Well it’s a Saturday and for the first time in about three months, I don’t have any articles to write over the weekend – I have finally finished my 60,000 word series for MM describing every Linux distro in existance so I can relax for a bit. However this does give me a slight problem: lack of stuff to do. So I thought I’d post about a few random and totally unconnected things which are on my mind at the moment.
The first is the new Google Reader RSS feed aggregator. I’ve been having a play with it and am very dissapointed in it. I expect stuff from Google to be well designed and very usable, but Reader just isn’t. I’m used to using Bloglines as my aggregator which despite being JavaScript-driven is pretty fast to use and navigate. Google Reader on the other hand is slow: there’s a delay when logging in before the feeds are displayed and there’s a significant and really annoying delay when browsing from one item to the other – it does a scrolling animation, which on my obviously-not-fast-enough Athlon64 4000+ with a gig of RAM just takes too long and isn’t smooth. Then there’s the organisation of the new items: in Bloglines I have the different feeds organised into folders – blogs, news, etc. But in Google Reader you just can’t do that – all the new items are thrown into one big list with no organisation whatsoever. Some of the feeds I subscribe to generate a lot of content on a daily basis and I generally don’t read most of it, whereas some only generate content every month or so and I read all of it. Google Reader just makes it too difficult to select the content I want to read and ignore the stuff I don’t.
For these reasons, I’ve gone back to Bloglines. Sorry Google, but I expected better from you. I know other people like it, but I just can’t get on with it…
I should also pimp nerd.ws, a new geek clothing store by ex-LUGradio presenter sparkes. There’s some good original designs on there, but as someone who predominantly wears t-shirts they got free from some now-non-existant company, I find £12.99 for a t-shirt a little steep… but it’s not too bad a price when compared to other similar sites. Anyway, should you read this sparkes: good luck with it!
I’ve also come to the realisation that I’m graduating in a matter of months and need to get a job. Having failed to get one before, I’m not exactly overflowing with confidence. While I am confident in my ability to do a real technical job and safe in the knowledge that it would take a real disaster for me not to get a 1st class degree, candidates aren’t judged solely on technical ability anymore it seems: it’s all assessment centres, touchy-feely group tasks and psychometric tests. Surely the only thing a company really needs to know about an employee is that they can do the job and aren’t a complete psychopath? 
I’ve also only managed to find a grand total of 2 graduate jobs which interest me, despite trawling various websites and being given about a tonne of literature by my university careers service. If anyone knows of any companies advertising graduate jobs with a significant networking/telecomms element (anywhere in the UK), PLEASE do let me know (either comment on this post or e-mail me). Ta.
