something for the weekend – interesting non work related posts
My cake making competitions have become very popular. The strange thing is that I get people I’ve never met before coming up to me saying that the posts I write about these competitions are amongst their favourites. Well one person did last week at the LINX meeting anyway.
I’m not sure what that says about my other posts but in answer to this huge demand I am happy to report the winner of the August competition – this time for the best cheesecake – is Paula Davies (no relation afaik).
Another great day out at the cricket at Trent Bridge. The second day of the Engand v Pakistan yielded some entertaining sport with some very good company.
The picture below is of me (centre) with guests Jeremy Dawkins of Next Event (left) and Mark Jaggers of Soll Leisure (right). You don’t do business with companies, you do business with people.
I think that’s the summer networking series coming to an end now and I’m signing off for two weeks R&R. I’ll be taking the kayaks and the snorkelling gear for a good old British summer holiday, whatever the weather. See you when I get back…
Regular readers may have noticed the distinct lack of blog posts last week. At least there were none relating to ip networking, the internet, communications or any other subject I normally spout on about.
That’s because I was out of the office most of the week in an exhausting series of meetings and dinners culminating in a couple of days in Lymington on the south coast. I spent the entire time talking about MPLS, Unified Communications, “the cloud” and current regulatory hot topics in the ISP industry.
The picture below shows me coming up on deck with the team for fresh air before moving on to talk about data centres and the future of mobile data / handheld devices.
In case anyone worries we did make sure that we were well fed and watered during the meetings. A supply of premier cru chablis and bordeaux accompanies the smoked salmon/crab/lobster/duck/caviar/aged aberdeen angus fillet steak (delete according to taste).
PS I have a backlog of jobs to get on with this week including some more serious blog posts. Watch this space.
Its tough at the top and it takes a special breed of individual to stay the pace. In this case the pace was being set by Timico Business Partner UES who had sponsored a horse race at the UK’s newest track, Ffos Las near Llanelli.
I have to admire the marketing nouse of UES whose sponsored race was entitled the “Reduce your utility bills with UES Maiden Handicap Stakes”. This message will have been carried in every newspaper in the UK on Tuesday -” The Watchtower” excepted if it is still going.
You may have noticed that the weather was a little damp. It’s what makes God’s Country so green and pleasant.
A prize for anyone who can guess what I’m playing.
One of our VoIP engineers Wayne Mills-Kiddals is setting off this week on a drive to Ulan Bator in Mongolia. It’s going to take him a month or so but it is in a good cause – he is raising cash for the Christina Noble Foundation. I will be providing periodic updates on his progress and in the meantime have created a temporary page on this blog so that we can track him via GPS.
It has been a huge organisational effort for Wayne. His passport is now much thicker as it has visas for Iran, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Russia and finally Mongolia.
Wish him luck – we want him back 🙂
The carrot cake competition was so successful that I was asked to organise another bake-off but this time with chocolate cake.
The 5 entries, shown below, were all top class and there were on 1 1/2 points separating the first and second place cakes.
The winner, with a fine triple decker offering, was Head of Product management, Andrew Massing – shown below being presented with his certificate.
Below is me during the judging. This is a highly responsible job that has to be taken very seriously as you wouldn’t believe the competitive nature of the entrants:)
Great day out with KCOM yesterday at their annual Charity Golf day at Forest Pines.
The weather didn’t put us off and the company (Steve, Steve and Chris) was great. The Timico team came in fourth, which considering I had probably the worst game of my life, was a credit to the others. I did win an umbrella in the raffle.
The charity being supported was The Stroke Association which is a very valued customer of Timico.
Photographed below are the team with the Pines as a backdrop. I can recommend the course although it is amusing to note that online the club announces itself as being “near Brigg” whereas in reality it is “near Scunthorpe”. Maybe of interest is the fact that down the road is Holme Hall Golf Club which, unless I’m very much mistaken, is where Tony Jacklin started his career. End of travel agent spiel.
I am very pleased to announce that Timico Tech Support Engineer Faye Hemingway has won the First Annual Carrot Cake Bake-off. All entries were of a very high standard with Highly Commended Certificates being awarded to Sian Steen, Verity Rushby and the Will Curtis/Fiona Dickinson team.
Pictured below is me congratulating Faye on her success and also the judges at work.
Thanks to everyone who took part. The entries were sold off after the competition with the proceeds going to a local charity.
Announcing the Timico Carrot Cake Competition. Entries need to be submitted to me during Monday morning. Judging will take place at 1pm on Monday in the Tech area on the first floor. Entry is free.
The cake must have been baked by the entrant who must in turn be a Timico employee (apologies to readers re this – if there is sufficient demand I will conduct an “Open Carrot Cake Competition” at a later date). Fake entries from M&S etc will result in naming and shaming of the entrant.
The winner will be awarded the title of Timico Carrot Cake Cook of the Year 2010 and will receive vouchers entitling them to 1 year’s unlimited viewing of Trefor.net.
Judging will be by a top panel of gastronomes renowned for their carrot cake tasting skills. For security purposes the names of the judges will not be revealed until just before the tasting.
Happy baking and good luck to all entrants. Results will be posted here on Monday. You read it first on trefor.net.
All work and no play…
The BP oilspill crisis only really hit home today when someone showed me this map of the spill overlaid onto the UK. The area is huge.
Check out this website to move the overlay to where you live. It includes live streaming from BP. I’ve captured it today so that you can check out the growth with time (macabre I know).
Richard Baxter of Neos Networks bravely took up the challenge of playing the NetOps guitar when visiting the Timico office last week. Watched by colleague Gary Waterman he entertained the Tech Support teams with a virtuoso performance of Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez, or at least I think it was 🙂
This was such a successful event that I’m thinking of creating a new guest guitar spot on trefor.net. Don’t get me wrong. It doesn’t mean that all suppliers have to entertain the team in the same way in order to get the business. But it might help…
Anyone else wanting to appear in front of a particularly uncritical audience should get in touch. Next time we will have the audio recording facilities lined up and post it on YouTube.
Every volcanic ash cloud has a silver lining, did you know?
My wife Anne is a supply teacher. That’s a substitute teacher for American readers. Normally she does two or three days a month, mostly to keep her hand in but also to help fund feeding the four ravenous children that run rampant around our house.
In the UK we are coming to the end of the Easter Holidays (Spring Break). Funnily enough over the last couple of days the phone has been ringing almost off the hook with calls from head teachers. Schools are desperately looking for staff to cover for teachers stranded overseas due to flight cancellations. Anne will be doing as much work next week as she normally does in a month.
As I said every volcanic ash cloud has a silver lining.
PS I’ll be making my own sandwiches next!
PPS as long as there is food in the shops to put in the sandwiches. There’s a lot to be said against globalisation.
Live air traffic control radar data as of 7.45am Saturday 17th April. Nothing to do with IP Communications although everything to do with the internet I guess.
An x represents an airport, a plane is a plane. The map shows how the Icelandic volcanic ash cloud is affecting air traffic in Europe – only a few airports in the south are open. Check out what it looks like now here.
Sometimes you just have to have a bit of fun. This is the NetOps guitar. It is an essential partof the toolkit at an ISP Network Operations Centre. It was in the window of the British Heart Foundation charity shop in Fareham and we made it ours.
It comes out every now and again for a strum or a singsong. Because we can 🙂 Any requests (keep em clean please)? If we get any sensible ones I’ll record it and put it up on YouTube:-)
Timico top performing salesperson Jo Barker shows off her new Audi R8. I’m told it does over 200mph but Jo assures me that she has set the cruise control to never go over 70mph.
Personally a car is no use to me if you can’t get a set of golf clubs in it – doesn’t look very practical to me!
with very intermittent WiFi connectivity – how did Robin Hood manage?
Normal service will be resumed after half term.
It was said that during the last recession over 1 million people left the communications industry. I know one person, for example, that decided to run his own Post Office branch. I don’t have any stories this time round – I’m too busy. However the results of a survey I just read from Cobalt Corporate Finance suggests that the industry thinks it is worse this time round.
Of over 100 UK mid-market businesses in the Technology, Media and Telecoms industries questioned, over 50% indicated that the impact of the recession has been worse than the 2000/2001 downturn. This compared to 35% in 2008 survey and 15% in 2007.
The good news is that in 2010 employment levels are expected to increase at 45% of companies surveyed. Only 20% expect a decrease compared to over 50% this time last year. Positive sales growth in 2010 is forecast by over 70% of respondents although the optimism of last year’s survey may have been misplaced (nearly 60% forecasting growth in 2009).
I think that if you have come through last year unscathed you are in a good position to take advantage of opportunities in 2010. Having said that, experience has shown that it always takes longer than you think so a strategy that involves taking on more staff must be executed with great care.
PS I have no idea if the Post Office branch is still open. He could have picked a slightly safer alternative career in my mind!
When Santa has finished for the day (night) he goes in for some well deserved relaxation. In this case Timico was pleased to be able to offer him a massage. We had a team of therapists, masseuses and beauticians in yesterday to give the staff a bit of a Christmas treat and luckily for Santa it happened on the same day as his visit. It’s a tough old game.
Note part of his outfit visible on the chair.
When Santa has finished for the day (night) he goes in for some well deserved relaxation. In this case Timico was pleased to be able to offer him a massage. We had a team of therapists, masseuses and beauticians in yesterday to give the staff a bit of a Christmas treat and luckily for Santa it happened on the same day as his visit. It’s a tough old game.
Note part of his outfit visible on the chair.
Santa made it to Timico early this year – some vids below include him meeting some of the staff – they have all been good boys and girls in 2009.
Santa visits the sales floor
Santa visits the Network Operations team
The youth of today doesn’t know how to put an LP on a record deck. That isn’t entirely fair. It is pretty obvious that you take the vinyl disc out of its sleeve and slot it over the little nipple in the middle of the deck.
The only thing is on my old “music centre” in the attic you have to select tape, CD, phono or tuner and to someone who just downloads from iTunes it isn’t altogether clear that phono means record player.
I also had to show him how to press “start” to get start the deck revolving and move the arm over.
My 12 year old needed to write a review on a jazz record for his homework and Duke Ellington fitted the bill perfectly. Problem is it was on 12 inch LP and in the attic. I sometime retire to the attic on a Sunday afternoon with my pal Terry and a few beers to play with the train set and listen to some of the 250 albums and hundreds of singles that live up there.
Just for the record 12inches = 30cms and LP = Long Playing record. Happy days.
I’ve just left a networking event organised by my friend Jeff Pulver to promote his forthcoming #140 characters conference (#140conf )in London. Scheduled for November 17th/18th the event will take place at the O2 Arena.
This will be the third such do organised by Jeff after the first in New York earlier this year and the forthcoming one in Los Angeles. What astonished me was that there were more people from London at the New York event than from New York itself and London is considered to be the twitter capital of the world. Hence the London conference. LA was second in terms of origin of attendees. I even met someone from London at the bash who had spoken at the NY event – Kate Arkless Gray or @RadioKate.
The number of attendees at tonight’s event was also impressive. When I signed up for it two days ago there were 70 or so people registered. Jeff was expecting a total of 90 but in actual fact he ended up with 190! There is clearly something happening here. Didn’t realise that Jeff is also an investor in twitter.
Anyway I’ve signed up as part of the cast of characters for the #140 character conference. In my mind it is definately worth taking a look at attending. If you don’t know what it is all about just google it or visit http://140conf.com/
My out off office is now officially on as I take the family away for annual leave in the sunny Isle of Man.
During this time it is unlikely that I will be writing posts but you can keep up with me on facebook if you want to.
PS I know that I have only just had a week in South Africa playing rugby. That wasn’t a holiday. It was a life enriching experience that boys sometimes just have to do.
Busy day tomorrow so I thought I’d get this post in today because I certainly won’t be writing anything during the ISPA Awards.
At 10am I have an ISPA council meeting, followed by the AGM at 12.15 and the annual ISPA Awards bash in the evening. I haven’t been to this event before so I am looking forward to it, especially as Timico is a finalist in the “Best Business Customer Service” category.
I’ll let you know how we get on plus any publishable/non-incriminating photos from the night.
It’s also the Nominet AGM today so if I have any feedback from that I’ll let you know.
As I drove in to work this morning I heard a BBC Radio 4 interview with 2nd man on the moon Buzz Aldrin. Part of it included playback of the telephone conversation the astronauts had with President Richard Nixon who emphasised that he was using the telephone in the Oval Office to make the call. Of course this was a technological marvel at the time.
I actually met Buzz Aldrin 15 years ago on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the moon landings. What struck me was the high calibre of everyone involved with the Apollo missions.
The technology they used was so basic that the astronauts had to pilot the spacecraft manually. None of this onboard guidance computer stuff. In fact my Nokia phone now has much more computing power than did the whole mission to the moon.
Buzz described to me the way that they flew the lunar landing craft by hand across the moon’s surface until they spotted somewhere suitable to land. The whole mission was balanced on a knife edge as the lander only had 40 seconds of fuel left before they had to abort the landing. Fortunately, as we now all know, they spotted a landing spot and took it down.
The missions to the moon were the catalyst that set in train the whole semiconductor industry and brought about the technological revolution that is still going on today. One small step for man, one massive leap for technology.
I had my photo taken with Buzz at that event 15 years ago. If I can find it I’ll scan it in and post it here. I wonder if he remembers me ?:-)
Just like the Queen has two birthdays, “official” and “actual”, I realised over the weekend that so do I. “Blog” and “actual” :-).
My first blog post went out on Monday May 19th one year ago. Since then I have written over 330 posts and had around 70,000 visits.
The year gone by has also been a successful one in business as Timico attained 4th place in the Sunday Times/Microsoft Techtrack listing and was winner of the ITSPA Best Unified Solution Award.
Trefor.net is still very much small beer in internet terms but we all have our own little worlds to live in and this is mine. It is an exciting place to be .
PS my actual birthday is the same as Donny Osmond’s! I’ll leave it to you to track down if you need to know it badly enough. I’m younger than him though 🙂
Microsoft is closing down Encarta, its paid-for online encyclopedia. It now holds such a small market share, 1.27% according to The Register, that it is no longer viable.
I imagine few tears will be shed. It is worth noting though that this really does represent the passing of an era. Not “the Encarta era” but the era represented by the likes of Encycopedia Brittanica of which Encarta was just one of the last in the line.
In its time Encarta represented a big change in the market. Up until then Encyclopedia Brittanica was sold mostly by door to door salesmen and came in around 30 large bound volumes. As a kid I would have loved to have had a set but it was also impractically expensive for my parents. I imagine that salesman only needed one sale to live off for a week.
The word encyclopedia will probably now disappear into the history books having been replaced by wikipedia.
Tina Turner was great. Amazing in fact considering she is 69 years old (allegedly). What’s that got to do with a technology blog? Only that I went along to a concert at the O2 Arena last night and was absolutely bowled over with the quality of what I saw.
The quality of the show, the quality of the venue – wonderful acoustics, and the quality of the hospitality on offer. My thanks to hosts, Telcity and specifically sales manager Sharon Newling for looking after us in their suite.
Telecity is one of Timico’s high quality datacentre partners – we have a number of suites and cages at both Harbour Exchange and Sovereign House in London’s Docklands.
Just to round off the story I was pleased to take along with me Barry Skillett of Paypoint and Terence Long of RTP Solutions, both Timico customers. What’s more the O2 Arena is run by AEG, also a customer.
From left to right Barry Skillet, me, Sharon Newling, Terence Long. I am obviously enjoying myself and obviously in need of a haircut!
Below – Tina herself on stage.
The things I have to do for the business. Today it was almost like being in a James Bond movie. I turned up at 10am prompt at the Thames Water Utilities Depot in Bow in East London – just around the corner from the site of the Olympic stadium which incidentally seems to be shooting up. I was met by Calypso Harland, bubbly marketing manager of Geo, the Alchemy owned business that sprang out of 186k’s UK fibre optic network.
I had been invited to inspect Geo’s London fibre ring which, yes you’ve guessed it, runs through the sewers. Donning layers of protective clothing I disappeared into a subterranean world for a once in a lifetime experience. Believe you me I doubt that anyone wants to do it twice.
The 140 year old Victorian sewers under London are I suppose of cursory interest. The message actually was that Geo can provide very cost effective and very secure fibre backbone connectivity because they use the sewers and don’t therefore have to dig up the roads.
What is interesting is the huge capacity there is down there. Geo run 4 ducts, three of which are currently empty. A duct can hold two fibre cables each with 288 strands of fibre. Each fibre can, using current DWDM technology, run 160 10Gbps channels (x 4 if you use phase modulation per wavelength).
So by my sums the Geo London ring should be able to operate at nearly 15 Petabits per second or roughly a billion times faster than the latest and greatest 21CN ADSL2+ connection. That’s a heck of a lot of capacity.
And for anyone that wants to know no, my thigh length wellies did not leak and no there were no floaters in sight – something to do with a high fibre diet apparently! 🙂
These sewers run on the surface (covered up obviously) right through the Olympic site. Come 2012 they will likely be crawling with security guards!
Check out the Geo video here. Photos below:
