Working as a programmer involves thinking at multiple levels of abstraction. You might be coding a web application, but at any one point it could be data modelling, presentational markup or low level architecture changes. Sometimes it is hard to think of something to draw or photograph. It shouldn’t have to be a real or obvious subject all the time. Therefore I just let my stylus wander and this is what came out.
Today it’s a photo. I sometimes like the play of light on elements of architecture. This is from one of the cafeterias where I work. A brief glint of sunlight came through the window after a short rain shower.
This week I’ll be trying something slightly different — I will post an image made each day — either a photo or a sketch. The only limit is that it is created or uploaded with my iPad.
Here I am, a little over one year since I started writing journal posts every two weeks (or so). Recently my tempo has dwindled thanks to working full-time. That doesn’t mean I’m going to stop, just that with only so many hours available each day I can’t always do everything.
At the moment I am living in Cambridge for 5 nights a week. I commute by bike, which takes about an hour each way including a shower and getting changed at the work end. When I get back after working I brew a mug of tea and spend a bit of time cooking and washing up. Once or twice a week my evening commute is diverted via a shop to stock up. By the time I sit down at the computer (my old laptop — not a fun machine to work on) it’s often 20.30 and I spend the a while surfing the web. Afterwards I am pretty much exhausted for the day and all I want to do is watch a TV episode or go to bed with a book. And so the cycle goes on…
It’s nice to be working again, but I forgot how much your free time becomes valuable. The weekends, previously a time to continue with all my hobbies and interests, have become a time to recover and basically avoid sitting behind a computer. My wrists and eyes are not fond of being parked at a desk for so many hours of the day, yet that is what I subject them to.
Moving forward I hope to catch up with some of my draft posts. I don’t know who reads this (especially when I write too much in one go) but I shall continue and strive to come up with new things to write about and perhaps manage shorter, weekly posts.
Things have been quite busy lately; it seems impossible to relax when you have too much time on your hands.
Tomorrow I’m starting a contract that fills the rest of the year. I’ll be working near Cambridge and staying there during the week. Hopefully the early winter will not be as bad as last year as I am hoping to do most of my commuting by bike.
This week I’m going to be revising Java, algorithms and data structures during my free evenings. I have a day of interviews coming up at a large software company, and it’s wise to be familiar with a lot of the first year computer science material.
I’ll be using a mobile hotspot for my internet during the week. So far it’s proven faster (on upload) than standard ADSL so I may write up my experiences in the next few weeks.
You may notice I have recently experimented with the typefaces used on this site. I am currently too busy with another website to work on this site’s re-design but a recent project demanded a particular font family be used and Typekit happened to have it available. I consider the value of the Typekit packages to be quite good considering what you get so I am going to let my subscription continue.
Last week I was using Garamond for headings and this week I’ve switched to the classic Futura for headings, with FF Dagny being used for body text.
While I was in Denmark earlier this month I ended up watching the morning magazine programme on the equivalent to ITV. One of the lead stories that day was on how to bake the world’s best bread. I am quite fussy when it comes to bread; one could describe me as a bread geek.
Earlier this year I got back in to baking my own bread. As a student living in England, buying what I consider the best bread can be both costly and time-consuming. The typical English bread bin contains a pre-sliced, very chewy (and generally white) loaf. While I can put up with this when it is toasted, or when something with a strong flavour and enough texture to hide the bread’s awful chewy-fluffy-tastelessness is applied, I generally avoid this type of bread. The wholemeal alternatives, produced in the same way, are slightly better (there is some flavour, but the texture is the same) but the only real positive side to this style of bread is the extreme longevity (i.e. it takes forever to turn stale).
What is it that I look for in a bread? This is probably not a question most people take time to consider in their daily lives. The first issue to consider is the flour — wholemeal or white. White is (for me) something to save for special occasions, rather than a day-to-day bread for lunch or accompanying a meal. My general bread recipe uses a blend of wholemeal and white flour which produces a good texture; I find pure wholemeal bread can be a bit too dense.
The next factor in bread quality is the texture. I have already explained my dislike of the sliced English bread, which primarily stems from the texture. What I look for is a spring in the loaf which is countered by a satisfying crunch in the crust. Chewy can be fine, if the bread springs back and does not stay squashed — as is the case with most sliced supermarket loaves. I am not a great fan of bread which turns to crumbs the moment a bread knife gets within a centimetre.
A third quality of bread which I consider is the taste. I don’t like my standard loaves to have a very strong flavour like Rye or sourdough variants, but conversely a tasteless bread is a little disappointing. I can remember supermarket “French” bread sticks having a bit more flavour than they do nowadays, but generally the Italian style loaves have a nice flavour.
You might by now be wondering what the recipe I use for day-to-day bread is. I must admit, I don’t like spending large amounts of time kneading. Therefore I often use a bread machine to do the mixing and then finish rising and baking in a separate tin (this gives a far better taste, crust and shape than the machine’s low temperature baking). One recipe I tried and hold in high regard is one from the Guardian by Felicity Cloake: http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/wordofmouth/2010/jun/10/how-to-bake-wholemeal-bread. This method requires repeated kneading for short periods, but creates a really good loaf. The standard loaf I make is similar, using sunflower oil instead of butter, and I vary between using molasses sugar and plain white sugar. I don’t normally add the vitamin C tablet, but it does create a slightly more open texture with wholemeal flour.
Today I baked the “World’s Best Bread” for the first time. I say today, but the process began last night with the initial assembly of ingredients for the twelve hour resting period. This morning the dough was full of air bubbles and had grown considerably in size. The next phase of rising involved dusting the folded dough with flour and a little textural supplement (in my case poppy seeds) and placing it on a tea towel for a further hour or two. As I was slightly time constrained I limited the time to an hour, but the dough had risen substantially enough in that time and did not spring back after poking. In the mean time I took the phenolic handle off my big Le Creuset (see this post) and preheated it to the maximum oven temperature.
What came out of the oven smelled great, but then I am accustomed to that hunger-inducing scent from past baking efforts. The loaf produced a satisfying hollow noise when tapped and had a bit of give. This reassured me that the loaf would not be horribly dense. When I placed the dough in the hot pan, I did not take time to even it out in the base, and to my surprise it did not fill the width of the pan. Next time I may try to produce a perfectly round loaf, but I quite like the rustic shape of this first try.
The texture revealed when making the first slice was much lighter than my usual loaves. Large air pockets feature throughout, but the overall bite ‘gives’ just the right amount. It reminds me of the texture of a good ciabatta. The crust nicely browned for the final 15 minutes in the oven and has a good crunch, better than my usual attempts.
The flavour is certainly good. With such a simple recipe there is not much to alter the pure wheat taste. This loaf has a really nice taste of… wheat. It reminds me of how rye bread has a powerful sour scent and the flour provides the main taste. I have already mentioned that my preference is for a wholemeal/white blend but that will wait until the next time. This white loaf is slightly darker in colour than I am used to (do they bleach the supermarket loaves?) but tasted great with cheese, homemade apple chutney and apple butter.
Would I recommend you try this recipe? It is certainly worth the effort to bake it at least once. I used a cast iron saucepan but if you don’t have one (yet) then it should work in a lidded Pyrex dish or a stainless steel oven-safe saucepan, but not necessarily as well. My main criticism is that it takes a bit of forward planning. The best timing is dependant on your work schedule. The initial preparation takes 5 minutes, but then you need to wait 12–18 hours before rising and baking. I started in the evening around 10pm and the loaf was out of the oven at 12.15pm the next day, and that was hurrying things slightly. Clearly if I was working away from home during the day this would not be such a good schedule, and I would probably have to do the baking the next evening.
For my day to day “sandwich” bread I will probably stick to my wholemeal/white blend with sugar and oil, but if a trial run of this recipe with wholemeal flour added works well I could end up converting.
In case you missed it, here is the link to the recipe once more.
Edit: I’ve now tried the wholemeal variant which turned out really well, although I added a little brown sugar and adjusted the water/flour content. The resulting bread had a very good texture, and is definitely an improvement over my earlier 50/50 white/wholemeal attempt.
This month it is approximately ten years since I first had a PC and the ability to use the internet at home. It is also a year today since I ordered my iMac and iPod Touch. I don’t intend to celebrate in any particular way, but I realised that is about time I dealt with the ever-growing collection of digital data that I’ve accumulated over the years.
In ten years I have never lost any files other than on one CD which got scratched. But I have managed to get myself into a pickle with multiple backups and data dispersed across far too many disks and filing systems. For the past 2 years I have wanted to get my digital ‘library’ in order, but it is always a bit of a struggle.
As primarily a Windows user for many years, I got into a routine of reinstalling my operating system and software every 6–18 months. This led me to use separate data and software partitions on my hard disk, creating a nice clean data storage system. It worked quite well when I lived at home all the time, and I used an external hard disk for backups with most important data duplicated on CD or DVD.
Once I had more than one computer in the same house, things started to get complicated. I set up one computer as a server which allowed the other PC to synchronise user files. Easy, simple enough and reliable.
In 2006 I acquired my laptop, which at first fitted in with my filing system quite well. However, when I moved away to university in 2007 my data became disjointed. Four years later and I haven’t managed to assimilate all my data back to a simple data store. Having a Mac for the last year hasn’t really helped with this problem, although I am gradually importing data to the large 2TB hard disk.
I suppose the problem is best characterised by the number of hard disks I have and how big they are:
It’s approaching the time of year when I take an internet holiday. I find that it really helps to get away from the constant distractions and endless flow of communications. It’s also convenient to not have to pay the internet roaming bill when you are abroad.
This also means that my ever growing selection of blog post drafts will either be posted shortly before I head away, or a little while after I have come back. I have a lot of hours to fill on trains the next few weeks so I hope to at least post a few things before I get away from the internet.
A lot of people I know find it hard to get away from the internet. I’m not sure if it’s an addiction, or if it’s just a matter of avoiding boredom. This post by Scott Adams explains part of the reason I enjoy getting away from it all: What would happen if the world stopped being bored? It’s a similar reason to why I enjoy cycling so much. When you have something gnawing on your mind, you can get away from it all and think in relative peace before you come back to the computer. The endorphins are good too.
Last Friday was the end of my university degree. I left school in 2007 and went straight to the University of York, which at the time was widely regarded as a top 5 Computer Science department.
I had 5 offers to choose between and while York might not have been the highest (Imperial College) or lowest (St. Andrews), it struck a good balance for me. London was a bit too expensive and Scotland too far away, and my other offers were from universities which didn’t rank as highly.
I thought it would be useful to go through the course retrospectively to give an idea of what I have been taught and what options I had. This first post looks at the first year. Continue reading