Virgin Media obviously doesn’t like complaints but would you fill out this web form with your full customer service account password?

The Telegraph reported this completly pink dolphin has been seen swimming in Lake Calcasieu in Louisiana, USA.

• up to 20mbps braodband
• their full (non-HD) TV package and
• Unlimited anytime calls to UK landlines.

20 mbps, No way!

Ok it says up to, but what would you say is fair? 18 mbps? 15 mbps? At least over the 10 mbps on the next package down, right? Well I am certain I don’t get more than 5 mbps!

So I am going to test this an post my speed test results here for prosperity!

The setup form my test is my standard home setup for my desktop, but removing all other network traffic:

• Computer: Windows Vista Ultimate, Intel Core2Duo 6600 (2×2.40GHz) processor, 4 GB of RAM (32bit Windows only uses and recognises 3.5 the rest is utilised by the hardware!).
• Router: Netgear 54 Mbps Wirelss Router – WGR614 v6 with fully up to date firmware.
• Cable Modem: Motorola – S85100 Surfboard Cable Modem

As many Windows processes as possible have been killed without killing Windows iteself, including for this test the Firewall and Virus Protection. The wireless has been switched off and the only connections are wired and between the computer and the router and the router and the modem (which is obviously plugged into the outside world!).

Day 1 results (21:45):

www.speedtest.net – download: 4508 kbps (4.5 mbps); upload: 678 kbps.

http://www.broadbandspeedchecker.co.uk/ – download: 4912 kbps (4.9 mbps); upload: 577 kbps

This isn’t very scientific but I will continue to post my results as and when I test the broadband speed. Let me know your thoughts.

This first came to my attention on candyjar.co.uk.

1. What are the biggest obstacles to innovation in your organization?
2. Why do projects identified in brainstorming or ideation sessions seem to never get off the back burner?
3. Why is there so much funding for legacy work, but so little funding for innovation?
4. When you know you have to do something new, why does it seem like your organization keeps doing what it always did – knowing full well results won’t improve?
5. What metrics need to change in order to create focus on innovation?
6. Why do managers pay lip service to innovation, but never give innovation projects more time and attention?
7. Why don’t customer interviews produce more innovation?
8. Why do we get surprised by competitors that introduce new solutions in our core business?
9. What should happen to give you more time to create innovative solutions in your business?
10. Who should be responsible for implementing innovation?
11. How does the budgeting process accommodate innovation projects?
12. Are “disciplined” or “focused” organizations better, or worse, at implementing innovation?

Read the full article at innovator’s digest, and the book this accompanies, Adam Hartung’s, Create Marketplace Disruption.

Disclaimer: I have not read the book, so cannot recommend it. The questions intrigued me.

The original

See the http://www.richardlennox.net/2008/08/11/101-classic-computer-ads/ Most of these would have been from well before my time. No Microsoft or Apple in sight!

Read more in the BoingBoing, BB Gadgets article 101 Classic Computer Ads.

Mr. Cameron: Do you have a break at all?

Mr. Obama: I have not. I am going to take a week in August. But I agree with you that somebody, somebody who had worked in the White House who — not Clinton himself, but somebody who had been close to the process — said that should we be successful, that actually the most important thing you need to do is to have big chunks of time during the day when all you’re doing is thinking. And the biggest mistake that a lot of these folks make is just feeling as if you have to be …

Mr. Cameron: These guys just chalk your diary up.

Mr. Obama: Right. … In 15 minute increments and …

Mr. Cameron: We call it the dentist waiting room. You have to scrap that because you’ve got to have time.

It raises the interesting question of stopping to think and contemplate on things properly before rushing down a path. I know my calendar is full to the point of overflowing.

See more in the BBC article and at 43 folders.

[YouTube]4KyCPiJPx48[/YouTube]

See the original post at Lifehacker and the guys accompanying site – hackingtechnicalinterview.com.

See more in the CNet Crave pictures.

[YouTube]4O6WVurC0j0[/YouTube]

Law suit or not, does Viacom have the right to see my data, or more correctly does a U.S. judge have the right to decide what happens to my data, Google being a US based company or not?

This is a huge data protection failure and does not comply with the terms and conditions I signed up to with YouTube.

The cultures facinate me to some extent. What are they doing that makes them so cool? Well I think they are not much different to a small company looking after the people that work for them in a way that meets eveyone’s needs, just on a much larger scale.

An interesting blog post on leaving Google to rejoin Microsoft gives one view on what works at both Microsoft and Google.

How do you get better at doing something? Simply doing is not enough, you have to practice what you do. This has to be a step forward, pushing yourself past the edge of your comfort zone and being prepared to fail.

What will the feature set be and when will it be available here, that are my big questions?

Tech Crunch thinks this may the new iPhone!

Read Cnet article at http://news.cnet.com/8301-13772_3-9956563-52.html.

See more logo mashups from Mario Amaya.

Does anyone not want to take the optional sterring wheel?

See more from today's The Daily WTF – Error'd

Click here to view the embedded video.

I found this WordPress theme and have added my own image and corrected some of the styling that annoyed me. Let me know what you think…

Firstly why Firefox?! It is my browser of choice, it is more standards compliant at the moment, offers a great tabbed browsing environments and an extremely good view of most of the web sites out there. OK, Firefox 2.0 is not exactly resource friendly, using an amount of memory that it shouldn't. The biggest effect is the open add-on and extension model. None of the other browsers offer the same level of support for third party extensions that Firefox offers. When I am staring at my web browser for much of the day, I need some of these tools to help me get on with things.

Here are my top Firefox extensions:

1. All-In-One Gestures – It is extremely difficult to browse the web these days without the mouse. In fact, try it on something like the BBC site, to see what I mean. Often, no amount of pressing "tab" will get me to the right place and even with Shift+"tab" taking me backwards it doesn't work. Some keyboard commands help but simplest of all is the use of this plug in. Right click and a flick of the mouse opens new windows or tabs, views the source (funny how often this is used just to be nosy!), refresh or close the current tab. Everything could be done but my top commands all use this mouse gesture command line.
2. Google Reader Notifier -I subscribe to maybe fifty RSS feeds and keeping up to date can be a problem. But Google reader notifier highlights how many articles I have to read. I don;t usually take time out to read unless I have 20 which I can comfortably process in less than 30 minutes.
3. IETab – for those sites (named and shamed to be mainly Microsoft sites including Windows update!) that simply refuse to work in Firefox, this opens up and IE 7 tab in my Firefox. A button in the status bar lets you toggle between FF and IE7, great for a quick check of rendering when changing any CSS. It also has a built in store of URL's to always open initially in IE7 – windows update then works when my default browser isn't IE7!!
4. Tab Mix Plus – gives an additional functionality to the tabbed browsing experience!
5. URL Link – Don't you just hate it when you see a web address that isn't a link! By selecting it and right clicking I can open the link as if it were a hyper link!
6. Web Developer tool bar – this is definitely one for the web developers out there – priceless in the various browser check you need to do.
7. Firebug – debugging Javascript is a real pain, this at least takes some of that pain away, as well as giving you DOM based analysis and CSS handling and live editing!
8. Del.icio.us sidebar extension – this is brilliant as I manage all my bookmarks here. I get them all, nicely tagged anywhere.
9. Live PR – displays the current Google Page rank for the page you are on! Nothing but information but something interesting none the less.
10. Fireshot – want to capture the image of a web page and annotate it? This makes it really easy, however doesn't quite support Flash!
11. Colorzilla – an eyedropper for the we, to select color information.
12. Measure IT – a pixel ruler for measuring across web components. Useful in my line of work.

I use others but this I guess is my top 12, those I couldn't do without. Although one not on the list that maybe should be is GMail Notifier, letting me see an outlook style notification when I receive new email (as my Emails are powered by Google Mail) in the Office.

I am sure there are those who will have a different list to this and if any one can suggest others feel free to do so!

It is simplicity in itself. I hit "Windows key + Q" start typing something that makes sense to me, and hit enter. My file, program or folder launches as if I had gone through the effort of moving my cursor to the stat button, clicking it, selecting all programs, finding the right program in the list and then launching it. I have tens of "magic" key words, and I barely have to type 3 or 4 characters as the little utility auto completes for you.

It is immeasurable how much time this little tool saves me but I can say it will be a couple of seconds for every file, program or explorer location I use on a regular basis so I would expect that it adds up to quite a lot of time.

Having just been round the supermarket and almost run into at least three times by kids skating around the aisles, I am thinking they are not only annoying but dangerous, there isn't much braking going on.

Using Open DNS has been a breeze. I have noticed very little difference in the speed at which web pages loaded but to be honest I didn't really expect to see much difference.  What has been really useful is the on-the-fly spelling correction.  Even though I can pretty much touch type, I still hit a variety of common mistakes, especially when I am in a hurry and not paying attention.  Most of these are caught by Open DNS and redirected to the intended site. The anti-phishing solution is also pretty nifty, although less frequently used as I can generally spot phishing.

I did however run into a little problem with Virgin Media when I last complained about my internet speed.  They were adamant that it would be Open DNS causing the slow down, but in a little over the phone experiment, Open DNS beat their own DNS servers, by a fraction.  Although not really enough to call it a clear winner it was a sign of connection issues not DNS issues.  To be fair with Virgin, other suppliers may have insisted that I not use Open DNS but they didn't (or maybe they would if their technical support team found out what DNS is!). 

Is this lazy or clever? Maybe it is the only reason to buy a Segway!

There will probably be a nagging doubt about it few a little (read Long here) while longer but we will just wait and see.

This time though with Ubuntu linux set up on my old machine – hooray for those 30 minutes spent installing it – I was able to source the problem to… guess what…Windows. Yes, Windows! Windows update to be more precise!! Is it a hardware compatibility issue or something else I do not know, but tonight and I may be speaking far too early I think I  cracked it – with a little help from that font of knowledge called the web!

It would not surprise me if Microsoft in its wisdom, when putting a 435MB service pack for Visual Studio, they wrecked an entire system of machines!  Not exactly a wise choice.  Lets hope this doesn't take all night to install manually! 

For anyone with huge "The instruction at…..The memory could not be read" error message followed by a 'Generic Host Process for Win32 Services had encountered a problem and needs to close.', the details of which point to an issue in the msi.dll, look here and follow the quick steps in the bottom of the post!

It has got me thinking how quickly time has gone by. It seems only last week it was December and Christmas, never mind January, February, March and April! Look at it now. Today, being first Monday in May, is May day, that's us four months into 2007 already and what is to show for it…

Well January as usual was a bit of a slow month, how can it be anything else when it is dark on the way to work and even darker on the way home!  That bit of light seen through the drizzle out of the office window is all you get, unless you venture out at lunchtime. February saw our trip to Budapest and March Mam's 50th.  April was all work and no play except of course for a couple of bouts of Friday night excess.

And now it is May, all in all not a bad month I hope.  It will be busy, punctured by the trip to Carrickfergus. I need to seriously consider how to progress from employee to freelancer and take this forward. Although I doubt very much I will be any less of an employee anytime soon, it is the direction I wish to go in. All I need now a couple of clients or someone who needs a little help to get me on my way.  If anyone therefore has a design that they want made up into hand coded, valid XHTML and CSS and then turned into WordPress (or other) themes drop me an email, I may even look at a discount to get me started!

While it is old by way of a car, it is great.  To be honest Susan and I don't really need a car.  No we still want it!! However it would be extremely useful, despite sitting in the parking spaces at our flat for the fast majority of the week.  It will give us the freedom to do the things we need to do that would be extremely awkward using public transport.  Have you ever tried to carry a weeks worth of shopping on the bus? It is an extremely painful and stressful event. 

The Polo is going in for an MOT that will finally determine its destination. I don't have all the specs but I don;t think it is more than a 1litre or possibly 1.2.  I will need to get up to speed with that but it is a five minute job.  It is Red, although the roof has faded to a pinkish blur which is a highly classy look, but it has four wheels and an engine as well as the chassis to run on so I am happy!

We are going to be over in a couple of weeks for Susan's Gran's birthday, so we are thinking of driving it across then.  By the end of the month, we could be in business.  No more putting off the trips to supermarket or B&Q, due to the hassle of public transport.  I once went to B&Q to get paint and ordered a taxi back. The taxi driver almost wouldn't take the fare!

Susan told me this morning she was "starting to get excited" about getting her car over! Hmmm, she thinks its her car!

However I have a huge issue with this period.  Today through the letter box came a total of 24 pieces of electioneering spam, yes 24.  Most of which went straight into the bag for recycling. At least it was all delivered at the same time and by the postman, so there wasn't a steady stream of people wading through the block of flats.

I was trying to figure this out if there are 24 pieces of paper of varying quality at an average weight of 2 grams (a good estimate, I think), there are 16 flats in the block, and it is number 16 and the last one in the street, and they are all the same style, so that leaves me with 12.29 kilograms of electioneering spam in my street alone, imagine that across the thousands of homes in Edinburgh and we are talking an awful lot of Spam, and I hate spam.

Can anyone tell me how many trees this campaign will have cost? So much for politicians running a "Green Campaign".  And the irony is, this is the third time I have had the exact same leaflet through the door from the Green Party candidate!

There are many kinds of blogs that I visit regularly.  I don't know why I find them all interesting, may be it is a snapshot of real life, that gets me intrigued.  For the most part though I think it is because they are just regular people, writing about regular things.  Though it must be said some are just for the pictures!  I don't necessarily know any of them but find them interesting none the less. 

If you find your site appearing in my Blogroll, or the new Photo-Blogroll, it is because I enjoy reading [or viewing] your blog. And if you like mine, do please share the linkage!

There are maybe two streams of what I call Web Entertainment: Audio and Video.  I guess a third is my reading materials which is a collection of articles, blogs and other stuff that kind of fit into this category.

Audio resources are freely available across the web.  Not only are many radio channels streamed across the web but a service I particularly like and use frequently is available at Pandora.com.  This is a custom radio station generator.  Enter a song or artist and Pandora creates a radio station based on songs and artists that are similar in style and characteristics to your original selection.  You can also train Pandora to cut out those that do not quite match what you want, and best of all no ads and no annoying Disc Jockey's.  Podcasts are fun to listen to too, while I am not so keen on them through my Ipod,  I am more likely to listen through my desktop and iTunes still works great for that!

Video resources are available across the web – whether it be You Tube or Google Video or any others.  I tend to use the Democracy Internet video player that downloads videos automatically within channels.  Video Podcasts and general Internet videos are a growing field.  The democracy player list hundreds of channels that are series of videos.  It also allows me to add specific You Tube searches and feeds.  This enables me to get my favourite videos when I want them without having to find them.

For reading material I tend to subscribe to RSS feeds of the sites I visit most recently.  I am a Firefox (web browser) user and use the Sage extension for subscribing to feeds.  This is a lightweight RSS reader – there are many better ones out there, but I like that it plugs directly into Firefox, and I can choose to read it on the site or in the feed.

To try and move this forward, I have now implemented a "Blogroll" [see my original post http://www.richardlennox.net/2007/04/09/wordpress-successfully-upgraded/ As none of you will have noticed, there have been a few periods of downtime last night into this morning! This is because I have been upgrading the underlying WordPress installation to the latest and most secure 2.1.3.  This is a significant upgrade from the 2.0 version although not a major update.  Thankfully it has gone relatively smoothly, with only minor modifications required.

It seems it may be either the hard drive or the memory.  It is only 2 months and a little bit old, so I am a little annoyed.  Here is where my choice of supplier will com into its own.  The machine is under a 5 year guarantee (3 yrs parts + 2 extra years free labour!!) so I am confident that it will all be ok, depending on how good they are in their support.   While annoying I have come to learn that these things happen so I am prepared to get on with it.  The only issue is my new web based entertainment has obviously lost out as I had my machine set up nicely! 

For those of who who want instructions on how to do this here is a public service announcement:

1. First you need to find your Windows CD.  This is the installation disc that was originally used to install Windows.
2. Reboot your machine from the Windows CD.
3. On the Windows setup screen: press ENTER (This selects Enter Windows Setup.) Do not select "To repair a Windows XP installation using Recovery Console, press R."  This will take you to a Windows console, which will be of little help to you.
4. Accept the license agreement and Windows setup will find your existing Windows installation.
5. Enter the number of your Windows installations.  (This will generally be 1.)  You may need to enter your administrator password also.
6. Setup will then copy the files to your hard drive and then reboot leaving all your files intact.
7. Once Windows reloads you should update your computer getting the latest drivers etc.

Having decided to install Linux on my old machine, I can happily browse away using this machine, in fact I am typing this here now using it.  It seems my installation isn't going well, I will need to take a look and see what is going on.  I will update soon….

Linking and mutual linking has great benefits in the page rankings [Disclaimer: This is a sweeping statement as while it helps is not the be all and end all of S.E.O., a topic on which I know only slightly more than your average Joe!] which will get you somewhere near the top of relevant search terms in Google. But now am starting to think differently, maybe I was wrong….

Recently I am moving away from the TV as a source of entertainment. I have already mentioned my democracy (soon to be Miro) video podcast / rss feed player, that gives me video content, and am starting to read many more blogs as a source of entertainment.  I am getting to thinking that if I like reading someone's blog maybe people who read my blog may want to read similar stuff.  

I am plumping towards an RSS reader on my desktop, which one yet am not sure.  But I need to get them in one place.  I will then be able to read many blog entries and determine the quality before anyone appears on my blog roll! We will see how this goes. 

Telewest started off being relatively economic.  £30 a month for all 3, but that was limited to the basic packages but that simply didn't;t meet my needs, and only lasted 6 months anyway.  Now I am paying anything between £50 and £60 a month for a service that we both think is less than what we started with.  TV channels have disappeared from our package, not just the Sky channels but other channels too.  The broadband quality is just shot with download speeds of 17-35kBs when 400kB/s is more realistic for a 4mB/s service!!  To be fair, Virgin are refunding the cost of the broadband for two months but I need a decent service.  The phone is OK with only weekend UK land line calls free.

The loss of the Sky channels on Virgin prompted me to look at what other packages I could get for my money.  It seems Sky are offering a better quality of service for £26 per month with an extra £11 for a BT line rental.  This is some £20 cheaper than my current monthly costs.  While there are downsides such as download limits on the broadband and the requirement for a communal dish (on the block of flats) for the TV, £20 is a lot of money.  Virgin take note.

Here is another one I laughed out loud at – although some of you may find it offensive – maybe! 

Click here to view the embedded video.

Great Golden Eye Recreation – Click Here for more great videos and pictures!

Our short break started with a flight into Budapest form Gatwick (London) with Easyjet all nice and on time etc. which is a good start.  The flight took a little over  two and a half hours and was grand. On arrival at Budapest, we headed to the Shuttle service desk where a shuttle ticket purchased for about a tenner each would get us a door-to-door return shuttle service, great value when you get over the shock of paying out thousands of Forints. We also got a city card which gave us unlimited, although unrequired and little used, access to public transport as well as a whole host of discounts at the tourist attractions and was well worth the money in the end.

Monday evening was spent wandering around Pest and taking a walk along the Chain Bridge to the Buda side of the Danube and back again, before looking to find something to eat. This was the first bit of disappointment. Perhaps looking in the wrong place, we ended up in a traditional Hungarian restaurant playing [loud] traditional gypsy music.  Susan being a vegetarian, struggled and ended up with a plate of unappetising grilled veg with some deep fried stuff, while I plumped for a traditional sounding chicken dish, that was equally unappetising and bland. A bit of a worrying start….

….but we needn't have worried.

For the first full day we took in a coach tour, a very good one at that.  We got to see most of the sites of Budapest in the 3 hour trip with a tape guide and strong English speaking live tour guide to help us out along the way.   The coach tour stopped at important places and gave us the time to get out, explore and take a few pictures!  As part of the price of a tour there was also included a tour of the Parliament.  Built towards the end of the 19th Century on the Pest side of the Danube, the parliament was designed in a similar style to the Houses of Parliament in London although more architecturally eclectic.   Following this, Susan and I walked our way back to the Opera House for the hour long tour of the magnificent Renaissance building.  Built with money from the Austrian-Hungarian Emperor (mainly to please his wife), it was only graced with his presence on opening night and for only the first performance.  A highly recommended attraction.  Dinner was at the highly recommended Soul Cafe on Raday Utca (Raday Street).  Recommended by the excellent Lonely Planet guide and a restaurant guide in the hotel (and now by ourselves) it was an internationally based cuisine with a good atmosphere and mix of Hungarians and tourists.  We were lucky to get a table!!

Wednesday we spent over in Buda, starting with a trip up the hill in the funicular railway! From afar the palace looks so much better than it does up close.  It is not that old, seemingly made of long concrete blocks that aren't particularly old.  But the palace wasn't all there was to see, although it did offer some great views of the Pest side of the Danube and in particular,  St Stephen's Basilica and the Parliament building.  The palace wasn't all there was to see.  St Mattiaus Church was particularly nice.  The stone walls were painted in a mosque sort of style (strange in a christian society) but the stained glass windows were something spectacular.  We then headed off for a coffee before making our way to the House of Hungarian wine.  This was a wine cellar with a selection of wines from each of the 22 wine making regions in Hungary.  Each one had at least one bottle open for visitors to try, in fact this was the whole purpose of this wine cellar museum, where you are given a glass on entry.  I must admit it was great fun tasting all the wines, a sip of each was not for getting drunk with.  I am not a big fan of Hungarian wines. In fact, none were that appealing to me at all.  It was an interesting couple of hours though!! 

Following that, we headed off for an evening stroll along Andrassy Utca (according to the coach tour) this is the Champs Elysees of Budapest.  It is a nice street to walk along and the quadrant (8 sided square) in the middle is packed with eateries.

Thursday was a very interesting day, spent wandering around city park where there exists a strange medley of castle and palace like structures.  Skirting around the city park is Budapest zoo.  Susan is a huge fan of zoos so we trotted in for a wander around (Free with the city card we bought which is always useful!). With a wide range of animals it was very interesting although major construction work, most of it was closed off to the public. The rest of the afternoon was spent in the thermal baths.  Lying outside (in February temperatures) with the water varying between 37 and 55 degrees Celsius.  It was wonderful and relaxing. Full of locals, and tourists everyone taking in the warmth of the hot spa water to sooth the aching muscles.

So that was our trip to Budapest, a very cosmopolitan and international city with a pleasant and welcoming cafe culture.  While not as cheap as we expected, Budapest was in no way expensive.  The exchange rate at 370HUF (Forints) to the £1 was a bit misleading but not greatly so. It is definitely a place I would recommend although unless you were into Hungarian history and their museums or interested in taking a trip out of Budapest, any longer than 4 or 5 days might be too much.

I have added a selection of the Budaest pictures to the gallery , please take a look!

Having taken over a year to get down and meet Isabel, my niece, it was great to get down and see them all sooner rather than later. I am pleased to say everyone is doing great, and despite a scare that put Joshua in hospital for a night the Thursday before we got there, the children are happy little people.

It was great to see them!!

So with my best foot forward I researched custom build companies. Forum after forum four companies came up.  Not always in a positive way, in fact as with most things you will find people complain about a company but if they are satisfied with the company often don;t bother.  It is from "hardcore" forum posters that comment on such complaints or questions that I gleamed most of the important stuff.  The complaints often prrovide more of an insight than anything else.

Out of the four companies I definately knew of two: Dell and Evesham. A third I had heard of but knew nothing about was pcspecialist.co.uk.  The fourth and eventual winner of my business on sheer cost alone was pcoption.co.uk. Of course I looked under every broken web server for other sellers but eventually everywhere I looked was recommendations (or at times the least compliants) were about these.  They are all abit of a muchness but the two brand presences priced themselves out of the running as the most expensive.

In the end I chose a specification (based on my budget and a variety of quotes) and went with who would give me it for the least money and allow the most customisation.  So for my spec:

I went with an Intel Core Duo 2 Processor.  Having been an AMD user, I constantly felt that wherever I turned something better was there and I couldn't get it because of the chipset of a motherboard or other reason like being too much effort.  So having discussed it with people more in the know than myself a Core 2 Duo it is.  It is a 6600 which has two 3.4mhz processing cores so it should be fast.  I plumped for 2GB of RAM and my Motherboad still has 2 empty slots that if need be I will be using.  A 320GB hard drive and an Nvidia/Asus EN7900GS (upgraded form a 7600GT due to lack of stock!!). Oh the Motherboard is an MSI P695 Neo.

I profess I am no hardware exper but I believe this to be a good mid-high range spec that will be realtively easy to upgrade when required in the future! (And when I get my feelance work bringing in extra cash!)

I also took the opportunity to get a MS Action Pack, which for a subscriptiion (annual fee) and being a small (although very new) business gets me Windows and MS Office (Vista and Office 2007 will come at the end of the month) and SQL Server Standard (database for development) and other development tools.  This is great and I would recommend it for small businesses!  

With no major hitches in the build and despite a short delay in delivery, the machine seems to be working grand.  There was a small graphics issue where the card capped its power ouput because a secondary power cable wasn;t connected up.  Fortunately the guys at PCOption included sucha connector and in five minutes it was dealt with!

We will see how it performs under the stresses of SQL Server and Visual Studio and maybe the odd game or two!

I hope everyone gets the chance to relax and enjoy the season. 

I really like this quote for various reasons !!

To that end and with the long term future in mind, I have spoken to Ezone with regard to doing a bit of freelance work on the side. This is not a career move as such but a way for me to look at different ways of working and trying new things. I am not going to be actively pursuing freelance work but I wouldn't turn it down out of hand. I want to keep my workload manageable and not spend all my spare time on it. I am big on quality as opposed to quantity.

I have the technical skills to provide technology for both the web or if necessary a custom Windows application, even a custom Linux or Unix application, using a variety of technical skills. One area where I could provide a great service is as a web presence consultant. I have strong skills in the technical side of this, in accessibility and usability and analysing web standards. I have also great business analyst skills that would guide someone into getting what they need from their web presence. With a raft of contacts in design, web technology and a variety of other areas, I can introduce the right services to get the best out of any budget.

While not actively looking for this work it will be interesting to see where it goes.  If anyone needs some help in these matters please contact me and I will get in touch.

I hate the new user interface. My first reaction to it was I don't want those buttons here, I want them over there where I am used to seeing them, and using them.  But I can't and no amount of searching has found a solution to my needs.  Maybe it is just an initial reaction to the change but I do not understand the reasoning behind it, it seems to break the mold of browser interfaces.  Maybe I am wrong and Microsoft interviewed and did fully user studies on what worked best for users but I feel that it is change for changes sake. 

As a well rounded computer and software user I could adapt to it if I had to, but I think of the people I know who would be strongly affected by the change.  Those without the Internet savvy of those of us who use it day in day out.  I can think of several people who will not like it because it is not what they are used to, and I know exactly who will get the calls when they get stuck looking for the buttons. 

I would like to think that Microsoft would listen to the calls to allow me to change the layout of the toolbars.  I would like to think that most application software that relies on toolbars in this way would allow me to change the position and placing of buttons so I can use it in a way that feels right for me and not for the guy that decided this was "better".

The person in question was positive that my reasons were valid and in fact was genuinely pleased that I was strict and thorough in how I release my software.  Yet he was insistent on my changing these methods to something less robust to suit his requirements.  (Luckily the person in question does not have any say in the release process, otherwise it would be a bigger concern for me!)

This seems to be human nature, and is not the only recent example I have experienced.  It seems totally illogical, to agree with somebody's reasoning and then take a standpoint against that.

I would no doubt expect that I do exactly the same thing at time.  I guess it kind of makes life interesting.

I am no study of blogs but there seems to be a clear separation of who writes them.  there are many people who write them as part of their working day, where the business culture allows them to express themselves in a blog.  It is increasingly becoming a form of journalism, and a way of getting the outside world up to date on what the company is doing, and how the author as an individual is supporting the company.  Alternatively there are those that do it for fun or personal freedom.  Using blogs as a method of communication.

I definitely fit into the latter category.  I write for myself, it is so one day I may be able to look back and say – ah that's what I was doing then.  However in order to do that I must keep trying to post.  What good is a diary if months at a time are missing.  As a memory jog, it must be kept up to date. I will try harder!

It has been a long time coming getting down to London to meet her but I am glad we finally made it!  With one thing and another, both work constraints and financial constraints it was difficult to get down before now.  A few months ago we decided we would just go and book the Holiday time at work and choose some flights.  With Susan's sister living in London, accommodation is taken care of, which is always good! Thanks Jenny! But we decided we would have a few full days in London.  It was almost like a mini holiday!

I have put all my Isabel photos in the gallery and will hopefully put the other London ones up soon.  Check them out!

 The Web is the first place where the mass populations can publish their own thoughts and opinions without recourse.  While many societies are not democratic, we must look very carefully at how the large service providers, such as Google have put profits before the human rights of certain cultures.  The irrepressible campaign has begun a petition aiming to stop the censorship and attempts to control access to the world wide web of information.  Sign up at irrepressible.info to support the campaign to give the same freedom of expression that we take for granted to these repressed countries.

I am not usually one for jumping on a bad wagon like this, but I believe that if starts to move forward, the free nature of the web will change for us all.  I want to continue as we are.  The debate on the quality of the web content and its dangers will continue but if we give control to big business we will all be worse off.

Despite the heat, it was the CS reunion on Saturday.  CS being the HWU Computer Science class of 2004.  It was a long afternoon out in the sun with a few beers and a bit of geeky chat.  We are, after all, Computer Science graduates.   There was a football and a Frisbee but it was too hot for that, so the beers and the chat won out.  Although the beers soon got to the warm stage.  After that it was on to Zizzi's at the start of the Canal for a pretty decent dinner and then on to the Chanter (formerly the Hogshead) for a few further drinks.   It was a great night in the end, good to catch up with a lot of folk.

It is strange to think that it was last week 2 years ago that it was graduation.  It is funny, in the two years since, despite a slow start, most of us have fallen into reasonable IT jobs or are doing something that is completely different but more grown up.   There are a few folk doing similar jobs to myself, others more in support roles and others doing some really interesting stuff. 

It has been a long but very short two years.  A lot has happened, in such a short space of time.  It wasn't long ago that I was off touring the US, or struggling to find "proper" work.  Now I am working hard at something I am actually enjoying which cannot be too bad and am pretty settled.  I hope the next 2 years are as good.

Concurrently we are also undertaking a strong degree of performance and load testing.  This is important from both the business and technical point of view.   And many sites can explain it better than me!  Basically, we need to know whether we can handle the number of visitors and the actions that they perform that have been predicted.  This is a case of learning to write specific testing scripts invariably in a new language to what I am used to.  A busy time for me with these two running side by side.

As a side dish, I am liaising with Visa and MasterCard accredited auditors, such that SK Chase become fully compliant with the PCI-DSS (Payment Card Industry – Data Storage Standards) that will allow SK Chase to be accredited by the leading payment card providers in the world. An interesting bit on the side!!

The weather in Menorca was fantastic (unlike the Thunderstorm conditions outside right now!), not a single day of rain and only one half day of cloudy skies! Temperatures were pushing my tolerance limits, but the private pool (came with the villa) was fantastic – no need to worry about beating the Germans to the sun loungers there! There was nothing majorly cultural about Menorca, it was a very tourist orientated destination.  Not to everyone's taste and not often to mine.  But for a week of sun, sea and sangria (a cliche truly reflective of my trip!) it was perfect.  A good deal of relaxing, the right balance of doing nothing and doing something and the fantastic weather means I have returned home relaxed and a little revitalised.

I would write a run down of my entire trip but really shouldn't rub it in! I spent part of every day in a pool, not really swimming as I do when I am home but just enjoying the water! I find being in the water really helps me relax and the privacy of the villa pool improved that relaxation dramatically.  

The villa, S'Aldern, was located a 10 minute walk from Cala'n Bosc (a.k.a. Cala en Bosch) in a Small suburb called Cap D'Artrutx in the south of Menorca.  The suburb itself was quiet, peaceful and private.  With only a few restaurants, bars and supermarkets.  Cala'n Bosc itself was a very tourist orientated town, situated around the Marina area.  It was a typical resort, plenty of hotels, apartments and bars, restaurants circled the Marina and it had more than its fair share of English ran and themed bars.  Not always for me, this environment so we didn't head into town that often.  Why bother when you could have the privacy of your own garden and pool where you can enjoy the long warm evenings with a quiet drink?!!  There was a wide range of activities available to the tourist.  A boat trip along the south coast to a private beach accessible by foot or boat only was a highlight.  As was trying SCUBA diving, although the sea dive was cancelled due to poor conditions which was a shame.  It is an ambition of mine to learn to dive properly and my first attempts in a pool only furthered those ambitions.  Other activities were also available but it was not meant to be an activity holiday.  It was always going to be a lazy holiday, and I feel all the better for it! 

It did however, take quite a lot of template and style changes to make it fit, mainly because of conflicting CSS classes.  I managed to get it working though, and I quite like it.  It is very simple to use and view images as thumbnails or as larger, fuller images! You use the breadcrumb or back button for navigation.  One of the good things about it is that there is no javascript or funky scripts to edit just straight forward link management.  Less work for me, having spent the best part of 3 hours getting it to work.

My first gallery is a snapshot of our city tour of the U.S. this time last year. Enjoy! Visit the gallery page [see the page menu in the top right corner] and enjoy the pictures.

One thing I mentioned wanting before is a Gallery Page. It doesn't have to be extravegantly functional just a simple here is a photo, click it to see it bigger and maybe a caption as I don't tend to rename my images!

What I do really like is my random quote generator and the weather! They are just two wordpress plugins that I have implemented and really help my site to be functional for me! I guess I am my own client!
So the quest goes on to build the site I want now!

I have other options a combination of Ezone's WMS and Community Server would be ideal but really it all comes down to money and effort. My hosting is Linux hosting so changing that would be more effort and cost as well as the requirement for a SQL Server DB for Community Server. WordPress has just the right power for a tiny personal site like this. It also gives me the chance to brush up on my PHP skills. Given that I develop in .Net and C#, it makes a nice change to make edits and small code changes in PHP. Although to be honest I hope this wil not be a regular occurence, or I will end up spending hours on this, when all I want to do is spend a few minutes here or there letting you in on my thoughts, ideas and opinions. Occasionally, I may decide to dip my hand in to some tutorial writing, or perhaps describing how I developed something to solve a problem that I wish someone had solved before!

I want to utilise and adapt as many plugins as possible. I would like a gallery where I could upload some images for my family to view. And I may come up with sime nifty pages but for now I am happy with it as it is. I like the bold orange yet simple design of this theme that I have adapted to make my own! I got the image and them basics from dl2media so thanks to them!

I am looking forward to getting started and will eventually replace my site with this, maybe over the next few days!