I find that whenever I start a new job it can be quite a whirlwind experience and this time has been no exception. I’ve met lots of people (the vast majority of whose names I’ve immediately forgotten – I’m sorry). I’ve been shown around various departments and given an overview of what they do. I’ve listened in on customer calls. I’ve seen a lot of software being used. I’ve learned rather a lot about the products the company sells. In short I’ve been given a lot of information in a short period of time.

My approach has been to not try to take too much in. I’m looking at it as an opportunity to get an appreciation of how the company works and meet people. It’s hard to start somewhere and literally know nothing. Not knowing who to talk to if there are no teabags for example. Not knowing who knows what. Who wrote what. Who decides what happens next.

But I’m not worried about that, in time it’ll all become clear to me. I don’t need to learn about everything and everybody in the first week (at least, I’ve not been told there’ll be a test). What I will say is that early indications are very good. I’ve been around long enough to know the sort of atmosphere, the people, the culture I’ll be happy in and fit well into and so far this looks like the right kind of place. Now, whether they’ll feel the same way about me is entirely another matter!

In other news… This is my 200th post! I’ve long been at the stage where I can read something I wrote 2 years ago and think “I don’t remember writing any of that”. Ah well, here’s to the next 200! (Did I hear a collective groan there? I think I did…)

This is a tree in my garden. At first I thought some kids had set fire to it but the brown has gradually spread all through the tree. Considering it lives in Yorkshire I doubt it’s a lack of water (courtesy of the high annual rain fall) but it does look like it’s on its way out. Any gardeners out there? I’m tempted to just cut the thing down. Or maybe set fire to it just to see what happens!

So today is my last day at my current job and I start the new one on Monday. Despite what my CV may say, it doesn’t feel like I leave companies that often and so it felt very strange coming in this morning for the last time. I’ve been here for a year and a half and have made some really good friends. When you spend 5 days a week, 8 hours a day with a group of people giving that up can be quite a shock to the system. I’ll definitely miss working with them but intend staying in touch with a good few.

So anyway, in a short presentation I was given a card signed by a lot of my colleagues which I found very touching. Whenever leaving cards come around to sign I do it without a great deal of thought but to actually receive them is quite a different matter. I also received a gift voucher for sporting goods (a dig at my battle with injuries and talk of my glory athletic days). The next three things probably say more about how I’m viewed than anything else…

I got a huge gobstopper (given to me to shut me up because I like to talk, which I do), a picture frame so I can put a photo of myself in it and a mirror so I can check my hair on regular intervals! Nobody believes me when I say I’m not vain (honestly, I shy away from mirrors, really!), but the humour with which the gifts were offered was nice.

So it’s onto a new place, new people, new challenges and starting again from scratch. I’m looking forward to it. But I’m going to miss the people here. Not the place, the people. I’ve always said the most important in life is to communicate with others and by doing that you make friends along the way. And after sharing time and experiences with them it’s hard to let go. But nobody said life was going to be easy! The show must go on…

The highlight of my weekend was undoubtedly attending one of my oldest friend’s weddings. I say oldest but I really mean longest (he’s the same age as me after all). It was a fantastic day, the bride looked amazing and he brushed up pretty well too. It was set in one of the most impressive castles I’ve seen (Menzies Castle) and it was really nice to see people I hadn’t seen in years. But almost overshadowing the day for me were a couple of things I found out…

Back at school 4 of us were really good friends. Myself, the groom and the two best men at the wedding (yep, two heads is better than one) – I’ll not name names to protect the innocent. Anyway, I moved down to Yorkshire 6 years ago and we didn’t see each other as much although I kept in touch more with the groom than the other two. They both got married (one 4 years ago and the other a year later) and I didn’t get invited. I didn’t think anything of it and despite being invited to the stag do for the first one I didn’t mention not being invited as I didn’t want to make him feel awkward. It was in Ireland so I just assumed they couldn’t invite everyone they wanted and as I’d moved away they’d moved on and that was fair enough.

When the second wedding happened a year later it was brought forward a few months for unforeseen circumstances and again when I wasn’t invited I just assumed that as it was a rushed job there wasn’t enough room, etc. I really didn’t take any offence, I’m not that sort of guy and I knew that weddings are expensive businesses.

When I got invited to this wedding we were one of the first people to accept. So it was with some surprise that mid-way through the evening the wife of my first friend came up to me and started to have a go about the fact that I never replied to their wedding invitation! I wracked my brains for a while because I’d forgotten all about it but eventually we came to realise that I had actually been invited but had never gotten the invitation! I hadn’t mentioned it at the time because I didn’t want to make waves and for the last 4 years they’d thought I was a rude git for ignoring them. I felt terrible even though looking back there’s not much else I could have done.

Still feeling bad about that can you imagine how I felt when the wife of my second friend came up to me and started having a go about the fact that I didn’t reply to their wedding invitation either?! That wedding was fresher in my memory because my mother was ill around that time and I distinctly remembered not being invited – but again the invite had never made it to my house. I couldn’t believe it. All these years the reason I hadn’t stayed in touch with two of my best friends was because of a simple misunderstanding. I’d just assumed they’d moved on in their lives whereas they were harbouring a grudge because I’d spurned their wedding invites. They’d thought it was out of character for me (which it absolutely was) but didn’t pick up the phone at the time so we never knew. Sort of put a dampener on the evening really (but not too badly).

Well, the lessons here are when you don’t hear from someone you invite to your wedding, phone them! Secondly, don’t trust the Royal Mail – people still steal mail and especially if it looks like there’s money in there (I guess a wedding invitation can look like a birthday card). Also, I’ve got a second chance to stay in touch with two of my oldest friends and their wives and that’s a chance I’m going to take.

Up until I sprained my ankle the other week I’d never actually done a day’s work from home before. I’d always thought it would be great. No phones ringing every five minutes distracting me. No colleagues annoying me, distracting me or letting me annoy and / or distract them. Better equipment to work on. A place to relax and think (my lounge, garden or shower). Nobody micro-managing me who should really have something better to do. No office politics. Proper coffee on tap (I can do anything those eastern European kids in Starbucks can do):

So I worked from home for a few days while I couldn’t walk and it turned out I was absolutely right. In a career where hours at a desk doesn’t in any way equate to productivity, I spent less time at my desk at home but managed to do around 5-10 times more work than on an average day in the office.

I thought maybe it was a blip and when I came back my productivity began somewhat higher than I left. Until the distractions started to intrude again and I’d find myself never getting in the flow at all. A day later and it was back to normal. I’ve just spent another day working from home as I really needed to get a particular task done and guess what? I got a hell of a lot more work done than I ever could have in the office.

The downside of course is the lack of human contact. Instant messaging and phone call aren’t quite the same as your basic social interaction. The best compromise? My own office with a door that closes and a phone I can leave off the hook. This concept is nothing new in the IT industry and neither is the fact that virtually no software companies offer developers offices with doors that close.

But I find it very interesting that most employers aren’t interested in increasing productivity and would rather have people spending hours at their desks – not necessarily doing much work – than working less hours in a better environment getting more done. But then again, mediocrity rules in most places. And most IT-based companies are either losing money hand over fist or could be doing a lot better. Alternatively, maybe I’m being a prima donna again?

One of the fundamental rules of software development is that when you find yourself thinking “I’m going to throw this code away and start again from scratch” you’re almost always wrong. It often feels like the right thing to do – after all, you can correct all the design mistakes of the current code, remove all the clutter that’s accumulated over time and so on. But like I said, it’s almost always the wrong thing to do. Netscape did it and you can read all about it in Joel’s 2000 article Things You Should Never Do, Part I.

So it’s with some degree of interest I see that Microsoft Office 12 is going to have a completely different GUI. There’s some discussion and screenshots from Microsoft here.

While they’re not exactly throwing away all the code and rewriting it they’re breaking another fundamental rule of software development. People hate change. I remember reading in the classic software management book Peopleware (chapter 30 I believe) about a consultant who was giving a talk to a bunch of IT managers about this point. They were saying “Hey, we build systems that change how people work and play. We try to make sure that the changes are for the better… Why would a rational person resist any change for the better?”. He retorted “You don’t get it. I’m sorry but people really, truly hate change. That’s the problem: They’re not rejecting any particular change on its merits; they’re rejecting any change”. The bottom line is that people get used to using software in a particular way and really hate having to learn a new way to do the same thing they’ve done for years. It makes them feel stupid and people don’t like software making them feel stupid. It spawns the quote “this new version of X is far worse than the last one!”.

While from the videos I’ve seen it does look amazing and I’ve no doubt it’ll make my life easier, that won’t be the case for the majority of users. It’s a big risk Microsoft are taking but I suppose they need to do something new in Office – to most users (me included) the only thing that’s changed over the last few versions are the toolbars. And now they’re getting rid of toolbars altogether… Interesting.

It’s an oft-quoted statement that “civilisation is only three meals away from anarchy” and it’s easy to dismiss it but recent events in New Orleans show that if you strip away the comforts of our modern world – running water, electricity, easily available food – we all revert to our basic instincts. Humans are just sophisticated, intelligent animals. But we’re animals nonetheless with a need to survive and protect our family. Most find comfort and defence in groups, some are scavengers, prowling on their own. Some are just plain evil.

The scenes on TV could easily have been from some African state in the midst of civil war or from decades gone by. But it was modern America and up until a few days before these were normal people living normal lives in the world’s only superpower. I’m not going to go on about it because that’s been discussed everywhere.

But it makes me think about what things will be like in the future. Currently doing the rounds just now is the high price of petrol in the UK (which is around £1 per litre). Back in 2000 blockades by farmers and hauliers meant that petrol stations ran out of petrol for a while. People were panic-buying petrol and so draining the stations and just making things worse. This time around despite the fact that there are no blockades planned they’re at it again – panic buying.

The logical thing to do is just carry on as normal because if everybody fills their cars up at once, the stations will run out of petrol but if you do nothing then the machine keeps rolling. But when the tiniest possibility of having no petrol enters people’s minds they become completely self centred and panic buy. Individually humans are complex, emotional creatures but collectively they’re entirely predictable. As an individual you might not like the idea of rationing, but if you think about the bigger picture it’s often the best policy – we humans can’t be trusted to act for the greater good!

So cut to 50 years time (or whenever doomsayers claim we’ll start running out of fossil fuels), what’s that going to be like? I can’t drive through my own village because people are queueing for miles to get petrol when there isn’t even a shortage. What happens when there really is? Are we going to end up in a Mad Max world? Unless there’s an alternative, I’d say yes. Can you tell I don’t have a lot of hope for the human race?

So a couple of weeks ago I was running to get to the ball (we’re playing football here by the way) and so was one of their players (coincidentally called John). I knew I had more pace than him but that didn’t help much when I tripped over thanks to my grippy new boots. My toe caught and my entire body weight went onto my ankle bending it inward in a way that feet aren’t supposed to be able to bend. I didn’t hear any snapping (a good sign) but it was monumentally painful (also a good sign, but at the time a bad sign).

There was no way I could play on so I limped off, got some ice onto it and drove home thanking my lucky stars that my car is an automatic. So here I am on a Saturday afternoon watching football on the tv, laptop on my lap, lying on my sofa. Plenty guys my age would love to spend their Saturday doing this but not me. I’m the active sort and I’d probably have been out on my mountain bike or hiking today if my ankle wasn’t wrecked. This is what it looked like when most of the swelling had gone down:

The day after I injured it my whole foot started to swell up like a size 3 football and some black and dark red patches began spreading along the inside and outside of my foot. At this point my girlfriend decided to start being sympathetic (up until then her bedside manner left a lot to be desired) by suggesting we head to casualty and get it x-rayed to see if it was broken. A couple of hours later and we discovered that it wasn’t – having been told that a sprain can often be worse than a break!

I hate being injured. You’re fit, having a run of good form, doing lots of action-packed things, everything’s going well and then suddenly you’re back to square one. I’d been doing a lot of work on my road bike and was starting to see some improvements there too but now it’s all gone to the wall. I’ve been here before thanks to breaking my toe (3 months out), damaging my shoulder (2 months out) and knee ligament damage (9 months out) so I know what to expect in terms of the road to recovery. Oh, all those injuries were while playing football by the way.

It’s just a bit frustrating – especially when I keep having dreams about running! I’m sure some people have nightmares about it but I love running so I was disappointed to wake up and only be able hobble around the house. I think my footballing says are numbered – another injury like this and I’m throwing in the towel, it’s a dangerous game! Maybe I’ll take up BASE jumping instead, less injury worries.

The funny thing about hindsight is that when you look back things seem so obvious. But at the time you just don’t see it coming.

I’ve come out of what I now look back on as a darker period of my life. I wasn’t happy on a lot of levels and I didn’t know where I was going. I’ll probably delve into details at some point but the bottom line is that I’m out the other side now and I’m happy, optimistic and looking forward again. Unfortunately for you, the reader, that means I feel up to the task of blogging again (I still hate that word)! But I suspect it’ll be a bit different this time…

The past seven months (since my last post) has been a busy one and it’s not all been doom and gloom. I’ve grown my hair long, seen a lot of live bands, made a few new friends, played a lot of football, sprained my ankle, got a new job, fixed a date for my wedding, drunk a lot of real ale and I even went to see Adam Buxton at the Fringe Festival in Edinburgh (he was hilarious, one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen).

It’s not all been good. I finally had to bury my dear guinea pig who in the end managed to live to the right old age of 8 years. Apparently they start considering guinea pigs old around 5 so she must have been about 140 in human years. May she rest in peace. I will hear her noisily drinking water from her bottle in my mind for many years to come!

Anyway, I’m back. More to follow…