I just moved back to Europe from the US after living there for 7 years. Apart from major adjustment issues, I'm currently looking for a job over here. I'm mainly interested in (IT) Consulting and, since these jobs typically require programming knowledge, such as Java, I'm trying to think of something productive to write (perhaps to demo my skills) while I'm waiting for my interviews (starting in two weeks. Folks here are a bit slower than in the US apparently...). I graduated from college about a year and a half ago and have a 4 year degree in international management/economics and about 3/4 of a 2 year degree in computer science finished. I've written my fair share of web software over the years, but nothing concrete that I could show, especially not in Java.

Now, I've never had the problem of not having any idea what to write. Basic games I could write, but I'm not sure how well that'll come over when I walk into my interview and say "hey, I was bored. Take a look at my multiplayer space invaders game! Wanna try beating me??". Any thoughts? I browsed SourceForge the other day to find a nice little project to contribute to, but decided that I don't want to commit to someone else's project at this time. Any ideas, perhaps from someone who has been, or currently is, in a similar position would be much appreciated.

Oh, and lastly: Instead of developing a program or two to demonstrate my skills, I could spend my time brushing up on UML and Perl. Any suggestions regarding that? Writing a demo vs. learning something new?