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.

See the original: Pixellabs

The original

See the ebay listing for more details.

[YouTube]lk5_OSsawz4[/YouTube]

See the lyrics here

[YouTube]nTRzaG_GbVQ[/YouTube]

private void FurElise()

{

Console.Beep(420, 200);

Console.Beep(400, 200);

Console.Beep(420, 200);

Console.Beep(400, 200);

Console.Beep(420, 200);

Console.Beep(315, 200);

Console.Beep(370, 200);

Console.Beep(335, 200);

Console.Beep(282, 600);

Console.Beep(180, 200);

Console.Beep(215, 200);

Console.Beep(282, 200);

Console.Beep(315, 600);

Console.Beep(213, 200);

Console.Beep(262, 200);

Console.Beep(315, 200);

Console.Beep(335, 600);

Console.Beep(213, 200);

Console.Beep(420, 200);

Console.Beep(400, 200);

Console.Beep(420, 200);

Console.Beep(400, 200);

Console.Beep(420, 200);

Console.Beep(315, 200);

Console.Beep(370, 200);

Console.Beep(335, 200);

Console.Beep(282, 600);

Console.Beep(180, 200);

Console.Beep(215, 200);

Console.Beep(282, 200);

Console.Beep(315, 600);

Console.Beep(213, 200);

Console.Beep(330, 200);

Console.Beep(315, 200);

Console.Beep(282, 600);

}

[YouTube]1lqxORnQARw[/YouTube]

[YouTube]BcQ7RkyBoBc[/YouTube]

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.

The iPhone isn't perfect, it has a maximum capacity of 16GB, which is only about half my 30GB classic! There is also no cut and paste or Multimedia Messaging (MMS) both features I would rarely use!

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!

Just over eight weeks ago now, I accepted a position at a company called Realise. With a very strong history in web development they are increasing the ASP .Net skillset in the business. The opportunity was one I thought was excellent, I have more responsibilities and a degree of process management to do. I think it will be am exciting challenge and I am ready to take the plunge, stepping outside my comfort zone.

It wasn't an easy decision to leave Ezone. They are a fantastic, if little, company with a strong skill set and some great projects. I feel I have learned a great deal in my time with them and grown both as a person and as a software developer. It is also quite difficult to pass my main project onto someone else. SK Chase have been fantastic clients and I have had the privilege of providing some quality bespoke software for them. I am proud of my achievements over the last 2 and a bit years.

In a shameless plug, as I was asked: Check out the rebranded Consumer site at: www.kisschasegifts.com.

Given that the time is right for me to move on, I am looking forward to the challenges Realise will throw at me and hope I can begin to add value through my own experience and ways of working.

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.

So I begin, with the first part of an unknown number of posts about the tools that increase my productivity when in front of my computer screens.

You may or may not have noticed that my last paragraph ended with the plural of screen.  This was not a mistake, I have 2 per machine (1 at home and 1 in the office). I cannot equate in time the amount of effort this saves me in a day. I liken it to spreading out over a physically wider work area, allowing me to have more organised and smaller "piles" for my work. 

Take a program like Photoshop.  Not something I use often (not being a big designer or photographer) however it has all these floating palettes and tool bars that while aiding usability, simply take screen real estate away from what I am working on – the photograph. With my 2 monitors I can fill one whole screen with my photograph and have the palettes and toolbars on the other, giving me more room to work on the image itself. This also is reflected in my work as a Software and Web developer.Much of this requires a minimum of 2 windows open – the development environment (in which I write my code) and maybe 2 or 3 browser windows for web work.  On 1 screen I would be constantly flicking between windows and it doesn't help me at all.  On 2 I can have a quick glance at how my work is going without too much effort.

However, as a Windows user multiple monitors although well supported are less easy to manage.   The task bar does not stretch over and you still get the piles of open windows stacked high there. Moving the windows between the 2 monitors is also a pain, they need to be resized smaller than maximum the dragged across the screen.  

Ultramon sorts all of this out. It adds a task bar to the other monitors making it much easier to use. It adds buttons to the window for switching program windows between monitors.  Alternatively there are the keyboard commands to do the same and also to move the mouse cursor form one monitor to the other. 

I cannot stress how these two simple things increase my productivity massively, so together they come top of my list! 

As a Wordpress user, I use Askimet as my main anti spam techinque, however I wanted to augment this with a CAPTCHA for a bit more security. I heard about re-Captcha in an article or blog post somewhere and think it is great. It uses the same principles of a CAPTCHA and puts it to good use helping to digitise books. The digitalisation of books (particularly those from before the digital age) uses Optical Character Recognition to parse a scanned image of a book into its constituent letters and words. However OCR is not perfect particularly when the scanned characters are distorted or not uniform. This is why a CAPTCHA is a good anti spam technique (at least for now!).

The digitalisation has many many unknown words and re-Captcha helps solve this. This special CAPTCHA gives you two distorted words, 1 known word and 1 unknown word. The likelihood of a person entering both words correctly increases dramatically if you enter the known word correctly making this an ideal way to help in the digitalisation of books. Add a comment to see the CAPTCHA in action and visit re-captch for your own plugin at http://recaptcha.net.

Now for those who don't know Carlisle United, Olga (acronym of Goal!), the fox, is the club's mascot.  It used to be the stuffed fox, placed on the centre spot before every home game, usually accompanied by a man in a funny suit. However in more modern times Olga the Fox is a much "cuddlier" mascot
and can be seen parading around Brunton Park before home games.  Carlisle United play in blue and there we have it the origins of the blog name.

As I am based in Edinburgh, and do not make many a game, Olga's Blues is looking for some loyal Blue's fans and volunteers to provide match reports and opinions on the goings on at Brunton Park.  If you know of anyone or want to volunteer your writing skills drop me an email. It is unpaid obviously but if the Google Ads cover more then the cost of the hosting, then I am more than wiling to share it out.

On the technical side, just like this blog, Olga's Blues is powered by Wordpress. I found a good design that matched the blue from N.Design Studio which I was able to edit and make into what you see on the page.

I have been on holiday since finishing up work on Friday evening and Susan's sister was staying with us up until yesterday.  So it has been a bit of a mad weekend and first half of the week. I for the most part let the women go ahead and book what they wanted to see, and tagged along.  This worked really well and I was able to have my input when I wanted to.  It also meant I saw a few shows that I would quite happily have given a miss if I had had the time to look at what they were when asked if I wanted to go.  This turned into a bit of a triumph as I thoroughly enjoyed everything I saw.  Obviously some more than others, but that is the way it is!!

With ticket prices rising though I think gone are the times of running around fitting in 3-4 shows a day. Although it is quite manic just getting along to 2, with places like the spiegelgarden to hang around in between.

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.

Listening to internet radio for at least an hour occurs at least 5 days out of 7 for me.  I enjoy an eclectic mix of music, most of it through Pandora or my iTunes catalogue and IPod, as I can easily match my mood and get a full playlist to match what I want.

Pandora,  as an internet radio, has taken part in the "Day of Silence" for internet radio stations, highlighting what it may be like in the near future.  The case seems to be that in the US, where most of these stations are based, the costs of playing a track over the internet will be so great (due to extra royalties and alike) that it will put them out of business.  

I am not against the artists getting a fair amount of royalties but I know for a fact there are more than a few albums I have bought having heard some tracks on Pandora.  A degree of fairness and compromise should be agreed. 

As I am not in the US there is little I can do about supporting the save net radio campaign except spread the word…

I do really enjoy the work despite some frustration at times. It is sometimes a really interesting project to work on particularly when I implementing new features that are innovative and exciting. It is great to see the application moving forward and improving, ensuring good quality on which to base their business.

SK Chase [the clients!] have also been making a bit of a splash in the press recently. You can find articles in The Scotsman here and The Sunday Herald here. They have also managed to get themselves on a business promotion reel on STV (Scottish ITV) running for the next few weeks between the regional and national news programs.

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!

Click here to view the embedded video.

What happens is that the spammers send out loads of emails having modified the  "FROM" address to appear as if it came from an email on my domain.  They then obfuscate the email headers to hide their actual location making it very difficult to trace them.  Imagine someone handwriting hundred of letters and signing someone else's name and address and sending them out.  It would almost be impossible to prevent that, and domain spoofing is a similar concept but with emails.

A decent spam filter will more than likely prevent the spam getting through.  My apologies if you have received spam from this domain, I am doing what I can to prevent it.  

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!

**Readers of the blog feed who cannot see this: You can view this here. Enjoy! 

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.

Click here to view the embedded video.

And well done to the fan who obviously had a few too many before the game against Bournemouth and saw the game sideways on!

Click here to view the embedded video.

These are from my new custom channel in the Democracy Internet Video Player (soon to be renamed MIRO): Carlisle United as featured on "Blue Tube", sorry You Tube!  It is funny how many crowd chants are uploaded.  I particularly enjoyed the "Que sera, sera" rendition from Saturday against Rotherham!

Carlisle are currently 1 point off a playoff place in League 1.  Who knows 6 points form the last 3 games might just see us there and a win will see us off to the new Wembley Stadium. Come on you Blues!

As a blogger, I tend to read a lot of other peoples blogs and have as yet been unable to find one in particular

Carlisle United: the games, the stories, the truth from the terraces.

While I follow a lot of media content including alternative Carlisle United sites, the Blues aren't a big enough club [in the eyes of the media] to warrant huge attention. Blogs like Black & White & Read All Over for Newcastle United don't exist for Carlisle United.

I would in some way like to rectify this. To that end I would like to see what the reaction would be for one or two literate, religious followers (home and away game attendees) to start one of these blogs. I would be willing to begin setting it up and managing the issues around the site, but I simply do not have the resources or the ability to even attend the games, so am not the person to begin writing the content.

If anyone is interested in this please leave a comment with an email address and I will be in touch!

But there are some people who rely on technology for survival, but their technology is not as aesthetically pleasing as my IPod, nor as easy to use.  On her own blog  Amy Tenderich has written an Open Letter to Steve Jobs (of Apple fame) asking him to address this.  I will let her tell you how it is.

I believe in good technology design and, while not afflicted by any such conditions, I support her letter. Good technology and good design should not be restricted to those things that make a pile of money or that are iconic gadgets.  Good design, should be applied to all technology but especially to those things that are essential.  This post may be better entitled 100 million IPods but 100 million design mistakes!

To try and move this forward, I have now implemented a "Blogroll" [see my original post http://www.richardlennox.net/2007/04/09/goodbye-virgin-media-dns-hello-open-dns/ I have said goodbye to Virgin Media and its DNS service and welcomed Open DNS. DNS [Domain Name System] is used every time you browse the Internet.  You enter the human readable (well understandable anyway!) address of a website into your browser and the DNS, translates the into the IP address (4 group numbers) that is the physical location of the websites server.  Take this site for example: you have likely reached it by typing "www.richardlennox.net" into your browser address bar, DNS translates this into the server's IP address, 85.13.219.74, to which you are then directed. This makes the Internet much more usable for you and I, as we can simply type in the human readable name and the DNS does the work of locating its address.

Normally and properly your Internet Service Provider (in my case Virgin Media) does all this for you in the background and the service is generally great but Open DNS offers a much better service (and its still free!).  Open DNS claims "to make your Internet blazing fast, block phishing sites and correct your typos on the fly".  While DNS does add a slight overhead to your Internet connection, the claim of making it faster I cannot prove and am a bit skeptical about, but the other two are the reasons I switched.

Blocking known phishing sites (you know those sites that try and get you to enter things like account details by pretending to be your bank so the site owners can steal all of your money!) is an extremely great feature.  It simply shows you a warning page saying the site you are trying to visit is a known fishing site, or that the site has been blacklisted for whatever reason and you should take care if you are wanting to continue to it. Great, especially for those who are not too savvy about these things.

Correcting typos on the fly is another great feature.  Ever typed .cm instead of .com or .nt instead of .net? Open DNS will try and correct it for you.  Or if you include a complete typo within the address it won;t show you a default browser error but show you what you typed and asks if it was what you were looking for. Pretty neat, hats off to Open DNS! 

Click here to view the embedded video.

This guy seems to do a few when I search YouTube for "beatboxing flute" and therefore I will subscribe to his feed ! Great! 

I have also taken the opportunity to upgrade some of the underlying CSS and HTML of the theme.  This won't mean any visible changes, it simply cleans things up a little in the code.  Let me know if you come across any issues…Thanks!

1. Format the HDD.
2. Clean reinstall of Windows.
3. RE-install all my applications and data.

Luckily I have my Netgear Storage Central (little box connected to my home network that adds hdd storage to the network!) that still has a backup of the majority of my important data.  I didn't have too much to lose just my time.

I was impressed with the support I got over the phone from the supplier of my machine, pcoption.co.uk.  We had a chat and decided that while it may have been the hardware, there was no reason not to try a clean install of Windows (steps 1 + 2 above).  If that goes ok, then maybe it was a corrupt Windows installation.  Luckily this seems to [touch wood or forehead here!] have been the case as over the last couple of days the Windows installation has appeared stable.  I am still a little nervous about it but am assured that any problems will be covered by the warranty!!

Next on my list will be an upgrade of this Wordpress installation, scheduled for Monday! 

Click here to view the embedded video.

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….

While this is great, it has one slight drawback: you end up reaching for the deadly bit of plastic and buying music which you love.  My iPod is going to love it, especially as it links directly to iTunes!

Note to self: I must write a post summarising my Internet entertainment suite!!

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. 

1. Hot off the press (well iTunes!): Kate Walsh – Tim's House.  This is a cool relaxed album which offers a folky, jazzy acoustic sound that is just a great little album.
2. E.S.T – Viaticum.  This Swedish trio (I happened to see them Sunday night past here in Edinburgh!) offer a fantastic modern jazz and some cool extras.  This is another good album! Looking forward to getting my hans on their latest offering.

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! 

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!!

Any ideas?

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 simply registered and got my hosting company to change my MX records, and that was it.  One of the great things I like about it is the GMail interface for my webmail now.  The things it allows me to do is much more intuitive than any of the mail programs I have used and currently use.  Thins like labels as opposed to flags or sorting into categories.  The conversation tracking is great too.  It took a bit of getting used to but I really like it!  I like the integration and simple management of it! Great!

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.

The widgetized sidebar basically lets you drag and drop the required sidebar components into the sidebar and saving this means the sidebar is created on the fly as the sum of its parts.  It took a while to work it all out but I have managed to get it exactly as the PHP hard-coded version! Which I never expected.  This is a great bit of functionality for those people without the skills to update the template.

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".

When I first started working at Ezone and on SK Chase's project, I was instantly aware of the ambitions of SK Chase.  They did not want to solely be a supplier of the gift voucher application to the hotel and tourism industry, but wanted to produce a site that took the vouchers loaded by the hotel clients into the gift voucher app and sell them through a single portal.  Enter www.skchase.com….

The site originally a simple "About us site" was transformed into a basis for what you see now.  Earlier this year SK Chase put together the design and soft launched a manual sales site. Manually controlled, with every bit of content being entered by hand, and with links to the existing gift voucher catalogues of their customers.  The site was unmanageable, unwieldy and I believe it must have been difficult to use as an end user.

So over the last 2-3 months I have taken their design and rewritten it, to what you see now.  It was a busy and ambitious development cycle, with not a minimal amount of stress, but the end result is what matters.  And I am proud of the end result.  

The site pulls in vouchers from the hotels using SK Chase's application, and categorise them.  I have developed a bespoke search system that allows the categorised vouchers to be fully search-able by type, location, for who and other search aspects. This "search" might not compare with the likes of Google but it is an achievement in itself.

The site then lets you buy multiple vouchers from multiple hotels in one order and deliver them wherever you like.  One thing I am really proud of is incorporating the conceptually two different sites – the hotel catalogue eg at Gleneagles and the SK Chase site – into the same application.  This gives a great experience for a user who is used to purchasing vouchers from a hotel catalogue.  The cart and checkout in particular look and feel and act in the same way – giving returning users the same experience, one which they are accustomed to.

I am particularly proud of my work on making the site Search Engine friendly and optimisable. Having a manually created site there first meant I was always reacting to existing search rankings. I still believe this is the wrong way round, but I developed a solution for even the most dynamic of pages, including the search results page, that allows SK Chase to maintain their positions in the rankings through an effective use of content. While I cannot go into details about the solution, it is something, I think will help SK Chase cement their strong reputation through a good set of search engine rankings.

The site itself from its soft launch at the end of October has been relatively successful, orders are coming through steadily, although not in great quantities as yet.  There has been no advertising other than that of the search engine rankings and it is great news that the number of visitors and buyers is on the increase.

While I am hoping for less manic development cycles in the future I am looking forward to taking both the application and the site itself to new levels in the coming months.  Please do take a look at the site, even if you are not wanting to buy anything….www.skchase.com 

UPDATE: 2008/02/26

Check out their new site launched just before Christmas – www.kisschasegifts.com!

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!

I must say they had amazing voices for such a range of women and with a very tight band were superb.  To be honest though their attempts at humour and chit-chat were not up to scratch.  They were touted as being comediennes but there brand of comedy really didn't wash.  They could quite easily of made it a full blown singing show, a proper feast of the standards but instead they chose to utilise their underdeveloped comic talents.  It would have been fabulous in a venue that wasn't rows of seats and was informal.  A good jazz bar or somewhere with table service and the areas for a chat.  Make it less of a cabaret and more of a understated show and it would be one of the best shows to see. 

If you get the chance do go and see them somewhere, they are great singers.

An interesting mix of players, as with many fringe music events they were using session players to cover for those with real jobs!! However the core seemed to be there.  It was an unusual makeup with the down on their luck Russian Mafia Groovy Head Nodders on guitar and base, the "too cool for my jeans and flip-flops" band leader and trumpeter and the jiving Duracell bunny on Speed leading the way with some admittedly fabulous organ riffs.

The honest use of session players meant that, while individually the many of the players were great, together they were a bit slack.  At times they managed to hit it off though and if you are into a real jiving funky tunes they might just do it for you.  Their interpretation of some soul classics was good fun, and they did get the crowd going, with some amazing individual solos.  

One big find was a local saxophonist that apparently came into the mix at the very last moment. He slotted in well and his improvisation and soloing was phenomenal.  As was the Duracell Bunny's sleek hand speed along an organ which at times carried the performance.  Obviously enjoying his work, he jived and boogied to every song, the coolest of Duracell Bunnys!!

The performance was let down by two things.  Firstly the venue was not the greatest.  The converted chapel has a cavernous ceiling and at times it felt like much of the sound was being lost into the room.  This is a band that shouldn't be doing gigs in venues like this.  They are good for a dark enclosed space with a good vibe for those wanting to dance.  

Second was the band leaders penchant for his own voice.  They could of played two more funky hits had he not mumbled and grumbled along between every song!  Most probably because they weren't as slick as they could be and he was covering for it but more funky tunes and less mutterings would go down better.

 All in all a funky band and would be great for a bit of fun.  Too be honest I haven;t decided on whether their album is worth it.  A bit funky for the times you need it, and the soul hits went down really well.  The jury is still out on this lot.  I would probably like to get a shot at the full lineup next time and see how it goes, unless someone was to send a free CD!!

If anyone comes across this and has seen something of interest that they can recommend or even tell me what to avoid, please leave a comment.  If you manage or are part of a particular show, tell me about it, tell me what it is about, how good you all are and where you are at and I might just come along and see your show!

I look forward to your recommendations! 

 Bailey puts on a dramatic twist to the genre of Stand-Up comedy. His act of slick jokes, musical interludes and the use of the big screen was hilarious.  He had a new toy, a keyboard like instrument that distorted the images on the big screen! 

His content sails a little close to the wind and using similar material (with the US the butt of his jokes) to the mainstream can seem a little old news but his new slant more than makes up for it. And don;t forget his musical prowess, a comic musician of the highest order.  If you get the chance to see it, look out in particular for his superb Friends theme renditions and of course his legendary Hokey-Kokey in German!

Certainly one of the highlights of the Edinburgh Festival.

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 basics of the article sum up the efforts that as a programmer I am constantly making. To sum it up a programmer must be lazy – to prevent being repetitive in his work, repeating oneself over and over means that you have to maintain the work everywhere, doing it once and re-using it the lazy way ensures that it is inevitably clean and tidy code, leading to a better application that is easier to debug.  A programmer must be dumb so as not to become too "smart" to learn the latest techniques and technologies.  He must dumb down, when asked to solve a problem, asking the simple questions to ensure that the parameters of the problem are set out in full and not someones impression of the parameters of the problem.

It is funny how on reading this, I understood exactly what the guy is saying.  I am constantly fighting to stop myself repeating code because it is easier to write if I just copy it.  I would also say 90% of my support queries can be answered using the simple question method – I even had one where they phoned up and said they can't access the software or any other web page – he had forgotten to plug in his network cable.  Ok, so that is a little exaggeration on my part, but it is so easily done, and the simple answer is usually the right one.  I recommend the article if you have time for a quick read, I will be one happy programmer the next someone calls me either lazy or dumb!!

 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.

It isn't a bad album.  A reasonably upbeat, rocky number of tracks.  Not heavy, and for me, just right for a rockish kind of mood.  Some highlights include, Better Days, an almost anthemic slow rock number, and the title track.  Both are almost rock ballads but have enough power to carry the album.  I would recommend this album.

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!!

When the second half came, it was the French who raised their game.  At times looking dangerous but never really threatening Buffon in the Italian goal.  It was a dragging final, not one for the fans to get roused by.  The game became cagey with both teams afraid to commit players to grab that elusive goal.  It was inevitable that the game would  into extra time.  Both keepers had very little to do and the game was winding down.

The game fell into a farse.  The red mist descended onto one of the greatest players, in his last ever game and he lost it.  It can happen to anyone, the anger cannot be controlled and he lashed out.  This is by no means an excuse, it was a despicable action, that deserved the punishment, however the referee became aware of the incident.  It was the only real defining moment in the game and was the only thing that got the crowd going, which sums up the game by no mans a classic. 

Even the penalty shootout had little flair.  Bang, bang, bang only the bar could defeat the French.  To be fair to the Italians everyone of their penalties was calm and collected but there was no hit, miss or maybe of penalty shootouts past.

The Italians, embroiled in corruption scandals, win the World Cup.  It is a shocker, a team of not so great players, but great defenders.  Zidane has been given the Golden Ball but Canavaro was by far the best player of the tournament, not a flair player, a solid, well marshaled centre back who a long with his fellow defenders won the World Cup for Italy. There will be fallout, and I guess if things go as they are heading in Italy, most of the squad will be out on their ear and most likely end up in the Premiership as bargain purchases made by thrifty chairmen on the back of winnig the world cup. 

Overall, I was disappointed with the latter stages of the World Cup.  It lost it's spectacle.  I stand by the fact that the better nations need to start playing to their potential so as to maintain the level of support seen in this World Cup.

It annoys me that, people say France should win because it is a fitting end to Zidane's career.  Yes it would be a fitting end to the career of a graceful and world class player but he has to deserve it.  The French rely on him to do something special to win the game, even the players admit that.  At times he is a footballing diva, arrogant and demanding.  Given the state of the French side, to beat the French: stifle Zidane's play making, frustrate him and don't be scared to put a challenge in.  The play goes through him, and they are an ordinary side.  The Italians are not really much better. I expect a dour final with very much stand offish play, no one will to risk a mistake.  It will be cagey and not the exciting final that the World Cup deserves.

But does this world cup deserve an exciting final?  Watching the majority of the games, I have been disappointed.  The knockout phase has been dull, the quality of the football poor. There has been bad performances, and from the point of view of a neutral wanting a spectacle, the Wong teams have gone through.  Cagey, defensive football has beaten the better teams in the world.  This World Cup needs an exciting final, to avoid being looked back on as a bad tournament.  

Fifa have failed to stamp out the cheating or simulation as they call it.  Why call it that anyway – lets say it is cheating and stamp it out.  And worst of all players asking the referee to produce a card have not been punished.  Is it time for a change at Fifa, time for Blatter (all puff and no action) to move on and be replaced by someone with the convictions to stamp this out? I think it is.

There is Bill Bailey to start with.  I have already booked tickets for his stand up show and this will be the third Festival in a row that I have seen his show.  First it was his stand-up Part  Troll and last year it was his comedy theatre.  I really enjoy his sense of humour so am really looking forward to that.

While I have been to Fringe shows before this is the first year that I am planning things I want to see in advance.  I haven't figured everything out as such but I am looking through the guide and online reviews starting with the Music stuff. I enjoy a bit of Jazz and the Fringe festival has its Fair share of Jazz events.  There are a few shows in particular that I am interested in:

• Filthy Six @ The Lot, in the Grassmarket
  Having read good things I took a look at their MySpace site and was able to listen to a few tracks.  Their soul/jazz/funk blend is appealing.
• The Jazz Centre – Colin Steele Quintet
  A great Jazz quintet that I enjoy!

These are two that I think would be good but I am acutely aware of the venues that have surprisingly good acts that are not advertised, particularly during the festival.  I Will be checking these out a little.

I may be back with some more once I get sat down and go through the guide a bit further.

I didn't  see the game, as I was in the airport waiting on m  flight back home so I cannot say whether they deserved to win or not.  By all accounts (having spoken to a few people back home) they didn't really deserve to lose the game they didn't deserve to lose at least.  But time and time again England's undoubtedly world class players could not stand up and be counted in a penalty shoot out.  To be fair they are probably the most pressured players in the world, the expectations are so high, which does not help but they should be strong enough to get through that.  

You can dissect the managerial decisions, the squad, the performances or the conditions but the fact is they are coming home and no amount of dissecting will change that.  However is it all bleak for England? With Sven departing and David Beckham's announcement today that he is resigning the England captaincy is it the start of a new era?  Many of the players from this World Cup will be around in at least two years time if not in 4 years time and with a new invigoration and stronger determination to succeed, that this disappointment will lead to.  I will say that England's chances in two years time will be great.  I hope so anyway.  A new crop of young English players will be available and there may just be  turn in the fortunes – if we can avoid the penalty shootout.

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.

The analysis is made up of various sections, and help me realise that the themes available for Wordpress required some modification to get the basics right.  I had issues with semantic structure, for example H3 HTML tags coming before a
H2 tag and worst of all no H1 tag beign in my site template. Plus many other little style sheet changes and header changes, as well some real cleaning out of some of the code due to deprecated attributes and tags.  All in all, a few more hours has been spent on tidying up the coding of the new site.  But it is always worth it when someone gives you a perfect score! Here is mine, click the link to read my certificate.

The huge negative is the injury to Micheal Owen.  A big game player, who will be sorely missed.  It looked awful, and the television pictures clearly show that something popped his knee out of the joint.  If it is serious that leaves a lot of question over how England will shape up for the rest of the World Cup.  Ferdinand, leaving the park also didn't help the England game, but hopefully he has only a tightness in the muscle and will be available for the next game. With Michael Owen out the question is how will England play.  It is set up for a 4-1-4-1 formation but who do you play up front? Is Rooney capable of being the sole outlet?  He plays excelently as the link between midfiled but I think he needs the extra striker to link to.  

The best solution would obviously be to drop Beckham. but that is never going to happen this World Cup or under Micheal Owen.  I just cannot see it! Which is a shame as it may cost England the chance of winning the World Cup.   

There is still work to be done.

I must admit I am really disappointed by the ITV coverage.  The only good thing about it was the  three, honest, straight talking, experienced managers as pundits.  But the rest of the "production" was a joke.  While the cameras and pictures are the responsibility of the Germans, they were awful.  Please show the game.  That is no excuse for the awful, cliched commentary coming from Clive Tilsley.  I found myself shouting at the TV telling him to shut up,because very rarely did he commentate on the game, he was in his own little world trying to come up with his negative opinions.  Please bring back the BBC.

More surely to come on the ongoing England saga. 

While I never agreed with all his managerial decisions, he did well by the club.  But, having all preseason stated how he wanted to continue the momentum into the first division, I am disappointed in the nature of his exit from Brunton Park.  He is undoubtedly ambitious but to join Preston North End, is a bit of a shame.  Chances are there is more money on the table there and of course as a championship side that had a good season last year it is a fantastic opportunity, but for the Carlisle fans that supported him (with by far the best gates in the last two seasons) through good times and bad it is a huge disappointment.  Not solely for the abruptness of his departure, for him joining an "Auld Enemy" as well. 

It shows the fickle side of the game.  There is little loyalty left in it.  Managers come and go, players come and go.  Not very often do you get the core of a club that sticks together.  More money and a higher division will tempt anyone, but there must be no more satisfaction in the management of the game to taking a club on the way down and making them into a success.  

I would wish Simpson all the best in his new role, but I hope he gets it right and quick, because he might just be out on his ear by Christmas if the results don;t go his way.  Such is football these days! 

We are 10 days into Germany 2006 and half way through the second round of group matches. England sit on top of Group 2 ahead of Sweded, Trinidad & Tobago and Paraguay and have already qualified for the group stages by winning their opening two games.

On the whole this has been one of the better tournaments for football fans. The quality of the games has been high for the most part. However it seems as if some of the big teams are yet to fire on all cylinders, the French being a prime example of this. The biggest exception to this being Argentina, who are looking so good at the minute I would consider a little flutter on them if the odds hadn't been slashed.

Having watched both England games in the midst of Scottish supporters* it would be safe to say that while the results went our way, they were not ideal games and I was getting plenty of stick. England were not at their best by a long way. However, there are some people including myself, who say that the result must come first. All that will be recorded for prosperity is the result, it doesn't matter how well you play, it is the result that counts. You only have to look to the Rugby Union World Cup in 2003, England didn't play pretty or quality rugby, they ground out the results and that is what counts. In 2006, we have all forgotten this and recognise that England won the WOrld Cup, all be it with a last minute drop goal. I admit that we have to improve our game if we are going to have any chance of winning the World Cup otherwise we will fall down when we come up against the better teams. But for now, we have to sit back and say after two games it is job done. We have qualified for the knockout stages and that is what matters.

I can't count the number of times I have been told in the last few days "England were lucky!". I find this amusing. Yes we didn't walk over these teams [no team in the world cup should be considered a walk over] but for the most part the England team did a professional job. Against Paraguay, we dominiated the first half and defended well in the second without really being troubled. Against Trinidad & Tobago we controlled the game from start to finish. Much is being made of how many of T&T's players play for lower league sides and how they stifled Englands top stars. Hold on lets just look at the F.A. Cup for the last few years. It is exactly the same. It was their chance to raise their game and try and beat one of the favourites at the start of the tournament. They had their chances to score a goal, notably John Terry's goal saving clearence just before half time but England were the ones in control of the game. We created chance after chance and should have scored several times before and after each game. I was pretty annoyed with Peter Crouch. While he has improved this season and probably deserves his chance, at times I felt he wasn't playing for the team. He should have bagged a hat-trick against T&T, but I felt he went for the glory amd played for the cameras. His miss just before half time is one example and another was in the second half where he got the ball in the box with his back to goal and instead of playing it simple and laying off a pass, he tried to flick it up and score with an overhead kick. Great if it comes off, but not when we are struggling to find the back of the net. It was the finishing that let us down against T&T nothing else.

Looking forward to the Sweden game, I think we cannot worry about who we will meet in the next round and try to avoid the Germans, the Ecaudorians would be as much of a challenge. We should go out there to win. There is talk of resting the players that have been booked or at least one of them. That is a good plan, but we must win the game. To win all three group games would be a massive lift. I would play Rooney and Owen to give them ninety minutes and would probably play Carrick to give Gerrard a rest. Perhaps even give Lennon a run out on the right but we must ensure that we win the game. I also think Paul Robinson needs a good game. He has been a supporter for much of the two games and has lost his concentration on occasion which has led to some mistakes. A big game against Sweden will give him the confidence going into the knockout stages. Defensively England have been strong. We haven't conceded a goal and you cannot get any stronger than that. A good midfield means the weakest area of the England team has been in the last 3rd of the pitch: getting quality ball to the strikers and scoring goals.

* For those of you who are not aware of this, the term "Scottish Supporter" is defined as: "someone who supports Scotland and whichever team is playing the Auld Enemy"

On a slightly ironic note, it was interesting to see the F.A.C.T "Fake DVD" advert again that appears before every film these days. Is it not amusing how they hang on the poor quality of such fake dvd's when the non-digital projector at the back of the cinema produces a grainy, pixelated picture that definitely has blemishes on it? Maybe F.A.C.T. should fix this before damning the quality of fake DVDs.

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!