minus zero

I have a research topic!

After spending a couple of months wading through research papers and trying to get a feel for the area, I've settled on 'discovering music on the move' as the area of mobile HCI that I'm going to concentrate my PhD research efforts on. There seems to be a lot of activity in the areas of creating and consuming music in a mobile context, but I've not (yet) found much that deals specifically with the joy of discovering a new band, song, or genre of music. Now I've got to knuckle down and read everything there is to read, and then write a literature review by January 15^th... Eek.

In other news, the Annual SUCS Christmas Party is taking place tomorrow at the House of Geek. I'm looking forward to it, although I can't help but wonder how it's going to differ to last year's gatherings now that people such as Steve, Jo, Tudor, Darren etc. have moved away. Photos on Friday!

Readers who visit the actual blog rather than via RSS will notice the rather nice new-look blog theme. It's in keeping with the main site and was (mostly) done by Andy. Thanks Andy. Thandy.

I'm all settled in to the house and it's certainly come to life now that everyone has moved in. Fun times are ahead, I predict :). The kitchen is a little on the small side considering there's 6 of us, but nothing's perfect. The landlord/lady seem to be on the ball as well, which is nice. A few days after requesting a dining table, they arrived with a gigantic refectory-style beast, which has pride of place in the middle of our lounge.

The Great Job Hunt paid off, and I've been offered an evening job at Woolworths... It's only a temporary position, so I'll probably have to go through the whole process again in January, but whatever keeps the wolves from the door in the meantime. I had a group interview today which was a bit scary but I must have done a good enough job of impressing/deceiving (pick one ;)) the interviewers so no complaints there.

This year I'm going to try harder to give my bike the love and attention it deserves, and it's not a moment too soon. 12 months ago (when I started riding it with any degree of regularity) I was fairly routine with the maintenance - a weekly clean, oil and tweaking of the brakes - but it didn't last long and the poor thing has had nothing but maltreatment since last January. It all came to a head this week though, and I've replaced brake blocks, an inner tube, bearings, rear spindle and handlebar grips with about 15 trips to the bike shop. Nothing major, but it still needs work. On the TODO list as soon as the loan comes are the bottom bracket bearings, re-adjusting the gears and an overall clean and grease.

Jen's coming tomorrow, which is going to be good fun, and then on Monday it's Jo's Quarter of a Century Celebrations AKA the Mumbles Mile in wigs. Can't wait. :D

I've become something of a man of leisure since my return from the holiday. It's rather nice to not have to worry about deadlines, going to work and other such things. I should be a slacker more often :)

I've been able to indulge in some pet projects - the current focus of attention is an AJAX webmail client. At the moment I'm doing it the hard (easy?) way - Python CGI. No doubt this isn't the most efficient or sensible way of doing it, but it's a scratch for an itch. Redeveloping the system using a framework like Django or mod_python (ok, not a framework per se) would probably be a simple task because there's not a lot of code written yet.

minus-zero.org finally has some kind of coherent design and content, although there's not an awful lot to see yet. The pages are static HTML, generated from a template by a simple script. This could be interesting when the site expands, we'll see.

In other news, I'm heading back to Swansea on Sunday. The Great Job Hunt will then begin, as I attempt to find some form of income to offset the new house's huge rent costs. Hopefully having my CV (which I've yet to write...) bolstered by having 'Google paid me money!' splashed across it will help. Though having said that, I doubt if the average shopkeeper gives a monkey's. :)