Steve's Seaside Life

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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 …

All Posts / Chronic Illness

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...

All Posts / Chronic Illness

I have a throat infection

Well the reason for my relapse again last week appears to be that I have a throat infection.  White spots on my Tonsills and a sore throat and mild temperature being the evidence.  As always whenever I get an infection the Stills symptoms come shooting back, but this time I...

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Great roundup of Windows Terminal Server products

For years, Citrix has been the only choice for software to power server-based computing environments. Sure, Microsoft’s Terminal Server products were out there, but their features paled in comparison to those of Citrix MetaFrame Presentation Server. However, as Terminal Server continues to gain ground as a standalone solution, many people...