Blog of Hamlesh

Finally got around to restoring my blog database backup, some content will be missing, mainly images and downloads.  If you need anything thats missing, drop me an email and i’ll see what I can do.  One of the most visited and useful things was my iPhoto fix, i’ll try and get the file back up soon.

I have always been an advocate of having a desktop computer (be it mac or pc), rather than working on laptops.  Having multiple locations (mayfair, stanmore, and home), with desktops at each location, all syncing documents between each other (using Windows Livesync[1] – if you havent seen/used this, go check it out, its great!).

Outlook configured at each location, all syncing to Exchange with logmein.com also running for remote access/working, all of this is key.  Multiple monitors is also an essential requirement, 6 at the office in Mayfair, 3 at the office in Stanmore, and 2 at home.

6 screen setup in Mayfair

Oh how things have changed! Over the last few months, I have begun working purely on my Macbook, the fact that its an Apple isnt the thing to note here, it could be any form of laptop hardware (although I do love my macbook).

I now have one screen at each location (other than at home where there are two), and I simply hook it up and work with dual screens.  The change did require a little forced acceptance on my part, as I was so conditioned to using all 6 screens.  This way of working does make a lot of sense, especially if you are in IT, you carry your “tool of the trade” with you everywhere.

At home there are 2 screens, as there is a desktop in my room, to be fair, its also hooked up to the projector, and is only/mainly used for watching movies while in bed.

Visiting my sister at Microsoft the other day (she works at TVP in Reading for MS), reassured me that there was logic in this line of thinking.  They too (for the most part) work on laptops with additional monitors.  That said, at the Google HQ on Buckingham Palace Street, they all have deployed desktops (spent the weekend there a while ago for BarCamp).  So who is “doing it right”?  As always, its a case of each to their own.  I am preferring this way of working (although on one occasion, I left my laptop at the womans, only realising when I got home, and had to drive 45mins back to her place to pick it up).

Anyway, the advantages of working like this, for me;

• No worrying about configuration changes – its the same machine.
• The same point above applies for applications/data (although I sync my docs between my server and the macbook using livesync constantly).
• Less cost – only need one machine and a few screens – the 6 way rig is going up for sale.

The major disadvantage is felt now that the weather is getting better, as I am back out on my motorbike, and having to carry a backpack on the bike is highly irritating!  Although this is a problem “challenge” that can be overcome with a little engineering.  Oh that and I need to buy 2 or 3 more power packs for my macbook; connecting and disconnecting the power adapter at each location is getting tiresome – yes, I am lazy “efficient” like that!

[1] – yep Livesync also works on my macbook

Right, I’ve been dwelling on and battling with this “issue” for a very long time. In fact, calling it an “issue” I think is far too kind, it is, without a shadow of a doubt, a 400 year old, oak tree trunk sized, pain in the backside!

Yep, thats right, we all have it, you cant get away from it, and its name is email.

Over the next few days, although it may turn into weeks, I’ll make some time to chew the email cud, and throw out some of my thoughts and rant-ish musings on the subject.

Lets lighten the mood somewhat now methinks, with our friend, well, hes my friend anyway, Dilbert.

My personal pet hates when it comes to email

I realise these are my pet hates, but feel free to hate them too, the more people hating them, will lead, lets hope, to fewer people doing them, and onward to the victorious world of “better email”. Hmm, well, I guess anythings possible, right?

To start with theres little point talking about spam, and the fact that supposedly my girlfriend is unsatisfied in bed, or that some Nigeria prince, if there were such things, would like to give me millions of dollars. So lets not. Any intelligent person has by now discovered “the spam filter”, just deal with it, and live with it.

Technical side note: If everyone would just check the damn SPF records on all email/domains before relaying them, spam would for the most part, go away. End of said technical side note.

Now, I’ve not ranked these, perhaps I should, then again, perhaps I’d rather scribble (or type) out this post and go watch a film?

1. Emails with no subject – I’m going to just start deleting emails that come in without a subject from now on, or add the subject, “OI, YOU FORGOT THE SUBJECT”.
2. Long emails – its always good to hear from friends with long updates, and those aren’t really what I would call “day to day” emails, nor the long emails that I hate. How many times have you had emails for meetings, outlining the agenda, and all the points to be covered, with a little breakout on each point? Well, if we’re going to do the whole thing on email, I may as well stay in bed, whats the point of going to the meeting. Its not complicated people, email to outline high level points, then pick up the damn phone or fire up a video call, or arrange a meeting (although unnecessary meetings are another pet hate, perhaps theres another post in there somewhere).
3. Emails reminding me about your email – its in my process queue, I’ll deal with it on *MY* time, unless of course you’re paying for the privilege of an immediate response.
4. People who treat email as an immediate form of communication – *phone rings* “I sent you an email asking you to call me 5 mins ago, and I’ve not heard from you”… well, was it that hard for you to just call me? It cant have been, as you managed to work out what all the scary buttons on the phone do in 5 minutes.
5. Responses from people, where they haven’t answered my original question or addressed the original issue that I had emailed them about in the first place. Come on!
6. When a reply contains anything that looks like, or could mean something like, “I sent you another email about that stuff earlier, see that email”. Clearly you have time to waste! You could have simply replied with the answer to my specific issue, but instead you refer me to a previous email. So you spend the time sending a reply and typing out words, but don’t bother actually being any help, what-so-ever… links to point 5.
7. Signatures – you only need to send your signature with all your info, your logo, measurements, blood type, CV, family pictures, your corporate disclaimer and whatever else you’ve decided that you need to share with me; *ONCE*. If you’re initiating the communication, include it on your original email only, theres no need to stick it on every single reply, or is there? Perhaps you’d be so kind as to explain why to me, no, really, I want to understand this. To be fair, until recently I was guilty of doing just this, until it dawned on me, just how utterly pointless it was.
8. That stupid, irritating, and more useless than the right honorable Gordon Brown when it comes to fiscal policy; please consider the environment “tree logo” – who the hell thought this thing up?! Its an email, I’d only need to print it if I *NEEDED* a hard copy, i’ll press print if I need to, I don’t need to be reminded by a silly little green tree asking me to “consider the environment”.

Righto, that’ll do for now. I know there are many many more, and perhaps one day we shall all work together to compile a big book eBook (the little green tree logo people got upset), and pass them into law, or should that be eLaw? Perhaps we could call it “the ebook of knowing how to use email, and if you break them, we’ll break your internets” – people are always complaining that the “internet is down” anyway, therein lies a rant for another day I think!

Watch out for the follow up to this, which will be more useful, I’ll go into how I actually deal with the masses and masses of transactional and business emails I get on a day to day basis. It’ll be worth it, you’ll see, email management is becoming one of the most important soft skills that you can have these days.

Anyway, for now, Hamlesh out.

Computer software giant Microsoft has announced plans to open its own stores, at a time when many other retailers are struggling in the economic downturn

BBC news article…

My thoughts;

MS are moving more towards services and away from software, and more towards hardware/providing platforms rather than software. The big issue at MS atm, and they recognize this internally, is that they don’t, and everyone knows that they don’t innovate.

The surface is the first interesting thing from an innovation pov to come out of MS for a long time. They’ve provided a hardware platform, and are letting others dream up the applications/uses. The restaurant application on the surface is very cool, and you can already see uptake (the vegas flirting app is just stupid imo!).

The retail stores do well in the US, and aren’t a new thing there. Just seems like an extension of the same thinking applied in the UK. Whether or not it will work here remains to be seen – but the Apple stores do well, not because of “fan boy” mentality, but because you can go and get help from a human being – not a call center that wants a credit card number before they can help you (consumer support side).

Apple puts a lot of time, energy, and money into building its community, and it pays off, not just for the brand following – but also for the fact that most apple users go from beginner to intermediate level very quickly – the workshops and classes they run are free, and useful.

Where do you get that with MS? Perhaps they will try and offer more of the same. Hopefully we’ll see some more innovation, rather than just reinventing what others are doing and calling it their own.

I’m not a “fan boy” of either. I like my mabook, never gives me any trouble, then again, nor do my Windows machines, or my Ubuntu laptop – each to their own, horses for courses, $insert_cliche_saying_here;

… yep, its true. Heres a quick run down of all the things I havent been able to talk about until now – either due to a complete lack of time, or a contractual “gagging”;

• Sold part of my IT business
• Had a major outtage on a heavily used platform – thanks to Microsoft
• Celebrated XMAS
• Garage that screwed up my old SAAB finally paid up – replacement SAAB 95 sourced
• Feeling the crunch; cutting the costs within my IT company in a big way
• New venture/business is formed and underway – pipeline building nicely
• Going to the gym again!

Need to start blogging on a regular basis again, as you all know, I have so many interesting things to say

I quite liked this, mainly as it challenges some of the stereotypes brought about by Apple with their PC vs MAC adverts.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hi1se9rH7S8[/youtube]

I had issue with the old Apple adverts, mainly as they are framed in such a way to suggest that “PC” is “Microsoft”, where a PC is actually a hardware/computing platform running soime form of operating system.

Anyway, an old arguement that doesnt need rehashing.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Id_kGL3M5Cg[/youtube]

Southpark version, and again, the guy that made it doesnt realise that “Computer” is a computing platform, and that his MAC is also a computer – unless thats a general “Computers Suck” message at the end of course!

To clarify – I use MAC OS, Windows XP, Slackware, FreeBSD, Ubuntu, Debian and a whole load of other operating systems on a daily basis, so I’m not being a biased “interweb idiot”, just sharing some funny/interesting vids

This would be the “wordle” of my blog (click for the bigger version).  Thanks to Paul Johnston aka pjnet for bringing this service to my attention.  Very cool way of displaying just what a blog/body of text/rss feed/site is all about.  Go check it out – http://wordle.net.

For me, it was a real suprise to see “financials”, “FSA”, and “markets” in such big letters – I always think of myself as a tech entrepreneur with an interest in the markets.  It would seem that i’ve been talking about the markets a lot recently, both here and on twitter… then again, so have most people!

Righto, so this morning the FSA has banned shorting certain financials, and to the suprise of a lot of people (mainly consumers) the markets are rallying in a big way.  We are seeing gains of over 100% for some banks, even Bradford and Bingley (BB.) saw a swing of almost 60% this morning after not having moved from their bottom for over 2 weeks.  This morning we’ve also seen a mass exodus from gold, which is usually seen as a stable place to put money (although if you look at the 2 day intra day of gold its been bouncing around – which is worrying behavior).  The media is starting to use phrases such as “recovery from worst financial crisis since…” and so forth.

Dear oh dear… right, the markets are a “free market economy”, so the market sets the value of assets and companies, by banning shorting financials, in one sense it can be seen that the FSA has said “these financials cannot go down in value”, or another way to look at it, is that even if you hold physical stock of these financials, they cant now decrease in value (on the short term anyway), as one of the main mechanisms has been banned.  This means that the price can ONLY go upwards, a shortage in volume on the market will drive the demand higer and higher – causing this rally and upsurge in the financials.

Now, dont get me wrong, in many ways I think this is a good move by the FSA.  They have created huge amounts of money for the financials in the short term (very short term).  I would imagine the logic is that once there has been enough of a rally the ban shall be lifted.  This is essentially just buying time, if the FSA don’t lift the ban on shorting, then the markets will find another mechanism to drive down the price and reflect the true/perceived value of those stocks.  In the short term traders are out to make money, this rally wont last, the financials were valued low for a reason, a lot of them are over leveraged, and their balance sheet value is greatly exaggerated.

It is indeed a very interesting time on the markets, especially for a novice like me, I am learning a lot through observation, and have been able to predict a few events before they happen in an intuative type of way.  This is crucial for markets success.

Please, I want to hear your thoughts, and get some debate going – you know how to get hold of me