Karl B

Want to go to Spain for a couple of days, on work? Sure!

That’s pretty much what happened to me this week. On Tuesday morn’ I started hearing the management talk about it, apparently there were some network problems in the Madrid and Barcelona offices. By the afternoon I had been told the situation and that I would be going either late that night or early the next.

What happened next was nothing short of tragic…okay. Not quite. A fter a mad dash to get over priced tickets. A pickup at 3:30am Wedmesday morning, and arrived back at 1:30am Friday.

What did I achieve? Found out I couldn’t do anything in the work offices because the ISPs equipment sucked, so what did I do? Managed to spend a few hours walking around Barcelona, discovering how awesome it is (I have to go back) and oh, I saw the Sagrada Familia.

Since I’ve become employed here, and perhaps more so since I was offered a full time contract (starts late April and lasts until the end of my working visa), I have fallen back into the worker ant mentality. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. Because of this a friend last night gave me a challenge, a mission of sorts, to post photos of myself at Stonehenge within two weeks.

I have accepted, but thought I’d make it a series and start out with something more interesting.  April 1st, the day before the G20 summit starts there will be a protest infront of the bank of England. As it so happens, I work within 300m of said bank, so tomorrow I plan to come to work (we’ve been told use an alternative site)  in a suit (we’ve been told to dress down), carrying a camera and snapping photos in the midst of the crowd.

If you have any ideas for things to do in my spare time leave a comment, I still plan on going to StoneHenge as well.

To Mum: I hope I speak with you tomorrow evening before you read my blog, if not, sorry!

So it’s snowing in London which I’m pretty stoked about, it should have done this for Christmas but oh well. The first picture is from earlier today when it snowed for 5-10 minutes, the second is from the time of posting this and the snow is still coming down.

..you’re writing a program to solve sudoku puzzles.

I know there must be hundreds, nay, thosands of implementations out there but I figured why not give it a go. I’m current writing a program to solve sudoku puzzles just as a mental exercise in designing the algorithm to do it.

A problem I keep coming up against is I constantly think about ways to optimize it when I havn’t even finished writing the program and I have to decide whether I finish the current implementation or to go back and refactor it. I’m also often distracted by side issues like how to input the puzzle into the program or display it to the user.

Last weekend I spent four days in Wellington visiting with friends and giving them time to mourn over the fact that they wont see me again for quite some time. I enjoyed my time as I caught up with some people I hadn’t see in far too long and who I really had wanted to catch up with in a general not just to say I’m leaving.

I made sure to take pictures of almost everyone I visited. Some of them were taken surreptitiously, as people didn’t want them taken, so I’ll be kind enough to not put them up on the inter tubes for everyone to see (maybe).

On the other preparing to leave front I’ve been busy changing addresses, signing over accounts etc for the flat I was living at, buying a gorillapod and suitcase and pretty much slacking at work.

I expect I’ll start “travel blogging” fairly shortly. With so many giggle bytes of photos being taken I suppose I have to show off the ones I like and explain where I’ve been, it will also be a way for people to see where I am.

I never get the first post in on Slashdot stories, I guess this isn’t exactly the same since it’s the first story but oh well…FIRST!

Anyway, if by some chance you stumble across this epic blog you’ll probably notice a flurry of postings in the next couple of weeks and then it will die off as a realise I don’t really want to tell the whole world what I’m doing.

Assuming that we get past the above stage and come to the second realisation that I’m an attention whore this blog will have the following uses:

- Documenting my attempts to get ready to travel to the UK
- Posting Random rants about things
- Stuff