Older blog entries for gilbertt (starting at number 18)

The really scary thing about taking the plunge from a steady, dependable, stable career in a stiflingly large corporate environment into the dynamism, involvement and whirling pool of instability that is a small startup is what happens when it all goes horribly wrong and you end up in the shit.

There is nothing worse in the world than being given something better than you ever expected, realising it is exactly what you wanted, where you wanted to be, and suddenly having it all taken away.

Well, maybe there is, but it hasn't happened to me. Yet.

Fucking useless uselessness.

aaronl: That's nothing. I just forked wget because it links with xlib. Oh wait. It doesn't. Duh!

So anyone coming to apachecon next month? I'll be there, my company has a stand (between Sun and IBM) and I'll be there showing off some web clustering and video streaming etc. Should be a lot of fun.

Oh, I'm all moved in to my new place in London now. It's really nice. I ate out at Waggamamma the other night. Awesome Japanese food. Really cool place.

Gonna join Lonix next week, they tend to meet in a pub in SoHo - London rocks :-)

*sigh*

I am sending an infiltrator to steal RMS's crack.

That way at some point we could maybe just get back to writing (and sharing) code, instead of having to get involved in politics and legality every time we sit down at a keyboard.

*shrug* oh well. On with life. I'm moving house on Thursday, gonna be in London by the weekend. Coolness.

New job starts next Monday. Woah.

Well, now I know how complex polygons got their name =P

I'm currently enhancing the drawing routines in imlib2. I have already added line and rectangle clipping, and polygon drawing. Right now I'm doing polygon filling, then polygon clipping and image blend clipping. It's really quite a lot of fun, if somewhat mind-bending...

Still, I always wanted to learn how to do this stuff, so it's great to play with

Hrm. Thinking about it, I have to do text clipping too. That should be fun, with antialiased truetype fonts to content with =P

So I found myself a flat in London. Small, but right next to Tooting Broadway tube station, so handy for work/town. I start my new job in 10 days. Argh!

I have 2 weeks to finish this drawing code, as imlib2 is gonna see a release soon. What with moving etc, that actually gives me about 3 evenings to do all this.

On that basis, what the hell am I doing here, writing this drivel?

*Off hacking

So. 4 weeks until I start my new job :-) I'm starting to get pretty nervous, but it's gonna be great.

For those who don't know yet, I'm gonna be Senior Consultant at ID-Pro, a UK startup of the solid German parent company.

Pretty exciting to be involved in something from the beginning, but nice to know there's a stable parent company behind it...

Currently looking for a flat in London. Eeesh. Scarce and expensive... I'll get there in the end, but I don't know if I'll sort something out in time.

Handed in my notice at my current job last week. Pretty tearful moment actually... I won't miss the work, but I'll miss the people. Lots. Especially the totally cute French chick I'd always hoped to end up with...

So geist (my new project) is coming along nicely. There are text, image and rectangle objects right now, all of which can be resized/dragged around and layered. The partial rendering engine is done, and pretty fast, even without any optimisation, so I'm pleased about that :-)

Today I wrote some code for saving documents. I've chosen XML as the file format. It's the right kind of structured hierarcial format for the needs of geist. Plus it's not binary, so humans can grok it and manipulate if necessary. The really cool thing about XML as a file format is that older geist versions will be able to load documents from newer versions, just by ignoring the stuff they can't grok.

The other reason I guess is that libXML is a cinch to use, and nice and fast and stable. It avoids all the nasty endianness and compatibility issues I would have had creating a binary format. Plus I loathe binary formats ;-)

Anyway the TODO list for geist is as long as my arm, and I still haven't put up a page for it or released an up-to-date snapshot. I should stop yip-yapping and go get on with it ;-)

If anyone knows anyone who's also starting at ID-Pro soon, put them in touch with me, as I'd love to meet 'em.

Woah. I finally did it. Goodbye non-IT job. Hello Linux job :-)

I'll say more when I sign the contract - but it's all good baby :-)

*Pauses to dance a little jig*

*Grins*

So. Bags are packed, I'm ready. I'll be in France on my hols all next week (I jump on the ferry tomorrow afternoon). Unfortunately I hear the weather sucks there right now...

Still, it's my birthday today, and it's also Bastille day (for the French), so I guess it's appropriate I head out there ;-)

I started writing something new last week, and now I hate to go away and leave it half-started. That always drives me crazy - lots of thoughts and no lappy to jot them down on...

It doesn't do anything yet, but it's gonna be a kindof object-based image/text layout thingummy - not desktop publishing standard, but for images/annotations/backgrounds etc...

We'll see how it unfolds. So far only the object model is in place, but it's pretty solid :-)

Now to mentally prepare myself for a week without PC/net access....

I'm rewriting my CV. Time to post it around a few places and try and make the science job -> IT job leap. I've been putting it off too long, but I can't afford to any more. There's no way BAT are paying me enough for what I currently do, no way in hell.

Besides, I quite fancy being paid to do what I love, it would be a nice change of pace :-)

Linux jobs in the UK are close to non-existent, so I guess I'll have to start with something more generic. Ho hum, I'll get there one day.

The hardest thing is trying to prove you are competent when you have no IT-related qualifications behind you. I have a lot of code behind me though, so hopefully that will count for something...

I'm currently rewriting feh's thumbnail mode to be far more useful, whilst simultaneously compiling CVS Xfree with a large collection of fairly insane optimisation flags. My flat got much warmer all of a sudden....

Some mates of mine are trying to set me up on a blind date with some 21 year old science graduate (she got a first-class degree, so she's smart!). She's apparently really nice, but I know nothing more about her. Being the shy, retiring type until I get to know people, the very idea of a blind date sends me into spasms, so I'm currently a mess of indecision trying to work out whether to agree to this...

I reckon I could charm her if I got my nerves under control, but every time I think about it, I see visions of Stan Marsh puking on Wendy Testaburger and break into a cold sweat...

Why can't all girls be like this?

btw. feh 0.9.9 is out. Grab it if it's your cup of tea.

Bills suck. Rent sucks. Banks suck.

Spare change?

pabs: Yes, we're all very impressed with your new TLD email address. However - we also know about your real email address, which really takes the shine off it for me ;-)