&c.

1999 to 2009 in review

2009 is nearly over, and I thought I would have a look back on some of the things that have happened in the past ten years that have most affected me.

The first is the proliferation of the Internet into everything I do.  In 1999 I was in my second year of Upper School, with no idea of what I wanted to do with my life.  The Internet was there, but it was slow and the content was difficult to find.  It sparked my curiosity though, and over the next ten years I would research it and play with it, setting up servers of my own to see how they worked, eventually leading to my current position as a website administrator.  Part of this learning was sparked by the growth of Google, which in 1999 was new and no-one had really heard of it.

1999 was also about the time that I started creating my own websites, though I wouldn't register muzz.co.uk for another four years.  It was hosted in various different places, initially being all hand-typed and later using blogging and CMS software to manage the background elements.  Whilst I did not keep the content across all the different versions (which could be both a blessing and a curse) I have always had a site, and tried to put some vaguely useful information on there.

around 2001–2002 I discovered GNU/Linux and Free software.  I wasn't initially impressed with it—I could never get X11 to work and it caused me more frustration than anything else, but in my determination to get it working I gained a better understanding of it and came to love the power and the flexibility it offered.  As I learned more about it I started to dig into the history of the system, which led to a passion for UNIX in general and the BSD operating systems (namely OpenBSD) in particular.

In 2003 I got my first full-time job as a systems engineer, building high-powered workstations and servers for the animations industry.  The experience I had gained from experimenting with GNU/Linux paid off massively here, and I was able to build on it massively as I would now be using it daily on the systems we were building.  I learnt to configure web servers and mail servers, understood TCP/IP routing and network design, and was given a lot of challenges that would enhance my understanding of computers and networks.

2006 saw my move from the hardware side of computing to the administration side, when I got a job as a network technician at a local college.  It was my first real taste of corporate networking, and I quickly learnt the challenges involved in running a network of 300 people instead of just five.  Patching, incremental updates, user account issues and Active Directory were all completely different beasts on a network of this size, and I learnt that even the smallest changes need to be tested and performed with great care, particularly if they needed to be made in the middle of the working day.

2006 was also the year I started dating my future fiancée Emma, getting engaged in the February of 2008.  We had a lovely engagement party in the June of that year with both of our families coming together for the first time, and everyone had a brilliant time.

In the summer of 2008 I was promoted to the position of Systems & Web Administrator, which meant I moved from running campus-level projects and hardware to managing systems that would affect every user and campus in the college.  This was a big step, and I hit the ground running by taking command of the SharePoint portal, three college-wide public-facing websites and the main internal Virtual Learning Environment (VLE).  Within a year I would roll out an entirely new VLE to replace the old one, manage the installation of a new web- and mail-filtering system, and assist with the deployment of new learning platforms across every campus and school that we managed.  It involved a great deal of planning, preparation and training at every level, and I loved every bit of it.

I wouldn't like to guess what the next ten years will hold for us, because with the current pace of technology I know that I would be completely wrong.  There will be new projects that no-one has heard of yet, and existing ones that everyone believes to be unstoppable may be completely forgotten.  But I do hope that the next decade is as interesting and as challenging as the previous one, because I have enjoyed it immensely.

Merry Christmas 2009

I would like to wish all of my friends & family across the country and around the globe a very merry Christmas.  I hope it brings you everything you wanted, whether that be a PlayStation 3 or having your family together for the first time in ages.

And in the immortal words of Bill & Ted: be excellent to each other.

Owning a CB radio

In the evenings a group of us often go for drives around the neighbouring towns, looking for interesting places and buildings to investigate.  We have been up to the abandoned church in Clophill, the bridge over the derelict road in Nettleden, and the dark and noisy woods in Ashridge.

There will normally be a convoy of between two and four cars, and we banded about the idea of getting some PMR446 handheld radios for each car or passenger.  Someone then mentioned they had an old CB radio in their house, and this then developed into a plan to get a CB radio for each car.

Four of us agreed to install a radio, and within a few days they had been ordered and delivered.  An hour installing them into the cars, illuminated by the lights in Sainsbury's car park, and we were ready to try them out.  Our cluster of small cars, each with six-foot aerials of varying shape and colour, set off in a convoy, snaking their way to Dunstable Downs with each of us chattering away over the mics.

They are a lot of fun and immensely useful.  I have spoken to my friends across town on the drive home, and when one of them was unable to come out due to illness she brought her radio into the house so that we could talk to her from the top of Dunstable Downs.

I have also heard a few elderly boys in the evenings and spoken to one or two of them.  They use their home-based CBs to stay in touch so that they feel less isolated, and means they can hold group conversations without spending a penny on mobile phone calls.  It also avoids the difficulty of setting up conference calls or using a computer.  Push; speak.  Release; listen.  In a world of computers and technology, I love the simplicity of it.

Isle of Wight holiday

My fiancée and I have just got back from a brilliant week away on the Isle of Wight, staying in a caravan in the beach town of Shanklin.  It is a beautiful island, with miles of countryside and some incredible views.  The roads are wonderful to drive on, taking sharp turns and dipping down toward the coast, before rising back up again and twisting inland.

Those who have been to the Isle of Wight before may recognise the banner image on this blog as the view toward the Needles that I took last year during our stay on the island.

We spent a lot of the time visiting the villiages and towns around the island, seeing the craft villiage of Godshill with it's ancient 14th Century church, and spending some time in the larger towns doing some shopping.  We took a lot of photographs and I will try to get these uploaded onto here.

Ten-second update on my life

Not too much has been happening recently, which leaves me with very little to write about.  A quick summary of the main things:

• The new Moodle VLE being installed at work.
• My T-Mobile G1 is still not fixed.  Currently it is sitting in a T-Mobile repair centre in Milton Keynes (again).
• Emma's 21st birthday party was brilliant, I think everyone had an awesome time there.
• I am skint as usual, but plan to get down to the pub on Friday as it's been a while.
• Emma and I are looking to book a holiday, but haven't decided on where yet.  Initially it may be the Isle of Wight as we had such a good time there last year, but this will likely change.
• My car has no problems whatsoever.  Normally this wouldn't be news, but if you know of my old cars then you will understand why this is noteworthy!

On being a geek

The trouble with being a geek, as pointed out by my fiancée Emma, is that half the time I write stuff that no-one else understands.  Things that interest me, like blogging, computers, social networks and Free Software, have no relevance to the majority of the people that I interact with in my social life.  Work is slightly different, as being a systems administrator means I am working daily with people that understand what I'm talking about, and the people that don't understand are grateful for my help when they have a problem they don't understand either.

The trick is to balance the two out.  When I am at work I can be as technical as I like, and it means that communicating with the people I am working with is faster because they are on a level playing field.  They understand what I'm talking about.  When I am at home I tend to focus on my lifestyle, which means I can interact better with the people around me in my social life.  There is some cross-over with friends, where they have a mild interest in technology, but then generally the conversation with my friends revolves around cars (an interest shared mainly with them).

Knowing when to be a geek, when to be a car nut, and when to talk about Eastenders is what stops me from looking like the comic book guy when I am socialising.

Resorting to paper

As a self-proclaimed geek and gadget lover I have always used gadgets to manage my time.  All of my phones since around 2002 have had usable calendars and organisers, which I have always used because they were convenient and I always had my phone on me.

I have also however had the joy of trying to synchronise all these devices into different desktop systems, which is not as easy as it sounds.  Synchronising one device with one computer is relatively easy, but add any more devices, or other computers, and the number of problems you will experience increases exponentially.  The number of times I have had to save my calendar and contacts by trawling through them and removing duplicates is more than I care to remember.

Electronic devices like this are supposed to be making our lives simpler, but instead they are introducing their own complications and problems.  So I had the idea recently of getting rid of all of this complication, and working purely on paper for organising myself.  I bought myself an organiser and dug out my favourite fountain pen from my school days, and started copying all my appointments and my important phone numbers into it.

Initially I wasn't sure how well it was going to work.  I like the ability to set alerts and recurring appointments when I am using Outlook at work, and I like the ability to add people to events and have them confirm or deny their attendance.  But I realised that, although I liked these features, I wither didn't use them as much as I thought, or the people I was organising meetings with didn't use them either.

As it turns out, having a notepad, day planner and contact list in one file makes it a lot easier to keep track of what I'm doing over the week.  I use the A-Z organiser dividers to group projects and companies together, and make use of the notes pages to keep track of everything I need to remember about that company/project.  The contact sheets mean I can keep contact details with the projects, and I can find everything within a few seconds.

I wasn't sure how much difference it would make, using a planner instead of Outlook, but being able to use it when I'm not near a computer, and being able to make notes in it faster than on a screen, have made me feel a lot more productive.

Twelve reasons smoking is bad for you (non-NHS version)

The NHS and the government often publish reasons smoking is bad for you, including lung disease and cancer.  The following is a list of reasons they are not likely to publish:

1. Since the smoking ban, having to go outside to smoke in the winter greatly increases your chances of catching a cold.
2. The burn holes in jumpers and jeans from smoking whilst drunk will mean you will need to buy new clothes more often.
3. The build-up of ash in the car means it will need regular cleaning, not to mention the risk of dropping your cigarette on the floor / the seat / your lap.
4. Friends will complain about the smell of smoke in your car.  But as smoking affects your sense of smell, you will not likely notice this yourself.
5. There is an increased risk of getting ash in your dinner if you smoke whilst cooking.
6. You may be forced to make small-talk with strangers who insist on telling you their life story, when all you want is a quiet cigarette break.
7. Fellow smokers will bug you for cigarettes when you only have two left.
8. Under-age smokers will ask you to buy cigarettes for them, as they know they won't get served themselves.
9. Occasionally you have the embarrassment of being asked for ID when buying cigarettes in the petrol station, despite being 23 and having just put £20 of fuel in your car.
10. If you smoke B&H Silver you have to put up with their stupid sliding boxes, with the risk of opening the box upside-down and dropping your cigarettes all over the floor.
11. The stress of waiting eight hours to have a cigarette (if your work has a strict no-smoking policy) and then realising your lighter has run out could be harmful.
12. Shopping takes twice as long, as the stress from pushing past all the other people to get from one shop to another causes you to need more frequent cigarette breaks.

And just to finish off, here's one reason that smoking could be considered good:

• In the 2006-07 financial period, income from tobacco duty and VAT on cigarettes totalled £10 billion—approximately 12% of the NHS's outgoings (full report, page 10, graph 7) for the same period.

Updates on life, &c.

It's been a while since I posted here so I thought I would update you all on what's been happening.  Firstly I've been off work for a week now with pleurisy, which is quite painful and is making me cough and choke all the time.  During the coughing fits it can be quite difficult to breath, but I have been prescribed some Co-Amoxiclav 500/125mg which seems to be helping a lot.  The coughing is less frequent now and is not as harsh.

Also earlier in the month I picked up a T-Mobile G1, as I have been looking at them for a little while now.  Everyone immediately compares it to the iPhone when they see it, which I guess is a fair comparison, but there are some things that make the G1 much more interesting to me.  For starters the OS—Android—is open source, and available to download from Google.  Second, there are far more free applications on the Android Market than on the App Store.  And finally, the Android SDK and the Android Eclipse plug-in make it very simple for even beginner developers to create applications for the phone.  I have been playing with the SDK myself and it is quite fun loading the virtual phone and seeing your program running on it.

Snow and bad weather

England, particularly the South-East where I live, was hit quite hard with snow over the past few days.  Quite hard being around 6 inches of snowfall so far, which is the most I've seen here in my lifetime.

We do not get snow very often here, and when we do it is normally very light; an inch or so at best.  So suddenly having so much in such a short space of time caused a lot of problems for the roads and the schools in the area.  Drivers were losing control, there were nowhere near enough gritters on the road, and I don't think the local council even has a snow plough.

Each morning there was fresh snow, and the roads would be covered.  The first daring drivers would start to clear paths through it as they drove, and then more would follow.  The main roads cleared fairly quickly, through the cars crushing and melting the snow with their tyres.  The side roads however remained covered, and fairly lethal.  If you approached a junction too fast on some of them you would simply slide out into the carriageway, or your back end would slide out into the parked cars.

In the past week I have worked just one day.  The college was closed, along with hundreds of schools in the area, because no-one was able to get there.  While it was nice having the time off, you couldn't really do anything with it because you couldn't drive anywhere.  It did mean I could sort out this blog though, so it's not all bad.