13 Thursday Aug 2009
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We picked this video up through a friend (which has most definitely gone viral). Given my little brother’s forth coming wedding, I think there is a challenge for him to rival this video:
11 Tuesday Aug 2009
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AJAX, development, software, Technology, UI, web
With WebUI’s getting more like thick applications as a result of the increasing adoption and sophistication of AJAX use I came across a website that does a good job of pulling together AJAX lessons, examples and tips tricks called www.ajaxlessons.com. Its a link’d recommedn adding to any web developers list of dev resources.
04 Tuesday Aug 2009
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Having had a brief business trip to Palo Alto – I had a couple of hours with colleagues in San Fransisco itself. I managed to snag a few snaps before enduring a return flight with United.
Weather as you can see wasn’t great in the city itself although down the coast in Palo alto the weather was lovely. Apparently every July/August the city and coastal areas suffer from regularly fog that can last all day.
04 Tuesday Aug 2009
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More of my photography has been published. This time as part of the support to the Basingstoke Tappers I did some photography at their Summer Show. The photos have then been used by a local paper (Basingstoke Gazette) who published an article about the show. The annoying thing is that they have assumed copyright on the photos given to them for the article and are now trying to sell them depriving a not for profit oranisation of income and failing to accredit the rights to the photos correctly.
Photos from the show - with the Gazette's copyright watermarking
26 Tuesday May 2009
Posted in General, Technology
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The Sans Institute isn’t a place I would look for entertaining reading. I have to admit to tracking the site as my job requires that I have a handle on best practice for development including code security considerations and issues of PCI. But a new paper in the Institute’s reading room certainly got my attention – "Beer – The Key Ingredient to Team Development". As much as my team and I’m sure many others would love to use this as an excuse to head for the pub everyday on the company’s tab; it is actually an article about team development and the different stages a team goes through (Forming, Storming, Performing etc).
I have to admit I’ve not read the paper any further than to discern its key theme, but I’ll try to blog about it once I’ve read and digested it.
31 Tuesday Mar 2009
Posted in General
When I travel, I like to hear local sounds, and have to visit a record shops to pickup some decent local tunes. In Oz they really do a good job of promoting music, and local artists in an unadulterated way. On the radio there is Triple J (funded by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation) who dont waste hours of time blathering on like Chris Moyles or Terry Wogan, there is chat but a lot more music without falling back to the over hyped boy and girl bands or the safest of safe choices; I mean Wolfmother got an interview during peaktime breakfast show. The musc is pretty varied within a show as well – no fear of going from Lily Allen to Nine Inch Nails to Nouvelle Vague doing an acoustic cover of the Sex Pistols God Save The Queen.
Then rather than having songs editted, cut or bleebed for language, the DJ will quickly warn of language, and let the song go.
The really surprising thing is despite the promotion of local bands, the amount of British music played is amazing, Lily Allen, The Prodigy, Coldplay and the list goes on.
31 Tuesday Mar 2009
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31 Tuesday Mar 2009
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Well I’m out in Australia for several weeks on assignment for my employer, which is why my blogging has been fairly quiet as I’ve had to try and prepare for the trip, plus address my usual work load.
The attitude towards ipods seems to be very different here in Australia compared to the UK is very different. In the UK it is generally held that you don’t flash your ipod and best to swap those white ear buds for generic looking headphones (I changed mine although not to generics, but nice Sennheisers). Over here though everyone seems to have an ipod or a clone, and the white buds are de-rigeur and you walk around with the pod in your hand unless your on the mobile.
13 Friday Feb 2009
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According to the NME (here) Fergal Sharkey the former lead singer of The Undertones who now heads an industry representative body has setup a website which will give people the opportunity to feedback to the ‘powers that be’ about their music buying habits. The only problem in my mind is that they’re not interested if you’re over 24 years old. Which I have to say I find a little insulting – I am well outside that age bracket, but still very much clued up about ways to acquire and listen to music; and spend as much or more now than I did when I was 24.
I think that the age banding also assumes you have an understanding of your demographic, but the point of site I thought was to try and understand your consumers. So why not let all contribute and then look at the patterns in the responses.
13 Friday Feb 2009
Posted in General, Technology
An interesting problem was highlighted the other day in conversation with colleagues in the IT industry. How do you take on a graduate or junior developer within a highly distributed development team, and how do you make Agile work well in a distributed team.
Often the argument is that distribution doesn’t matter, we have lots of technologies to overcome that. But, when we deal with new people, particularly those who haven’t had much or any experience there is a lot of contact needed – communicating large amounts of detail – not the clearly expressible things that we can read in a document, but all the nuances, the policy compared to the actual practices; seeing and feeling the tensions and people politics within a team and how they should be negotiated. It is this very reason that video conference is better than a phone call, and traveling to meet someone is better than a video conference.
With my new roll which involves running a team of individuals, it is easier for them and me that we now located in the office as group. I obviously will get to feel how they interact with external demands, and what the demands are – which in our case are many. But the team have a better sense that they can call on me to help easily. This cant translate to a distributed team.
This is not to say that there a good things for distributed teams. The staff will be content as they located in situations they should be happy with. The disruptions of a large office dont exist, so the chances of longer periods for clear thinking are there – which are important to developers.
Phil (aka MP3Monster)'s Blog 