The Musings of the Kat

Posted by Kat Crichton Wed, 28 Apr 2010 07:55:00 GMT

I’ve been living and working in L’viv (a spectacular Medieval city near the west border of Ukraine) for a couple of weeks now.

I’m trying to learn a bit of the language, but it’s fairly hard getting your message across. Very few people who went to school during the Soviet era learnt English, because the chances of travelling anywhere where it was spoken were very slim.

Only people who have been in education in the last 20 years are likely to have picked up any English, so at the moment, the cut-off age is early-thirties.

Last weekend, I managed to find an art supplies shop thanks to some helpful ladies in a local art gallery. So I set to work sketching and painting one of the views from my balcony onto Ploscha Rynok (Market Square).

Hopefully the weather will be as good this weekend, so I can get out and paint somewhere else.

Posted by Kat Crichton Tue, 06 Oct 2009 07:44:00 GMT

Our latest work project (video, voiceover and music by yours truly).

Posted by Kat Crichton Tue, 13 Nov 2007 16:48:00 GMT

Wahey! This is the pot of gold at the end of the Google-phone rumour-rainbow. The Open Handset Alliance have released the first API and SDK for the Andriod platform.

Android is an Open Source mobile phone platform based on a Linux kernel and written under an Apache 2.0 licence. The OHA is led by Google and includes members such as HTC, China Mobile and other huge players in the mobile market.

First impressions are good. The SDK includes an emulated handset running the operating system and tools for creating your own Java based applications that take advantage of the proposed hardware.

The emulation looks good, including basic phone software but strangely no messaging support yet (SMS/MMS/e-mail). It does however have a Google Maps application and some developer demos and tools.

Overall the GUI has the simplicity of design that Google tend toward, though not quite so much as Apple does with the iPhone. We must however remember that this is a first developer preview release. It's unusually slick for a version zero Open Source project, but then I'm sure Google has been pumping cash in to get this party started.

Anyway, this could be the next big thing, so I'm off to try creating an application for it...

Posted by Kat Crichton Fri, 02 Nov 2007 14:15:00 GMT

The weather is stunning. It's November and we've been sitting outside the local pub in tee-shirts, enjoying the autumn colours. There's nothing quite like a nice Friday lunchtime with work colleagues and some good food and drink.

The conversation flitted over T3's DIY efforts (We have many Tims), including a partial loft convertion. Very impressive. We're thinking of converting our loft and it'll cost at least 20 grand. T3 seems to have achieved the same in just over a thousand quid! Food for thought, although we are planning to get a full staircase put in, which will be the majority of the cost.

Other reasons for jollity include the fact that we have achieved our commitment for this iteration and that we included an afternoon of ''Innovation'' for exploring non-purchase-order based ideas. It's all a bit Google and I can only hope that it continues along similar lines in the future.

Posted by Kat Crichton Wed, 15 Nov 2006 20:28:00 GMT

Today I tried to book a ticket to go and see The Decemberists in Seattle using the Ticketmaster Web site. Everything went fine until I tried to pay for the e-ticket using my credit card issued in the UK. Lo and behold I am obliged to choose my State from a selection of US States and enter my Zip code.

This seems pretty silly since the ticket would not even be physically delivered. Given that making credit transactions in the US is ridiculously easy - my signature hasn't been checked once in the last month - it's amazing that the Web is so unaccommodating.

Bad Web design is one of my pet peeves. All Web sites should be location agnostic given the global nature of the internet. Ticketmaster have a UK presence, but the events on the US site don't show on the UK site. Seems the only way I can see the show is turn up on the night and hope.

Posted by Kat Crichton Fri, 03 Nov 2006 19:32:00 GMT

I'm always up for trying local food when I travel and Seattle is no exception to that rule. So yesterday I had my first ever burrito, at Taco Del Mar - a Mexian fast food franchise in America and Canada.

I wasn't at all sure what I was asking for, so I tried to follow Mike's lead picking a wholegrain burrito with guacamole, sour cream, beans, rice, chicken, cheese and hot sauce. My order came to a couple of dollars more than Mikes, so some of that stuff must have been optional.

When we got back to the office I had a quick lesson on the art of eating a burrito. Unwrap one end of the foil wrapping, eat the end and unwrap as you go. I later realised that these same instructions were printed on the bag.

So what did it taste like? Relatively satisfying but kinda mushy. I think I'd prefer it with a little more crunch or bite. Not bad though, interesting mix of flavours. I think perhaps the fun is in choosing a different mix of fillings each time.

Taco Del Mar's speciality seems to be seafood (as the name would indicate, so next time I might get a fishy burrito (if that doesn't sound like too much of an inuendo).

Posted by Kat Crichton Thu, 02 Nov 2006 22:30:00 GMT

Well, the nice weather lasted a few days and was followed by some bitter cold (I'm told these are typical of an El Niño year) but now the rain has set in. Still I'm hardly unused to rain, living as I do in sunny England.

On Sunday, I visited the Bodies exhibition at 800 Pike. Fascinating! If you have not heard yet, this exhbition is made up of preserved human remains, disected and annotated.

It's not nearly as gruesome as I imagined it would be, but it is a little creepy to think that these people all had lives. In some ways it's like reading an anatomy book in 3D.

Posted by Kat Crichton Wed, 25 Oct 2006 10:13:00 GMT

My company has sent me to our Seattle office to work on a project that requires support by someone in the same time-zone as our customer in South Africa.

This is the first time I've been to the US. I've never really had the urge to visit before - there are many other places in the world that are more interesting to me due to their cultural differences from the UK. However, I've recently become more interested as I video conference with my colleagues in Seattle every day.

I'm staying in Bellevue, the office is in Kirkland and about the same distance away to the NE is Redmond, home of Microsoft.

So far I've only really seen shopping malls and fast food restaurants, but hopefully I'll explore downtown a bit at the weekend.

Posted by Kat Crichton Mon, 25 Sep 2006 05:15:00 GMT

I thought I'd done a pretty good job of booking the hotel in Paris entirely in French (trois chambres simple pour un nuit). However, on arrival at 2200h - my colleagues and I were told at the reception of the Hotel Printemps that there was no reservation. Thankfully they had three shabby little rooms on the top floor available.

It didn't exactly set us up for a good meeting the next day and the train journey was sweltering. Fortunately, the village we went to was beautifully picturesque and within a few minutes of arriving, we felt relaxed and calm.

The second night was spent in the Quality Hotel in the business district. Usually the rule is that if something has to mention an attribute such as quality in its name, it will probably be trying to make up for a lack of that attribute. However, the Quality Hotel was indeed of high quality. My evening meal of duck with a garlic jus was particularly good.

The meetings went well and my return flight came far too quickly with not a moment of time available for sightseeing or shopping. Must revisit Paris soon for leisure rather than work.

Posted by Kat Crichton Sun, 20 Aug 2006 18:59:00 GMT

Which brings me unpleasantly to something touched upon in the white book...

When pairing, it is essential to maintain a level of personal hygiene that befits the process of sitting very close to another developer for the whole day.

So far one half of our new recruits has proved to be somewhat less than satisfactory in this area. It's hard to know - as an Englishman and a gentleman - quite how to breach the subject, but breach it I must.

I have slightly more confidence in my point of view as I've had this opinion shared by a long standing colleague.

The drinking, however, is not within the scope of my interest, having not as yet had a detrimental effect on any project that I have a current interest in. These things are often over-emphasised in our company, since the drunken antics (several years ago) of one former employee.

Anyhow, three months probation should be sufficient to determine the validity of our choices.

I wish them both the best of good luck.