Fancy dress is fancy.

I quite randomly found myself in Canterbury this weekend, all thanks to the wonderfulness that was Jen and Matt's birthday celebrations. Caught a train with Dave on Friday afternoon, and arrived in Canterbury around 6pm. Dropped in on Mike and Jen (first time I'd ever been to their flat, strangely enough) for a couple of games of the new Smash Brawl game for the Wii, then went to the Dolphin for drinks with various people I hadn't seen in ages. Was good.

Saturday involved lots of pubs and lots of people in fancy dress. Started off at East Spoons, then went to Seven Stars, then the Dolphin, the finished up at the Penny Theatre. Around 12 hours of drinking in there. Was very good to see everyone again, and kinda made me wish I was back in my first year at Uni again. Canterbury really is an awesome little place.

Anyway. Back home now after a 3.5 hr train journey back to Sotton. Now I've got to back my bag and get ready for a 7hr journey to Edinburgh tomorrow for an interview on Tuesday and a Wotmania Gathering next weekend. Hoorah \o/

I euthanised my faithful companion :/

As I posted a while back, my old Acer laptop that I got in my second year at Uni broke. The screen decided to go on the blitz, rendering the laptop pretty much unusable. Well, my wonderful mother ran it through the house insurance, and it's been replaced with a shiney new Acer Travelmate 5720. I really must commend Abbey for the hassle free house insurance they provide. I filled in no forms, they picked up the laptop next day, and I had a brand new laptop just over a week later.

And, compared to my old one, what a laptop it is! It's pretty much quadruple the specification of my old one, and (despite my inital hate) I'm growing to like Vista. The graphics card is *much* better than my old one (and much better than the one in the main PC!), which means that I've *finally* been able to play Portal.

And finish it. Such a great game. Funny, too. The song at the end is brilliant. Except, of course, now I'm hungry for cake :/

In other news, I'm off to Edinburgh for a week to do some jobhunting. I've already got one interview lined up, with a web development company. Hopefully something will finally work out :)


Now off to play through HL2: Ep 1 & 2...

Feelin' Foxy

It turns out that today is Download Day. Firefox 3 will be launched in about 15 minutes, and Mozilla are attempting to set a new world record for number of software downloads in 24 hours. You should get Firefox anyway, seeing as it's a much better browser than Internet Explorer, and you get a special certificate if you help contribute to the record.

The nature of Me

I've had discussions with several people recently about having my blog open to all and sundry while job hunting, and about how it might be hurting my chances. Specifically about how employers might either A) read my blog and dislike its content or B) view the fact that I have a blog as a bad thing.

It's true that there have been several cases of people being fired because of their blogs, even for quite trivial matters. Does this mean that I need to start censoring myself, limiting myself to the most innocuous of subject matter?

I think the most important thing to realise is that this is primarily a journal, not a blog. What I post here is primarily about my activities, allowing my friends and family to keep up to date with what I'm doing, and to give me something to look back on when I'm old and decrepit. What I do is no different to what anyone else does... I simply talk about it online!

The main point, however, is one of discrimination. I believe, although I could be wrong, that applicants can only be judged for a particular position through the information they submit on an application form, and later through interview. For an employer to hunt down extra information about a person, either from their blog, personal website, or social networking profile on sites like Facebook or Myspace, without the applicant's permission is discriminatory. (It's another issues altogether, obviously, when you're actually employed by a company)

I don't intend to start censoring myself any more than I normally do, so, rest assured, you can all look forward to more thrilling entries about a single, unemployed 24 year old man who still lives with his parents and is trying without much success to find meaningful employment.

Enjoy!

This post is all about Dave

Happy Birthday Dave! I hope you have a fantastic day :) And congratulations on becoming all Grown Up and getting your own apartment. C'est tres bon.

Now to sign you up for a whooole load of junk mail... ;)

Holiday over, time to crack on!

After a long journey back home from Canterbury yesterday, it's time to really knuckle down and carry on playing computer games job hunting!

I had a great few days in Canterbury, it was nice to wander around the place again a year after I left University! Silje and I arrived on Thursday, and spent the evening with Tim and Joanna at the Ingoldsby 'Spoons, catching up with each other. I tried to dissuade Tim from the madness of marriage, but he was resolute. Ah well, at least I tried!

On Friday Silje and I wandered around Canterbury, doing the sightseeing stuff and finding shoes and a shawl to go with her dress. I even bought some purple ribbon and made an awesome sash to go with her dress! My sewing skillz are just as great as when I made the wotmania flag all those years ago...
Friday was finished off with a wedding rehearsal, where I practiced the photography gubbins for the real deal the next day, and a curry with Tim's family the others who had arrived that day, i.e. Roh, Camilla and Tor.

Saturday was the Big Day, and after squeezing myself into a suit (Note to self: eat less, exercise more), Silje and I moseyed on over to the church. One beautiful ceremony later, and Tim and Rebekah became man and wife. How lovely. The reception was also quite awesome, although most of it was spent taking photographs of various groups of people. The food was delicious, and the speeches were pretty good too. Well, people laughed in all the right places during my Best Man's speech, so I'm assuming it went rather well!
And, after Tim and Rebekah and departed for their honeymoon, there was the obligatory polishing off of wine and pubbage. Quite a long, but thoroughly awesome day!

Yesterday was basically "let's get home" day. Met up with the remaining wotmaniacs left over from the wedding (Snoop, Roh, Camilla, Tor, Monique, Silje and myself) and Joanna to grab some food at the tastytasty Nandos before getting the coach back to London. Turned out the ever awesome Monique was on the coach with us, so I entertained her with the Black Ping-Pong Ball joke for half an hour, much to her dismay. Upon arrival in London, the next available coach to Southampton was 3 hours away, so Silje and I retired to a nearby pub for a last meal and pint together, then sat in the sunshine for a while before being thrown out of the park by a grumpy parksman.

To cut a long story short, I arrived back home at around 10pm last night after a brilliant 2 weeks in London having great times with great people.

Now, I need to edit 700 photos. Oh, and get a job too.

Back to Canterbury, then.

Just a quick update, as Silje and I are off to catch a coach from Victoria down to Canterbury this morning, for Tim and Rebekah's wedding this weekend.

Last few days have involved wandering over lots of London. Went to the British Museum and watched lots of movies on Monday, went to the Natural History Museum on Tuesday before meeting up with Kim, Alex, Becky, Matt, Dan, Chris and Rince at the Porterhouse which was nice. Went to a little Mexican place nearby for dinner, was very tasty and quite cheap too!

Yesterday was dress shopping for Silje, as she doesn't have anything to wear for the wedding. Except she does now, because our scouring of London's charity shops was successful! Pictures to follow, of course. Had a nice walk along the South Bank in the afternoon, after going to the Tate Modern (which I was thoroughly unimpressed with), to the Telectroscope thing. Didn't see New York though, as there was a bit of a crowd.

Then went to the Waterstones at Picadilly Circus, and spent a very pleasant three hours there, during which I accidentally managed to read a book, Replay by Ken Grimwood, and had a bit of an epiphany. Which was nice.

Yesterday evening, Silje and I made the most of our last night in London by spending a while down at Trafalgar Square with our cameras. Sadly, my photos didn't turn out too well, but Silje got some awesome time lapse photos. I gave my torches to some rollerbladers out the front of the National Gallery, but the lightpainting didn't quite work how I hoped it would.

Anyway, off to Canterbury now! Ciaociao!

On London

Well, what an exciting few days! I came up to London on Wednesday to hang out with the two Camillas for a little bit, spent the afternoon/evening with them and Snoop, and was met in the evening by Monique, so that was a fun day. Spent Thursday morning with the Camillas again at the British Library, before their train to Edinburgh in the afternoon.

Silje arrived from Norway on Friday, and she, Snoop, Monique and I all went to see Avenue Q that evening. While the first half was a little more punchy than the second, it was still very enjoyable and incredibly funny. And I was able to get cheap £20 tickets on the day, straight from the theatre! All the "half price" booths were selling tickets for £25+, so I think that worked out well.

We mooched around on Saturday before meeting an old school friend of Silje's, Caroline, for drinks in the afternoon. We went to the Porterhouse in Covent Garden, and spent a pleasant few hours there before heading to the Leicester Square Yates for foodage. Back to a pub for some more beer, then off to the Circle Line party!

We got on a party train at Westminster, but it was *very* rowdy, lots of banging on the ceiling and tearing posters off the wall, so we got off at Liverpool Street at about 2050 so we could join in with the main group of people at 9pm. One quick loo break later, and we came back to find the underground station closed off! So we stayed at Liverpool Street, amid the chaos of about 3000 other people. It was quite a jovial atmosphere until people started getting a little more violent, throwing beer cans and the like. So we moved off and got back to where we were staying via Old Street. All in all, an enjoyable night!

Today's been, understandably, a fairly relaxed day. Lots of movies, with more on the way. I've been introduced to The Fountain, which I enjoyed tremendously while not really understanding one bit of it :P

Rest of the week is going to be mostly touristy stuff, I think. I've got my lightpainting stuff with me, which I hope to do in Trafalgar Square while I'm here.