Neil Hopcroft

A digital misfit

Enough of the silly links, you’re all waiting for some real content, aren’t you?

Starting a new job is always a tense time, did I do the right thing? Am I going to be able to do the job? Will I get on with the people?

The new office is somewhat different to most of the places I’ve worked before. It has greenery outside for a start. Because of this (or maybe for some other reason) the atmosphere in the place is more relaxed. One day during the week I was concentrating on figuring out how to use the coverage tool and looked up around 5:30 to discover the office had become near deserted while I wasn’t looking. I’m an evening person not a morning person, so I’m not sure they’ll take well to my arrival at 10am…oh well, we’ll see.

I’m looking forward to starting to do some real work, there doesn’t seem to be much already done for the things I’m looking at, and theres nobody actually doing any work on them at the moment, but they’re also not really planning on starting for another three or four weeks.

My seat in the building is a bit disconcerting, the structure of the building is such that the floor seems to be suspended from above rather than sitting on support from below. I guess this is just a design issue, but when people walk past in a certain way (not sure exactly) the floor moves in a similar way to the start of an earthquake, putting my on edge five or six times a day.

Cambridge itself seems to be alright, I figured out why I didn’t understand the geography of the place. It seems that it is mostly built within the bend of the river, so all the roads I thought ran at right angles to each other actually only cover about a quarter circle, making all of their ends rather close to each other. I wonder what happens in the other three quarters of the circle where the city should be?

I also managed to meet up with some of the people I know in the area, mostly for conversation over food….hoping to meet some more of the locals at some point, but I’ll need to not be quite so tired for that – its a Calling week this week, isn’t it?

There were a couple more houses I went to see this week, I put in a request to take one in Milton village itself, six or seven minutes walk from the office, closer than the one I saw before, with parking space and ‘3’ bedrooms, actually 2 bedrooms and a cupboard. More details when (if) they’ve accepted me as a tenant.


10 comments

  1. should tell you about Callingage.. I might be persuadable to come out for a bit this week :)

    As for the geography, yes, Cambridge is famous for having non-Euclidean corners. At the Four Lamps roundabout by Jesus College there are five roads meeting which are all at right angles to one another. Plus you can go out of the Market Square in any one of five directions and end up back in it again – we think the fountain in the middle is concealing the core of a neutron star.

  2. About a week. I started with Symbian in Milton last monday. Getting a house in Milton from a couple of weeks time, until then just floating around B&B circuit. You? Weren’t you in Warwick last time I saw you?

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