Andreas – Joakal

August 16, 2009

Where I get me fun

Filed under: Personal Life — Tags: , , , — Andreas Markauskas @ 4:54 pm

As of this moment, I have about 90 projects, not counting the closed ones. If this seems a lot to you, I agreed long ago and adopted a 3-active project rule that means I won't have to face tremendous amount of work to do. I do each of the three projects alternately at one every three days so each day is dedicated to project work. Yes, I consider projects to be a fun hobby in giving me a challenge and something to read. However I'm not always in the mood so here's what I do for fun on the web.

News Sites

These sites update me to the happenings and are mostly related to my interests and pursuits.

  • Slashdot.org A 'News for Nerds' user-submissions site. It updates me to the general idea of the world IT industry although some of the news and users predominately American.
  • Whirlpool It's not a washing machine, it's the biggest Australian forum that features a cool broadband choice section, ISP-related daily news and a hugely active forum that I browse.
  • Boston's The Big Picture A pretty impressive blog of big pictures, usually due to recent highlights in the media such as Typhoon activity.
  • Fark.com USA-Centred user-submissions site where it features the most random and bizarre yet actual news articles of the world. However, it has faltered lately as sometimes it appears to be male-biased or has an agenda when moderators approve certain news (eg news that males want and political content).
  • Wired Science USA-Centred editorial site like a newspaper, it features some cool exciting articles of science.
  • Wired Epiccenter From the same site as above, this is the technical business section. It features articles such as how Google helped Twitter in the recent DDOS attacks.
  • paidContent A site that provides global coverage on the economics of digital content. Gives an insight to site finances.

Daily Sites

  • digg - 24 hours A user-submission popularity based site, it gives a link to what people generally like at the moment. It tends to lean to USA-centred content at times but only because of the amount of USA users on the site. The maturity of the content can be very varied though.
  • Not Always Right A user-submission moderator-approval based site. It features the interaction from customers who have bizarre responses. Sometimes it's the other way around.
  • The Daily WTF A humorous blog dedicated to "Curious Perversions in Information Technology". It offers living examples and stories of disasters, horrors, etc. Great for those who are IT. For others, the error messages are funny and easy to understand most of the time.

Web Comics

I have Web Comics which are numerous but most notable ones I like:

  • Sluggy Freelance College students comic but centered around fantasy, talking animals and other outrageous hijinks.
  • Ctrl+Alt+Del A windows-centered comic of gamers. Also features storylines.
  • xkcd A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language.
  • PHD Comics The ongoing chronicle of life (or the lack thereof) in grad school. Some laughs, etc.
  • Digger Comic A wombat that goes on a mysterious adventure. Relatively new webcomic to me.
  • Dawn of Time A cave woman that seems to be going through many different timelines in the land for a funny tale of mishaps and interactions of the different periods.
  • UserFriendly.org An IT based comic by an IT guy who keeps copying and pasting. But there are quite some good jokes and storylines.

Other Sites

Here are some sites that don't fit above.

  • Wikipedia's Random Page Sometimes there's a good article.
  • Omegle Talk to a complete stranger. Sometimes interesting, sometimes rude, you never know.

August 4, 2009

Job hunt progress – August

Filed under: Personal Life — Tags: , , , , , — Andreas Markauskas @ 9:38 pm

I have not found any good jobs as of this moment. My most recent interview almost achieved me an internship until I baulked at the technical question that was out of my expertise. I suppose I had hoped I would get on the job training as I progressed.

Otherwise, yesterday, I had a particular dilemma where I realised from my courses this semester that were mostly business-oriented and economics-oriented yet the advertised business jobs had specifically stated their desire for business degrees and for IT jobs, they were requesting 3-5 years of minimum work experience in the IT industry. Since I am an IT person with business-economics knowledge, I thought that this was not helpful for my career goals and considered deferring or dropping out to attempt IT work experience. However, the recession is making jobs quite scare and I don't see it ending any time soon enough to gain some experience in place of a resume. As a result, I plan to continue my university education and build up my portfolio.

Some people have asked what I use to search for jobs, here's the list:

My tips:

  • Firefox users: Create a folder just below that URL bar named 'Job sites'. Next add all the job sites you like to browse. You can then right-click and click 'Open in all tabs'. Quick and easy.
  • When bookmarking job sites, try to bookmark the programmed search URL so you will always get the pre-programmed searches. For example http://whirlpool.net.au/jobs/?state=NSW for only jobs in NSW.
  • Don't go to random places during a job recession. Most likely if they wish to hire people, they will either advertise jobs in the local newspaper or a local job site (I'm guilty of it).
  • If the job ads are the same or there's more online at the local newspaper site, then you don't need to buy the paper every day like my Newcastle Herald does.
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