Today was a day spent working in front of the computer, which is not nearly as exciting to write about as galavanting off to conferences is, but it was good to have a day of rest after the intensity of LWF.

I worked on YRS-related stuff most of the time: assigning applicants to centres, drawing centres up on a map, etc. (The latter was done with awk, which was a terrible idea but I blame Adam for encouraging me.)

It’s been over a week since I interviewed with a certain London-based internet company. I was supposed to arrange another interview with them during this week, but I sent them an email telling them when I was available but never they never replied. I’m a bit disappointed that, after calling me in for an interview, they don’t even have the decency to even send an email saying that “Sorry, we’re a bit busy, we might take a while to get back to you,” or something along those lines.

A a short interview with John Roderick has just been published. He talks about his next album, and getting a band together to form the new The Long Winters. (Since Eric Corson, the bassist, left the band, it’s now just John alone. The upcoming record will feature the first all-new line-up of backing band members since the band’s formation in 2002.)

What a fucking tiring day.

Another early start, with my alarm interrupting a dream again. I think that is probably incredibly bad for one’s mental health and sanity, because it is so deeply jarring.

Josh and I checked out, took a cab from our hotel in Kew back to Olympia (which took almost an hour in the rush-hour traffic) and got started immediately on our new project. We had barely got it working in time for the presentations.

Most of today was spent hacking, which is a rather boring thing to write about in an online diary. But a few cool things happened: I talked for a while (well, Josh talked with me in the middle because I was incredibly busy coding) with Dallas Campbell, one of the presenters of the television show Bang Goes the Theory. Not that I watch that or any other TV programme: I only knew who he was because he presented the awards yesterday.

The time came to present, and it mostly went well. Then we had to dismantle everything around the Rewired State pod, which was a bit chaotic because Henry had to park the van many miles away, so while everyone else was finishing packing away, the Rewired State stand was still mostly intact while we waited for our van to arrive.

While we were doing this, Josh (whose original plan had been to stay in London all week) realised he had to go back to Manchester. That just left me to stay at Emma’s house tonight and tomorrow.

Eventually we grabbed a Micro each and headed across the road to a Persian restaurant. The food there is pretty good, actually. (Sorry, I can’t remember the name.)

I had (deliberately, not realising we couldn’t go back in) left my bag in Olympia, so Henry found it while dismantling the stand, and had to stop in the street to give it to me.

Emma is at a big dinner for all the people who spoke at LWF. She had tried to get me into it, given that I’m staying at her house and it would have made sense to head back there together, but she couldn’t. So I caught the Overground to Clapham Junction, then a (very late) train from there to Guildford. I was greeted by Emma’s boyfriend Phill, who has an early morning start and usually slept early, but kindly opened the door for me.

Sleep time now.

I woke at 6:00 am and showered, dressed, and was ready to set off to LWF at 7. I jumped in the back of the van (it was my turn) and waited for us to arrive at Olympia. We couldn’t go in the easy way so we had to walk all the way round to the other side of the conference centre, then once we were in we had to all the back to near where the sensible entrance was. But we bumped into John Bevan on the way, so it wasn’t all bad.

Once the conference had started, I headed to the main theatre to catch Noam Chomsky’s video speech. It turned out that would be the last speech I would see, because after that they started turning away people with exhibitor’s badges because only conference attendees could watch the talks.

We spent a while playing with the BBC Micros in the BBC’s tent (implementing the inevitable 10 PRINT "HELLO WORLD"; 20 GOTO 10; RUN program almost immediately), then with Lego in their tent, which invited visitors to “build the campus of the future,” in Lego, of course.

After that we needed to do some actual hacking. I had a barely-formed idea for a hack involving natural-language processing. Using stuff I half-remembered from building the natural-language parser in SICP, I was able to string together a roughly-working parser in Ruby but didn’t get much else done coding-wise because of various distractions, like food, sweets, and a Mario mascot posing next to Rewired State’s Storm Trooper dummy.

After the excitement of not doing enough coding, we headed to Pizza Express, where I was indecisive (as always at restaurants) but eventually managed to choose. We then headed upstairs to a ‘networking reception,’ met a few people we knew, then to an awards ceremony where Emma had been nominated for an award. She was worried about it and hopeful that she wouldn’t win it because she would have to give a speech, and wasn’t really prepared for it.

Fortunately, she didn’t win. We headed back to the hotel in a cab, left Emma to head back to her house in Guildford, and Josh and I split up in the lobby to our individual rooms.

I boarded the train an hour later than last week, but it still felt like déjà vu to arrive in London on Tuesday with Josh on the train an hour behind me.

I took the Tube from Euston to Embankment then to Gunnersbury, the nearest tube station to the hotel. It was still a very long way away and I ended up taking the bus. Upon arrival, the receptionist was less-than-helpful:

ME: Hello, I have a reservation under the name ‘Kendal.’
RECEPTIONIST: OK, but check-in doesn’t start until 3pm. I’ll charge you £10 extra to check in now.
D: Err… no, I’ll wait and come back after three.
R: Also, your room hasn’t been paid for. Will you be paying for it?

Confusion from me: my room is supposed to have been paid for by the BBC. I phone Henry. He speaks with the receptionist and they make some progress towards making sure the rooms are paid for.

M: OK, if I can’t check in, can I at least leave my bag here?
R: No, we don’t take luggage for security reasons.

After briefly considering having a Bruce Schneier rage at the pointlessness of this policy, I decided to leave and carry my stuffed-full messenger bag around with me. I phoned Henry back and told him I was on the way to Olympia to help set up for LWF.

I took the Tube to Earl’s Court and then waited around on the platform for 15 minutes for a train to Olympia, before an announcement was made that there was no service on the Olympia branch all day. Replacement bus services are available but are fucking impossible to find. Eventually I got the right bus, but despite keeping my eyes peeled for a bus-stop at Olympia I somehow went past it and had to walk back to the exhibition centre. Then I walked all around the massive exhibition centre looking for the correct exhibitor’s entrance. Eventually I just charged in and none of the security guards batted an eye. I found the YRS pod after a significant search.

After spending an hour or so helping set up, I had still not eaten lunch so I went out and bought a sandwich from Sainsbury’s. Henry offered a lift back to the hotel in the van. I hadn’t met Josh yet, we needed to take Henry’s friend with us, and there’s only three seats in the van. So we drove to High Street Kensington to pick up Josh and he has to get in the back with no windows and all the empty cardboard boxes.

We headed to the hotel, all check in, then head down to the bar for a beer. Then to McDonald’s for dinner (or lunch, in Josh’s case) and back to the hotel bar to discuss hack ideas and data sources while I wrote this. I think I’ll head to bed in a few minutes.

Procrastination is the sincerest form of productivity.

I woke up early this morning, but didn’t get anything done until about 11, when I was spurred into action by a phone-call from the estate agent. Thursday’s late-breaking setback has thrown the moving-in schedule up in the air.

It’s now just me and Josh looking for an apartment: Jordan has pulled out. Fortunately, there’s a two-bedroom unit available in the same building. We’ve agreed to take things a little slower for now.

I’m heading back to London tomorrow, mainly for Learning Without Frontiers, but also so I can sort this apartment mess out.

Things need sorting out. I hope to sort them out.

You will recall how I arrived in London and found an apartment in 36 hours, with a promise from the estate agent that we could move in by Saturday.

Well, without saying too much, it could all have gone wrong. At the last minute, as I was on the train leaving London, some news broke which has changed everything. We probably need a new place.

I had a job interview today at a well-known London internet company. Some of the questions were lowball (“What’s a block, in Ruby?”), some were predictable (order of complexity) and some intriguing. I was pleased when he told me that he called me in for interview because I said I was a Lisper.

The interviewer asked what my favourite sorting algorithm is. I resisted the urge to say bogosort, and answered with merge sort, citing its beauty when implemented in a functional style. He asked the average- and worst-case performances. I said n log n and n, respectively. He corrected me that it was n² in the worst-case. I thought this was wrong, but I didn’t want to object until I was sure. I replied, “Yeah, maybe.” Later I checked on Wikipedia, and my answer was correct. Update: Turns out we were both wrong: I misread the infobox. It’s n log n in both the worst- and the average-case.

I have another interview some time next week.

Tomorrow I have to go about patching over the troubling development regarding my apartment. It’s a blow given that I had hoped to be able to start moving things in on Saturday. Tomorrow will be an interesting day.

I had set an alarm for 8:30, but woke up at about 7. Not surprising given that my “bed” is not that comfy: when I slept at the youth hostel at St. Pancras, where the mattresses are like solid rock, I woke at 6:00am without needing an alarm.

After greeting (and shortly thereafter saying farewell to) Emma’s two daughters, Josh and I had a cursory look at the list of Young Rewired State applications. Unfortunately, we’ll probably have to turn down the applications from North Carolina and Bangalore.

We headed out to London on the train from Woking, talking about plans for hack-days for Rewired State and matters house-related.

We headed to the Canteen at the Royal Festival Hall again, this time meeting someone from the BBC. We introduced ourselves and our skills, talked for a little while but had to go to our first viewing of the day. We headed out to Haggerston and met the estate agent. The place was amazing. We arranged another viewing so that Jordan could come and look around, but had pretty much decided on making an offer.

After a Subway sandwich, we headed back to the agent to ask a few more questions (is that bath in the master bedroom actually fitted?)

We had two more viewings scheduled but, partly in elation at finding the previous apartment, we cancelled one. This gave us plenty of time to get to the one after, so we headed for a coffee shop and had tea (me) and lemonade (Josh) for a while. We left, thanked them, and slowly walked over to the Tube station. After a minor fuckup on my part, we got to the right place early, had the tour in 10 minutes, and decided against it.

While walking back to the Tube station, I realised that Stephen Mount, who I hadn’t seen in ages, was in London, so we should meet. I phoned him, arranged to meet at 7, and we headed for Holborn to pick up Jordan and head back to the first flat.

We arrived on time, but the estate agent showed up half-an-hour late. By that time I had to phone Steve and tell him we’d be late. But we toured the flat, decided to make an offer and headed back to the agent’s office. We can’t formally make the offer till tomorrow, but he’s accepted our terms in principle.

We got to Covent Garden, where we planned to meet Steve, at about quarter-past eight. We wanted some food, as well. We phoned Steve and, after a brief period of phone confusion caused by indecision, we agreed to meet Hyde Park Corner and head to the Hard Rock Café.

I ordered a burger. We introduced ourselves to the waitress by saying we’d just found an apartment, but she misheard in the loud restaurant atmosphere that we’d “founded a pub.” So there was amusement about that for a while.

At the end of the day, we said our goodbyes and Josh and I got the train back to Emma’s house. (After getting the wrong Tube. Again.)

An early start again, but this time for a more important reason than just going shopping: a trip to London.

On the train down, I got a message from the estate agent with whom I had an appointment, saying that the flat I enquired about was let out overnight. I figured it would be worth going to the appointment anyway to see what they had (I assumed it hadn’t been cancelled). To get to the estate agent’s office, I had to go to East Dulwich station because there was no Underground connection nearby. As I waited on the train at London Bridge station to set off, I sent a message saying I’d be a few minutes late. The reply: we’ve cancelled your appointment. Fortunately, the train hadn’t set off yet.

I was supposed to meet Josh and Emma at some point at the Canteen so I phoned Josh and he said his train had arrived from Manchester and he was heading there, so I followed suit. I arrived before Emma but Henry Warren was there, who is organising a part for Young Rewired State at Learning Without Frontiers. Josh showed up a few minutes later, which was our first meeting since he returned home from San Francisco. (Jordan, Josh and I are moving in together. We were all supposed to look round an apartment together but we didn’t in the end.)

Shortly thereafter Emma finally arrived — she was held up by the problems at Waterloo this morning. Josh, Emma, Henry and I had a conversation about the future events planned by Rewired State.

Emma had an appointment with Jim Knight so she moved table to see him. We carried on talking for a while, phoned up about two potential flats (codenamed House Alpha and House 2), then Henry mentioned that he had a meeting at the Gherkin and we were welcome to come along. We caught the Waterloo & City line and walked to the Gherkin. It turned out that the meeting was on the top floor, which is a members’ bar. The view really is extraordinary from up there. It really is great up there, and we talk for about 45 minutes further. It turned out something had been messed up and the person Henry was supposed to meet had the wrong place, so he turned up right as we had to leave.

We left to look around an apartment. It was pretty nice, but not great, and the agent was far too pushy. We left it be, partly because Jordan wanted to see whatever apartment we chose before renting it, which is fair enough.

I went off to see a potential source of a job, and we chatted about their current situation and what I’d be doing if I worked there.

After I’d finished up there, I headed to Holborn to meet Josh again, and catch Jordan as he finished work at Government Digital Service. We walked over to Covent Garden, had some paella. This was meant to be a one-day trip, but it became clear that we weren’t going to get anything sorted in one day, so I phoned Emma to pester about sleeping at her house. (Well, not pester: I asked nicely once and she said, “Of course!”)

So after spending a while in Starbucks with Jordan and Josh looking for apartments, we split up, headed for Waterloo station, split up with Jordan and got on the train to Guildford. Josh was very tired on the train but he seems to have recovered since we arrived at Emma’s house. We’re each sitting in our beds and working on our computers as I write this.

Photographs.

• The corridor at Bank station, down to the Waterloo & City line.
• The bar at the top of the Gherkin building.
• A view from the top of the Gherkin.
• Josh, wearing Henry’s beard-and-moustache hat and his ‘glasses.’