Friday April 29, 2005

Product of the week Portmeirion china

This tableware is the best in my opinion. It is tough, attractive and seems to survive in a dishwasher well. The series we have above is called The botanical garden.

The reason we started buying it was we only had a five place 'starter' china set. I remember being upstairs and heard a crash. I shouted down "what have you broken?" to my wife. She replied "a dinner plate" then said "hang on, too many bits, two plates!" Having lost nearly fifty percent of the dinner plates we started buying the Portmeirion stuff. When I look at it it sort of reminds me of when we visited the Portmeirion village where they filmed the The Prisoner with Patrick McGoohan . It is an amazing village in a very attractive part of Wales.

Sunray at home object of desire...

After a prolonged delay caused by the company I bought my Cisco router with VPN from, I am up and running with Sunray at home. I took my bundle of Sunray, country kit and router home last night. I just about managed to force myself to have dinner before playing with it. Never has a piece of hardware from Sun developed such an interest and expectation from me. Ever since we first tried sunray with two users on a single Ultra5 I dreamed of taking this technology home.

I had to program my firewall at home to do DHCP for the Cisco router and then I plumbed it all in. It came up like magic. A quick utswitch -h to get the sunray onto our servers and bingo my session from work was on the screen and as I had left it an hour ago. I have to say this is awsome. It is fast. It is so quiet in our study now that I can hear the blackbird singing outside. After the sunray worked I did an init 5 on my ultra5 desktop to shut it down and power it off. I am going to get really annoyed when my wife comes in and switches on her PC. This is so cool. ( and it will be in the summer..) I don't have to think about upgrading my home machine or system admin on it anymore. If the sunray stops working I just bring another one home. It is a zero boot time access to my desktop. It is going to reduce my electricity bills. If our work building has power problems I just drive home and work from home. ( as our servers and the internal network are on UPS/Gen sets)

Demand it from your IT specialists, you will never look back...

Final thought. A big thank you to Ian who sorted out where my missing router had got too and Tony who is from our internal support team in Sun who quickly programmed the router up and showed me how to do the plumbing. Thanks guys.

Thursday April 28, 2005

David Bowie

One of the most talented UK musicians and his never ending ability to come up with innovative material never ceases to amaze me. If you want a flavour of his music the singles collection cd's are the ones to go for but buy an album and listen carefully and each of these is like a mini opera. The best has to be "Ziggy Stardust" named after the character he created and then destroyed to make way for other ideas. The album is Bowie at its best. Looking at the track list there is not one that is bad. The starting mournful track "Five years", "Starman" that you cannot help but sing along to, the title track and "Suffragette city". My next favourite cd would be "Hunky Dory" , with the singles "Changes" and "Life on Mars". "Kooks" and "Andy Warhol" are memorable. The final track "The Bewley brothers" is very clever.

I would say the other CD's are not so consistant; I recently bought "Diamond Dogs" which has an excellent title track. "Aladdin Sane", again a good title track, also with "Watch that man" the first track and the unforgettable "The Jean Genie". Both these were anniversary editions with lots of interesting information from the time of the initial appearance of the album. "Space Oddity" has highlights such as the title track and the "Memory of a free festival".

His newer stuff is not so inspiring, I would like to see him live but only if I would know I was going to hear a lot of his older stuff. Collaborations with artists are numerous "Dancing in the street" with Jagger was good.

Justice be mine !

Well at last after my attempts to find a white van doing something bad which I documented before has finally happened. I was driving to work heading over a roundabout patrolled by traffic lights. As I went around it ( following green lights of course) my path was blocked. For some reason the exit I was to take was full of stationary cars. So not wanting to block the roundabout I stayed by the light. Behind me a white van lurked. Its driver gesticulated, then beeped his horn. I stayed put. The van then veered off to the right and then headed to the line of traffic. By this time our light had gone red and the blocked traffic then moved on. I then waited for the next green light and carried on. I then saw the white van in the distance stationary behind another line of traffic. My lane continued to move on. The reason for the lack of motion was clear, at the head of the queue was another white van having a bit of technical bother. As I passed him I could not resist a "YeeeeeeSSSSSS !!!".

Wednesday April 27, 2005

Cut paper and press dot

In my last job before Sun the computing evironment was very much modelled on the mainframe days. In fact when I joined they still had a mainframe. The Sun hardware I managed replaced it. All the printouts from the printers were popped into pigeon holes that each user had and plots were put in a special holder. The HP plotter we used on the Sun server had a large roll of paper and after each plot a cutter had to be used to remove the finished plot, press a button marked with a dot, roll up the plot and place it in the holder. Very often over lunch I would wander in the computer room and if the operators were busy ( some were at lunch ) the plotter stood there waiting for the finished plot to be removed before starting the next one. So if it was in that state I'd do the job of an operator. I was surprised one day when someone made it clear a manager should not be doing that - why ?

During our lab move I had to help. My contribution helped get the lab completed in good time. Even now after a spell on conference calls one on ones etc I often walk down into the lab and if the rubbish bins need emptying or something like that I'll do it. I think if you manage people who do things it is your responsibility to ensure you understand what they do and how they do it and the challenges the face.

A job opportunity in the lab for students.

I decided this year to open up the way we find the students who work with us for a year to my weblog. Basically if you are a UK student and meet the requirements below and think the job sounds up your street please email me at paul.humphreys@Sun.com by Friday May 6th and attach a covering letter and your CV please. The job starts in July 2005 and runs for one year. It is in Surrey, UK. I would stress you must have some kind of Unix knowledge. Ideally having loaded it on your home PC tinkered with it, setup some kind of services, upgraded it etc. Although I cannot discriminate based upon the sex of the candidate I would say we do not get many female candidates. Over the years we have had very successful female students in the team. So don't be put off by any stereotypes you might have on the word 'lab' or feel it is a closed off, male dominated environment. Anyway here is the Job description:

The student will gain knowledge of Suns hardware range, system and application software. In addition he/she will benefit from working within a highly experienced software/hardware team and indeed be part of that team.

The position will be working in the two labs in the Camberley ( Surrey ) office and the successful candidate will have exposure to Sun's latest hardware and software offerings as they are released.

Tasks undertaken by the student may include the following:

Installation, configuration (hardware and software) , tuning and system administration of lab systems and project work in the lab. This will enable the student to gain hands on experience and knowledge of Unix hardware and associated system software.

There will be oppertunities for students to undertake project work in the lab. These may include ongoing planning and development or expansion of the laboratory infrastructure.

Requirements

Willingness and ability to absorb a large amount of information within a short timeframe.

Ability to co-operate and communicate effectively with other individuals.

The candidate MUST have at least one years experience of using Unix, for example Solaris, Linux or similar. The experience must cover installing Unix and other administration tasks. These would cover network (lan/wan) setup, user adminstration, software upgrades/patching and file system maintenance. You should grade yourself as having a good theoretical and practical understanding of your preferred unix platform.

Experience or knowledge in the following technical areas would be a distinct advantage:

Unix skills (user/administration) (essential)

Networking (essential)

Shell scripting (essential)

Experience of PC or Sun Hardware (essential)

Structured programming techniques (preferable)

Scripting languages (perl/tcl/php) (preferable)

Training in some of these areas WILL be given where required:

Typically: Solaris admin, Sun hardware etc.

We also expect applicants to write us a covering letter to accompany their CV explaining why their skills make them a suitable candidate. The letter should also cover what they would expect to get out of the one year working in Sun in this position.

I look forward to hearing from you ! If you are unsure about the job I am happy for you to talk to one of our existing students.

Tuesday April 26, 2005

Nine day fortnights ?

No I have not lost my limited mathematical ability completely. When I worked at BT and then HR Wallingford we had flexi time. In these times of stress, busy people, crowded roads etc I think flexitime should be considered by management for many reasons. I basically worked at BT from 8am until 5.30pm and got every other Friday off. That is not 'real' flexitime but a version that provides the employer with a longer working day, and the employee with twenty four extra days holiday. At HR it was more flexible and I can understand employees gasping at the abilitiy of employees only having to be during 'core hours' and being able to carry forward a deficit or credit of ten hours to the next month. You could also take 1.5 days off per month.

I cannot believe some kind of flex time is not more openly available to everyone. I think it offers great benefits and in a carefully managed environment could be made to work. It would cut down on crowded trains, roads and mean with flex desk working employers could reduce the amount of office space they need. Of course employees benefit too.

Owning a Victorian house

After owning two modern houses, when we moved to Oxford we ended up living on a road called Magdalen Road in East Oxford. I think we paid 80K GBP for it or thereabouts. This was at the height of the 1980's housing boom. The survey was reasonable and the words I read in it seemed to assure us all was well. However very soon we realised the house needed a lot of TLC. The thing about these houses is they look ok until you try and do something. Take the spare room. We decided to decorate it. First thing remove the wallpaper. Hang on the plaster comes off too. Time to replaster the room. Plaster dust gets everywhere. The window. Sash windows . Very nice to look at and I soon learned how to take them apart, strip the paintwork and rehang the sash weights on the cord. I found painting the window with Sadolin was best. This preserves the wood as it seeps into the grain and to give it another coat you just paint that on top. As this stuff is thin you don't have the problem of windows getting stuck and not opening. Of course while the window was in bits I had to board it up. When I did the front bay window for the living room sashes the boarded up window looked like we had squaters !

The central heating installation and bathroom refit were reasonably painless but the roof replacement was a real mess. I remember trying to open the loft landing hatch afterwards. It felt stuck. I gave it a good shove and a ton of slate dust landed on the carpet. We replaced all the doors with stripped pine ones which was easy.

When we did up the rear garden there was a concrete path to remove. We had no path by the side of house being a terrace so the whole lot had to be carted through the house to a skip on the road. The turf went through the house on a return leg.

All this sounds very negative but we enjoyed that house. The best room was the dining room. We installed a new fireplace with victorian tiles. It was a lovely room as the window looked out over to the nearby church. When we came to sell up and move to Twyford I think we got 75K for it. We had put a lot of initial equity into it so we were still solvent (others were not so lucky at this time) and because of its condition it sold quickly.

I think owing a house like this is a once in a lifetime experience. Only once.

Monday April 25, 2005

The San Marino race

Well this race was always going to be critical for both Ferarri and BAR if they were to show their respective seasons were not going to be duds. Mclaren had Wurtz in place for Montoya who is still out on injury leave.

Alonso won by the skin of his teeth holding off Schumi during the last few laps. Schumi got past Button when they were chasing backmarkers. Amazing shots as the cars flew over the kerbs of Imola. On average the cars are now one and a half seconds slower than last year and catching that speed back fast. Nice to see a good mix of different cars at the front of the grid and some drivers doing better than expected.

Teams who did better than expected.

BAR who seem to have recovered well after the first three races of the season. Lets hope for them they continue to move forward. A strong double points finish was their reward.

Sauber finally get points for JV. He drove a strong race, lets hope he continues to improve with the team.

Teams who did as well as expected.

Renault with a good win with a slice of luck perhaps. Fisi's DNF again a concern and to his annoyance.. Nice of flav to say he'l stick around until the end of 2006 with Alonso.

Ferrari with all the testing they have done, this finish was expected and Schumi was just awsome in a car that appeared even under heavy fuel load to be one and a half to two seconds faster than anyone else. As usual Rubens got the reliability troubles.

Teams who did not do so well.

Williams - hero to Zero with Heidfeld doing ok to get a point and be ahead of his teamate. Webber again making mistakes.

Toyota - an historically bad circuit for them, but a bad performance for them in Spain will not be excusable.

RBR - who hit the reality landing strip with a bump.

Mclaren - who have a fast but fragile car for Kimi.

Others.

RBR who have secured Ferrari engines for next year which must mean Sauber will get BMW power. A one qualifying session on Saturday might return soon - thank you Bernie. ITV ran adverts when there were three laps remaining. I could not believe this especially as it was at a critical point of the race. When they got the deal to show F1 they promised innovative ways of working around the adverts. All they did yesterday was to reshow the final three laps after the race. I have seen F1 on other European commercial channels and they really do handle adverts very well. either way I watched the race using the time slip mode of our DVD recorder. Finally with all the fuss about making overtaking easier with the new regulations the drivers are saying once you get close to another car the 'dirty air' problem is even worse than before. Anyway Spain in two weeks, where because most teams test so much there, a very tight grid will be formed I think during qualifying.

The Frog at Skirmett - third time lucky..

This weekend we decided to stay one night at the Frog in Skirmett. It may seem extravagant to stay in a pub less than thirty minutes drive away but it provides a good base from which we could do two walks. A little drama before we were finally got to the pub was that on the way, outside Wargrave my wife decided she had forgotten a vital pieice of my clothing allowance. So back we went for it. After an excellent lunch at the Frog of a sausage and onion baguette with a wonderful side salad we then unpacked our stuff. One , two three , only three walking boots could be found. As it was raining we elected to drive home to retrieve the missing boot. Finally with a full complement of our clobber we started the first walk from Nettlebed. This was a walk we did before but I had the camera with me this time.

This brick kiln is in Nettlebed at the start of the walk. An information plaque describes the kiln and its history. Bricks have been made in Nettlebed since the middle ages. Raw materials for the bricks where provided locally. Lime came from the Chilterns and wood from nearby woodland. Bricks were first mentioned in 1416 when a Thomas Stoner paid forty pounds for making 200,000 "brykes" to a Michael Warwick and a further fifteen pounds for their carriage from the kiln to Stonor house three miles away.

We then came to the ruined church in the walk, called St James. It is believed this church served a village which has disappeared and the church itself was abandoned in 1875 to be replaced by one in Bix itself.

Back at the Frog we had an excellent dinner; seared scallops for me followed by an huge salmon steak on a bed of onion maramalade. My wife had a caesar salad followed by chicken with a tarragon and shallot sauce. I then had cheese and my wife the pancake with Grande Marnier sauce, she has had before. If she had a choice I think she would have had this for all three courses... Before the walk on sunday we had the "full monty" or English breakfast. The walk was a new one starting just outside West Wycombe. The walk took us through impressive woodland with birds and deer to see. Nearly halfway round we passed the UK headquarters of the "Wycliffe Bible translators". This group was inspired into action when on a visit to the Cakchiquel Indians in Guatenala someone was told by the Indians "If your god is so great , why doesn't he speak my language?". Each of the buildings are named after one of their famous missionaries. After a stop at a garden centre we then followed the walk back to the start first alongside the busy A40. A load of walking shoes were hanging from this tree, all in pairs and in good condition. We had no explanation for this. (apologies for the rotten picture)

The walk then took us into bottom wood owned by the Chiltern Society. Above us fly Red Kites, amazing to see them in numbers. It is a thriving wood and has a thriving population of dormice who are very rare in the UK. These mice eat pollen, nectar, insects and various fruit and nuts. Their varied diet is critical for their survival and a wood's health can be shown by its ability to sustain a dormouse population.

One final piece of good fortune. As the pub was a bit noisy on the saturday evening the landlord gave us a bottle of Sancerre rose wine as a way of apology. A promise of a single malt with him on our return will of course be taken up gratefully.

Sunday April 24, 2005

Shorts - a few short items of news.

A few short items.

John Mills has died aged 97. An inspired actor and a true gent who did not let fame get the better of him. My favourite film of his; Ice old in Alex.

Who are VW kidding? Advert in the paper; nine hundred and ten pounds off the Golf GT. However the model now has semi automatic air conditioning instead of the two zone system I have in my Golf GT. The price for 2Zone is four hundred pounds. Come on guys..

Doctor Who. The Daleks return to our screen this coming Saturday. I for one cannot wait...

Friday April 22, 2005

Bumble bee blues...

I may be the proud owner of my own Bumble Bee nest. All my garden waste is composted in plastic water butts. Some still have a round hole where the downpipe would have entered the lid. I spotted a Bombus terrestris flying into the butt. Further research indicated that they like to make their nests in dry places and a pile of mown grass can be a tempting favourite. Of course the butt is waterproof and on the top of the rotting material is guess what - lawn clippings. If further investigation means I am the proud owner of a nest I will leave it be until the winter and not subject the butt to a regular turning over of the rotting material to aid composting.

2001 A Space Odyssey

My favourite sci-fi book - quite possibly. Years ago I used to read more sci-fi than I do now. Arthur C. Clarke and Isaac Asimov were the two authors I liked most. But 2001 is a classic. I fear I may offend by saying the rest of the series 2010/2061 and 3001 were not as good as the first but I suppose they completed the tale. The idea of the monolith and its bigger brother is an awsome concept and how life on earth was manipulated by these higher beings. The journey by Discovery ( what an apt name for that doomed spaceship ) as Hal becomes more unreliable and paranoid is brilliant. The final words of Bowman as he tumbles into the monolith "My god its full of stars" has you on the edge of your seat.

If the book is excellent the film is just perfect. It complements the book very well (the book of course was written from the screenplay) and even when I see it now it does not seem dated.

Thursday April 21, 2005

Rebus books

A morning TV book show recently featured Ian Rankin the author of the Inspector Rebus books. Set in Edinburgh the aging Inspector has over his career had to deal with most of types of murders you can imagine. The latest reviewed in the program is called Fleshmarket Close and relates to asylum seekers in Scotland. Rankin said that Rebus is only a few short years away from retirement and as his books follow our own 'real time' he will be hanging up his truncheon if he still has one soon. His female sidekick Siobhan Clarke ( not from Scotland, pronounced shivawn ) is now according to Rankin likely to take up the main character in his stories. Romance between the two is not on the cards though he admitted.

I have read all of the the Rebus books ( apart from the latest which I am waiting to appear in paperback ) starting with the first Knots and Crosses. I would suggest for new readers to go through the books in order to get the most from the series. They are all well written and tease the reader as the plots develop. An early book of his called Watchman has been reprinted and is of historical interest as many of the ideas for Rebus started in this book. Three books by Rankin under the name Jack Harvey are also worth reading. The TV series was a flop as far as I am concerned with John Hannah as Rebus. A new series is planned but Hannah is not taking up the main role again.

Hong Kong

I have been to Hong Kong three times now. I remember the first time very well. It was still then a British colony. HR Wallingford where I worked did a lot of business in Hong Kong. They even had a small office there. HR were selling some of their water modelling software to the Hong Kong government and part of the deal was a set of Sun machines and a AMT DAP used to run the software on. I remember knowing about this and attending a meeting to discuss progress. The project manager went over the schedule and said something like "Paul we have you down for one week in Hong Kong {date}. I was flabbergasted ! So off I went. It was my first long haul flight and first experience of business class in a Cathay Pacific jumbo. At that time Hong Kong was using the old airport Kai Tak . I remember on the approach seeing the building with a X on its roof which was said to be part of the approach guidance !

So I had a week in Hong Kong getting to know the island and spent time being shown around many of the sights. I went up on to the Peak the marketplaces and bars in Wanchai the old red light district. We also took a boat trip to the Cheung Chau island and walked around. My second visit was soon after this, again with HR.

On my last visit the island was now back in the hands of the Chinese and a new airport built away from the centre. There are some amazing bridges that take you back to the centre of Hong Kong. During this visit I walked from the island to the old airport. When I got there it was deserted except for a prefab building with loads of ice sculptures in it. Each celebrated the various Chinese new year symbols , dragon, Chicken etc. Very surreal feeling, a few years ago jets pounded that very place as they screeched to a halt on that narrow ribbon of runway.

One last point if you want a good book to read about the history of Hong Kong read the book by Jan Morris