Another late-night book-inspired post...

[denny]

Just finished reading 'Pattern Recognition' by William Gibson. Extremely good. It's as compelling as his earlier books without being anywhere near as ostentatiously and self-consciously cool. Not that I dislike that in his earlier books :) but it's impressive that this one is just as grabby without trying to be that flashy.

It's interesting, and to me sort of disappointing, that his books have pulled in from the future to the now, going through near-future on the way. I really liked his future, I found it highly believable, and I feel like it had a lot more stories to tell - but I don't see him returning to that area given the way his more recent stuff has shifted emphasis.

Anyway, I didn't really like the near-future books (Idoru etc) anywhere near as much as the first few, but this one is definitely as good, if not better, than Count Zero et al.

In other news today, I nearly had a job for tomorrow, then didn't. So that was briefly exciting :) Just a one-day thing anyway, so not a huge loss, but it would have been nice to do some paid work again.

Oh yes, and this evening I shut down the main customer on my web hosting service for non-payment and lack of communication. This seems to have caused a sudden shift in their attitude and it's possible they may even pay now, which frankly has surprised me - I was expecting them to tell me to stuff it and leave me with nothing to show for three years' hosting services. (Yes, I did leave it incredibly late to invoice them, but it's been a weird few years.)

Comments

[valkyriekaren.livejournal.com]

I've had a thought. When I was moving down to London last year and looking for temp/contract work, my biggest problem was convincing London-based agencies and employers that I was actually available to work, as if my postal address said Cambridge, they didn't want to know.
Have you encountered this? Would it be useful for you to have a London address?

[dennyd.livejournal.com]

I was expecting it to be a problem to some extent, but so far it hasn't been at all... perhaps a difference between hiring for contract and permanent roles.

My CV doesn't even have a postal address on it - the question has been raised at interview sometimes, but then I've always got time to explain that I'm moving into London as soon as I've got a job there.