The cow parade
Originally uploaded by davidillsley.
Archive for May, 2006
Had a good day at the Recruitment Fair (more later) but having got out of bed at 5am and done 5 hours of standing and talking I need o go to bed. Now!
Not sure what to make of this
No, I’m not coming up to Edinburgh and Dundee at the end of next week for the Scottish Tourist Board, but to represent IBM at a recruitment event in Adam House (Edinburgh University). Believe it or not IBM is looking for graduates to start at Hursley for Software Development this year. If you’re interested in working for a good company on large, tough projects and products with lots of really intelligent people in a great location (if you like acre after acre of park with a bar on-site), pop on over to IBM Recruitment or come along to Adam House next Thursday (25th) and say hello.
To anyone I haven’t seen for ages I’ll be around (and looking for somewhere to crash 
) on the Sunday (possibly as early as Saturday) and flying back down here on Monday 29th. I’ll be in touch.
One of the things that’s kept me busy recently was finally getting around to finding a local theatre group. After a number of recommendations I went along to Maskers last week. They were all very friendly and I’m going to try and help out at their big outdoor show coming up in July. Probably dogsbody work but I’m used to that and it’ll be a good chance to get to know lots of new people.
It’s been a couple of weeks since my last post because it’s been a busy couple of weeks (though not because of the below).
Noteworthy news: WS-Addressing Core and SOAP Binding goes REC
The response from the blogosphere has been split between happiness that it’s finally done (people have been using WS-A in anger for years) and comments for those who’d kill all the WG members in our sleep for building some Enterprisey, non-REST beast. I think the most important thing is whether people want (and do) use it and judging by all the people on the Axis2 user list who have problems engaging the addressing module there’s quite a few of them. Additionally there are a bunch other specs which require WS-A underneath which will drive implementation and adoption like WS-AT, WS-BA, WS-Notification, all to be found in the recently announced WebSphere AppServer 6.1.
Well done to everyone who got these specs out the door. WS-A WSDL here we come….
I’ve been listening to some podcasts since about this time last year though I’ve been more attentive to it again recently. For anyone reading this who doesn’t know what a podcast is, its a set of audio files that are automatically downloaded to your computer once you’ve subscribed to a feed and may be further automatically transferred to an iPod or similar. Most such feeds match a traditional format of series of shows of a similar duration. The advantages of podcasting over traditional radio are many and varied but the 2 that appeal to me are firstly that anyone can put out a show so there is a wide variety of content and secondly that there are no time restrictions. I think Steve Jobs was spot on when he said: “it’s like TiVo for radio”.
The 2 music podcasts I liten to most are AccidentHash which is rocky music, produced in Boston but refelecting wider America and the tartanpodcast produced in Glasgow and focussed on unsigned and independent Scottish music. I strongly suggest you check them out if you have some time each week which you might enjoy having something a bit different as background music.
I also use podcasting to keep up with what’s going on in the world through Left, Right & Center and From Our Own Correspondent and also what’s going on in the tech industry with the Gillmor Gang and some podcasts from IBM. It’s refreshing to check my iPod each weekend and find there’s loads of high quality content to listen to while making my way to and from places.
