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Sunday 27th September 2009: 12pm. Heh, what can I write about this entry which is any different from the last entry? A good question to be sure! I've accomplished a few small things: the first is that I have finally, finally, finally finished converting my CV into XML and it is available online here. I have wanted to get that done for oh about five years now because maintaining the Word edition was becoming increasingly annoying over time: any time you applied for a job you'd have to manually cut & paste the bits relevant to the job, and the Gantt chart had to be separately maintained from the main listings. What I really needed was a programmatically controllable CV and that really means a custom XML format with a parametrised XSL transformation to make it present itself as you need for some given purpose. The output also has hResume microformatting so technically speaking the search engines should be able to pick it up.

I wasted a fair few hours trying to get that CV to work right on Internet Explorer - unlike Safari or Chrome, IE actually does spit out "the right thing" but unfortunately I couldn't figure out how to make jQuery accept XHTML in a way which worked (on IE) which oddly enough was an identical problem with my MBS BIS final project. Anyway in the end I gave up - all browsers will happily translate the XML into XHTML, it's just only Opera and Firefox will let the user mess around with the conversion settings. And in the end it is currently only Firefox with the support for CSS3 rotated text, so Firefox alone works perfectly which is a bit sad though all too common.

The other major thing that I have been doing during the last month is a contract with Applied Research Associates for work on my memory allocator nedmalloc which now is pretty much complete and is worth a good few bob to my company which is great as it's seriously in debt - as indeed am I. The RoIP contract came through too which will no doubt occupy much of next week, and I have also been working on a critical pedagogy for numerate social science subjects which currently looks like this:

The theory goes that students completing the above would be much better placed to not repeat the mistakes made during the recent credit crunch and indeed before that, the Enron and other accounting/consulting related lapses in morality. My hope is that we might be able to collaboratively develop this into something serious though of course it would be highly unlikely to go anywhere without a serious bandwagon effect. Anyway, we'll see.

The plan still holds to make a start on that "synopses of Nobel prize winning papers" book after the RoIP contract is done using all my work on deepereconomics.org to good effect, and then after that to start my PhD thesis. Meanwhile Megan has begun her OU Masters in Education course, and she has her next driving test this coming Friday. I also must start getting more exercise - I have exceeded eleven stone and I am definitely becoming fat which needs to be fixed, not least that fluid keeps building in my lungs due to lack of breathing fresh air - however, after these two contracts and hopefully the imminent payout of welfare after oh, like four months now, we should be financially secure until 2010 so I can finally relax. Be happy!

Monday 31st August 2009: 10.25pm. Well the summer is almost over - Dad comes back from his holidays on Thursday which is the usual signifier of being back to work, and the weather is definitely becoming much cooler - I had to turn on the heating a few days ago because it was getting too nippy even under a blanket.

This month, much like last month and the month before it, has once again very little evidence to show for its passing. I have my ZEO cluster running as you can see if you like on deepereconomics.org or lowenddedi.net though in fact at the present time it actually consists of just one lonely and very puny Celeron D processor until the tax office return from their holidays and give me my VAT number. I have finally got the latter site up and running despite having languished for such a long time - I bought the domain itself maybe two months ago, but it needed some custom Zope datatype programming and teaching myself how to do that swallowed a week just on its own. Meanwhile, very, very, very slowly, deepereconomics.org is finally at a point where I can start adding some content as I have nailed one pernicious bug after another.

Once again I wonder where the hell all the time went - how can one invest ten to twelve hours a day every day and get almost nowhere after two months? I was even getting up early as Megan got herself a summer job teaching English to foreign kids so I was dropping her in early and collecting her fairly late. I haven't had the time to release TnFOX as I usually do each summer, and the Radio over IP work I did in July was done before even the last entry. Furthermore I didn't need to drive Megan to and from Mallow daily anymore as she failed her test so that yielded even more free time. I am also very sure that I have been pushing myself hard because my mouth ulcer opened itself up again, and that only happens when I'm getting very run down - moreover, I do feel knackered and I do know I keep forcing myself to work just that extra hour or two per day. I almost wonder if I should start keeping a time and motion study!

At this present time it seems unlikely that Megan has obtained a teaching job, and the TEFL one has ended so she has a lot of free time on her hands. She has a her visa application to make, and I suppose she needs to start thinking of non-teaching jobs and activities which make her the network of contacts requisite for getting a teaching job such as voluntary work and interacting with the teaching unions. She also needs a slew of further qualifications unfortunately, but it's a dog-eat-dog world out there and even a Masters is fairly worthless nowadays. You just gotta have that PhD.

Speaking of which, I will almost certainly write that crib book for Economics students first and after begin writing my PhD with an intent to submit it for PhD by Publication which a few of the UK universities nowadays offer. I am hoping to have it done by Summer 2010 though if I keep up this low level of accomplishment then it'll probably be Summer 2011 at this rate. Once I have the PhD, many opportunities open themselves not least the possibility of a US work visa.

So that's the plan. If we're ever going to make any sort of progress in life like getting married or having children then we gotta get some money from somewhere. Money sucks and the system stinks, but time is running out before oil and food starts to seriously rise in price - hence all those governments buying up agricultural land recently. And then the shit will really hit the fan. Be happy!