I have a revelation!

Saturday, April 18, 2009 ~ 4 comments so far

Apparently, and this MAY come as a shock to some of you… in fact, before I continue perhaps some of you should make sure you are sitting down, even if you already are. So, please could you (yes, you) double check that you can feel your body weight being supported by your arse on something (hopefully) cushioned.

I mean that the seat is cushioned, of course, not that I think you have a fat arse..

In fact perhaps some of you should prepare yourselves by making sure you have a stiff drink ready, purely for medicinal purposes of course.

OK.

All set?

Right.

The revelation is….

Actually perhaps I should mention that this is not a Revelation with a capital R, this is no biblical tale of the coming of the New Earth and whatnot (and apologies to those of faith, my knowledge of the Book is lacking). It is, however, a revelation of the more everyday sort, so perhaps all this hyperbole is overplaying things a little.

But then, I tend to do that, don’t I. Waffle, some would say.

Yes please, with maple syrup…

Ahhh, but I jest, and even I have to admit that it now feels like I’m just stringing you along further in the vain hope that someone, ANYONE, is still reading (hellooooooo ?), rather than reveal what is likely to be recognised as less a revelation and more a rather obvious fact that everyone already knows.

Guess I should get on with it then.

So.

Did you know that you can turn computers off?

*click*

Informationally Overloaded

Monday, April 6, 2009 ~ 6 comments so far

Those of you who have been reading for a while will recognise the title of this post, as it used to be the name of this blog. Then I realised how naff it was and dropped it when the ‘one man’ stuff was borne.

The phrase itself remains particularly apt, probably more so than when I first used it and, with reference to the exponential growth of Twitter, it is coming back into prominence. Social media applications, and the use thereof, shows no sign of slowing. This is a good thing because I firmly believe that social media applications (think Facebook, Twitter and the like) can be useful to many and the basic model of all of these things is based on the premise that “the more people that use them, the more valuable they become”. Which, of course, is (sort of) in direct conflict with those of us fighting information overload.

Of course, we only have ourselves to blame, as the bulk* of the online information we digest is driven by either opt-in or by deliberately choosing to monitor or follow a particular thread of information. This point is crucial. If you feel you are being overloaded by the amount of information you are choosing to receive to parse, be it by RSS feed, email, or directly from a website, then you can choose to reduce that load.

Twitter remains a bit of a mystery mind you, every morning I gain another follower or two, sometimes based on a product name (hello Dyson Airblades) and sometimes on a completely random basis. Or at least I assume they are random because I don’t recognise the person following me, nor do I recognise their website (yes, I do check profiles in case it’s just a username I’m not familiar with) and, as of yet, there is still no easy way to find this out. I’m presuming that this is the same for everyone, and it is just the usual clamouring for ‘Friends’ that so many people seem to think a good thing to do.

Each new social media application brings with it yet another raft of gurus trying to exploit and harness the “wisdom of the crowd” for themselves in a hope of forcing a “Tipping Point” even if their idea isn’t “Made to Stick”. What they don’t get is that this is not just another marketing bandwagon to jump on, not this time. The phenomenon of social media and the way it allows people to connect can be very powerful, but the important piece thing to understand isn’t the fact that people all over the globe are connecting, but because it’s PEOPLE that are making the connections.

The opt-in model is still the most powerful part of all of this, ensuring that those people who are passionate about a product or service can seek each other out and share their thoughts and ideas. Over to Matt Haughey who suggests that companies should:

make awesome stuff that gets people excited about your products, hire people that represent the company well, and when your stuff is so awesome that friends share it with other friends

Twitter continues to be the buzzword of the moment, the numbers rise and more connections are made. I glad to say that I am benefitting from being on Twitter, something I wasn’t sure of even a few months ago. Particularly as some of my peers are now on there, posting ideas and links to articles of interest to my profession. The iPhone is a boon for such things, particularly as Twitterific and InstaPaper to keep a track of “to read” articles and blog posts (Twitterific has built-in Instapaper bookmarking capabilities).

So whilst I’m not blogging here, or on either of my other two blogs, you can find me on Twitter, or read the links I post to my Instapaper account, browse the random things I find and post to my Tumblr account, or keep an eye on the websites I bookmark using del.icio.us. You can see my photos on Flickr, and see what music I’m listening to on Last.fm.

It’s a bit scary seeing all of my online data listed out like that. What’s even worse is that I do have an RSS feed that monitors them all… talk about information overload!

* I’m aware that many social applications (or whatever we are calling them today) generate a lot of email notifications, but again, you can usually either turn them off or, you know, opt out of that application.

Ada Lovelace Day

Wednesday, March 25, 2009 ~ 1 comment so far

Yesterday was Ada Lovelace day, a day when women in technology, particularly those who blog, take a moment to highlight some of the heroines (am I still allowed to use that word?).

Ada Lovelace Day is an international day of blogging to draw attention to women excelling in technology. Women’s contributions often go unacknowledged, their innovations seldom mentioned, their faces rarely recognised. We want you to tell the world about these unsung heroines. Whatever she does, whether she is a sysadmin or a tech entrepreneur, a programmer or a designer, developing software or hardware, a tech journalist or a tech consultant, we want to celebrate her achievements.

An excellent idea and, whilst it was open to me as well I completely, and utterly, forgot about this. So by way of apology I’ll offer up some of the blog posts that others have posted:

• These women
• An interview with Ada Lovelace
• Oh me, oh my – it’s Ada Lovelace day
• Oh shit it’s Ada Lovelace Day post
• Ada Lovelace! Ada Lovelace!
• Ada Lovelace Day: Rachel Dixon

There are a variety of women I could mention in respect to Ada Lovelace day, particularly as my area of IT (technical communications) has a higher percentage of women than others, but over the past year or so there is one name that springs to mind, Anne Gentle, who has been a constant source of inspiration to me. I’ve been lucky enough to swap some emails with her, and we’ve bounced a few ideas between her blog and mine.

There are many other women in my field that I could mention and I’m lucky that, as I say, my area of IT is quite well represented. So, for those that missed it, what women inspire you?

What to do when you can’t

Friday, March 20, 2009 ~ 5 comments so far

It was a normal evening. Arrived home, fed the cat, started dinner, ate dinner, watched a bit of TV. Ordinary, staid, perhaps even boring.

With a couple of things to do I turned on the PC. I checked my email, skimmed some RSS feeds and pondered what I’d do next. Perhaps a blog post, perhaps I’d see if the writing muse had bothered her pretty little arse to turn up, or maybe I’d push on with my current mini-project (er… noodling about in Photoshop trying to rework the banner graphics a little).

At this point I turned to my current “what can I do that will divert my brain from the fact that I’m still not sure what I want to do” service. You may also know it by its proper name, Twitter.

It was at this point that everything came tumbling down, the lights dimmed, the room vibrated with the tremor and, somewhere, the sound of a helpless baby crying could be heard. Trees were uprooted, cars overturned and lumps of debris were launched into the air, terrorising all as they landed with sickening crunches and thumps.

I had no internet connection.

The eery silence was unsettling at first, punctuated only by the incessant click click clicking of a mouse button and the almost silent cursing of a man who knows some rather choice swear words.

I checked the flashy lights on the modem, the other flashy lights on the wireless router, and I even turned on the strobe light just so I could check another flashy light. After realising that the strobe was just giving me a headache and didn’t, in fact, have any impact on my lack of internet connection (and for the sake of clarity it also has no impact when I do have an internet connection) I turned it off and checked all the cable connections.

Everything LOOKED a-ok so I fired up a web browser to go and check the status page handily provided by my supplier. It’s a great idea, it shows any outages or planned maintenance across all of the services they provide. With a quick click I can check whether I have broadband or not. Brilliant.

What I did do at this point was connect my iPhone to a certain Wifi connection that could, may, possibly, be coming from next door and which is open to the world. Lo and behold the status page showed a red dot (this is a bad thing) next to the word BROADBAND. Next step is to phone and be told, by recorded voice, “if you are in the ML postcode area, you may be experiencing broadband conn…”. I hung up at this point.

And you know what I did then, dear reader?

I read a book. Ain’t NOT having the internet wunnerful??

A petition arrives!

Friday, February 20, 2009 ~ 1 comment so far

It begins “Dear Sir/Madam,” and, being the former, I read on.

“Objection to proposed Mobile Phone Base Station (Aqua Court/Nature Trail, O2 Cell Site: 040762)”

I pause at this point. I have an O2 mobile phone, it has a crappy signal in my house, the new cell site would be up the hill a bit, off to the side of the road (not a particularly nice site either, ignore the bit about ‘nature trail’ it’s a path between two housing estates).

YES! FINALLY a better mobile phone signal. BRILLIANT!!

Then I remember that I live in a community and, perhaps, there are good reasons as to why someone would object to having a good mobile phone signal in their house. I pause and despite some serious thinking whilst I watch an episode of Scrubs (the one where they all drift in and out of a medieval fantasy, hilarious!) I can’t think of any off the top of my head. I can only surmise that, with it being 2009, if you don’t have a mobile phone you must be ‘of an age’ that views those that carry them as suspicious, communist-card toting luddites. Or hippies. Or, god forbid, a Liberal Democrat.

So I return to the missive and read on. And on. And on. I’m less than half way through the first few sentences when I give up.

I know who has put this through my door and I’m sure he means well but I’m hungry and can’t really be bothered reading it all. However I vow to read the rest of the missive later, noting that the return address is included, figuring that once I’ve done some of my OWN research I may (or may not) sign in agreement and post it off.

I do note that there is no option to disagree with the stated objection, thereby agreeing that the erection (waahey!) of the base station should go ahead, but decide to cross that bridge later.

My troubles behind me (for such things do trouble me, dear reader) I turn my attention to more timely and important matters, namely unlocking Everlong by the Foo Fighters in Guitar Hero World Tour on the Wii. I’m midway through one of the songs in the setlist (Sweet Home Alabama by Lynnrd Skynnrd if you must know) when the doorbell chimes.

I pause the song, annoyed, and stomp to the front door. Lo and behold the very man who pushed said missive through our letterbox today is back to “collect my signed copy”.

Now, I’m a reasonable man but there are a few things that irk me greatly and one is people who make assumptions on my behalf. That just makes an ass of you and an umption of me, and there is nothing I hate more than being an umption, let me tell you!

“Ahh I’ve not signed it, not sure I will to be honest”, says I, confident that’ll put the wind up the cheeky sod.

“Ok, no problem, cheers”, he says, all too cheerful. How very dare he! Not only has he made me an umption of me, but he has the gall and sheer affrontery to be cheery about it!

I am irked, possibly even miffed, by this and am left with no other option.

I reach out and grab him by the throat and, whilst squeezing his windpipe and cutting off his air supply, I reiterate my dislike of being an umption and, just when he’s approaching his final breath, I let go. He drops to the ground and I stand over him for a moment to make sure I haven’t killed the old bugger (he’s 70 if he’s a day) and, satisfied he isn’t going to die whilst on my property, consider the matter closed.

I turn and close the door firmly, but not before he’s choked out a final “sorry to have bothered you…”.

So, dear reader, I’m sure you feel my pain. It seems I shall remain adrift in a calm sea, with no mobile signal to billow my sails.

Bugger.

Purging

Thursday, February 12, 2009 ~ 6 comments so far

There is something very cathartic about have a good clearout.

I’m not having a good clearout at the moment, nor a bad clearout for that matter, but I have been slowly whittling down ‘stuff’ for the past few months and everytime I tackle another little batch I do feel very pleased with myself.

By nature I’m neat and tidy. I’m not quite so bad that everything must be in an exact place and I’m more than happy to just bung things in a drawer out of the way, but I do like my minimalism and with that is a need to keep clutter down to a … err … minimum.

I’ve no grand plan in place for any of this instead I’m taking the opportunities as they arise. This evening, whilst hunting for my Microsoft Office installation CDs, I found myself elbow deep in a big plastic box of computer paraphernalia and my inner “declutterer” kicked in.

I now have a bag of software CDs (all crap, the stuff you get installed on a Dell and which I immediately uninstall), a variety of USB cables, an ancient web cam and three power adapters for items which I no longer own. At least I don’t think I still own them, truth is I may never have owned them and just inherited the adapters from.. somewhere…

In the midst of all this I was checking the printer cable and realised that when I got the printer (a year ago?) I neglected to remove the previous power cable. So, for the last year, whilst I’ve been struggling with getting enough power sockets in this room, all along there was a plug that was plugged in to the socket but which had nothing on the other end. Doh.

The next question is what to do with this bag of random computer ‘stuff’. Whilst I could eBay off each individual item the hassle would outweigh the profit (I reckon if I got £10 for the lot I’d be lucky), charity shops don’t take electrical stuff usually so… bin? Really?

What a waste. Surely there is some way of recycling these things? (and no, not Freecycle, again not worth the hassle!).

Anyone got any ideas?

Rip it up

Tuesday, February 3, 2009 ~ Comments Off

There is a part of me that is destructive. A part of me that says fuck you to all and sundry. A part of me that questions and challenges everything.

That part of me hides in the shadows waiting for the moment to reveal itself, to rise up and strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger.

Or something like that.

Actually it’s the part of me that really does, sometimes, think ‘You know what, fuck this’.

It’s usually aimed at something I either don’t fully understand or with which I can’t really be bothered. My previous post is an example of the latter, computers usually a large part of the former.

So right now I’m toying with deleting my Facebook account for, despite some valid uses cropping up in my comments, I just don’t use it. I’m also restraining myself from throwing a laptop across the room as it doesn’t belong to me it belongs to my employer.

Anyway, that’s enough of that… ohh wait, no it’s not.

Remember how I was wittering on about MP3 tags and how I really want them all to be uniformly complete? Well Pete Ashton has stumbled across a solution!

Yeah yeah, he’s talking about Twitter but the approach is what I was interested in, the idea of having a pool of [stuff] into which you can dip as and when you want, why don’t I do the same with my MP3s? I have reams of MP3 files that I don’t listen to all that often and which could easily be moved to a larger pool, leaving my ‘everyday’ tracks in their own library.

That’ll let me concentrate on those ones first (the ‘important’ ones, if you will) and I can tackle the rest as and when the notion strikes me to shuffle some albums in to/out of the pool.

Sounds like a plan.

Which is really not what I was going to write about but then that’s all part and parcel of the nonsense that is this blog. If nothing else, it helps me!