Tom Fotherby’s Blog

• Must have:
  • At the bare minimum, at least 50% of my time should be spent coding. Yes, they use agile development with minimal documentation.
  • Comparable salary to Amadeus. Yes.
  • Some involvement with Linux. Yes, the servers are running RedHat.
  • No long periods of time away from home. OK - No travelling.
  • Reasonable commute time (would be good if it involved some exercise, e.g. cycling). Borderline - I estimate 80 minutes but the train journey from Reading to Paddington is only 30 minutes so the rest should be exercise.
  • Not too much legacy software. I.e. No TPF or the like. Yes.
• Good to have:
  • Five weeks holiday per year + Not too ridiculous hours + hardly any weekends. No - This project is going to be hardcore.
  • Some involvement with open-source software - perhaps the opportunity to work on a open-source project? I think so - They certainly use a predominantly open-source tool chain.
  • Some kind of cover to hide behind between the end-users and me. I think so.
  • Able to wear casual clothing. Yes.

You wouldn’t believe what they have as a optional extra at the Universal Studios theme park in Los Angeles…

An unlimited food pass for THE WHOLE DAY. All the pie people (like me) walk around with bright pink arm bands that allow you, at any time in the day as often as you like, to walk into a food joint and place a free order. It’s ridiculous but amazing. Kix ate for free because I gave her my side salads on each round. What’s more, the fat pass was only $20 which probably works out at only 1 cent per 10 calories

There were so many different types of fast food. In England we only have a few options (Maccy D’s, KFC, Murder King and The Hut) but in the US there’s many different burger joints to choose from. The variety of burgers is huge and the price is cheap (a US Maccy D’s double cheeseburger is only 60p whereas a single cheeseburger in England is 99p. I didn’t try them all, in fact I generally stuck with one’s that had “Tom” in the title:

Tom at Tommys

What was my favorite fast food joint? In-and-out burger easily.

We saw a lot of wildlife while in the US, it was one of the best things about our trip. Often the animals we saw were in their natural environment and protected from humans by the rules of the National Parks. These were our top five wildlife encounters:

A Bob Cat in Yosemite
Sea Lions in San Francisco
Chipmunks everywhere
Mountain Sheep at the Grand Canyon
Lions in Las Vegas MGM casino

The animals that we saw most frequently were Squirrels:

This one seemed to be sitting at the Canyon edge contemplating life:

I had a small scrape against a stealthed rock which I assumed the car hire company wouldn’t be too impressed with:

The scrape on our car

They actually were very understanding and just told me “don’t worry about it” - I therefore rate Alamo very highly and will hire from them again if I get the chance. The funny thing about the rock I reversed into was that I tripped over it while going to see what I had hit. It therefore put a hole in the car and my leg, Doh!

A hole in my leg (and the car)

Our “holy” car was a nice drive - It was a hybrid, which I’d read about but thought was quite futuristic and didn’t expect to get. It did 50MPG which probably saved us quite a bit of dosh seeing we did an average of 100 miles a day.

James, David, and I did an exhilarating swim from Man O’ War beach to Durdle Door beach through the archway.

The “door” at Durdle Door, Swanage.

Knackered after the 20 min swim

In Stockholm we found a Cola drink with the same name as our favorite Operating System. It’s fair trade and tastes just as nice as the original Cocacola.

Ubuntu roughly means “I am because we are”. From The Guardian: In fact, the word ubuntu is just part of the Zulu phrase “Umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu”, which literally means that a person is a person through other people. Ubuntu has its roots in humanist African philosophy, where the idea of community is one of the building blocks of society. Ubuntu is that nebulous concept of common humanity, oneness: humanity, you and me both.

Why do Art Galleries not explain their exhibit pieces in more depth? I go there to learn about art and I like modern art because you don’t just learn about art but about society and human beings and yourself at the same time. But some pieces are complex and confusing and impossible to decipher without explanation so why do many pieces come with nothing helpful?

Kix being a statue

Tom being a Lion

I took Chloe to Rome for our “cotton” anniversary where we found some amazing piles of rubble. We walked for miles and miles admiring the very rich history of the place. One of the most striking features of the the city is that every other building is a church. We watched “Gladiator” in our hotel room to get excited before seeing the Colosseum.

I had some of the best pasta I’ve ever had, but some of the worst pizza.

The 7th Radiohead album, “In Rainbows”, is freely downloadable from their website till today only. After today it will only be available as a CD - Or, of course, from file sharing sites.

Since it is a free download (they let you chose how much you want to pay - including £0) I had a really difficult time understanding why anyone would get it from any non-official source. Ethics, freedom, rights, trending-setting are at stake - Jolly well support the cause! That was until I tried to buy it myself. The site is REALLY poorly designed:

• The splash-screen on the main page of the site doesn’t work on my Ubuntu 6.06 machine - I had to Google around to find the URL that gets past the splash-screen (BTW, it’s http://www.inrainbows.com/Store/index3.htm).
• Clicking the “ORDER” button doesn’t order anything - you need to then click the “VIEW BASKET” button.
• You have to name your price, in U.K. Sterling. OK for me but a bit dawning for 90% of the world?
• After choosing your price, you click “PAY NOW”, at which point you set up an account enter some personal information (including your email address and mobile phone number) and agree to some terms of service (which are benign, but it’s more time and more clicks to verify that).
• Finally, you get to download the music.

After, jumping through all the hoops, I now understand why it wasn’t being lazy to get the album through the file-share networks. Since this is the first time a big band has snubbed the Record Labels in such a massive way, it is important that the experiment is a financial success (or at least a break-even) for Radiohead. Otherwise other bands won’t try following suite. They have a lot of responsibility. This is why it’s so wrong that they messed up the user-experience of the site. They reduced the availability to a level that is below what most teenagers are used to. Shame on them.

If people normally choose P2P over authorized channels because P2P is cheaper, we would expect customers to shift toward the authorized channel when it offers a zero price. But if people choose P2P for convenience, then we’d expect a shift toward more P2P use for this album, because people have fewer moral qualms about P2P downloading this album than they would for a normal album. (from Freedom to Tinker)

BTW, I paid £5 for it. Fair?

There’s no reason whatsoever why I shouldn’t be able to lose weight by eating less, but I can’t, so I have had to resort to extreme measures. I’m going to go to Saturday morning weigh-ins. In my first meeting I was the only bloke so it’s more than a little daunting. Especially as how we have to clap when so-and-so has lost ½ a pound.

I feel being over the medically healthy weight just feels like I’m voiding my warranty. I’m 18 stone 2 lbs but the maximum weight for 5 foot 11 is 13 stone.

I need to keep the meetings up, apparently “we could still drop a dress size by Christmas!”

I’ve been using geni to compose my family tree. I haven’t done any of my own research so far - my first aim is to simply combined the records from my Dad’s side, my Mum’s side, and my wife’s family. I’ve already entered 185 names but only scratched the surface of the archive material that I have.

Doing it online is fantastic. It’s easy to share and collaborate with other people, it’s safe from accidental loss and it’s free. I’m also hoping that one day someone comes across it and discovers they are part of the family and grows the tree. Maybe one day we will all join tree’s to Adam and Eve.

The two celebrities that I’ve found so far are my great-great-great-grandfather’s brother, Sir George Gilbert Scott (1811-1878) a famous architect that has many great works to show for (e.g. the Albert Monument) and my great-great-great-great-great-grandfather, Thomas Scott (1747-1821) nicknamed, “The Commentator” because he wrote a best-selling commentary of the Bible.

Many thanks to Carole King (My Paternal Grandfathers niece) for the Fotherby family tree, Mark Bodley Scott (my Maternal Grandfather) for the Bodley Scott family tree and Sarah Cowland (my mother-in-law) for the Cowland family tree.