Category: Uncategorized

Or at least it feels a bit like it during the times of COVID. I changed jobs (and industries!) again (well, for the second time in 10 years. Still a Software Development Manager, but now at Limejump in the world of green energy. Feels like we’re beginning to emerge from lockdown at last. I’ve not been sharing much on here, but our cat has been much more active over on Instagram.

So… been a while, eh?

Last time I posted I’d just got a job as Knowledge Engineer here in Cambridge – well I’m still here, but have moved on a little: now I’m a Software Development Manager, managing a team of Software Development Engineers, Knowledge Engineers and Research Scientists. Last time I posted I was also just talking about the Evi app and website… that’s because I couldn’t tell you about this secret thing you may now know of called Amazon Alexa. Suffice to say it’s been quite a success! It still doesn’t know everything though, so still work to do.

Since then I also got married, bought a house, and got a cat! I might be beginning to feel like an actual adult!

Now is the time of Coronavirus lockdowns, so that might explain getting around to long neglected things such as dormant websites. This is usually the point were I promise that I’ll be updating this page soon with all sorts of exciting things. That may not be true, but I hope to update it again in less than seven years!

Well well well. So now I am no longer a physicist/mathematician/theorist/whatever I was. I am now a ‘Knowledge Engineer’ (pause for dramatic effect).

I think that sounds kind of cool, I know you may sneer and say it sounds like one of these modern made up titles, but it’s a real discipline with a history (it even has a wikipedia page). I work for Evi Technologies which is now part of Amazon. Our job is to give natural language answers to questions asked in natural language, and we hope to be able to answer any question in any language eventually, but for the time being a good place to start is simple questions like “What’s the capital of France?” and “What was Madonna’s first album?”. I’ll explain more later, for now I’ll just say we started out as a webpage and you can find the webpage here, but that hasn’t been updated for a long time so is not a good reflection of our abilities, much better is the app, which is available on the iOS app store, Android, and shortly, the Kindle store.

As for heading somewhere exotic, well that didn’t work out and I’ve ended up back in Cambridge which I guess is my second home, having spent second most time here in my life. Didn’t particularly aim to to come here, but it’s a centre for tech jobs in the UK and my linguistic skills are not yet good enough to get me to many other places. Ell very quickly got a nice job for an NGO in London which seems great, despite the commute and we have a nice peaceful flat which we have finally managed to furnish.

So, all good! For the last year I’ve been doing online courses and have managed to teach myself quite a bit of programming, but now I finally have a break I intend to tidy up this site a bit, but then again, I have umpteen other things I plan to do with my time, so we will see. Happy New Year!

So after some thought I’ve decided to leave academia. It feels a bit strange as I’ve though of myself as a string theorist for quite a while now. What will I be next? I’m not sure exactly. And where? Don’t know this either. Eliška just finished her masters here, I only extended my contracts at work and on the flat till the end of August, so after that we’ll see, maybe back to the UK, maybe Prague, or somewhere more exotic.

And so this is Christmas, and what have we done? Nothing terrible exciting recently,just passed my Czech exam and I’m preparing for Christmas. Planning new year in Warsaw and flying to Glasgow on the first if we manage to get up in time/stay up indefinitely.

Aha, still being very slack with putting anything here, but you know, it’s been a busy time, what with moving intercontinentally again. So after a slog across Russia here we are in beautiful Brno in the Czech Republic, where the beer is cheaper than water and so far it’s been roasting hot. Got ourselves a lovely flat near the station (shame about the main road and building site outside the window). So the moving in stage is drawing to a close and now it’s time to get working on some longer term projects and try to perfect (render adequate)  my czech.

Na shledanou,

N

April already and I haven’t added anything significant? I should get to work! At the very least I should get some of my own pretty pictures on here. But the times they are a’changin’, and we’re already preparing to leave Seoul. Lets say I aim to have this looking like an actual website by when I get to the next destination… Brno in the Czech Republic.

Well I used to have a page here, but I let it lapse and the content is all out of date now anyway. So I guess I should make something new and shiny now all this Web 2.0 has happened (or is it 3.0 now?). Well, tiny acorns, and all that. Maybe someday there’ll be something interesting. But hopefully at least there’ll be something a bit more individual than bloody Facebook.