Saturday 1st June: Trip to Bletchley Park. Meet at 9am at Manchester Piccadilly, full travel arrangements can be found in the mailing list archive.

Friday 7th June: Currybeer – meet from 7pm at Hardy’s Well, we set off for curry by 8pm.

Friday 21st June: OtherCuisineBeer – cuisine to be decided. Meal starts at 7pm and is usually at a city centre location.

TBC Saturday: Geek Walks trip to Jodrell Bank, followed by pub lunch. Vote in the Doodle poll to help decide the date.

Meeting point/time is 11:15 next to the self-service ticket machines at Manchester Victoria. When buying a ticket, the nearest stop to Uppermill is Greenfield (Uppermill station closed in 1917). We should be back just before 16:20. Hope to see you there!

The other avenue I have been investigating recently is the prospect of taking the Graduate Diploma in Law at MMU. This is effectively a conversion course which puts you in the same position as having completed a law degree. From what I can remember, you do the GDL, then the Legal Practice Course, and then join a law firm as a trainee and work your way up the ranks. For me, the safest option is do the GDL part time in the evenings, as that minimises the cost and means I don’t have to give up my job. The concept of becoming a solicitor specialising in company, insurance or technology law (the first two I have become familiar with through my job and voluntary organisations) is especially appealing, though my main concern is how long it would take to get there. There’s an open day at MMU next week, so I’m planning to attend that and get a bit more information, plus act on helpful tips from a long discussion with Richard (who works for a law firm, though not as a solicitor) after last week’s Currybeer to see what career opportunities are available for older entrants without a law degree.

All the urgent jobs on my house are complete, including the unexpected expense of having to replace the garage roof when it started to break up (the original installers did a shoddy job, using straw instead of boards). The house still needs a rewire and a new kitchen, but I suspect it will be the end of the year before I can afford the latter.

Job-wise, things are very quiet. I’ve now reached the stage where I have virtually nothing left to do, as all the major programming projects have been completed.

More than anything, I feel that I’m just coasting along, and I’m not sure where to go next. I think I’ve reached the maximum of what I can earn as a developer in Manchester, but I have little commercial management experience to push me up onto the next level (most of my experience in that area is from the voluntary sector). At the moment I’m looking for things to do in my free day (usually Wednesday). So far I’ve had little success with the charities in Bury – either I don’t hear back or I find that there’s a huge personal liability involved (e.g. organisations which own properties and employ staff without incorporating).

Meeting point/time is 10:45 next to the self-service ticket machines at Manchester Victoria. We should be back just before 16:00. Hope to see you there!

Currybeer runs twice a month. On the first Friday, we go to Hardy’s Well pub in Rusholme for some drinks, followed by curry. On the third Friday, we pick a different cuisine (using the ‘one man, one vote’ system of Ankh-Morpork) and go for a slightly more expensive meal out. There’s usually 10-15 people at the curry events, and 6-10 at the alternative cuisine.

Geek Walks are a monthly event on Saturdays which involve a train journey to a destination within one hour of Manchester where there are places to walk and decent pub lunches. The walks are more akin to gentle strolls, and tend to last 40-60 minutes. It’s a great way to get a bit of exercise and fresh air whilst talking tech (or trains, photography etc.). There’s usually 6-8 people on each walk, and you’re welcome to meet us at the pub instead.

Bletchley Park trips are organised once a year, usually around June/July. We all go down on a Saturday – I try and group people into cars where possible and the rest of us arrive by train. There’s a guided tour and then we break off into smaller groups to wander around the grounds and fixed exhibits.

If you’re worried about being deluged with emails, I can promise that Currybeer gets approximately one email a week, Geek Walks has two to three a month and Bletchley Park two to three a year. I’m the only person who can post to the mailing lists, so there’s no long discussion threads or people saying ‘please unsubscribe me!’.

• Building Web Applications with Erlang
• Neuromancer
• The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
• Secrets and Lies: Digital Security in a Networked World
• The Revenge of Gaia
• The Art of Deception: Controlling the Human Element of Security (Hardback)
• The Death of Gentlemanly Capitalism (Hardback, slightly yellowed edges)

As with previous clearances, I’d prefer to give the books to people who will be able to take them off my hands in person.

Post a comment or drop me an email if you want to claim anything. Anything unclaimed by Wednesday 9th January (though you don’t have to have collected it by then) will get donated to Madlab or a charity shop.

The event is open to everyone, if you’d like to join us there is a Facebook event or you can just turn up on the day.

The December walk will probably involve a trip to the Pioneers Museum in Rochdale, followed by lunch at The Baum pub—the meeting place for the local CAMRA group so guaranteed to have some good beers on tap.

*PHP jobs max out at around 35-40k for senior developers outside of London.