supersonic feet

It could of course still go wrong in some cruel twist of fate, but Ken and I have pretty much got a flat sorted now. I went down to London on Tuesday night to spend the rest of the week flat-hunting and found one the next day that was pretty great. We’ve now got a holding deposit down on it and should get the rest tied up this week ready to move in next weekend.

On Wednesday afternoon, I arranged to view a couple of flats in a brand new block in Ilford. The first agent I spoke to about them didn’t call back for days though, so I ended up being shown the flats by another agent who was a bit keener. The first couple I saw (Ken, who I’m gonna be both working with and sharing the flat, had to be at work) were very nice, but slightly small and then we got to the third flat - on the 14th floor (last before the penthouses, lah-di-dah).

As the door opened sunlight was streaming through the flat in a quite corny, but pretty cool effect whereas the other two had needed the lights turning on. This is good to get sunlight coming through in the afternoon. The flat is quite a bit bigger than the others, with a good sized main bedroom and en-suite with its own balcony and a really long second bedroom. The living room is a good size as well, with open-plan kitchen at the back and sliding door out onto a bigger main balcony.

It took us until late Friday to sort out most of the details before putting down the deposit, but the flat looks great and should be good for the quick move I have to make for my new job as it’ll be fully-furnished and everything’s brand new. The location (although unfortunately technically in Essex) is pretty good for work - the train station’s a very short walk from the flat, with a 20-minute overground journey into Liverpool Street Station (so no boiling/packed tube) and then another 5-10 minute walk to the office. I’ve also found out after the fact that the area the flat’s in is supposedly the safest in London in terms of crime figures.

Pictures will follow when we move in as I currently only have a seriously dodgy video I took on my IXUS.

The still-unreleased Optimus keyboard got my vote way back in August last year, but Logitech have recently announced an update to their diNovo keyboard which looks excellent - the diNovo Edge:

Before even seeing the picture, I was drawn in by the promise of a diNovo that’s rechargeable. I’ve got the original diNovo set and half the time the mediapad (noticeably missing from the Edge) sits doing nothing as I can’t be bothered finding some new batteries, while it’s an irritation when the main keyboard runs out (though that mercifully happens much less often).

The Edge looks pretty stunning and has some interesting technology features to go with the looks. The function keys have LED backlit icons that only come on when you activate the f-lock. It can be annoying pressing a key expecting one thing and finding the f-lock was on and something else happens instead. The most significant additions though are the touch-sensitive bits on the right. There’s a touch-based volume scrollbar and a mouse-replacement touchpad (like on laptops), that also has vertical/horizontal scrolling by moving around the edges of the circle.

Maybe by the time it’s out in November I’ll be able to afford one!

After installing the Windows Vista RC1 back in mid-September, I finally have sound working. Creative’s beta drivers for Vista haven’t been great from what I’ve read, but they’ve finally released drivers for Vista RC1 specifically and (after some jiggery) they do now work.

If anyone else is having trouble with these latest drivers, this may help: use WinRAR or similar to unzip the driver .exe file and then run setup.exe in the Drivers folder that gets extracted. Choose to overwrite existing drivers.

It gave the impression of doing nothing for a good few minutes, but it does actually work in the end (unless you get an actual error).

Yesterday was my last day at Net Effects. In the next couple of weeks I’ll be moving down to London to take up my new position as web developer with a new startup company. Unfortunately details are shrouded in a non-disclosure agreement, so I can’t actually talk about what I’ll be doing. It’s a job working in-house on a big new site though, where for the past couple of years I’ve worked for web dev agencies doing client work, so it’ll be an interesting change.

Ken started work at the new company a few weeks ago and gave me the heads-up on the opening for a web developer, so thanks to him for that

We’re currently trying to find a flat to share close enough to the office and thought we had one yesterday, only to find out it had been let out through another agent in the morning. Another flat in the same building then came up through another agent yesterday, so we were gonna check that out. Looking at the plans though, the second bedroom was tiny and Ken called to cancel the viewing this morning. Guess what? It had already been let out anyway!

We’re now on a third attempt, with another flat in the same building becoming available (perhaps there’s something we should know hehe) for a bit more money, so we’ll see whether it’s already gone by the time Ken gets there tonight.

Back to the new job, it’s an interesting mix of HTML/CSS work and bits of Ruby on Rails. To start with, I have to implement all the page designs as working views in the application. After that, it in theory gets a bit looser with options to do a bit more Ruby in with the HTML/design stuff. The team all seem very friendly and it’s a small group so it should be fun (if not, I blame you Ken :p).

Last night I went to the premiere of my best friend, Krishna’s first full skateboard film, Bish Cam. Two showings were held at the new Star and Shadow Cinema in Newcastle - an early performance for the younger skaters and a late over-18s showing.

Both showings went down a storm and Jackie (owner of Native skatestore and Krishna’s flatmate) and others (sorry, don’t know there names) helped set up a flat bank inside the cinema building (it’s still being built out) and everyone just went at it.

Plenty of photos in my flickr set and watch out for Bish Cam on DVD later in the year