Being back home over Christmas and New Year and with the recent cold snap in the UK there was my first opportunity to witness something which my dad has described many times over the years; walking on the Lake of Menteith.
Lets get this out of the way early on, lakes in Scotland are usually called lochs but this one (which I’d always thought was the only lake in Scotland) is called a lake. It isn’t very deep and we were told in Geography at school that it is a kettle lake. It has three small islands, the most famous being Inchmahome, the location of a Priory where Mary Queen of Scots took refuge for a few weeks in 1547. I’ve been to Inchmahome Priory before as a kid and it is a local tourist attraction maintained by Historic Scotland who usually provide a boat service over to the island from the strangely titled Port of Menteith village.
The lake hasn’t frozen over since 1979 but when it does to a depth of at least 7 inches an outdoor curling tournament called The Bonspiel or the Grand Match is held on the loch. Unfortunately the event was cancelled but at least Dad and I got the opportunity to walk over to two of the islands, Inchmahome and the nearby Inch Talla with it’s ruins of a castle usually unreachable to the public.
It was a strange feeling to walk on the ice. Any concerns of it cracking were quickly allayed and throughout our time on the ice we saw some stable cracks but never heard any new ones. In places there was a covering of snow which made it easier to walk on without slipping and sliding around. We wore the wrong footwear though, we could have been over to the island in minutes if we’d brought ice skates.
Recommending useful software is a common feature of technology blogs, but I thought I’d share with you some programs that I’ve come to rely on when using my Mac. These are general helpful applications, which can help people regardless of what they primarily use their computer for. It’s easy to go down the geek route, but here is a list of easy to install easy to use applications to enhance your computing experience.
Growl (free) gives you notifications on your screen when something notable happens. It’s able to notify you of events that originate in other apps, like Firefox and with OmniGrowl (free) you can extend that functionality to notifying you of the weather, birthdays, flights arriving, etc.
I was already really looking forward to going to Malaysia and I was promised an experience completely different from my previous Kampong (village) life in Sarawak. We were in Malaysia on business, pitching travel software to one of the most important tourism boards in the country, seeing what future Bhav’s company could have there and visiting her family.
We spent the majority of out time in Kota Kinabalu (KK to the locals) with Bhav’s Dad but visited Kuala Lumpur (KL, the capital) and Bhav’s extended family for a weekend too. I’ve never really been to KK before, my previous experience was getting a taxi from the international to domestic terminals before the recent building work. The city is quite spread out with a few hills separating residential parts. The waterfront area is the main location for tourists but even then KK isn’t a very attractive city and doesn’t have much in the way of tourist attractions. The Sabah Museum and Heritage Village is probably the main attraction. The museum is poorly laid out and quite dull but the heritage village outside is much better. Like its counterpart in Kuching, Sarawak (the other Malaysian state on the island of Borneo) the heritage village is a collection of buildings in the traditional style of the various tribal groups.
We enjoyed our time in Malaysia, and who knows, maybe it’ll be the next destination after New Zealand.
We only had a few hours in BSB this time (I’ve been there countless times before due to having lived only a few miles away over the Malaysian border) and nothing has changed, not that I expected anything new. It was good to escape the airport for a few hours, get some lunch, retrace paths once taken and visit BSB’s only new attraction; the Kampong Ayer Cultural & Tourism Gallery. Kampong Ayer, once described by a European explorer as the “Venice of the East”, is a collection of somewhat rundown houses and other buildings built on stilts in the bay. I’ve been there before of course (and taken the sunset boat tour round it and everything) but it was still fun to go over on one of the little speedboats and see the new museum.
Our detour to Brunei was only short but was our first taste of things to come; the food, the heat and the way of life. It’s funny how you fall so quickly back into things.
With the level of UK unemployment to reach 3.2 million next year (or slightly more than 10% of the workforce), I’ve been waiting to see what happens when the more than 300,000 students due to graduate this year hit the job market and what ideas the British Government have to help them out.
Before I left for sunnier climes graduate (or any form of entry-level jobs) were a bit like hens teeth and it was a situation that everyone knew was going to get much worse before it got any better. A survey by High Fliers Research of 100 firms found recruitment targets had been cut by 17% for this year. The economic downturn had rather predictably hit financial sector recruitment, with 47% fewer graduate entry-level jobs.
3 month long internships were suggested as a way to improve the skill sets of recent graduates and make them more employable. Governments don’t have the best track records with job creation however, “fancy a job comrade?” You can’t magic something out of thin air.
It turns out that someone I met whilst in Malawi last year has been short-listed for “The Best Job in the World“, which is also billed as Caretaker of the Islands of the Great Barrier Reef. In what has been an enormously successful marketing campaign come job advert for Tourism Queensland, Ben Southall has made it to the final 50.
It has to be one of the most unfortunate and uncanny coincidence I’ve heard in a while. A German woman who travelled to the Roslyn suburb of Dunedin, New Zealand (where I am currently sat) has been rescued by police from a man “not who he had portrayed himself to be”, Detective Senior Sergeant Steve McGregor told the Otago Daily Times. The woman had travelled to Dunedin only a few days before me to be with her partner who she had met on the internet (This is where the story is different, I met Bhav in Australia).
The full story is available on Yahoo!Xtra. Freaky!
Before I headed of to New Zealand I performed as the Bass Trombonist in Callander Brass at their first concert. For such a new band containing a number of players who had only recently picked up instruments we made a good noise. Watch the video below of our opening number, Southdown.
Objective-C seems to be quite fashionable at the moment and it’s something I’ve been meaning to learn for a while. Objective-C is an extension of the C language and so allows you to do normal C programming but with added extras like Objects. If you’ve done any programming before you might have heard of Object Orientation (OO). I’m not going to explain it here but it’s not a new idea and is implemented in a number of languages such as Java and C++. I’ve never done C++ but at uni we were taught Java and then introduced to the more utilitarian C (of which many languages, including Java, are descendants). Objective-C is the language of choice for the various Apple platforms (including iPhone) and as a hardened Apple fanboy with the desire to create iPhone apps; Objective-C is a prerequisite.
What I’ve found to be helpful to getting my head around Objective-C quickly (making use of the OO languages I already know) is a series of screencasts and a book called Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X. I watched the screencasts first to see if I could get interested in it enough to stick with it and found that they were created in such a way that you can get stuck straight into the code. They’re US$5 a time but I found the first 2 very helpful (at the time of writing there was only 2 of the series). Apple also has a number of resources available for free (requires registration) on the Developer site. From my perhaps limited experience of development environments I’d have to say XCode is one of the best I’ve used and makes coding a very logical and easy process. XCode, various other applications and even an iPhone simulator are available to play with through your free developer membership.
I’m still working my way through the book but I hope to be making my own apps for the iPhone soon. All that remains is to actually by one!
So having spent the last few months trying to find the ideal job I’ve decided that it’s better to move to New Zealand for a few months. I’ve got a number of reasons; such as the kiwi economy being more buoyant, the desire to live abroad when I’m young and having friends over there. I’m really looking forward to going but I’ll miss home I’m sure.
I fly out early next month and I’m due to return at the start of December but you never know what the future might hold.
Growl
