Ports Thoughts

IBM is reaching out to the Lotus Community - Meet the Experts...

2011-09-19T19:40:00.001+01:00

There are many IBMers in the IBM Collaboration Solutions team who love to help out our customers, partners and the Lotus community. IBM Collaboration Solutions (or ICS) includes a wide ranging portfolio of products covering Web Experience (Portal), Collaboration, Social Business and Unified Communications. For those of you who, like myself, have a fondness for the Lotus brand it is important to understand that ICS is a superset that still includes Lotus branded products, but ICS goes beyond the traditional Lotus heartland as we integrate more and more IBM technology such as analytics and sentiment tracking into the core stack and augment it with software from our middleware cousins in Tivoli, IM and Websphere.

Many of the ICS team keep up with the Lotus Community through tools like Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and of course PlanetLotus.org. Sometimes watching, sometimes joining in. We also like to attend conferences and Lotus User Groups as well as participate in Podcasts, Tweetups and LotusBeers.

However, we can always do more to make ourselves available to the community so here in the UK we have started adding descriptions and contact details of more social and collaboration experts to help people find and connect to us. You can find these profiles in the "Meet the Experts" area on a whole bunch of web pages such as these...

http://www-01.ibm.com/software/uk/
http://www-01.ibm.com/software/uk/itsolutions/collaboration-solutions/
http://www-01.ibm.com/software/uk/lotus/

If you click the "Options to Connect" it will bring up a full profile with links to our profiles on various social sites. So don't be a stranger, drop by and say "Hi".

IBM is reaching out to the Lotus Community - Meet the Experts

2011-09-16T19:03:00.007+01:00

Cats with thumbs

2011-05-07T02:36:00.002+01:00

I have two cats called Barney and Boo. This worries me.

It's Official. Lotus Notes is Cool

2010-11-02T13:19:00.003Z

My frolleague Darren Adams has created a web site pointing out the great features and general awesomeness of Lotus Notes. Notes is Cool. Well done sir.

No more passwords for Domino applications

2010-08-11T00:02:00.005+01:00

A number of times I have heard customers commenting that they can sign into Windows and access everything that they need to do their job - except for Lotus stuff - where they have to enter their username and password again. This may have been true in the past, but as you can see from this demonstration created by my frolleague Steve Seymour from The Portal Partnership this is no longer the case. A users credentials can be passed from their Windows login to Domino via SPNEGO which will in turn create an LTPA token on the Domino/Websphere infrastructure that will allow access to all those services without having to authenticate again. So in this video you see a user log into Windows and then access a personalised Domino welcome page, iNotes (web mail), Lotus Quickr (team places), Lotus Sametime (real time collaboration), Lotus Connections (professional social networking) and Websphere Portal (Enterprise integration) without having to authenticate. Just to be clear - this is not smoke and mirrors - this is all out of the box functionality. Have a look - it only takes 80 seconds.

If you are wondering how Lotus Notes fits into this, then then you should check out the new Lotus Notes Single Logon capability built into Notes 8.5 which means that once you have logged into Windows you can launch Notes without having to log in again*. Seemless.

So if you hear folks saying that other competing technologies are "more integrated" because they don't need to reauthentiate, show them Steve's video.

*Single logon for roaming users is being evaluated for a future release

Not what you want to see on a 6 week old Thinkpad

2010-06-28T19:46:00.006+01:00

I was chuffed to bits to get my new Lenovo W500 Thinkpad a month or so ago. I put Windows 7 64bit on it and with an Intel Duo Core T9400 processor, 8Gb of RAM and 500Gb 7200rpm disk I was looking forward to some awesome performance. And to start of that is exactly what I got. I installed all the newest version of the Lotus stuff, Notes 8.5.2 with embedded Sametime 8.5.1, Symphony 3, Domino 8.5.2, Quickr 8.5 etc. I also added some basics like Firefox and VLC Media Player.

After just a couple of days I had the machine pretty much ready to replace my old T61 as my main customer demonstration machine. Except for one thing. Every now and again the machine would seemingly just lock up with the hard disk light on permanently. Sometime it would recover and sometimes it would require a hard reboot. I took to starting Resource Monitor in Disk mode as soon as the machine has booted to see if I could catch the culprit. You might think that my immediate reaction would be to blame Windows 7, but that was the last thing I was thinking. Since most of the Lotus stack that I had installed were builds and betas rather than gold releases my first guess was that there was a bit of dodgy code in there causing the problem. But some basic troubleshooting showed that they were in the clear. The problem sometimes occurred when nothing "unofficial" was loaded. I could even reproduce it in safe mode.

There seemed to be no rhyme or reason to the hangs. Sometimes it would go hours or even days without an issue but I couldn't trust it to use in front of customers. It was very frustrating having this Ferrari of a machine but not being able to know when it would freak out. Many people point to the indexing and pre-fetching in Win7 as being possible causes but I have had no problems on my home PC which is Win7 32bit so I was sceptical that this was the cause. It also gradually became apparent that even though the disk light was permanently on there wasn't that much disk activity going on, but the disk queue length was shooting up to 50 or 100. This would imply that two processes or threads were squabbling over disk access - but I could find no evidence of what they were. There was no fragmentation on the disk and CHKDSK was coming back clean.

Then out of the blue yesterday this error started appearing.

So it turns out that the problem was a failing disk drive. Not something I would expect on such a new machine. Hitachi doesn't publish a Mean Time Between Failure (MTBF) for the Travelstar 7K500 but it just goes to show that MTBF does not mean how long a drive will last but rather the average. So be warned and never be complacent. Drives can fail at any time. So make sure that you have a good backup. Fortunately I backup my important data to multiple locations (Home Network, Backup Thinkpad) and my really important data (customer presentations) to Lotus Connections Files/Lotus Quickr Places. So it will be very straight forward to rebuild this machine when my replacement drive arrives.

Wimbledon Widget for Lotus Notes

2010-06-22T16:55:00.005+01:00

As you may know IBM has for many years been providing the technology for the Wimbledon Tennis Championships (as well as many other sporting events). This includes the Wimbledon web site which is awesome and there are now apps for both iPhone and Android to keep track of results. In an effort to help IBMers keep track of what is going on in the Championships while they are using their favorite collaboration application, IBM has deployed a Lotus Notes Widget called Wimbledon Sideline that allows everyone that is using Lotus Notes 8 and above to see what is going on in real time displayed in their sidebar. Very nice. (clicky for bigger).

Update: Here is a link to the Widget

Informative Messages in Software

2010-05-18T00:53:00.003+01:00

It is always important to let a user know what is going on during an installation. I particually appreciated this informative message whilst installing my VPN client on Windows 7.

Three Years in Six Minutes

2010-05-04T20:46:00.004+01:00

This is a little film of my kid Lucy going from nought to three using 550 pictures of her face.

I think it is fair to say that she has quite a strong character which really comes out in this film especially later on. If your interested the excellent music is by The Beta Band and is called Dry the Rain.

Samsung Android phone does not work with Samsung software

2010-03-21T21:40:00.007Z

Yesterday I wasted half a day trying to figure out why my brand new Samsung Galaxy Portal (called a Spica in the rest of Europe or the GT-I5700 for the geeks) phone would not connect to the software provided with it called New PC Studio. It turns out that for the software to detect the device as being a phone you need to go (in Android) into Settings / Applications / Development and enable USB Debugging. Hardly intuitive. Even with the software recognising the phone, most of the basic functionality is not supported - I'm talking little things like syncing contacts and uploading or downloading media such as photos. The only thing that is supported is "Update Device".

This is actually important since the phone runs Android 1.5 but an upgrade to 2.1 is promised soon. Unfortunately when you check for the update it is more disappointment!

If you do want to transfer content then it can be done. Once you have connected the phone via USB you will see a device called "UMS Composite (F:)". This is actually the micro SD card inserted into the phone. If you try and open it you get this error.

However, the rather geeky solution to this is that when the phone is connected a USB logo will appear in the upper status bar on the phone. If you drag this down you will see a notification that "USB Connected". Clicking this message will result in the following message "You have connected your phone to your computer via USB. Select "Mount" if you want to copy files between your computer and the phones SD card".

Mounting disks is something I associate with 80's computer rooms - not connecting to mobile phones. What I find particularly disappointing is that none of the help I needed to trouble shoot all these issues came from Samsung. There was no notice in the packaging that the supplied software was incompatible with the device and nothing helpful on their web site.

This is a real shame because the phone itself is very good especially for the price - free with a £20 quid contract. Having already got an iPod Touch I was not interested in an iPhone and I already have a Blackberry for business purposes and whilst I have no doubt that the Nexus One will be superior it's not $529 better so this mid range Android phone is perfect for my personal needs. I just wish that Samsung had treated it's customers with some respect and documented the limitations and workarounds so that the experience of purchasing this lovely little phone would not be spoilt

LCTY: Bridging the Digital Divide - Demonstrating Enterprise Social Tools

2010-03-05T15:56:00.002Z

I'm lucky enough to be presenting at Lotusphere Comes to You again this year. This is the abstract of my pitch for London and Edinburgh.

Today, employees are divided into digital natives, those who have grown up with the web, mobile devices, always on broadband connectivity and internet social networking and digital immigrants, those who grew up working in a fixed office with more traditional tools like email.

Through a series of demonstrations, see how IBM's social and collaborative portfolio seamlessly bridge between these worlds bringing social capabilities to traditional users and bringing robust security, reliability and integration to the social world to produce true enterprise ready professional networking.

This empowers organisations to maximize their success by realizing the potential of their people through collaboration, communication and social technologies and mining the collective wisdom of their staff for more accurate and effective decision making.

Hope to see you there.

Grayed out hard disk password on a Thinkpad

2010-03-03T18:11:00.004Z

Every 3 months or so I have what I call password day. This is when all my corporate passwords expire and I need to change them. Despite most of IBM's internal services being authenticated against our intranet ID and password, I still need to manually change things like OS Passwords (two Windows and one Ubuntu clients), VPN, Boot up and hard disk passwords, Blackberry, Sametime, Activities, FTP and a few others relating to non standard sites and services.

Whilst this is quite irritating to have to do, it is a necessary evil and normally quite straight forward. But today I hit a snag I haven't come across before. When I went to change my hard disk password in the BIOS it was grayed out. This was especially annoying because I had changed my power on password successfully. The last thing you want is to have two different passwords on boot up.

My initial thought was that it must be something to do with the supervisor password - but it wasn't enabled. Turns out that the problem was that the hard disk password was set on a different machine, a Thinkpad T60p but I had upgraded to a T61p. As luck would have it, I hadn't got round to returning the old T60p so I could swap the drive back - remove the password and then put it back in my new machine and pop the new password on. I don't know what I could have done if I had returned the old machine. So a warning to Thinkpad users - it is incredibly handy being able to use the same drives across different models - but if you are transferring a drive then remove the password first - otherwise you might find that you are stuck with it!

Guitar Hero

2010-02-21T16:36:00.006Z

I was just browsing YouTube when I came upon this film of my friend Damon. He works for Fender and funnily enough he does pretty much the same job as me except he demonstrates and explains guitars while I do the same for social and collaborative software. On the one hand this makes him way cooler than me but then I work more sociable hours and get a better company car.

Damon, or Bass Elf as we called him, used to play in my band Sideburner. Obviously we were somewhat under utilising his skillz by forcing him to play the fat strings but Lightning Tom was already lead guitarist so that was the only job left. Here is any example of our ragged magnificence.

So if you enjoy guitar, are interested in the Fender Stratocaster (particularly the '79 hardtail) or just like watching short people over compensate then spend 5 minutes in the company of Damon presenting his extraordinary abilities whilst also showing off outrageously. As he should.

Gmail 2010 = Lotus Notes 1995?

2010-01-15T20:25:00.002Z

A very interesting article from PC Pro comparing and contrasting the progress of Google Mail with Lotus Notes. Comparing a robust reliable product matured over many years to the new players on the block reminds me of an old anecdote my Dad used to tell; "When I was a kid my father knew nothing. It's amazing what he has learned since then."

"Comparing the Notes architecture back then (all of which is still in the product, even now) with what Google is laboriously developing, as if there were no prior art, is pretty illuminating: Notes does smart replication between servers and clients, works offline or in low-bandwidth connections admirably well, secures the inter-machine traffic with robust levels of encryption, doesn’t have to sit on top of protocols used for other things, stamps messages with irrefutable digital identities so you can verify who the sender really is. These are all things which SMTP (on the one hand) and webmail over http (on the other) are struggling to reproduce, the best part of 20 years later."

Full Story: http://www.pcpro.co.uk/blogs/2010/01/15/gmail-2010-lotus-notes-1995/

The Perfect Job Interview

2010-01-08T15:51:00.003Z

It is always important to understand your potential employer when considering how to answer interview questions.

Cyanide & Happiness @ Explosm.net

Saving an email directly to the file system from Lotus Notes

2010-01-07T14:31:00.008Z

I have pretty much lost count of the number of times MS Outlook users who have been upgraded to Lotus Notes have asked me how to save an email either to their file system or to their desktop. The most commonly stated reason for this is so that all the emails, files and documents related to a project can all be saved in one folder on a shared drive. Most organisations now recognise that collaborating through shared drives creates a whole raft of problems including security, duplication, compliance and the inability to find the "one version of the truth".

This capability is pretty much redundant to Lotus users since they have many ways of collaborating including Teamrooms, Quickr Places, Wikis, Blogs and Connections Communities. These tools include access control, search, versioning and all the various features that promote good information management. However, we must remember that users do tend to become a bit set in their ways, so if they do want to copy mail messages to their file system I point them at the free File Navigator sidebar plugin for Lotus Notes 8.5 and above available from OpenNTF.org.

My frolleague Darren Adams wrote about it last year. Quite simply it shows your file system in your Lotus Notes sidebar and you can drag and drop files and email to and from it. Specifically, you can drag emails to folders on the file system where they will be stored in their entirety as .eml documents* (including embedded graphics and attachments). You can also drag multiple emails at the same time. Very cool and great for knocking an old objection on the head.

Notes:
1. The Quickr Connectors can also create .eml versions of email messages by drag and drop but of course these are stored in Quickr Places rather then the file system.
2. Lotus Notes 8.5.x has an .eml viewer built in if you have the Quickr connectors installed: See here: http://tinyurl.com/ydm9xcy

8 Bit Fun (Pun)

2010-01-04T00:02:00.002Z

Click the picture for the appalling pun. I would apologise - but I think it's very funny :0)

Why better isn't always best

2010-01-03T17:21:00.018Z

I guess it is now pretty evident that humans are not the greatest at predicting the future. It is well established that generals tend to prepare to fight the previous war (hence aircraft carriers and fighter jets take on AK47 and IED's). Looking back at the predictions from the 1930's we see reusable rocket ships and hand held ray guns being on the cards whilst in the 50's folks were predicting we would be eating food pills and flying around in jet packs. In fact we only have to look back 10 years to see some predictions by noted futurologist and author Arthur C. Clark which have mainly been shown to be hopelessly wrong (All coal mines closed, Humans cloned?).

So how did they miss real game changers like television, mobile phones, personal computers and of course our old friend the Internet? Perhaps the answer is that, in these 4 examples, they were solutions waiting for people to notice that they needed them. For example the Victorians didn't sit watching a painting in the corner of their living room wishing it would move.

But strangely a lot of recent work has not been about introducing new game changers but rather has been in making things better. On the audio side manufacturer have moved us off vinyl records onto CD, then SACD then DVD-Audio but actually more and more people are perfectly happy with sub standard low bit rate MP3's because they can carry their entire music collection around with them. Similarly with video, manufactures moved us from VHS/Betamax to DVD to Blueray and HD but so many of us consume low quality video on the likes of YouTube.com or the BBC iPlayer because of the vast amount of content. How many people don't even bother carrying around a dedicated camera anymore because the one on their mobile phone (with poor lens, low resolution and rubbish flash) is good enough?

Similarly, desktop operating systems (and I don't just mean Windows Vista) have been piling on more and more capabilities requiring more and more horse power when out of the blue a massive market for netbooks emerged because many people have quite simple requirements easily served by a low cost, low capabilities device especially when it can be much more mobile and also always connected through WiFi and 3g. Look at the motor industry, particularly in America, and the vehicles were getting bigger and stronger when the customers were crying out for cars that were smaller and more environmentally sound. Witness the success of that glorified milk float the Toyota Prius.

All of those improvements were better in many ways than their preceding versions but being better is not enough. You need to ensure that things are better in a way that embraces the needs and requirements of the customer. Partly this can be achieved through Agile Development. The key tenets of this design philosophy is to introduce new features faster and ensure that they are aligned to what the customers want by involving them at regular intervals. This is what the Lotus Design Partner program is all about - letting business partners, developers and end users have the chance to ensure that what Lotus is building is what people need.

And I think this is reflected in the scope of the Lotus portfolio now. On Premise, Hosted or Cloud based depending on what is right for a particular organisation. Thin client, thick client, browser client, mobile client depending on what is right for a particular user. And a full set of capabilities to truly allow people to work better and smarter. From basic collaboration, team working, real time collaboration, unified communication, professional networking through to knowledge enablement. I really believe that we have all the bases covered and aren't just trying to make a better email client, but building the best ecosystem for people to work together.

I look forward to a great 2010 working for IBM Lotus Software and I wait with baited breath for more exciting announcements from Lotusphere 2010. For instance, what will the next major release of Lotus Notes be called?

So long Doctor

2010-01-02T17:11:00.004Z

So the 10th Doctor has regenerated into his new incarnation Matt Smith. Geeks will appreciate the synchronicity in this appointment since The Doctor often refers to himself as Mr Smith when he is incognito.

But from my perspective there is a more significant change - which is that the venerable Dr Who logo which has been used since the series returned in 2005 is being replaced with this one. I can't say I'm convinced but I suppose we will have to see how it suits the new season which starts in the UK this spring. However, it has certainly prompted me to regenerate the poorly plagiarised Ports Thoughts logo into something a little less showy.

If you are an old timer like me and you are interested in the history of the Dr Who logo's from very beginning then this is quite cool.

New Bathroom

2009-09-16T00:08:00.011+01:00

We have a small problem with our bathroom. Her name is Lucy. When we moved into our house it didn't have a bath, just a fancy shower.

This was fine when Lucy was a baby. But she is now on the verge of being two and a half and doesn't really fit into the baby bath. So it was time for a new bathroom.

Quite aside from Lucy and the shower situation, the old bathroom was a bit crap. Pink tiles and faux marble are not a good look in 1989 never mind 2009.

First job, get rid of the awful pink tiles.

Fit a bath where the shower had been.

Now the very laborious job of putting fresh new tiles up.

Using the new bath as an impromptu work bench. Very enterprising.

Tiling round corners is a bit tricky.

All done with most of the spacers removed.

Next up is the grouting. Starts looking worse before it looks better.

In with the toilet and new sink.

Now that is starting to look better.

A shower curtain and a place to put the shampoo.

A lick of paint on the side of the bath and it is finished.

And a new mirrored cabinet and shelf finish off the sink.

Lucy loves her new bathroom but especially her new bath.

Boo Loves Smarties

2009-09-13T23:24:00.000+01:00

Cats are inscrutable

e:Mail is a part of collaboration

2009-08-21T12:01:00.005+01:00

Lotus Knows that collaboration means people working together to achieve better more productive results. Sometimes this means participating in finding expertise, sharing files, discussions, instant chats, collaborative applications, workflow, knowledge management and sometimes it means sending an email or scheduling a meeting. Lotus Notes and Domino allows all of these types of collaboration (and more) on a single platform via any client (Rich, Web or Mobile) on any O/S (Windows, Linux, Mac).

Competing solutions require multiple platforms to achieve these capabilities. Why would you want to use one solution to send an email or schedule a meeting but then require a different solution to book a holiday or participate in a collaborative team space? They are all collaboration. Email is the TCP/IP of collaboration and should not be thought of as a different product. (Remember when calendaring was separate from email (cc:Mail and Organiser vs. MS Mail and Schedule+) - would you ever want them separate again? of course not. So why do it with collaboration?

If you agree, vote for this thought on the LotusKnows Ideajam

Lotus Knows: How to integrate Notes and Connections Business cards

2009-08-11T09:31:00.004+01:00

In honour of it being Yellow Day and for those of you who missed MBR's Notes 8.5.1 update at IamLUG, here is one of my favorite forthcoming features. Lotus Connections in the Notes 8.5.1 Business Card. Nice.

And here in the integrated Sametime. It's never been easier to know who you are talking to.

Many a word spoken in jest

2009-08-10T14:47:00.005+01:00

I was chatting with my frolleague Rick Robinson a couple of days ago about Enterprise Social Networking. Specifically we were talking about how people may feel inclined to put more accurate information in internal Social networking systems such as Lotus Connections than they might do for external sites such as Facebook. I'm not sure if this is true or not, but I gave the example of my own Linkedin account. In a vain attempt to divert attention from my meagre academic achievements (an O'Level in Woodwork) I invented what I thought was an amusing spoof degree, "Applied Quantum Philosophy" which I assumed anyone would see for the joke that is was meant to be.

Imagine my surprise then when Dr Rick said, "Oh yes, I studied that at University. Fascinating". Later on he followed this up with an email "PS you pulled "quantum philosophy" out of the air as an example subject when we spoke about collaboration ... I'd very much recommend the following book on the subject ;-) In Search of Schrodinger's Cat by John Gribbins". That is certainly the philosophy of quantum mechanics. I think I might have to leave the "applied" part alone for the time being though. My cats are stating to look worried.

Lotus Notes on The Wire

2009-06-07T01:24:00.003+01:00

I love the TV show The Wire. My Wife and I are halfway through watching the fifth and final season on DVD. It's brilliant TV. All the better for seeing what software Bunk uses for his colloborative needs ....

Maybe that is why crime is going down in West Baltimore. (Season 5, Episode 5, 47.14). You feel me?

Access to Archive from Preview Pane

2009-04-21T14:53:00.005+01:00

John Lance wrote a couple of days ago about how cool it is that in the next release of Lotus Notes (8.5.1) You will be able to access calendaring functionality from the preview pane of your mail. This is indeed a very welcome improvement and being able to accept or decline a meeting without having to open the invitation or your calendar is great and will save time.

But personally I am more pleased to see this innovation. If you have a message that has been archived (as can be seen by the little "torn paper" icon next to it) there is now a button in the preview pane to say "Open in Archive". Obviously this was always possible using the "Open Archived Document" in the Actions menu but putting it as a preview button (also there when the message is opened) is far more intuitive. It is only a little thing but these things really matter.

*As always these things are subject to change

Button injured in horrific F1 accident

2009-04-09T18:34:00.004+01:00

From my frolleague @FunkySimm. Obviously funnier if you got this through Twitter or RSS.

Pig dancing to ABBA

2009-04-03T03:36:00.002+01:00

A cute pig dancing to ABBA. My twin sister is the Svengali behind Mickey the pigs genius dance.

Lotus Notes on BBC News

2009-03-13T22:51:00.007Z

I was half watching the BBC News tonight in the middle of the Red Nose Day charity bash (do give generously). However, my attention was caught when I saw this interview with Geordie Greig the new editor of the London Evening Standard. What would he choose to have displayed on his monitor during this high profile appearance? The Standard web site perhaps? Publishing staples like Quark or Photoshop? No, he's gone with Lotus Notes mail.

I'll be honest, I don't think I'm gonna get a job as a photographer any time soon. But this is clearly a valid Lotus Notes on the TV sighting. (Looks like Notes 7 - the latest version is Notes 8.5)

A sneak peek at LinkedIn integration into Lotus Notes

2009-03-08T22:12:00.006Z

The Profiles component of Lotus Connections is a great way of finding expertise and information about people within your organisation. This has been greatly enhanced through the tight integration into Lotus Notes 8.5. So whenever I see a name in a Notes document "Live Text" recognises that it is a name and allows me to search Profiles for that user. This is great for finding out about people internally but there is also a need to be able to find information about people who are external to your organisation. So Lotus announced at Lotusphere that they are working with LinkedIn to produce similar integration and I have just installed it to see how well it works. And the answer is brilliantly. When I select a message in my inbox;

It automatically enters that name into the LinkedIn sidebar application and returns a search matching the name (I had to manually edit the "J" our of my name since it does not appear in my LinkedIn profile).

Clicking on my name in the search results brings up my profile in the sidebar. So if I receive an email from a partner or customer it is that easy to find their LinkedIn profile and understand. There is still a little bit or work to do on the installer (you can't just drag it into your widgets sidebar yet) and I'm not sure if it will be released as a standalone plugin or as part of maintenance release but it is going to be well worth the wait.

My little kid is quite cute

2009-03-05T22:53:00.002Z

This is my little kid Lucy being quite cute.

Jumping cursor when typing on Thinkpad

2009-01-22T21:00:00.002Z

I have been suffering from a most infuriating problem for the last few months. Every now and again when I'm typing my cursor will jump to the beginning of the line. Since I don't touch type I spend quite a lot of time looking at my clumsy fingers and not at the screen so when this cursor jumping happens and I don't notice it can cause carnage to my document. At other times it was causing a seemingly random word to be selected and as I continued to type would overwrite it. As you can imagine this weird behaviour started messing with my head.

Having worked in IT Support in a previous life I am well aware of the need to find a reproducible set of circumstances in order to trouble shoot a problem. Since I spend most of my life in my beloved Lotus Notes client that was where I first spotted the problem. My initial thought was that it could be a bug in the editor since there had been loads of improvements to it in recent releases (drag and drop stuff mainly). However, it didn't take long to spot the problem happening in other applications including Firefox and even Notepad. With my support head on I might have suspected "Finger Trouble" but even though my typing is not great it isn't that bad.

However, I just had a stoke of luck. For no particularly good reason whilst in an web based editor I just happened to tap my Trackpoint and witnessed my cursor moving to the beginning of the previous line! But that is dumb - since when have trackpoints behaved like mouse buttons? Well after a bit of research I found out that this behaviour is called "Press-to-Select" and can be configured in the Control Panel/Mouse. I have been using Thinkpads for 13 years and I am sure that it has never been turned on in any of my previous machines - I wonder why the default has changed to on now. Whatever, at least I understand what is happening so now I need to decide whether to turn it off or to take advantage if it.

From the Trackpoint tab in the Mouse menu you can configure your trackpoint.

Ticking enable Press-to-Select allows you to configure that particular function.

Multiple Domino instances on a single machine.

2009-01-14T15:14:00.005Z

Although it is completely unsupported, I have a requirement to have two Lotus Domino server installed on my Thinkpad at the same time. One is my super stable environment for performing standard cusotomer demonstrations which includes Domino, Quickr, Traveler, iNotes and Sametime. This is currently using Domino 8.0.2. Then I have a more experimental server which is running the latest build of the code I can get my hands on which I use for playing with the new toys like DAOS, Xpages, ID Vault, DCT etc. The problem I am having is that when I now upgrade either of the servers (they are just installed locally on my C:\ drive) it causes the other to show the following error when started:

This is a known issues and you can see the Technote here. The problem is easy enough to fix, just reinstall the code and the server is fine again. The problem is that in fixing one you have knocked out the other. This has only just started happening to me in the last month or so - prior to that I could have as many servers as I like installed and they would all work fine independently of each other. I am pretty much sure that the problem relates to how Domino reads or writes to the windows registry.

A similar scenario happens with the Notes client. IBM do not support having multiple versions installed on a machine at the same time. But clever folks in the Lotus community have found ways to get it working. The best description I have found is this one from Thomas Bahn which even allows the versions to be running simultaneously. So my question to the community is has anyone found a similar workaround for having multiple versions of Domino installed on a Windows laptop (not running simultaneously of course!).

p.s. I know I could use VMware workstation and the problem goes away but I hate using VM's for customer demos. I don't like introducing additional moving parts.

Windows 7 Beta: How well does Lotus Software work?

2009-01-13T01:05:00.009Z

When I first tried installing Windows Vista I used a Thinkpad T41. The results were very poor. Whist the operating system did install it was pretty much incapable of doing anything useful. I quickly reverted to using Windows XP again. With the launch of the Windows 7 Beta1 I thought I would try the same test again. And I am very encouraged by the results. It is clearly a step up from Vista both in terms of stability and performance.

From downloading the code (over 2GB) to burning it onto a DVD to installing it onto my venerable Thinkpad only took a few short hours. Within a couple of reboots it was recognising my Wireless Lan, Graphics Card and the other computers on my network. Impressive although nothing you wouldn't expect from a Mac or Ubuntu.

But the big question is does Lotus Software work on it? The answer is a resounding yes. The first thing I installed was Lotus Mobile Connect to get VPN access to IBM's internal systems. Then of course it was Lotus Notes. It installed a treat and after I copied my bookmarks, workspace (OK I'm occasionally old school) and ID file it was like working on my main PC. As you can see, Lotus Sametime also works brilliantly as well.

I also checked out the Lotus Symphony editors and they all worked faultlessly.

All in all you would have to conclude that Windows 7 is a massive improvement on Vista. I happen to know that IBM Lotus Quality Engineering always test out latest software on older hardware. Specifically, they have used a Thinkpad T30 which is over 5 years old to ensure that performance would be fine. Despite a slow start with Notes 8.0 the performance optimisation in 8.0.2 and 8.5 is really impressive.

So in conclusion, Lotus Notes 8.5, Sametime, Symphony, Quickr and Portal all work fine on Windows 7 Beta 1 on a three year old computer. But beware if you want to edit a picture, watch a video or play a simple card game!

Update: The first version of Lotus Notes that officially supports Windows 7 is release 8.5.1 Fixpack 1. See Here

Did you know?

2008-12-11T13:46:00.005Z

A really insightful video celebrating the exponential progress of Information Technology researched by Karl Fisch, Scott McLeod, and Jeff Bronman. It also contains some interesting metrics comparing the United States with some large emerging nations such as China and India. I don't know if all the statistics are accurate but it all seems very credible.

Did You Know? from Amybeth on Vimeo.

Lotus iNotes on the Nintendo Wii

2008-09-24T23:09:00.000+01:00

There have been a few people talking about the new Lotus iNotes Ultralite and specifically how well it works on the Apple iPhone and iPod Touch. Less comment has been made about the fact that iNotes Ultralite works very well in a browser on a PC. What I haven't seen mentioned so far was if iNotes Ultralite works on a Nintendo Wii. So I thought I would give it a go.

First I type in the URL and see if the Wii version of Opera will be able to handle it.

Not surprisingly iNotes brings up a dialog saying that it is not certified to use this browser. But offers a link to use Ultralite mode.

And it works perfectly. It looks pretty stunning on my 40 inch Sony LCD TV.

As you see, here is my Inbox.

Even complicated emails (this is a calender invite) all render perfectly, Obviously IBM will most likely not be certifying iNotes for the Wii any time soon, but so far I have yet to find any functionality that works on the iPhone that doesn't work on the Wii. So if you want to check your email between rounds of Mario Kart Wii you now have an excellent solution.

Double Click attachments in Lotus Notes

2008-09-22T15:57:00.002+01:00

Receiving attachments via email is a bit of a two edged sword. On the one hand it is quite an easy way to get stuff, but on the other hand you don't necessarily know if the attachment contains wondrous information which will transform your life or viruses and other malware which will destroy your computer.

In order to help users, when they double clicked on an attachment Lotus Notes would bring up a dialog box warning the user of the possible perils and offering some alternatives including "viewing" the attachment to check that it was safe before launching it. But these days most computers and particularly those ones that are used for business have Anti Virus software installed to watch your back. In which case if you add AttachmentActionDefault=1 to your notes.ini file then double clicking an attachment will launch it in the native application with no dialog box.

More details are here: http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg21292126

F5 Refresh in Lotus Notes 8.5

2008-09-21T14:48:00.004+01:00

There are some debates about IT products which are far more like religious arguments rather than technical discussions because there really are no right or wrong answers, just opinions.

Obvious examples are the two button "PC Mouse" vs. the single button "Mac Mouse", coding using "Multi Threading" vs "Multi Process" techniques, using images in GIF, JPG or PNG format or perhaps the ultimate in cosmetic comparisons, the Black Thinkpad vs the White Macbook

One such debate has revolved around what key should be used to refresh a view or page or in the case of a mail client, check for new mail. As with most things in the PC Software world, there has never been a standard for such things. Each developer does what they think best. However, over time "De facto" standards sometimes emerge. In the case of the refresh key, it became the key F9 since this was what was used by Lotus 123, the dominant application at the beginning of the PC age. As 123 was gradually overtaken by Microsoft Excel it also used F9 for refreshing. Lotus Notes has followed this convention and has used F9 for refresh for nearly 20 years.

However, in more recent years Microsoft started using the F5 key for refresh in some (but by no means all) applications, most notably Windows Explorer and Internet Explorer. Confusingly Microsoft Outlook 2003 uses F5 to refresh the view but F9 to check for new mail.

So what to do with Lotus Notes? Clearly it wouldn't be fair on our current customers to change the behaviour of F9, but on the other hand many new Lotus Notes users expect refresh to be F5 because of their experience with Microsoft Windows. So in version 8.5 of Lotus Notes either F5 or F9 can be used to refresh a view and check for new mail. It also means that F5 can be used in Symphony Presentations to start a slide show. A very pragmatic solution I think.

Honda Whites

2008-09-18T22:50:00.007+01:00

I had the pleasure of visiting a Lotus Notes customer today and briefing them on what is coming up in the forthcoming Notes/Domino 8.5 as well as Quickr, Sametime and Connections. That isn't particularly unusual, I spend a lot of my time ensuring that our customers are aware of upcoming features in new versions of our software and indeed our new collaborative and social offerings.

But what I really enjoy is finding out about our customers. They are all unique and vary from International Airlines to 5 people Internet start ups, film makers to police forces, Universities to chocolate makers. Today I was at a manufacturing plant of a well known worldwide car maker based in Swindon. The main thing that struck me was that all the employees were wearing identical white uniforms.

This would not normally be worthy of comment. Many manufacturing sites mandate that their staff wear protective uniforms. What was unusual here was that everyone from engineers, secretary's to Senior Management all wear the same white uniforms. So in my meeting today all the IT staff were wearing the same white uniform with their name on the left and the company name on the right. It made it very easy to be able to identify the IBMers from the Customers :-)

It was really interesting to walk down a corridor and see some folks who were clearly very hands on in the manufacturing process wearing the same clothes as some executive carrying a laptop and a briefcase. Apparently the uniform is referred to as Honda Whites. And before you think that this uniformity stifles individually I can tell you that the folks I met were full of character, and also one of the guys name badge read "Gadget". "Funny name" I said. "It's my nic name" he replied. "I like Gadgets".

Cloud Burst

2008-08-19T18:05:00.008+01:00

A few days ago my friend Ed Brill was writing about the suitability of services such as Gmail in the Enterprise. Despite the vogue for services such as Google Apps and other "Software as a Service" and "Cloud" computing, he points out that they simply aren't as reliable as on premises solutions (or hosted ones for that matter). However, one of the biggest challenges with these solutions is "who you gonna call" when there is a problem. If you can't access Gmail you won't get very far phoning Google. However, these free services are normally deemed to be fine for consumer use.

Well I have just had a personal experience that even makes me question that. Since around 2000 I have been maintaining a web site for the band that I'm in. Being a cheap skate I just grabbed a free site at Tripod. It was a bit spoiled by the adverts but it worked fine. Tripod was subsequently purchased by Lycos but it didn't seem to change anything. It only got a thousand or so hits per year and I didn't update it particularly frequently but it was a nice place to keep all the band related stuff together and to inform our vanishingly small fan base about gigs and such.

A little while ago I made a music video of one of our songs and so I popped over to the site to provide a link. To my surprise all the content had vanished. When I tried to log in to my account I got an error message stating that my account had been suspended because of suspected abuse! It directed me to a Lycos troubleshooting and reporting site where it asked me to create a problem report promising a response within 72 hours. Several weeks later and despite me repeatedly emailing they have stubbornly refused to contact me other than an automated confirmation that they had received my report.

My account has subsequently been re enabled but all the content on the site is gone for good. Now being a paranoid sort of chap I have always saved copies of everything I uploaded to the site - but I would imagine many people are not so careful. Interestingly I have never bothered to save the contents of this blog. What could I do if I came here and found it blank? Even worse would be if I found the Blog that I write for my daughter was gone. Who would I ring? When I restart my bands page it will not be on a free service but rather with a host who provides a support number so I can talk to someone if problems occur. Not a vast anonymous blob.

As we sometimes say, free software is worth every penny! Incidentally, remember that nothing is ever really deleted from the internet. The Internet Archive still has a copy of my site.

Olympic BSOD

2008-08-13T12:09:00.002+01:00

OK - so it is kinda like shooting fish in a barrel poking fun at MS Windows for crashing. I'm sure that we have all seen the famous Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) on airport monitors and ATM machines, not to mention our home and work PCs. But it is rare to see one as high profile as this - during the climax of the opening ceremony for the Beijing Olympics. More ironic because PC suppler Lenovo ditched Windows Vista for the supposedly more stable Windows XP. Full story Here

Matt and Alexis' Wedding

2008-08-08T20:19:00.009+01:00

Matt and Alexis looking ravishing seconds after tying the knot.

Matt and Alexis on Kew green

The bride and groom with the bridesmaids and page boy.

Matt with some of his family

Alexis and some of her family

Matt and Alexis on the back of a vintage Routemaster bus which was used to transport all the guest from Kew to the reception in Soho.

Matt's Mum and Dad with Akira and Junji

Traditional cheesy self service shot of Mr and Mrs Ports

Alexis and her daughter Tracy

The fantastic wedding cake made up of loads of tiny cakes

Matt and Alexis have their first dance as a married couple

Ali cuts a rug on the dance floor

Alexis opens the card from Lucy

Alexis and Ali

Matt and his Best Man.

Tom and Laura's Wedding

2008-08-02T23:53:00.010+01:00

Tom poses with his Best Men, brothers Olly and Ben, before the ceremony.

The ceremony itself was beautiful being held in the back garden of Laura's Parents house overlooking the glorious Gloustershire countryside.

After the ceremony the normal festivities kicked off. Ian was looking particularly racy in his white suit.

The core of legendary band Sideburner. Al, Tom and Ports pose together.

Ports and Ali take a traditional self service picture.

The happy couple at the reception

He might be married but Tom is still a ladies man.

The traditional cheesy wedding band

Ali and Lynne compare shoes

Ali and Laura

Ali with the Happy couple

Matt's Stag Night

2008-07-20T22:57:00.003+01:00

As my best friend Matt's Best Man I had to organize his stag night. The first thing we did was go for a superb champagne flight on the London Eye. Not only did a couple of glasses of bubbly make the flight more decadent but the other advantage of a champagne flight is that you get to jump the long queue. Even better the long queue of people get to see you jumping the queue.

Next up it was a trip to the excellent Benihana Japanese restaurant in Piccadilly. This is great place to dine as they mix excellent surf and turf style cuisine with with what can only be described as a performance chef who practically juggles the food in front of you as he cooks it on your tables personal hot plate.

The over to the The Comedy Store for some fine stand up comedy. Finally we all piled back to my place. I take my Best Man duties very seriously so this is how I had prepared the fridge. Full of Lager, Guinness and Wine with just enough room left for sausages, bacon and eggs for a fry up in the morning. (And a bit of friable Halumi cheese because Jason is a filthy vegetarian).

Jason looking in remarkably good health despite being a vegetarian.

Alex starts off with a Guinness.

And then in a rather strange move for a stag night - we start playing chess!

Chess might seem an odd way to finish a stag night but as you can see - the stag enjoyed it.

Matt Graduates as a Security Don

2008-07-16T23:10:00.004+01:00

Completing any degree is hard work, but it is especially challenging when you are doing it in your spare time whilst also having a full time job. So I was very proud when my buddy Matt invited me to attend his graduation ceremony after gaining a distinction in his Masters degree in Information Security from Royal Holloway. Interestingly the degree is part of the school of mathematics rather than the school of computing. Here are Matt with his Mum, Dad and Fiance looking appropriately chuffed.

Time for the group photo. Matt is in the middle.

What could be more traditional that the Mortar Board (hat) throwing ceremony.

After spending 4 years earning his Masters, Matt decides to continue wearing his mortar board to the amusement of many passers by.

Tom's Stag Night

2008-07-12T22:21:00.003+01:00

For Tom's stag night his brothers Olly and Ben first arranged for us to got to the famous Ice Bar where you are provided with a very fetching smock, locked in a sub zero room and plied with vodka cocktails. An interesting experience.

Stag Tom sits on his ice throne.

Obviously being a stag night we had to have a couple of ales.

Olly and Ben had also provided fine Cuban cigars and champagne outside.

Al is no expert on smoking cigars.

Ports has got the idea.

Back at the pub Neil and Ian plot strippers (not really)

Olly and Ben congratulate themselves on being excellent Best Men who laid on a cracking stag night for their brother.

Gadget Overload

2008-07-02T22:19:00.005+01:00

I love a gadget me. I mean I really do. The problem is that there are so many of them but none of them are quite good enough to make the others redundant. This means that on any business trip I carry 5 gadgets. An iPod Touch, A Blackberry Pearl, An AT&T Tilt, a Samsung SGH-U600 and my trusty T61p Thinkpad laptop computer.

The iPod may be thought the poor relation to the iPhone but is it a better media player because it has more memory (32Gb) and is significantly thinner. Of course all the other devices can play an MP3 but they cannot sync with podcasts with anything like the straight forwardness of the Apple device. Also none of the others can so seamlessly integrate with my jalopy when I want to listen to audio books on long trips. Of course it has built in wireless networking so I can access my mail and calendar using the forthcoming Lotus iNotes Ultralite in Domino 8.5 as well.

Talking of email on the move, the Blackberry is very much the vogue for secure enterprise messaging and is indeed an excellent device for syncing with Lotus Domino mail. But the fact is that it isn't really a full PDA and despite what the fan boys say, the keyboard is a challenge for someone with sausage fingers like me. The real limitation for me is that it doesn't support wireless networking.

The AT&T Tilt (HTC TyTN II) on the other hand is a proper PDA with full Windows Mobile capabilities. Again I can access my Lotus Domino email and calendaring using Lotus Notes Traveler. Also it supports both GPRS or 3G dialup and wireless networking. Lotus Mobile Connect VPN software makes a pretty good job of ensuring the most appropriate (cheapest) service is always used. The slide out keyboard is also pretty good. The downside of this device is that it is about the size and shape of a house brick.

The Samsung may seem a little light in functionality compared to these super gadgets - but that is the point. It is my personal phone that I keep with me all the time and the most important attribute is that it is small and light so it can hang off my belt without making me look like a Star Trek nerd.

So my real challenge in life is not connectivity or functionality - its big pockets in suits!

When the impossible happens

2008-07-01T17:38:00.007+01:00

There are some things that should just never happen. Some time lines that by all rights must be impossible. Normally strange intersections are reserved for Science Fiction. Just think Marty Mcfly fighting off the attentions of his teenage mother in Back to the Future when he visits his past.

But it isn't just science fiction - you may remember the story about the twins parted at birth who went on to marry before discovering the unpalatable truth.

Well a similar if not quite so serious situation has befallen me. For 31 years I have been supporting the mighty Manchester United football club. Some may wonder why I didn't support my local team of Hull City, but they were so laughably inept that there was no chance that they would ever play in the top flight. In fact their claim to fame was they they were in the semi final of the FA Cup in 1929. Beside which, Hull was really a Rugby town.

So how has this happened? In just five seasons Hull City have risen from the bottom division of the English Football league to being promoted to the Premier League! For many years Hull was famous for being the largest city in Europe to have a football team that had never reached the top division. Now they are up there with the elite. The dilemma of course is what do I do when the plucky Tigers are playing Man United? Do I root for the team I have always supported or do I hope the underdogs from my ancestral home will triumph? Very simple - I'll stick with ManU but really hope Hull beat Chelsea. And Arsenal.

The Preposterous Toyota Prius

2008-06-26T13:49:00.004+01:00

I'm not suggesting that every tree hugging hippy who drives a Toyota Prius is a smug idiot. But people who follow Hollywood actors in an effort to be green might just want to consider if this is the best role model they can find. They might also want to consider if the Prius is the only car owned by Cameron Diaz or Leonardo DiCaprio (hint: no). It is true that by driving a Prius you get cheap car tax. However, is it really as green as these Eco warriors would have us believe?

For an objective assessment, let's have a look at what conclusion Jeremy Clarkson and the Top Gear team came to.

And here is a slightly more sober story from the Sunday Times showing a video comparing the Prius with a BMW 520d on a trip from London to Geneva. Guess what - the 520d is more fuel efficient when driven over 500 real world miles.
Click here for the story

I guess we should leave the last word to Jeremy.

Awesome Story

2008-05-15T22:24:00.010+01:00

I have a number of points on my driving licence for driving marginally faster than the Police deem to be acceptable. Thus I was most amused to stumble upon this story from a little while ago. Even though I love my new BMW 520d Touring with leather seats and cup holders, I might have done better to get a Tornado F3 with Sidewinder Missiles. Unfortunately IBM's company vehicle policy isn't quite that generous. And parking it at IBM Southbank would be a bitch.

Clicky Clicky for bigger.

How an iPod integrates with a BMW

2008-04-18T21:48:00.008+01:00

One of the things I was most looking forward to with my new car was the fact that it features "proper" integration with my iPod Touch. The idea that I could access gigabytes of music, audio books and podcasts on the go was very appealing. Fiddling with an iPod whilst driving is about as dangerous as using a mobile phone. Also on my old car I tried using an FM Transmitter to send the output from the iPod to the car radio using FM. It was rubbish. The problem is that there are no spare frequencies in London and if you go for a long drive the available frequencies change requiring constant retuning. All in all it made it impractical.

The new car features a combined 3.5mm audio jack and USB connector. The advantage of this approach is that it allows the sounds to be routed through to the cars Hi-Fi but also for the control of the iPod to be passed to the cars iDrive Control system. iDrive is far from perfect but is significantly improved since it has stopped being based on Windows CE and has moved to a proper real time OS.

Here we see the iPod Touch hidden away in the Drivers center arm rest.

Another advantage of the combined USB/Audio connector is the the iPod is also being charged when it is connected to the car. So no worries about a dead battery.

The iDrive control screen is in the center of the dashboard allowing either the driver or front seat passenger to operate it using the controller knob on the center console.

The iPod is identified as Audio Aux. As you can see, many of the iPod options are available including all your play lists as well as Artist and Album views.

It is very qucik and easy to zoom up and down these lists by spinning the control know and then pressing it to select.

You will notice that the Audiobook and Podcast views are missing from the menus - but this is not a problem because they are still available in the master list - so an Inspector Rebus audiobook I purchased from iTunes is listed under the artist/author Ian Rankin. Likewise the Russell Brand Podcast I subscribe to is listed under the artist Radio 2.

So it is a little different to the iPod interface but it really doesn't take long to get used to it and then the world is your oyster.

Since I found this information very difficult to find on the Internet let me also include a ...

Mini FAQ.
Q1: Do I need to specify anything when I order my BMW for this great functionality?
A1: Yes. You need to order the optional Auxiliary input port. It was a couple of hundred quid

Q2: Is that it then? I'm ready to rock?
A2: Nope. You will also need a special cable which goes from the iPod Doc connector to a USB and 3.5mm jack. This is where I got mine Cooper BMW on eBay. Should be about £35

Q3: Can't I just use an 3.5mm audio cable?
A3: Of course. But you will have to operate your iPod directly and it will not be charged.

Q4: Will this work for any iPod?
A4: Yup - as long as it has a docking connector. So not the iPod Shuffle. But then the whole point about the Shuffle is that there is no UI so it would be a rather daft thing to do.

Q5: There is loads of stuff on the Interweb saying that the connection is in the glove box and it is free.
A5: That is true - but it is much more basic (essentially the first generation of iPod compatibility from several years ago). To get the cool integration above you need the Aux/USB option.

Q6: Have you tested all BMW Models?
A6: Nope - just my own 520d. But this should all work with new BMW's with the iDrive

Q7: What else doe this Aux/USB port give me?
A7: Well you could do things like copy MP3's to a USB stick, plug it in and play those track through the car stereo. Pretty cool eh?

Q8: What if I have some inferior sub iPod clone?
A8: Dunno. I use and iPod Touch. But the documentation refers to MP3 players rather than just iPods.

New Car

2008-04-18T20:16:00.004+01:00

I find it almost unbelievable how much stuff you need to take with you when you have a kid - especially if you are staying overnight. Push chair, Baby Bath, Travel Cot, food, clothes, nappies etc. So Lucy was a big consideration in choosing my new car, a BMW 520d Touring. It certainly isn't a particularly pretty car. Jeremy Clarkson said it looks like it is wearing Dame Edna's glasses. Obviously I don't agree but the front end is certainly quite distinctive.

From this three quarter view I think the car looks very imposing.

In it's Touring (BMW's posh name for an estate) form it looks particularly good from behind.

One of my favorite features is the split rear door which enables you to just open the window if you just need to pop a shopping bag in the back rather than open the whole boot. And also notice the rock star tinted rear glass which makes people think someone famous is in the back seat but really is so that Lucy won't get sun stroke.

Getting your gun off

2008-04-06T20:19:00.002+01:00

For my 40 birthday present my brother in law Stew took me and a couple of mates for my first experience of clay pigeon shooting.

The ear plugs aren't particularly attractive - but very necessary.

I shot 19 out of 50 clays. Apparently that is "rubbish". It was a cracking day out though. Maybe these toffs aren't so stupid after all.

Demilitarised Zone

2008-03-25T20:16:00.005Z

Some time ago I wrote about the dilemma I had making our main living room safe for Lucy. The fact is that we have a environment that is virtually impossible to make child friendly. 3 computers, loads of wires and cables, loads of plugs and sockets, bookcases, rubbish bins, guitars. Basically - carnage. So I decided on a rather orthogonal solution. Rather than make the whole room baby safe - why not divide the room into the safe side and the dodgy side. For a divider I found the Summer Infant Super Wide Safety Gate. So on Lucy's side she has sofas, toys and a big TV to watch "In the Night Garden" on.

And then on the other side of the fence is Ali and my Office. The sad thing is that Lucy's safe side if far bigger so it make us feel like the cages ones :-(

Trinitron Gone

2008-03-20T20:15:00.002Z

A sad day - Sony has announced the end of their Trinitron line of televisions. Here is an Obituary on Slashdot. The first Trinitron I used was around 30 years ago when my mate Matt had one as a monitor for his BBC Model B Micro computer. The last one I had was a 32 inch widescreen which I bought in 2000 with the money I received for working in Lotus Support on the night of the Millennium (incidentally - money for old rope - nothing went wrong apart from a minor problem with an unsupported cc:Mail X400 gateway).

I say the last one that I had - but actually I still have it. For various reasons I have upgraded to a new Sony Bravia flat screen LCD. It is actually about the same size as the old Trinitron - the difference is that the new Baravia is all picture. The problem is that the old Tele is still in perfect working order with a brilliant picture - but you can hardly give them away. I can't stand the thought of just throwing such a loyal old friend in a skip - so if anyone out there is willing to give it a good home then you can enjoy owning a bit Trinitron history.

Which Greek God are you?

2008-03-15T15:34:00.000Z

Haven't seen one of these for a while. I'm still basking in the fact that my Muppet was Kermit. Anyway - this is a little more high brow.

You are the god: Ares

Ares is the son of Zeus and Hera and is the God of (savage) war. Ares is one of the gods that takes no sides regarding the battles of mortal man. He readily takes human life and is driven by bloodshed without remorse. Wielding a spear and associated to animals like the dog and the vulture, Ares is feared by men and envied by other gods. He was fearless, good-looking and impulsive. Interestingly, he was secretly making love to Aphrodite, Hephaestus' wife at the time. This was soon discovered by Helios and revealed to the other gods residing on Mount Olympus in aims to humiliate the adulterers. Ares has never married, and although his real love and passion is war, he still gets around. Homer references Ares in the Illiad, whereby Ares sided with the Trojans as they fought against the Achaeans. He was wounded by a spear from Athena, and later Ares flipped sides after discovering his child, Ascalaphus. Ares cried at this moment.

I am the Ancient Greek God:

Ares

Greek Gods Quiz

Matt's Domesday

2008-03-09T14:05:00.004Z

I got a phone call from my best pal Matt a few days ago. He said "I'm sorry I can't come round tonight - I'm on Richard and Judy." For the few people who don't know, Richard and Judy are a bickering married couple who have risen to national treasure status on the back of their daytime and early evening cheesy chat shows. Matt making an apperence on their show was, to put it mildly, unexpected.

However, it turns out that the invitation came becasue of Matt's long involvement in the Domesday Online project with his Dad, Prof. John. (Incidentally trivia fans, you should refer to Domesday Book and not The Doomsday Book). Channel five is not noted for it's coverage of medievil history so it was very refreshing to see a piece that was both interesting and educational.

It was also very nice that Matt gave such a brilliant performance given how potentially nervous one could get appearing on live national TV. Although I'm pretty sure that he is still wearing the makup.

Awesome and frustrating

2008-03-07T11:34:00.000Z

My lovely wife kindly got me a Sanyo Xacti HD1000 digital movie camera for my 40th birthday. Now that our baby is just about to turn one year old and has started moving about and doing funny things it will be nice to capture some of them. And there is always the chance of getting on You've Been Framed if she falls over.

Unlike many movie cameras the Xacti is tiny and has a docking bay making it just as easy to synchronise with the PC as a stills camera. Until recently video cameras used tapes which were heavy and awkward. Re writable DVD's were also popular but their size and shape adversely affected the shape of the camera. Some even feature a built in hard disk. But the Xacti uses SD cards for storage. This is great because they are cheap, small and use minimal power which in turn allows the camera to be so little despite still being very capable.

As you can see it has a reasonably large 2.7 inch screen and supports full HD at 1920 x 1080. If you have a 8Gb SD card it can store about and hour and a half at top quality or 5 hours of standard TV quality. Pretty impressive.

The problem is that Ali ordered the camera and the 8Gb SD card at the same time - but so far only the camera has arrived. And the only spare SD card I have is 128Mb which can only record about one and a half minutes. So I have Smallest and Lightest full HD camera in the world with nothing to record onto! How frustrating. Hopefully the 8 gig card will arrive soon.

Engineer vs. Manager

2008-03-04T16:01:00.002Z

A man in a hot air balloon realised he was lost. He reduced altitude and spotted a woman below. He descended a bit more and shouted,
"Excuse me, can you help me? I promised a friend I would meet him an hour ago, but I don't know where I am."

The woman below replied,
"You're in a hot air balloon hovering approximately 30 feet above the ground. You're between 40 and 41 degrees north latitude and between 59 and 60 degrees west longitude."

"You must be an engineer," said the balloonist.

"I am," replied the woman, "How did you know?"

"Well," answered the balloonist, "everything you told me is technically correct, but I've no idea what to make of your information, and the fact is I'm still lost. Frankly, you've not been much help at all. If anything, you've delayed my trip."

The woman below responded, "You must be in Management."

"I am," replied the balloonist, "but how did you know?"

"Well," said the woman, "you don't know where you are or where you're going. You have risen to where you are due to a large quantity of hot air. You made a promise, which you've no idea how to keep, and you expect people beneath you to solve your problems. The fact is you are in exactly the same position you were in before we met, but now, somehow, it's my fault."

Life begins at forty

2008-02-17T16:24:00.002Z

I still remember being 16. I quite distinctly recall my clear understanding that anyone over the age of 30 was utterly pointless and totally incomprehensible. In fact Logan's Run should have been a documentary rather than a film. Myself and my best mates Matt and Phill used to spend hours plotting the downfall of the fascist Thatcher government, being proud Yorkshiremen supporting the Miners Strike (despite not really knowing what it was about), worrying about our untimely demise by atomic bomb due to the Cold War and generally setting the world to rights. However, perhaps the principal focus of our attention was the general desire to beat the system and resist the corrupt and cynical grasp of "The Man". OK, perhaps our principal focus was actually on girls and our seemingly endless quest to gain the attentions of one - but after that it was beating "The Man". Our future plans mainly revolved around our inevitable successful career as rock stars (our band was called The Strangled Wombats) whilst simultaneously writing worthy but witty novels and moonlighting as peace campaigners for CND and humanitarians bringing parity and fairness to the Third World. In short we were stupidly idealistic, impossibly opinionated and of course girlfriend less.

So what would my 16 year old self make of me now I have hit 40? I guess he would see me living with a huge mortgage in a twee suburb of London and think I had been a traitor to my Yorkshire roots. He would bristle at my "ostentatious" BMW since it is "Only a badge and that car could buy a house in Hull". I'm quite sure that he would be disappointed that the music career didn't pan out but disgusted that I ended up working in IT and worse still for a behemoth like IBM (perhaps softened by the fact that I work in the cool Lotus bit). I guess he would be ashamed that I had followed convention and got married rather that just "living in sin" but be secretly relieved that I had a kid since that showed that he was definitely going to get a shag sometime in the future. I'm sure he would be baffled that I spend money on white goods but quite chuffed to see I have a garden shed. And he might even like the goatee beard. But probably not. 16 year olds are a very difficult crowd to please.

Fortunately I don't judge myself like Mini Me. In fact I'm well happy to be 40. So happy I had a party with my twin sister. This was the invitation (don't worry if you didn't get one - the room was limited to 90 people for fire regulations - so not being invited doesn't mean I don't like you. Necessarily.)

Here are a few pictures from the party. We made some poster sized copies of some pictures from when we were little - so here are my sister and I in front of a picture of ourselves from when we were small and black and white (taken by my Mum).

This was the band that played the party. They are called Beautiful Losers (clicky clicky for Myspace Page). They rock!

Here I am approving of the band.

Here are Andy, Heather, Richard and Johanna.

This is most of the legendary indie rock band Angelfield. Lynne, Ian and Brian. Brian gave me a birthday card with a cartoon stegasaurus saying "From one dinosaur of rock to another". Respect :-)

Here are Helen, Pete and Alexis.

Ali (with the bag) talks to Simon and the band at the bar.

Oh dear - comedy headwear has come out!

Various folks start "cutting a rug".

Me and my idealistic foil Matt may have moved to London and forgotten our idealistic past but at least we both have cool goatee beards.

And despite what Mini Me might have though - being married is pretty cool ;-)

And so is the Beemer ;-)

Lucy

2008-01-23T15:25:00.000Z

It's hard to believe that Lucy is already over nine month old. The childminder said yesterday that she is now more like a little girl than a baby. *sniff*. Everyone warns you when you have a kid that they grow up really fast but I guess you have to experience it to fully understand. And aren't the policemen looking younger ...

ZoneAlarms problem on Windows Vista

2008-01-22T14:43:00.000Z

I have been using Windows Vista on my home PC for a few weeks now - I will write about my experiences and opinions of Vista soon. But I was about to upgrade it back to Windows XP because of the appalling performance and reliability I was suffering. It would randomly hang or start going slow despite being a new machine with 3Gb ram and Quad core processors. I would also get cryptic errors like this one.

I did loads of monitoring and analysis but Vista was giving no clues as to the source of the problem. However, through a series of troubleshooting steps that involved uninstalling just about everything and re adding it and then testing I discovered the the culprit was ZoneAlarms Security Suite. It was causing the machine to run like a dog. So if you are running ZoneAlarms on Vista Home Premium (32-bit) and are suffering similar problems then this may well be the solution to your problems.

The current (as of 22nd Jan 2008) gold version of ZA for Vista is 7.1.078.000. This has seemingly been the root of most of these performance problems. If you go here http ://download.zonelabs.com/bin/free/beta/zavistabeta.html you will find a Beta release of version 7.1.247.000. This release so far seems to have fixed the problems and the performance has returned to normal - certainly sufficiently for me to persevere with Vista for a while longer.

I should say that even though this has fixed my problems it is Beta software so you should read all the terms and conditions and warnings carefully before you decide to install it. Beta software is rarely if ever supported.

The Bathtub Test

2008-01-12T17:28:00.000Z

During a visit to the psychiatric hospital, a visitor asked the Director how do you determine whether or not a patient should be institutionalized.

"Well," said the Director, "we fill up a bathtub, then we offer a teaspoon, a teacup and a bucket to the patient and ask him or her to empty the bathtub."

"Oh, I understand," said the visitor. "A normal person would use the bucket because it's bigger than the spoon or the teacup."

"No." said the Director, "A normal person would pull the plug. Do you want a bed near the window?"

How do you make a Computer Monitor a TV?

2008-01-02T20:25:00.001Z

Perhaps you can help me. I have an excellent Sony flat screen monitor which I no longer need to use on the computer. I wondered if it was possible to use it as a conventional digital TV. I realise that I can't just add a Freeview DVB box since those normally output to SCART or RGB and my monitor accepts DVI or VGA.

I have had a Google about and can't find an easy answer. Is there one? Any hints appreciated.

What does the colour of your car say about you?

2008-01-01T19:49:00.000Z

The time has come round to order my new company car. It is almost four years since I got my current motor so I'm quite excited about getting a new one. Things have changed since then though, not least the fact that Lucy has come along so now I find I am much more interested in ISOFIX car seat connectors than top speed. The biggest change is that I will be getting an estate car because even though Lucy is only 2 and a half feet long she takes up an unbelievable amount of room. What with her car seat, pushchair, travel cot, baby bath, clothes, toys and nappies she has more packing than Posh Spice.

But the real dilemma is what colour do I chose. In my opinion, the best looking car I ever had was this one in green with beige interior. That was 10 years ago. Since then I have boringly stuck with a blue/grey combination. So I thought I would return to Green for the new jalopy.

But then I found this list here
Black cars denote an aggressive personality or someone who's an outsider or rebel.
Silver cars indicate someone who's cool, calm and slightly aloof.
Green cars can often be chosen by people with hysterical tendencies.
Yellow cars signify someone who is idealistic and novelty loving.
Blue cars are chosen by the more introspective, reflective and cautious driver.
Gray cars represent those who are calm, sober and dedicated to their work.
Red cars denote those who are full of zest, energy and drive and who think, move and talk quickly.
Pink cars are chosen by gentle, loving and affectionate drivers.
White cars represent status-seeking extrovert drivers.
Cream cars are the least likely to be involved in accidents and denote self-contained and controlled owners.

Notice that it suggests people with green cars have "Hysterical Tendencies"! Perhaps I should go with Pink instead.

Sideburner Video

2007-12-20T20:00:00.000Z

6 years ago Lightning Tom and Al, my good friends and fellow bandmates in the awesome Alt Rock group Sideburner went with me to California for a rockin' holiday and shot some video. The idea was to mix some of it with live footage to produce a promo video to amuse friends and family. At last I have now got hold of a video capture device that has enabled me to grab the footage off the dodgy old VHS tapes. So here is my first effort at creating a film (using Pinnacle Studio).

Do you think Spielberg will be worried?

Ear Today, Gone Tomorrow

2007-12-12T22:07:00.001Z

I first got my ear pierced almost exactly 20 years ago. I was 19 and it was the day before the interview which would result in my first job in IT. I was such a rebel. My employer was no fan of male ear furniture but they were far more distracted by my long curly hair so didn't mention it. Would you hire this man as a VMS Systems Programmer? Incidentally - this photo is not taken at the interview, it is at the legendary "Spiders" nightclub in Hull.

Over the following 20 years no one seems to have been particularly bothered. One of the comments I have had was a customer saying "You are the first IBMer I have ever seen with an ear ring" to which I pedantically replied "I'm sure you mean Male IBMer". On several other occasions IBM colleagues have commented that it was good because it made me look like a geek :-/ Mrs Ports thinks it makes me look more like a pirate being a silver hoop.

However, all good things have to come to an end and I have decided that the earring has to go. It has nothing to do with work - it is all to do with the baby. Every time I give Lucy a huggle she grabs it and she is getting very good at grabbing things and holding onto them. So I have given up. It is just a matter of time before she either rips my ear off or ends up swallowing it. I just don't understand how people with babies and lots of Jewelery, specifically jangly earrings, don't go bonkers.

iPod Touch: Object of Desire, Software of Derision

2007-11-20T17:26:00.000Z

I have always liked the idea of Apple. I like the way that when IBM's motto was "Think" they made their motto "Think Different". I like the fact that when Microsoft stole all their ideas (e.g. Windows) they didn't just complain like so many of their long gone competition, they came up with some better ideas. I like that they always seem to be a step ahead of the rest. But more than anything else, I like it that Apple don't just make beige boxes that do accounts they make beautiful objects of desire. Having said all that, I have never owned anything by Apple.

Since I have started going to the gym I thought that perhaps this was the time to take my first faltering steps into mobile music. I had been tempted by an iPhone until I discovered how draconian the restrictions were (O2 only, 18 Month Contact, No 3G etc.) so the obvious candidate was the iPod Touch. All that is good about the iPhone, except without the phone.

I have to say that my first impression of the Touch was awesome. Even the box it comes in is a work of art (Except for Macy Gray on the cover - her music sounds like an Alligator gargling). The Touch itself is extremely slim but weighty enough so it doesn't feel dainty. The first disappointment is that I can't do anything with it until I have connected it to iTunes.

The second disappointment is that iTunes is a disgrace. Having downloaded the software it would not allow me to proceeded until I had given it my address and credit card number. I know muggers who make less demands on their customers. I have bought a media player yet it is forcing me to be a record shop customer. Absolutely disgraceful and I now start to see where some of the criticism of Apple comes from. That is not to mention the fact that it crashed my PC several times. And it is also about as intuitive as Latin. In braille.

This myth that Apple software is easy to use really is a myth. It is pathetic. However, if you search on the web you will find loads of good people railing about the evils of iTunes so I won't waste more time ranting about it any more here other than to say that iTunes stands in stark contrast to the excellent software on the Touch.

I have previously commented on the Web browser Safari being a bit rubbish on Windows but on the Touch it is a revelation, helped by the ease by which you can enable wireless networking. Being able to access You Tube is less useful but still quite amusing to show friends.

Getting back to using the Touch as a media player it is very good with the basics. Music played pretty well and it automatically picked up most cover art to make the "Album Flow" interface work well. Likewise I could download a few videos and TV Shows after I had converted them from .mov to .m4v format. I was disappointed that other videos and DVD's didn't want to transfer even though they were all legitimate. The curse of DRM.

The other major suprise was how crap the built in headphones were. I would have replaced them anyway since white earbuds just scream mug me, but the sound quality was awful. A pair of discrete black in ear Sennheisers has cured all that though.

The final addition was a Griffin iTrip. The current jalopy doesn't have an iPod connector so the iTrip allows the Touch to become a radio transmitter which can be picked up by the car radio so I can listen to all my new podcasts as I dive. Neat.

www.Build6000.com

2007-11-18T16:34:00.000Z

A build number can be a quite interesting things in software. It represents the number of times that a computer program/suite has been assembled and compiled up to that point. Lotus stopped bothering with build number for Notes and Domino years ago because we normally have several versions that are being built at any one time (currently 6.5.x, 7.0.x, 8.0.x and "Next") and they are often built more than once per day. So we tend to go with build names that are version and dates - so I am currently running Notes V801_11152007. However, Microsoft has continued using build numbers for Windows and they have a sort of iconic status for Softie geeks. Windows NT 3.1 was build 528, NT 4.0 was build 1381, Windows 2000 was build 2195,Windows XP was build 2600 and Windows 2003 was build 3790. You can probably see why geeks make such delightful conversationalists at dinner parties.

Anyway, my mate Marcus is a royal expert on all things Windows and has set up the definitive resource for folks who are trying to find out about Vista and Windows Server 2008 and above. Not only that - but he has gorn and nabbed the domain name Build 6000 because that it the build number of Vista! Clever or what! The site is designed to embrace all the social side of stuff and become a community area so there will be blogs, forums, articles, links and such like as it develops as well. It is brand new though so bear with any teething troubles.

Dave

2007-11-05T01:17:00.000Z

Several of my friends have derided me for not having Sky+ or some such 600 channel televisual extravaganza. Fortunately I have a "life" and so don't require such frivolous rubbish. Or more accurately Mrs Ports has forbidden it. Whilst this did make me feel like a second class citizen in this multi media age, I was able to mitigate it by purchasing a splendid Humax 9200T PVR. Whilst I don't get 600 channels, I do get 40ish and they are all for free.

However, what's been missing is a channel for the gentleman. I don't mean Playboy. I mean a channel about comedy and hovercrafts, cars and survival. But that was before the arrival of the excellent new channel called Dave. It is unbelievably genius. A typical night may involve a couple of classic episodes of Top Gear, then maybe a couple of Clarkson's Extreme Machines followed by QI and Have I got News for You. Perhaps this might be rounded up with Ray Mears explaining how to survive in a Jungle. Quality.

Dave TV is the best channel ever. Mrs Ports thought the Humax had gone wrong when she saw that it had recorded TopGear 12 times. Nope. Just obeying instructions. So if you are a bloke and wish you were still 16 then tune your Freeview box to channel 19.

Cats

2007-10-28T13:16:00.000Z

My mate Matt sent me this cartoon which has been doing the rounds on the Interweb. If you have a cat you will know how accurate it is. Specifically it is Boo.

Fit as a fiddle

2007-10-23T17:32:00.001+01:00

A few months ago I was down at the Doctors getting an MOT. I was obviously feeling quite smug having given up smoking cigarettes over two years ago and figured that I would pass with flying colours. I was not unaware that I weighed slightly more than was ideal and that I occasionally slipped over the recommended alcohol limit. Neither had my fondness for cheese and roast dinners escaped me. But I was rocked to the very foundations when the Quack explained that I suffered from "being fat".

What's more, the medical profession has devised a new and hideous treatment for this ailment. Apparently it is called "exercise". I asked for a second opinion but he would not be shifted. I was sentenced to a regime of "Gym" attendance and "dieting".

I can't say I have much enjoyed hauling myself to the gym twice a week, but I had my three month assessment yesterday and it appears to have done some good. I have lost about a stone in weight, my resting heart rate has dropped by 12 bpm and my flexibility has gone from 33cm to 46cm. Whatever that means. Cutting down on the booze and cheese was hard at first but I haven't exactly turned into a Monk.

So all in all I'm glad I gave this "exercise" lark a try. I think I'll keep it up and see where I am in another 3 months.

Back to Work

2007-10-19T17:08:00.000+01:00

So a very symbolic but also slightly sad day today. Ali is returned to work and that means that Lucy will be spending her week days with a child minder. I've been working for the last six months so this isn't a great change for me - but it is quite a wrench for Ali who has spent just about every waking hour with the little fella since she was born.

Our child minder is lovely and clearly adores children. We know that Lucy will have a great time with her and fortunately she just lives round the corner. We have checked her impeccable ofsted report and talked to her awesome references. But the fact is that she could be Father Christmas and we would still feel a bit guilty about not being able to look after Lucy forever.

But wages need to be earned because the mortgage needs to be paid (the banks seem very insistant on this). I'm sure that this is just the first of the many difficult things that we have to do, for instance I'm not looking forward to explaining why she can't have a pony. Anyway, it will always be nice coming home from work knowing that we can give the Spocket a big huggle.

Music Everywhere

2007-10-04T15:33:00.000+01:00

I have a fantastic computer (as you might imaging given what I do for a living) and I have ripped all my CDs onto it giving me a reasonably impressive music library (if you are impressed by Marillion and The Sisters of Mercy). However, I have been struggling to find an easy way of listening to this fine library of sound anywhere else, for example in the garden. In the past I have put a guitar amp in the garden and draped a long lead out of the living room window to connect it to the computer, but the sound is not great and the aesthetics are worse. Of course I could just feed CDs into a ghetto blaster but that is soooo 90s!

I knew there must be a better way but I couldn't find it. There are systems like the Sonos which will enable you to play music in every room in the house but an "introductory" pack to get two rooms going romps in at nearly £1200. That is a bit steep for listening to "The Temple of Love" while munching a burger at a BBQ. You could virtually hire the band for that.

I also looked at devices like the Squeezebox and Transporter but again, starting at £200 they were just over engineered and over priced for what I wanted. I was starting to think that perhaps I just wished for a product that simply didn't exist. Until I came across these fellas yesterday. They are AQsound Wireless Speakers from the appropriately named I want one of those.

As you can see from the pictures, they look mighty fine sitting there in the garden pumping out a bit of Oasis.

Obviously, no wires in sight. They run on 6 AA batteries each. This enables them to be very loud with great sound quality. They have a claimed range of 100 meters. I don't know if that is true - but they still worked with no sound degradation at the bottom of our garden. If you are worried about them eating through too many batteries then they come with an adapter for each speaker as well so they can be powered from the mains.

All you need next to the computer is the wireless box (the little silver space ship thing in the middle) that plugs into the headphone socket. Smart. Of course this could also be used with a hi-fi, iPod or any other noise creating system that has a output socket of some kind.

Over all, very highly recommended.

Wii Madness

2007-09-09T00:21:00.000+01:00

At the weekend my frolleague Darren helped me out big time. He had heard me bemoaning the lack of Nintendo Wii's around my neck of the woods (despite being in the market for 9 months). So when he spotted one available in Camberley he bought it for me. Good man.

I have never been a great one for computer games. In my line of work sitting in front of a computer for fun seems like a busman's holiday. But the Wii really is better fun that all that other tosh. The Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 may have all the power (although actually all three devices use IBM processors) but their games are so realistic now that you might as well watch a movie. In fact these machines are more like HD Media Centres rather than games boxes. On the other hand the Wii is just a games machine. The innovative Wii Remote (wiimote?) controller really does manage the magic of sensing movement so you can stand up and flail around the room like a mad thing and make your custom avatar (Wii Mii) do the same.

Of course the down side of that is the potential for collateral damage. So catching this lampshade with a particularly committed forehand smash whilst playing Wii Tennis is probably not the last item to be broken. It is worth it though. This Wii is brilliant.

TV Adverts

2007-09-03T11:46:00.001+01:00

Most TV adverts drive me nuts. They tend to be very irritating and painfully unsubtle. Like most people I would imagine, I just mentally tune them out (if not fast forward/Tivo them). The agencies that are commissioned to create them appear to be idea vacuums as they constantly plagiarise each other or steal the latest idea from innovative movies. The fact that these people are called creatives rather than pretentious thieves is beyond irony. And oblong glasses don't make you look clever, they make you look like a cliche.

Anyway - it is always the exception that proves the rule - and this is superb. The folks at Cadbury (sorry, don't know who their agency is) have created this piece of genius (clicky).

If you don't have broadband or are not inclined to play the video clip then here is part of the transcript:
"We realize that the Gorilla is sitting in front of a massive drum kit. One of those Eighties big kits with loads of things to hit. Loads of tom-toms, hi-hats, double bass drum, etc.

We know that the best drum solo in the whole history of rock - ever - is coming. The Gorilla knows it too.

The Gorilla hits the drums with passion and vigour. Elegance meets power. He's phenomenal on the drums - feeling every beat.

The camera leaves the ape and his drum kit in the studio."

And what had a Gorilla drumming along to Phil Collins got to do with chocolate? Well as it says on the site "There's no clever science behind it - it's just an effort to make you smile". Which is of course all the more delightful because there is a lot of clever science behind it. It may be brilliantly funny, but it doesn't have it's own viral web site by accident does it!

Also, when the gorilla is playing he looks quite a bit like Neil the drummer in my band Sideburner.

Make your own entertainment

2007-08-23T21:04:00.001+01:00

My home computer is about as stable Britney Spears riding a unicycle. On a bouncy castle. In fact it is back at the manufacturers at the moment being repaired because, they tell me, it is "broken". So me and the wife are having to remember how to make our own entertainment. Ali is reverting to reading "books".

I'm just staring at the cats in the hope that they will bring in a mouse. Unfortunately they just stare back. It is nice to see the cats back on the web log though. Since having a baby they seem to be getting slightly less attention.

Sat nav leads thieves home

2007-08-23T12:36:00.000+01:00

This story has been making news of late (See Ananova here). Cheeky coves stole a car from the car park at Alton Towers. While the owners happily cavorted around the theme park, the villains tapped "Home" into the satellite navigation system and were led to the victims house where they stole another car off the driveway.

The Police suggest (as they have done for years) that you take your satnav with you when you leave the car. That's fine advice if you have a portable device like a TomTom but not so helpful if it is built into your dashboard. So what else can Her Majesty's constabulary think to suggest? "Only put in the town and not the full post code". I suspect that the good yeomen of Staffordshire are unaware of the size of Ye Olde Londone Towne. This is not a helpful option. So if anyone lives near me in South West London can I suggest you use this postcode: SW18 3HS. It should get you near something you recognise so you can find home - but it will direct our larcenous friends to the front gates of HM Prison Wandsworth.

Idiot requiring a history leason

2007-08-20T10:51:00.000+01:00

This country drives me bananas! A few idiots who were disappointed that a Rave was stopped threw coke cans at the Police. What is the BBC's breathless headline? Mob lays siege to Police Station. That would be a huge mob of 15 people vs. 200 Policemen.

Always level headed, The Sun proclaims "Anarchy in the UK as yobs rule". It is true that there have been some nasty incidents of late, but I think it is a bit premature to declare Anarchy across the nation because a few hippies are waving tofu at the airplanes outside Heathrow.

Anyway - I was listening to the rather over excitable Radio 5 Live on my way into work this morning and I heard this brilliant exchange:

Victoria Derbyshire: "Listener Matt has a comment about British society."
Matt: "This country is going to the dogs. It's not safe to go outside any more. And it's full of immigrants and criminals."
Victoria Derbyshire: "Come on Matt, surely that's an exageration?"
Matt: "No it's not. I've had enough. I'm going to leave this country."
Victoria Derbyshire: "Where are you going to go Matt?"
Matt: "Australia."

(If you don't understand why this is dripping with irony have a look here Transportation or here Convicts to Australia)

Addiction

2007-08-18T19:05:00.000+01:00

Crack, Heroin, Cocaine, Nicotine, Gambling. I'm not interested in any of that junk. I know from my many years in the past of smoking that things like nicotine can be quite moreish, but then I managed to stop a couple of years ago so it can't have been that addictive. Not like Ebay! Cripes, I can't put it down. I watch my bids/sales every night to see what is winning and who is buying what. I wouldn't mind - but most of it is going for around 99p - so it doesn't even matter. Bonkers. If you fancy buying any of the shmutter I currently have for sale then click here .... Go on, join in the madness.

Notes and Domino 8 ship

2007-08-17T10:33:00.000+01:00

Today sees the launch of the greatest version of the greatest collaboration software ever.

Find out more about Lotus Notes and Domino 8 here.

Brand abuse explained

2007-08-14T13:53:00.000+01:00

I'm sure that we can all think of companies product names which have ended up becoming verbs. Hoover for vacuum cleaner or Biro for pen are probably the most famous examples. But what will be next? iPod for media player? Powerpoint for presentation? Flymo for Lawn Mower? Bush for incompetent president? ...

See the source here at Hoodyhoo.

Potter

2007-08-09T19:10:00.000+01:00

So I just finished the last Harry Potter book. I'm glad to say that I didn't whistle through it like some breathless teenager on the day it came out. I was much more restrained. It was quite enjoyable as well. The second half of the book almost reaching some of the gripping excitement that the earlier installments reached before J.K. Rowling's editor seemingly lost the ability to restrain her occasional aimless meanderings. I know that many folks will look down their nose at someone nearly 40 reading a series of children's books, but they are clearly a social phenomenon and if you want to get shirty I only just read The Gruffalo last year.

To the other folk that point to The Dark is Rising, His Dark Materials, The Hobbit and other superior children's fantasy series and say kids would be better off reading them, perhaps by getting involved in reading fiction through Potter they will leave their PlayStation's and Nintendo alone for a little while longer and try them as well?

If you can't be bothered to read HP though - this is an excellent spoiler. If that is too long for you then this is an even more concise version. I'm not joking - they really are spoilers!

Binary Marble Adding Machine

2007-07-30T14:45:00.000+01:00

We all know the old joke. There are 10 types of people. Those who understand binary and those who don't. Well I think I might have stumbled upon something that might help those folks who don't understand or at least have a problem visualising it. It's not quite Charles Babbage's Difference Engine, but some eccentric Canadian dude has built a 6 bit binary adding machine out of wood using marbles as the bits. It is really rather smart in that it actually isn't a million miles away from how a digital computer does it - obviously without the marbles! - but it is also a lovely bit of woodwork.

If you like this then you can visit the dudes Web Site where he explains exactly how he did it.

Al and Lynne's wedding

2007-07-22T16:04:00.000+01:00

I always love it when I get invited to a wedding. Especially when it is two such smashing friends as Al and Lynne. Here they are receiving the first of many barrels of confetti outside the church.

Both of them looked radiant.

Being slightly unconventional folks they decided that the appropriate way to feed the masses at the reception was a fantastic hog roast. Don't worry, there was some tofu salad for the vegetarians.

Well that pig doesn't eat itself! Here are Laura, Ellen, Marcus, Lightning Tom and Damon troffing.

One of the lovely things about weddings is getting to see those friends who you don't get to see half as often as you would like to. So it was great to catch up with my god daughter Millie.

Of course all good weddings end up with everyone making fools of themselves on the dance floor. Here is Julius, Ali and Sally.

Doh!

2007-07-19T22:29:00.000+01:00

You may have heard that the Simpsons are making a little filum. Well as you can see I have managed to get a part.

I also managed to get a part for Boo the cat.

OK. Not really. But this is fun. Create your own yellow fella simpsonizeme.com.

Sadly none of this stuff appears to work in Firefox. Tsk. That really isn't good enough for a show that constantly lambasts monopoly and the casual abuse of power.

Al's Stag Night

2007-07-16T15:21:00.000+01:00

So for Al's stag night 8 of us started off with a couple of liveners in Kew before heading out in couple of taxi's a Mexican restaurant in central London where we consumed 5 pitchers of margarita and some lovely food.

Here is the gang on the way to Somerset house where we were going to see a gig. We weren't going to see the Lion King incidentally. We were just saying that Al was the Lion King for the day. Not that I've ever seen a lion is a waistcoat.

We had managed to keep the event a secret from Al. He dreaded the thought that we would be taking him to Stringfellows or something cheesy like that. Like we would have got in! Instead we took him to see Bert Jansch with Beth Orton and Bernard Butler at Somerset House. That might sound a but dull for a tag night but the atmosphere was amazing and nothing is dull after 5 pitchers of Margarita. As you can see, Al approved.

For a folk singer Bert lays on quite a light show.

The final surprise was that we had laid on taxis to take us all back to Al's favorite pub near Guildford where we had negotiated a lock in and another twenty or so Friends we waiting for him. Surprise!

Oh the shame!

2007-07-11T23:47:00.001+01:00

As a parent you do what you can, but there are some things that are out of your control. Despite our best efforts it is looking like Lucy is going to be a south paw. A left hooker. Left Handed! Apparently surgery can't help. It look like she is destined to have bad hand writing, an inability to use scissors and an artistic temperament. At least there is a store she can go to visit others who have the same condition...

Obviously I'm joking and we don't care. Both my Mum and Sister are afflicted. But this article is very interesting. And there really is a store for left handed ~~freaks~~ folks. You can find it here.

Floody Hell!

2007-07-06T02:20:00.000+01:00

Blighty has been stuck by some pretty heavy rain lately. Places that have seldom been flooded before have received a hammering. I originally come from the East Yorkshire hamlet of Hull and it was hit very hard. My sister Chris sent me this picture of kids kayaking down that road where my first flat was in The Avenues. (I do wonder where the kayaks came from, someone was obviously very prepared!). They say 36,000 people have been affected in Hull alone. That is really serious for one of the most impoverished northern city's to handle.

My folks still live in Hull, and I was very happy and relieved to find out that they had missed out on the nasty stuff. They have a big ol' puddle in the back garden but the house was OK. The neighbours weren't so lucky, but as my Dad said - "What a difference an extra inch can make". I'll let you insert your own crude jokes here ;-)

All was not well down south either. This movie clip shows a hail storm outside our house. In July. What are the chances of that?! I don't expect anyone to think that this is extreme weather. It is just bizarre to see this in London in Summer.

Personally I just think it is one of those things. Climates are funny and they change every now and again. On the other hand the The Rt Rev Graham Dow, Bishop of Carlisle believes that the floods that have affected large swathes of the country are due to our moral decay and that "We are reaping the consequences of our moral degradation". I would love for him to attend a meeting of the tens of thousands of poor folks who have lost everything in these floods and who couldn't afford insurance and tell them that they were being judged because of their decadence.

I don't want to get petty, but I'm guessing that his Bishops palace hasn't been flooded. I suppose that huge silver cross he is wearing isn't ostentatious (imagine if a rapper was wearing it!) and that crock is really to secure his sheep. If he really worried about his congregation, perhaps he would be better getting his wellington boots on and helping resolve the immediate problems his flock are suffering rather than blaming it on gay people. After all - I can't help noticing that he is wearing a dress?!

Update: This is funny http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvdpYgX4f7Q

Life After Death by Powerpoint

2007-06-27T13:19:00.000+01:00

I do quite a lot of customer presentations. I have also watched hundreds over the years. I don't use MS Powerpoint these days, I use the open standards based presentation tool that comes as part of Lotus Notes 8, but like Hoover and Biro, I guess Powerpoint has become a generic term these days to mean computer based presentation graphics tool.

Geek, engineer and ex chip designer Don McMillan has some pretty funny observations on how not to construct slides and present. In fact in 4 hilarious minutes he gives more and better advice than I have seen in many formal presentation skills courses.

With his wit and insight I can see why he dumped designing processors and swapped it for performing corporate comedy routines. Here is some more of his stuff.

Alan Sugar buys IBM!

2007-06-18T16:10:00.000+01:00

Last week I was very much looking forward to the final of The Apprentice. Alan Sugar might be a touch fond of himself and the candidates are mainly scheming ego maniacs but it is brilliant TV. I knew the challenge this week was for the two finalists to redesign some building that Sugar had bought near Waterloo. I nearly fell off the sofa when the program started and they showed the building! It was IBM Southbank - somewhere I typically work out of a few days every month.

It turns out that IBM's lease on the building has many years to run so all that has really happened is that we have got a new landlord. But next time I'm in the office I will check that we have still got IBM Thinkpads and not an Amstrad PCW 8256. I also need to check that our fine Cisco IP Phones haven't been changed for E-m@iler phones that only exist on Sugar's secretary's desk and in his boardroom.

Safari not so goodi

2007-06-12T16:34:00.000+01:00

So at last Apple have ported their quirky Safari Web browser to Windows. It is great to get another browser into the market to further promote choice and innovation. Astoundingly Steve Jobs claims that this will trigger another browser war - and that Apple is aiming for the 15% of the market that Mozilla currently holds with Firefox. There would seem to be a more obvious target!

Obviously Apple claim that Safari is "The world's best browser" but this hasn't been backed up by my experience with it. Firstly, just like the horrendous iTunes, it has the ugly gun metal grey header and menu bars which take no account of any Windows theme and so clash with everything else.

But that is just cosmetic so do I have any more substantive criticism? Well Apple claim that it is twice as fast as IE and 1.7 times faster than Firefox - but that hasn't been my experience. It seems about the same. They claim that compelling reasons to move are things like Popup blocking, inline RSS and tabbed browsing. Not really anything new. They also state that "Security" is a reason to love it - perhaps they should have done a bit of testing first to avoid this type of egg on the face.

The biggest problem however, is that it keeps on crashing. Of course a new browser on the scene isn't going to render every page perfectly first time and it is still in Beta testing cycle - but I'm afraid I'm finding that it falls over so often that is is unusable. As my frolleague Darren Adams would say, it is about as stable as Paris Hilton juggling cats on a pogo stick.

Interestingly when I analyze the traffic to mrports.com I can see that 4.63% (2466) of visitors use Safari whilst 8.83% (4698) of visitors are using Macs. Demonstrating that just under half of the Mac users are not using Safari. If these Mac users are rejecting Safari it can't bode well for its invasion of Windows. Less of an Apple, more of a Plum?

The Rules

2007-06-06T00:48:00.001+01:00

Now I don't want to come over all Alf Garnett but every family has to have rules. This might involve the attitude of the toilet seat or who is responsible for taking the trash out. Likewise cooking duties may be up for debate and loading (or unloading) the dish washer tends to a matter of contention. But there are some rules that are set in stone and one of those is the ownership of the remote controls. If ladies are accidentally given the remote controls that rightfully belong to blokes then they could inadvertently select "Desperate Housewives" or "Ugly Betty" when "Top Gear" and "Police, Stop, Crash, Argh!" would be more appropriate. It might sound patronising and misogynistic but it is for their own good. So imagine my horror to see my beloved 9 week old daughter with her hands on the crown jewels! Doesn't she know the rules!

(Note to Idiots: Please don't think I'm being serious! It's just a cute picture and I'm being cheeky)

Slideshare

2007-06-05T01:42:00.000+01:00

My frolleague Ed Brill started sharing some of his presentations on Slideshare a few months ago. You can read his incredulous reaction here. Over 5,000 folks have viewed his presentations. Mainly because a) he can knock up a good slide show and b) the Lotus technology he advocates is pretty damn smart.

Anyway - I have decided to do the same. There are 3 presentations that I use every day. And virtually everyday I am asked to send these slides to the customer I have presented them to. So perhaps it is time that I just make them public. So if you are curious about what I do for a living then check our My Slides. I hope that I add value to the slides when I present them. That's why the jokes aren't on the slides ;-).

Unusual Networking Event

2007-05-26T11:33:00.001+01:00

This week I have been at Disneyland in Paris for a conference called the Technical Leadership Exchange where several thousand geeky types come together to share knowledge and get insights into interesting developments in the industry. A very important aspect of the event was to network and socialise with colleagues from around the globe. In order to organise such a large group of folks, we all had a colour coded dot on our name badge. They then correspond with the instructions on these Posters which were displayed all around the theme park. Imagine my concern when I looked at the option for my red dot. I've been to some odd networking events in my time but this seemed a bit strong. Hello cowboy.

So it was with no small amount of relief that when we got to the designated spot we found that there had been a spelling mistake and we were simply having a BBQ.

Business Trip

2007-05-24T12:17:00.000+01:00

My frolleague Matt has been trying to persuade his young sons that his trip to Disneyland in Paris is for work and he will not be having a good time at all. I'm not sure that this picture is going to help his case.

First Class Rip Off

2007-05-22T10:47:00.000+01:00

Recently our National postal system, The Royal Mail, introduced a new set of pricing that for the first time took account of the shape of an item as well as its weight. They claim that this is in line with the rest of the industry (Fedex, DHL etc.) Today I saw for the first time how petty and stupid this system is. We got this card in the post claiming that they were unable to deliver an item because there was insufficient postage. Fair enough I thought. It did say that there was £1.06 to pay. Was someone sending me gold bullion without putting a stamp on it? Then I noticed the killer line "includes £1 handling fee for underpaid items". So actually the postage was just 6 pence short. Seems a bit petty. Of course we didn't know what the item was at this stage.

One option was to take half a day off and go to the sorting office to retrieve the item - which seems a bit extreme for a 6p under payment. The alternative is to attach £1.06 to the card in stamps and send it back and they will deliver the it. Now these days people only buy 1st class stamps which have a value of 34p. Attaching 3 1st class stamps would only make £1.02! So we would need to attach 4 which means we are now being charged £1.36 for the 6p underpayment. Of course you can still buy smaller denomination stamps - but you have to go to the Post Office to buy them - somewhat defeating the object.

So what was this object that had caused all the fuss? Simply a congratulations card for Lucy with a first class stamp on it. Should be fine right? Well if you check out the new regulations it turns out that the card was 5 millimeters too long. You are allowed 240mm and this is 245mm. I bet some despicable jobsworth is really proud of themselves.

FA Cup day

2007-05-19T13:21:00.000+01:00

I have supported Manchester United since I was 9 years of age. I went on a school trip to watch the 1977 FA Cup final at Wembley between Man Utd and Liverpool and encouraged by some school friends, decided to support MUFC. As luck would have it they beat their scouse opposition to win 2-1 so my support started off with a flying start. Although the rest of the seventies and the eighties were pretty lean pickings with just a couple of FA Cups to show, the nineties and naughties (otherwise described as the Alex Ferguson era) have been pretty successful.

Obviously once you support a club it is with you for life. Through the good times and the bad times. You can't just pick and choose. Unless your my wife Ali. She started off supporting Brentford FC because her first football match was at Griffen Park. However, as soon as Chelsea started being successful she dropped the Super Bees like stone and started supporting Abramovich's plaything. Just because her best friend Lorna is a (proper) fan of the Blues.

So what team will Lucy support? Well if Ali had stuck with the Bee's I might have allowed her to become a Brentford fan. But since her appalling defection I cannot allow Ali to influence Lucy's football choice in way - so I have had to take matters into my own hands. Especially because Lorna is coming over to our house to watch today's FA Cup Final between ManU and Chelski.

Obviously Muji rabbit will support United as well. Here is the full kit - still with a bit of growing room (it is meant for a nine month old!)

She still needs to get a bit bigger before she will be running around the park with a ball at her feet.

New Toy

2007-05-12T10:53:00.000+01:00

I love my little digital camera. It is a Canon Ixus 40. Ali bought me it for my birthday a few years ago and it has turned out to be one of the best presents ever. It is really simple to use - just point and click - but produces excellent pictures. Also the fact that it is so small pushes it into the cute gadget category. Finally, the way it synchronises the pictures with the computer is effortlessly simple and well designed.

Sadly it is time for an upgrade. Despite it's many good points the camera is starting to show it's age. 4 Mega pixels seemed like massively high resolution when we upgraded from a 1 MP camera - but now it just isn't enough. When you try to enlarge bits of pictures it is a bit grainy. But the worst sin of all is that it has started to get a bit unreliable. Sometimes it will just switch itself from still into video mode. At other times when you turn the flash off it will turn it back on. This can be quite a shock for a five week old baby as you can see here!.

There are so many capable compact digital cameras around there days that you are spoiled for choice. But as luck would have it, my mate Marcus had just bought himself an Ixus 900Ti and highly recommended it. I was a bit dubious at first. Do I really need 10 Mega pixels? Well I'm glad that I took the plunge because the 900 is a fantastic bit of kit. And what is best about it is that it works pretty much exactly like the Ixus 40 except just a bit better in every area. Bigger screen, better focus, more capacity, more control and most important - new and shiny.

Double Decker Cats

2007-05-08T16:00:00.000+01:00

When Boo grabs the premium spot on the chair - Barney knows his place. It's like a bunk bed for cats. And everyone knows that the top bunk is always best.