https://www.pietersartain.com/ Recent content on rational human Hugo -- gohugo.io en-us Wed, 09 Apr 2014 00:00:00 +0000 https://www.pietersartain.com/now/ Mon, 08 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000 https://www.pietersartain.com/now/ Playable Prints has been successfully running for over a year now as the umbrella organisation housing Minihoarder, Wargaming3D and Orynt3D. The software consultancy Hyperrational is winding down, to focus on Playable Prints. At home I’ve fixed one bathroom, and removed the walls from another. I’ve had a skip on the driveway for too long, so that clearly needs correcting this year. Since June 2023 I’ve been playing music out again, performing locally in Southsea. https://www.pietersartain.com/post/2021-03-20-personal-virtual-computing-iv/ Sat, 20 Mar 2021 12:00:00 +0000 https://www.pietersartain.com/post/2021-03-20-personal-virtual-computing-iv/ This is a series about my journey in building a multipurpose PC using virtualisation technology and RGB strips. This is the 4th and final part, which is about using this system in anger and working out the bugs! If you missed the beginning, you can jump all the way back to part 1. At this point I have built a PC, installed Proxmox as the hypervisor, and configured a random collection of Ubuntu and Windows machines. https://www.pietersartain.com/post/2020-08-20-personal-virtual-computing-iii/ Thu, 20 Aug 2020 12:00:00 +0000 https://www.pietersartain.com/post/2020-08-20-personal-virtual-computing-iii/ This is a series about my journey in building a multipurpose PC using virtualisation technology and RGB strips. This is part 3, which is about putting the pieces together and getting a prototype running. If you want know about why these pieces, try part 2, if you want to know about the software challenges and solutions skip to part 4. I had a budget in mind of somewhere between £2000 and £3000 - about the same cost as a new 2020 Macbook Pro, and given inflation, the same sort of money I put down 5 years ago. https://www.pietersartain.com/post/2020-08-15-personal-virtual-computing-ii/ Sat, 15 Aug 2020 12:00:00 +0000 https://www.pietersartain.com/post/2020-08-15-personal-virtual-computing-ii/ This is a series about my journey in building a multipurpose PC using virtualisation technology and RGB strips. This is part 2, which is about some of the research and design choices I made. If you want some self-indulgent history, try part 1, if you want to read about the construction, start at part 3. I’m trying to accomplish two things with one machine: A recording / 3D design / gaming rig. https://www.pietersartain.com/post/2020-08-05-personal-virtual-computing-i/ Wed, 05 Aug 2020 12:00:00 +0000 https://www.pietersartain.com/post/2020-08-05-personal-virtual-computing-i/ This is a series about my journey in building a multipurpose PC using virtualisation technology and RGB strips. This is part 1, which is mostly made of self-indulgent history. If you just care about the hardware and tech, start at part 2. 5 years ago I upgraded to a brand new Mac Book Pro, and it’s done me proud. However, between development on Android apps, doing more with my music and some experimentation with 3D modelling, I’m starting to ask just a bit too much of the poor thing. https://www.pietersartain.com/post/2020-07-12-upgrading-video-calls/ Sun, 12 Jul 2020 12:00:00 +0000 https://www.pietersartain.com/post/2020-07-12-upgrading-video-calls/ I’ve already written about routing audio from different sources into video confs, and waxed a little lyrical about my history, and the present, of remote music collaboration. A recent generous offer to join in with a remote roleplay game (City of Mist) being run by a friend gave me just the excuse I was looking for to experiment with streaming technology for video conferences. My hypothesis is that there’s a lot of benefit to be had by being at least familiar with the streaming tools that are now basically plug and play. https://www.pietersartain.com/post/2020-06-25-remote-music-making/ Thu, 25 Jun 2020 12:00:00 +0000 https://www.pietersartain.com/post/2020-06-25-remote-music-making/ With the need for social distancing, the internet is full of remote shows. Take That got in on the action, as did Dua Lipa on James Corden, and countless others. Prompted by the questions of “how do they do that?” and “what are my options?” I wanted to dig into the state of the nation regarding remote collaboration tools, especially with regards to music. As it happened, my good friend Richard was also interested in poking around remote recording. https://www.pietersartain.com/post/2020-06-13-teslabridge-iii/ Sat, 13 Jun 2020 14:00:00 +0000 https://www.pietersartain.com/post/2020-06-13-teslabridge-iii/ Early last year, I detailed the construction of a special guest wifi access point for my car. Then how I had to fix it to make it work. Until recently, this was working just fine: my car connected, software updates were downloading, everything was happy. I stopped thinking about what I’d built and started relying on the service it provided. I don’t know exactly when things stopped, since we’ve all been spending less time in the car, but a few weeks ago there was a software update available but I should “connect to wifi to download it”. https://www.pietersartain.com/post/2020-05-16-osx-audio-routing/ Sat, 16 May 2020 14:00:00 +0000 https://www.pietersartain.com/post/2020-05-16-osx-audio-routing/ Once upon a time I used to collaborate online and make a lot of music. As I write this, the UK is in the 10th week or so of lockdown (although it’s now “stay alert”) and I find myself with a little more free time on my hands for things like music, but without a workflow to make the collaboration happen! In the olden days, I had a shared Dropbox folder that handled the synchronisation of files between me and my collaborators. https://www.pietersartain.com/post/2020-02-03-replacing-dropbox/ Mon, 03 Feb 2020 12:00:00 +0000 https://www.pietersartain.com/post/2020-02-03-replacing-dropbox/ Part of an ongoing series exploring my digital life, starting with “Designing my digital life (again)” With Dropbox positioning themselves as a collaboration platform, rather than just a synchronisation service, I find their products and my needs are diverging. As mentioned in the opening post, this observation about Dropbox and their intentions was one of the core drivers to reevaluating what services I was using and where I’d gotten to with my digital life. https://www.pietersartain.com/post/2020-02-02-trying-brave-and-ddg/ Sun, 02 Feb 2020 17:17:00 +0000 https://www.pietersartain.com/post/2020-02-02-trying-brave-and-ddg/ Part of an ongoing series exploring my digital life, starting with “Designing my digital life (again)” Thinking about privacy and surveillance as I did here began as an emotional reaction to Inbox being shut down, but the approach I took with the privacy topic could also be viewed as a somewhat academic exercise to explore an idea. As a more practical exercise to understand what “let Google see less of me” looks like, I figured I would try to make changes to ensure that Google sees less of me. https://www.pietersartain.com/post/2019-10-10-privacy/ Thu, 10 Oct 2019 19:28:00 +0000 https://www.pietersartain.com/post/2019-10-10-privacy/ Part of an ongoing series exploring my digital life, starting with “Designing my digital life (again)” Part of understanding my gut feeling for wanting to move away from Google, why I think HTTPS is good, or why I dislike targeted adverts, is understanding and unpacking the feelings I have when I hear about Google and data in the news, when I hear about three letter agencies dragnetting the internet and when I see targeted advertising going wrong. https://www.pietersartain.com/post/2019-07-27-working-around-dvd-regions/ Sat, 27 Jul 2019 14:00:00 +0000 https://www.pietersartain.com/post/2019-07-27-working-around-dvd-regions/ Yesterday, what I really wanted to do was watch 3x3 Eyes. I own the DVD, so this should be a matter of plugging play … except what I own is the NTSC Region 1 DVD “Collector’s Edition” and I no longer have a Region 1 DVD player regularly in use under the television … So this could’ve turned into a post about how hard it can be to find older, less popular, works on streaming services but this is actually a post to remind myself how to get video from a Region 1 DVD to a decent digital rip with nice subtitles, and some of the things I learned along the way. https://www.pietersartain.com/post/2019-06-27-designing-my-digital-life/ Thu, 27 Jun 2019 23:02:00 +0000 https://www.pietersartain.com/post/2019-06-27-designing-my-digital-life/ Nearly a decade ago I discovered the power of controlling my environment by being deliberate in how I wanted to operate. This consisted of reflecting on what “systems” I wanted to use and what mental models served me. This ranged from the delightfully banal (“how do I want to hang my washing?”) to the rather more esoteric (“I desire my wallet to function exactly like this”), which often brought an associated step of having to build that thing. https://www.pietersartain.com/post/2019-06-19-actual-watch-dev/ Wed, 19 Jun 2019 22:00:00 +0000 https://www.pietersartain.com/post/2019-06-19-actual-watch-dev/ This post is mostly for me. It’s not a design diary, it’s not a retrospective. Using embedded development tools is tricky and so this represents some notes on the use of the tooling (more of a project log, and because I will forget!) on the two experiments I ran to start hacking around before I get deep into a complex original piece of work. Introduction Eventually I managed to set up the smartwatch development environment ready to begin some hacking. https://www.pietersartain.com/post/2019-05-27-getting-started-with-smartwatch-development/ Mon, 27 May 2019 14:30:00 +0000 https://www.pietersartain.com/post/2019-05-27-getting-started-with-smartwatch-development/ So the goal here is to have some fun hacking some watch face ideas together for personal use. I’m not looking to sell, or share. When working with embedded systems like these, there’s two parts that we need to get working: Development/compilation environment Deploying code onto the device Usually deployment is fairly easy and the IDEs are the hardest part to configure. In this case, the security model of the watch is such that there’s a whole signing process to go through and the development environments provided by Samsung and Tizen are Java-based, which hurts on MacOS. https://www.pietersartain.com/post/2019-05-24-teslabridge-ii/ Fri, 24 May 2019 18:00:00 +0000 https://www.pietersartain.com/post/2019-05-24-teslabridge-ii/ A couple of months ago, I detailed the construction of a special guest wifi for my car, and ended the post having successfully got the car to connect to the bridge and appear, and first blush, to work. Over the last month I’ve watched and noted the car not staying connected over night, and not reconnecting when I get home from work. Early in the process I checked the logs and could see things being a bit wafty, but this time it was time to get serious and figure out what was going on. https://www.pietersartain.com/post/2019-05-16-my-first-smartwatch/ Thu, 16 May 2019 18:00:00 +0000 https://www.pietersartain.com/post/2019-05-16-my-first-smartwatch/ Today is day 5 of smartwatch ownership for me. This is a purchase that was made after a lot of thought about my needs and how I might use it, but like the tablet before it, I knew that this device would influence my behaviour by the capabilities offered just as much as it solved problems I had and could articulate. My decision making process swings wildly from the emotional “Shiny! https://www.pietersartain.com/post/2019-03-31-design-diary-special-guest-wifi/ Sun, 31 Mar 2019 18:00:00 +0000 https://www.pietersartain.com/post/2019-03-31-design-diary-special-guest-wifi/ In late 2017 I bought the best toy I have ever had the pleasure of playing with: a Tesla Model S. I’m not a car-person, so I didn’t have to overcome the loss of a combustion engine, and I mostly do a 30 mile round-trip commute, so range anxiety was something that wasn’t a huge deal for me. This post isn’t about my experiences of the car, this is about getting the car on the wifi. https://www.pietersartain.com/post/2019-03-19-lessons-in-keeping-music-software-ii/ Tue, 19 Mar 2019 12:00:00 +0000 https://www.pietersartain.com/post/2019-03-19-lessons-in-keeping-music-software-ii/ Two days ago I realised things were a bit wafty with my DAW setup, but now it’s time to do a proper cleanup, because upgrading to Reaper 5 64-bit has shown: My plugin stack is running 32 bit, but some plugins are starting to creep into the 64 bit territory. Half my plugins won’t run under 64 bit without upgrading them. Revalver is annoying the hell out of me and really just plain broken IK Multimedia just doesn’t quite work on the interface side of things anymore anyway. https://www.pietersartain.com/post/2019-03-17-lessons-in-keeping-music-software/ Sun, 17 Mar 2019 12:00:00 +0000 https://www.pietersartain.com/post/2019-03-17-lessons-in-keeping-music-software/ Back in 2015, when I wasn’t working I was trying to make music. I spent a lot of time and some money to assemble a set of tools to support my creativity. It was a careful blend of the physical space, the recording and instrumental software and the hardware (both instruments and computer), and it worked great. Life happened, however, and my setup was moved, reassembled and largely left behind while I upgraded my OS. https://www.pietersartain.com/post/2018-08-27-design-diary-inspirational-dashboard/ Mon, 27 Aug 2018 17:00:00 +0000 https://www.pietersartain.com/post/2018-08-27-design-diary-inspirational-dashboard/ I love Momentum, the Chrome plugin, that welcomes me to each tab I open. I don’t use all the bells and whistles it offers, but I really really value the calming image and inspirational quote, along with the welcome reminder. I’m spending more and more time on small screen Android devices these days, though, and I really wanted to carry this idea over to those devices. Unfortunately, you can’t use Chrome plugins on Android! https://www.pietersartain.com/post/2018-07-17-some-advice-about-cvs-and-resumes/ Tue, 17 Jul 2018 18:37:00 +0000 https://www.pietersartain.com/post/2018-07-17-some-advice-about-cvs-and-resumes/ One day I’d like to write about the most recent hiring experience I had in 2017, to compare and contrast against my previous written and recorded experience in 2009. One of the things that struck me about my record keeping is that although I did a pretty good job of describing the steps, I didn’t really record how it felt. However, it’s a big piece, and so I’m putting it off. https://www.pietersartain.com/post/2018-07-13-verbal-scaffolding/ Fri, 13 Jul 2018 23:22:23 +0000 https://www.pietersartain.com/post/2018-07-13-verbal-scaffolding/ This is about communication. What I want to do is start at the beginning. I mean, isn’t that the most efficient way of bringing someone else up to speed? To give them all the information, to walk them through your thinking and then have them immediately understand and follow you? Life has a start, a middle and an end, sure; but living is a continuum. There’s no way of communicating all of my experiences, education, conversations, hard won knowledge, and off the cuff heard comments in a short enough space of time that the other person will just Get It. https://www.pietersartain.com/post/2018-07-04-uncertainty-continuum/ Wed, 04 Jul 2018 23:37:00 +0000 https://www.pietersartain.com/post/2018-07-04-uncertainty-continuum/ The uncertainty continuum We’re sitting in a meeting room having another conversation about the project, and for the 3rd time someone says “but what about …?”, which leads us predictably back to the start of the meeting. Finally, after an hour or so, we give up going round in circles and dejectedly head back to our desks to execute on some small stories that we did manage to scope out, but without any of the real enthusiasm that this exciting project should offer. https://www.pietersartain.com/post/2018-01-24-understanding-guitar-tone/ Wed, 24 Jan 2018 12:00:00 +0000 https://www.pietersartain.com/post/2018-01-24-understanding-guitar-tone/ This post is about a hobby that’s been languishing a while: music. It’s been a significant part of my life since I’ve been born, and I’ve been making music on and off since about 1997. Despite that, I’ve never done a deep dive on electric guitar tone. Mostly this is just reference, to document what I’ve learned in my explorations so far. One day I might swap the ASCII art out for actual images, but one problem at a time :) https://www.pietersartain.com/post/2015-10-22-optimising-for-clarity/ Thu, 22 Oct 2015 15:45:00 +0000 https://www.pietersartain.com/post/2015-10-22-optimising-for-clarity/ I’ve spent a lot more time over the past few months listening and talking to people than ever before. As a new manager, I’ve had to learn a few really important things first hand. Answer direct questions directly A yes or no question should be met with a yes or no answer. That said, rarely are complex questions truly binary, so if possible adjust the question until it is, and then answer. https://www.pietersartain.com/post/2015-10-16-interesting-people/ Fri, 16 Oct 2015 15:45:00 +0000 https://www.pietersartain.com/post/2015-10-16-interesting-people/ Who are your interesting people? The internet has done wonders for opinions, since everyone (including fools like me), can write and publish. Not every piece is going to be scientifically sound or as rigourously peer reviewed as academia, but it is unparalleled as a source of inspiration. Since everything is public, this means that the numbers of people echoing back is vast and, on average, good people rise to the top. https://www.pietersartain.com/post/2015-10-09-something-you-already-know/ Fri, 09 Oct 2015 15:45:00 +0000 https://www.pietersartain.com/post/2015-10-09-something-you-already-know/ There is a difference between assuming nothing and hammering things home well past the time the point has been made. I had a conversation recently where I was asked why I ask people to do things they’re already doing. During a staff update this week, I made an explicit request in response to an email that had gone out that was not explicit; once again I was informed that everyone knew that. https://www.pietersartain.com/post/2015-04-20-recording-software-stack/ Mon, 20 Apr 2015 12:00:00 +0000 https://www.pietersartain.com/post/2015-04-20-recording-software-stack/ I was worrying today about the costs of my recording hobby, having assembled a collection of VSTs and recording software. Once I put the numbers down, however, it actually doesn’t look too bad. Since I’ve also been asked a couple of times what I use, and figured it was about time to link it all up in one place. My current software stack looks like this: Reaper v3 DAW for tracking (20110521 - £25) Addictive Drums 2 with Black Velvet kit for V-Drum noises (20121224 AD1 - £100, 20140629 AD2 upgrade - £80) Peavey Revalver HP for the amp selection and pedal effects stacks (20140515 - £7. https://www.pietersartain.com/post/2010-02-25-forum-building/ Thu, 25 Feb 2010 12:00:00 +0000 https://www.pietersartain.com/post/2010-02-25-forum-building/ From time to time, as we all do, I get into a new subject or hobby. So into it, infact, that I want to get involved; especially when it’s a community run offering or a relatively unknown hobby. ‘Involvement’ for me means more than just playing the game, running the software or optimising the rules - it means sharing what I know with others and spreading the word impartially. If it’s a good product, I like to vote with my mouth as well as my money, and often the fastest way of getting this kind of involvement is getting into the community and steeping myself in the product. https://www.pietersartain.com/post/2009-10-28-new-job-pt-3-deal-or-no-deal/ Wed, 28 Oct 2009 12:00:00 +0000 https://www.pietersartain.com/post/2009-10-28-new-job-pt-3-deal-or-no-deal/ For those joining us this late in the game, allow me to recap: Two companies, both alike in dignity (and their desire to get their hands on me). Two phone interviews. Two face to face interviews. Two offers. One very long day. Imagine: It’s now Wednesday 21st October, and at this point the first company have been waiting since Monday. The defence contractor has only just sorted their offer out, so I’ve got both of them sitting in front of me. https://www.pietersartain.com/post/2009-10-26-new-job-pt-2-the-art-of-handwaving/ Mon, 26 Oct 2009 12:00:01 +0000 https://www.pietersartain.com/post/2009-10-26-new-job-pt-2-the-art-of-handwaving/ Having beaten the first couple of levels, now things get intense. Casual mode is yesterday’s news, now we’re in to Hardcore territory, and coming up to the first real boss. No raid to support you through the actual fight, this is a single player game. The phone interview Phone interviews are wonderful entry points to new companies, since they can’t spring exam-style technical tests on you or put you on the spot by asking awkward knowledge-based questions. https://www.pietersartain.com/post/2009-10-26-new-job-pt-1-foot-in-the-door/ Mon, 26 Oct 2009 12:00:00 +0000 https://www.pietersartain.com/post/2009-10-26-new-job-pt-1-foot-in-the-door/ Every journey begins with a single step, and for jobs, that’s getting your CV to someone who cares. I’ve been very lucky to have had some excellent advice regarding my CV: I’ve queried several employers who’ve had me for interview if there was anything they’d change on it, and universally the answer seems to be ‘it’s absolutely fine’. After some early false starts, I’m confident at this point that I look good on paper, so it’s just a matter of getting the paper into the right places. https://www.pietersartain.com/post/2009-10-02-a-refrain/ Fri, 02 Oct 2009 12:00:00 +0000 https://www.pietersartain.com/post/2009-10-02-a-refrain/ Success. The demon has been banished from my hardware and I am finally able to reliably record at 48KHz 16bit (native resolution for a SB Audigy2 Platinum). Having two bootable Linux installs meant there were a lot of variants to work through. The final result was to boot up in my usual install (not Ubuntu Studio, amazingly) and ditch X. A blog reverse nod to Richard for putting me on to the fact that the nVidia drivers play merry havok with recording latency. https://www.pietersartain.com/post/2009-09-24-a-musical-interlude/ Thu, 24 Sep 2009 12:00:00 +0000 https://www.pietersartain.com/post/2009-09-24-a-musical-interlude/ Being a natural born tinkerer isn’t a good attribute when what you really want to do is finish something. The past few weeks I’ve been working fairly hard on music and trying to get some recording done. So far I’ve managed 3 minutes. That’s about a minute a week, or 0.0099% of one week. Fair enough, I do multitrack recordings, so my actual play time is song time * tracks, but even if I had 15 tracks, that’s still only 15 minutes a week. https://www.pietersartain.com/post/2009-09-01-normal-service-to-resume/ Tue, 01 Sep 2009 12:00:00 +0000 https://www.pietersartain.com/post/2009-09-01-normal-service-to-resume/ While the hob is still laying outside in pieces, I am at least back up and running with my PC. Most importantly, with all my data still intact, just where I left it. So what had happened? I’m still guessing as to the exact cause of the failure, but the problem was a blank partition table on the disk, and a corrupted MBR. Under a hexdump, the ascii in the boot loader looked really wrong, and more like a snippet of my Xorg start up log than lilo, but the real killer was the fact that where the partition table should have been was just a lot of zeros, meaning I couldn’t mount any of the partitions to rerun lilo to fix the bootloader. https://www.pietersartain.com/post/2009-07-21-turbulence/ Tue, 21 Jul 2009 12:00:00 +0000 https://www.pietersartain.com/post/2009-07-21-turbulence/ What started out as killing time at work has actually gone past the “That’s cool” barrier and into something practical. To start at the end first, the template you’re now looking at is in a Git repository that’s linked to my local development version. Two clicks and I can have what I’m actually working on synchronised and deployed to this shared host without trying to remember what files have been changed and what I can skip uploading again. https://www.pietersartain.com/post/2009-07-02-farming/ Thu, 02 Jul 2009 12:00:00 +0000 https://www.pietersartain.com/post/2009-07-02-farming/ Welcome to the farm! This dokuwiki installation is now part of a wiki farm that also contains http://pam.pesartain.com, http://www.src2pkg.net and http://pq.pesartain.com. One core wiki serves that lot, and whatever other wikis I chose to create on the way. What I wanted was: One wiki to rule them all, for centralised maintenance - /farmer One wiki at the root of this domain - / As many wikis as I like located at /<subdir>, accessed by <subdir>. https://www.pietersartain.com/post/2009-06-22-ease/ Mon, 22 Jun 2009 12:00:00 +0000 https://www.pietersartain.com/post/2009-06-22-ease/ Catching up on some RSS subscriptions this morning, I found myself reading Kent Beck’s blog about the Open/Closed Principle. Flipping back through his past posts, the talk Ease at Work really grabbed me. I recommend you watch it. I especially like the comparison between joy and fun at about 24 minutes in (4min into the 3rd part). The idea of being at ease with yourself put me in mind of MacGyver, and how he’s always very content to be what he is, doing what he’s doing. https://www.pietersartain.com/post/2009-06-03-interviewfail/ Wed, 03 Jun 2009 12:00:00 +0000 https://www.pietersartain.com/post/2009-06-03-interviewfail/ Interview over. I walked out feeling like that was a total fail. It didn’t help that I got a bad case of the nerves just an hour before I was due to start. Anyway, the technical test was interesting. Turns out I revised all the wrong topics. There was a confusing recursive program (as they always are) which contained a snippet similar to: {% highlight c %} if (a == 1) if (b == 1) printf(" https://www.pietersartain.com/post/2009-05-28-interview/ Thu, 28 May 2009 12:00:00 +0000 https://www.pietersartain.com/post/2009-05-28-interview/ This is what it’s all been leading up to. I have a good shot at it providing I don’t screw up the C test and subsequently stick my foot in my mouth. 1pm Wednesday 3rd June. But that’s not why I’m writing today. No no. Today, I am writing because this is a post that I lost after Firefox crashed and because it’s related to interviews. Speaking to a friend recently (TLW is getting quite a cast, I wonder if I should start including a cast list? https://www.pietersartain.com/post/2009-05-25-power-saving/ Mon, 25 May 2009 12:00:00 +0000 https://www.pietersartain.com/post/2009-05-25-power-saving/ Since moving to a server/client network architecture at home, I’m finding the electricity bills are going nowhere but up! There are many reasons to have made the move to this sort of network architecture, and I’m still not quite there (web development is done on my main box), but it’s so nice not to lose access to media when I turn my machine off for whatever reason. Anyway, power saving … https://www.pietersartain.com/post/2009-03-06-add-on-domains/ Fri, 06 Mar 2009 12:00:00 +0000 https://www.pietersartain.com/post/2009-03-06-add-on-domains/ The difference between addon domains and domain parking is important. Which is why I first titled this post “parking”, ‘cause I got ’em confused. You will, however, have to go elsewhere for a different sort of parking. An addon domain is a cheeky way to host multiple websites without the hassle of multiple hosting fees, or worse, a dedicated server. Because I totally forgot how to set these up, these are specific instructions when you have a hosting plan with lunarpages and one or more domain names with namesco. https://www.pietersartain.com/post/2008-09-26-employed/ Fri, 26 Sep 2008 12:00:00 +0000 https://www.pietersartain.com/post/2008-09-26-employed/ What started with a few stressful phone calls at the start of August has lead inexorably toward being employed in the same location, by the same people, doing a different job! There are pros and cons about this choice, and my biggest worry has been that I would upset someone along the way. I hope if I run into them again in 12 months time they won’t hold this decision against me. https://www.pietersartain.com/post/2008-09-15-curiousity-kills/ Mon, 15 Sep 2008 12:00:00 +0000 https://www.pietersartain.com/post/2008-09-15-curiousity-kills/ I’ve just pulled the title of this post off a song by Trapt. Since I’ve started this sort of blog, I’ve kept brand names out of the posts, I’ve kept links out. I’m not endorsing anything or leaving adverts on the page. Any companies I deal with have their names removed. Generally I feel good about that. I feel doubly vindicated, because having just wandered over to 43folders.com to check out suggestions on improving my inbox situation, I discovered he’s recently taken a moment to think about what he’s trying to provide, and then told everyone else. https://www.pietersartain.com/post/2008-09-10-now-under-offer/ Wed, 10 Sep 2008 12:00:00 +0000 https://www.pietersartain.com/post/2008-09-10-now-under-offer/ Another Monday morning, I’m still dozing in about 9am fully intending to get up any minute now, and a surprise phone call. My London interview came up trumps! Not only do this company want to waive the second interview they usually request, but they would like to make me an offer! I should expect to hear from them (or more accurately the agent responsible for this particular vacancy) within the week. https://www.pietersartain.com/post/2008-09-07-what-interviews-are-supposed-to-be-all-about/ Sun, 07 Sep 2008 12:00:00 +0000 https://www.pietersartain.com/post/2008-09-07-what-interviews-are-supposed-to-be-all-about/ So I dashed into London on Friday (2008-05-09) for an interview with no specific job specification. The night before I found myself in a complete state, having been sent an 11 page dos and don’ts document by the agency … To cut to the chase, it was fantastic. I didn’t honestly believe there was such a thing as a “good interview” but this one was amazing. I really enjoyed the company of the interviewers, and they didn’t all pounce on me at once. https://www.pietersartain.com/post/2008-09-06-quick-fire-round-go/ Sat, 06 Sep 2008 12:00:00 +0000 https://www.pietersartain.com/post/2008-09-06-quick-fire-round-go/ From the sublime to the ridiculous. The first phone interview I’ve ever had was very simple and required talking around a bunch of points that my CV had made. These people may be in a hurry, but are clearly going to assess if it’s worth bringing you up for a RL interview. It lasted about 30 minutes and was nice and easy. Conversely what I’ve just been through has left me feeling quite bewildered and disoriented. https://www.pietersartain.com/post/2008-08-31-the-long-road/ Sun, 31 Aug 2008 12:00:00 +0000 https://www.pietersartain.com/post/2008-08-31-the-long-road/ Still no word about the job referenced recently. Since life has been busy I’ve felt little need to keep this up to date. I have another interview on September 11th. A lot further away this time but that’s something to deal with when I get there. I’m concerned about the coding test (all 45 minutes of it) since I don’t have a CS degree I’m worried that my self taught approach of solving (programming) problems isn’t sufficient to set me on the career path I’d like, I’m quietly hoping that everything else will make up for that and my experience will show where a fresh graduate might not comprehend. https://www.pietersartain.com/post/2008-08-12-technically-interviewable/ Tue, 12 Aug 2008 12:00:00 +0000 https://www.pietersartain.com/post/2008-08-12-technically-interviewable/ Turns out I made a decent enough impression on the phone interview to warrant the travel expenses and face to face. I can see why you’d want to check someone out beforehand - with two interviewers and 3 hours out of their day! There were plenty of things I think I missed, and equally plenty of things I could have done better. The technical questions came in three parts: a dodgy bit of C code in the style of “what does this do?