A simple matter of…

Well today my nice new [http://www.smop.co.uk/album/2008/Food/tn/IMG_0602.JPG.html shiny toys] arrived from [http://www.smop.co.uk/album/2008/Food/tn/IMG_0603.JPG.html Has Bean] (I have to say, Steve has been very helpful keeping me informed and being patient whilst I sorted out the order for the three of us who have ordered one). My [http://www.smop.co.uk/album/2008/Food/tn/IMG_0604.JPG.html first coffee] was very nice, I’m sure I’ll get much [...]

Well that was a fun weekend! [http://www.smop.co.uk/album/2008/FOSDEM/ FOSDEM 2008 photos] uploaded. A big “thank you” to the FOSDEM crew, all the groups who organised talks and those who presented talks. Generally the presentation quality was very good. The timekeeping was _far_ better than the previous two times I’ve attended (2005,2006) – only one talk was [...]

(As Tony would say) Well this weekend I’m off to the wonderful land of [http://fosdem.org/2008/ FOSDEM] in Brussels, Belgium. This is the biggest Open Source conference in Europe and is always well worth attending. As they say, “200 talks, 4000 geeks”. I won’t mention the beer. As usual we’ll be staying in the [http://www.novotel.com/fichehotel/gb/nov/2122/fiche_hotel.shtml Novotel [...]

The explanation was “it’s a team building thing – we are going to have a pointless meeting each month”. “Only rule is no work, no kids (that’s _your_ fault)” You may have seen that I’m currently seeking an Espresso machine. Well there are few coffee fanatics at a customer and so obviously I’ve asked their [...]

An engineer would (I hope) have spotted the [http://www.hogyros.de/?q=node/374 problem]. If you link three gears like this, they cannot turn.

Sun has now [http://www.sun.com/aboutsun/pr/2008-02/sunflash.20080212.1.xml bought Innotek]. Another company goes down the tube then. I’m sorry but I have very, very little faith in Sun. If I was an enterprise customer I’d just worry like crazy – they seem to have no real roadmap – other than one consisting of huge amounts of hype which you’d [...]

I struggled most of Friday and for a few more hours tonight (and probably more time last week I can’t recall) on setting up [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_File_System GFS] for work. GFS is a cluster filesystem – where more than one box share the filesystem amongst themselves – useful for HA (High Availability) clustering. Now an additional complexity [...]

Had a lovely time at Andy and Vicky’s up in Oxford this weekend helping out with some of the DIY jobs to do before they add a new member to their family. I’ve uploaded a [http://www.smop.co.uk/album/2008/Andy_and_Vickys_Feb/ few photos] to my album – including some of the [http://www.smop.co.uk/album/2008/Andy_and_Vickys_Feb/tn/IMG_0549.JPG.html fabulous] [http://www.smop.co.uk/album/2008/Andy_and_Vickys_Feb/tn/IMG_0548.JPG.html nursery]. Fun jobs included: * running [...]

My gallery uses a plugin to display [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exif EXIF] information about the photo (technical details as well as useful stuff like the date the photo was taken). Some friends have said that they find this a bit obtrusive so I’ve hacked in a 2 second delay before it displays the information. If you also use [...]

Today I finally remembered to take my camera along to one of our customers. Since I’m only there a few days a week I don’t have a proper desk, however the desk I do have is right against the window – I only have to look up (or down since it’s on the 7th floor) [...]