Archive for November, 2010
So, day two. Today was the 20th anniversary of ARM so it was a rather special day. Morning, received a free iPad. Afternoon, got free beer, cake and fireworks. Was a reasonable day I think.
It is a lot heavier than the Newton, but I think I will upgrade to it.
Survived the first day at ARM today. People seem fairly friendly. Apparently the first few days, on a new job, are spent reading reference manuals. Cycling around Cambridge is pretty pleasant. The house is nice, and now I finally have a new bed. No more sleeping in a sleeping bag for me!
Tomorrow is the 20th anniversary of ARM celebration day, so very little work will be done then.
I have now boxed up pretty much all my belongings ready for the move next week.
There is quite a bit, even after the purge in which I threw away many things I no longer use.The things that turn up are incredible. For example a Red Hat7.0 CD (didn’t work, too scratched)
Here is the bag I am taking for the first week. Just the bare essentials. It really looks like forever alone guy. As well as that, I am also taking my bike, on the train.
Before I left, the APT group said their goodbyes. This was kind of emotional for me as it will be my first time away from the University for 12 years. There was a whip round. I was kind of shocked at the scale of the parting gift. This is an Asus EEE (my fav laptop range), but it is actually the really posh Nvidia Ion, dual CPU and high res 12″ screen one. I have never received a present this nice in my entire life. Thank you so much to everyone. I am using it right now and it is fantastic.
As well as the computer, there was a crate of chocolate cherry beer I like.
As usual there was the visit to the pub where I bought the traditional first round. The turnout was incredible, not to mention expensive.
I will miss everyone in the group very much and hope I find friends as good as them in my next job (which starts on Monday).
I don’t know why, but for a couple years, I would remove the memory and processors from the machines we scrapped.I collected them all thinking about grouting them together to make nice floor tiles.
Last time I counted, there were 130 processors. Mostly Sun Sparc and Pentium.
And here is 1.2 GB of RAM spread across over 300 memory modules. Mainly 30 and 72 pin SIMMs.
And this is what they look like when spread all over Matt deChav’s desk. You can’t see the keyboard and mouse which are buried under them all. I don’t want to take them to Cambridge, so hopefully he will be able to find a good home for them.
I ordered two Kingston DDR3 DIMMs from ebuyer for a dual channel machine. This is what I received.
Identical numbers and identical specs, but very different sized PCBs.
They worked fine together passing a complete memtest86 pass, but somehow I am still afraid it will screw up.
In case you did not hear this though the gossip tree, I am moving to Cambridge. I will be leaving Manchester at the end of this month (November). I will be joining ARM in their processor division working as a “CPU Performance Architect”. It will be the first time living outside Manchester for 12 years. Try not to use my cs.man.ac.uk email address as that may die some time soon. Use your name at brej.org.
Talking to a couple people who live in Cambridge, apparently getting a bike is a must. Luckily John is moving to the US and he said I could have his old one.
Just look at the bad-boy:
I have been cycling it everywhere. Even Wilmslow Road which is where Matt (deChav) recently broke his arm while on a bike.