Category Archives: Thoughts..

05.05.14
by

One Of Those Faces….

Walking on Brighton seafront this weekend we came across the “Tight Modern” a tiny replica of the Tate Modern containing artworks by 60 disabled artists.  Well worth a look but that’s not important right now…What is important is that as I came out , one of the guides stopped me and said:

“I know you don’t I?”

Well no, no she didn’t but I come across this all the time.  It’s weird that people think they know me.. Not just “I might know you” but “I DO know you”.  So I responded whilst smiling:

“No I just have one of those faces, people think they know me all the time”

From here we move to the next step which is the person who claimed to know me insists that my memory is faulty:

“We met at one of Simon’s get togethers” – said quite forcefully whilst gesturing at whoever Simon is.

These are my favourite responses , the best of which was from a guy at immigration in Chicago who insistently said:

“We were on the same kibbutz a few years back”

When I continue to deny knowing them the whole atmosphere gets very frosty and the person who is convinced they know me is now convinced I’m lying for some reason.  I then get a dismissive goodbye.

So there you have it, in a few short seconds my new friend goes from delighted to see me again to annoyed I’ve turned into such a lying b***h.  I clearly need a better strategy to deal with these confrontations because they do keep happening and I must  just have one of those faces

Or I’m part of a science fiction plot / movie and there are hundreds of me’s out there that I’m unaware of.  Maybe one of the other me’s also has a blog?

01.09.14
by

My Search For The Perfect Doorbell Is Over (Yes Seriously)

Last March the build of our home office was completed.  It sits at the end of our , not very long garden and is s our primary place to work now.  We love it.

About 20m from the back of the house

About 20m from the back of the house

The only downside to the office is that it’s the full length of the house and the length of the garden away from the doorbell.  We order plenty of things for home delivery and our poor neighbours were having to take things in because we never heard the bell ring.  So we tried a few things

1. Buying the most expensive doorbell in Homebase that claimed the furthest range (25m).  Didn’t work at all

2. Importing a doorbell from the US that cost 140 USD plus import charges that claimed a 100m range.  Worked intermittently but not well enough

Finally Carl sent me a link for a new product that hadn’t yet launched called the Doorbot. The Doorbot connects to your wireless internet and has a mobile app that works on iOS and Android , when someone rings the bell the app launches.  You register the app with the serial number of your doorbot(s)) and you can “answer” the bell which triggers the video camera and a microphone. For me it means I’m able to trigger the mic and talk  to the person at the door as well as   see who’s there and if I even want to answer it (hello 6pm Jehovah’s Witnesses)

Since it uses push notifications there’s a small delay but at home it’s not even  a couple of seconds. Maybe when I’m away from home and on 3G it might be longer but my use case for talking to someone at my door when i’m away from home is small.  We received it Monday (14 quid import duty) and set it up and had 3 deliveries Tuesday and 3 visitors Wednesday all worked beautifully.  For some reason other people aren’t as excited as I am when I open the door and explain how thrilling our new doorbell is, I guess if you don’t know about it, it’s just a doorbell.

I had no solution for what we’d do if the Doorbot didn’t work so very glad it does and highly recommended for anyone who has trouble getting to the door on time or wants to keep an eye on people who ring their doorbell.

Doorboat

10.17.13
by

Keeping It Clean

Two recommendations for accessories for my Macbook Air extremely useful for both what they are meant to do and also as something completely different.  The first was a simple privacy screen to keep things private when I’m sat in meetings making notes I don’t want seen travelling.  The second is a keyboard cover to protect the keys from my aggressive typing (I wore the M and N keys away in 6 months on my last laptop).

The unexpected bonus of the privacy screen is that  I bought one that had guide rails stuck to the side bezels so it can be slotted in and out as needed. This also stops me getting fingerprints all over my monitor.  I just take it out and clean it with soapy water, plus it only cost about 15 dollars so i’m happy to replace it if I need to.

My keyboard cover (as recommended by Kathy) actually does an second  job of catching crumbs and long bits of hair (the classy fallout of not stopping work to eat and being on the keyboard 18+hrs a day).  I love the Moshi keyboard protector which is so light and thin I don’t notice it’s there and doesn’t effect my typing – in fact i’d buy it purely to protect the keyboard from debris.  I was surprised by how nice the Moshi was compared to other covers I have seen which created too much of a buffer between my typing and the keys to make them workable.

If you want to try it out, here’s the keyboard cover. Again it “sits” on the keys , it’s not glued on so can be removed and cleaned (spot a pattern here ?}

Moshi Keyboard Cover

09.10.13
by

Let’s try that again

Hello there … Well apparently I haven’t blogged in some time, at least not publicly.  I’ve written countless ones in my head but somehow (let’s call it time passing too quickly when you’re busy) they never made it from my head onto the page.  That’s a shame, if only for me, because the past year has been full of learning and doing and (oh my!) PMRs and Sametime and Connections and Tivoli and SSO and Cognos and DB2 and Filenet and DON’T FALL ASLEEP AT THE BACK.

So, things discovered and lessons learned that I’d like to write up so I don’t have to learn them twice.  Plus random stuff that needs to leave my brain and be free.    Expect to see both Mike and Tim posting updates here too, but first I need to write about Sametime 9 because I’ve been biting my tongue for months and there’s much goodness coming your way that I can now talk about. Enough in fact that I needed to start a new blog just to share.

More very soon…