Category: life

It is, of course, gratifying that whenever a senior Perl development contract comes on the market in London I get calls from what seems to be most of the recruitment agencies in the UK. It would just be nice if for once it happened when I was actually looking for work.

In the past I’ve been quick to use this site to rant about bad customer service, so I’d like to take the opportunity to redress the balance slightly and mention some good customer service that I recieved yesterday. I was browsing the Jessops web site looking for information about digital cameras when I noticed that… Continue reading Good Customer Service

I wondered last night about searching for “informational” photos of Balham in Flickr. So this morning I decided to look for all the photos on Flickr that had been tagged with “balham”. All I found was a set of photos of someone’s halloween party that seems to have taken place in a pub somewhere in… Continue reading Photographic Memory (cont)

Lucy Mangan makes a plea for greater intolerance in the world. Now that the season of goodwill has passed, let’s make a plea for greater intolerance (carefully directed) in the world. The next time a woman (and it is always a woman – men have many flaws but at least they prefer to seek the… Continue reading Greater Intolerance

I was going to get a lot done during the christmas break. I finished working at Outcome before Christmas and I start a contract (hooray!) at Guardian Unlimited next Tuesday, so that left me over a week to get a lot of little jobs done. But I reckoned without the flu bug that was going… Continue reading Getting Things Done

In the tube station on the way home last night I saw a few of these posters. They have a large picture of a rat and a link to the web site www.hungryrats.com. This turns out to be a link to the people who run the “Keep Britain Tidy” campaign. The thrust of the argument… Continue reading Hungry Rats

There are rumours abounding that the brothers who (mis-)managed Bibliotech when I worked there in 2002 have finally been removed by the shareholders. It’s a couple of years too late for me but I hope that the few people left there can turn the company around and make it work.

It’s the time of the year when the UK starts to close down for Christmas. I estimate that there were about two thirds of the usual number of people on my tube this morning and that number will fall further during the week. From what I’ve heard around the office, Tuesday and Wednesday are popular… Continue reading Christmas Shutdown

Summary of a conversation that took place between me and an recruitment agent a couple of weeks ago: agent: So we’ve got a job going at [large media company]. me: Is that working at [location] for [rate]? agent: Yes. That’s the one. me: Well in that case my CV has already been put forward for… Continue reading Recruiter Stupidity

This morning there were women standing outside Tottenham Court Road tube station thrusting free condoms into the hands of anyone who walked past them. Is it national safe sex day or something like that?