Today was my first day at work with Graham Technology. I was the only graduate starting this month; there are one or two postgraduate students working there who started a little while ago, but I think I'll probably be the first graduate going into a permanent position. Two undergraduate placement students began today also; I feel quite old being around them, since they don't seem any older than 20! It's a little scary that I can feel old around typical 3rd/4th year students.

I enjoyed the training today, it involved learning some proper interesting stuff, which was nice. I wasn't sure what to expect on the very first day. People seem friendly and laid back, i.e. what I expected and yet not at the same time. Odd that.

I felt a bit nervous this morning, but I'm positively looking forward to heading in tomorrow. It's a great feeling, and long may it continue!

On an unrelated note: Now that the Stegmeister is back from his native land, we should be starting to jam rather soon. Progress has been stunted for months by my university commitments, and for another month by his subsequent work and holiday commitments. After all this time, here's hoping we won't sound like someone shitting ball bearings.

Unless we want to, that is.

Someone's stolen my bike! It was chained to the railing in the stairwell in my close, and someone's obviously done a bit of heavy duty cutting there. I went to the polis, but they don't seem too keen on doing much about it. As my friend said, as it's a secure close, it's either an inside job or someone let the culprit into the close, meaning they might know something.

But you know what? I hadn't ridden it since I moved into the flat last October, and I wasn't planning on starting any time soon. I would never have got round to selling it either. They've saved me the hassle of moving the bike back to my Dad's house when I move!

The power of positive thinking is a marvellous thing!

I take my hat off to the English who see the obvious fact that me not supporting England in the World Cup does not preclude me from wishing them good luck. I'm not supporting anyone in particular. I have not and will not take the Anyone-But-Them position. The 'Pan-Britain' argument that some people use doesn't prove that I'm bitter or racist*, because it ignores the fact that I'm Scottish, not English, as well as British. A specifically British football team would get my full support.

Pfft, I don't know why I feel the need to justify my position though. Anyone who points the finger at me isn't worth giving the time of day to.

* or if you're a pedant, then it's not technically racism, because the English do not constitute a separate race. Spin on it!

My flatmate made the observation the other day that this conflict between Israel and the Palestinians is just never going to go away. Watching events unfold over the last few days, I can see his point.

The biggest problem I have with the whole Israeli operation is the gung-ho approach they've taken to stripping Gaza of the only power station it has. My first thought was that civilians would be hurt more than anyone, and now that the UN are agreeing with me I'm pretty sure they've taken the wrong course of action.

Is one captured soldier vindication for creating a humanitarian crisis? Erm... no. Probably not.

Are homosexual lions called a gay pride?

I've been 'learning' Norwegian for two years now. It's only since I finished my exams that I've properly started trying. Which got me thinking about learning in general.

I have a friend who's 'learning' a different language. He'll always say that he's learning it, but will then admit that he hasn't looked at his language book for weeks, or more recently, for months. If I ask him why, he'll say that he'll get round to it. Considering that he hasn't had any responsibilities for months (except for a brief stint with a part-time job), I take this to mean "I can't be bothered trying".

It's not easy learning a language. This seems obvious to most people until they start learning one and find that it's _really_ not easy. It doesn't have to be impossible, but it requires so much practice - which in turn equals time and thought - that it seems that for a lot of people the whole endeavour goes tits-up pretty soon after they start.

People like my friend bring me to the conclusion that they dream about the end result but don't actually want to put in the work to get there. They'll sometimes tell themselves that the journey isn't as hard as it really is, or that they'll "get round to it" - a euphemism for "I'm procrastinating because this is hard".

In truth, it's not hard to detect that mindset. More significantly though, is that I think that people's strategies for learning are often too linear and unimaginative, thereby leading to such great difficulties and procrastination. My friend has a book - it looks like a pretty good one - for learning his language of choice. Lovely. But is he going to learn to hold conversations in that language if he merely reads the cunningly chosen snippets of dialogue that are in the book? How about scouring through pages of grammar? Maybe. But it doesn't seem to be working for _him_. Maybe he's missed the point of the book: as a foundation for learning the language, not a convenient encapsulation of the entire journey.

The first book I bought was Teach Yourself Norwegian. It has a couple of good reviews there on Amazon. I didn't really like it. I'm now sure that this was because I didn't supplement it with some other means of learning that suited me. I've now got a dictionary and a grammar book, and www.aftenposten.no and the Bokmål version of Wikipedia are at my disposal. I can read articles on those websites to develop my reading skills and learn a bunch of new words and phrases (along with some idioms). Once I understand an article, I can try to explain its contents in Norwegian a few hours later. I can have banal little conversations with myself about the fact that I've mislaid my wallet somewhere in the flat or that I can't see the fridge from where I'm sitting in the livingroom.

Having silly little conversations with myself works for me. Reading silly little conversations between unrealistic characters didn't. Not on its own anyway. I can't be sure if my friend isn't employing the right learning strategy for himself; maybe he's just lazy. But if he's not helping himself to learn anything, he's helped me to learn how to learn. :)

Aha! So it's finally began to properly sink in that I'm no longer a student. Good stuff. I'm quite excited really, not least because I have what looks like a cracking job lined up. Important things that need doing are:

Get a bank loan
Buy a car
Get lunch

I value my food as much as anything else, you know.

Fortunately, someone I know is selling a car for a grand and a half and the mileage isn't half bad for its age. Unfortunately, the Bank of Scotland didn't want to give me a loan until I start working. The problem is that I need the car to get to work, avoiding an almost two-hour trip by bus in the mornings. Nothing can spoil the buzz of a great new job more than getting there. Well, except maybe for the terrible music they play in the toilets there. So, I need the car _before_ I start work; that way I can get behind the wheel for the first time in four years(!) and work my way up to driving in town.

I considered the whole idea of 0% balance transfers, but that would require getting another credit card for which I'm not guaranteed a sufficient credit limit.

Apart from that, there's nothing much to declare yet. There are no holidays for me yet, since I'm skint.

I'm off to the Mitchell Library now. Partly because I've never been and I think it'll be great to see, and mostly because I can't afford Kent Beck's book on Test Driven Development right now. Oh, and because the weather's been great and it makes me happy.

Food...

The intention is to always keep blogging.

But of course, the intention is also to always keep making it to the toilet.

Hmm.

We'll see how this pans out.

I had almost completely forgotten about my blog. In a nutshell, this is what has happened since my last post:

I was a bit silly regarding my studies. This is of course an understatement, since I don't seem to do anything by halves, and some stark lessons have been learned.

Some self-exploration has been helpful. That is to say, emotional and mental.

A troubled mind can't be helped if it doesn't want to help itself, and it can't want to help itself if it doesn't realise it needs help. Unfortunately, sometimes it requires a kick to the back of the head to realise that something needs to be done. The occipital lobe might suffer somewhat, however.

Skip forward, and I'm at the point where my 5th year group project is almost complete, I'm preparing for exams and I'm _fairly_ confident of a job offer from an excellent local software engineering company. If all goes to plan, not only will I have learned from some fucking awful mistakes, but I'll also have landed myself in the best possible position to prove myself worthy of possessing this brain.

It's not a bad brain, but I haven't been very grateful of it for the last 6 years prior to this year. I haven't been too grateful of anything in that time, and it shocks me to think of all the opportunities that I've allowed to pass me by in that time. But then, I'm not shocked at my apathy, which was related to underlying reasons. I'm shocked by my unwillingness to deal with the underlying reasons that caused me to throw so much away.

It is down to good fortune that I'm in the position I'm in now. The ball is in my park, but I do wonder if I'll always feel like a fraud for having somehow dodged the bullet.

Two idioms in one sentence. I hope that won't be the only achievement I make in the next two months ;)

I have a little work in progress here that I'm very fond of. Paul - my fanboy as he's quickly becoming - is quite enamoured with this, I think.

I can set a mood, I can layer instruments nicely, I can even program some decent drums. I'm starting to get somewhere these days. But Paul's calls of, "You should go pro" are definitely misplaced for now...

It's still a little rough the edges, of course. There's some hiss in the guitar recording at the beginning that's the result of an unideal recording environment (i.e. my computer's whirring away in the background). Hmm - I'm also suspicious of this 192kbps rendering, because there are some irritating dissonant artifacts following the lead instrument around sometimes that aren't there when I play it in FruityLoops. I should start making VBR encodings with LAME. You might not notice them though, because you don't have a reference point.

I need to add lyrics. I'd also love to have some brass in this. If you play a brass instrument or know someone who does, let me know. This could be a beautiful track with some horns, even a trumpet. Something not quite as piercing might be best though.

Listen and be happy.