Betfair

I borrowed the title from a guy who kickstarted all of this. Thanks Ariya ;) I’m leaving Betfair. I owe a lot to this company: for a bit longer than a year I have had the pleasure to work with smart, enlightened, knowledgeable people from which I learned loads. Leaving was definitely not an easy choice. The only thing didn’t happen, is that I didn’t become a proper punter: I just learned that even something sounding “boring” as betting on sports, can actually be a very big challenge in terms of the technologies involved. Even more, if you try to do it in the Betfair way: with million of customers, all constantly hammering the servers to make the most out of their money. ...

I’m impressed. Today a lot of important things just happened, and I think it’s work putting them down. Tahrir Square pushes Hosni Mubarak down After what he said yesterday night, I was not expecting this to happen so soon. Mubarak stepped down! In addition of being a great news for all my friends that are directly or indirectly related to Egypt, this is an INCREDIBLE news for something I tagged as “lost”: hope. ...

Last friday I have attended Full Frontal 2010, a one day JavaScript conference organised by Left Logic. This has been the second time the conference ran: the first was last year. Full Frontal 2010 It was a very inspiring and stimulating day, with a very very nice line of speakers, all coming from different, but yet connected, areas of the Front End Development scene. Left Logic is run by Remy Sharp, that made an very good job, together with his wife (sorry, I don’t recall her name right now), to organise, publicise and sell-out all the tickets, months before the conference. I guess next year the only problem for them will be to try to find a bigger venue: Duke of York’s Picturehouse in Brighton was a nice and cosy one, but the absence of decent WiFi connectivity, and the size of the cinema, will probably become a limit as this event gets more and more popular. ...

A lot is changing in my life. I’m getting older, I’m getting wiser, I’m getting “stupider” (like it was even possible :-P ). New Job Last Friday (3rd of Sep 2010) I left Orange Labs UK. After 2 years and 2 months, my work at this the UK branch of France Telecom R&D is over. I have been involved in a number of projects with various degrees of commitment: some full time, some to land a hand, some to just criticise and make fun of colleagues (just kidding: it was more like trying to shutdown wasteful project branching and focusing on the good targets :-P ). ...