Andrew Wilkinson

Today I had a contact lens fitting. It wasn't as unpleasant as I had expected, and while the lenses were uncomfortable after ten minutes or so it was ok. The biggest problem was that my eyes were watering bucket loads of tears which made it very hard to tell if the lenses were having an effect. I do think they will improve my vision considerably as they push the cornea of my left eye back into a more normal shape.

I need a hard lens of my left eye, and a soft one for my right which means that each requires a different technique for getting the lenses in and out of my eyes, but that's something to worry about when I have my training session on their use in a week or so I guess.

Yesterday was was my 6 month anniversary at Mintel. It only seems like last week that I first got up at the crack of dawn to make the trek into central London from Guildford. Time has passed though and I've moved to a much more sensible location, I've become good friends with people in the office and I've learned a lot since joining. Not just stuff like XSLT and how the product I work on (GNPD) works, but more abstract stuff such as surviving office life and how to solving technical problems for customers (remembering they don't.know anything at all is the key)

Things do seem to be going well, and today I was given a pay rise. Sure I was due one (I was told when I had my interview that my pay would be reviewed after six months), but it's nice to for my bosses to show their appreciation for my work.

Last week was our company Christmas Party. It was ok, but nothing to write home about. In order to facilitate inter-department mixing the seating plan was random (though it was girl-boy-girl-boy). I was sat next to a woman who had been at the company 25 years and when I said that I was in IT she said: "Oh, you look like and IT person." and that was the end of the conversation with her for the evening. On the other side was a nice girl from sales except that she had the annoying tendency to get up and leave even if I was mid-sentence. Fortunately there was more mingling than there was sitting and eating so it wasn't too bad. Tomorrow is the department Christmas lunch which I'm sure will be a lot more pleasant.

Life is good in my flat with Ellen, although it is a bit lonely given I'm here by myself for a week while she's with her parents. We'll be meeting up again on Saturday and she has the dubious pleasure of spending Christmas with my family. We're both off to Dublin for New Year, although I expect we'll spend it with her parents rather than out partying in the city centre.

Oh no! My credit card has been declined while Play.com were trying to ship Super Mario Galaxy.

It's just because I've exceeded my credit card limit, but still, gah. Hopefully my payment will clear today and Play can still get it to me in time for Friday.

Today, three months after my submission, I had my PhD Viva exam. A four and a bit hour gruelling interview later and I'm told I will pass, subject to major revisions. I've got to admit it's not the result I was hoping for, but at least I've been told I will pass once I've made the corrections they want.

It's not quite as bad as the name "Major Revisions" makes it sound. It's mostly clarifying what is already there and moving things around a bit. There shouldn't be any extra work that needs to be done it's just that minor revisions imposes a one month deadline on submitting the completed, corrected copy. Given I have a full time job and will regularly be distracted by the bright lights of London I think it's reasonable to say one month is too short a time to make the amount of corrections they want.

It's hard to know what to feel at the moment, but I'm mostly just glad it's over and know that maybe not tomorrow, maybe not next week but one day I will get my PhD.

I've been a bit quiet on here recently, this is mostly due to my new job sucking up most of my time. While living in Guildford the commute into work took 75+ minutes, each way. This weekend however myself and Ellen hired ourselves a transit van, packed up all our stuff and moved to Barnet in North London. This cuts my commute down to a much more manageable 45 minutes each way.

Driving a van was much easier than expected, and it didn't really cause me any problems. Reversing into a parking space at Ikea did take three attempts mind you...

We're all in now, and are in the process of unpacking everything into the vast (relative to what we had previously) amount of space in our shiny new flat. The biggest problem we're facing so far is that the TV reception is so poor that I can't get any digital channels. Hopefully some time spent with my portable antennae and booster will sort that out.

We clearly have something about living near train lines. Our Guildford house rumbled everytime a train went through the tunnel underneath us, and now this new flat is within earshot of the East Coast Mainline.

Tonight the job is to build a chest of drawers, providing we can find somewhere that sells a hammer!

Today, after one thousand three hundred and thirty seven days, two hours and fifty seven minutes I submitted my PhD thesis. Now all I have is the agonising wait to be examined on it.

I went to the Science Museum's exhibition on the history of computer games. From the very earliest games of Pong where you had to keep your own score, through Space Invaders, Frogger, Tetris, Lemmings and various Playstation, PS2, N64, Gamecube and X-Box 360 games Ellen and I spent an hour and a half in video game heaven. It's definitly worth a trip if you're in the London area.

In addition to the classic games we got to play two games of Tennis on the Wii. It was everything I had hoped it would be, and then some. In an excellent turn of events Ellen, who thus far had just listened politely to my ramblings about how great the Wii would be, was so impressed that she said she would be willing to go halves with me on the console. Score!

Afterwards we followed the Codex trail round the British museum, which was fun if you've been watching the Crystal Maze-like show with Tony Robinson. Come ON then!

I picked up my first ever set of glasses on Saturday. Having never really worn sunglasses before, let alone proper glasses it's taking some getting used to. It's taken me a couple of days, but my eyes to finally be adjusting to the lenses and are not having to strain too much. The fact that everything has subtly changed size and shape means that my depth perception has been thrown off, which is somewhat disconcerting. I wonder how long before I will be able to press the button at a Pelican crossing on the first attempt?

I really left it too long to get glasses - I wish I could blame it on Spec Savers taking two weeks longer than they said to make them, but really I should have got them months ago. While the glasses do help, they don't fix my eyes completely - only contact lenses can do that. Annoyingly I will almost certainly have to go through all the diagnostic tests again here in Surrey, even though York did that, and I assume they will also diagnose me with Keratoconus. Once they've decided I really do have what I have I assume I'll be able to begin contact lens fittings.

In other news, I brought Lego Star Wars 2 for the Gamecube, and it's great fun.

I'm slightly concerned that today, the first time I've come back to Computer Science in York for two weeks (having now moved to Guildford), I've done virtually no work...

In other news John McCririck was on my train this morning and he got off at York.

I had my last ever haircut from Campus Ken today. He's been cutting my hair for six years, and he's always done a good job (i.e. I don't really have to say anything and I come out looking neat and tidy). Today we had a quite interesting discussion about The Inn Way walk, which he is planning to do and I did a month or so ago.

The fact that I'm now saying things like 'This is the last time I'll do X' quite often is making me sad as York is the place where I've lived for the second longest amount of time, and it has felt like it was my home for most of that. Despite not really enjoying living here over the past couple of months, I will be sad when leaving.

In geeky news I have started a new blog, here, where I will be posting about my programming exploits for the GP2x. Unfortunately Livejournal does have the features I wanted (time-delayed posting and RSS feeds for tags), so I was forced to find another solution. Besides, I don't think the majority of the people who read this blog would be very interested in quite specific technical posts. I like having a topic to blog about, rather than random "here's what I've done recently" posts. Hopefully I can keep this new blog going for a fair while before I inevitably get bored of it and move onto something else :-)

Hurrah! Five months after I received the QI DVD, myself and Ellen have finally completed it!

What will we do with all the free time we will now have?

Yesterday was one year to the day since mine and cailin_ciuin's first date. To celebrate we went for a trip round the York Wheel*. To be fair it was never, ever going to compare to the London Eye, but even so it still disappointed. Rather than having one long trip round the wheel you have three at high speed. The fact the wheel is quite small also means that the other cars get in the way of the view quite quickly. I'm not entirely convinced that it was worth £6, but at least I got to look at some trains as well.

Photos can be found here.

_{* this wasn't actually all we did to celebrate.}

Today is what is technically known as a Good Post Day™.

Waiting for me on the sofa were...

• The NME, not hugely exciting as this happens every Wednesday.
• Gig tickets. There may not be a Glastonbury this year (wah!) but I'm not doing too badly for live music. Four gigs already this year and two more pairs of tickets in my possession.
• A Cd. dwinsper will hate it as it's an album of Radiohead covers, but it's actually rather good.
• A letter from the House Of Commons.

I think that last one needs some more explanation doesn't it?

Last Friday I wrote to my MP on lieutenanth's recommendation. I'm quite impressed that he replied already, and in some detail. I only emailed him so I was expecting an email in reply, it's nice to see he took the time to write a letter that is over a page long. I'm not sure how much of it is form, but it does seem to respond to most of my points. I didn't actually expect to achieve that much by writing, and indeed I don't think my letter has persuaded him to become a rebel, but at least it's Democracy In Action™.

If people really want, I'll type the letter out and post it.

It's my birthday today (24, eek!) and I have a feeling people are trying to tell me something... I got three cards related to drinking and a (highly amusing) pint mug. Students are drinking less than ever before but I guess that doesn't hold true for me!

Not that I'm complaining mind you, every card/present/text message was much appreciated.

Apart from the aforementioned pint mug my presents ranged from the useful (new slippers) to the geeky (Ogg Vorbis playing Digital Music Player) to the odd (a tub of Dates).

Today I went for a rather lovely walk with cailin_ciuin and the rest of the Outdoor Society to Aysgarth in the Yorkshire Dales. For those that don't know Aysgarth is where the fight between Little John and Robin Hood in "Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves" was filmed.

Photos for this, and the previous Outdoor Soc trip are on my website.

Ellen (also known as my girlfriend, the missus and she who must be obeyed) has created a livejournal as cailin_ciuin. Apparently it means quiet girl in Irish. Please give her a warm LJ welcome :-)

( The year in summary... )

Last night I went to The Ice Factor, the ice rink that has been set up by Cliffords Tower. It was actually surprisingly good fun - ok so the rink is not that big, and sure it was full of chavs but it's not so small that it was over crowded, nor did the chavs cause much hassle. I was quite surprised how quickly I picked up skating again, given that it's been two years since I last went. I never achieved the elegant gliding motion that some people manage, mine is more of a stumbling-but-not-quite-falling motion. It was so much fun that we're (as in me and the missus) are going again next week.

Tonight it's the Badminton Club Christmas Dinner so I get to dress up in my Tuxedo and dance like a loony again, then tomorrow I'm off to see the Editors at Fibbers. Not a bad three days I feel...

This morning before I went to lunch I went to a cash machine to get some money out. I pressed the £40 and it buzzed and whirried and flashed as usual, then my card popped out and then... nothing. The cash draw stayed resolutely closed with no sign of my hard earned cash.

Grrr I thought, fortunately nmitchell was kind enough to lend me some money to buy my lunch.

After that I went to the bank, got a mini statement and no forty has been withdrawn. The big question is, how long does it take for a withdrawal from another bank's cash machine to appear on your statement? Should I still be worried that I've lost 40 of my shiny pounds into the mysterious banking vortex of doom?

When I got to work this morning I had a nice surprise waiting for me: an email from a Google recruiter suggesting a couple of jobs I could apply for. Clearly they haven't done any research on me as they required a minimum of three years experience in a variety of roles, but it was nice to see the email was directly sent to me.

Unfortunately some research reveals that the same email was sent to a lot of people, including some mailing lists so it's clearly not as specific as I first hoped. Still, I didn't know that Google had technical positions in Dublin before and that information may come in handy in the future.