Category: Weekend

something for the weekend – interesting non work related posts

Categories
End User fun stuff

What’s in a name?

Despite on occasion being known to criticise the UK government for policy matters relating to the internet I am not a particularly political person. I have had a go at both (New) Labour and the current coalition.

The one thing I can’t fault them on, whatever their political hue, is the names of the politicians involved. Here we are talking David (Dave), David, George, Nick and looking back a bit, Tony and Gordon.  at Timico the leadership team comprises a Tim, Chris, Neil, Jonathan, Steve, Andrew, Luke, Sandra, Geoff, Calum and Tref – a good spread from around the British Isles.

What I just can’t understand is how on earth anyone could consider being run by someone with a name like Mitt or Newt. I can ascribe Barack to being a cultural/language thing – a bit like a bloke called Nicola running France. Angela in Germany seems positively normal!

Perhaps the Americans have done some market research and picked the “most electable name”. I fully expect to see a Giraffe or an Aardvark running for the US Senate in future – the only possible reason in my mind that the UK media would want to report such an event.

The only possible excuse I can think of is that they needed to find candidate  names with available domain names but I haven’t done any research to validate this theory. Any original submissions on this proposition could well be published in full.

Call me boring…

 

Categories
Business Cloud competitions datacentre video

Video games killed the art of conversation – spot the game megaprize competition #TimicoDC

Timico datacentre logoWe had a hugely successful data centre opening event at Timico yesterday – 210 customers, prospective customers and business partners came along and, if I say so myself, had a great time (and were impressed 🙂 ). More on this as soon as I’ve assembled the photos etc – I’m on the move at the moment.

In the meantime I have a little prize competition for you. At the back of the lecture theatre (conf room, call it what you will – it had more than 200 odd people in it), just for fun, we had a range of “antique” video games, consoles and computers on show.

There’s a bottle of champagne1 and a mug for the first person to correctly identify all the different systems shown in the video below (Timico staff not eligible here as they will have been able to view the kit yesterday).  Note no apologies for the title of the post. It is partly true and the internet is now doing its best to finish the job.

1 I saved it specially from yesterday’s celebrations 🙂

Categories
charitable End User social networking

world record attempt – the results are in #comment24

世界記録のコメントWe had a good go at it guys. When I first discussed the world record attempt for “most comments on an online news post” with the Guinness World Records® people there was no record in place. We came in at 5,455 comments in 24 hours.

Unfortunately in the meantime a Japanese pop star – don’t ask me his name, I was too distraught to register it1  – has come in with 56,800 on his fan website. Apparently a quarter of all his registered fans left a comment. That’s life folks.

However we should not be dismayed. We should rejoice. First of all we raised just over £6k for the RNLI. The RNLI needs £150million a year to keep going. That’s a lot of two pences rolling down that lifeboat donation box and every little helps.

Secondly I contacted Charles Arthur, Tech Editor of the Guardian who after digging around a bit discovered that the most comments ever on a Guardian news post was 4,789.  The Guardian is reputed to have a monthly unique readership of 50 million people globally so the fact that we beat their number for most comments is huge news. NOTW phone hacking not unsurprisingly seems to be the subject that generally attracts most people to comment at the Guardian.

Perhaps I’ll change the subject next time to something more inflammatory. I think we will have another go – next year maybe. There was huge enthusiasm amongst everyone who participated. The main feedback from GWR, apart from the fact that they enjoyed following the attempt was that it appears that this sort of record is generally best suited to celebs with huge  followings. A bit obvious but perhaps we can prove that wrong someday:)

Still to do: tech post & look at the “most inspiring comments”. As regard the latter if anyone has any they would like to highlight let me know – leave a comment on this post linking to their favourite comment.

That’s all folks.

PS world record attempt blog post here

1 tbh it’s ‘cause I couldn’t understand it & didn’t want to look stupid asking for the name again 🙂

Categories
charitable Cloud datacentre End User social networking surveillance & privacy

The social media summary of the world record attempt

UK trending for @tref & #comment24 on twitter The world record attempt started at 6am on Thursday 5th Feb and ended at 6am the following day. There are three stories to tell here. The first is the charity fundraising aspect that was covered on Friday.

Second is the social media story. This was an event largely promoted using the #comment24 hashtag on twitter but the story was also posted on Facebook, Google+ and LinkedIn. The effort also caught the imagination of a good number of friendly journalists as the list of names in the table of top referrers for 5th Jan illustrates.

referring site

# visits

pages/visit

time on site

1

t.co (Twitter)

2,012

2.73

00:04:08

2

 facebook.com

903

4.44

00:04:56

3

 gizmodo.co.uk

310

2.38

00:02:19

4

 thinkbroadband.com

291

4.38

00:04:36

5

 forums.moneysavingexpert.com

265

3.24

00:02:58

6

 m.facebook.com

240

2.2

00:01:53

7

 guardian.co.uk

233

3.07

00:03:50

8

 thenextweb.com

221

2.83

00:02:47

9

 telegraph.co.uk

207

3.6

00:04:47

10

 hootsuite.com

67

2.88

00:04:10

11

 community.plus.net

63

2.84

00:02:43

12

 plus.url.google.com

59

4.05

00:05:45

13

 linkedin.com

57

4.84

00:07:03

14

 thelincolnite.co.uk

51

2.25

00:02:07

15

 celticquicknews.co.uk

50

1.36

00:00:23

 

In all according to Google Analytics there were 162 referring sites over the 5th and 6th January. A Google search for

Continue reading “The social media summary of the world record attempt”
Categories
charitable End User

The morning after the week before #comment24

The world record attempt finished at 6am this morning. Phew. We didn’t get the 100,000 comments we were after. According to the screenshot I took at 6am  it was 5,455 though there are potentially a few “non-qualifying” comments in there that I will have to check.

final comment numbers - snapshot at 6.08 am
final comment numbers - snapshot at 6.08 am

At this point in time I don’t know whether we will be accorded a world record for this one. There is no existing record to break and the 100k was an arbitrary target set by the Guinness World Records® organisation as one considered appropriate based on a different record category concerning Facebook comments. I will report back on this one over the next few days as the info comes in.

More importantly the current tally of funds raised is £5,809.50. This comprises 110 donations made online via just giving (includes a very generous £1k from zeninternet – thanks boys)  and also includes £2,360 worth of pledges made to me offline that I know we are good for (£2k is from Timico & £250 from ipcortex – both great contributions) .

The total funds raised is yet to be firmed up as money is still coming in and

Continue reading “The morning after the week before #comment24”
Categories
charitable End User

World record attempt for most comments on an online news item in 24 hours has started. #comment24 #RNLI

At 6am Greenwich Mean Time (that’s in the the UK) an attempt at the world record for the most comments on an online news item in 24 hours began (ie this blog post). According to Guinness World Records® we need around 100k unique comments. That’s just over 1 comment a second! With your help we think we can whoop that.

This is also charity fund raiser for the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) the UK. The level of funds raised is not associated with the number of comments and it doesn’t cost to leave a comment but if you want you can make donation by clicking on the big green “DONATE NOW!” button in the sidebar – the bigger the donation the better.

When you leave a comment you have the option to tweet it – please do so if you can as this will help to spread the word using the #comment24 hashtag.

To comply with the rules the comments must be at least 10 characters, a minimum of two words and not comprise solely of punctuation marks. Basically comments have to make sense. Happy commenting & let’s see if we can raise  some cash for the RNLI.

Postscript – conclusion here

Categories
charitable Engineer

The tech detail of the platform being used to host the world record attempt #comment24

trefor.net is powered by WordPress, CIsco, EMC and TimicoThe attempt at the Guinness World Records® Record for most comments on an online news post in 24 hours is set to start at 6am on Thursday 5th January. This is going to be an interesting experiment which will hopefully raise a lot of cash for the RNLI.

In order to make a success of the record attempt we have moved the blog off its old shared platform onto a new state of the art job hosted at Timico’s new data centre in Newark. This is before the data centre is officially up and running so we have all its resources to ourselves. I am heavily indebted to Timico for this.

We have been quite busy getting the new infrastructure up and running so I am also very indebted to neighbour Steve Nice and his company Forlinux for their help with the platform software.

The basic architecture looks like the diag on the right (click to enlarge).Cisco UCS server architecture used to host trefor.net for world record attempt A load balancer fronts a number of wordpress servers that in turn feed off a two database (one replicates to the other as a backup).

Each server is a Cisco UCS B200 blade and connects with 2 x 10TByte EMC Storage Area Network (SAN). The blades are dual 6 core (hyper-threaded) Xeon processors with 96Gigs of RAM each and with the Hard Drives disabled for mtbf optimisation purposes. The components are all connected using a 10GigE backplane.

The data centre initially has 2 x 10Gig connections coming into it so there is plenty of bandwidth available. The site supports IPv6.

We are using WordPress 3.3 on top of CentOS 6/Apache 2.2/PHP5.3 and mysql 5.1 – version numbers are hidden from people querying the web server (Apache).

The blog itself, already relatively light on plug-ins, is based on the Thesis theme and has been pared down to the minimum to maximise performance.

Some plug-ins are worth a mention. Caching is employed using WP Total Cache for performance optimisation. Simple Twitter Connect is used particularly for comment tweets and AddToAny is used in the post for sharing.

We were kindly offered CDN capacity by Limelight Networks but we as we have already been working overtime to get the data centre ready there wasn’t time to incorporate this. The CDN is probably just a “nice little extra” on this occasion anyway as the content isn’t particularly heavy on bandwidth.

If you want to help with this world record please tell your friends – the post is going live at 6am on Thursday at http://www.trefor.net. If you regularly use a forum or have your own blog please leave a post with a link to this site.  If you want to donate please use the JustGiving page or click on the big green “DONATE NOW” button in the sidebar.

Categories
charitable Cloud End User

promo interview with BBC for Thursday 5th Jan world record attempt #comment24

More world record stuff. Keep the sponsorship coming in by the way. It’s starting to build momentum.

Categories
charitable End User

calling all sponsors – help a good cause and be associated with a fun event #comment24

Many of you will already have heard of the world record we are going for on Thursday 5th Jan. This is for the most comments on an online news story in 24 hours.

Timico is sponsoring the first 2,000 comments. Yesterday Rob Pickering of ipcortex (great company) came up with £1 for each of the next 250 comments – totally unprompted and keen to support the cause (RNLI). Thanks Rob.

Now we are looking for more donors. Donating is easy – you can use the JustGiving page or hit the big green “DONATE NOW!” button in the sidebar. Leave your twitter username if you can – here or on the JustGiving site.

Note that the number of comments made is not actually associated with the amount of cash raised. In other words we don’t have to have the same number of comments as pounds and vice versa.

If you are a corporate sponsor and would prefer to send a cheque or do a bank transfer you can email me  or call me – number is here.

This event is going to get some serious media coverage and sponsors will get very positive global PR out of it.  As the world record is going to be formally submitted to Guinness World Records ® there is also the possibility of being associated with a long lasting record online. The value to sponsors could continue long after the event is over.

I will publish a list of major donors but in the meantime the Twitter list of sponsors here. (needs updating)

Categories
End User fun stuff

wistful retrospectives and bold predictions?

I suspect that at this stage of the holidays I normally write a review of progress over the last 12 months (with appropriately satisfied noises) and put my mind to the next year.

Well this year all I have to say about  2011 is that it was another great one – they all are. No doubt there were ups and downs but hey, you have to get on with it.

So what sagatious pearls might I have to impart in making predictions for 2012? I am not a wise man. I can only say this:

“There will be a lot of change in 2012 and how you feel at the end of the year will depend on how you managed that change.”

Whether this is in business or in your personal life it is no different. New things will come your way. Try them out. Throw them away if they don’t suit but don’t sit on the fence muttering that things ain’t what they used to be. That fence is groaning under the weight and one of these days it is going to collapse. If you’re sat on it you can wave goodbye as you go down.

For various reasons we live in exciting times. This is probably the most exciting period of technology change I have known in a short life that has (and I am constantly amazed by this) seen the invention of the mobile phone, the personal computer, the internet, oh and penicillin1 . The excitement may stem from the pace of change but believe you me that pace is accelerating.

So in 2012 embrace the change and make it work in your favour. Work hard, play hard but most of all don’t sit on that fence.

See ya next year.

PS sorry if the title was somewhat misleading -I’ve obviously been reading the tabloids to much recently

1 only joking – not that old 🙂

Categories
charitable Cloud End User social networking

The story behind the world record attempt #comment24

This attempt at a Guinness World Records® Record all started back in November when I took a customer out to dinner to celebrate a bit of business. The customer mentioned that he read trefor.net and, to cut a long story short, I said that Timico would donate £1 to his favourite charity for every comment left by one of the staff from his company. I capped this at £100 – it was just a bit of fun. His favourite charity is the RNLI.

A glass or three of wine followed and we decided, as you do, that we would go for a world record. Considering this I upped the ante to 1,000 comments from his employees (£1 each) and said Timico would double up if we got a world record out of it. The record, whatever it was, seemed eminently doable. This customer has thousands of employees globally with many of them being industry analysts and commentators with large twitter followings.

I was sure that we could have a good time with this important customer and raise some funds for charity at the same time.

I woke up the next day thinking hmm what have I committed to

Continue reading “The story behind the world record attempt #comment24”
Categories
Cloud End User fun stuff

2 days til Santa comes yay

Lincolnshire Fire and Rescue Concert Band play for the good folks in Waitrose in Lincoln

big wheel outside the Liverpool Echo Arena before last night of Paul McCartney tourThis is undoubtedly one of my favourite times of the year. When you are a believer like me the run up to Christmas Eve is very exciting. I start going to bed early and being a good boy so that there can be no question in Santa’s mind that he should be making that important stop in Lincoln.

Paul McCartney at the Liverpool Echo Arena for the last night of his tour - stunning concert as usualThe mince pie, carrot and brandy get put out before I go to bed and it always amazes me how Santa can get down what must still be a red hot chimney after that fire has been going all evening. The next day he and the reindeer have always scoffed the lot. Every year, without fail.

Timico management team at black tie dinner in private room at Stapleford Park hotelThe run up to the big days is always busy and this year has been no exception. This week has been a particularly good one with a trip to see Paul McCartney at the last night of his tour in the Liverpool Echo Arena.
Eleanor Turner - internationally renowned harpist entertains at the Timico management dinner

Stapleford Park in Leicestershire - qualityWe also had the annual Timico management bash, this time at Stapleford Park.

Stapleford, if you have never been, is a stunningly luxurious country house hotel in Leicestershire – former seat of some duke or other and surrounded by Capability Brown landscapes.I chat with Eleanor Turner who is listening politely to my drivel

You know what it’s like, champagne, cocktails, port, brandy, that kind of stuff. We’d do it more often if it was up to me.

We were lucky enough to be entertained by top international harpist Eleanor Turner who lives locally. Brilliant stuff though the team needs to stick to managing a business because carol singing accompanied by a harp is not their strong point.

The pic on the right is of me wowing Eleanor with my witty and erudite after dinner conversation.

It’s been another great year in business and on the blog. In fact it’s been a great year all round. To all friends out there have a wonderful Christmas break and I look forward to engaging with you anew in a slightly toned down January – life can’t keep going at the same pace when you get to my age you know!

I will be working between Christmas and New year – data centres to launch, world records to smash etc – so keep your eye open for news. Your help is required. 🙂

Categories
End User fun stuff

Rook’s off

I recall a Two Ronnies Rook Restaurant sketch Simon Brown is served by Denise at the Beacon Centre in Newarkon TV from when I was a lad. The only thing on the menu was rook and even that was off.

Today we popped over to the caff at the Beacon Centre in Newark for a quick bite. The lady serving there, Denise, is a lovely person – always has a smile on her face. Today felt a little like the Two Ronnies sketch as they were running down stocks for the Christmas shutdown.

I started off ordering a cheese end onion sandwich (my needs are simple). No cheese left sorry. “The soup was good” shouted someone. Sorry soup’s finished. I then went through a list of possibilities until I ended up with a ham sandwich. Whilst it was being prepared I said “with butter please”. Sorry no butter left. Ok mayo then. No mayo either:) I settled for pickle.

It’s a good caff and they bake their own bread which is of outstanding quality. Happy Christmas to Denise, Sharon and all the staff. They deserve the break.

Categories
charitable Cloud End User social networking

World record attempt – Most comments on an online news story in 24 hours #comment24

To get 2012 off to a racing start we will be having a bit of fun on trefor.net and aiming for a world record for “Most comments on an online news story in 24 hours”

This is a genuine Guinness World Records category in which the current record stands at 100,000. That’s just over one comment a second. Should be easy huh? 🙂

The attempt begins at 6am GMT on Thursday 5th January 2012 and ends 24 hours later. It would be nice to think that we could smash the existing record by a country mile. Someone mentioned 1million comments – why not?

Between now and then the blog is moving to a high availability, high performance platform, details of which will be made available in a blog post on Tuesday 3rd January.

In the meantime there is much spreading of the word to do to make this a great success.  You will be kept up to speed with any relevant news regarding the world record either on the blog, Twitter (#comment24), Facebook, Google+ or LinkedIn (actually all of the above).

We will also be letting you know in advance the type of content that will be in the post for the record attempt so that you can get your thinking hats on in advance for your own comment.

It would be great if you could spread the word on this by “liking”,” Linking”, “sharing” “tweeting” or just telling your friends by good old fashioned “word of mouth”.

Trefor.net also has a page on Facebook where you can find out more and a Facebook event here.

Hope you can help  🙂

Tref

Categories
Business competitions

Santa visits the office to judge mince pie competition and I missed him

Santa seen on Timico premises

entries for the Timico mince pie competitionToday we had four entries for the Tref being massage by Karen Mayfield - as you doTimico mince pie making competition.

You will note from the picture on the left that one of the entrants looks as if he only brought in one mince pie. That was Big Rich Wright.Great care is taken over the judging of the Timico mince pie competition with Santa looking on

He ate all the others The judges line up for a cuddle with Santa and to tell him what they would like for Christmas(claims it was his workmates). I had intended to be one of the judges but whilst I was having my regular massage, Santa came in, rounded up a teamFiona Spear - winner of the Timico mince pie competition is congratulated by Santa himself of judges and cracked on with the competition.I totally missed him! I am pleased to announce that the winner of this year’s Timico mince

hmm, whats this, a tin containing mince pies, a Santa outfit and a Cisco router on someone's desk!pie competition is Fiona Spear – seen here being congratulated by Santa. I have to say I thought they were all winners and would like to thank Faye Hemingway, Victoria Webster and Rich Wright for also entering.

The judges were Daryl, Danielle and Sophie – beautician students from Grantham College. I wish them well.

Categories
Business events

Thanks to everyone for making #trefbash 2011such a big success

Big thanks to everyone who came to the tweetup last night. I think the general consensus is that it was a huge success. Special thanks go to all the sponsors.  Couldn’t have made it happen without you. Also the venue was a  stunner and the staff at the hotel looked after us superbly.

I’ll stick some photos up next week when I get them back from the chemist though the dim lighting was not hugely conducive to good photography with a smartphone. In the meantime if anyone else has any decent ones please could they send me them.

Also next week I will be putting up more info re the world record attempt I announced last night. Watch this space.

That’s all for now. I’ve got the day off:)

Categories
Business events

The glamour and glitz of the ISP world

line up of Timico staff on stage for the Newark Business AwardsThis post is up just so that you can see the lineup on stage as we collected our Newark Business Awards Business of the Year prize (holiday in Necker Island, Upper Class flights, Rolls Royce etc – the plaque is just for display in reception back at the office). It may be clearly seen that good looks are one of the qualifications for working at Timico1.

To my right are Saira Khan of “The Apprentice” fame and Joanna Parlby of the Newark Advertiser. From Timico are Scott Wroe, Suzie Hodges, Nadine Edmondson, Katie Nicholas, Sandra Hine, Andrew Fox, Dawn Spear and Jo Barker.

Just for reference Suzie is the one with the Brazilian headdress. She has a collection which is watered daily. We have very progressive advanced refined tastes in fashion at Timico.

1 no clever comments please – just appreciation 🙂

Categories
Business events

On the occasion of winning Business of the Year at the Newark Business Awards

To the staff of Timico

Last night we won two categories at the Newark Business Awards: “Excellence in Business” and “Business of the Year”. You couldn’t all come, if for no other reason than there wouldn’t have been room for anyone else if you had. You will though be comforted to know that we had a great night on your behalf and drank the place out of champagne1.

I was quite surprised at how excited I got as they came to announcing the results of our first category – Excellence in Business. Probably not quite the same level of agitation as it would have been had we been up for an Oscar but exciting nevertheless.

This excitement was partly adrenalin from knowing that if we won I would have to get up and say a few words2. It was also the realisation that this was quite an important award to win. You might say this was “only little old Newark” but you would be way off the mark.

Newark and its surrounding districts is where we live and work and many of the people in the audience last night were our friends, customers and partners in business. The recognition that winning this award in our home town brings us is far more important for Timico than winning some national gong. It puts us on the radar locally and as we grow our company it will make it easier for us to attract good quality staff which of course will in turn help us to attract good quality customers. Wins all round.

Being recognised in this way should also attract more local customers our way because local firms want to deal with local people. We shouldn’t underestimate the amount of pride that our community has in our success in business. To be able to point at shiny new buildings/data centres at a time when other areas are struggling to find opportunities for investment and growth lifts everyone.

Then of course for us as individuals it is nice to find people saying “oh you work for Timico do you?” rather than “Timico who?”.

So I have to tell you all that I am pleased to work for Timico and I am pleased to be working with you. We have exciting times ahead. Hard work perhaps but this is a world full of opportunity and I’m sure that the recognition that we received last night will be a real help to us in moving the business forward.

Tref

PS thanks very much to the hard work of the folk at the Newark Advertiser for the tremendous organisation. It went really smoothly.

1 not the night of overindulgence this might sound – they only had the one bottle in stock! 🙂

2 for those who know me ok ok I realise that “few” probably understates it 🙂

Categories
competitions Engineer

Is Your Aging Terminal Emulator Putting Your Applications at Risk? #catchymailshotheadlines #anotherwinatimicomugcompetition

There isn’t much to this post other than I like the title. It came from one of the many junk emails I get daily – 12 today in that category. I must stop leaving my business cards at trade shows – I never win the iPad anyway.

This particular title isn’t very catchy which is why it stood out. Usually it’s all about “deploying this”, “helping staff with that” and sometimes it has to do with “the other” though the spam filter usually catches that kind of email. In fact they are very rarely catchy titles.

I am gradually unsubscribing from these mailing lists though it’s probably a battle I will never win.

Anyway I figured it would be a good idea to run a competition for the least catchy junk email competition – real or imaginary. Sometimes I get a huge response to these competitions and sometimes nothing. Doesn’t stop me coming back for m0re though 🙂

As usual please leave your entries as comments. Kudos but no mug to anyone guessing the name of the sender of the email in the post title.

Categories
broadband Engineer Net olympics

Olympics Broadband Numbers BT Style – #Olympics #LOCOG

Usain Bolt - billions of fans want to see him win at the London 2012 OlympicsThree years or so ago someone placed an order with BT. Uhuh!  But this was no ordinary order. The order read something like this:

  • 80,000 connections across 94 locations
  • 4,500 miles of internal cabling
  • 60Gb per second available bandwidth
  • 1,800 wireless access points
  • 16,500 telephone lines
  • 14,000 SIM cards
  • 14,000 cable TV outlets

Juicy eh?  If you were a BT salesman taking that Olympics broadband order you would be planning your retirement. Unfortunately it isn’t that simple.  This is what BT is providing for the 2012 London Olympic Games and the order was probably taken by CEO Ian Livingston himself1 .

There are other interesting numbers to dwell on.

Continue reading “Olympics Broadband Numbers BT Style – #Olympics #LOCOG”
Categories
Business charitable

Meet Andrew North – modern man and all round good egg #childreninneed

meet Andrew - a butch kinda guyMeet Andrew, a butch kinda guy. He likes shooting Timico Account Management Director Andrew has his nails done for Children in Need and has been known to jump out of planes “just for fun”.

Andrew is clearly a happy go lucky bloke and nothing excites him more than getting ready for a night out at the weekend. This weekend is a big one. It’s Children in Need.

Andrew really likes to sit in front of the TV watching all the celebrities doing their bit to empty your pockets and raise cash for a worthy cause.

Timico Account Management Director Andrew North has his nails done to raise money for Children In NeedAndrew though is no couch potato and today has got off his butt to raise some cash himself. In fact as you can see from the pics he has gone more than the extra mile.

Andrew has gone and had his nails done.

It took a whip round to do it. It’s funny how the whole company responded to the challenge opportunity. The £145.18 was raised in no time at all.

As you might imagine it took Andrew some getting used to,Timico Account Management Director Andrew North has his nails done to raise money for Children In Need especially the drying bit. There was some serious wrist action going as you can see from the photos and no small amount of puff.

Anyway he got there in the end and has been strutting round the office proudly showing off his nails to everyone generous enough to have donated.

The lad has promised to keep the varnish on for the whole weekend so that his mates down the Rose and Crown on Saturday night can take a butchers. Perhaps they will buy him a pint – he deserves it. They should at least add to the donations already made.Timico Account Management Director Andrew North has his nails done to raise money for Children In Need

The last photo is in stark contrast with that of the header where he is trying to look tough.

In it he is obviously a happy chappy and has already worked out the best position to hold his arm to display his nails to best effect.

Well done Andrew, proud to be your workmate.

Well done also to Kirsty Watt, the ingenious instigator behind the important fund raising initiative. She is evidently a talented Timico Account Management Director Andrew North has his nails done to raise money for Children In Needartist 🙂

Meet Andrew North – modern man and all round good egg.

Categories
End User fun stuff

Now you see it now you don’t

It’s dark out (hence the somewhat cryptic title) and I can see the lights on in other buildings in the business park. In fact I can see lights pretty much all the way on my drive home. That’s 18 miles through Lincolnshire countryside. There is something not right about that.

I quite like the dark nights though even if they do make you think it is going home time around 4pm and then you find out there is an hour and a half still to go.

The dark nights make the living room seem nice and cosy, especially with a fire lit in the grate which I might do tonight. Who needs central heating?!

Tonight I’m picking a couple of the kids up from orchestra rehearsals on my way home. It makes me feel good

Continue reading “Now you see it now you don’t”
Categories
Apps Engineer media olympics

2012 – Summer of Sports on Steroids – BBC estimates more than 2x Football World Cup traffic levels

growth in BBC iPlayer coverage of Olympics2012 or as the BBC puts it “Summer of Sports on Steroids” 1 is going to be another milestone year for the ISP industry with the UK playing host to the Olympic games and another record anticipated for internet traffic levels. On Wednesday at the ISPA conference we had Jane Weedon, Controller of Business Development at the BBC talking about their preparations for the games.

The coverage in 2012 is going to be comprehensive with pretty much 100% of the sport available to watch as it happens – up to 27 simultaneous channels at the peak towards the end of the second week. This will have grown from perhaps 15-20% of coverage at the Sydney games 35% in Athens and 65% in Beijing (click on the header photo for graphic illustration).

The peak traffic during the South Africa Football World Cup hit 450Gbps with everyone going online to watch the EnglandiPlayer traffic levels during Football World Cup v Slovenia match. For perspective this year so far iPlayer traffic has peaked atiplayer traffic levels in 2011 220Gbps.

So look out ISPs.

The forecasting of traffic levels for these games is in reality going to be very difficult. On the higher demand side the games are on home territory and will appeal to a wider demographic than the Football World Cup. To counter this device proliferation may lead to the streaming being distributed over a wider range of media – 3G mobiles and tablets, public WiFi zones, offices providing big TV screens and the fact that many folk may well take the two weeks of the games off on holiday.

Medals success for Team GB is also going to be an influencing factor.

The Beeb has gone into significant detail in estimating demand on a session by session basis and has come up with a forecast of  10 x the traffic levels for London as they saw in Beijing. That’s 1Terabits a second 2  at the peak in streams averaging 1Mbps.

That’s enough Olympic bits for the moment but there is so much interest in this subject looking ahead I’m going  to be looking out for more Olympic stories to share.

1 Steroids is perhaps an unfortunate word to use in this context

2  Nobody is going to hold them to this forecast but it certainly gives us all an indication of what to expect

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End User fun stuff

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah @ the #dentist

areas of life that need technologyI am currently on hold to the dentist trying to rearrange a dental appointment for one of the kids. This is with a national chain. What I really want to be able to do is go online and alter the date to an available slot earlier in the same day.

As it is I am now three minutes into the call listening to some bland violin music with occasional platitudes apologising for the delay.

The last time I took the kid there we arrived ten minutes early only to be told that we were actually forty minutes early. Whoever had written the letter for the appointment had made a mistake including calling him Miss J Davies. Harrumph. The dentist  was also running late so we were in that waiting room for an hour looking at magnolia paint, posters selling toothbrushes and flicking through copies of “Country Homes”1 from 2009.

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competitions End User

Caption competition – demise of the Bb Trumpet

tarmac being laid on the carpark of the new Timico data centre in NewarkAs we approach the final days of the Timico data centre build the lads are putting down the tarmac in the car park. This is quite convenient as I happened to be in need of a steam roller – assuming that’s what they still call them despite the absence of steam. If you can’t get the video below to work then there’s a link here to the original YouTube location.

Here are a few other photos mapping the before and after. There’s a prize of the best caption for the “after” shot – entries left as comments please 🙂

site manager Nigel has a word with the driver of the roller Site manager Nigel has a word with the driver of the roller. In case you were wondering my 14 year old plays the trumpet.  He found this in a skip at his school and decided it would go well on his bedroom wall in a slightly altered stateBb Trumpet on my desk at the Timico offices

Bb Trumpet after a tussle with the rollerJust to finish off an artistic view of the air conditioning fans outside the data centre:)

fans line up outside the Timico Newark Data centre

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competitions End User

It’s all about focus – 4000 throws a month & who am I with – this week’s grand prize giveaway?

Olympic medalists in panel aboard Aurora for ITDFIt’s an idyllic life, the cruising game. You board at misty Southampton and wake up the next day to the splash of the anchor running out in the calm waters of an exotic island in the stream. A stroll out onto the balcony of your cabin reveals Guernsey on the starboard bow. Not Antigua or Barbados perhaps but hey…

On this occasion the location is academic, a backdrop to the serious business of the IT Directors Forum on board the liner Aurora where I am giving some talks entitled “The State of the Internet” and chairing some debates on Consumerisation of the Workplace. More on these anon.

On the first evening we were treated to a panel session with Kelly Sotherton, Sally Gunnell, Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson, Daley Thompson and Steve Cram. Good entertainment with the Olympics coming up.

The one thing that really stuck in my mind

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Business events social networking

trefor.net xmas tweetup 2011

The premier internet industry Christmas tweetup is back bigger and better than ever.

Last year we were in the Platform Bar of the Betjeman Arms.  In 2011 we are staying with a railway station theme but are moving inside to the Booking Office Bar of the St Pancras Renaissance Hotel.  This is a seriously cool watering hole and a far more sensible use of the space than the selling of train tickets.

This is no ordinary tweetup. Dress code is in keeping with the 5 star hotel surroundings and the drinks are sophisticated. If past performance is anything to go by the trefor.net tweetup is the party to be at this Christmas.

Try your hand at a cocktail mixed by Nick Strangeway – Master Mixologist. The former World Mixologist of the Year as voted for by experts at Tales of the Cocktail industry event & famous for his work with leading establishments Hix and Hawksmoor, Nick is London’s leading cocktail expert.

The 2012 tweetup is sponsored by a set of extremely generous friends including Timico, Newnet, Powernet, RTP Solutions, Sangoma, Fortinet, Provu , BT and Genband.

If you haven’t been the Booking Office Bar is situated just across the platform from last year’s bash. The St Pancras Renaissance Hotel was voted the Number One Hotel in the UK in The Sunday Times Magazine’s 2011 Top 100 Hotels in the World.

I look forward to catching up with you on the night. Numbers are limited so click here to sign up. You will need the password @trefbash to register. Hope you can make it. The date is Thursday 8th December from 5pm onwards.  Get there early.

photos courtesy of St Pancras Renaissance Hotel.

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End User mobile connectivity olympics

That smell of rubber, the roar of the turbo-powered engine, smart phones and the Olympics

Tref in reception at the WIlliams F1 conference centreI attended a Telindus sponsored Consumerisation of the Workplace workshop on Tuesday on my way down to the Convergence Summit. Jean Marie Stas of Belgacom gave a talk about tablet adoption – his experiences seem to exactly reflect my own – especially when it comes to the wife always asking if she can borrow your iPad.

The workshop came up with a few interesting snippets. Firstly Cisco has stopped buying mobile phones  and just give staff vouchers so they can go and buy their own. They are apparently looking to do the same thing with tablets and PCs. This seems very much to be the way forward.

Some of the service providers around the table were reporting that there was a significant interest from many areas in BYOD, notably in the Financial Services market. Workers in this industry are highly paid and typically want all the latest gadgets which is at odds with the need to maintain security and compliance.

This correlates quite nicely with

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End User fun stuff

What’s love got to do with it?

outside the Visited Hampton Court today. It wasn’t originally on the agenda but we stayed at a pub last night called The Kings Arms – situated just outside the back gate to Ennery 8’th old gaff. He probably used to nip there for a swift one before each marriage – just for a bit of Dutch courage, know what I mean?

Anyway after an early breakfast we still had time before the Convergence Summit South opened for business so Fraser Anderson and I went for a stroll around the maze at Hampton Court. Around the outside of the maze – it was not yet open for business.

Moving on through the gardens we found that someone had left the door open to the bit you have to pay to get in to! 🙂 We thought nobody would really mind if we nipped in for a bit of a look around so we did – some photos below. It was easy to imagine having the run of the place with few people around other than the odd gardener doing his stuff. Of course in Ennery’s day there would have been hundreds of people milling around so we probably had the best of it.

Fraser Anderson takes photo of Hampton Court with a view to applying for planning permission to convert to 500 flats Hampton Court
NewNet Wholesale stand at Convergence Summit SouthYou may have noticed I cheekily slipped in a picture that has nothing to do with Hampton Court. It’s actually of the NewNet Wholesale stand at the Convergence Summit South exhibition. NewNet is a Timico Group company and is launching it’s brand new white label wholesale portal.

The longer term plan is for NewNet to be able to support all the Timico Group technologies and services through this portal giving channel partners a single point of contact for all connectivity sales. That’s the sales pitch over. They are a very genuine bunch of lads. If you are looking for a partner for your connectivity needs you should try them 🙂

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End User fun stuff

Friday afternoon blogging and the Royal Military Tournament

Timico, sales, marketing,We bloggers when it comes to Friday afternoon begin to think about the weekend. For most of us the two precious days off are a chance to recover from the stresses of the week, recharge the batteries and quietly begin to compile the ideas for posts in the week ahead.

By the following Friday afternoon these ideas have been applied, consumed, absorbed and  subsumed into the national consciousness (depending on how many readers you have 🙂 ).

So come Friday a blogger, especially of the tech variety, starts to look around for one last idea to fill his WordPress quota for the week. This is where the truly creative post are born. The cake competition results, details of the lunch with Viv Richards etc etc.

On this occasion I can offer you

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