Its half past eight and I’ve been up for three hours now. For some people that might be fine but I’m not a morning person, never have been and its increasingly looking like I never will be. For some reason my mind and body are sluggish and unresponsive in the day time but by evening I’m firing on all cylinders and that’s when I tend to do my best thinking and work. Which is a bit unfortunate when you consider the daytime is when I actually am at work. That’s not to say I don’t like the mornings – the world is quite a nice place before and while everyone is getting up and before the mad rush to work starts happening.
Some books are just full of electricity. I’m reading Pattern Recognition by William Gibson at the moment. Set in the modern day it captures the sensation of being on the edge of things – not quite getting the whole picture – perfectly. What makes it brilliant is not the plot but more the minutiae of the main character Cayce and her connection to the world around her. Gibson’s writing has matured considerably since his (still excellent) early books and this is an extremely well crafted book. A real pleasure to read. It also illustrates well Gibson’s maxim that the future is already here, just not well distributed. The interactions on the internet echo the stories set in cyberspace of his earlier books. Like a magic trick done by Penn and Teller seeing how its done increases the magic somehow rather than decreasing it. This is Gibson’s best book by far.
two men in ill fitting suits
two men in a room
a gun held in another mans face
a moment fraught with the resonances
of lives lived
the echo’s and implications
of a death
in a slow voice
one man says
“..like a Harold Pinter play…”
there is a long
silence
A silly poem that occured to me on my travels tonight.
Today was filled with the unwanted excitment of computer hackers wreaking havoc on an unprepared network. I am tired.
My sojourn into the world of job seeking has come to an end and gainful employment is mine once again. I now work for these people. Vamosa is part of Marcat which is owned by the people that used to run Gamut who used to employ me several years ago. Its very pleasant to be working in a dynamic atmosphere once again. The lack of customer activity at Appropria had become very demoralising and understandably the mood had become rather heavy.
One of the worst things about looking for jobs are recruitment agents. Now there are good agents out there and I have even been found work by them but there are also a very large number who know nothing about IT or the jobs they are trying to fill. Instead they get by using key phrases and words and simply try and match the words in the job advert with those on your cv. The other delightful trick they employ will be familiar to anyone who has ever had contact with an estate agent. The "talking up" of jobs and positions, so that for example Tea Boy becomes a position with great potential for growth, is rife. At least I am free of their attentions again.
The manuscripts of E.W Dijkstra have recently been published. Dijkstra is one of the founding fathers of modern IT and there is some great stuff here. For anyone working as a software developer this article is a great read.
Well I'm unemployed. Despite a valiant effort by the entire team we finally ran out of money. The big deal we made at the start of the year fell through and there was nothing for it. Appropria itself is still battling on in skeleton mode so its not quite the end of the story but unless a miracle happens its not far off.
If you work in IT you get used to this kind of thing. The only real hassle is that the job market is not quite the one I would choose to enter voluntarily so the immediate future is not as clear as I would like it to be. For the longer term the time seems to be right for going it alone and setting my own company up. I have a business plan that’s been brewing quietly in the background for a while now so watch this space.
The biggest thing I have noticed with this sudden change in circumstances is a) how stressed I must have been and b) how tired I am now the stress is not pushing me forwards.
The next few weeks are going to be the usual in these circumstances. Phoning agents and sending emails (and possibly even letters but I haven’t done that to find a job for years now). It is also a great opportunity to get some work done on my projects and also a project Abby is doing. Best of all of course I get to spend some quality time with Abby and Milo while I’m not too tired or stressed out.
I don’t get to listen to much music at home (due mainly to Abby hating most of the music I like) but the Sylvian album “Blemish” (see below) is a stunning piece of work.