CodeFrenzy

About a year and a half ago (October 2005), I tentatively applied for a Software Engineer in Test position at Google. When, to my surprise, a recruiter actually emailed me moments later and scheduled my first interview, I panicked and dug out all my old Computer Science notes and textbooks from my 4 years at uni. I had read that Google’s interviews were tough, so I thought I had better get studying. Over the course of a few months, I stressed out heaps, reviewed all my old comp sci notes (really, who remembers how to implement B-Trees, A* Search algorithms and MergeSort after leaving university?) and had 5 hour-long hard-core technical phone interviews with software engineers and testers at Mountain View.

Anyway, although the recruiter I was dealing with told me I had done very well during my interviews and that everyone was very impressed, I was eventually given the bad news – there wasn’t really anything for me at that time. I was pretty gutted but glad that I had gone through it all for the experience – no interview from then on would ever be as difficult as the ones I’d just undergone.

How wrong was I? About a year later (December 2006), one of the recruiters I’d dealt with during my interviews emailed me and asked if there was any chance I could come in for an interview for the same position at their Zurich office while on my holiday in Europe. Apparently they were expanding their test team and thought of me :). Well, since I was going to be in the area anyway, I said sure. However, since I was going to be on a much anticipated holiday, study and stress were not an option. I just accepted the fact that this meant I was going to totally suck at any tricky technical interview questions – but I thought, what the hell, I might as well.

All I can say is: yikes. As you can probably guess, I didn’t get the job, AGAIN. But this time I felt I actually did quite well in the interviews, despite the lack of study. Google flew me (and Chris) down to Zurich from Copenhagen and put us up in a really flash hotel for a night. The following day I had a full day of interviews on-site at the Zurich office. Basically this translates to 5 hour-long interviews with 5 different software engineers and testers. The questions they asked were very technical and covered a lot of different technologies. Towards the end of the day I was totally knackered and found it really hard to think straight, whether in code or in plain old English. 5 hours of hard-core technical questions when you have only a few seconds to think up a good answer and write code on a white board is TOUGH, no matter how much of a geek you are. NOW I’m pretty sure I’ve experienced the toughest interviews I will ever have to.

Anyway, I guess the moral of all this is that if you are given an opportunity to try out for something you really want but are pretty sure you’re not going to get – give it a go anyway. Sure, it’s gonna be hard and you’re gonna stress about it. Sure you’re gonna feel pretty crap about it if it doesn’t work out. But you will gain SOMETHING from it – even if it’s just the experience. In my case, apart from being forced to review a whole bunch of pretty cool geeky stuff that I’d totally forgotten about, I got a cool trip to Zurich, paid for by Google, I got to meet a bunch of really fun and talented software engineers (who by the way took Chris and I out for a great Swiss-fondue dinner after my day of interviews in Zurich) and basically I feel pretty good about the fact that I even got the chance to interview with Google. And as I mentioned above, I am now confident enough to believe that I can sit through any technical interview known to man (or woman) :)

OMG. This Monkey Kick Off game is horribly addictive. I hate it.

No, I don’t really. I just can’t afford to waste any more time on it.

But that’s alright, coz I beat Chris, which is really all that matters (until he gets a better score than me, in which case I”ll just have to kill him… muahahahah).

I must say, however, that Chris did put up a good fight with his best score – 4734.

Anyway after about 4 (ok maybe 5) hours I was successful in my mission to WIN. That’s right – check out MY score: 4859.

OOOhhh YEAH!! Bring it ON!!

About a year ago, I embarked on a project through an organization called InterConnection.

InterConnection, as its website says, works to make Internet technology accessible to underserved communities around the world. As a web designer and/or developer, you can become a “web volunteer” and help build sites for other organizations out there who need a site but don’t have the money or the know-how to build one themselves.

So this is what I did. I became a web volunteer. InterConnection assigned me a project – to build a site for Shauri Yako Community Youth Support Centre in Kenya. How excited was I?!? Kenya! Awesome! Apart from doing something which was going to help others a LOT, I was going to have to push my boundaries and come up with a design. Yikes.

Shauri Yako Community Youth Support Centre is a community based organization, based in Nyeri, Kenya. SYSC was created to provide developmental services for children and youth living in poverty in Nyeri. SYSC works with vulnerable children, youth and women who face poverty, HIV/AIDS pandemic or social isolation to address their needs and hopes.

Within a few days of being assigned this project, Joe from Shauri Yako got in touch with me and with InterConnection’s help, we set them up with some online hosting and I started on the designs. Now, me not having a creative bone in my body meant that it was, let’s say, somewhat difficult for me to come up with a nice design. It took me about… 26 designs(!!!) and many frustrating one-sided arguments with photoshop until both Joe and I were happy with it. Phew! What a mammoth effort that was!

I then embarked on actually building the site. I had received lots of word documents and requirements from Joe, so this part was pretty easy. APART from the fact that in order to challenge myself a little bit more, I had decided that I would build the whole thing with as little HTML as possible and as much CSS as I could come up with. This, however, didn’t sit well with many browsers and after many attempts and many hours cursing at IE, as well as the realisation that this site was actually meant to be as accessible as possible (read: cross-browser), I gave up and re-did the site in HTML tables. Urgh. But, it took probably no more than 1.5 hours. How frustrating.

Anyway, the site has now been up and running for a few months and apart from a few last bits and pieces to tidy up, I would say it’s pretty much done.

But I’ll tell you the best part of all this. The other day when I did what I bet a lot of you out there also do but don’t admit to – “googled” myself – I came across one result which I totally didn’t expect. Shauri Yako had dedicated a paragraph of one of their latest newsletters to thanking me, Annie Luxton from New Zealand, and others from all around the world who have helped them in various different ways. That recognition was one of the best feelings I’ve had in a LONG time.

Here is a screenshot of the page as it is now – the best design I could come up with. I know it ain’t the greatest but it’s usable (well, at least I think so!) and does the job :)

p{margin: 0px auto; text-align: center;}.

While in San Francisco, Chris and I were lucky enough to spend a few hours visiting “The Goog” offices – aka “Googleplex” – in Mountainview. How cool is that?!?

Our friend Jeremy Ginsberg who is a software engineer at Google invited us to come have lunch with him and gave us a tour of the offices. What can I say – the place is HUGE!! We drove down wide streets beautifully lined with trees and large buildings on either side. Most of them seemed to belong to Google but there were also others pertaining to other techie companies such as Sun Microsystems amongst others. Once inside the “Googleplex”, it looked like we’d stepped into an American-style university campus. A central courtyard filled with brightly colored outdoor furniture filled a space between 5 or so large buildings. Five fully catered cafes serve free full-on buffet-style meals to employees and their guests all day, there are laundry facilities on site so that employees can bring their dirty laundry to work with them (ewww), a juice bar handing out interesting concoctions of blended fresh fruit (I think I had an apple pie fruit smoothie) on demand, a gym with state-of-the-art equipment in it (treadmills with LCD screens in them!?) for employees to use at their leisure and a mini swimming pool with a full-time life guard sitting by. Oh and a life-sized Tyrannosaurus Rex skeleton parked outside in the gardens and the actual SpaceShipOne spacecraft (X1) just hanging over the stairs in the foyer. Those are just some of the perks enjoyed by those who work at the Googleplex in Mountainview. Pretty amazing really.

What I found quite interesting, apart from all the above of course, was the layout of the actual desks inside the offices. Software engineers are grouped into decently-sized offices of 3 or 4. Since Google have expanded so much in recent years, they no longer have enough offices to fit all their engineers in, so they’ve built some futuristic-looking tents that are installed in the middle of the buildings and call them offices. Pretty crazy looking.

Anyway, I think I can safely say that both Chris and I were awe-struck at the magnitude of the Google empire, and very jealous of everyone who gets to work there. And thanks Jeremy for your very informative tour of the place!!! :)

Time seems to be flying. It’s certainly been an interesting year so far. Lets see, so far this year, I have…

1) been to South America and back,
2) been interviewed extensively for a SE job at Google (unfortunately unsuccessful – guess I really don’t know how to move mount fuji),
3) resurrected an old (1985) Honda Civic from almost ending up at the junk yard (with Pete’s help),
4) got my scooter back up and running after it was stolen and later found by the cops (again, with Pete’s help),
5) left my job at Critchlow,
and finally…
6) now joined Trade Me as a web developer! Woohooo!!

So I am no longer working at Critchlow, no more GIS for a little while at least. This week I started my new job as web developer at Trade Me, a New Zealand online auction site quite similar to Ebay. It seems to be a really neat, dynamic and fast-paced environment to work in and the people there are really friendly. Being as Trade Me accounts for about 60% of New Zealand’s internet usage, let’s hope I don’t break anything major…

That’s right, we have a new flat member!! She’s a cute, black and white, playful, sometimes naughty but mostly well behaved, tiny moggy kitten called Safi (short for Saffron).

After a long wait and much patience, Beth-Anne finally decided to ask the landlord whether it would be ok to get a pet. This wasn’t the first time this request had been made – Beth-Anne gave it a shot the day we saw the flat for the first time. But the landlord had said no, she did not want any pets, not even any cute little kittens. According to all the grumpy old men at the office, kittens are vicious little creatures that destroy curtains, carpets and furniture. So I guess that’s what the landlord was afraid of. Anyway, somehow, being the lovely tenants that we are, the landlord was far more easy going this time round and when Beth-Anne called her up, the landlord said yes to a pet! WOOOHOOOOOO for Beth-Anne!!!

So off to the pet shop. Then came the dramas of her not being able to actually purchase the cat due to her not being a New Zealand citizen. Doh. Yeah, the pet shop people don’t trust Americans… hahah she’ll kill me for saying that (she’s actually Canadian). Ahh well, thats what friends are for – the cat actually now belongs to me.

So its been a week and Safi hasn’t actually torn anything apart. She’s very playful and likes chasing things around the lounge. It makes watching anything on tv with Beth-Anne and Richard almost impossible as they’re constantly watching the cat instead of the tv. I’m sure that will pass though.

It’s been a while but I’m back, back into blogging mode. I’m back from my 5 week trip to Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil and Chile (5 weeks isn’t nearly long enough to see all that!) and settling back down into normal working days in Wellington.

Came across this awesome multi-input touch screen demo.

You could do so much with this type of technology, it really opens up to the floor to a whole new type of computing. If it is pressure, heat, moisture sensitive then it could even take into account how you’re feeling when you touch it. Imagine writing programs for that! Hmm… where can I get me one of those…

Well, better get back to work and stop dreaming…

I figured this was as good a place as any to post some more stuff about myself. I hope to upload some of my reports from university as I think they might come in handy for both myself and others doing similar courses.

So here it goes…

Miscellaneous:

• Annie Luxton – CV November 2007
• Paper presented and published in HCC Conference, Auckland, NZ (2003)

• BSc Hons – Computer Science Honours Report (2003)

  Victoria University COMP473 – Formal Aspects of Concurrent Systems:

• Assignment #1
• Assignment #2
• Assignment #3
• Assignment #4
• Assignment #5
• Assignment #6

• Assignment #7

Good question!

Well, lets start with the basics. My name is Annie Luxton and I’m a developer. Programmer. Scripter. Geek? Whatever.

Anyway… This site / blog was meant to be a place for me to put down some of my ideas and try to actually go through with some of them. I really enjoy discovering new ways of coding cool new things and the web seems to be full of just that.

I currently work as a developer for a GIS company called Critchlow Associates based in Wellington, New Zealand. Although I don’t think I’d ever even heard of GIS before working for Critchlows, I’m actually quite fond of maps now (as you can probably tell by the flavour and probably most of the content of this site). Online mapping seems to have really taken off in the past couple of years and I’m finding it harder and harder to keep up with all the neat stuff people are doing out there. Oh well, who needs sleep anyway?

Please feel free to comment on anything in this site. I’m still in the process of getting it up and running so don’t expect too much just yet.

Right. Enough on me for now. So until another time…