Happy 300th birthday!

November 28, 2007 at 22:13 | In Life, the Universe, and Everything | Leave a Comment
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I might be getting on a bit, but my old school is really showing its age! I just caught something about it reaching its 300th anniversay on BBC South Today as I was leaving this morning. Strangely Shinfield isn’t big news, so it took a little tracking down, but I finally found the story at 6:25 in the online version of the lunchtime show (unfortunately it doesn’t look like that link will be any good after today).

It looks like I completely missed the main celebrations which were back in May. The school has a page about this year’s celebrations and there is more about the school Richard Piggott created on British History Online.

A few years ago, quite randomly, I spotted a small display cabinet about Richard Piggott and my old school in Hursley House, which is where I work. I was pretty surprised to see it the first time I walked past! I might investigate what became of it as I haven’t a clue what it actually said now.

So happy birthday Shinfield school- it seems like 300 years since I was last there!

Recipe for a Virtual World 2: people

November 24, 2007 at 16:07 | In VU | 1 Comment
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While the rest won’t be in any specific order, the second in the series is for what I think is the most important ingredient: people. In fact, if there is a killer application for virtual worlds, it’s people. (Well, obviously that sentence doesn’t quite work but people are the key ingredient in meetings and education, the two killer apps which Irving Wladawsky-Berger talked about when he visited Hursley recently.)

Without people, you’re left with 3d graphics, or not even that for some virtual worlds. If you want to show off some 3d design on a web page, there would certainly be better ways to do it if slick graphics, simplicity or speed were you primary concern. You could mash up 3d content and social software in some sort of google CAD application so people can collaborate on garden layouts/kitchen designs/pimping their ride, and there are already instant messaging tools, voice over IP and web cams, so who needs a virtual world? There’s no one thing that you can do in a virtual world that you can’t do another way but virtual worlds tie it all together in a natural way. (Well, I’m sure there’s room for improvement but the potential is definitely there.)

If you just try out your first virtual world without anyone else, you’re unlikely to see them at their best. It’s a lot like arriving in a big city- there must be things to do and people to talk to, but where do you start? Exploring with someone you already know can help a lot. That’s certainly my experience with Second Life; the first time I logged in was very nearly my last. It was only after being shown round a few places and meeting up with people in-world that I began to see the potential. I think linking up virtual worlds with social networks is a great idea in this respect, which I think Kaneva does, and you can now do with the Second Life Link on Facebook.

Trying out virtual worlds with a specific purpose in mind also seems like a good way to experience the people power early on, whether they’re people you already know, or just other people with a common interest. The I am Legend Second Life game is a fun example, but I recently heard about talkademy which just sounds fantastic. One of my excuses for being so bad at languages is just not having the chance to practice. I rarely go to Spain or Germany, and when I do, everyone is far too kind and happily talks in English before I’ve barely struggled through my first sentence! Using virtual worlds to practice sounds like a great use of virtual worlds. Another killer app?

In recognition of 10 years [and 2 months] service

November 21, 2007 at 23:20 | In Life, the Universe, and Everything | 2 Comments
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A couple of months ago I celebrated 10 years of working at IBM and today I received a nice pen to mark the occasion. It seems that 1997 was a good year for IBM and quite a few people I know have been celebrating their first decade this year (tin anniversary?) including Roo, who has a very nice photo of the pen on his weblog.

It doesn’t seem possible that I’ve been at Hursley for so long but it’s not a bad place to spend a few years. Having said that, the place is nothing compared to the people; over half my friends on Facebook are IBMers! (Even some of my ‘normal’ friends have started working at IBM in the time I’ve been there!)

Should be posting some very nicely written Christmas cards this year.

Damn Good Linux

November 17, 2007 at 15:38 | In Ones and Zeros | 1 Comment
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Damn Small Linux is a superb Mini Linux distribution which I’ve been using on and off for a while. Like some sort of swiss army knife on steroids, it seems to do everything I expect of much larger distributions despite its tiny size. It is also really well thought out, being remarkably easy to use; this isn’t some bare bones command line only system and everything just seems to work without a struggle.

After getting my latest gadget (see below) I had another look round for alternatives but I’m sticking with DSL. Very handy to have around, and now even easier to carry.

Micro Vault Tiny- much cheaper than an iPhone!

Sony Micro Vault

Keeps my old Thinkpad 240 gainfully employed, but I do keep thinking a Damn Small Machine might be fun, or perhaps a Linutop… resist, resist, might as well give in to the iPod Touch temptation at that point!

Recipe for a Virtual World 1: preheat oven

November 15, 2007 at 00:09 | In VU | 1 Comment
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I’ve been procrastinating over posting a list of virtual world ingredients for a while so, instead of one big post, this is the first in a series (a.k.a. plan B).

Before getting started, Roo Reynolds very eloquently explains why you might want a virtual world in the first place.

There are quite a variety of virtual worlds out there, so some of the ingredients will only need to be added to taste. I have an idea of where I’m going to start but if there are any suggestions that would be great too; just bring your own ingredients a la Ready Steady Cook!

Premium rate guarantee

November 10, 2007 at 22:16 | In Grumpy Old Man | 2 Comments
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A little more progress after I had my mobile phone account held up:

A letter from a Vodafone Customer Relations Specialist arrived this morning which did at least depart from the standard script used so far. They very carefully didn’t accept any liability but made some goodwill gestures instead, so I finally have my money back and should be properly invoiced from now on, at no extra charge. One thing they are still unwilling, or unable, to do is prevent the same situation being repeated. I’m quite happy with the ring tone that came with my phone, and I’m not interested in paying for an expensive call to find out if I’ve won a fabulous prize, so I would much rather block any future reverse charge SMS texts. The closest they offered was to block all SMS messages, both incoming and outgoing! Not exactly useful when I use texts more than phone calls on my mobile.

In many respects I think that existing laws should already protect customers if only the mobile phone companies accepted their liability. In particular, my contract is with Vodafone, not some 3rd party I have never interacted with, so they should be refunding me for services I have not requested. Given the unwillingness of Vodafone to take responsibility for the charges they are billing their customers for, and I suspect other companies are no different*, I wonder if a premium rate guarantee would be useful to increase the level of protection for consumers. Perhaps the following would be a good start:

  1. an option to accept or reject a message should be given before each reverse charge SMS is delivered (if this is not given, the company billing the recipient should be liable for providing an immediate refund)
  2. it should be possible to block all premium rate services on an account without affecting other services
  3. a proper invoice should be provided for any premium rate services at no extra cost

I would be very interested if you have any comments or suggestions.

* if there is a mobile network that does better than Vodafone, please let me know!

Update: was very pleased to receive another letter from my MP last night, who has also written to Ofcom. Looking forward to seeing how they respond.

17 Dec Update: another follow up letter from my MP who has received a teflon letter from Ofcom telling him that it’s a matter for PhonePay Plus, the premium rate industry body. No prizes for predicting what they’re going to say! I think Ofcom are missing the point that the mobile phone company are dodging their liability, regardless of what the companies sending these texts are doing. I also finally received the itemised bills Vodafone have been promising for so long. Unfortunately the bills are about as useful as a chocolate teapot; one of the text messages is so well hidden that I can’t find it, and the other is just labeled as a premium service, or something similar, with no indication of who sent it. I think I’ll be writing to Arun Sarin again since even the extra special call centre staff I now have the number for are completely uninterested.

“Energy Recovery Facility”

November 7, 2007 at 22:39 | In Life, the Universe, and Everything | 1 Comment
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Had to share this brilliant piece of rebranding from the local council on a leaflet about recycling. Apparently non recyclable waste is sent to…

“one of our three Energy Recovery Facilities which generate enough electricity to power 37,000 homes”

Call me old fashioned but I’m sure Energy Recovery Facilities used to be called something a little less salubrious. Still this new name sounds much more scientific, and how could anyone get upset about having one in their back yard when they look this good?  (Which reminds me about plans to drill for oil in my back garden. I believe the council threw out plans to drill for it on their land near my house but I figure I should be able to get to it from my garden!)

Downloading PowerShell

November 6, 2007 at 15:23 | In Ones and Zeros | 3 Comments
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I have just spent a very interesting hour watching Dale give a talk about PowerShell- he has a summary on his blog if you haven’t come across it before. Until today I was only vaguely aware of its existence but hadn’t had the time to take a look, so I’m very glad Dale took the time to share his presentation.

My immediate thought was how much it reminded me of the excellent OS/400 CL commands (I used to work with MQ on the AS/400 in my youth and, on a slight tangent, am quite fond of the rather splendid WRKMQM). Among other reasons for liking CL, I think it proves that it is possible to have a very usable command line interface; a concept which, while lost on some people, is very definitely evident in PowerShell.

What became clear was that the power in PowerShell is largely derived from its object orientated nature. No need for tortuous string parsing between piped commands (or commandlets in PowerShell speak). For example, instead of having to process a text list of process information, you get a list of process objects, which you could then display as a list, or simply select one to end (or all of them in Dale’s case- oops!). You can also extend PowerShell very nicely to add product related commandlets which, keeping the same noun and verb format along with all the generic commandlets like Sort and Select, make picking up a new product much easier for an admin.

So, cross product: good. Cross platform… hmmm, I wonder… Mono? Well, it seems others have asked the same question (and that wasn’t actually a ‘no’ in response to the open source question!) but not yet at least.

Flapjack peach crumble

November 1, 2007 at 20:43 | In Life, the Universe, and Everything | 1 Comment
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Ingredients:

  • 3 oz. butter
  • 1 oz. castor sugar (~1 rounded tablespoon)
  • 2 tablespoons golden syrup (or 3, or….)
  • 6 oz. rolled oats (~3/4 mug)
  • 1/4 teaspoon salt
  • 1 medium-sized can of sliced peaches

To prepare:

  1. Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy
  2. Add syrup and cream a few minutes longer
  3. Gradually work in oats and salt until mixture is well blended
  4. Place drained sliced peaches in greased pie dish
  5. Spread flapjack mixture on top
  6. Bake on the middle shelf of a moderate oven for 35 minutes

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