One of the best things about leading my own project has been not having to pretend I’m some sort of shit hot programmer. It’s nice to be able to to say “argh, that’s too hard, fuck it” or “I have no idea how this works” without worrying about my performance review. Of course, I also like to claim that I’m providing a visible example that it’s okay not to be perfect or know everything, to help make it less scary for our newer contributors. But Continue reading → Technically, for most the last year or so since leaving Google, I’ve been unemployed. I didn’t receive unemployment benefits, though, because I didn’t really need it and because the paperwork overhead seemed higher than I was prepared to deal with. (Plus of course the periods when I was studying or overseas.) But now I’m working on Growstuff and I’d like to get onto the New Enterprise Incentive Scheme, which offers small business training and mentoring and some small amount of funding for a year while Continue reading → You think those Google recruiters would know not to contact me, but the other day I got another perky “Opportunities at Google” email from one of them, telling me that they’d found my “online profile” and that based on my experience they think I “could be a great addition to our team!” Riiiiight. Since I just deleted my LinkedIn profile, I emailed them asking where they’d found this “online profile”, since it was obviously outdated. Oddly enough, it seems they’d found a page about me Continue reading →