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tin-men is the part-time home of Graham Gilbert; a 24 year old geek who loves nothing more than geeking out about web stuff and Apple kit - which is kind of handy, since that happens to be what he does for a living. He also has the annoying habit of talking in the third person.

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London calling

So, it’s been quite a while since I’ve posted anything on here. Quite a bit has changed in the past four months.

I’ve been at RMStudio for over three months now. I’ve loved every second (well, nearly anyway!).

I’ve picked up an iPhone 3G (I love that too).

And as you may have noticed, I knocked up a new theme because I was bored with the old one. It’s full of javascript-y goodness and as an added bonus, it looks like shite in IE. And I don’t care. They shouldn’t be using the devil’s browser anyway.

So, the job. I’m an all round mac nerd. I do a bit of web stuff, I look after servers, I fix people’s email (“no, click on send, not delete…”). On the whole it’s pretty cool. I’m learning new nerdy stuff every day (ever wondered how Mail.app stores the email addresses you’ve sent mail to? I know more about it than anyone would ever want to, and I also have a series of scripts that will populate that database with email addresses for when people migrate from Entourage and haven’t been using their address book properly – I might do a post on it if anyone cares), and I work with a bunch of cool people. They might be the only people I know who get as excited by the prospect of being able to run OS X Server on a virtual machine as me!

I’ve learnt that I really, truly, deeply hate Adobe Air apps. Thankfully the ones we use here all have a mysql back end, so I can write my own interface to access the data (well, I will be when I stop working until 7-8pm most nights!).

Living in London is pretty cool too. It’s a little impersonal; it feels (and is) much, much bigger than Manchester. There’s loads going on, but I’ve been too busy with work to do anything of note. I am looking forward to meeting up with a few twitter people at the filming of Diggnation next week (must remember to call Nik at some point…).

Well, that was a random post. Sorry about that. I just had a few things buzzing around my head recently and I’ve been annoyed at myself with my lack of blogging.

Posted 2 October 2008 @ 2pm

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Farewell Manchester

Whitworth Street, Manchester

As those of you who are following me on twitter know, in a few short weeks, I shall be departing the rainy city and abandoning the lifestyle of a layabout student and moving to London to start work for a small company called RMStudio.

This rather large turning point has made me start to reflect on the four years I spent here and also to think about the future.

The main thing I’ve been thinking about was “did I waste my time doing a degree?”. On the face of it, the answer would be “yes”. I learnt virtually nothing useful on my course (we didn’t even touch any networking hardware until 3rd year – and the degree title was Computer and Networking Technology!), being taught circa 1999 HTML (font tags anyone? I actually got marked down for using CSS in one assignment), how to make basic games in C++ and how ancient processors such as the 8088 worked. Yes, I’m sure some of this is useful to some people, but not to me.

So, what did I find useful? There were several group assignments with me invariably running around people getting them to do work, and of course it teaches you not to leave things to the last minute after you get sick of being up at 5am trying to get that assignment done for tomorrow that you have had lying around for three months. Oh, there’s also the fact that I met some of the best people on this earth up here (leaving those people behind was one of the hardest decisions I ever had to make) and will leave with some very fond memories (and some very fond “I think I remember what happened last night, but I’m not too sure” nights too!).

And of course there’s the extra pay at the end of it. Even in my starting role, I’ll be on several grand a year more than I would be if I’d not been to university. That should go some way to help pay off the debts I racked up when I was testing the beer to make sure it was safe for everyone else (what a public servant I am!).

So, what does the future hold for me then? As I said at the top, I’ll be moving down to London in a few weeks to start what should be my dream job – I’ll be making websites and doing other mac related geekery. Yep, basically what I do now, but I get paid for all of it (not just the web bit like I do now). Hai five!

Sure, I could have got more money selling my soul and joining an IT department at a large company or whatever, but I couldn’t face dreading work every morning (and wearing a suit! Yegads! Although I do look pretty good in a suit… ;) ).

So there you go. University was probably worth it since I had lots of fun, met great people and didn’t do a great deal of work for most of it whilst managing to get enough credits to make my way through. Now it’s time for the real fun to start! :D

Posted 27 May 2008 @ 12pm

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London Calling: Live blogging the UK iPhone launch

And so the anointed day came to pass. Graham and Nik are the first two people in the iPhone queue. I’ll be writing on here as long as my battery lasts, so enjoy.

Thursday 10:27am: Been here for two hours now. Camp iDay is set up and coffee is in hand. The Apple reps have already come out to say hello. My mac is getting dirty from the filthy London air…

11:26am: And we’re still the only people in the queue. Had apple PR asking if we want to be on TV. I think tomorrow I’ll only be capable of grunts after three days of little to no sleep.

12:40pm: We had a visit from a guy from The Cloud. He wants us to wear a Cloud hoody in exchange for a rather nice bribe. I think I’ll take him up on the offer!

6:04pm: In the Apple Store giving our macs a little drink. Have been wearing my Cloudy hoody in exchange for food and tea. There are now five of us in the queue, and I’ve been giving interviews all day to the press. I still suck at it. And it’s only going to get worse. Hoping the rain stops tonight so I’ll have a chance of getting a little bit of sleep.

Friday 5:08am: Didn’t get any sleep unfortunately – central London seems to attract a few drunk people at night (hence the non-blogging). A very nice chap from Apple brought us out a cup of tea about an hour ago, and about five minutes ago the 7th person to join the line turned up bringing a gift of wine gums. I’ve been reading the press so far of our holy quest (will be writing more about that another day – one or two of the articles made my first exposure to the mainstream press a not entirely pleasant one).

1:15pm: It’s been a busy day so far. Given more interviews than I can remember and I still haven’t slept. We’re getting ready for the final push now. Just need to sort out the escape route after we’ve got our JesusPhones and we’re pretty much away!

Sunday 11th November
I’ve just about recovered now. And yes, I have in my hands the first iPhone in the UK. I will write a full round up of the experience over the next week.

Posted 8 November 2007 @ 10am

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