Steve's Seaside Life

Monthly Archive: September 2004

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VMware ACE, I like it and use it

VMware have just announced ACE, this is how they describe it:

VMware ACE is an enterprise solution for IT desktop managers who want to rapidly provision standardized and secure PC environments throughout the extended enterprise. VMware ACE installs easily, improving the manageability, security and cost-effectiveness of any industry standard PC. VMware ACE enables IT desktop managers to apply enterprise IT policies to a virtual machine containing an operating system, enterprise applications, and data to create an isolated PC environment known as an “assured computing environment”. VMware assured computing environments are self-policing, protect enterprise data, and enable safe access to enterprise resources.

I like the idea, I have been using VMWare myself for exactly this requirement.  On one of my home servers that sits on my home network I have a Windows XP VM, configured with corporate firewall, AV products, locked down configuration and VPN client.  I use this VM to connect to the company network. 

This has two advantages, The company network is pretty well isolated from my home network and I am well isolated from it, (since its pretty big and represents a fairly large threat).  I would prefer to be able to just fire up a Windows Terminal …

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All the buzz about weblogs is really about one thing: Making publishing to the web as easy as writing an email

Or so says a really interesting presentation posted here http://www.37signals.com/blogprez/ but blogging for me means much more to me than that.  It’s about being able to craft for an external audiance, a view onto what I am doing, what I think is important, and why I think its important.  Even though my blog is essentially for an external audiance, I often find myself posting articles to help me shape my ideas, or as reminders of things that I want to work on in the future.  Its suprising the extent to which my blog has become a sort of personal reference library. 

I have never sustained a Journal before, but my blog is now probably the longest lived personal productivity tool, and personal development initiative I have ever used, so their must be something to its more than easy publishing.

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The more data you have, the more you know. The more you know, the more you forget. The more you forget, the less you know. So why have data?

Microsoft Researchers have an answer for this old, slightly twisted riddle. They’ve put together a nifty interface that will find all the data on your PC that you need, be it email, documents, tablet notes or spreadsheets. You can find all the data that people have sent to you, all the Web pages you’ve ever seen, and all the attachments you’ve ever forgotten to save. Its called Stuff I’ve seen and you can read about it here.

It’s an important concept in Personal Knowledge Management.  I personally have been using X1 for about 6 months and also use Lookout to seacrh my RSS feeds.  I find the two incredibly useful and routinely find things now that I would never have tried to even find before.  The level of re-use I am now achieving is significantly greater. 

I figure these tools probably save me an hour a week, thats one impressive ROI, and X1/Lookout don’t do everything that Microsoft are promising.

There is a downside though, I suspect that these capabilities will only work best when the products your use to create, manipulate, views and store the data all come from Microsoft. 

Not suprisingly the Open Source community are …

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Wondering what personality type you are?

ISTJ Serious, quiet, earn success by concentration and thoroughness. Practical, orderly, matter of fact, logical, realistic, and dependable. Take responsibility.


ISFJ Quiet, friendly, responsible and conscientious. Work devotedly to meet their obligations. Thorough, painstaking, accurate. Loyal considerate.


INFJ Succeed by perseverance, originality, and desire to do whatever is needed, wanted. Quietly forceful; concerned for others. Respected for their firm principles.


INTJ Usually have original minds and great drive for their own ideas and purposes. Sceptical, critical, independent, determined, often stubborn. (Thats me)

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An Architects Perspective on IT Programme Management

I have managed a lot of IT Infrastructure projects in my time, and a couple of smaller programmes.  I have also keenly observed the management of several large programmes as a Chief Architect.  This article is written from this perspective.

 

Some initial observations:

 

  1. IT Infrastructure Projects generally fail from at least one perspective and often more

  2. IT Infrastructure projects look superficially simple

  3. The programmes have been overly influenced by the personality and skills of the Programme Director

 

The following are a set of Article Titles that I intend to write over the next year or so; they give you a good idea of the issues I think are important:

 

  1. What does he do? The importance of top down Journal keeping to programme communication, coordination and team spirit

  2. The need for a balanced management team instead of Super Men

  3. Management information is a team resource

  4. The customer is not the same as the client

  5. Objectives and Requirements, why they are different and both important

  6. The importance of programme maturity reviews

  7. Conceptual integrity and how easy it is to loose it

  8. The lost art of estimating – take different perspectives

  9. How to plan a programme, top …

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My IQ

When I was at school I tested 137 in the IQ test.  I generally dismissed it but I have since done a few personality tests and found them to be very accurate, others have also reliably predicted my personality type, so I must be very easy to read.  That got me thinking that there may be something useful to gain from understanding a persons IQ. 

When I did the test it was also very clear where I scored high and where I scored low.  In fact there were two areas: I did not concentrate on a few of the questions very well, so misread them and I was hopeless at questions that relied on a memory of words and phrases. 

Anyway I have done two test recently one was 135 and the other 140.  So the school test of 137 was a pretty good mean!

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My personality type – INTJ

People who know me tell me that personality tests are very accurate for me.  One of the most common tests is the Myers Briggs test which you can do here.  Using this test I am an INTJ.  Which is described variously as the Mastermind, Scientist, Innovator, and Free-thinker, which actually...

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A tale of bureaucracy

As readers of my blog will know I have been working from home since late January.  In February my company and I decided that home working was probably for me and that I we should make the switch permanent.  It’s been a low process to get official designation as a home worker, but that did finally arrive on the 19th of August.  I wanted to share with you the story of getting a business line and broadband installed.

 

  1. I get an email from Ms C in HR with two forms, one completed by HR and one that I need to complete

  2. I correct an error on Form A filled in by Ms C

  3. Form A is a request for quotation from BT and justification which needs to be sent to Mr X in Internal IT.  Form B is another justification which needs to be sent to my manager along with the Quote and then needs to be sent to Mr X

  4. I send Form A to Mr X

  5. I then receive a phone call from Mr Y from BT asking me what I need so that they can install it.  I have already …

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Thank goodness for swimming!

I have always loved swimming, and since I have started to suffer with AOSD, it has become all the more important to me.  Right now I am not able to swim at all, but hopefully within a few days I will be swimming ten lengths, within couple of weeks I may get up...

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Books and Magazines

I read quite a bit, mainly my RSS feeds and related web articles which I print so I am not tied to my computer all day.  But I also read plenty of books and magazines.  In the Categories Me\Books and Me\Magazines I have listed the most recent just in case...