"Temporary Retirement"

....."I" has left the building!

Am on a 3 week break between jobs. Great :) Bit of shooting, exercise, motorbiking and general catch-up on life.

Some of my friends call it "temporary retirement" which i quite like.

Change is in the air

I'm in my last week of work at my current employer! I have been here 2yrs and 8 months. Sacked? Made redundant? Bankruptcy?

No. I am one of the lucky ones. A new job found me. Started talking to some folks back in October. Interest started to pick up then i started doing some of the chasing and hey presto i start on march 23rd. I will be working in the UK as employee #1 though i do know some of the folks in the USA. All seem very nice. Looks like a good opportunity. Good company, right attitude. What more can you do to check? Nothing. You just have to start and see what happens.

Don't be afraid of change!

Funniest book reference

I'm changing jobs and decided to read up on distributed systems. The image to the left is of a book i purchased. The book is very well written and really hits the spot in covering a complex topic. It's hard to find a good book that covers a wide range of sub-topics really well. I recommend it.

However, the thing i wanted to bring your attention to is one of the references inside this book. Here it is verbatim:

"Alonso, et al., Web Services: Concepts, Architectures and Applications.
The popularity of intricacy of Web services has led to an endless stream of documents, many of which can be characterized only as garbage. In contrast, this is one of the very few books that gives a crystal-clear description of what Web services are all about. Highly recommended as an introduction to the novice, an overview for those who had read too much of the garbage, and an example for those producing the garbage"

What a beautiful reference. It is also a great piece of marketing as i went and bought a copy off amazon.co.uk! In a couple of weeks i will let you know if Alonso, et al live up to the reference. IN the meantime back to tanenbaum and van steen.

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow.....

The UK does not do snow! We had alot of it this week. Everyone's been on about the travel situation, councils are running out of grit....all fairly negative.

But on the positive side. It was beautifully sight to see. I also couldn't believe the sheer quiet around. People were walking and what traffic there was did not make much road noise. There have also been nice stories of neighbours helping out elderly relatives. One example: a roofing contractor in the next village couldn't work so he sent his blokes around to clear paths of all the elderly folks in the village and then they took on the local kids at snowballs. isn't that great?

Town planners!

I was in Seattle recently and i came across this motorcycle parking. Yes - that is parking for THIRTY motorcycles. They obviously make small motorcycles in America! Unfortunately i could not find a way to demonstrate the scale but it's it's safe to say that you might be able to get 2 bikes parked within the yellow triangle. I would love to see how the fit 30 in!?!

Sorry for the slightly blurred photo. I was laughing so much when i took the picture!

is there a right way to do things?

People get hung up on the right or wrong way to do something and can waste alot of time arguing about it.

As #2 son illustrates, just get on and do it and figure it out as you go along.....it's sometime alot more fun that way!

2009 is GO!

Can't believe that it's been nearly 6 weeks since i put something up on the blog. Usual excuses - busy at work with year end, birthdays, Christmas, back to work.....

Anyway, 2009 is here and we are ready to "GO, GO, GO" as Murray Walker used to say! OK, not my best link to the image but i thought i would start off 2009 with an image of a Christmas present. Pedal go-karts are in things. Both boys got 'em. Here's #1 son with his kart. Blow-up tyres, bit of weight and the right gearing and this thing fly's along. Steering is direct, seat is adjustable (its on rails for god's sake!) and it's well built (by the germans - who else?)

Disappointment....

I have approval's stamped from other half to go buy a MacBook Pro. the VAT dropped today by 2.5% so a little money off...and we are coming to the christmas time with a little RnR....perfect sometime to spent getting everything sorted out/moved across and some much needed time editing photo's ....except i read the following report : http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2008/11/29/nvidia-heat-causing-macbooks

Bugger. Probably wait till Jan09 before i invest in a Mac (just the pain of moving stuff onto new platform - getting photoshop moved etc) i don't want to move twice if they update the video chipset as it looks like a h/w swap!

Point and click?

It is 150 years since the death of Robert Howlett - the young photographer who took this iconic image of engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel.

Robert Howlett died - in December 1858 - from a fever, most likely caused by exposure to the poisonous photographic chemicals that he used.

Intrigued by how the Brunel photograph was created, photojournalist David White set out - using non toxic methods - to recreate some of Howlett's images.

With a specially-made camera, he travelled across south and west England to view Brunel's extensive legacy. Here is his story.

see the video at http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_7753000/7753202.stm

just makes you feel lucky to be able to pick up a relatively lightweight camera, point, click and hey presto!

Genius

If you use itunes and haven't upgraded to version 8 - do it NOW! There is a new feature called genius - it takes the hassle out of one of the time consuming activities within itunes - creating playlists.

With genius, you select a track, hit the genius button and it will create a playlist. I've had 5 people try it out and they have all had the same reaction "that's great - how does it do it?"

Ah, its black magic i tell yer!

Frankly i don't care. It does the job very well and builds great compilations. After a while you see if you can fool it by hitting the "refresh" button again and again. It seems to come up with and endless combination of tracks that sit well together. I have to admit i have over 7000 tracks in itunes so i do have a good base for it to work from. But genius is a better DJ than i ever will be!