Tag: cricket

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End User fun stuff

Spring – the feelgood factor

sunlight streaming through my straw hatToday is one of those absolutely stunning Britishview in rear view mirror on the drive to work - car was stationary in case you were wondering spring mornings. You feel it everywhere. The smells, the gentle warmth of the lightest of breezes, the clear blue sky with just the faintest of clouds somewhere on the far horizon, the birds singing happily to themselves in the bushes. It’s the kind of day where I’ve often thought about turning the car around and heading for Skegness instead of going to work. I’m a rebel at heart. I didn’t do it today – not enough holiday to spare 🙂

We are in for a fantastic summer. Forget banking problems, the Euro, Greece, Spain (et al). Forget that jobs list1.  Think cricket, tennis, Olympics, Diamond Jubilee, festivals, even think European Championship football if that is your bag. Think tall cool drinks under shady trees, picnics on the riverbank watching the boats drift slowly by. Lie back and gaze up at the rays of sunlight filtering though your straw hat. Light up the barbecue then, when you have eaten and your faces are sticky with bbq sauce and butter off the sweetcorn,  throw a few small logs on the embers and enjoy the firedance, plucking away at your guitar until it gets dark and the empty bottle of wine or the realisation that it is almost bedtime tiredness drives you inside.

Life is short. Enjoy it.

1 except for the mowing the lawn bit – that needs doing to make everything else enjoyable, besides I like mowing the lawn.

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End User fun stuff

Me and Sir Viv Richards go way back

Sir Viv Richards, Umar Bajwa, Trefor Davies,Timico,MurcoOne of my massive cricketing heroes is Sir Viv Richards and I was privileged to sit at the same table with him at lunch in the City yesterday. Click on the header for a bigger shot – the guy on the left is my friend Umar Bajwa who is IT Director at the Murphy Oil Company (Murco).

We were treated to four hours or so of entertainment that included very interesting anecdotes from Sir Viv and also from Australian Fast bowler Rodney Hogg (41 wickets at 12.85 during the ’78-79 Ashes series for those who like to know these things).

This being a Friday I have another competition for you.  Who is the black guy to the right of Viv Richards in the small inset photo?Sir Viv Richards, Australian,Rodney Hogg I had not heard of him myself but I’m sure that many will have seen him in action. Again click on the photo for a bigger image. Usual prize is up for grabs (while stocks last). He is also in a couple of the photos below.

friend appears again in bottom left of photo but who is he?

The final photo  is of the auction of a signed print of a photo of Rod Hogg taking the wicket of Sir Geoffrey Boycott. There was not much love lost between both speakers and the bold Sir Geoff. The photo was  signed  by Rod not Geoff.

Print of Rod Hogg bowling Geoffrey Boycott auctioned for charity

sir viv richardsI have to sit on my hands on these occasions otherwise I end up coming away with auction prizes as a “surprise” for my wife.

At a Lincoln rugby club charity dinner I was once used as a stalking horse by an auctioneer trying to drive the price up. Having made the initial bid for a signed photo of the Red Arrows I firmly sat on my hands. The whole room, however, thought I had bought the photo and imagine my wife’s surprise when, after picking the kids up from school the next day, she was asked if she liked her new photo.  Funnily enough she could think of better things to do with a couple of hundred quid 🙂

By the way if you are wondering about the title of this post what I really mean is that I went to see Viv Richards play at Trent Bridge in 1984. He had just scored a massive 189 in the game at Old Trafford and received a standing ovation from the crowd as he walked out to the the crease. Despite being England fans we were there to see the great Viv Richards score a big one. You have to imagine the stunned and disappointed silence of the crowd when he was out caught behind for two runs. Ah well at least I saw him play and have now had lunch with him 🙂

PS Nobody won last weeks competition but  I did get two comments so if you can let me have your address there will be a mug in the post for you.

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Apps Cloud Engineer virtualisation

PCoIP over VMWare View (for Keeping Up with the #Cricket Wherever You Are)

PCoIP thin client technology in use
I’ve been trying out thin client software at the office, specifically PCoIP running over VMware View.

It’s going very well. The station I sat at had just a keyboard, mouse and screen with a small connector box hooking me up with the network. I was running a virtual instance of Windows with the actual application running on a virtual machine in our data centre.

You wouldn’t know that there was no PC in a box underneath the desk.  The beauty of this technology is the fact that I can install a virtual client on my PC at home (or anywhere else) that will allow me to log in and replicate my work environment. It consumes much less power and also makes management of the whole estate much easier.  New users can be provisioned in seconds – the process of building a PC can take a day.

EVGA PD02The experience is great – in fact I didn’t know I wasn’t sat at a PC when I started using it. The header photo shows the workstation set up (a bit untidy – click to see more) and the inset photo (right)  is of the EVEA connector box. You can have up to 4 monitors using a DVI splitter plug – something our geeks really like.

The box is an EVGA PD02. They retail at around £216 plus VAT. When you add the costs of the licenses the individual per unit cost is roughly the same as a fully loaded new PC so the cost saving is in the management – IT staff headcount I guess if you were looking at a large estate.

Note England are doing well in the cricket against India which is why I sat at the workstation in the first place – I wanted an update of the score 🙂 . Invitations to the Oval test gratefully accepted.

 

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Business internet media

Internet bandwidth use by press corps at the Edgebaston Test Match #cricket

There is something comforting about the start of a new day in a cricket test match, especially when your side is doing well. We don’t want any excitement, just the occasional run and maybe every now and again a boundary. There is plenty of time, no rush.

Test Match Special is on Radio 4 and cricinfo.com for a glance now and then at the statistics. It feels as if all is well in the Empire, and coming from a Welshman that is saying something. It’s all comfortable establishment stuff and far away from any trouble at t’ mill.

Which makes it somewhat bemusing when in the pre match commentary on cricinfo I read the following:

11.10am An entertaining diktat from ECB at Edgbaston. As reported by NG, “It has been detected that there has been inappropriate use of the bandwidth in the press box with people downloading music, movies, programmes, skyping etc. If you are found doing that today your computer would be blocked. Full Stop.”

This can be read in two ways. Either the occupants of the press box are upsetting the authorities by indulging in copyright infringing activites, which I’m sure they can’t be 😉 or one of our major test cricket venues has inadequate internet connectivity and doesn’t want to clog it up with streaming media.

Actually I would have thought that the press corps would be heavy users of streaming media – watching the game live and simultaneously online for example to catch repeat showing of runs scored, wickets taken etc.

If someone from the ECB wants to get in touch I will happily sort them out with some more bandwidth 🙂

PS the header photo is of the pavillion at Owmby Cricket Club in Lincolnshire. Owmby is one of those beautiful little rural grounds that make it a pleasure to follow village cricket.

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Business internet media

#Budget eclipses #worldcup #wimbledon #cricket for online video streaming

Wimbledon doesn’t appear to be starting online until 14.40hrs. The budget speech is online, the England v Australia 1 day cricket match is online, there is no World Cup football until 15.00hrs. So what eh?

So video streaming has hit another high. It is up 309% on the norm. The World Cup has seen a 171% increase so many more people are interested in the budget than in the world cup. 

All the recent major political events have seen large spikes in internet traffic online. This goes back to Obama’s inauguration, the last budget speech under the Labour government and the day after Polling Day in the recent general election, which was in itself a local maximum, to use my A Level maths.

Fortunately for ISPs the Chancellor of the Exchequer and his cronies are a fairly static lot.  In other words the only bit of moving is the occasional waving of an order paper (or whatever they call them in Parliament – “The Dandy” probably). This means that the bandwidth usage hasn’t gone up in proportion to the number of users online in the way that it does for the sport. Movement means change which means lots of bandwidth usage when it comes to video streaming.

Tomorrow is the biggie.  The last England Group match and one that they have to win.  It’s all there: passion, excitement, intrigue, dissent, highs, lows, vuvuzelas,  tears and tattoos but no romance – the WAGS have stayed away.

Read all about it on trefor.net.  Order, order! No hang on the budget speech has finished. Everyone has started doing some work again.

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Business internet security

“Stealing” domain names is just not cricket

Businesses need to be mindful of the need to manage their domain name strategy sensibly. There are any number of individuals and organisations out there ready to take advantage of the careless.

For example take a look at http://www.cricinfo.com/. Not a bad time to be visiting the site during an exciting match between England and South Africa (yes I did say exciting).

If you now visit http://www.crickinfo.com/ you will see a difference. The spelling mistake is an easy one to make for someone looking for the main cricket website in the world (wide web). A good domain name strategy would have seen cricinfo snaffle both domains.

Now visit http://www.cricinfo.co.uk/. This one you might think would certainly take you to cricinfo but it doesn’t. It is owned by someone else and until recently took people to a cricket shop completely unassociated with cricinfo.com.

This is quite a high profile example of someone not doing something right when the business was small and it didn’t matter but paying for it downstream.

There are other different examples – the famous myspace court case where the .co.uk domain name was owned by an ISP long before myspace.com existed.

It is quick and easy to check your own business’ domain name – click here if you need a domain name checker.

Good luck England.

Categories
End User internet

"Stealing" domain names is just not cricket

Businesses need to be mindful of the need to manage their domain name strategy sensibly. There are any number of individuals and organisations out there ready to take advantage of the careless.

For example take a look at http://www.cricinfo.com/. Not a bad time to be visiting the site during an exciting match between England and South Africa (yes I did say exciting).

If you now visit http://www.crickinfo.com/ you will see a difference. The spelling mistake is an easy one to make for someone looking for the main cricket website in the world (wide web). A good domain name strategy would have seen cricinfo snaffle both domains.

Now visit http://www.cricinfo.co.uk/. This one you might think would certainly take you to cricinfo but it doesn’t. It is owned by someone else and until recently took people to a cricket shop completely unassociated with cricinfo.com.

This is quite a high profile example of someone not doing something right when the business was small and it didn’t matter but paying for it downstream.

There are other different examples – the famous myspace court case where the .co.uk domain name was owned by an ISP long before myspace.com existed.

It is quick and easy to check your own business’ domain name – click here if you need a domain name checker.

Good luck England.