jonnii.com

I’m now officially moved into my new flat, which is located in a funny area of new york that can’t make up its mind whether or not it’s Soho, Little Italy or China town. Walking around it seems like every street has a different cultural leaning, some of them are just Vietnamese restaurants, and then you turn a corner and you’re confronted with green white and red poles and you know you just walked into Little Italy.

By the way, the flat is massive and has a spare room for visitors. Hint hint.

The other day I made a trip to Ikea and bought a whole bunch of furniture which was delivered yesterday, which meant that I spent the majority of yesterday sitting on the floor building, in order, a bed side table, a chest of draws and then a bed. I now considered myself a skilled carpenter of jesus like proportions. Admittedly I slept a little uneasily last night as I had a funny feeling that my bed might collapse at any moment in a cloud of sawdust, but thankfully it all held together and I’m still alive and not missing any limbs.

With Argos and the US Embassy in first and second place I would rate Ikea as my third least favourite place in the world. In my own personal hell I would spend eternity endlessly visiting these horrible establishments with a short gap in between where I would have to assemble all the furniture I was forced to purchase.

I think the subway is better than the tube, which might be a controversial stance for a londoner, but hear me out.

The subway is airconditioned, which when summer finally comes will be a big deal. The tube wasn’t designed for heat, what with people passing out in 40c+ temperatures and the rest of us arriving to work dripping in sweat. While handing out water stops people from dying, it doesn’t detract from the fact that those of who are still left standing have to arrive to work dripping in sweat and smelling like a refugee boat. And when you do finally get into work, which is airconditioned, you promptly freeze to death.

The carriages are also roughly double the size, so during rush hour you don’t feel so cramped. I routinely had to wait for a second or third train in the morning and in the evening coming home from work in London. People squeeze in, sweat in your face, and then look at you with disdain because you’re in their personal space. Here the rush hour is still a squeeze, but it doesn’t feel half as bad as it is in London.

Obviously the subway is far from perfect. There no indication of when the next train is coming, unless you can see its lights coming from down the tunnel, so you don’t know how long you’re going to be waiting. Most lines also have express trains, which is great if you know how the subway system works, but if you’re a tourist then it’s very easy to get confused.

I also wish they would make it more obvious which station you are at when you are sitting in a train, because i’ve often not been able to tell just by looking outside the carriage. Luckily I mainly take the 6 train, which seems more clearly labeled than the others.

These last few days have been a very exciting time in my life. With my visa in hand, I’m now in NYC and have begun the process of finding somewhere to live with a furious bout of apartment hunting. So far my only source of potential homes has been craigslist, which seems to have a lot more chaff than wheat, but despite that I’ve managed to find a few nice places with normal people by successfully filtering out those that are crazy (they normally have cats, go figure?). You can tell by their email reply or first phone call what you’re getting yourself into. This screening process has become second nature.

New York has the worst pavements and roads I think I have ever seen. I thought that people were being miserable/unfriendly because they were always looking down, but its actually just so that they don’t fall into a pothole. Cab rides are like a rollercoaster, especially if the cab has really soft suspension and bounces around like a space hopper.

China town has the worst drivers of all time. I almost died a dozen times. If you’re wondering why I was even in China town, it’s because some nice person on the street gave me crappy directions and I ended up walking about a mile in the direction. I didn’t really mind because the weather was so nice.

So in less than a week I’ll be moving to New York, which is both exciting and kind of nerve racking. I have about a thousand things to sort out between now and then and have yet to even make a dent in my to do list. Today I was tasked with going to the US embassy to sort out my visa, which was… an experience.

The embassy, ironically, looks like it came straight out of communist Russia, it’s this monolith of a building in one of the nicest squares and contrasts entirely with the other buildings. They’ve finally got rid of those ugly concrete blocks they erected after the 9/11 security alerts and replaced a lot of it with black metal grates, which I guess is an improvement but it stills looks hideous.

After standing outside in the cold for 30 minutes to go through security (I’m just glad it didn’t rain or snow), I ended up inside, which is where the fun began. Inside you are placed in a queue, where you are positioned by a number you are given when you come in. It’s a bit like Argos, just without the book of things you don’t want to buy and people wearing tracksuits. Actually some people were wearing track suits, and there were lots of crying children. A good combination for a monday morning, I’m sure you’d agree.

Luckily when I arrived at the desk I was told I was given the wrong number at the start and would have to go through the process all over again. Whatever, I’m not bitter. I have my visa now and I’m flying out in less than a week, so I’ve put all the pain behind me. After all, in the long scheme of things, what’s five hours of pain here and there. It keeps you on your toes.

Next step is finding a place to live which means trawling craigslist for decent sounding apartments, going to viewings, and praying that the people I end up living with aren’t psychopaths.

This article about a jewish basketball team having to forfeit a final due to the sabbath caught my attention:

If Herzl/RMHA makes it to the regional championship and refuses to play a Saturday game, another school would be chosen to take its place, CHSAA commissioner Bill Reader said.

Since when are jews good at ball sports? This is indeed news to me.

So my new computer has finally arrived and I’ve spent the last few days playing around with it and setting it all up to my liking, which explains the lack of updates, or maybe I’m doing what I do every year which is start blogging then give up a week or two in.

So yeah, it’s fast. Very very fast. And thanks to a co-worker and an msdn subscription I’m also dual booting vista (a topic for another blog post) and have a windows virtual machine all set up for doing windows development so I’m covering all possible bases. Needless to say I’m very happy.

In other news: Ex-Homecoming Queen Beats Sister With Fake Leg In Trailer

NORTH HUNTINGDON, Pa. - A former homecoming queen is facing a slew of charges Thursday, accused of attacking her sister with a prosthetic leg and then threatening to burn down a neighbor’s home.

Craziest news article ever? I think so.

Ha, so it seems apple reads my blog, because today they announced updates to both the iphone and ipod touch just to spite me. The updates are just to memory sizes, which sees the ipod touch increased to 32gb and the iphone to 16gb.

I’m not sure how long it’s going to take for the iphone update to be available in the UK, but i’m sure that a lot of consumers are going to be annoyed… especially since the iphone was only released here recently. I’m guessing they’ll probably delay it a few months to reduce the amount of people feeling robbed. Talking of robbing… if any iphone users want to loot the apple store, let me know so I can steal a macbook air.

As for me, i’m happy with my new nokia that cost me nothing and does a great job of making phone calls and sending texts… what else do you really need.

Loads of people, and by loads I mean a grand total of three, have asked me about this mac book air thing and whether or not it is any good, and whether or not they should buy one etc… I’m guessing my status as a rapid mac fan boy has been firmly cemented having dropped a wad on a new mac and my history of purchasing every silly mac gadget possible.

While the sheer thinness of the air makes me want to post my debit card and pin to apple in hopes of them mailing me back an air (in an envelope) I think it’s pretty safe to say that I’m not in the target audience. For now my bank account is safe.

Yes it looks nice, and yes it’s shiny, but for *me* the machine isn’t really suitable. It’s almost entirely un-upgradeable and the solid state model, the only one I would consider getting, is far too expensive for my liking. I think the reason for me not immediately buying one is the same reason why I didn’t rush out to buy an iPhone the day it came out, like I did with the iPod Touch. Do I want it? Yes. But does it fit my daily needs, and will I eventually feel unfulfilled when the initial thrill of the shiny-ness and thin-itude have worn off?

This is the kind of consumer laptop that is ideal for someone like my dad, who spends a lot of his time going back and forth between work, holiday and home and doesn’t have very demanding needs from it other than the fact that it works and has a comfortable keyboard with big keys that he can see the letters on when he puts his glasses on.

So buy it. Or don’t. But if you do, let me know so I can play with it and convince myself I need one.

• Testicle Attack
• One expectation per test

Maybe I should start publishing these with delicious.

Here are a couple of links that might brighten up your monday:

• A hell of a joke…
• And in today’s news

I’m trying to transfer two domains to godaddy from two seperate registrars, but it seems that doing that involves smashing my face repeated against my desk in frustration. The old registrars have incorrect administrative contacts, unreachable or incompetant support staff and websites that are borderline useless. I’m half regretting doing this, but the fact that my old registrar wanted to charge me £5 to change my nameservers (something that most let you change as many times as you want for free) was just outrageous.

Godaddy are… ok. They’re cheap enough, and their website is alright once you get into the admin panel and past all the obnoxious advertising. I’m not sure if I’d recommend them, but I didn’t know who else to use. Either way, this is hopefully a one time thing. At least it better be.

I find the recent news article about a trader at soc gen defrauding the bank for €4.9 billion absolutely incredible. How are these losses not noticed earlier?

PARIS, Jan 24 (Reuters) - Societe Generale (SOGN.PA: Quote, Profile, Research) has uncovered a fraud by one of its traders which will have a 4.9- billion-euro-($7.16 billion) negative impact on the group, France’s second-largest listed bank said on Thursday.

I recently finished reading Managing Humans by Michael Lopp, which is a collection of the best articles from his blog on, among other things, management techniques. I bought the book on the recommendation from one of Mike Stall blog posts, and must say that I think it’s one of the better software engineering related books that I’ve ever read. On top of that it’s pretty humorous in places, which is a rarity among books in this genre.

Personally, I think that as a programmer it’s almost inevitable that after enough time in the industry you’ll end managing other programmers, and before that day comes, if it ever comes, I thought it might be interesting to see what’s involved and, maybe, at the same time learn something to improve my day job, both in terms of process and the interactions that I have with *my* manager.

The chapter on the zone, which is also on his blog, is probably my favourite of all the chapters in the book because it was the one I felt that I could relate to most. Productivity is something that I think we all individually have a hard time with, not just during work hours but also in our personal time. There’s no easy solution to improving personal productivity but there are plenty of techniques, many of which he discusses, but also ones we have developed ourselves. I’ve already started working on a post discussing my own, which I hope to publish in the very near future.

So yeah, buy this book. It’s awesome.

The Mac Heist bundle gets you fourteen mac apps for $50 and 25% of your purchase price goes to charities. The offer runs in a couple of days, so make sure you get in there quickly before it runs out.

I found this news article about the former head of european equity derivatives at Credit Suisse who filled in for a student to help him pass his final year exams absolutey hilarious.

Jerome Drean, 34, the former head of European equity derivatives trading at Credit Suisse, was arrested at the University of York while using a false identity to impersonate the 22-year-old economics student.

The French banker, who has also held a senior position with the Bank of America, was pretending to be Elnar Askerov, an Azerbaijani undergraduate. He is believed to have sat up to eight crucial exams, using a false identity card, before university authorities realised that he was an impostor.

The scam by Askerov and Drean was uncovered on the day that another York economics student, Qiu Shi Zhang, 23, had persuaded his friend and fellow Chinese student, Xin Zhang, 24, to sit the business finance paper on his behalf.

Later on in the article…

Xin, who is short, skinny and bespectacled, bore little resemblance to the ID photograph of Qiu, who was tubby and long-haired, which immediately alerted invigilators.