Sep 20
The Cardiff geeks will be having its first ever face to face on Wednesday 17th October from 7pm at Cafe Floyd, just opposite the castle. Props to Dan Zambonini for organising the venue.
This is an informal, introduction between us all. If you’re a geek, or interested in chatting with us about what we and you are passionate about, make sure you get over there!
Sep 20
Today on the return from uni I passed the new Subway that is opening up soon near Queen Street train station. On one of their job adverts, they were advertising for team leaders and sandwich artists. I’ve never really noticed my sandwiches being arranged in a artistic fashion before, maybe it would brighten my day if they were. I feel sorry for the poor art school graduate who ends up filling baguettes for a living.
Does anyone else have examples of jobs with somewhat over enthusiastic job titles?
Sep 11
Yes, yes I know I already posted about the FOWA Roadtrip in Bristol, but I live in Cardiff and have friends and colleagues in Bristol too. I promise I didn’t just head there for free drinks once again. This time the Carson Systems team had pulled together some funky little FOWA Roadtrip badges that they handed out on the door, rather than the stickers at Bristol. I’d previously learned that Ryan’s wife, Gillian had taken a MSc in Cardiff and it seems the same is true of Lisa Price too. I had a really interesting conversation with Lisa about how Future Publishing (whom she previously worked for) produced one of my favourite mags (PCFormat) back in my adolescence. (I actually still own all the magazines I bought for like 3 years and harbour plans to ship them back to Future in Bath, along with all the CDs).
Anyway, it was grand that those who were involved in the web app scene in Cardiff finally made it to an event together, and our newly formed Cardiff Geeks group is already scheming to stage another meet up for geeky people. (It’s a good label, it’s a nerd you don’t want to be).
Last night I attended the FOWA Roadtrip in Cardiff, which was great. Unfortunately my “business” cards were a little lacking, due to me making a rather late order from moo and having to put something together by hand for the interim. They instead arrived today, about 14 hours too late. I felt like writing “beta” on hand hand-made ones or something…
Since moving to Taffs Well, just outside of Cardiff, Viv and I have enjoyed fantastic views of the Garth. This mountain is the centre for the original true story of “The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill But Came Down A Mountain”, a book/film which I managed to catch on TV this week. Basically, it goes like this, the villagers of Taffs Well work together to try to prevent an English cartographer from leaving the village and classifying the Garth as a hill. They gradually take soil to the top of the (then) hill and eventually get it classed as a mountain by the cartographer. Carrying all that soil is no easy feat – it does require roping in all the villagers into getting it up the hill. It was quite amusing to be sitting in our living room watching a film about the mountain which could be seen through the window right next to our television. Anyway I’m really enjoying it out here – its such a sight to wake up every morning and see the Garth covered in cloud at its peak. I hope Viv and I get the chance and enough enthusiasm to walk it together soon. Stuart Herbert has some great pics of the Garth on flickr.
Sep 7
I’ve long wondered why there doesn’t seem to be much happening in terms of community of the web professionals in wales. There is a vibrant collection of people sporting different skill sets in the area, yet as I can see not a lot of chat amongst everyone in between different groups. On a whim, I decided to create a facebook group “Cardiff Web Geeks” to try and get people to come out of their shells and actually participate in a bit of discussion about tech topics in wales. I’ve invited a bunch of people who might be interested and hopefully we’ll be able to organise some sort of chats and discussions at meetups, rather than having to cross the border back to England and sponge from our friends over there. (Each one of those return trips costs…) If you are interested in what’s going on with people and the web in Wales, I’d invite you to sign up and participate in what hopefully could be built into a nice valuable community in our local area.
[Update - We now have our own website! Rock on!]
Wow, Apple have released a new touch version of the iPod (think the iPhone with no phone) as well as updating the classic iPod (160Gb!) and new nano versions. This actually means I’d be able to have an iPod which fits my entire music collection upon it with room to spare. I’ve waited a long time for that. The iPod touch also allows wireless browsing and download of new music via iTunes. Nano versions now rock up in both 4Gb standard and 8Gb models. I’m sure someone in our department will have one before long….
