Category Archives: General

Community, Developer Events, General, Jobs

DDD6 – The Recruitment Panel – Your help is needed!

Colin needs your help! Whilst we’re still voting for the DDD6 sessions, Colin is keen to prepare this session! If you can spare some time, and the panel topic interests you, would be kind enough to consider providing Colin with “your question”?

Thanks in advance.

A panel of experts will answer audience questions on the subject of recruitment – chaired by Colin Mackay. This session is for you if you are looking for a job and want to find out what companies are looking for. You are trying to hire someone but don’t know what to look for. You have been burned in the past and don’t want to repeat the experience. You have a question about recruitment no one else seems to have an answer to.

There will be a question box on the day for you to post your questions, but if you want to email in advance, you can email your questions to colin@scottishdevelopers.com.

Submissions by email close at 23:59 on the 23rd November.

The panel consists of:

Sarah Blow: Founder of Girl Geek Dinners and software Engineer at Cardinal Health. She has grown up around technology and HR with parents in both industry sectors and works closely with Women & Technology and companies to create a better understanding about how women may be recruited in different ways to men.

Barry Dorrans: Senior consultant for Charteris PLC and Microsoft MVP. When interviewing he takes the red pen and becomes intellisense for whiteboards.

Frank Kerrigan: Development team lead for Erinaceous Insurance Services in Glasgow. His team writes enterprise applications for internal customers using C# and SQL Server. Frank has been in devolvement and support of enterprise systems for 15 years.

Karl Lightfoot: Recruitment Consultant that for the last 9 years day in day out has only been recruiting developers in the Midlands region for the largest IT Recruitment consultancy in the UK. He has successfully recruited for large and small corporations through different market states of the supply / demand of talented Developers from Visual Basic 3 to .Net 2005.

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On blogging, Opinion, Rants

So what’s wrong with 3-Column WordPress themes?

1 Comment

A while ago I fired off a tweet about WordPress themes. Gary responded, as did Oliver.

I can’t seem to find one that just works out of the box.

So, in order to demonstrate what I see as a problem with a theme, here are couple of examples.

Firstly, this one was a perfectly good theme, however notice how the Comments (1) has lost the trailing )

And this one was great too, but why does the post count have to appear on a new line?

Yes, they are probably easy enough to fix, but that means hacking the theme…and when an upgrade to the theme comes along, I’ll have to remember to extract the hacks and re-apply them. Not fun. I’m probably going to have to write my own theme, who knows when I’ll have the time do to that.

In the meantime, whilst I’m happy enough with this Clean [BlueHaze] theme (it’s a 3-column theme, but the left-most column makes it feel like a 4-column theme), I’d be happy to receive recommendations for 3 column themes, minimal, fluid (i.e. wide content area), decent configuration for the column widths, WordPress 2.3 compliant and no hacks required.

Is that a too big an ask?

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General

OS/2 – who said this?

5 Comments

Clearing out the loft, I found an old book from 1988. History is amazing, I found this page to be a very interesting read; it’s astonishing how things have panned out since then.

Can you identify the author? Leave a comment. What are you thinking?

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Opinion

Has Apple shot itself in the foot? What do you think?

8 Comments

I’ve been thinking about my earlier post a little more. You know, I’m no marketing guru or press relations expert, but I can’t help but think that Apple might have opened up a whole can of worms: a possible marketing disaster? I do appreciate that there is a breach of contract in play (by those folks who unlocked their iPhones), but if every contract was enforced in this way, where would we be? Surely customer alienation isn’t the right option?

I guess that Apple are simply covering themselves if AT&T decided to seek compensation for the lost revenue. Working out how much that compensation might be is anybody’s guess – are Apple able to identify and quantify all the unlocked iPhones that are in use? Probably not. Instead, they rely on the fact that folks always want the latest and greatest, so they release a firmware update that is capable of identifying unlocked iPhones at source, then it disables them. I would imagine that makes for one rather upset customer (“upset” probably doesn’t really do the customer’s feelings that much justice, but it’ll do for this blog, thanks!)

Apple shoots itself in the foot?

Has Apple shot itself in the foot?

Do you think Apple were right to release firmware that essentially disables the iPhone if it’s not on an AT&T network?

How else could Apple have dealt with this sitution?

Tell me what you think please!

—

On another note, I couldn’t help but notice my Google Ads on the iPhone post…the irony of the ads still offering iPhone unlocks!

unlock you iPhone ads

Related Information
BBC – Apple iPhone warning proves true
Gizmodo’s recommendation
Customers are not ‘brand accessories’
http://nanocr.eu/ (specifcally this and also this)

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General, Opinion

Do Apple iPhone users who have unlocked their phones deserve to be locked out?

8 Comments

Recent press has confirmed that Apple’s threat to disable iPhones that have been unlocked appears to have come true.

The Guardian’s article title is rather amusing: Apple bricks some hacked iPhones.

Gizmodo has a good piece about it here.

Twitter has gone wild with folks reporting problems, not just with hacked ‘Phones but with regular unhacked devices too. And even Robert Scoble’s son is having problems.

Do you think iPhone users who unlocked their devices deserve to be locked out? I suppose it *is* breach of contract and Apple are simply enforcing that contract…after all, I guess AT&T have a legal position on this too. I’d appreciate your comments.

Related Posts
Has Apple shot itself in the foot? What do you think?

Apple shoots itself in the foot?

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General

WordPress 2.3 upgrade complete

2 Comments

Well, I bit the bullet very soon after the 2.3 announcement went out. Here I am running 2.3 on this blog.

I had hoped that the new built-in tag support would emulate the functionality that I get from Simple Tags. However a brief test using information found here, revealed that the tagging mechanism appears to be limited to within this blog and doesn’t insert Technorati tags as I expected. Once I’ve got some sleep I’ll have another look.

Anyway, I need a really nice, simple, clean 2 or 3 column fluid theme – does anybody have any suggestions? I am very close to writing my own theme as I’m really struggling to find one that I can settle down with.

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Opinion

Law Lord flaunts the law – Ride a bike? You must be rich [via The Times]

1 Comment

During lunch today, I was reading The Times, paper copy. I couldn’t believe what I was reading on page 3 (it’s The Times, please!)

Lord Hoffmann, Law Lord
Do you always obey the Highway Code?
Up to a point, Lord Copper. Sometimes I lose patience at lights when there is obviously nothing in sight.

Perhaps Lord Hoffmann’s bicycle is being used for medical emergencies when he flaunts the law like this? I think not.

What would Lord Hoffmann do were he to receive a Notice Of Intended Prosecution for going through a red light without proper authority or need? No doubt he’d say “on yer bike, I’m a Law Lord don’t you know?” Welcome to the UK, one rule for you, another rule for us – this is a civilised democracy in action (or perhaps inaction?)

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General, Product Reviews

Megatrain – Edinburgh To Manchester (return)

This morning, Monday, at about 0100, I bought a train ticket on-line.  I say on-line because most of the on-line train tickets that I’ve bought to date have either been delivered via snail mail or I had to collect them in person.  This is unlike the airline industry which allows me to print tickets at home, check-in at home, print my boarding pass at home (or in the office of course).

Back in July, I sat beside a lady who used a service called Megatrain.  Now I had heard of Megabus before, but not Megatrain.  I had a ticket from Edinburgh to Manchester that cost about £80.  My traveling companion had a ticket from Manchester to Edinburgh that cost her…£10.  OK, so I had a reserved seat…

So this morning, I used Megatrain.  I paid £20.50 for a return ticket to Manchester, taking the same trains that I would have taken had I booked via other on-line services.  My ticket comprised of a single sheet of A4 containing two ticket references – out and return. 

This evening, I used the return portion, got myself a seat at a table, laptop out, blogging continues.  As a first experience with Megatrain, it was a good experience and one that I can strongly recommend.  I for one will be looking into booking a couple more trips for October.  At these prices, you can’t beat it.

Factor the £6.40 ticket from Inverkeithing to Edinburgh (return) and the whole trip has cost me £26.90.  Not a bad saving.  Now, if only there was some way of an employee reward plan – make travel savings like this for three or four trips, then travel First Class for the next one!

How long the Megatrain service will last, I don’t know – I’ve heard that it might be up for renewal or even terminated in November.  Certainly for these kind of savings, it’s worth taking advantage of it whilst it’s available.  I’d certainly like to see it continue.

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General, Opinion, Rants

More hassle at airports

3 Comments

Germany

Last year, 2006, when I was traveling back from Dussledorf, my flight was “rearranged” on my behalf by the airline.  This meant that I had to spend a few hours hanging around the airport.  After you’ve browsed pretty much every shop available, including those that you would never think of even going into, never mind browse, you have to concede and find a seat.  This is what I did at Dussledorf airport (back in 2006).  I found a seat near a plug, opened the laptop out and started typing.  I found myself sat in front of some over-zealous credit card touts who were going out of their way to try and rope in punters.  And this being Germany, the touts were leggy blondes…

UK

Over a year later, I find myself hanging about Edinburgh airport, for today I have chosen not to fly on the red-eye (first flight of the day at 0600ish).  Instead I chose to fly on the second flight of the day, heading to London on the day when there is a Tube strike, smashing.  Anyway, I digress. 

My arrival at Edinburgh airport took the usual route: park in the multi-story car park then enter the airport on foot.  Entering the airport is fine, however getting upstairs to security/departures and onward to airside is a problem.  The escalator is the primary and most obvious route to departures – it’s protected by a couple of credit card touts, usually ladies. 

Avoiding eye contact is the key, then pretending to be deaf as it can be difficult to ignore “excuse me sir”.  Having props, like a passport and a slip of paper in hand (this could easily be your pre-printed boarding pass) whilst hurriedly looking towards check-in, then sharply running towards the escalators is another trick that works. 

However, I have a trick that is guaranteed to get you past the inconvenience of the credit card touts.  Upon entering Edinburgh airport from the multi-story car park, instead of turning to the right to head up the stairs and into their trap, turn to the left.  Here you will be greeted with access to lost property and a lesser-known set of stairs that takes you upstairs without any hassle at all.

This is all very well and good, and you would think that once you are airside, you are free from touts and their fishing lines. Sadly, the touts have got wise and have also installed themselves airside.  Slap bang in the middle of the primary shopping area of the departure lounge.   Instead of leggy blonds, we are presented with middle-aged balding blokes with glasses.  it just doesn’t work for me.  Of course, once they’ve made that first step towards you, closely followed by “excuse me sir, do you live in the UK?” (to which the answer that seems to work is “no”), eye contact inevitably follows. 

Why should they be here at all?  For most people, being at an airport is a stressful enough time, without them believing that they have to sign up for a[nother, unwanted] credit card as part of the “airport experience”.  Business is business, but when business become invasive, it becomes annoying and puts people off.  Whilst I still use the bank that was rather over-zealous in Germany last year, I can’t see myself using the bank that employed Rowan Atkinson for its advertising campaign.  Over-zealous and invasive marketing  techniques are analogous to shooting yourself in the foot.

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General

Diary entry: Underground – no, overland – how was your day with no Tube trains?

Mine was great, thanks for asking.  Despite taking a slightly different route to our London office, a route which would normally have seen me use the underground for a few stops, I had a really good day yesterday (Tuesday).

My normal route would entail an 0400 start from close to Edinburgh to catch the 0615 easyJet to Luton.  From there, I would take the free shuttle bus to Luton Airport Parkway, where I would catch a Thameslink train to London Kings Cross.  At Kings Cross, I would then walk the remainder of the journey to Southampton Row, just south of Russell Square.  The return trip would see me perform the reverse for the 2055 return flight to Edinburgh – it’s a long day, made worse by overcrowding on the Thameslink.  But, since train companies don’t understand overcrowding and safety, it’s not worth further discussion.  Normally it’s a fairly cheap route too, which is an attraction.

Today, I decided to take the second flight of the day to Gatwick.  And I chose British Airways.  So, there was a little bit more cost involved – but, since I couldn’t get a cheap easyJet flight I figured the same trip by BA was worth it.  It meant that I didn’t get out of bed at 0400 (I could check-in online, for free) and I got a breakfast included, which, coupled with the later start, makes a huge difference.  Even with a 50-minute walk involved, I still arrived at the office more refreshed than I normally would.

I enjoyed a lovely walk from Victoria to Southampton Row, taking in some sights on the way:


Buckingham Palace


Admiralty Arch


Nelson’s Column


Big Ben


St.James Park

[Note to boss: I spent only 5 minutes “off track” taking these]

I did pass Downing Street, but was so disappointed with it, I didn’t grab a photograph.  Was I disappointed with Downing Street itself or this government, I leave that to you, dear reader, to decide.

Clearing the security at Gatwick airport was painless.  I am pleased to see that they’ve move the “shoe scanning” process to post-security – speeds things up a lot – good move, well done BAA, or whomever.   Some klotz chose to leave his/her Blackberry in one of those small black trays they make you use; they’ll miss their e-mail addiction real soon and will return to collect it, you can be sure of that.  “Hey, I haven’t received an e-mail beep/ping in 5 minutes, where’ my crackberry?” 

And here I am, at Gatwick airport, it’s 2015, I have a pint, I’m blogging (using Windows Live Writer, was else would I use?), waiting for my gate to be announced on the overhead screen.  I’m sat down, not milling about like the clowns in my earlier post.  I’ll get fed on the flight home, which is also good, although I might give in to temptation and have a “chippie”, we’ll see. 

Uh oh, that’s the pint finished, what now?  Save this post and head for the gate I guess?  No, it’s not announced yet.  Please wait.  No not you, me, I’m waiting.  I’m relaxing.  Enjoying the music, wondering when my gate will be announced.  Lordy, that Geordie in front of me in getting on my wick.  He reminds me so much of my three years in Newcastle, it’s uncanny, man.

Gate  55. Hurrah.  More later. 

<time passes />

So, we’re airborne, the flight is very empty, but despite that I’m sat with two traveling elderly companions.  We are free to move to other seats (after take off), however I can’t be bothered – using this Dell D810 in an aircraft is an exercise, so I probably won’t write much.  Humbug, no tomato juice.  Black tea for me.  Nice salmon and chicken sandwich affair for food;  chippie still very much on the cards,  Note to self: get a smaller laptop for travel, large screen format isn’t really conducive to writing.

All in all, a good day, a lot was accomplished, including a couple of blog posts that I wouldn’t normally have written.  With more Tube strikes planned for next week, expect to read about my travels to Mix07 (also via Gatwick, but using easyJet)

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