Reports Of My Blog's Demise Have Been Greatly Exaggerated!
But you could be forgiven for thinking it was so. It’s been a long time between posts and there’s a good deal to report and a few things to celebrate.
On the professional front:
- In January I celebrated my first year of working for Cenqua/Atlassian (in August 2007 we were acquired by Atlassian). Working for Atlassian is much like working for Cenqua except rather than working with 7 really smart people on 3 cool products in a different time zone, I now work with around 150 really smart people on 7 extremely cool and increasingly well integrated products across 3 different time zones.
- This also means I’ve completed my first year of working from home. Home working has been a surprising adventure (and not always for good reasons - more on that in a future post) but I’ve survived and feel I’m now in my groove (well, one of them, anyway). Atlassian has also ramped up its European presence so I now have developers in my geographic region to work with.
- In May of last year attended my first Java One. I worked along side of the other Cenquans in the JavaOne trade hall demoing our products, talking with customers and networking with other nerds.
- Clover and Fisheye both won first prize Jolt awards! For those not in the know, Jolts are kind of like the Oscars of our industry. As a long-time reader and fan of Dr Dobbs Journal there’s a deep sense of pride I feel from being part of a team producing something worthy of a Jolt.
On the personal front:
- Today we celebrate our 5th anniversary of living in London. It was initially tough going but ultimately worth it. Moving countries always is tough, I suspect, but doing so during the worst part of the tech crash was not something I’d relish again. London is a fantastic and vibrant city which constantly surprises me - despite the seductive charms of the (for me, very accessible) cities Sydney, SF and Singapore, there’s no place I’d rather be right now than Finsbury Park, London.
- Wei Kiat recently celebrated his first anniversary of working at the British Museum. In that time he survived his first blockbuster exhibition, The First Emperor (ending on Sunday). Having someone on the inside with a thorough understanding of the events and celebrations taking place there has meant for a very culturally rich 12 months.
- In December we celebrated our 6th anniversary together.
- And finally, I’d like to announce to you all that I’ve decided to have my gender reassigned. Of late, you may have noticed my enlarged manboobs and assumed I’d been hitting the Krispy Kremes a bit too hard. Well, now I can now announce that this evening*, after several months of hormone therapy I’ll be going under the knife and will come out a new woman. Please kindly refer to me as Brenda Studman in all future correspondence.
Blog moved. Please update links. 3
I’ve moved web hosts and decided it was time to relaunch my blog as well as rechristen it ’Full Fathom Five’. It was also a good opportunity to smoke some of that red coloured crack (a.k.a. Ruby) by way of Typo.
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Sincere thanks to Neale at Metawerx for 2 years of excellent customer service hosting my Java-based blog. Thanks also to Simon Brown for Pebble, my faithful blog web application for the last year or so.
I'm divorcing you. Fancy a curry?
Wei Kiat found this amusing ramble on the back of a Thai fast food flier:
So next time you're in Stoke Newington and about to divorce, drop in to Lemon Grass
I'm a Grammar God
According to BaalObsidian , I’m a grammar God!
Here’s their HTML badge to prove it:

You are a GRAMMAR GOD!
If your mission in life is not already to
preserve the English tongue, it should be.
Congratulations and thank you!
How grammatically sound are you?
brought to you by Quizilla
I think they mean the American English tongue, though.