archive for the Work category

Valley Technology is hiring!

Work Monday 7th April 2008

IT Services company based in central Edinburgh seeks honours graduate with computer-related degree for wide-ranging role in software application development for business.

Essential:

  • One or more of: PHP/Python/Perl/C++
  • SQL
  • Good problem solving skills
  • Good communication skills

See the full job posting for more details.

 

Future of Web Apps

Technology,Work Wednesday 3rd October 2007

Mark, Al and myself are all in misty London for the Future of Web Apps conference which has been pretty good so far. Apart from the 4am wakeup and 6:30am flight from Edinburgh. We’ll see how long we last at the party tonight which has free adobe-sponsored beer…

 

Last day at Scotweb

Work Sunday 3rd June 2007

Shown below is my haul of presents from all the fantastic people I’m no longer working with at Scotweb. The frame at the back is an awesome Scotweb Instant Gift for a Kilt, for me! I’ve been in Scotland now for nearly eight years so I don’t think I’ll lynched for wearing one.

I worked at Scotweb for almost three years, and it has been great fun, I’ve met a lot of really great people and hopefully made some friendships that will survive us not working together. In my last thirty minutes of employment I quickly gathered some random stats from my time at Scotweb:

  • I created approximately 2 Gb of data. Graphics, scripts, source code etc
  • I resolved 2052 bugs in our Mantis bug tracking system
  • I put 226 bugs into the system
  • I may have eaten more than 150 slices of cake as part of our Friday meetings
  • I got to love using an Apple Mac

The best of luck to everyone at Scotweb, especially Doug who has taken over from me as Web & Database Developer.

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1068/527605941_7772e8838b_m.jpg
 

I Have A New Job

Work Friday 30th March 2007

After two years and nine months at Scotweb as a Web Developer I have handed in my notice. I have been offered a job at Valley Technology as a PHP Application Developer. It’s a step up professionally and would lead to more exposure to a wider variety of clients and development processes. They’re currently based in Leith but by the time I start (my notice period is two months) they will have moved to shiny new offices in the centre of town. This will be an exciting opportunity and I can’t wait to get started at Valley Tech.

 

Did You Mean?

Work Monday 19th December 2005

At work Sandy recently implemented Google-esque “did you mean?” results on our site search. It’s pretty neat.

 

The Heated Mouse

Me,Technology,Work Monday 24th October 2005

We’re often joking at work about how cold it is. Maybe this is the answer: The Heated Mouse.

 

Mac T-Shirts

Design,Technology,Work Thursday 13th October 2005
spinner shirt

I know I’m becoming a total mac-geek when I like t-shirts with mac GUI widgets on them. At work I use a mac while at home I’m in PC/Windows land. I have to say, there are more elements of OS X that I’d like in Windows rather than vice-versa.

The shopping cart system over on panic.com is also awesomely cool and the UI is instantly useable to mac users.

 
 
via: preshrunk.info

Local W3C HTML Validator

Technology,Work Thursday 18th August 2005

We got annoyed at the slowness of the W3C HTML validator today, so I looked around for instructions on installing a local version. As usual the Apple Developer Connection has a very good article on installing and setting up a local validator. It’s much faster with it being local plus its, like, more extreme.

 

Clan.com

Design,Work Sunday 14th August 2005

We did some “extreme” programming at work the other day and manged to re-design clan.com in a single day(ish). This wasn’t technically extreme programming but hey, it makes our geeky jobs sound much more active and well, eXtreme. It was nice change for the team to focus on a single project for a whole day.

 

Successful Strategies for Commenting Code

Technology,Work Tuesday 2nd August 2005

This is a nice article over on particle tree about code commenting strategies. We should do more of this at work.

 

The View From Work

Photography,Work Thursday 28th July 2005
view from work
view from work
 
 

IE Woes

Technology,Work Thursday 28th July 2005

Spent some time at work tearing my hair out today as IE was rendering a page bizzarely. I eventually tracked it down to the fact that the very first line in the HTML was not the DOCTYPE definition. If IE doesn’t see this first I think it reverts to “quirks” mode AKA “render stuff where every I want” mode. Handy to know.

 

Mutt

Me,Technology,Work Friday 13th May 2005

Mutt is awesome. It’s a super hardcore console email client that I’ve been using for my personal mail at work. Not that I’m trying to be sneaky, but it keeps the personal mail out of the way in a terminal, and stops me getting distracted by it all the time. It supports IMAP nicely and has an insane level of customisation. I’ve got it colouring my inbox mails differently depending on the status of them and what their subjects/senders are. Its pretty neat. It also does threading, threading! I can’t live without it now and it drives me insane when I see people reading their mail in the wrong order through something like hotmail.

 

Pacman, The Snow Level

Gaming,Work Thursday 24th February 2005

It’s amazing what you can do in your lunch break.

 
 

More Fun In The Snow At Work

Work Wednesday 23rd February 2005
 
 

Hurrah!

Work Saturday 22nd January 2005

In the past I’ve ranted about how clunky the Adwords interface is. Google have at last seen sense and are releasing an API: siliconvalleywatcher.com.

 

Frosty

Work Tuesday 18th January 2005

Another busy day at work…

 
 

Froogle

Design,Work Friday 29th October 2004

Froogle have recently launched in the UK and at work we’ve hopped on the bandwagon with me developing a froogle feed backend. You can view all of our products here or one of my favourite products here. Now….its party time.

 

Design

Design,Work Sunday 22nd August 2004

Work is pretty constant at the moment with lots of design “look n feel” changes on our main store. We finally managed to drag www.scotwebshops.com kicking and screaming out of html 4 hell. It took some convincing as it wasn’t a “critical” project but we managed it in the end :).

 

Kilt2 In The News

Work Friday 30th July 2004

Our latest venture at work, kilt2 has been making some waves in the press. Scottish TV recently did a feature on us and interviewed Nick (my boss). Look here for some hilarity and terrible quality clips of the feature.

 

Happenings

Work Monday 26th July 2004

Alex at work has recently finished the companies latest pet project. We got an article in yesterdays Herald and there is a big fancy “press event” this Thursday. Should be interesting to see what the general public reaction is, some of the kilts are pretty “out there”.

 

End Of An Era

Work Monday 5th July 2004

Yesterday was my last day working at waterstones. I will miss the retail shenanigans. Mainly the other people at work and the nice customers. Working in a bookshop is a pretty good job for the retail sector but the pay and prospects are pretty non-existent. It was just my summer job anyway, the stuff I’m doing at scotweb I actually, like, enjoy doing. So, I’m getting paid for doing stuff I enjoy, which is the whole point I think.

In other earth shattering news I’ve had a haircut. My parents are up tomorrow for pre-graduation stuff and then the big day on Wednesday. Good news is that Kerry got a ticket in the extra ticket lottery thing. She jumped around for a bit giggling when she found out .

 

White Suit

Work Tuesday 21st October 2003
I was working at the Martin Bell event last night for work. Very nice guy and an excellent speaker (well, he is a politician). We had someone from Forth 2 doing the talking up on stage with him, it was all nice and informal. It was a pretty good turnout, probably just shy of a hundred people. Plus, Queen’s Hall is not huge so it looked ‘full enough’. He stayed to sign all of our stock aswell, about 120 books, which was very nice of him. The question and answer session was nice and active aswell with forays into scottish politics, the Kelley affair, the scottish parliament etc. All in all, a good night. We even sold some books!
 

Random++

Work Monday 22nd September 2003

The other night at work a giant squirrel and a giant Zippy (from Rainbow) came into the shop…..