It has been a really long time since I posted anything (and maybe longer since posting anything interesting).

Work has been really, really busy including a number of evenings at home to finish up the day’s efforts. I’ve been busy with planning the start of a new version for the Sophos Web Appliance. The successful launch of version 2.0 in January caused a fair amount of new investment in the product line. So time for robots and other hobbies has pretty much been suspended because of that, which explains why the Joint Strike Minisumo project hasn’t progressed any further.

Eileen and I have recently seen two movies worth mentioning though: In Bruges and The Other Boylen Girl.

In Bruges is basically the same type of film as Pulp Fiction, except it is set in Europe and has a strong European flair (and without the great dance contest). It is a really well-made film starring Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson and Ralph Fiennes and probably a bunch of other great actors I didn’t recognize. It was shot in the fantastic city of Bruges in Belgium, and we recognized quite a few scenes (we’ve been to Bruges probably six or seven times or so from the time when we lived in Brussels).

The Other Boylen Girl is quite different. We debated the film quite a bit and I’d say that the set decorating and costumes were the best part. The script follows the historical facts quite closely but is generally an uninspired tale. The film plods along without a strong central storyline. I’d still recommend seeing it though but don’t get too excited – it isn’t quite the same scale as Elizabeth.

The one bright note for my robotics hobby is that I’ve finally invested in a CNC set-up for my Sherline mill. I decided on a package from Xylotex. I’m still waiting for it to arrive in the mail but when it does I’ll document the conversion, including the Sherline CNC conversion package. I haven’t purchased software yet but I’m strongly leaning towards Mach3. I really like the g-code generator wizards for common operations.

Google sometimes does the most surprising things. It (they? is Google a person, place or thing?) found this site and linked me to a page regarding my former employer Creo. I would have never discovered this except that someone else found it and followed the link, and I found the result in my access log. Weird.

Of course their page doesn’t actually detail the current state of Creo; it doesn’t really exist any longer, it was purchased by and subsumed into Kodak over a year ago. Maybe they don’t know everything but it must be close to everything.

Last week my company took all the developers to a team-building event at TBC Indoor Kart Racing. About fifty of us descended onto the TBC location for lunch, racing and beer. The beer came after the racing of course.

The organizers got everyone into four-person teams for a two-hour race that had complicated rules about safety, pit-stops for driver changes, and track etiquette. The idea was to get everyone to drive at least a couple of times so there were a minimum number of pit-stops required. Of course there were also rules about bumping and running people into walls and such but pretty much it was a race against time.

These karts go fast – like 30km or more – and you are basically sitting low with your rear end scraping the ground, a gas engine right behind your seat and a full tank of gas between your legs. You get to wear a helmut and a seatbelt for safety.

I’ve done this same thing exactly once before. When I moved to Brussels (for Creo) a number of years ago we also (coincidentally) went to a kart racing track. So I had some experience to bring to the team. It was clear from the introduction that some of my co-workers were far more experienced, but I noticed none of those guys were on my team. Instead we had Tom who has never driven a car before (he has always lived in cities, never had a need to learn, and is from the UK where getting a driving license is not simple nor nearly automatic like it is in Canada and the United States). Everyone was a good sport though and we all wanted to have fun and do well in the race.

After two hours it was clear that our team was the best team on the track. We led the next closest team by four laps and some teams by up to seven or eight laps. We didn’t have the fastest driver (track record for the day went to Luke on a different team with 32.9 seconds for one lap, I had the second spot at 33.5 seconds). But we were very consistent (our average lap time was below 39 seconds over the 180+ laps including pit-stops), we didn’t take penalties for rough driving behavior (which cost time) and we were very efficient in changing drivers.

Driving these karts is very intense and also very strenuous. The track has lots of tight turns and zig-zags that make you turn the wheel very hard. I must have sweated away several pounds! Even the next day I was feeling the pain in my shoulders and upper arms. But it was a lot of fun and the next day at work was filled with everyone reliving every moment of their moments of glory (or defeat) at the track.

I’d highly recommend this sort of event, its not really expensive and the folks at TBC were fantastic. What a great day!

Last week was the first week of working at Sophos in downtown Vancouver. I joined this company because they we are a fantastic organization making fantastic products in a growing industry.

The first week was like going back to school – I’m writing C and Perl on Linux and I forgot everything I knew about the Linux / UNIX system and library APIs a long time ago. Fortunately these are great people to work with, and they knew I’d have this learning curve for a couple of weeks.

We are doing pair-programming for most of the work. It’s a full Extreme Programming shop, and that has been really fun so far. I’d tried pair-programming in the past but the problem was never having quite the right set-up: we have special workstations with one computer, two monitors, two keyboards and two mice. Instead of crouching around a single monitor and trading the keyboard back and forth, both people sit comfortably and can immediately switch back and forth with no effort. Its really been a positive experience.

Another great feature of Extreme Programming: having the customer proxy (the guy whose opinion about features counts the most) sitting in the same work area all day long. Got a question about how the feature should work? Grab the customer guy (his name is Marc on my team) and get the answer immediately.

It was a little bit of a risk to join a company so different than my last job but I really think this is exactly the kind of place I like to work. Many times this last week I observed and participated in activites that reminded me of my best memories from development projects are Creo. I’m sure there will be days that I get frustrated too, but I doubt that will happen very often.

Today actually started my second week, and it was a great day. Learned a lot more about how our project is assembled and how the various components interact. I can hardly wait to go back tomorrow!

Today was my last official day of employment at Kodak. As I wrote earlier, I’ve worked there for more than eleven years and now its time to move on.

I walked around the main building on Gilmore for about an hour this morning. I don’t know hardly anyone that works there as all the software developers moved out to separate buildings years ago, but that is where I worked when I first joined the company. I was sort of odd walking around there, both exactly the same as I recall and quite different at the same time. Got a hug and a nice message from Judi on my way out.

Then it was back to to building on Willingdon to clean up. I found a couple of my things in my office that hadn’t yet made their way into either the trash or into my bag to take home. Dave K. sent an email note around re: my departure and so many people stopped by to say hello & goodbye. It’s kind of weird when you get congratulated for leaving the company by people who are still there. :^)

A group of us played board games for an extended lunch. Sean organized pizza. We played a game of Carcassonne; unfortunately I lost big time. There were six people playing so to extend the game time we included the tiles from several expansions: Inns and Cathedrals, Traders and Builders, and The Princess & the Dragon. We only really used the rules from Inns; the other expansion rules don’t really work very well but the tiles are great.

Some of us then followed that up with a game of Modern Art which I won with a good lead. I took Ticket to Ride Europe into the office today but didn’t play it; maybe another time.

I think the thing I’ll miss the most is working with my friends. I’m sure I’ll make new friends but it won’t be the same. Thanks to Sean, Michael, Tobias, Phillip, Norm, Andrew, Gordon, Marion and John K. for the games today, it was a great way to say adios.