Back intact and bear free

Canadian jaunt turned into a very rewarding Canadian Trial

I’m Back from Algonquin provincial park – still a little jet lagged about 10000 kcal down in the week not lost any weight but converted about 16 lbs from fat to muscle. feeling very refreshed revived and ready for anything.

top tips and observations:

Do not let a man with a hangover be responsible for buying your food for a canoe trip.

Do not underestimate mother nature she is very unforgiving

Sometimes a walk in the park is decidedly not a walk in the park.

do not fall for the skin so soft myth – the Algonquin biting insects just don’t notice it

Bears do sh*t in the woods :) and just because you don’t see them it doesn’t mean they aren’t there.

Moose are BIG

honestly I loved it but it was damn hard – no film crew around the corner for us and we had a few hairy moments.  

I feel pretty  invulnerable at the moment  even though it’s the most physically demanding thing I have done in my life my body is suffering and I’m somewhat exhausted.

Apologies to the lovely couple who had to put up with my stench of bog water for 6 hours on the way home I had no idea until I got back to my own house.

expect normal service to be resumed shortly

Technorati Tags: algonquin, canoe, bears, canada

away for a Canadian jaunt

I’m off to play with bears and moose :)

Hopefully won’t get too close but I’m away for a canoeing holiday in the Algonquin provincial park in Ontario.

Scared and exhilarated at the same time  so far out of my comfort zone ( i.e. more than 10 miles from a power socket ) and limited technology allowed to be taken anyone know where I can get 11000 AAA batteries cheap ? :)

Back early in September blogging opportunities will be sparse

Technorati Tags: canadian Canoe, algonquin, canada, bears

Rumble in the telecom Jungle part 2

why the PBX is dead

Matt has posted a very interesting response to  my doom laden assessment of the future of the PBX.

Here I should declare my position, I’m a big fan of  the appliance led approach to telephony, hell it’s were I came from and emotionally I’m a bit of a stick in the mud whilst intellectually I’m a technology radical,  I’d like to see the PBX survive,  the flashing lights of that dedicated box are somehow reassuring but it’s on it’s way.

Having digested  matt’s post I think some of the arguments put forward for retention are perhaps equally arguments for discarding the good old PBX.

Call centres or contact centres are a prime example, all they really are are management information systems, a true contact centre is interested in quality and  nothing else, quality of interaction, quality of the transaction and quality of the management are the key drivers, the PBX plays little part and will be increasingly marginalised as voice becomes just another route in.

The communications hub which will inevitably be a server will accept interaction from whichever source the customer chooses and deliver it to an agent, taking my teenage sisters preferences (and she is the next gen worker and consumer) the source will probably be IM followed by text followed by email followed by voice followed by fax  and the PBX is just a sideshow to that route, any dumb gateway will do.

For call handling the foibles that ad hoc groups want are pretty much impossible to accommodate in the traditional model. as a hypothetical user I want my calls to go to me then to my colleague Melissa then to John our support person then to my voicemail which  is the kind of nightmare PBX engineers are often confronted with, trying to fit that into the prescriptive environment of directory numbers and pilots and groups and trunks is a real mind bender.

Send a call to me and then let me control it with a monitoring core application that stops me setting up a perpetual loop or breaking the system. Systems should be able to tell me that the reason I can’t divert  to Melissa is because she is diverting to me and when we achieve this we’ll liberate users and remove the management headache. Having spent time in the bowels of a few PBXs I long for plain English and I’d much rather let the users administer the process.

As Matt says The little stuff you take away is always a problem but you can always assuage the user by education up front and showing them the benefits of the new system, it’s been ten years since a feature has lost us a sale because everyone knows that the 1500 features that manufacturer X  offers still boils down to the 100 that everyone uses and every manufacturer offers , gone are the days of three pages of proposal devoted to an appendix describing directed call pickup and it’s friends.

Sticking with what you know and have will usually have a benefit but what if your choice is to upgrade your proprietary PBX; add  voice functionality through an application sat on your existing network (maybe the network IS the application) or, and this is a real possibility, the inevitable upgrade you will perform on your email system just happens to provide you with a free enterprise strength telephone system?

Like Matt I believe that unified communications needs a single unified interface whichever  application delivers that successfully is going to be the winner and what if  the application that provides UC is the application that 300m of us use day in day out for most of our messaging…….  

You know I think the death of the traditional PBX is much much closer than any of us might have thought

Technorati tags: Unified Communications, PBX

alternative SPV E650 review

never ever ever say you’ll schedule a reminder to do something that relates to your loved one (even if you actually do)

a great alternative review of the E650 can be found here, fabulous – we’ve all been there at some point that ‘ I can’t believe I said that out loud I hope she didn’t hear that’ moment

fantastic – best rule no technology in the bedroom – results in much less pain in the long run

technorati tags: humour, tech, gizmos

Office Mobile – Standard or Professional – Part II Excel Mobile

More reasons to buy Windows Mobile Professional?

The same treatment for Excel Mobile

Excel Mobile
Professional	Standard
Only one mode	Separate View and Edit Mode
Sheet Overview not available	Overview Feature available
Cell Text not available	Cell Text Feature available
Accelerate Scrolling not available	Accelerate Scrolling
Page Up and Down with 2 and 8 keys not available	Page Up and Down with 2 and 8 keys for Power users
Save and Save As both available	Only Save As available (No direct Save)
File opens in Normal Mode	File opens in Full Screen Mode
File Delete is available from Opened file	File Delete is not available
AutoFilter is available	AutoFilter is not available
Modify Sheets option is available	Not available
Clear Formats/Contents/All options available	Clear Cell All only available
Cell Right/Left/Center indent available	Not available
Row/Column Auto-fit available	Not available
Paste Special available	Not available
the file is modified, clicking OK closes with Saving changes	If the file is modified, selecting File > Close checks if the changes need to be saved
Insert/Modify/Delete Chart available	Only View Chart available
Toolbar available	Toolbar not available
Row/Column Headings and Scrollbars can be turned On/Off	Not available
Beam option is available inside the application	Beam option not available
Rename/move option available	Not available
Revert to Save Option is available all the unsaved changes and reopen the last(this will drop saved version of the file)	Not available
Rows and columns resizing is available	Not available

 

technorati tags: E650, Windows Mobile 6, Office Mobile

Testing a Post using BlogMailr

Another blogging made easier tool to try

David Overton put me onto this from a yacht in Antigua, the lucky [Expletive Deleted] so I thought I’d give it a try – anything that makes blogging life easier has got to be a winner, certainly beats web admin at WordPress over GPRS on my m3100 ;)

have a great time David you deserve the break

Technorati tags: BlogMailr

[EDIT] top tip – if you want to maintain your blogging anonymity and you are emailing from your work email account make sure you delete your email signature before sending :) 

tags and HTML work really well so you can email from with rich Outlook and get a reasonable blog post sorted – apparently you can upload images and everything

are you a Geek ?

Steve Clayton posted a link to MSN’s Geek test which frankly IMO doesn’t go anywhere near far enough :) and  as Chris Parkes says is too outlandish in some cases – spell my name in Elvish or speak Klingon indeed.

I’d thought about a post along these lines but understood that I’m an unterGeek when I was talking with pride to a codie friend of mine about my Asterisk install and he asked how  I’d tweaked the source .

bah humbug –  I installed asterisk because I wanted to try and get an open source gateway working with Exchange 2007 UM  (there’s a list of supported tested VoIP gateways here and PABXs compatible with Exchange 2007 here) but now I’ll need to consider whether I’m up to messing around with the software enough to try and patch Asterisk to allow SIP over TCP which is what Exchange 2007 UM requires.

that sounds l33t Geek doesn’t it?

Geek is a very relative term, in the company of some I am Uber Geek in the company of others I am the unterGeek

Anyway I’d add the following questions to the test:

When sat at your main PC can you see the insides or part of the insides of any other computer without turning your head? (needs to be a yes but still OK if you have to turn your head a little)

(if you don’t have to differentiate between your computers or you don’t have computerS don’t bother reading on)

How many operating systems could you have running at once ? (yes of course virtual machines do count, extra points if the base OS ends in an x)

Have you spent a small fortune in the last  12 months on gadgets to perform a particular task, mainly or only because they are gadgets when you had barely spent £35 on non gadget examples in the last 12 years? (think cameras)

Do you have any mementos of your 1st computer secreted around the house? ( I’ve got my original ZX81 somewhere and the BIOS chip and processor of my first IBM compatible)

have you set your own wireless network up and at least one other family members and maybe a friends? (of course) (extra credits if you’ve ever fixed a strangers Internet connection when logging on through an unsecured wireless link, accidentally of course)

Do you buy CDs anymore and do you have an opinion on DRM?

that’ll do for now – more on the Asterisk and Exchange 2007 unified messaging shenanigans later

in the meantime any additions ? anyone? anyone?

Notification Area Congestion

not one for the anally retentive

In the past I’ve been a bit of a notification area policeman thinking I can improve the performance of my notebook by keeping the notification area neat and tidy ( a contrast to my mission control at home believe me) but recently I’ve thrown caution to the wind as tbh since Pentium 75 days its not really helped.

well my notification area is now pretty busy and I wondered who if anyone has more exciting icons – mine are all pretty obvious aren’t they ?

can I freeze …..

OFF TOPIC alert

this from the national center for home food preservation via Lifehacker

it’s a valuable resource – I’m always wondering how to freeze my oysters ;)

missed a day or two

I’ve missed a couple of days blogging, for one reason or another and got to feeling itchy – thankfully things have calmed down a little so I have a little bit of time to catch up – some interesting things going on in the background

My thingamy has encountered a problem and needs to close… please send an error report.

especially if you are running Vista and it’s a driver problem.

This is my least favourite message of all because it’s usually accompanied with a tantalising glimpse of the crashed application behind it with the last 10 minutes / hours / days unsaved work captured for a brief moment before being consigned to the ether when I make my choice.

Now I’ve always been a don’t send kind of guy, don’t know why, just have,  however one of Eileen’s comments at the TechNet Roadshow the other day opened my eyes. Eileen’s comment was that whilst Microsoft don’t look at each and every report, if they get 80000 from a single driver issue they do use that to metaphorically beat the vendor over the head with.

so it’s worth adding your little bit of grist to that mill

UAC – user account control – yay or nay?

If you don’t know what UAC is then you’re obviously not using Vista. UAC is the:  (Delete as applicable:)   useful/helpful/annoying/frustrating feature that reminds you when you are just about to do something important to your Vista system.

If you routinely login as  a member of the administrator group you may find this a little frustrating, as it asks you to confirm you want to do,  everything you’d routinely log in as an administrator to do.

you’ll notice here that as I’m logged in in this instance as an administrator it’s not asking me to elevate my privileges ( I already have the appropriate rights) but it is asking me if I really want to do what it is I’m trying to do ( adding windows components for instance)

you do get a hint you’re about to see the warning BTW

the little icon above shows you need to be an administrator to perform the function.

You can turn it off if you like in the security policy editor but I quite like it, allegedly if you enable THE ‘administrator’ account you don’t see this.

if you aren’t an administrator you get asked for a user name and password to an account that is before you can proceed.

I used to love this when using Linux distros in a GUI,  it’s most valuable use is to prevent something you didn’t expect like malware to alter your system.

In Linux as in this instance it’s designed to allow you to perform important tasks and test the  outcome in   a regular users account without the pain of logging out and logging in as an admin it’s a graphical runas. 

I always used to login as an admin under XP as too many apps needed admin rights of some description but with this  feature I’m just any old user. add the fact that through Vista Microsoft are forcing sloppy coders to stop putting things where they shouldn’t and all is getting rosier.

I could be an admin but I’d leave UAC in place, I’m not an admin because you get click happy and don’t  actually read what’s asking for permission after a while.  

I can’t wait to get this on my father-in-laws machine ;)

activesync 4.5 released

what with all the furore over Windows Mobile 6 & lovely Vistaness, I nearly missed the fact that Microsoft have released activesync 4.5  for all you old XP users out there – funny the download page doesn’t mention WM6 ????

how old are you?

chris is old me too but actually I’m now relabeled as al classic or classical who knows?? anyway a good way to track how old you are is throw a few characters from kids TV in and see who smiles and who looks puzzled.

in no particular order ( and you’ll get the idea)

• little old lady
• Hartley
• pocoyo (yes)
• pootle
• penfold ( a personal favourite)
• the mice on the mouse organ and Gabriel
• the soup dragon
• finistaire the dog
• gonzo (see penfold)
• pingu
• the DORIS – who knows how to protect themselves?
• muran buchstansangur
  (the spiritual twin of Norbert dentressangle)
• if you’re hardcore you’ll recognise the phrase
  no bwian is no hedge piggly
• yoffi
• Mr peavley
• penrod pooch
• parsley
• Ludwig
• the shopkeeper
• berk and the thing upstairs
• the moog
• I can cheat and throw in charley the cat

at some point and through P2P most of this stuff will come around again my sisters teenage boyfriend is a Megadrive fanboy and poo pooed me when I asked 16 or 32 bit … 16 bit all the way

The Feature I can’t do without

had a minor tech disaster yesterday, which could have curtailed my working from home, when I logged on I had the disconcerting message that Windows could not load my local profile, it appears that NTUser.dat had become corrupted, anyway. had to talk to IS to get their agreement (my notebook is their baby after all)  I simply logged on as local admin and renamed my profile folder and logged back in again. this was fine and got me on a working machine a little Spartan in appearance, however I’d temporarily lost all my favorites, feeds, settings and whizbang little programs I can’t do without.

I undertook a bit of a Windows XP Life Laundry in reverse, putting back the things I really need.

this is what I did

1. Get rid of Bliss and go for windows classic theme with most prettiness turned off but with cleartype and the XP style start menu.
2. get connected to exchange (using RPC over HTTPS, or Outlook anywhere as we have been calling it long before Microsoft) , not a particular problem as I was up to date (AUTD) with my Windows Mobile Device.

   The biggest pain was when outlook 2007 and Windows Search commenced the reindexing of my mailbox I now know I never ever ever want to go back to coping without smartfilter again, not never.  For the hour or so it took to build the index I was technologically crippled, did I ever poopoo the importance of search? .

   I can’t wait to try smartfilter on Windows Mobile 6

3. install the rest of Office 2007 (the apps were there but my preferences and identity weren’t )
4. Install Office Communicator, and Live messenger need to know what everyone else is up to.
5. Install Live writer Beta, obviously
6. install Feedsplus aggregation is absolutely vital, and then went through my feeds, I’ve created a priority folder with a handful of feeds in them, I’ll share the priority club on my blogroll.
7. sort out my offline folders, as they’d disappeared took a bit of faffing which I haven’t the time to share at the mo.

then got back on with my work, only an hour later than planned, at roughly the time I would have arrived at the office in a foul mood because of the traffic anyway.

just goes to show self service at home works for the geek at least.

……. eek just realised all my autocorrect entries have gone, that claims back a bit of the productivity CESG# used to mean Computer and Electronic security Group, oh heck, oh and outlook not checking mail before it’s sent by default very nearly got me in trouble ;)

the feature I can’t do without – smartfilter, well proper search in general so I think I’m going to love Vista

I love a man with a pipe

mashup of mayhem is a little Ironic as I haven’t the programming skills to combine my own feeds to produce my own mashup thankfully however Yahoo have :)

Yahoo Pipes allows you to take feeds and combine them ( the name is a tribute to Unix pipes)

using Live writer beta

another little test using the beta of Windows Live Writer, a few people in the blogoshpere have been raving about this tool and I thought I’d give it a go – we’ll see how it works out.

-(F)-

scalded toe?

1st December 2006 – B-Day

at long last after skulking and lurking around many many other peoples blogs I’ve decided to dip my toe in the water – not sure what I’ll be blogging about yet – not really one for agendas however I’ll be musing and ranting on a wide range of subjects. I’m an IT consultant, specialising in communications and flexible working so they’ll be a fair smattering of related posts,   I’m thirty cough cough so expect a  curmudgeonly rant or two, and I’m just interested in life so don’t expect any boundary’s. I’m not in this for the money just want somewhere to offload  and maybe have a little intelligent discourse (probably only with myself).