A First Day Mistake I’ve Never Seen on LinkedIn

LinkedIn is full of useful little articles about mistakes not to make in the world of work. However here’s one I’ve never seen mentioned. I’ve just had a kick-off meeting with a new client. In order to appear friendly and unthreatening I dressed in a dark green suit, with a brighter green shirt. Unbeknown to me, the brighter green is not only quite similar to one of the company’s logo colours, it’s also the colour they have chosen for many of the walls and much of the furniture at their offices. Take off my jacket, and I was approaching sniper levels of camouflage. There’s a lesson here somewhere…

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Scary Format Reversal

My penultimate purchase of music on vinyl was in 1989. I think, if memory at this distance serves, it was Running in the Family by Level 42. In the intervening 26 years I have felt very limited need to use Continue reading

Saturday, May 30, 2015 in Thoughts on the World

Edge of Silence

We’ve just finished our 30th anniversary viewing of Edge of Darkness. I must now have seen the series at least 10 times, but in this case familiarity breeds respect. Like the best Shakespeare play or Verdi opera the series rewards Continue reading

Friday, May 29, 2015 in Photography, Reviews, Thoughts on the World

Next Generation SOA

This book sets out to provide a concise overview of the current state of, and best practices for, Service Oriented Architecture. While it may achieve that for some managerial readers, it is simultaneously too general for those with more background, Continue reading

Thursday, May 28, 2015 in Agile & Architecture, Reviews

Standardising the Mac Keyboard

My MacBook Pro is, ironically, the best portable PC I’ve owned. The Big Old Alien is slightly faster and more powerful, but you’d never use the word "portable" about it without gritted teeth, and since the PC world went to Continue reading

Wednesday, May 27, 2015 in PCs/Laptops, Thoughts on the World

Schizo!

It has been said that the ideal car for Darth Vader would be an original Mercedes CLS, in black. I think I have discovered the ideal car for Dr. Henry Jekyll, and Mr. Hyde! Mercedes themselves acknowledge the dual personality Continue reading

Friday, May 15, 2015 in Thoughts on the World

Lotsa Changes!

I’ve taken advantage of a bit of spare time to sort out our web sites, and in particular fix a few things which didn’t work quite right after our enforced emergency upgrade in February. Hopefully you should see everything working Continue reading

Thursday, May 14, 2015 in Website & Blog

A Visitation

Great excitement chez nous last night. The security lights went on and we spotted not one but two hedgehogs snuffling around in the courtyard. Fortunately they stayed round long enough to get a few photos. The security light provided good Continue reading

Sunday, May 10, 2015 in Photography, Thoughts on the World

A Failure of Curation

We visit a lot of photography exhibitions. The majority are inspiring or thought-provoking, and well worth the effort of the photographers, the presenters, and the attendees. Along the way there has been the odd disappointment: sometimes we just don’t connect Continue reading

Sunday, April 5, 2015 in Photography, Thoughts on the World

Normal Service Being Resumed

Apologies to all for the interruption to our websites and email service around last weekend. My server was hacked and used to launch DDoS attacks, and had to be taken offline and rebuilt with the latest software versions. Fortunately I Continue reading

Saturday, February 28, 2015 in Website & Blog

Efficient Fuzzy Matching at Word Level

I’ve just solved a tricky problem with what I think is quite an elegant solution, and thought it would be interesting to share it. I’m building a system in which I have to process fault data. Sometimes this comes with Continue reading

Friday, January 16, 2015 in Agile & Architecture, Code & Development

Positively On Fire…

Apologies, my first blog post of the New Year really should have wished you all the very best for 2015. Please accept this as a pseudo-first post, with said wishes. I also just wanted to post this shot from yesterday. Continue reading

Monday, January 12, 2015 in Photography, Thoughts on the World