up photos to a network drive – I need to write that up in a blog posting. Also had fun playing around with the “create a book” tools in Aperture. I like the idea of taking my Merthyr Road articles, and making them into books that can be ordered online, but I think Aperture’s book features are a bit too limited for that. More thought required here, me thinks.

Work up this morning with terrible cramp in my left calf. Haven’t had a cramp attack like that for months! Taught Kristi some basic Chinese massage so that she could fix up my leg. Hobbled down to the station, and bought my monthly season ticket to Bath for Monday. The look on the lady’s face was priceless, and I promised her that when I can finally afford an annual ticket (costing over 3k), I’ll come back and buy it through her, and not down in Cardiff. Watched Never Back Down at Cineworld in Cardiff with Kristi … it’s shallow and predictable, but with plenty of eye candy on offer for both sexes. Watch out for the guy who plays Ryan; I think we’ll see a lot more from him in the future. Enjoyed the first episode of the new Doctor Who series this evening, although I still think that RTD over-uses background music. Here’s hoping he takes a back seat from here; the best episodes of the last season were those he didn’t write.

Kristi made me watch the original Buffy the Vampire Slayer movie this evening (boo for Sky+ boxes). I’m utterly amazed that they managed to get a TV show off the ground on the back of this outing. I managed to escape after an hour or so, but Kristi carried on as apparently the comedy vampire death at the end makes it all worth while. Go figure.

Haven’t seen the footie yet (yay for Sky+ boxes; I get to spend Sunday morning vegged out watching Match of the Day), but I did read that Newcastle United won again We must be safe from relegation now, and a good end to the season will improve spirits at the club ready for the next campaign.

I think I’m all set for Monday. Part of me isn’t looking forward to the commute, but once I’ve settled into a routine and I’m able to work on the train, I’m sure it’ll just become a normal part of the day. I’m really looking forward to starting the new job. Working on secondment at the Ordnance Survey for the last few months reminded me just how much fun work can be when you’re working for the right sort of people and you’re encouraged to apply yourself to make a real difference. In the last year, after years of a fairly stable life, I’ve lost three people to cancer. Life is transitory, and if you’re just going through the motions every day, what’s the point? That’s not living, it’s surviving. That’s why I left my old job, because I want to get back to making a real difference, and I want to work for someone who demands that I do, rather than being afraid of me and looking to hold me back every opportunity going. I wish everyone at Box UK well, and I hope they all achieve the success that they deserve. But that chapter of my life is over now (well, almost; it’ll be over when basic paperwork like P45’s turn up), and I’m ready to take the next steps forward.