Mark's Blog
Aber train
02:02 pm Friday 16th March 2007
Currently sitting on the train to (hopefully sunny) Aberystwyth to play frisbee and catch up with friends. have not treated the blog in ages so i thought sitting on a train for 3 hours would be the perfect time to write an entry.
Have been really busy at work since christmas and not had many weekends free either. Work has been great fun and i have been given some very interesting projects to get my teeth into. manyly working on adding functionality to our crm and cms systems. I have been slowly converted to using linux, which i am really enjoying.
during feburary work paid for me to go to the php uk confrence. a complete bargin at £50 heard a very good talk on oo programming and rasmus lerdof spoke about optimising php servers and what can be expected in the next version of php. after the conference the was a social event with masses of free beer.
going to leave it there for now as not actually sure how my phone is going to handle this and i have gone on for a bit. if all goes well i may write an entry on the train home.
Music: pete doherty - shaking and withdrawn megamix
Aber train
02:02 pm Friday 16th March 2007
Currently sitting on the train to (hopefully sunny) Aberystwyth to play frisbee and catch up with friends. have not treated the blog in ages so i thought sitting on a train for 3 hours would be the perfect time to write an entry.
Have been really busy at work since christmas and not had many weekends free either. Work has been great fun and i have been given some very interesting projects to get my teeth into. manyly working on adding functionality to our crm and cms systems. I have been slowly converted to using linux, which i am really enjoying.
during feburary work paid for me to go to the php uk confrence. a complete bargin at £50 heard a very good talk on oo programming and rasmus lerdof spoke about optimising php servers and what can be expected in the next version of php. after the conference the was a social event with masses of free beer.
going to leave it there for now as not actually sure how my phone is going to handle this and i have gone on for a bit. if all goes well i may write an entry on the train home.
Music: pete doherty - shaking and withdrawn megamix
Lunch time update
03:07 pm Monday 8th January 2007
I spent most of my weekend shop. Saturday we spent the entire day at bluewater. Mainly shopping for clothes to wear to work as i do not have much smart casual clothing so i brought a few shirts and some polo shirts. We also brought a load of christmas decoration in the sales as we have none this year so the flat will look more festive next year.
Saturday we went to bexleyheath to get some more stuff for the flat. It now really feels like home the only thing we have left to do now is hang all of the photos on the wall and we are thinking about painting the bedroom.
We have started to properly use the large collection of cookery books we have as a new years resolution we have decided we must cook one new recipe each week. This week was my week and i cooked a Beed Stew from 'cook with Jamie' by Jamie Oliver it was very tasty and we both recommend it. Will report on what miranda cooks next week
Music: BBC Radio 1
Post Xmas and New Years Update
10:58 pm Wednesday 3rd January 2007
Having to access the internet useing 'dial-up' at the moment as I have not sorted out a broadband connection yet as tiscali clams we can only have a 1mb line so waiting to sort that out.
Any way a post Christmas and New Years update. Merry Christmas to everyone first With love from Miranda and Me. Sorry we did not get a chance to send out cards we still have not really got the flat sorted out. Secondly Happy New Year!
So Christmas was great fun spent it with Miranda's Family this year for the first time. Had a nice relaxing christmas day had Beef Wellington for Christams lunch rather that Turkey. Got some lovely Presents. Boxing Day I spent in the garden painting Miranda's dad's new Shed. Then got the train back home on the 27th To get Back to work.
New Years Eve was quiet. We stayed in and watched the crap TV that was on. New Years Day we took a walk in to Greenwich through the Park. Had possibily the worst food that Greenwich could offer then walked back through the park to The Crown not our most Local pub but the nicest pub we have been to so far.
off to the PHP London Meeting tomorrow
Other than that been working and thats about it.
Music: Cars sitting at the traffic lights outside
Lunch Time Update
01:16 pm Friday 1st December 2006
Not updated my blog in a while as i have spent the last few weeks job hunting and had nothing to talk about apart from interview and did not want to ruin my chances by talking about them here. But thankfully i am now in full time employment with Real TSP.
But other than interviews and job applications i have been up to a few other bits.
Spent a day in Ikea (no joke the entire day). brought sofa bed, coffee table and a few other bits. Although the sofa bed did not fit into mirandas car so that was FUN (fortunatly for me we were not the only people to have this problem.
Also finally got around to updating my Flickr account photos can be seen here.
Any way back to work!
Music: General Office Chatter
The Weekend
02:56 pm Monday 13th November 2006
I had a rather busy weekend. I had the flat to myself on the friday night, so I put the TV on a watch the TV inbetween pottering around the flat reducing the amount of boxes and getting everything to a tidier state. then feel asleep on the sofa at about 10pm (I'm getting old!).
Saturday i woke up around 7 to my displeasure so continued to sort the flat out. Mid afternoon i left for miranda's parents house to accompany her back to london with a car full of her stuff on the sunday. Met Miranda and her parents in the pub.
sunday was spent packing up Miranda's stuff into the car and posting some fliers for her fathers upcoming election. after a lovely roast pork lunch we left for the drive back home. which was not too bad until we got to the M25 and hit some very slow traffic for about 2 hours. when we got back to the flat we unloaded the car into the living room and crashed out
Next weekends plan is going off to Ikea for sofa bed and some other bit.
Music: Pete Doherty - Untitled (downloaded of his website)
Been a while
11:45 pm Monday 6th November 2006
Not updated in quite a while as i have been working as a Freelance PHP programmer for IT Labs working of the project a cool Web 2.0 Application with a flash front end. Its not live yet but it should be live hopefully in the next month.
In some huge news Miranda and I have moved into a new flat. in Blackheath. So once we have sorted the flat properly we will be able to invite people over for food and a drink.
The moving in day was a little bit mad to say the least we picked up our keys at 10am and moved everything in and started to unpack that then at 1pm i had to run off with my father to the MPH 06 show at earls court (This was very good, but more on that later) then i returned to the flat for 7pm to drag Miranda down to Blackheath Common to watch the firework display. Sunday we went shopping and then in the evening to a walk in to the village to have a quick walk to see what resturants there are in the village then sampled one of the pubs in the village The Princess of Wales. not to sure on this pub yet trying to be a country local and modern pub at the same time and not sure if it works. want to try the crown next look more promising. If anyone has a recommendation for a good pub in the village leave a comment of this entry.
Any way back to the MPH 06 show. this was a really good day out some lovely cars. personal favourites the Spyker D12 and the Matt Black Bently GT continental. The stage show was great fun, lots of hammond jokes and i found it amazing what you can do with a car in such a small space.
In other news im in the middle of sorting myself a Flickr account to put my personal photos on to will put a link up on the blog and in the photography section of the site once i have a decent amount of photos up on it.Any way better get on with sorting out things for the flat
Music: Madness - Wonderful
Lost
12:16 pm Tuesday 10th October 2006
Finally downloaded Lost Season 3 Episode 1, WOW it was good. A lot of my friends don't like it or get it, hovever I love the fact that i do not have a clue what is coming next and the new season is excellent. Loads of new twists and stories to follow.
News for the website I started implimenting a calendar program for the site not quite sure whether to tie it in with theblog or not at the moment but i should get it down pretty soon inbetween applying for jobs.
got tickets to the MPH show this week so thats something to look forward to!
Music: Jo Whiley - BBC Radio 1
Job and flat hunting
05:22 pm Friday 6th October 2006
Spent the last week looking for jobs and flats in London as Miranda got a job working in London so we are moving to the little Hamlet of London in the south east of this fine country.
Spent most of the week getting very annoyed with Job agencies that dont listen (I have a job on the south coast for you) or just want to be annoying (I just got you to ring me and made you wait two days till i actually told you i dont have a job for you (NO JOKE)).
Anyway back to job applications
Music: Genius - BBC Radio 4
Job Hunting
09:05 pm Tuesday 26th September 2006
Continuing on the job hunting today took the train down to bristol to sign up with a few job agencies. Went pretty well and got some good feed back on my CV which is always helpful. back to filling in application forms online tomorrow.
Music: BBC Radio 4
Weekend Update
11:33 am Monday 25th September 2006
A quick update inbetween job applications.
Spent the weekend staying at one of miranda's friends house as it was her son's second birthday. So i spent my weekend being uncle Mark and playing Bob the Builder and King of the Castle. Was very pleased to hear that bob the builder has a very strong recycle or reuse message in most episode which is great to hear. I also managed to teach the little boy 'silver car' and he then managed 'silver and red car' which i was really pleased with unfortunatly 'MG B GT' did not go down as well.
The party was good although I had a few too many party ring and chocolate fingers.
anyway better get back to job applications
Music: The White Stripes - White Blood Cell
Happy OneWebDay
02:19 pm Friday 22nd September 2006
Apparently today is the first OneWebDay unfortunatly im not in London at the moment to attend any of the events. To be fair I only noticed the news article on the BBC website but chance of otherwise i would have not even known about it.
Spent yesterday on the train travelling up to visit Miranda. Had a pig of a journey but not as bad as getting a train to Aberystwyth the one bit of living there i wont miss. Anyway spent most of the journey ready XML in a Nutshell which is going well, i am currently up to DTD's. I dont think i have really done much with XML since the first year at uni and that was pretty basic so I am expanding my knowledge of XML quite a lot. Hopefully in a week or two I would have finished the book and have a good understanding to XML so be able to add it to my CV.
Really missing Aberystwyth at the moment, could be the fact that all of my housemates from last year have just moved into their new house and i miss the banter and the company of living in Halls, I am also really missing the mental stimulation of lectures and course work. currently the only thing i have to entertain me is writting covering letters and editing my CV when applying for jobs.
and finally a big get well to hamster - you are a driving god!
Music: BBC Radio 4
RSS Feed
03:56 pm Tuesday 19th September 2006
There is now an an RSS Feed of this blog now avaliable.
Music: The Magic Numbers - The Magic Numbers
Photos are up
05:20 pm Monday 18th September 2006
I have now added the photos from the weekend to the photography section of the site. Give me a day or two to sort the alternative text out.
Music: Computer Fan
Thames Festival
11:18 am Monday 18th September 2006
I went to the Thames Festival sunday afternoon. after a rather interesting bus and train journey. I took my camera and went a bit snap happy filling both of my memory cards.
Went a bit paparazzi getting some photos of the Mayor of London (Ken Livingstone) was rather fun although not sure the photograph will make me my fortune and has not convinced my to change my career path and stalk celebrities.
The entire day was great very well organised and loads going on i must have missed so much. I did not even make it to the events by tower bridge. Spent most of my time between the London Eye and the OXO tower.
The Night Carnival was brilliant fun loud and bright got so many photos.
Any way better get on with getting the photos off the camera will put a post up when i have added some of the photos to the site.
Music: Radio 1 - Jo Whiley
First Entry
05:07 pm Wednesday 13th September 2006
Well I have spent about half a day implimenting this blog. Its a pretty basic program but it will do the job that I need it to do. It allows me to keep a blog and it will allow people to leave comments on any of my entries. needs some work on the admin controls but will be fully working by the end of the week.
I am currently looking for a job, but going slower than i thought. I have not had one interview yet and its getting a bit disheartening. I thought i would have had at least one interview by now but if I keep at it and improving the site and applying for jobs I will soon get an interview.
Right then back to looking for job.
Music: MC Plus+ - Algorythms