Passing Thoughts

Me on a train

Things are settling down. Its looking like this job is not going to be overly stressful - very hard work, yes but not the stupid kind of stress of which there has been a lot in the last few years. I've also finally got my proper photo pass which means I'm allowed a key to the room I work in at last. Security at work is quite funny - mostly, like a lot of security systems, about the appearance of security and probably easily bypassed by a determined social engineer. Its a little disturbing how little people actually think about security properly. They seem to assume that your average intruder will be deterred by the things that most honest folks would be deterred by, forgetting entirely that the intruder has a different mindset althogether.

I've got my new picture book up and running, including the built in camera as you can see. Still haven't got any networking but I bought a cheap USB key which does the trick for transferring files. I only really use this machine for writing anyway at the moment. Apart from the occasional jolts the train is quite a good place to work.

I haven't done much cultural of late though - I need to get back to my reading and I also need to get into London a bit more an check out some gallery's. All in good time though.

I'm listening to Kesto by pan sonic right now - only the first (of four) disk right now. Its rather excellent - they have moved on a long way from the minimal techno of their first album. This one starts off with a total rock and roll attitude - all leather jackets and low slung Bass. Right now its exploring more gentle territory. From what I've heard so far its going to be a good album. The other essential listening is the recording from Coil's recent appearance in Paris. Its a bit hard to get hold of but well worth the effort. There are some excellent video clips about too.

A Small Change in circumstances

Phew - its been busy. Ok - so we now live in Ely in a nice but slightly small house and I moved all our stuff there single handedly last weekend. I work for the British Library on their web archiving programme and I spent the rest of last week in Copenhagen at the Black Diamond with regard to this. Oh and we have another child due in 5 weeks.

Actually, apart from not having a second to myself for a while, its all good. The new job is excellent and is going to be really exciting to work on. Essentially all of the worlds libraries are turning their attention to collecting and preserving digital content as well as the more traditional paper based stuff they are used to. The International Internet Preservation Consortium initiated largely by the inimitable Julien Masanès (who I had the good fortune to meet last week and will be working with) has begun to get the various libraries working together on the technology to make this happen. My role is as project engineer for the British Library in the project. I will be making sure that the work we commit to happens and that the grand visions of the Curators and other non-technical participants get turned into working technology. I'm working in quite a new environment compared to the small companies I have frequented in later years. The BL is as you might imagine a slow moving, venerable British institution will all that that entails. On the other hand the project is cutting edge, fairly fast moving and based around a small team. This in itself presents an interesting challenge. Our work is to be Open Sourced and our entire working environment based on open source software. We will have a project server on line shortly (when I've built it) where I will be maintaining a work blog.

Hopefully as a little more sanity and normality return to my life I will have other things to comment on.