Monthly Archives: February 2006

General

Apple and Sony Ericsson Announce New Products

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Whilst you might expect that the Apple announcement today would be the most exciting, I’m with The Unofficial Apple Weblog in thinking that after all the rumours, it was a bit of a letdown. Really the iPod cases and Intel based Mac Mini’s haven’t really hit the ‘I want one’ buttons for me at all.

The same can’t be said for the announcement today from Sony Ericsson. As you’ve probably seen in some of my recent postings, I’ve been being tempted by the upcoming Sony Ericsson P990 Smartphone, which seems to offer a pretty effective combination of PDA and phone, in a reasonable sized handset, something that could replace both my K750, and Dell PDA. However today, as predicted by All About Symbian last week Sony Ericsson have announced the K790 and K800 phones, essentially the same phone, but for 2G and 3G networks.

The reason it is so tempting is that whilst the underlying OS is much the same as the Sony Ericsson P990 Smartphone, this phone includes a much better camera, indeed they are selling it under the Cybershot brand that Sony use on their normal digital cameras. It looks to be not much larger in terms of size than my existing K750, indeed the K800 has been touted as the replacement for the K750 in the range. About the only significant missing features that I might find useful are that there is no support for Wi-Fi, but that is only really a nice-to-have, and that it lacks the touch-screen – being driven instead with a regular phone style keypad. So decisions decisions, do I go for the smartphone, or the better camera… I guess I’ll have to wait for both to be released and compare!

MobLog

New Job, New Desk, New Traffic Jams

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New Desk

So after two days at the new job, I thought I’d share a picture of my new desk.

Each of the developers at my new job are equipped with a laptop, plus docking station, monitor and wireless keyboard and mouse. The idea is that the developers have something easily portable to take out on site if needed, but when docked, it also means that effectively you get a dual screen setup to work with. Desk space wise it is much better than what I had at SSE. The office is entirely equipped with modern curved desks, so even compared with the large desks at SSE there is plenty of space. Compared to the small desks that most of the guys on my team at SSE work with it is positively palatial.

I was expecting the first week to basically be training on the various products and bits of software that the company sells. However this morning, after a brief introduction yesterday, I found myself chucked in at the deep end with a bit of coding for a customer, in VB.Net no less. As is the way with small software companies, there is a bit of rush on, and it’s all hands to the pumps to get a project out the door. So despite the fact that it’s not in my skill-set, (although since I have VB6 and C#, so it’s not massively difficult) it’s a question of picking up a book, and getting it done. Anyway, by the end of the day I had a custom control up and running, and had only tripped over a couple of the differences between VB.Net and C#. Certainly it does look like I’m going to get quite a variety of different languages and platforms to play with, as before I went home tonight there was a discussion about a potential customer who are involved in publishing, and therefore run their business entirely on Mac rather than PC.

Wokingham Traffic Queues

About the only frustration at the moment is nothing to do with the job, but more that, thanks to South-East Water, the journey is not nearly as quick as expected.

Rather than the expected 15 minute journey, the past couple of days it has taken between 30 and 40 minutes, thanks to the closure of a short stretch of the A321 near Tesco. As a result, everything coming in to Wokingham from the south west side is being directed across the level crossing, and not surprisingly it is tailing back, resulting in virtual grid-lock at rush hour. It’s not going to get much better either as once they finish the three weeks on this stretch, they then spend another thirteen weeks digging up the road further up the Finchampstead Road. Whilst South-East Water is absolutely right, the work has to be done or risk a main bursting, it is still going to be a long sixteen weeks…

Life on Mars, Movies & TV

Still on Mars

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I guess we kind of knew he wasn’t going to wake up, the news that a second series of Life on Mars has been commissioned really meant that he couldn’t leave 1973.

Having said that, the final episode of the first series of Life on Mars was certainly a gripping hour, as Sam discovered the truth about his father, and also finally pieced together his flashbacks.

Following on from the arrest of the local gangland boss back in episode four, rival gangs are fighting for control, one being led by the Morton brothers. As part of the investigation the police find Sam’s father in a hotel room, and the whole episode is Sam trying to find explanations for his father’s behaviour, as more and more of the evidence points towards him being heavily mixed up in the gang. Sam believes that his father is the key to his coma – if only he can persuade his father to stay, then he will wake up.

The finale takes place at a family wedding, the wedding where Sam last saw his father, shortly before he vanished. As Sam follows his father as he walks away from the wedding, he realises that his flashbacks are this same walk, the walk he took as a child, and again, he sees his father beating up an undercover policewoman – Annie – but this time he intervenes. As he gets closer and closer to the truth, he starts to hear more and more of what is going on in 2006. However, he realises that he cannot win – there is no way that he can get his father to stay. If he leaves, the young Sam and his mother will be alone, but if he doesn’t leave, he will be arrested for his criminal activities.

Sam lets his father escape, and with his father, go the voices from 2006, and Sam is left in 1973.

All in all, it has been a superb series. On paper, a drama set in what seems to be someone’s coma based fantasy sounds a decidedly odd premise, however in practice it has worked well. On the one level you have the basic seventies police drama, but on another you get some decidedly subtle moments. These vary from the anachronisms, such as Sam always wearing a modern watch, to points where you don’t know whether the other characters in Sam’s universe are his subconscious, or whatever, but suddenly they seem to be talking to Sam out of time, knowing that he is in his own past. For example in tonight’s episode on a couple of occasions Sam talks to Gene, his DCI, and whilst Sam is talking about waking up from his coma, Gene is talking about his life in 1973 – or is he?

In some ways these scenes are very reminiscent of the conversations of another time-travelling Sam, Sam Beckett in the final episode of Quantum Leap, where Al the barman tells Sam that he is leaping because he wants to do so – in the same way Gene, and other characters have told Sam Tyler that he is staying because he wants to stay – because he has things he wants to do.

Certainly we’ve got no objection if he wants to stay – as we are really quite looking forward to seeing more of Sam and his life in 1973 when they are shown next year!

MobLog

Last Day at SSE

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My Desk at SSE

So today, after almost four years, I’ve finally left SSE, so no more long daily commute down to the South Coast, which with the arrival of snow yesterday evening made me really rather glad!

My last day was pretty well just clearing up. I spent the morning going through all the rubbish on my hard drive so that whoever gets the machine after me has at least some space, although they’d do well to just rebuild the whole thing from scratch, as it hasn’t had anything much done to the install of windows for at least a couple of years, and it’s a bit slow to say the least! This afternoon was the physical clearing up of going through the stacks of paper on my desk and in the drawers, fishing out the stuff that was useful, and disposing of the rest. As per usual I didn’t actually leave on time, as I waited around whilst Rob put a build of the application I’ve been working on for the past few months onto the test server, so as to test the results of the changes we had made over the past few weeks to reduce the memory usage. Certainly with the brief chance I got to try it out it seemed to have solved the problem, but unfortunately had hit the performance somewhat. Having said that, between myself, Rob and Darren we had managed to clear the majority of the outstanding incidents from the last round of testing, which is what I had said I would do before I went. I would have liked to have seen it onto the live box, but unfortunately the memory issues proved to be a lot more complicated to solve than expected, thanks to the joys of Infragistics.

My SSE ID Badge

Interestingly, the news this morning did an item about the demise of the carriage clock as the leaving gift of choice, so I was quite interested to see what, if anything, the guys from work had got for me. Thankfully I was spared a loudspeaker announced presentation, and instead was given the card and present over lunch. It seems that in much the same way as with my birthday and Christmas presents, I lived up to my reputation of being difficult to buy for. As I don’t drink, they avoided the old staple of getting alcohol, and in the end plumped for book tokens, which I suspect will end up going towards computer books – if Beth doesn’t get to them first!

What has been quite interesting over the past month since I resigned has been quite how many people have admitted to not being happy. I’ve said before that there are two very distinct groups in the IT department at SSE – the long-term people who are generally in the final salary pension scheme, and then a pretty regular turnover of more recent arrivals who usually depart before the notice period changes at five years. The ones in the final salary scheme seem pretty well resigned to the long haul, however in the recent arrivals I know at least two or three in the team who are actively looking, indeed one admitted that he turned down a job offering a 25% pay rise only a few days after I resigned. A number of people said that they were surprised I hadn’t gone sooner with the journey I’ve been doing every day. In general there seems to be some uncertainty as to where peoples roles are going, particularly with the increasing presence of Infosys and TCS staff working on projects around the building. Anyway, I’m all clear of that corporate politics stuff now.

Health and Safety

So what will I miss about SSE. Well they are a nice bunch of people, and certainly there are a number of them I’ll miss having lunch with every day. Job security wise, it was certainly a good place to ride out some rough times in the IT industry. However what I won’t miss are some of the big company stuff such as the slow procurement processes that have to be signed off by multiple layers of management, and the real problems getting things done quickly. I also won’t miss the obsessions, such as the stair safety where at times people would be fined for not holding on to the handrail, and the rest of the time you had posters on every landing warning you to hold on. In fact there were signs everywhere, from those on the stairs, to signs in the toilets asking you to keep the blinds closed so as not to upset the team of women on the ground floor who could see the frosted window of the gents toilet from their desks. I also won’t miss my security pass, which combined with having to identify myself by my payroll number a lot of the time did sometimes make you feel like a number. (I am not a number, I am a free man!)

Anyway, I’ll finish off with one of the comments that was put in my leaving card:

Parole at last! Let us know what the secret is…

Pictures

Parking

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Cones 1

Like most office buildings nowadays, the building where I work has problems with parking. Even with a large car park, we quite frequently run out of spaces.

However, next door to us is the local football club, who have come to a reciprocal agreement with my company that allows our staff to park in their car park during the day, in return for our car park being used for football supporters when there is a game. As a result we get regular reminders about parking in marked bays only, and there are double yellow lines and cones in all the various spots where people tend to park that cause obstructions either to other staff, or to the various delivery lorries that turn up during the day.

Having said that, despite all the cones and lines, you still get people who park in the crazy places anyway, and cheekily move the cones out the way. This is a shot of one effort that I came across today. Incidentally, I’ve just moved my car out of the empty space on the right, since the whole reason the cones are put there is because with the green Vectra there, the red Citroen has a difficult job getting out, and it’s either the Vectra, or the car in the space next door (i.e. mine) is in the firing line if they misjudge the manoeuvre trying to get out.

Cones 2

However, what is really impressive is what the Vectra owner has done with the cones – rather than push them to one side, or stick them in the hedge, they seem to have quite deliberated moved the cones from where they were, and then put them back next to the car. Oh and have a look at the front of the Vectra – parked in the hedge in order to fit in too.

The final cheek is shown in the picture I snapped off on my way home. The driver of the Vectra appears to have just moved the cones out into the middle and left them, in a hurry to get home I guess. However bear in mind over all of this, that barely a minute away, right next door in fact, is a big empty car park that doesn’t involve moving cones around, doesn’t run the risk of someone hitting your car, and doesn’t involve parking in a hedge…

Parking

However it has to be said, that whilst I think that it’s just a bit of a cheek moving the cones, and somewhat of a pain that I had to move my car (although since the Citroen owner appeared to be working late I probably wouldn’t have needed to), this final picture has to be seen to be believed.

This was taken on a trip we made to Peterborough back in 2003, and we came across this in the hotel car park just as we were leaving. It always amazes me somewhat, as I can’t explain quite how the Honda got into this position in the first place, whether they were going forwards or in reverse, as we only came across the aftermath. Suffice to say that they were just going into the hotel to try and find the owner of the Rover…