mattwhite.me

On the way to work this morning I stopped to get some cash from the hole in the wall at Ipswich Station. Unfortunately the machine decided to eat my card, instead I just got a bit of paper telling me to contact my bank. Apparently the fault code on the paper meant that there had been a jam, rather than me being insolvent (I’m guessing like a big printer there was a 20 pound note getting ripped in half somewhere inside!).

So when I got to the office I phoned the bank who were very apologetic and said they’d "rush" a new card out to me, how long will that be… you guessed it, 5 working days. So at best I won’t have a card until next Wednesday! In the meantime to get money I have to go into the bank and go through the rigmarole of queuing up and then proving who I am.

Luckily the security procedures are laughable so it doesn’t take long. When I went in at lunchtime all I had to do was provide the sort code and account number and my post code (that’s ZIP code for friends over the pond). There was no checking of my signature (which they have on file and I would assume is stored in a document management system online somewhere), or any "proper" security information such as mother’s maiden name etc. I think it actually ended up quicker using the counter system to get at my cash than to use the cash machine! A bit of a tip there for anyone with criminal tendencies, just get hold of a thrown out bank statement and you’ve got access to free cash with no hassles!

I’ve just got home from a weekend in Brighton catching up with some old friends. Not a huge amount of sleep but great to catch up with everyone and to meet some new people as well.

It’s pretty hard to get a hotel room in Brighton in the summer so I ended up in a very overpriced place right on the seafront, but I have to admit it was nice to have a wander along the seafront this morning to try and clear my head (in the end some paracetamol did a much better job).

Anyway, I did promise Lopa that I’d stick this photo of Phil up on Flickr just to prove what a trend setting DJ she married ;o)

Sorry for the recent lack of posts, things are hugely busy here at the moment. I’ve had workmen in the house all week fitting a new bathroom. That’s all finished now and a massive improvement with a really nice shower in my ensuite. Much needed as well to try and cool down in this insane heat. For the last few days the temperatures have been in the 30s and now it’s got humid as well. I know that a lot of places get hotter than us but the UK is just not set up to handle this sort of weather, it’s been a great pleasure getting into the office in the morning to appreciate the air conditioning!

The other thing which is on a roll at the moment is one of my own side projects, I’ve been using Dojo to write a new Domino application, it’s a bit of a change in the way you think about web development but I’m really quite impressed. So far I’ve come to the conclusion that for the best integration with Domino is to go with a Web 1.5 type approach!

What does that mean? Well Dojo really pushes you away from any classic interaction with HTML forms and direct contact with the server, however I’ve managed to come up with an application framework within Domino where all the validation etc is done using the classic Input Validation formulae. So using dojo.io.FormBind I can submit the Domino form and then handle the response so that it looks like a Web 2.0 interface (i.e. few screen refreshes, lots of asynchronous activity) but is in fact still using classic Domino web techniques where they are useful.

It’s all a bit of a tease talking about applications and then not giving any details, well this is one of my own personal projects which I’ve been working on in one form or another for a few months now, hopefully it will see the light of day but I’m not going to release something which will embarass me so don’t expect anything too soon. If / when it does come out then you can be sure that I’ll bore the pants off you talking about it then so just be grateful for the moment!

Now, onto something completely different. I guess this is fairly common but I am in the zone at the moment. Most developers know what the zone is, when you have a period where you can truly concentrate and get huge amounts of good work done, probably not even being aware of the passing of time. Well I have two different types of zone, what I just described is a period of a few hours during a day when everything goes well. But I have long periods of time where everything seems to come together and I just get loads of work done. I’ve learned over the years that when I enter one of these periods I have to make the most of it because in this two or three week timeframe I can make real progress on whatever project I concentrate on. I don’t know, maybe this is just me, or does everyone experience this?

Since starting the new job I am back on the daily commute from Ipswich to the City, I try not to mention it as it’s boring for everyone but this morning we had a journey which could turn into a modern classic.

The train broke down at Colchester, annoying but not that unusual, I guess it happens 4 or 5 times a year (for some reason always at Colchester, never anywhere else, go figure). But this morning was slightly different. Usually what happens is that everyone piles off the train and just waits on the platform for the next one to come along before squeezing onto it. Today what happened was that we all rolled off the train moaning and grumbling about bloody One, couldn’t organise a piss up in a brewery, all the usual. But the broken down train didn’t move. After a while an announcement cam eover the tannoy… “The train at platform 3 cannot move until the people in the buffet car have finished their breakfast.”. Cue several hundred people on the platform bursting into laughter at the absurdity of the situation, we were all being held up for 10 people to have their morning fry-up.

Needless to say, when they heard the announcement they began to file off the train rather sheepishly. In the end we were only delayed by about 45 minutes, but you’ve got to love commuting in England haven’t you!