Guide to pants off living
October 2007
Who is gonna make the gravy?
Tuesday, 23 October 2007
Went to see Paul Kelly last Friday night at the corner -- wept like a baby through most of the evening.
I didn't realise how much his songs had attached themselves to my core. Some of the deepest parts of my conscience resonated to the strains of "To Her Door", "Deeper Water", "Who's gonna make the gravy", "Dumb Things", "Leaps and Bounds"... all of these songs bought big fat tears to my eyes.
My wife just said I was over-tired.
Great gig though; it was my first Paul Kelly gig, which made it all the more special. He's a great musician, a national treasure in fact. God bless.
Posted by travo at 10:00:02 PM
Switched - Part Two
Tuesday, 23 October 2007
And I have a new job. I'm no longer going to be amassing Yamaha branded consumer electronics and musical instruments. I'm going to be working for Cogent Consulting - the cracking-est bunch of developers you ever did see. I realised while writing this that I had yearned to be a part of their posse before. A good year later and here I am -- rock!
Yamaha was an equal parts great learning experience and difficult personally negative experience. I'm grateful to everyone there from whom I've learnt many interesting things; logistics, finance, service, marketing, product support and dealer networking.
I've ranted about the negative aspects of this before; the significance is that these experiences actually have a lot more to do with me and my ability to deal with them than the individuals and circumstances that cause them.
As if I need to reassert my goals; I must work harder to develop a personal toolkit which allows me to function and act appropriately in environments that are uncomfortable, disagreeable or downright crappy.
Which makes me all the more grateful for the support of my new colleagues -- it's great to be in a positive and encouraging environment.
Not to mention all the cool stuff that I get to do, the exciting new platforms I get to do it on and the killer technology I get to do it with. Sweet.
Posted by travo at 9:37:01 PM
Switched - Part One
Tuesday, 23 October 2007
And now I'm a Mac whore. Fully switched, surrounded by more Apple logos (and Apple remotes - what's with that, does every Apple device need a remote now?) than you can poke a stick at. It's great; it's been nearly ten years since I used Mac OS in anger and in a familiar / slightly weird way, it's good to be home.
Sure things have changed. It's not like I remember. Hardly at all really. But it kinda feels better.
What I'm loving
Terminal : under the hood, there's this really strange and powerful beastie that will do your bidding for you.
Good Mac software : Mail, TextMate, Calendar, Adium, iTunes, iWork, Delicious Library, Toast; there's just a whole bunch of really nice, well made apps which just work
MacPorts : The developers hardware store -- you want it, just grab it off the shelf. Sorted.
Parallels + BootCamp : This really is the best way to run Windows. Lock that fucker up in a box, don't let it out unless it's, really, really necessary. Parallels makes using windows the most surreal experience; seeing ugly windows over the top of your shiny Mac desktop in coherence mode is the strangest thing. But, it's so convenient.
What I'm struggling with
Windows windows everywhere : it's a little hard to explain, but I do get quite lost trying to locate the last window I was working on. Command-Tab is useful, minimizing stuff to the dock is weird -- I can minimize something, but if that application is still active, there doesn't seem to be a command key to maximize it.
Bad Mac software : as with most operating systems there is a load of junk out there.
Unix : I don't have a heap of experience in this environment, so I've got to sharpen my chops. I'm enjoying the challenge, but hoping that I don't screw anything up.
Just sublime
And there's the hardware, and this is where it gets a little creepy; it's freakin' beautiful. I kinda want to touch it in inappropriate ways. Do you think Jobs would care?
Posted by travo at 9:15:47 PM
Right Right Right
Friday, 12 October 2007
This is an exercise online to determine whether or not you're a left brain (logical) or right brain (emotional) person.
I am so right-brained, I can not get the dancer to spin in the other direction. How does it spin for you?
(and yeah, I haven't blogged in a while. so what, sue me. who's reading anyhoo)
Posted by travo at 10:26:42 AM