Participation

I spend a lot of time on-line. I look at hundreds of blog sites and hundreds of photos each month. I read dozens and dozens of articles on everything under the Sun - from the best way to live in a van to the progress of the Large Hadron Collider. I read tweets (hundreds and hundreds) and occasionally tweet something myself. I email. I surf. I flipbook.
In short, I consume. I consume in vast quantities, and I want more - and more - and more AND I don't want to pay (well, alright, a little bit - but not that much!).

In a second or two when I was not slurping up the products of someones else efforts, I thought:- "What would happen if everybody just produced ONE thing?"

Well, the internet would be a vastly more interesting place, for one. It might take some of the pressure off the inveterate producers of digital goodies, as well. It could help convince those organisations that simply moved their "real world goods" to the Internet (and continued to charge "real world" prices) that they don't own the game anymore. And, if you did it, it might even make you feel as though you were part of something bigger than you had ever been a part of before.

So, i just produced something - a slideshow of my photography set to music and themed with "a calming, tranquil" goal in mind. Each photograph is from Scotland, and while not technically perfect (is anything?), they are some of the ones that "stick in my mind" - for a variety of reasons.

Anyway, here it is, in a form suitable for an iPod/iPhone and one for the iPad/Mac/AppleTV and for all you HD fans, here's a 720HD version. The first is around 46M and the second is just under 160M, while the third weighs in at 272M. Large sizes, I know - but to make what I wanted I wasn't going to compromise (and spare a thought for me - I uploaded them from a 448k uplink :-( ). If you are a Windows user then either transcode them to your preferred format or install QuickTime for the PC.

If you like it, leave a comment. If you hate it, leave a comment.

iPad - Magic, or meaningless?

When the iPad was announced, I waded through all the facts I could find (as apart from all the anguished "it's not a computer/replacement netbook/whatever/" and all the "apple fanboy" cries of "brilliant/earth-shattering/world-changing" etc). And factual stuff was hard to come by, as was unbiased reviews.

My decision was to leave it until I could get a "hands-on" and see then if it fitted my work flow.

I got the "hands-on" from the apple store and one early adopter who let me have a play for a couple of hours in return for setting up his email accounts.

My decision was that the iPad was well engineered, but it wasn't a lap-top replacement, and it wasn't a net book, and it wasn't a tool I could use in my work regimen. Leave it until generation 2 or 3 and see what comes with those (like facetime (camera(s)), like the ability to move files on and off without a third party app or emailing them!).

So why is there a first-gen iPad sitting next to me as I write this?

Simple - I got work to fund one to help me support of all the iPads that were popping up all over the place.

So, has my opinion changed after a week with the iPad?

Well, yes and no.

I still think it is a well engineered piece of kit, it's still not a laptop replacement and it's still not a netbook replacement. I can use it in my work regimen though - to answer emails and to grab information from the Internet.

But the fundamental shift in my thinking is that the iPad is a device for consuming. Consuming films, TV shows, screencasts, podcasts, youtube, music, audio books, books, blogs, photographs, games and any other thing that Apple can push through the iTunes/App store interface. The battery life is brilliant ( I played the movie Avatar back-to-back 4 times and still had 3% battery left ), the screen is superb, the sound quality is up to Apples usual standard, and when IOS4 comes to the iPad, I should be able to "fast-app switch" while my magnatune music streams keeps playing in the background. This combination makes it an excellent media consumption device.

I have used the iPad for ssh access to my servers, and that works, but the app is an iPhone app run in 2x mode (double pixels) so that's a bit clunky, but it does work. Next, I need a remote desktop protocol app for attaching to my Mac and PC - then I can use it as a replacement emergency netbook (I use an Asus eeepc for that now (thanks sis!) ).

Overall, not magic, but certainly not meaningless, not by a long way!

(the iPad model I have is WiFi 32G - iPad picture Courtesy of Apple)

A Day in the Life

For IT Systems Administrators there are no "typical" days. There are "typical" tasks. Log reviews, software patches and updates, data retrieval, data backup, storage management, commission new servers, retire old ones, test new software, server performance checks, network performance checks, power regulation checks on the Uninterruptible Power Supplies, Air Conditioning unit checks, handling user queries and complaints, checking that all services are up and running (and running correctly!) and many many more smaller tasks that fall into the "preventative" category - all form the backbone of the Systems Administrator raison d'être.

Then there are the atypical tasks - like dealing with a flooded server room, moving your entire inventory of servers from one room to another, crawling around under the floor to find a possible cable break, running emergency power cables because someone forgot to tell you that there would be a power interruption that day and a hundred and one other things that can and do happen only occasionally, but that need to be dealt with by "someone".

Then we have the administrative tasks of the position - the documentation of systems, servers, networks and services, the preparation of proposals for new/upgraded servers and services, the preparation of specifications for desktops, servers and laptops so that they will do the job at the most reasonable cost - and then there is the form filling for management - but enough said about that particular endeavour.

And after all that, we have the real reason why we are needed. When a service goes down, we need to get it backup as soon as possible - and that may mean 24 hour shifts, cannibalising other, less important servers/services and basically doing what is needed to ensure that that service is back up in the least amount of downtime possible.

There are many ways that could be used to describe the job of Systems Administrator, but my favourite is this one:

"So, Jock, you say you are the "Official Elephant Hunter and Disposal Person" for the City of Glasgow?"
"That's right"
"But Glasgow has never had a problem with elephants!"
"See what a good job I'm doing!"

You don't know you need me, until you need me.

A tale of two ISPs

I switched to Namesco as my ISP nearly 3 years ago, because they offered a fixed 2M package (my line had always done 2M and no more) with 100G download per month. I paid a year in advance.

Mostly, I got what I paid for - 2M download speeds and virtually unlimited data downloads. Occasionally, the Internet went away, but mostly it was fine. At renewal time, the cost of the 2M fixed package had increased, and the data allowance had gone down to 1G per month, purchase extra as required. After a review of my download habits, I decided 10G extra was enough. I renewed for a year, paid in advance to take advantage of a discount, and expected the same level of service as I had the year before. Didn't happen. Mostly, I got Internet at fluctuating speeds.
After another year, I renewed again, but this time with an 8M ADSL+ package that was cheaper than my fixed 2M package (by about £100 per year). That, if anything, was worse. The connection speed was up and down, the Internet took frequent holidays from me, and my ISP always started the diagnostics with "Please reboot your router" and then had me crawling under the desk to put the connection in the master socket (which was where it was from the last time!), then said the line test was fine etc etc.

Eventually I found mention of an ISP who appeared to be a little more pro-active on its customers behalf.

I rang their sales line and had a chat to a guy who listened to what I told him about my sorry tale and then said that they did not guarantee to get my speed back to 2M, but that they would at least get BT to run tests before expecting me to pay - and they agreed with me that a line capable of 2M just doesn't drop to .5M without there being a problem somewhere along the path from the exchange to my house.

Long story short. After just two months with these guys, I have had BT replace my line from the exchange to the pole at the back of my house and I now have an Internet connection that has been stable for 96+ hours at roughly 2.5M.

The name of these guys is "Andrews and Arnold" and you can find them at http://aaisp.net.uk . Read their Broadband page, then their Support page and you will get an idea of where these guys are coming from. Their charging model won't suit everyone, but it sure suits the way I work.

Obviously two months is a very short time, and a long term assessment of these guys will take time.

But 2.5M in two months from .5M? That's huge! Especially after the other shower did nothing for 7 months.

Clearing the clutter

Many years ago I was made redundant. This was quite a shock to me, as I had always considered myself to be a good worker, giving value for money to my employer, going the "extra mile" when required.

I blamed myself, as I thought it was my fault - but when I saw who was kept and who was fired, I saw that there was no reason (other than the management having a "plan" to reduce costs ) to choose one over another.

So, what to do?

At that time, things were, economically speaking, quite difficult and the prospect of paid employment was quite low. I knew computers, book-keeping, computer games, the meat industry and how to talk to people. I really liked playing computer (and console games) and as I had been in the console games sector, I thought I would see what could be done in that area.
Realizing that retail premises were not an option, I went mobile. I started a market stall selling the console games of the day (Super Nintendo, MegaDrive, Neo-Geo (look it up!) etc. ). The business kept me afloat until the PlayStation and other CD based formats came to the fore. Since they were easily copied, they followed the way of the PC and put many legitimate sellers out of business.
Shame, but that's life.

Fast forward 10+ years.

Our loft is getting added insulation soon, so it had to be cleared out. While in the process of doing so, I came upon the remnants of my console games selling business. I found an Atari Jaguar console (no games, so useless), an American SNES (Super Nintendo) still in its original box (no games, no "universal" adapter), an Amstrad 664 home computer (with disks), several hundred Commodore 64 games on cartridge and tape, and an MSX home computer (circa 1983), many spares for many different consoles and a lot of leads etc that were just plain useless.
I suppose I could have had a good old wallow in the nostalgia evoked by these items, but, you know what? I dumped them. Unceremoniously. Without real thought.
Why?
Because they were useless. Because they brought nothing to my life now. Because they had been sitting in my loft for 10 years, never looked at.

The sum total of what I kept from the loft clear out was my chess board and pieces, and some financial papers that needed shredding.

I am currently in paid employment, with the prospect of being made redundant yet again. As we know, economic times are hard (again). My base skill set hasn't changed much, but the world has.

So, what to do?

Haven't got a clue, really.

But at least my loft is empty.

Money and Value

When I do something, I try to do it as well as I can - probably, so do you, and probably so does everyone else.

So why do we end up with ISP's who can't deliver what they sell?
Why do we have voting booths that run out of ballot papers?
Why do we have politicians who can't manage to be truthful?
Why do we have Public Servants who neither serve, nor care about the Public?
Why does any work you have done on your house have a 10 year guarantee, but anything that goes wrong isn't covered?
Why do we have insurance companies who will take every penny you've got in premiums, but demand you jump through all sorts of hoops before they fail to give you a penny?
Why do we have banks that are now my best friend, when two years ago they would cheerfully have put me in debt for the rest of my life?

If everybody is trying their best, why does it turn out like this?

My take is simple. Everything is measured in terms of money. We no longer have a value system, we only have a monetary system.

Example: I use the internet. I pay a premium to an ISP for a certain level of service. I value that service beyond the price I pay, because it is of importance to me. If that service slips, and I can no longer do what is of value to me, then I need to re-assess. Having re-assessed, I now pay more for my internet, but I only pay for what I use and I am not locked into a long term contract and I have an internet connection I can carry in my pocket and use almost anywhere in the UK. Overall, the value of the service I now have is more than the old one to me. The cost might be more (could be less depending on what I use) but the value is the important thing.

Example: I research a problem at work and come up with the answer that is best for the users of the system. I make a presentation to the "powers that be" and I am told it is "too expensive". When I ask what is the cost of the performance degradation on the users output when using a "less expensive" solution, I am met with blank stares. The value of the "too expensive" is not the amount we pay for it, but the amount by which the users productivity goes up as opposed to the "less expensive" solution. Simple concept, but totally alien to "the powers that be".

Let's start valuing again, instead of pricing.

The Internetz and me

I started using dial-up many years ago when UUCP was doing the heavy lifting, and Kermit was fighting with X, Y and ZMODEM.
I have used remote access for a long time.

No technology in my life has ever frustrated me more. If I got a good connect, the file transfer failed. If I got lousy speed then the file transfers took forever and still failed. Mostly things just failed - but - every so often it all came together and it just worked, giving a glimpse of what could be possible.

Fast forward to today. We have blistering fast broadband in every house. Everybody is on-line all the time. We can download as much music, video, and other content as we want. It is always there, always on and always available. That's the picture painted by the ISP's, the media and those trying to sell you stuff.

The reality is that some of us have blistering fast broadband speed (cabled areas, those who live on top of the BT exchanges) - the rest of us have todays technology delivered (slowly) by last centuries infrastructure, intermittently.

The ISP's have restricted how much we can download (caps and "fair use" policies), they push ever faster (more expensive) packages, when they know the delivering technology cannot deliver anymore than what you are getting today, they change the fine print, they traffic shape your p2p traffic on the grounds that these services are "illegal", when the reality is that their crappy (rented) networks can't handle the traffic on the bandwidth they are overselling.

You are branded a thief if you download music (even from sites where the music is original and freely distributable), download a video (legally) from anywhere and boy, you better watch it quick, or it will disappear off your computer in 10/20/30 days whatever. Access a web site and chances are you will be asked to participate in a survey/have a pop-up add in your face, have to listen to someones (not your) choice of music, have spyware, crapware, trojans or viruses attacking your computer. And don't get me started on spam and spammers. There has to be a special version of Hell for those bastards!

Last October I changed my package with the same ISP from a fixed rate 2mb package (that was rock steady at 2 and a little bit megabits)to an ADSL+ package capable of upto 8Mb - I knew I would not get any increase in speed (my line is incapable of more), but it was UKP100 (per year) cheaper than the package I had.

Big Mistake.

I now have a rock steady (most days!) internet connection at .5 to .75Mb.
Roughly one quarter to one third the speed I had before.

I have contacted my ISP about this over the last 4 months, and they finally (after many tries and me jumping through all the diagnostic hoops they could conjure up) agree that the line is the problem, and to progress this, a BT engineer should come to the house and inspect my equipment and internal wiring (huh?). Oh, and by the way, they will charge you UKP188 pounds for the privilege - according to them, the charge is levied only if they find a fault in your equipment. They don't charge if they find a fault in their equipment - which is really big of them.

I have been dealing with BT from the days of ISDN data connections, and let me assure you, they *never* admit a fault. Your problem magically disappears some time after BT have been notified of it (usually!), but it was never their fault.

Case in point. I lost my internet connection in 2009 for three days. The ISP was useless, they couldn't do anything - it was a fault at the exchange. Finally, after three days it "just came back on". When I asked for the report from BT, I was given a one sentence report that explained nothing.

So, whats the answer?

Well, for me, I have changed ISPs to a firm that have a reputation of being a little bit more pro-active on their customers behalf, and I have moved onto a month by month contract (I will never get a long term contract again) and I have begun exploring other methods of Internet connection.
Satellite and Mobile Internet are the front runners at the moment.

For you, I don't know what the answer is, - but I can surely say that the model of using an ISP who doesn't own the delivering infrastructure is fatally flawed - you end up as the ball in a three-way ping-pong match between you, your ISP and BT.

Not pretty. Which just about sums up the state of the "Information Superhighway" in my part of the UK.