Jasarien.Com

I don’t think about the future as much as I should. And I’m definitely not very good at planning my own future.

I graduate this summer, which forces me to face a fork in the road that is my future. (I was gonna write ‘destiny’ there, but it sounded far too cheesy). One of my two main options is to carry on my education and take up the offer from Swansea to study a Masters degree. Personally, I feel that this would help me in my endeavor of finding employment somewhere down the line. Although, people I’ve talked to (and a number of job adverts), indicate otherwise. In some cases it would be self-deprecating to waste the time and money studying a Masters degree when I could find a good job that doesn’t require one.
There’s also the possibility that some employers may even sponsor me to undertake a Masters degree at some point in future, even if that possibility is a minute one, it’s still better than having to pay for it myself, which brings me to the next point. There’s no ’student loan’ for post graduates. There are grants, bursaries and the likes available to eligible applicants, but it’s unlikely I’d be awarded one, considering my financial position.

The second choice available to me is to just start job hunting as soon as possible. It’s been drilled into us that we should have started job hunting this time last year, but seriously, come on. They say that all the good jobs at the big organisation are gone by now - and thats just it. I don’t want to work for them. Screw Microsoft, Oracle and those corporate entities, and as for Apple offering me a job, I think I’d have to come up with something a little more revolutionary than an Xfire client before they’ll start noticing my existence. The main thing I’m looking for is not high profile work, but work that I’d be happy doing. I don’t particularly care how big the salary is, as long as I’m happy doing whatever it is I’m being paid to do.

One of the jobs that has piqued my interest is a small (2-man, I believe) operation located in Fareham, Hampshire. They have two shipping software products for the Mac. The job advert states they’re looking for a junior software developer with experience with Cocoa amongst some other stuff. The benefits of the job include working with the two developers who, according to the advert, have over 40 years combined experience with Mac software development. It’s this kind of thing that I want to do. Small scale, but fun. I sent my CV off, and explained my current situation, so we can only hope. The only thing is that if I was offered the job, I’d have to move closer to Fareham - naff commuting from Cwmbran… that’s a bad road to go down.

So that’s where I’m currently standing. I think I’d be happy with 2:1 and ecstatic with a 1st. But who knows, I guess I’d be a little disappointed with a 2:2. And I think I’d be mortified if I got anything worse. Only time will tell at this stage. I think it’d be a good idea to go look for some more jobs now.

So, it’s been more than a month since I last posted. So sue me.

Leopard is finally here! Despite the setbacks and delays. I installed it as soon as it arrived yesterday, and I don’t think I could be happier. (That might be a white lie).

You see, Apple pulled the NAS backup feature right at the last minute. I was using the Beta builds right up until build 9A528. That was about 2 or 3 builds before the release build. NAS backup was still in at that point. It’s sad actually.

I now have a 250GB NAS router that isn’t being put to it’s best use. Sure I could use a 3rd party backup solution, or even Subversion, but then you miss out on Time Machine.

It just so happens that I have a 160GB external disk handy to use with Time Machine.

Leopard also seems a lot fast than Tiger was. Apple must have done a lot of tweaking.

Another thing I really do LOVE about Leopard is XCode 3.0. Its faster, more integrated, offers a whole range of new features. Interface Builder is more streamlined, it parses changes in Classes in real-time, so you won’t forget to drag that Class into the NIB file and get errors when you build for a silly mistake. Objective-C 2.0, Core Animation, so many things!

I haven’t given X-Ray a try yet, not sure what to expect either. Application Performance Testing and Debugging meets Garage Band? Not sure about that. That’s how Apple describe it though…

The unified GUI that Leopard now sports is a step in the right direction. It’s nice to have every app look and feel similar to others. It takes the learning curve, and smoothes it out a little for a lot of apps. That’s not to say that custom interfaces can’t be made. Delicious-Monster are doing it with their Delicious Library, and Apple themselves do it with Time Machine.

I’m in the middle of trying out the new iChat features with Gammasts (Xfire Plus), the video chat uses less bandwidth it seems. I still haven’t tried hosting a chat yet. The effects work well, as long as you have a (somewhat) plain background behind you and enough light.
We had a brief foray into Screen Sharing - and he didn’t realise that I’d be able to control his screen, so he promptly turned that off, hehe . iChat Theater works like a charm - grab a file, drag it onto the video chat and you can both look through a document or an image slideshow together.

In the past I’ve never really used virtual desktops to any extent. I had them enabled when I used Linux, but never switched to them, and i used them on OS X for a while just to get a fix of Smackbook Pro . But now Apple introduce Spaces, and I find myself using them. I think that it’s because of the tight integration it has with the rest of the system. You can preview all the spaces at once - and you get a live preview of each window on each space. For example - if you have a game running on your 3rd space, and a web browser on your first, you can his the spaces key (F8 default) and you can see all your spaces, and the game you’re playing will still be running, a video would still be playing, etc. Also, while in the preview, you can just click and drag a window to move it to any other space, or you can just click and drag the entire space to re-position it to suit yourself. It’s just so tight and well executed.

I’ll leave it at that for the time being. Maybe I’ll post again next month… or even sooner, God forbid.