Finding my path in e-world

A question for those who’ve been there:
- At what side looks stranger in London before crossing the street at first?
- Down, to see what sign says  – “Look Right” (or Left)

I wonder how having a roof changes a way person feels. It’s about 2 hours since I have moved in (a large room in double bedroom flat) and I already feel like a human again. My landlord is a french guy who lives in London for 19 years already and looks a bit strange – 38 old guy, living alone, hooked on chinese, janapese and indian stuff – you know.. bit he is really nice and welcoming. Just right now he is watching The Simpsons on TV and person watching Simpsons just can’t be evil.

My first visit to local supermarket (not Tesco but Salisbury) took me a while as I have now to get use to food and prices (oh those prices !). I will try to limit my spending up to 10 pounds per day on food. Got a Basmati rice - a huge pack - for 1 pound only! My girlfriend will be happy for me when she will hear this. Got a can of precooked chicken in carry sauce and totally forgot to buy opener.. Anyway this can looks more as a cat food..

Tried to catch any free accessible wireless network but failed – those bastards secure them ! I hoped people are less computer-educated here. Will try to see if the university wifi has enough range to be used here. There is no life without internet…

It is my fourth day in London now. I have arrived on late Thursday throught Gatewick airport and catched a Victoria Express just before mayority of other passangers did. During buggage reclaim I experienced some fun minutes, when realised that I do not remember how my luggage looked like – i just have bought a new case, You see.

Aston Hyde part hostel is really a shitty place – but I needed a place to spend couple of first night until I find a place to live. Hostel is nice from outside and OK by location (just 5 mins from Bayswater tube station) but inside it is a totally crap.

New Skype office seems very cool and pleasant place to be. Main attraction is a lounge room with cosy coaches and  lots of free coffee, diet Coke and beer. Will explore content of fridges soon.

I am going to see Gorillas Run tomorrow on Tower’s Bridge – it is an annual event to raise some funds for poor African monkeys – got this from londonday newspaper.

It just has been published – until the end of 2006, all SkypeOut calls to landlines within France are free.

More information and some things to mention here

It is amazing how sometimes one word keeps bubbling in your life for a while. Some days ago I have posted email abou ICE – In Case of Emergency which could become a default record in yor phonebook.

Today I started researching Ice, the Internet Communications Engine. It can be found on www.zeroc.com page. Basically it is a alternative for CORBA in middleware world, which “has the features of CORBA but lack CORBA errors” as Zeroc states in Ice’s overview.

 The power of Ice as it seems to me is that it has interfaces for almost all important programming languages like Java, C++,PHP and Python. Of course we could argue what to call important languages but being a web developer You couldn’t make me to change my mind

Ice is highly efficient middleware. It has excellent performance for both latency and data transfer. Furthermore, Ice provides features that make it inherently faster than other middleware technologies, such as CORBA. Examples are batched oneways, efficient event forwarding, and data compression over slow connections.

As e-business systems become more and more diverted and integrated to each other, a middleware question arise. It is all about interfaces and transport now. SOAP is good and simple, but has a huge overhead. So Ice maybe a choice to consider.

I have just got an email from a friend of mine, thought that it should be published:

Recently, the concept of “ICE” is catching up quickly. It is simple, yet an important method of contact during emergency situations. As cell phones are carried by majority of the population, all you need to do is store the number of a contact person or persons who should be contacted at during emergency as ” ICE” (meaning In Case of Emergency).

The idea was thought up by a paramedic who found that when they went to the scenes of accidents, there were always mobile phones with patients, but they didn’t know which numbers to call. He therefore thought that it would be a good idea if there was a nationally recognized name for this purpose.

Following a disaster in London, the East Anglican Ambulance Service has launched a national “In case of Emergency (ICE)” campaign.

In an emergency situation, Emergency Services personnel and hospital staff would then be able to quickly contact your next of kin, by simply dialing the number stored as “ICE”.

Please forward this. It won’t take too many “forwards” before everybody will know about this.

It really could save your life, or put a loved one’s mind at rest. For more than one contact name simply enter ICE1, ICE2 and ICE3 etc. A great idea that will make a difference.

We just launched Skype version 2.6 BETA. Go and grab it ! You also can get a changelog here.

Among bugfixes and design tweaks a new feature called Live tab is something worth mentioning.  It is a totally new tab which displayes ongoin skypecasts in it.

2.6 version is also using new sound codec which increases the sound quality drastically.

During installation You are offered a new IE and FF plugin for phone number recognition on web pages – quite a cool feature.

And a small step for development but a huge for a Skype – clickable links in mood messages are available since now. Make your mood message content richer with it.

I am back to work now. I thought it would be hard to bring myself to speed and become productive again but it seems nothing has changed drastically. People are the same, silence in the room is the same too. Somebody has got my lovely chair so I had to rollback to old one.

Yesterday Skype had a party over being a 3 years old now.  Today we have 75% people loss as stated on whiteboard. The Biggest gift was made bby our customers. Thank You all guys. I must confess that being a lazy person I still work hard knowing that there are millions of people waiting for a new releases.

I also start to enjoy answering posts on Skypecast forum. This place becomes a fast feedback source. You always can detect the bug from there faster that from logs.

Finally in almost 2 years I got my vacation. Who cares that I managed to drive away only for 2 days. Who cares that I managed to drive away only to neighbor city.  It is a true vacation for me and I really enjoy it.

The temperature here in Pärnu is around 16 degrees and no sun goes though heavy clouds which makes beach here look very nice and.. empty.

I still can recall from my childhood memories how  crowded this area used to be. I think I was about 5 years old then. I recognize dunes, streets and sometimes even trees but everything has changed since then. I would say everything is smaller now except me.

 Suit room we got are quite nice and big. We spent about 30 minutes arguing how our private saune should be switched on but now it is loaded and will start heating up in 1 hour.

I foresee bowling, swimming, eating and drinking (of course).

Looking for some lodging in London I was asked by my manager if I would like to get a gumtree.

My first reaction was – what should I do with this plant. Not having a clue where I will leave yet I had to guess if a gumtree would fit to my rented room.

Seconds later I have recieved this link, which explained me everything. Things are not always You think they are