Friday, December 15, 2017

Last Day

Today is my last day at Citrix.
What shall I say after 7 years, lets compose ourselves, I have a severance package, and some clauses, which pretty much says, "be nice, and we will be nice".
For me , today says, "the wheel turns".
This last year has been more about people and process than about software engineering sadly, although one positive process thing was learning a lot of agile. I tried to learn some Java and Angular this year, but that's another story, and as evidenced today, was pointless.

It's been a good ride though, in the previous 6 years, I learned a new programming language, two actually if you count my rubbish Python, which really is more ropey than snake. I learned about virtualisation, that changing tools can happen many times in a year, and that testing, is not checking!

I learned to drink beer, and that more than a pint of beer does not like me the next day. I know I will meet some ex Citrites in the future, just like I have me many ex Symbianites since those doors closed 8 years ago, so do keep the connection open your end. I am really looking forward to working with software that is a bit closer to real hardware again, and more focused on delivering one thing. I suppose I never really got the hang of working in large companies, Symbian and Citrix for me feel so large and mechanical as places to work, where the daily email barrage is a relentless un-necessary distraction that communicates no true message in the end. I hope, email is a thing we fix in future. Even Slack , fixes nothing in reality. And while in that basket, nor did Skype fix anything. The lesson there, keep your head down, probably my greatest flaw.

Signing out
Z

(Starting a contract position at Displaylink in January, well chuffed.)

Tuesday, November 28, 2017

Headshot

A quick scaled image with background blur to update my profile pics everywhere with.

Monday, July 17, 2017

Nala the dark princess

We went to Woodgreen animal shelter together to find a cat to be re-homed. Something we had delayed due to the home renovation bustle and noises which we figured would not be great for any cat regardless.

Nala arrived home, already starting to explore

A real lady, and after 2 weeks still settling in, feeling like old family. We have found that, she likes to watch TV in the evenings with us. Is still very shy and retreats to a cosy dark corner for any sudden movement or noises. So not many good well lit photos. She is a real lady, very polite; well trained and all; and although lazy to jump up on the bed is not inactive at all, she just shot past me now like a thundering bullet 3 times up and down the stairs, just randomly. Does not like sudden noises, but is perfectly fine with the vacuum cleaner. 

Finding a cat was a plan that started back in May actually, I made a sortie out to the Godmanchester shelter to see what the place was like and was totally impressed. Woodgreen is not like any other animal charity I've been to. It's very organised, astutely funded (although we found that even that is a tough job), very slick managed site, and focused on one thing. Animal well-being, and that was my big concern, after last having had an animal 10 years ago, I wondered what had changed in petcare. Not much, aside from more regimented immunization it appears.
Back home, we used to only worry about worms and fleas when that particular time of year came around, and yes, already figured out that those nasty cat collars are in fact really nasty in more than one way for a cat.

Nala really loves a good ear rubbing and will walk almost endlessly in circles until your arm is about to fall off just for nudges with her flat nose. Almost trying to scent transfer I guess, but she loves head scratching. Nala is always purring, and slowly getting more comfortable, and spends most time with the youngest boy, mostly under his bed. Oh, and we found she does like to play with all those kinds of fluffy toys and balls that can be knocked about. Quite fun to watch.

She is keen to see outside through the window, which is a good thing to be interested in, but that's still a long way off. She does appear to have lost a bit of weight, still struggling for a way to weigh her, since nobody is allowed to pick her up, that might get technical. We found she will mostly eat more consistently overnight, and also mooches around at night a good bit. Nala is really working out well for us, and she seems to be liking it too.

Hope to get better pictures as time goes by, she does not sit still. Just love this little lady.

Tuesday, May 16, 2017

Am I in tune?

Started trying to sing recently. As a slightly tone deaf and slightly imbalanced (that last I think happened on a shooting range) hearing person, it's not as simple as you might imagine. Being tone deaf, I have always found it hard to listen to anyone talking or singing. The former probably more out of habit. but I have never had an ipod. a spotify an itunes or a CD collection. I have just over a dozen CDs to my name, such a small collection it's not even worth throwing them out. So why sing?

Well it's a happy thing I guess.
http://www.reaper.fm/ - looks cool, might try buy this later on.

https://malfunktion.bandcamp.com/releases

Also tried out but was disappointing by JukeDeck. AI music composer, https://www.jukedeck.com/
JukeDeck is really limited and random. Makes great sounds 9/10 times though, so good for intros or outros/stings. But since no 2 sounds are ever similar, it's not possible to really do something that feels "continous" without spending a load of time generating random short tracks.

Just found an alternative to Reaper - making me wonder if computer made/composed music is the new art frontier. And whether everyone is using a common codebase to churn out all of these apps.
It's MAGIX Music Maker
http://www.magix.com/us/music-maker/
And you an get it for a limited time in the humble bundle with some free credit go buy plugins (trax too I assume.)

Friday, February 24, 2017

House

Radiator and boiler notes
Some good backgrounder notes written for installers that actually explain how the things work for non installers too.
http://www.stovefittersmanual.co.uk/articles/boiler-stoves/