Sleeping Monkey

Sleeping Monkey Presents...

My new offices

I just thought I’d post a quick picture (courtesy of Google StreetView) of my new offices:

Sleeping Monkey Presents...

Two new pads

I was going to call this post A new pad, and talk about the flat that now has “Let agreed” outside and is waiting for me, but then I realised I could be clever, call it Two new pads, and also talk about the iPad!

Firstly, the iPad. I don’t think I need to talk about what it is, what it can do, it’s good points, it’s bad points, etc… as you must have been living in a cave to not know about it. Mine was dispatched on Saturday, so I’m waiting for it to turn up at some point this week. Quite excited really!

Secondly, Annie, myself and my parents went up to North London on Saturday to look for a new place for me to live when I start work next month (as mentioned in my last post). We looked round five places, and settled on the one shown in the four pictures below. It comes unfurnished, so Annie and I are going to have great fun shopping around to turn the flat into a home!

Sleeping Monkey Presents...

Moving On

It’s coming up to the end of my final year at University. In approximately two weeks, I will pick up my bag for the last time in Anglesea Building, and walk out. Ok, so I’ll have to return in mid-July to attend the Graduation Ceremony, but two weeks tomorrow is the last day of work that I have to do. And that’s a pretty weird thought.

On the one hand, it’s going to be good to no longer attend University. I won’t have to worry about exams, or coursework, or working on the weekend; instead I’ll have to worry about real work during the day. I can relax at the weekend and in the evenings! It’s going to be good. But, moving on means moving away. I’ve landed myself a job at Ocado (yes, the grocery delivery company; no, I’m not driving a van) as a Network Engineer, working in Hertfordshire. I’m going to have to move up there, and that will mean moving away from my friends and my life here in Portsmouth – which is not going to be fun. I’ll miss everything and everyone down here.

However, these past couple of months have been spent working hard at University to complete my final year project. The project has involved designing and developing a Network Testbed Monitoring and Management tool for the ECATS team at Cisco, the department I worked for last year. It’s been fun, and at the moment I’m just finalising my (30,000+ words) final report. We have to present the project on Project Day, the 4th June, to all and sundry who come to look round. Below is a screenshot of one of the modules in the application that I’ve developed.

This was really just a quick post to update you all on my current status in life…. I realise that I haven’t blogged in a very long time (in fact, this is my first blog post of 2010, happy new year everyone!).

Sleeping Monkey Presents...

The Chosen One

There are a lot of browsers out there. There are the major ones that everyone has heard about – Safari, Firefox, Opera, Internet Explorer (Windows only, obviously – and let’s face it, you can’t not have heard of it if you own a Windows computer). I’m a very picky person when it comes to the browser I’m using – it pretty much has to be just right, or it will niggle at me all day until I get so fed up that I have to switch. So what do I actually use?

My day to day work is done on a Mac, and therefore that automatically rules out Internet Explorer. I can’t say I’m too upset about that – on any installation of Windows, the first thing I do is download a more capable browser if there isn’t one already installed. However, on my Mac, I have a multitude of browsers to choose from. As the image above shows, I currently have installed 5 – Chrome, Safari (obviously, as it comes preinstalled on OS X), Firefox, Camino and Opera. I use them primarily in that order.
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