Luke Sheldrick’s Blog

You know the way sometimes someone will say to you, oh you’re from London [or whereever else] you must know xyz. Even if the place, i.e. London is huge, and you’d never even 1% of the people.

Amusingly facebook, has taken this approach now

Today see’s many o things, not that I am going to discuss on the open t’internets…. but on a more non/public way, I have just closed my facebook profile…. a number of reasons they include:

• Am getting too much info following stories, it’s like real life soap drama’s. I don’t have time to follow them.
• Too contactable, I am feeling like every inch of my life, is contactable via facebook.
• Too tempted to right shitty statue, which no-one really cares about, and doesn’t really help anything.
• Don’t fancy the upcoming unheartfelt, happy birthday messages, so I’ll save you the trouble.

This will be a temporary feature, I expect, but at least 7 calender days…. I wonder if I’ll break. For all of those that I have replied to messages with, sorry you’ll just have to email me.

Many a thing I would like to blog about, but not that stupid, not even after a few beers…. going to bed I think, looking forward to a hangover… thanks Stella

Does facebook chat really annoy you? Well it does me, however is quite conveinant, as I rarely add people to my IM accounts, i.e. MSN, however facebook has the majority on it.

There is now an addon for the popular cross platform IM program Pidgin, which lets you sign on using your facebook account, and adds in your contacts from facebook. The advantage of this is, you can chat like you would say for msn contact, i.e. notifications.

As pidgin uses the libpurple plugin this should also work for other clients such as Adium for Mac OS X.

The simple addon is available at Google Code:

http://code.google.com/p/pidgin-facebookchat/

So far I am finding it super useful, no longer do I need to add people to my other accounts The only bug I have found is that if I have it open, and then go on facebook, it hides all my facebook contacts. I have however logged a bug which should hopefully address this.

It’s amazing how many people you can actually get in contact with on social networking sites, such as facebook. Years ago I was pretty impressed by the likes of friends reunited. That particular site seems to have died off now. This was again proven to me yesterday, when I managed to get in contact with another person, Laura, who I went to primary school with. Someone who I thought I would never talk to again, after I moved away from London about 10 years ago.

As per any site, you get people who just add you to bump up their numbers, but I have always been a bit of a prood, and will only add someone if I actually know them. So was a bit amazed when I checked this morning, and it says I know 397 people. If I had to guess, I wouldn’t have said I knew that many people.

An interesting application on there is the ‘Friend Wheel’ which shows you who you know, and then if the people you know, who knows each other. It is actually quite scary, how people from totally different parts of my life know each other. Below is my wheel (click to get in a new window)

If you do actually know me, and I have missed you, feel free to get in contact my facebook profile.

Where to start… hmm Well last week was on a Red Cross 4 day First aid @ work course. Was quite a laugh, but scary how things have changed in less than three years.

There was two guys on the course, that really didn’t get a grip on first aid, and on a number of practice sessions, would have either killed you, or you’d never have walked again. They had to do the exam/test THREE times, and then they were passed. It really makes me think how unsafe first aiders could actually be.

Whilst on the course, I got to work with one young lady, who was pretty cool. In the end we exchanged details, now usually people would exchange numbers or at least email addys. Now it seems perfectly acceptable to exchange nothing more than full names. Why you ask, to find each other on Facebook. It seems that social networking has overtaken phones. I’m just waiting for a time where we all have some sort of unified social networking / mobile / email / address / ip address / voip contraption, would make life so much easier.

Friday saw me attending an interview in St Katherines dock, for a similar, but more technical role than I am currently doing. The interview was a technical interview, which I passed. I was invited back for a second interview on Monday, which seemed quite positive. Monday evening the agency confirmed that the company was going to make me an offer on Tuesday, which they did. Just awaiting my contracts, and my start date is 11th Feb. So 2008 looks positive so far. The only draw back is, there is no parking, so will be utilising the train. Which I guess with a bag full of gadgets, wont be too painful. It’s not terrible as I only have to get the train, and don’t have to venture on the tubes.

Also went for leaving drinks on Friday for my good pal Yinka, who is leaving us to go work for Betfair, so the team will be two down, which kinda sucks I guess for the existing team.

This morning was awoke by my ever ringing mobile, today it was Barclays, calling about my executive complaint. Seems I was 1000% correct on my thoughts, and was their error, which they are correcting, refunding charges and correcting my credit history. I ask myself, why could they have not resolved it like that on my initial call, and force me to write a letter of complaint?