My High Tech Blog
Everyone has a Blog it appears. OK this is mine. My professional Blog. In fact I have two others on another site, and no I am not going to tell you where. Those are anon and will stay that way thank you very much. Not sure what I am going to write here. I'll just go with the flow.
Saturday 7 April 2007, 6:36 PM
Read the Friendly Manual (£14.99 in all good bookshops)
In the back of a bookshop today, all sorts on display, hard back, paper back, cappuccino, latte. I wandered into the computer section seeing if there were any good subjects to try and learn at home. I'm doing very well, HTML, VBA, C++, Visual Basic, PHP+MySQL, USB even a book about audio DSP that I imported from the States via Amazon, but I've lent that to a friend and I don't suspect I will be seeing that again for a while.
Sadly, I've not finished any of them. All goes well, then my real life gets in the way. Roll on a couple of weeks and I've lost the thread and find it hard to pick it up again.
So today I convince myself that I don't need any more books for the moment, and was about to turn away when a couple of books on the shelf catch my eye. a whole book about iPod and iTunes for £13.99. Next to it was a tome about Nero 7 for £17.99. My initial thought is why would anyone need a book about these? The iPod's main selling point is its ease of use, iTunes is a little less intuitive in my mind, but I expect most people can get by. Nero 7, is a commercial package, doesn't it come with a manual, on the CD if nothing else ?
I then look again along the shelves that I had just spent 5 minutes staring at. I see all the rows of books for Microsoft XP, Vista and Office, even books about bits of MS Office (Word, Exel, Access). On the Amazon site, the Recommended Retail Price of MS Office Professional 2007 is a penny short of £450. If I was to pay that sort of price for a top of the range DVD player. I wouldn't want to have to go to WH Smiths to get the instructions.
So next time you advise someone who has just asked in your mind a fairly basic question about their computer, don't tell them to RTFM. Waterstones probably don't have it in stock yet.
Sadly, I've not finished any of them. All goes well, then my real life gets in the way. Roll on a couple of weeks and I've lost the thread and find it hard to pick it up again.
So today I convince myself that I don't need any more books for the moment, and was about to turn away when a couple of books on the shelf catch my eye. a whole book about iPod and iTunes for £13.99. Next to it was a tome about Nero 7 for £17.99. My initial thought is why would anyone need a book about these? The iPod's main selling point is its ease of use, iTunes is a little less intuitive in my mind, but I expect most people can get by. Nero 7, is a commercial package, doesn't it come with a manual, on the CD if nothing else ?
I then look again along the shelves that I had just spent 5 minutes staring at. I see all the rows of books for Microsoft XP, Vista and Office, even books about bits of MS Office (Word, Exel, Access). On the Amazon site, the Recommended Retail Price of MS Office Professional 2007 is a penny short of £450. If I was to pay that sort of price for a top of the range DVD player. I wouldn't want to have to go to WH Smiths to get the instructions.
So next time you advise someone who has just asked in your mind a fairly basic question about their computer, don't tell them to RTFM. Waterstones probably don't have it in stock yet.
Thursday 5 April 2007, 1:31 PM
That's the way it should work
A long story so I hope you're sitting comfortably.
I sat down to dinner with my beloved the other day. I felt cold, I asked "is it me or is it cold in here?" Her reply was "its is cold isn't it". Upon investigation I found out that the central heating wasn't working.
OK being a practical type of person I decided to do a bit of investigating. I looked through the little window on the front of the gas boiler. No pilot flame. So I followed the attached instructions on lighting it again, but it wouldn't take. No gas perhaps. I ring the Gas people helpline. and ask if they know of a problem in my area. I am then given the 3rd degree. The lady at the other end starts sounding a bit serious. She then tells me to go and switch off the gas from the main valve next to the meter. then come back to the phone and tell her I've done it. She then instructs me to not operate equipment, switch on or off lights, open windows and an engineer will be with me within 2 hours.
Sure enough an hour and a half later there is a knock on the door (note he didn't press the door bell). After a bit of fiddling he declares no emergency, my boiler is on the blink. He gets it going for me but advises me to get it seen to properly.
I have a maintenance contract with British Gas. who used to supply me, in fact probably all of us, with Gas. That was about 3 suppliers ago. So next morning I ring them up. An engineer can be with me that afternoon. Sadly I have to be out. so we agree a visit for the next morning instead.
Next morning my door bell goes dong! (It should be ding dong but the batteries must be low). A little old man is standing there saying he is from British Gas (and he had a blue van and jumper to prove it too). I know not very PC, but he was male, smaller than me (and I'm not tall) and had a mature look about him. That said he went to work on my boiler, did the obligatory tut tut noises that domestic maintenance people do and found the culprit, a worn out thermocouple. Within 20 minutes he had replaced it with a brand new one. I just hope it lasts 2 months which is when I will be ripping out most of the central heating system as part of an extension I am going to have built.
Anyway, the point of my post today. Having done the work, the engineer then proceeded to get a laptop out of his bag. One of those Panasonic types designed to be dropped out of a Hercules with no ill effects. I ask him what he thinks of it, he says he knows nothing about computers and this is what head office gives him. He went on to say that his daughter recently gave him and his wife an ipod each and that he was really impressed with how easy it was to operate. A few moments later, out of another bag a printer, obviously connected by wireless of some type, produced a printout for me of the record of work done. He then closed the lid of the laptop, picked up his kit and said good bye.
After he left, I realised a self confessed computer illiterate had just opened a laptop, entered some details and produced a printout. Total time between lid up and lid down, 1 minute.
Why can't it always be like that?
I sat down to dinner with my beloved the other day. I felt cold, I asked "is it me or is it cold in here?" Her reply was "its is cold isn't it". Upon investigation I found out that the central heating wasn't working.
OK being a practical type of person I decided to do a bit of investigating. I looked through the little window on the front of the gas boiler. No pilot flame. So I followed the attached instructions on lighting it again, but it wouldn't take. No gas perhaps. I ring the Gas people helpline. and ask if they know of a problem in my area. I am then given the 3rd degree. The lady at the other end starts sounding a bit serious. She then tells me to go and switch off the gas from the main valve next to the meter. then come back to the phone and tell her I've done it. She then instructs me to not operate equipment, switch on or off lights, open windows and an engineer will be with me within 2 hours.
Sure enough an hour and a half later there is a knock on the door (note he didn't press the door bell). After a bit of fiddling he declares no emergency, my boiler is on the blink. He gets it going for me but advises me to get it seen to properly.
I have a maintenance contract with British Gas. who used to supply me, in fact probably all of us, with Gas. That was about 3 suppliers ago. So next morning I ring them up. An engineer can be with me that afternoon. Sadly I have to be out. so we agree a visit for the next morning instead.
Next morning my door bell goes dong! (It should be ding dong but the batteries must be low). A little old man is standing there saying he is from British Gas (and he had a blue van and jumper to prove it too). I know not very PC, but he was male, smaller than me (and I'm not tall) and had a mature look about him. That said he went to work on my boiler, did the obligatory tut tut noises that domestic maintenance people do and found the culprit, a worn out thermocouple. Within 20 minutes he had replaced it with a brand new one. I just hope it lasts 2 months which is when I will be ripping out most of the central heating system as part of an extension I am going to have built.
Anyway, the point of my post today. Having done the work, the engineer then proceeded to get a laptop out of his bag. One of those Panasonic types designed to be dropped out of a Hercules with no ill effects. I ask him what he thinks of it, he says he knows nothing about computers and this is what head office gives him. He went on to say that his daughter recently gave him and his wife an ipod each and that he was really impressed with how easy it was to operate. A few moments later, out of another bag a printer, obviously connected by wireless of some type, produced a printout for me of the record of work done. He then closed the lid of the laptop, picked up his kit and said good bye.
After he left, I realised a self confessed computer illiterate had just opened a laptop, entered some details and produced a printout. Total time between lid up and lid down, 1 minute.
Why can't it always be like that?
Wednesday 4 April 2007, 11:16 PM
Live from the Metropolitan Line...... Well, almost
Still no mobile ZDNet, though that's my fault. I haven't made any effort to find it......yet.
Thought I would give a nod towards mobile connectivity by writing this on my PDA on the tube. You know the one, the HTC TyTN disguised as an Orange mobile phone. I know it's all a bit cliché, there was once a time when the world was full of people with the latest mobile communication device riding around on trains proclaiming the fact that they could move and write letters and articles at the same time. Fortunately no longer while they are driving.
The main reason I went for this PDA was the slide out keyboard. I wanted to be able to write letters, articles and long emails while out and about, using a pocket device. Well I can do that, but there is always a compromise. I hear the arguments in the R&D office now.
"Too many shifted functions",
"OK we need more keys",
"the keys are too small now"
"make the device larger"
"it doesn't fit in the pocket anymore"
"OK we make it smaller, and use shifted functions"
And around we go again.
Lets be understanding about the shifted functions, I know to keep the keys a reasonable size, modifier keys are going to be needed to get to the lesser used characters, but I ask you, why does the comer have to be a double button press?
So as I sit here waiting for the train to pull into Baker Street. I wish I could go back to my Psion 5mx. Now that was a mobile computer. It even had a programing language (OPL). Back then, instead of annoying everyone with "hey I'm sending you an email while on the tube" I was quietly writing programs. Not very good ones I grant you. I was never going to make a fortune by selling them. But they did things and it kept me occupied.
Its all very well writing Blogs on the train, but can I upload them? Ah I've not got that far yet. On my private blogs I can. The site allows me to email the blog in. I just have to remember to send it in using my own email address instead of the company. Otherwise my blog entry will have the company rider attached at the bottom. You know the thing, the bit that says if you receive this email by mistake, will you promise not to read it.
So its just going to have to wait until I get to a main machine (probably this evening when I get home), I will upload it then.
Thought I would give a nod towards mobile connectivity by writing this on my PDA on the tube. You know the one, the HTC TyTN disguised as an Orange mobile phone. I know it's all a bit cliché, there was once a time when the world was full of people with the latest mobile communication device riding around on trains proclaiming the fact that they could move and write letters and articles at the same time. Fortunately no longer while they are driving.
The main reason I went for this PDA was the slide out keyboard. I wanted to be able to write letters, articles and long emails while out and about, using a pocket device. Well I can do that, but there is always a compromise. I hear the arguments in the R&D office now.
"Too many shifted functions",
"OK we need more keys",
"the keys are too small now"
"make the device larger"
"it doesn't fit in the pocket anymore"
"OK we make it smaller, and use shifted functions"
And around we go again.
Lets be understanding about the shifted functions, I know to keep the keys a reasonable size, modifier keys are going to be needed to get to the lesser used characters, but I ask you, why does the comer have to be a double button press?
So as I sit here waiting for the train to pull into Baker Street. I wish I could go back to my Psion 5mx. Now that was a mobile computer. It even had a programing language (OPL). Back then, instead of annoying everyone with "hey I'm sending you an email while on the tube" I was quietly writing programs. Not very good ones I grant you. I was never going to make a fortune by selling them. But they did things and it kept me occupied.
Its all very well writing Blogs on the train, but can I upload them? Ah I've not got that far yet. On my private blogs I can. The site allows me to email the blog in. I just have to remember to send it in using my own email address instead of the company. Otherwise my blog entry will have the company rider attached at the bottom. You know the thing, the bit that says if you receive this email by mistake, will you promise not to read it.
So its just going to have to wait until I get to a main machine (probably this evening when I get home), I will upload it then.
Monday 2 April 2007, 11:25 PM
Well Hello
Since I've just created this Blog, I suppose I should write an entry now. I got to know about ZDNet as a channel on AvantGo for my PDA. A good source of IT news. Then suddenly it stopped. No more news and for no apparent reason.
After getting over the withdraw symptoms, I go hunting to find out where ZDNet has gone. Well ZDNet is still happening, but not on AvantGo. A shame as I spend most of my time out and about instead of sitting in front of desktop PCs. I can access the ZDNet website on my company Blackberry, but it is slow and I have to wade through loads of website waffle before I reach the nitty gritty IT news. I find out today there is a Blackberry solution for accessing ZDNet, but it means downloading an application and guess what, my company's IT provider has locked it so hard down, I'm lucky to get emails on the damn thing. In fact it is so useless, I try not to take it with me when I go out. It's not the habit forming crackberry for me. Perhaps I should consider myself lucky.
So The Blackberry solution is a non starter. Perhaps I should try my other belt worn gadget. My HTC TyTN. Well I assume that is what it is. It is in fact a badged Orange phone, the SPV M3100, but it does everything a TyTN does and all the buttons are in the same place, they are just a different shape that all. The main difference between the Blackberry and the PDA/phone is that the PDA is mine, not the company's. I pay the bill, I say what it can and can't do. OK Orange has a say in the matter, but I'm the customer, and I am always right.
So on my list of things to do, when I get the time, is to try and get ZDNet IT news downloaded onto my Windows 5 PDA phone. I'll let you know how I get on.
After getting over the withdraw symptoms, I go hunting to find out where ZDNet has gone. Well ZDNet is still happening, but not on AvantGo. A shame as I spend most of my time out and about instead of sitting in front of desktop PCs. I can access the ZDNet website on my company Blackberry, but it is slow and I have to wade through loads of website waffle before I reach the nitty gritty IT news. I find out today there is a Blackberry solution for accessing ZDNet, but it means downloading an application and guess what, my company's IT provider has locked it so hard down, I'm lucky to get emails on the damn thing. In fact it is so useless, I try not to take it with me when I go out. It's not the habit forming crackberry for me. Perhaps I should consider myself lucky.
So The Blackberry solution is a non starter. Perhaps I should try my other belt worn gadget. My HTC TyTN. Well I assume that is what it is. It is in fact a badged Orange phone, the SPV M3100, but it does everything a TyTN does and all the buttons are in the same place, they are just a different shape that all. The main difference between the Blackberry and the PDA/phone is that the PDA is mine, not the company's. I pay the bill, I say what it can and can't do. OK Orange has a say in the matter, but I'm the customer, and I am always right.
So on my list of things to do, when I get the time, is to try and get ZDNet IT news downloaded onto my Windows 5 PDA phone. I'll let you know how I get on.
