Memos From the Cube

So, I’ve been busy working over the last week – I’ve now got into the routine of getting to work, drinking a half dozen cups of coffee, doing a bit of coding and whatnot before returning home. It seems that’s the real secret to working; lots and lots of coffee. I’m a bit surprised that my heart has been able to take it quite frankly, although the jitters does help ward off the cold when I have to leave in the evening.

And boy is it cold. Last week I braved minus-goddam-18–degrees to go rescue my passport from the clutches of the Norwegian Immigration Office. Ever seen the scene from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy movie where they try to rescue Zaphod, and have to line up behind a huge amount of people and sign a million forms? Norwegian offices are like that. By the time I managed to get back into work, I was shivering, couldn’t feel my fingers. Much thanks to my awesome co-workers, who have let me borrow a decent jacket and heavy duty gloves for the really cold winter days.

One more thing about the cold; I give you a simple heat map of my room:

Yes, the engineers thought it to be a wonderful idea to place the thermostat next to the heater. Somewhere out there, a building engineer is laughing heartily.

Now, on to other things. A few days ago it was Christmas! I actually feel a little jibbed now – while there’s plenty of “God Jul” being thrown around and a few decorations, I really haven’t been able to get into the Christmas spirit this year. That’s proven to be both a blessing and a curse, as it means being alone didn’t impact me as much as I thought it would, but I also didn’t get the awesome end-of-year cheer I usually do. Missing out on the Christmas family gathering (and, of course, the feast) sucks mightily, but thanks to modern technology I was able to be a part of the action, courtesy of Skype and the high speed internet link in my room back to Australia. I think I’d probably go insane with the isolation if I wasn’t back to call back home (timezones permitting) every few days.

On Christmas day I woke up to unwrap the few small presents my parents sent me off with, so that I could still experience some of the Christmas magic. To try to get into the swing of things, I put on some familiar Christmas Carols from YouTube – depressingly lame, but I’m going to listen to my favourite ones regardless of where I am in the world, damnit. One of the gifts was this festive little thing, which is currently keeping me company on my desk. I’ve been damn lucky to be living with a housemate that is an excellent Nepalese cook, and really nice guy to boot. Christmas dinner we both sat down and had a great rice and pork meal – plus beer, of course.

One of the upsides to living in Norway and eating at the Atmel building cafeteria each day is that I’ve got to eat a whole boatload (possibly in the literal sense before I leave) of Smoked Salmon and Jarlsberg cheese, two things which are both extremely tasty, and extremely expensive back home. Being lactose intolerant, I’m very glad I brought several bottles of Lactase tablets to prevent sickness, so I’ve been able to indulge more than I would have otherwise. Today I tried something new – Brunost, a Norwegian brown cheese on bread. It’s actually not bad, but quite different to regular cheese, as it’s slightly grainy and sweet.

Over the weekend I got back into some real coding – not the code Janitor kind where I just push bits of code around, but the real kind where I prototype, innovate and design. Currently I’m trying to work on an asynchronous API to go into LUFA, allowing for endpoint data to be transferred asynchronously between the host and the device. I’m actually not certain it’ll make it into the next release yet until I’ve done some more work to see how viable it is, and more importantly how much of a speed gain it can give over the current polled system. More on that later, depending on how it goes.

Atmel is keeping me very busy – I’m slowly getting through the proof-of-concept project they have given me.