It’s now the second week into my new job. I had been working half a day for more than two months previously. Hence, it’s still quite fresh to me although working from half a day to full day did help with the transition. Technically, I am still not working the whole full day each day as I have to spend a few hours each day teaching the new guy who is doing my old job. It’s all been good and he is quite a nice guy.

To be honest, I can’t quite believe that I am doing web programming. Ten years ago, I was saying that I would never go into the line of programming. Here I now, doing programming day in and day out. It’s fair to also say that my line manager has been really supportive and great. He knows about my strengths and he knows where I need help and he is always open to suggestions as well as the many questions that I have.

It’s this time of the year where we can see more moths than usual. Even though it’s cloudy and rain occasionally throughout the day, the overall weather is still warm. Hence, we tend to leave the windows open and that’s when the moths and other insects start to make their way into our house. Since we are currently only renting a room, we don’t care much as most of the time, we will be in our room anyway. We just hope that our new house will be ready to move in as soon as possible and we may have to think about getting moth traps. We haven’t yet  got a moving date for our new house and we have already been thinking the things to buy. I am quite worried that we will fill up the whole house within weeks. I have watched a number of programmes about hoarders and I definitely not intend to live like one.

There were some interesting announcement at the recent Apple’s WWDC event. On the last WWDC event, I watched the whole keynote on Apple’s website mainly because it’s announcing Apple iPhone 5. This time, I didn’t. I only watched the iOS 7 video and some articles about OS X Mavericks. I can’t wait for the release of iOS 7. I am pretty sure that I will be downloading it the moment it is released. In the past, I would just wait for a few weeks and then check the internet for any reviews or problems that might have been reported by other users.Well, the reason is simple, iOS 7 is like a major upgrade compared to previous versions. It seems like Apple is gearing towards what Android has to offer. I love the overall simplistic of Apple iOS yet in order to check my upcoming calendar events, I always have to unlock the screen and then open the calendar app. Now, the iOS 7 has a notification centre in the lockscreen which will be real handy. However, from the screenshots on Apple’s website, it seems like the notification centre is only showing missed calls, calendar events and weather. It will be great if the final version of iOS 7 includes items in the reminder.

Control center is very much like the one in Android. I can live without it but it’s nice to have. Shame that AirDrop only available for newer devices. The camera app looks like it copies Camera 360 but with less functionalities. All in all, the notification centre is the one to watch. I don’t want to always have to unlock the screen to get to see my tasks or events. It’s just one step too many.

OS X Mavericks, I don’t see much difference from OS X Mountain Lion. The only interesting thing would be the way it compresses memory to give better performance. When I bought my MacBook Air, it comes with OS X Snow Leopard. Just a few months later, OS X Lion was launched and then a couple of months later, OS X Mountain Lion. I kind of regretted for upgrading to OS X Lion. However, upgrading OS X operating system is not as expensive as upgrading Windows operating system. Anyway, there are significance in OS X Mountain Lion but the performance seems to be worst than OS X Snow Leopard. So, I am hoping that OS X Mavericks can be faster than OS X Mountain Lion as claimed.

As mentioned in my previous post about turntables at a local store, I also saw some bagpipes on sale. I wonder who is the target customer as I don’t remember seeing anyone playing bagpipes around here except the time Mee and I went to Scotland. In addition, those bagpipes are not cheap either, depending on the brands. I have to say that I am quite impressed with the local music store as it stores all kind of music instruments but every time Mee and I go past the shop, it only has a couple of customers. I guess the music classes help them a lot as I don’t think people would need to change their music instruments that frequently.

I am particularly excited going back to work next week as it will be my last week as a MIS developer, my job for more than five years. After that, I will be a web technologies developer. I am already a web technologies developer since May but I still work for the MIS team until they manage to get my replacement. The MIS manager is quite confident that the new guy only needs a few hours a day for the first week for me to show him the work that I have done in the last five years. After that, it will be like as and when needed. Well, we shall see. It works out better for me as I don’t have to be there for whole two weeks as agreed previously.

By next Friday, I will be taking my stuffs to my new office. I will definitely be wanting my chair and keyboard as they have accompanied me ever since I started working for this company. I don’t have to take my computer since I am getting a new one. I just have to start clearing my junks.

My dad has a lot of vinyl records at home, well, at least 50 I think. And he has an old turntable which my brother and I used to use it to spin our toys. I don’t think I realise the use of it at that time. One day, my dad suddenly started organising all the vinyl records. He started by carefully cleaning all of them and then wrapped each one of them in a custom plastic cover that he made. Then, he started to source the pin that transmits the vinyl records into sound. It’s not easy to find as it took months for him to finally get it.

For the first few weeks after he got a working turntable, he would play a few songs in the afternoon. I still don’t quite appreciate the sound of it. Maybe the machine needs some tuning. I guess it’s older than me. Just last week, I saw some new stanton turntables at a local store and the sound was much better. I am not sure if the vinyl record was better quality or the turntable was better or the speakers. Anyway, I might get myself one sometime. It looks fun and I bet I can find some cheap vinyl records at local charity shops.

Candy Crush Saga seems to be quite a popular games nowadays. Mee saw her work colleague played last week and she was kind of hooked on it since. I too played Candy Crush Saga as I have nothing to do at all last week. All I did was eat, drink, movies, TV and Candy Crush Saga. I got bored after a while and I do hope that my next holiday will be abroad or decorating our new house. Anyway, I am only at Level 60 something. One more level and I will have to make a request to three of my friends for me to get on to the next episode which will have more levels. There are a total of 350 levels.

I can’t really see the fun of the game except that I just want to finish it. Some people may want to play it just to compete against his/her friends. Imagine a conversation about Candy Crush Saga comes up and they will surely be talking about the level they are at. Well, I just want to see what happens at the end of the game. That’s what keep me playing.

I remember saying that whenever you see a company advertises on either newspapers or tv stations, they are probably making money. In other words, advertisement is not really for the poor. Recently, I saw a lot of advertisement on a website hosting company. When I was asked to quote to develop a website, I did look at the company and the way it sold its product was really impressive. Easy to use and you don’t have to worry about hosting and domains. It’s all about free website builder free hosting. Websites created can be easily amended and there are lots of layouts to choose from. However, after searching for reviews on the website, there are not a single good review about it. I guess the price is what attracts people. Imagine that you can have a website ready and go with little web programming knowledge and it only costs less than £10 per month. With prices from £0.99, you can have your own domain too. In addition to these, you can trial it for 30 days, though 12 months contract applies if you forgot to cancel.

It’s been a week of doing nothing at all. What a great way to spend my holiday. Mee has to work this weekend while I am trying to clear my annual leaves. I still have 12 and a half days left. Usually, I would only have about 5 days left by this time of the year as I would have taken some time during easter or May to travel overseas. Due to the application of our permanent residency at the end of last year, we had to postpone a lot of things. By the time we got our visa in March, we had to move on to finding a place to move as well as adjusting myself to the transition from my previous job to my current job. After months of searching, we finally found a place to buy and we are still in the buying process. Although things have been moving on smoothly, we still do not have the moving date yet.

I am hoping to spend my annual leaves at our new home as well as travel. We still have over 10,000 Avios points, previously Airmiles, to spend. Well, at least those points should cover our flights and hotels. We haven’t decided on the destination yet. In fact, we haven’t actually talked about it at all. All we want now is to MOVE!

Even though Mee and I have definitely settled for our choice of the house now, we still look at RightMove every other day. I must say the frequency of houses for sale advertised is about the same as when we first started looking for a house. Some of the houses that we went to see before are still on the market while some have dropped their prices in the hope to attract potential buyer. When we were looking for a house, our landlord kept asking us why we are not considering somewhere near the town centre. Well, our first thought was that the price is always higher. Houses near the town centre area can cost £10,000 more and smaller in size. However, we recently saw a house, which is really close to the town centre and literally only 1 minute walk away, had reduced by £20,000 from its initial selling price. It’s a two bedroom house and by looking at the pictures, it didn’t look too bad. Well, better than some that we have seen. Oddly, the bathroom is on the ground floor while there is no landing area upstairs.

Anyway, we have seen houses with water fountains indoor and ponds in the garden. It’s fair to say that we are satisfied with our purchase. There’s a small green area in front of the house and the garden is low maintenance as well.