Tuesday 1 January 2008

Guten Morgen 2008

So... a new year.. the 30th new year of my life.

A big year for me. Firstly I am now just two months away from moving to Munich with my girlfriend Nicole and I'm both terrified and excited at the same time. I'm not worried about moving to Germany - strangely I just "know" that this will be OK - I'm worried about the future. I like working for my current employer, and I'd like to carry on working for them, but that may not be compatible with living in Munich in the long term. We will see...

Over the Christmas break I've been re-learning Java. It's been 8 years since I really spent any time looking at it. That's odd, because for a lot of the programming world java is the very air they breathe. For me it's just a language that my various employers have never needed me to use, so I haven't got any commercial experience with it. I am perhaps in the odd position of having far more Ruby, Python and Scheme experience than Java! Still I make it a rule to learn a language a year (at least), so Java it is (for the 2nd time!).

... I need Java for a work project, and I guess it will be useful in the job hunt that may await me - it's less boring than I'd imagined, but after years of Python, LISP and Scheme I find it very long winded. Oh well - maybe that's the price I pay for the vast library base Java provides.

Oh.. and I got an Olympus e410 over christmas... can't recommend it enough - the closest thing to a pocket DSLR in existance.. I love it already.