I’ve recently been spending quite a bit of personal time learning and playing with Scala. I’m going to publish a couple of the blog posts I’ve written on the IBM internal Lotus Connection blog system here, but I’ve also put a presentation I gave up on slideshare. It’s aimed primarily at Java developers wishing to learn a little more about Scala as a language.
Just blowing the cobwebs off this blog as it has gone relatively untouched for over a year. I blame Twitter. Anyway, I may have something to say soon…
Because you know there just aren’t enough opinions out there on this one…
Like I did with the iPhone, I’ll happily wait until the second rev, and for an actual need to present itself. Now Mr. Jobs, if you’d like to hurry up with the Quad Core, Blu-Ray toting Macbook Pros then we can talk.
Can you imagine how many of those reports they get every day?
(Lotus Knows. Remix, by DJ Steve Porter)
Lotusphere 2010 was my second Lotusphere conference, and the first I’ve spoken at. I previously attended in 2008 as staff. My memories of 2008 revolved around trying to understand the deep connection between the Lotus brand and it’s clients and partners, as well as having the first chance to meet many of the people I’d been working with since joining Lotus in Dublin in June 2007. My time in the Meet The Developers lab that year was mainly spent talking to people who knew little or nothing about social software and Lotus Connections in particular.
The one thing I did take away from 2008 was an understanding of how long and hard the week was. As such I wasn’t too worried about not attending in 2009. This year however my hunger to be involved was well and truly back.
As I’ve previously mentioned, this year I was presenting with Mitch Cohen from Colgate Palmolive. He never misses an opportunity to promote their products 
(via Mitch’s flickr stream)
Our session was a Show ‘n Tell, which basically means we don’t just talk about a subject, but actually do it onstage. Think of a daytime TV cookery show and you get the idea! For those who may not have presented at Lotusphere, presentations have to be finished by mid-December. Given ours needed to be step-by-step slides that people could take away and follow this led to lots and lots of prep-work of both the slide-ware and demo environment. Early January saw us have numerous teleconferences to do run-throughs, but it wasn’t until the first Sunday of the conference that we had the opportunity to go through it in full, in person. Thankfully the timing was spot on, and the live demonstrations solid enough. On the day the session was well attended (I was secretly dreading we would get one man and his dog given we didn’t have the best time slot and that we were up against some other popular and even related sessions.) What’s more our material seemed to go down well and was delivered without hiccup. However, there’s no getting away from the fact that Show ‘n Tell sessions are a huge amount of work to prepare. Much work, but worth it in the end. Many thanks go to Mitch for being a great co-presenter and a pleasure to work with.
Away from the session, most of my time was spent in the Meet The Developers lab on the Lotus Connections stands. I think the one solid thing to say this year is that Connections has firmly established itself in the marketplace and the Lotus portfolio. Nearly every person we spoke to had questions about deployment, adoption or even issues they had. In previous years, both from my own and other’s feedback it has been much more about “what is Connections?” which we had very little of this year. In general the Connections sessions I went to seemed to be very well attended and full of people with hands in the air when the “Have you deployed?” and “Are you in production?” questions were asked by the speakers.
It was also nice to meet in person various clients and business partners I’ve dealt with over the past two years, either for the first time, or to re-aquaint. It was also nice to meet various people I’ve connected with on Twitter, as well as even more of the folks in IBM US who I speak to nearly every day but had never met face to face. Of course, there were also people that were there but whom I never got the opportunity to catch up with, so if you fall into that category then please accept my apologies but you know how it is!
Outside of the actual conference, I found I was a bit more relaxed about things this year, with it not being my first time to either the conference or Orlando. I didn’t feel the need to make the most of every minute and had a few more early nights than previously (ok, early means no earlier than midnight anyway!) Regardless I still found myself absolutely knackered by the Thursday and have spent the majority of the weekend catching up on sleep.
One downside of spending the week at Lotusphere is that, despite best intentions, it always puts me behind in terms of the day job. Not just because of the five days spent in Orlando, but the effort in preparing the session as well. That’s the other thing I’ve been trying to catch up on this weekend, and I suspect I’m in for a few late nights over the next week as well. However, from going with the attitude that I’d be quite happy only attending every other year I am now chomping at the bit to get my place lined up for Lotusphere 2011. Hope to see you there!
I’m fortunate enough to be both attending and speaking at Lotusphere 2010 in Walt Disney World Florida this year. Whilst I attended in 2008, this is my first chance to speak at this conference. I’ll be presenting with Mitch Cohen on: SHOW303: Putting *Sparkle* in Your Social Applications! Customization and Branding with the New IBM Lotus Connections 2.5. In this Show ‘n Tell session we will be taking you through live examples of how to customize the user experience of Lotus Connections, including:
As well as showing how to do all this in the session, participants will also go away with step-by-step instructions to follow which will allow them to accomplish everything they see.
I think that the combination of customer and product development perspective that Mitch and myself will provide should lead to a fun and informative session. If you are attending the conference I hope to see you there. Apparently we will be having a live Twitter Q&A during it as well!
Outside of the session I’ll be spending most of my time in the Meet the Developers lab where we will be happy to show people Connections 2.5 and some of the things we are looking at for future releases. So come along and say hello!
Quite simple. The songs which rocked my world the most from 2000 through 2009. As with any list, there is a personal aspect to this so it is coloured by my musical tastes and personal experiences, through to the memories they draw of good times. Building this has been a fairly big task, involving a thorough trawl through my iTunes libary, and even locating and opening up the box of records stored at my parent’s house.
Initially I built a list of what turned out to be 102 songs, with a strict one song per artist rule from which the final ten have been selected (the list is in a PDF here, in artist order.) The full list more accurately reflects a slightly broader taste in music than the top ten below might suggest. My tastes have evolved (and mellowed) over the course of the decade.
Anyway here they are, in reverse order:
10: The Hives – Hate To Say I Told You So
Makes the ten not only for being a great song, but reflected probably the most vital, alive period of music in the whole ten years, at least from my point of view. Memories of Saturday nights in The Underworld in Camden flood back when I hear this song. This (and some of the other songs on this list) came along at the height of my active gig and festival going. It also represents the huge contribution to the 2000s from Scandanavia. Following the path trodden by The Cardigans and The Wannadies before them came Soundtrack Of Our Lives, Leaves, Kings of Convenience, Erlend Øye, Alphabeat, Röyksopp, Peter Bjorn and John, The Raveonettes and Sondre Lerche to name but a few.
9: Muse – Plug In Baby
One of my biggest musical regrets is staying in the pub instead of going to see the first band on at a Feeder gig at the Portsmouth Pyramids in 1999. To be fair, Feeder were in the pub itself at the time! First support act on? You guessed it. So many Muse songs could make any greatest songs list, but Plug In Baby gets the vote for the awesome intro.
8: Kings of Leon – Molly’s Chambers
The date: 9th February 2003.
The place: Oxford Zodiac
The occasion: Kings of Leon’s first official gig in the UK (I believe they played a warm up at the High Wycombe White Horse the night before though)
One of those true “these guys are going to be huge” moments that don’t come along very often. Despite the assault of the senses of warm up band Winnebago Deal, Kings of Leon simply blew us away that night. Once again, there are other songs that could contend to represent them here, but Molly’s Chambers is the standout of Youth and Young Manhood for me.
7. The White Stripes – Seven Nation Army
Dum, dum dum dum, dum dum, dum. Dum, dum dum dum, dum dum, dum
The White Stripes fall into the same period of intensity as The Hives and The Strokes (see below) but have outlived and outperformed both. It was a hard choice between this and Fell In Love With A Girl. Or Hotel Yorba. Or The Hardest Button to Button. Or…
Honourable mention goes to the awesome Adam Freeland remix.
6: The Strokes – Last Nite
The Stone Roses of the decade? In any case, The Strokes were, undoubtedly, the coolest band on earth for a good period around 2001/2002, and they had the songs to justify that title. Last Nite reminds me of Friday nights at Nexus in Southampton (as, to be fair, do a lot of this top ten) Whilst not making the top ten, the Hard To Explain / Christina Aguilera Genie in a Bottle wins the “Best Mashup of the decade” prize, so here’s a bonus video:
5: The Libertines – Can’t Stop Me Now
Maybe another contender for the “Stone Roses” comparison. It was criminal (quite literally) that such a good band fell apart. Whilst probably not the best example of Pete Doherty’s lyrical genius, it is the intro and first verse of this song that stick so solidly in my mind and cause me to play it over and over again.
4: At The Drive In – One Armed Scissor
A band that just managed to get into this decade before splitting up. Only the fact that I’d been tipped off about them by a friend led me to the new bands tent at Reading 2000 to see them. Definitely one of the bands that had to be experienced live to be appreciated. In any case, One Armed Scissor is a track which defines them.
This station is non-operational.
3: Queens of the Stone Age – No one Knows
2: Foo Fighters – All My Life
These two songs are inextricably linked in my head. They represent yet more memories of Nexus, but also of meeting my now wife. Both are mosh-tastic air guitar anthems that saw me lose all sensibilities whenever they were played. In the case of No One Knows, it’s even one of those rare air-bass classics!
1: The Killers – Mr. Brightside
I was late to wake up to The Killers, and to be honest, this passed me by at first. However, it wormed it’s way into my consciousness as I heard more and more stuff from them. Proof of this is the fact that it remains the most scrobbled song by me on last.fm. Other Killers songs (most notably When You Were Young) could reasonably contend this list, but Mr. Brightside is the daddy. It is also one of those rare songs that has so entered the consciousness that, not only can I recite every word, it also takes on a different set of lyrics whenever I hear it in certain company. If you happen to be in a bar, club or football stadium and hear “I’m Norman Whiteside!” being shouted out by a bunch of drunken blokes then I’m probably not far away!
If you are maybe looking for a good value, well specced and excellent condition second hand desktop Mac, and you are in Ireland or the UK, then my 2.33Ghz, 3GB, 500GB HD 24″ iMac is up for auction on eBay
The plan is to replace it with a personal Macbook Pro as and when the next update for them comes along (hoping for Quad Core and maybe Bluray to come along) In the meantime all of my media/RAW images etc are stuck onto external drives and my work Macbook Pro will suffice for running my iTunes library and the odd bit of photo editing.
Given it is likely that the work one won’t get upgraded for at least two years (it is 18 months old) I’ll probably end up handing it back for somebody else to have when I get my own!
I work from home quite often, and also tend to be on calls to the US in evenings even when I’ve been in the office all day. As such I’ve always struggled to find the best possible way to get good quality on phone conferences, where quality involves:
Up to now, I’ve tended to just use the speakerphone on one of our Siemens DECT handsets, which has fallen down on a number of the above requirements. VOIP has tended to be unreliable for a variety of reasons, not all of which are in my control. A fixed phone is out of the equation due to the location of the only phone socket in the house and a desire not to have cables snaking all over the place.
Our DECT phones do have Bluetooth, but they have been really unreliable when it comes to using with a headset. So, I’ve been looking for other options for a while.
The one I am now trying is a Plantronics C70 wireless DECT headset:
This is basically a regular DECT phone, but without the form factor of a phone, having just a mic and speaker. It connects to a DECT base station like any other handset. As usual with Plantronics gear, the quality is good and it is quite attractive to look at as well as being comfortable to wear. The docking station is used for charging. A full charge takes around 3 hours and claims to give up to five hours talk time.
Whilst incoming calls can be answered by pressing a button on the side of the headset, the astute will wonder how it can make outgoing calls without a keypad? The answer is that you need to do this on another phone, then transfer the call to the headset unit. Most DECT systems support call transfer. This is relatively painless in real life and I find that I’ve dialed in, entered my passcode and transferred the call to the headset before I’m joined into my conference call. The main pain here is that you need to keep another handset nearby.
Once on a call quality is good and I’ve not had any complaints about my voice quality, hiss, echo or background noise. I used to get this all the time when using the handset speakerphone.
Volume controls are located on the earpiece and are easy enough to use. However, my main gripe is that there is no dedicated mute button. Muting/Un-muting yourself involves holding the volume down key for a couple of seconds. Firstly, holding down a button behind your ear can become uncomfortable. Secondly, it means there is an appreciable delay before I can mute/un-mute myself which leads to stuttering when trying to respond to a question or avoiding others hearing dog barks! Thirdly, there is no way to have visual indication of whether you are muted or un-muted, therefore they use a quick double-beep every 15 seconds to remind you when you are on mute. In practice this is not intrusive mainly because the volume of the beeps is low compared to the noise of the conference call. However, the main failing is that the same beep mechanism is used to confirm the mute/un-mute operation. Three mid-tone beeps for mute and three low-tone beeps for un-mute. Because these are so similar, and both very hard to hear over conversation, you end up being unsure about exactly what state you are in, or if the button press has worked. This leads to “can you hear me” moments. Plantronics should either: provide a dedicated mute button on the earpiece; increase the volume of the beeps; make one a different number of beeps; or have a visual indicator on the dock when you are muted (though I realise that requires some wireless communication to happen between the dock and earpiece)
My other gripe is that it is sometimes hit and miss when replacing the earpiece in the dock. Twice now I’ve gone to start the first call of the day by picking the earpiece out of the dock to find out it is completely drained as the it hadn’t connected completely to the charge connectors.
Overall though it has been good to use and has certainly greatly improved the experience of taking regular work calls from home. A few tweaks and it would be perfect.
We have recently started ordering dog stuff (including Orijen food) from Zoo Plus. They have a .ie site and a .co.uk site and we’ve ordered from both with the same account. It works out cheaper from the .co.uk site and delivery is still free over a certain amount
The order dispatch email gives a tracking number but no details about what to use to track it. It seems that they are based in Germany and the stuff so far is dispatched from there, so the DHL Germany site is the place to enter your tracking number. Just enter it in the Sendungsverfolgung box.
Alternatively, if you use the Delivery Status widget on OS X you can track DHL Germany shipments using that.