Trisha's Ramblings

Last week I went to get my hair cut (yes, sorry, this is a story about hair).  I had thought long and hard about what I wanted.  I researched, checked styles online, and bought a magazine so I could show my hairdresser exactly what I was after and there would be no confusion.  I was determined I would not be spending that ridiculous amount of money on something I was not going to be happy with.  I was even bold enough to ask for some changes to it at the end, which I have never ever had the courage to do before. He did an excellent job.  It was almost exactly what I had asked for, with some variations to account for my particular hair type.  It was a very cute hair style that suited me.  But I had a niggling doubt. A few days later, that niggle was a certainty.  It wasn't what I wanted. However, it was what I had asked for. Being English, the thought of going back and telling him I wasn't happy with it was horrifying.  Especially sinc...

In theory, I am busy writing material for my upcoming speaking events, rather than writing terribly illuminating posts on my blog (see what I did there?).  In actuality I am being lazy and have pretty much taken January off for a recharge. In the spirit of doing something which ticks both the event-speaking and blogging boxes, this is a quick update on the conferences I'm confirmed for so far.  Put the following dates in your diary - these are my first international solo speaking events: 7th March - QCon London - Concurrent Programming Using The Disruptor  (sadly I can't stay for the whole conference as it clashes with the only holiday I had booked for 2012). 23rd May - GOTO Copenhagen - Concurrent Programming Using The Disruptor  & War Stories. 25-26th May - GOTO Amsterdam - Concurrent Programming Using The Disruptor . The presentation will be more of a user's guide to the Disruptor than anything we've done before.  An hour isn't a lot of time to c...

And now, after an absence of several weeks, you get to see how long it takes me to write some of these posts. I was putting up the Christmas decorations one Saturday when my worst fear was realised 1 - one of my three strings of lights was not working. The first two went up fine.  The third lit up when I plugged it in, and in less than a second went out.  Curses.  This is not what I wanted, this was supposed to be a short exercise in making my tiny little flat look festive. So I set about the tedious task of starting from the end closest to the plug and replacing every bulb, one by one, with a spare one to see if it magically lit up again.  When it doesn't, you take the spare back out and replace it with the original bulb.  I remember my parents going through this ritual every Christmas, the tediousness of this activity is more memorable than the fleeting joy of shinies. While I was doing this, my mind was back on the job I'd been doing at work the p...

If you have a Parleys subscription, you can watch the whole "Why we shouldn't target women" panel from Devoxx 2011 a month or so ago.  Watch me attempt to monopolise the whole panel as if it was my idea or something...

When you're applying for a job at LMAX , your CV (or résumé, for our American readers) usually comes through me and I decide whether to call you for a technical phone screen. I'm going to let you into a secret. I'm going to tell you the criteria I use when judging your CV. Now, you could say this is a foolish thing for me to do, because now when you apply you'll be "cheating" and writing your CV to pass these guidelines. Good. LMAX isn't the only company that's going to judge your CV based on these criteria. I firmly believe that an increase in quality of the CVs in our industry can only be A Good Thing.  An increase in the quality of your CV is definitely A Good Thing for you . Even more importantly, if I get CVs that do not pass these basic criteria, now I know you either don't read the LMAX blogs (shame on you), or you're not able to follow simple instructions (bodes poorly for your ability to learn within the company). The t...

At JAX London Mike and I presented "Understanding the Disruptor - A Beginner's Guide to Hardcore Concurrency".  This is the session we initially previewed to the London Java Community a few weeks earlier.  The content is the same, but the feel of the presentation was quite different to us - the venue for the LJC event was more intimate, and it was easier to interact with the audience.  At JAX, we were up on stage, which was pretty cool actually, but meant that it felt more like a lecture and it was less easy to connect with the audience. We received some really great feedback on this presentation, and it was brilliant to see a lot of the speakers from JAX there watching us.

Tori Wieldt from the Oracle Technology Network interviewed me at Devoxx.  Because I was there to be on the Why We Shouldn't Target Women panel, the interview is just another platform for me to air my views on this subject again. Yes, I am actually wearing pink....