Last night a small group of IPs from Oracle, including myself and Jess, went out for a few pints in Reading. It was a lovely night which started off in a pub with a remarkable amount of character, right in the middle of Reading in the main pedestrian zone: the Hobgoblin. A lovely pub that is, with great beers, lots of guest ales, and a very cosy atmosphere. This is the sort of place that has a no mobile phones sticker on the door. Lovely! We then moved on to another pub, The Outback (I think), which was perfectly reasonable but nothing too special. All in all a nice night. I really need to get used to going out more often: I had a hangover after just 4 pints!

Tomorrow, Sam, Ben and I are off to IBM in Hursley (near Southampton) to take part in the first heat of the British Computer Society Programming Competition 2005. I’ve spent most of the evening brushing up on things like parsers, compilers, and various data structures and algorithms that I really should know but have forgotten about. We’re also allowed to bring in all sorts of printed matter so I’m printing out whatever I think could come in handy!

So, wish us luck! I wonder if we’ll even get through the first heat, but we can but try.