Couple days ago we received a delivery containing 20" 2.4 GHz iMac, printer and iPod Nano. Nice difference compared to old 12" 1.5 GHz PowerBook. But the nicest thing was the higher education student discount and special promotions for the printer and iPod - sweet.

Holiday is gone now and the first week in Kirkcaldy is almost over. Commuting to Edinburgh has been quite smooth and the walking distance to stations is not too long. The downside of living in Kirkcaldy is the cost of the season ticket.

The two weeks in Finland were great. We spent most of the time in my parent's summer cottage without any schedule. The trip back to civilization was the name giving ceremony for my new nephew and godson. Walking in the forest was relaxing and I managed to hunt a rabbit without a dog. Unfortunately birds were way too fast so there was no chance to bring any to kitchen.

Returning back to working seven hours a day after two weeks took some time. I even managed to forget maven command line mantra for deploying one of my main projects. But tweaking some last minute changes in to a live project and a client meeting brought me back to reality fast.

We survived. I was a bit nervous about driving in the UK but it went pretty well. Dóra did very well as a navigator and she had to tell me to drive on left side instead of right side only once. No accidents caused and close calls do not matter.

Moving itself was nothing special, just a matter of elbow grease. It was pretty straightforward this time as we moved between furnished flats in the same country. No overweight fees nor pulling suitcases through the city happened this time.

On the way back we drove along Fife coastal path (road A921) which took us through many small towns like Kinghorn and Burntisland. The downside was that the road was rather narrow and there was usually just a stone wall or thick bushes next to the road shoulder. For some reason the car rental upgraded the van from small VW Caddy to bigger Ford Transit for free. This was nice but it caused me more headache on those tight bends on the narrow road. But that is just matter of practice.

Tomorrow we will load a small van with our belongings and drive to Kirkcaldy. Yep, it is time to move again. I will keep working in Edinburgh but Dóra's studies start in Dundee so this location is a bit more reasonable. We'll see how life in Kirkcaldy looks like...

I ended up on the website of Expat Software and my first thought was how come they managed to hide from me this far. They have some cool applications like twiddla but the main point is that these guys are location independent. They seem to be doing fine having a branch at Chamonix for example. That sounds much better than a cubicle, right?

This is not the first company being location independent but this one is distributed over continents. Previously I have blogged about Artlogic but in their case they seem to be located just all over North America. Both companies have in common that they employ senior level developers only. They also utilize collaboration software to keep people on the map.

But what remains somewhat unclear is how these two companies find their customers. Artlogic has most likely achieved strong reputation among its customers and that will keep them busy. At least they have bunch of big names as their references. On the blog of Expat Software they mention high value of meeting people in real life instead of online resources. My own experience is that having a beer with right people might lead to a job interview so I could imagine that works with customers as well.

Early last week I saw an interesting blog by Antoinette O'Sullivan - I think I spotted it from dzone.com. Her fresh blog is about working from home in France and to make situation even more interesting, she works in US working hours.

The blog has already some good posts, for example costs of working from home and whether remote working is suitable for someone at all.

Being location independent sounds really appealing and I am striving for it. Especially for IT jobs like software engineering it should be pretty easy to work remotely. There are plenty of existing solutions for remote working like chat, version control, issue tracking etc. Well, those are same tools as software developers use anyways. I think the biggest requirement is your own and company's mindset. How to keep everyone up to date and how to work without close supervision.

Some practices like extreme programming are emphasizing frequent stand up meetings and close collaboration with colleagues. But it seems be feasible even with remote workers - there are couple blog post about such: Agile Variations for Distribute Software Teams and The impact of the remote worker on Agile approaches.

Hmm... as a matter of fact I had this topic in my mind already two years ago. Not too much progress though - I changed country but I still work in the office.

www.flickr.com

Couple photos from previous walk.

Just created flickr account with only a couple photos.

www.flickr.com

There will be more later on, selecting good shots out of hundreds is not a quick task.

when it is done on time and there is even empty space left.

We spent whole Wednesday traveling to Hungary along the route: Edinburgh-Glasgow-Prestwick-Budapest-Miskolc. It took around 12 hours from door to door. Everything went pretty well except that I had a bit too heavy suitcase and Ryanair charged me for one overweight kilo which equals 12 pounds. So, if you happen to be flying with plenty of luggage it is worth of checking other options as well. For example easyJet allows 20 kg suitcases without overweight fee compared to Ryanair's 15 kilos. Also the price of extra kilo is 6 GBP compared to 12 GBP.

Yesterday we were busy with closing our Hungarian bank accounts. There were no troubles but as an interesting detail I can tell now that closing Raiffeisen account was free but at OTP you had to pay some handling fees. Then it was time to spend some left over forint notes so we did some shopping and visited dentist. Check up, cleaning and one small filling in a clean and modern private clinic in Miskolc was 55 GBP. The NHS fee for that would be 44.60 GBP but I happy that I got that tooth fixed at the early stage.

I had previous check one year ago and at that time there was something very small but not worth of fixing. I guess my lunch habits in Edinburgh are way unhealthier than in Budapest. In Edinburgh I often take a lunch offer from Boots store which includes drink, sandwich and snack. And that snack is usually Mars or Snickers bar...

Today it is raining and I don't have too much to do. Dóra is at the hairdresser because tomorrow we will visit her cousin's wedding. On Sunday we will go to Slovakia for a trekking so I'd better take partying easily.

I got my first flu in Edinburgh and I have been doing pretty much nothing today. It is such a shame because weather is sunny and warm outdoors. I hope I will recover fast because after couple days we will have a holiday in Hungary and Slovakia. Flying while having flu is not the most pleasant experience and actually not recommended.

Yesterday night there was Scottish Firework Championships taking place at Ocean Terminal. We missed first show but there were two more to come. The cold weather and wind kept people indoors so we had good place to watch and photograph fireworks. The fence before sea also provided steady support for the camera.

Photographing fireworks is tricky and especially if you cannot use manual settings for exposure and focus. I was using my Canon IXUS 60 which is just a simple pocket camera. It was impossible to set exposure manually so I had to trick it a little bit. The camera shows exposure time on its display after focusing so I was able to try my luck and when I got right numbers on the screen I kept shooting with continuous mode. The down side of this method is that I took nearly 400 photos and selecting 20 best ones took some time.

Building a social network after relocation is pretty important and takes effort. Based on my experience in Hungary I would recommend to start building local social network as soon as possible. Later on you will have already established routines and getting involved will be more difficult.

The first persons you get to know in the new location are usually your colleagues. But they tend to have their own circles already outside work and often you would prefer seeing different faces. Luckily it is rather easy to meet new people if you know where to look.

Various user groups are easy way to meet similar minded people. I have visited local Java and Mac user group meetings in Edinburgh among some other IT related events. These have been free,relaxed and fun. Some events are simple social meetings in a pub but there are also educational events with valuable information.

Edinburgh Mac User Group

Java user group for Scotland

The washing machine was fixed and also something unexpected happened. Weather changed and there were several really warm and sunny days. It was such a luxury to have lunch outdoor in the park. Too bad the lunch here is usually just a sandwich or similar which is pretty much nonsense compared to proper two course lunches I got used to in Budapest.

Nice weather also took us to Portobello beach to check activities there. For our surprise there were some people swimming in the sea. We decided to stay dry and just walk along the beach.

Just couple weeks ago I had a leaking radiator valve which was fixed. Today I was checking the washing machine while it was working and I noticed it leaked water out on the floor. The washing machine is part of the kitchen furnishing and it has covering panels so I cannot see where the leak is or how big it is - just some water coming through while the machine was running. Luckily the leak was not flooding the whole floor but any leak near wooden floor is bad.

So I had to call my landlady again and now she is trying to organize repairs for it...

Actually I do not understand why washing machine is in the kitchen so often in this country. In Finland and Hungary the machine was placed in the bathroom where water leaks from the washing machine are not that dramatical. I guess it has something to do with peculiar electricity standards here in the UK.