OSM; IBM

*doesn’t know why he bothers with titles, when they contain nothing that’s not in the tags*

This is the feedback I got from IBM:

Your strongest exercise was your “Standard Interview”. You provided sound
examples of your drive and leadership, not only in technological
situations but also in your other interests. You clearly highlighted your
interest in developing your technical skills and proved yourself to hold a
great passion for technology.

That’s interesting, because I thought that went horribly. Seems they were trying to work out what I was good at here.

Your weakest exercise was the “Communications” exercise. It was felt that,
in both your letter and your presentation, you could have delivered your
answers in a more clear and concise fashion.

That’s not surprising: I didn’t have the first clue what they were wanting from me there. If I’ve not posted about that exercise already, poke me already.

Your strongest competency was your “analytical reasoning”. You displayed a
very logical approach to problem solving and a clear ability to cope with
complex issues. You analysed scenarios well and constructed logical
responses based on sound ideas.

Yeah: that was probably because of my efficient data structures that helped us infer our only correct piece of information, and my failed attempt at using algebra to solve a “5 people sitting on chairs” problem.

Your weakest competency was your “planning and organisation”. It was felt
that your presentation did not address the question in hand, which would
have been resolved with clear planning of the task.

Now that’s fucking annoying: I thought they were trying to work out what I was good at with this one, so I showcased a load of my projects, and hoped they would explain “Why am I suited to a career in Information Technology”. Seems they wanted me to spell it out to them. Oh well. I guess I’ll just have to learn how to jump through hoops better.

In other news, it seems that there is a permalink button on OpenStreetMap. If you click it, then change the lat and lon to mlat and mlon, you get a marker. It may be primitive, but I will certainly be using it for all linkerizing in the future: it’s much more convenient than adding points to http://www.cam.ac.uk/map/ , and hilariously more detailed than Google Maps.

If you wish to compare:

http://www.openstreetmap.org/?mlat=52.20114&mlon=0.1175&zoom=16&layers=B0FT

and

http://www.cam.ac.uk/map/v4/drawmap.cgi?mp=main;xx=1700;yy=1040;mt=a;mx=1770;my=1122;ma=180;tl=Little St Mary’s Hostel

Also, There’s rumours of being able to embed it as well. I’ll see if I can get that working shortly.

Long Day

I am now completely dead. Interview day with IBM from 9:15 until about 3, then back into London for dinner and dancing until 10-ish. Wearing the same shoes the whole time.

Interview wasn’t an interview really: more of a test-day. Don’t know why they didn’t start it later, so we could have just gone on the morning train.

Tried to scav dinner off my mum, but apparently she’d taken the day off, Dad too. I’ll have to ask them about that. Ended up eating in wagamamas instead. Not too bad, if I hadn’t eaten the semi-raw red-onion.

Dancing was jitterbugs, marble arch. There’s SO MUCH SPACE. Even my dreadful floorcraft didn’t trip over anyone. I think my dancing became a little Roland-esque at points. Not sure whether that’s a good thing or what. There were a few familiar faces (Carol(?), Cleo :D…). For some reason, I was half-expecting to see J there, but no joy.

Now there’s a stupid bus replacement service to cambs, so I don’t know when i’m getting in. (answer: 1:00-ish)