Cities of twinkling lights

I don't care much for the rampant consumerism that descends upon the western world as the 25th of December approaches each year. It can be a bit of a nuisance sometimes, but from my perspective there's one thing that makes it more bearable: Christmas lights. How I do love Christmas lights. I'd been oblivious to it so far, but I noticed it in earnest for the first time at Edinburgh airport last week. They've got some lovely lights on the lamp posts outside, far more chic and tasteful than I'd have expected to be honest, and the interior decorations were equally pretty.

I did a fair bit of wandering around London as well over the weekend, even getting a couple of hours to explore by myself for the first time in nearly in year. It was a slightly bittersweet experience. For me London is a city that's best appreciated in small doses. Seven years in the place had definitely left me a little jaded, but I got to view it again with a fresh perspective, and wandering down Regent's Street in the early evening reminded me just how much the place has to offer (like an Apple Store :) I wouldn't go so far as to say that I miss it (yet), but I've definitely learned to appreciate it's charms again. I'm in a fortunate position that I can indulge myself with monthly visitations courtesy of work, and I'll do my best to take advantage of those in future.

And work! Even work proved a pleasant surprise. I'd been dreading the meeting to which I'd been summoned after I'd been given a single word summation of my next product: Productization. In my experience nothing spelled with 'z' is likely to be good news. I had but one guess as to where this was leading and I'd mentally prepared a vast number of reasons as to why it was going to be an incredibly bad idea. I was ready to rattle all these of when I was informed that the name of the project was actually rather misleading. In fact it turned out to be something else altogether, which happens to be right up my alley, and which I'm looking forward to working on. I've had mixed experiences with some of projects I've worked on recently, largely due to the shifting requirements I've had to deal with. I've found the end results unsatisfactory, but given the constraints set upon me I can honestly say that the end result was as good as I could make it. It's partly why I went to town with my last bit of work. After so much compromise, I needed the opportunity to cut loose and prove exactly what I'm capable of when given free reign. I wanted to show off, and regardless of what anyone else thought of it, I was pleased with the results. There may have been one or two of what I considered to be rough edges, but to be honest, in that regards, I'm rather like Doc Brown apologising for the crudeness of his models. Anyway for my next project, well, I've basically been asked to show off. Apparently we have to impress some potential clients, which means breaking out the bells and whistles. And believe me when I say that I take my bells and whistles very seriously indeed. This should be fun.