Driving Karma

I like driving, always have done. Ever since I had my licence and got used to doing longer journeys I've often found I can relax by hitting the road with something good to listen to and possibly a particular direction in mind.

Part of my enjoyment of driving, particularly good country roads, is to drive them at the limit. Not speeding, not dangerously, but if there's a decent straight bit of tarmac, with the occasional interesting bend then I want to be at the limit and it can at times be a bit frustrating when stuck behind someone going significantly slower than that.

Strangely I don't enjoy my morning commute all that much. Yes it's country roads which are interesting to drive so I guess it might be a case of familiarity breeds contempt but I actually believe it's because I get stuck behind a slow driver more days than not.

Today however was very different, on the way in the roads were clear and I felt like I had the road to myself and mentioned this to my colleagues at work. I may even have suggested that my thoughts to all the other drivers in Hampshire to get out of my way had finally worked and that karma might come back to bite me.

Turns out I may well have been right. About an hour before I would normally consider leaving an email arrived which indicated my normal route home was closed. Fair enough, I'll take the motorway, it'll just mean working slightly later than normal to avoid the worst of the jams. Then it turned out that the motorway was jammed due to a broken down lorry. This meant that my smooth journey in was going to be complemented with a slow, queue laden journey home.

Fortunately it was as bad as it could have been, but certainly wasn't as interesting, and the motorway definitely crawled in places. Looking back on both journeys I don't think that they're going to necessarily change how I view driving on the road, especially my commute, but perhaps I'll be just a little less smug if it's a good run in.

A post about work

I don't often talk about my job in any great detail, mostly because I get the impression it wouldn't be that interesting for anyone that isn't in the trade, and because I can get away with saying I work in computing, or that I work for IBM.

There have been several changes in what I do in the 6 years I been working there full time but I've stuck with the same team because it's always provided a challenge, whether that's going to Poughkeepsie for a month to write a book, or being put in charge of a group of people and told to produce something by the deadline.

The latest 'opportunity' (which I'm sure is management speak for more work) to be sent my way is to act as a design architect for one of the systems we use. From a personal note, this is very cool, the sort of role I've wanted since I started, and without sounding too bigheaded I think it's a job I can do well.

However there is scope to get things horribly wrong. While I may be in charge of the direction things take, I can't micromanage every little detail of the work, nor can I reject something because it isn't exactly how I'd have done it myself.

After a week in the role I've a list of requirements and plenty of ideas, just need to sort out how and when they get done. Good times.

Don't ignore the support acts

I enjoy going to gigs every so often and aside from the fun of watching a band you like play live I'm a big fan of the support or warm up acts. It's a tough job playing while the venue is most likely still filling up and a lot of people will be at the bar.

Last night I went and saw Nine Inch Nails at the O2 in London and had a perfect example of what I'm talking about. The big names on the tour weren't due on till over an hour after the doors opened and so Mew were playing to a still forming crowd and a packed bar.

Turns out that they are a fantastic band with a different sound and incredible vocal harmonies. It's a shame that they didn't have the full crowd to play to and that we missed the beginning of the set however a quick download from iTunes later and I can get to know the music a bit better.

So next time you're at a gig, make sure to check out the support act(s) as you may well be surprised at what you hear.

Protecting our Internet Access

So the European parliament has got it into its head that it should be fine for Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to limit our access to websites on the internet based on whatever package we've purchased from them.

Think about how Sky and Virgin Media work today, there are different packages you can purchase which give you different channels you are allowed to view. Without the right package you can't watch Premiership matches or the latest movies.

While this is ok for television, the internet is a completely different beast though. New sites are being opened up all the time and once they're in a search engine like Google it should be possible for anyone to find them and use it. However if this goes through and their site isn't part of your ISPs package they're not going to get your custom.

Now I really like the way when I need something slighly different than what you get on the high street they are often a few sites which can provide this and get it mailed out the next day. I don't want my internet compartmentalized based on what I'm prepared to pay a company that supports the physical wire to my house.

If you agree that this plan just has bad written all over it then head on over to http://www.blackouteurope.eu and follow their advice for lobbying your MEPs to vote against the bill next month.

Random Things

I've been tagged enough times on Facebook with this latest fad so thought I'd do my response here and make it a bit more accessible. So without further ado, 25 random things about me.

1. I spent my first 15 years growing up on the Isle of Wight, this explains a lot about me.
2. I'd never been on a plane till I was 23.
3. Both times I have been to the United States it has been for business.
4. I get addicted to TV series very easily, so much so that I now avoid certain new programs to avoid adding to the list.
5. If I had the time and the talent I would have loved to be a full time musician.
6. I'd love to own a 2-seater coupe, but am worried I wouldn't fit in it, or it wouldn't be big enough to carry all the stuff I need.
7. I'm qualified to work as a door supervisor at a pub or club.
8. I have never been stopped by the police whilst driving.
9. Over the years I've played concerts at Canterbury Cathedral, Birmingham NIA and Royal Festival Hall.
10. I've worked for IBM for nearly 5 and a half years
11. A good night in will generally involve: pizza, beer or wine and a movie
12. I have never seen Titanic. I can't see the point when I know the end.
13. I never read the end of a book first.
14. I can't grow a proper beard anymore otherwise the gray hairs show.
15. When Go-Karting I have more fun going round corners sideways than driving the track "properly".
16. I get very annoyed by people who pull out in front of me and then proceed to drive slowly causing me to brake.
17. I'd like to cook more, but find it difficult when it's just for me and at the end of a long day.
18. Sometimes it scares me when I can work out how to fix a problem in code without actually looking at the code.
19. After one disastrous night drinking cider it would be 9 years before I drank it again.
20. Bad computing references in films may cause me to shout at the screen (but never in the cinema).
21. I would love to visit Canada at some point or drive down the east coast of America.
22. I don't make the most of living on the edge of the New Forest.
23. Very silly jokes will nearly always make me laugh, especially the one about the bee in the cake shop.
24. This blog post has taken me three days to write.
25. I've never enjoyed dance clubs and would much prefer a decent pint in a quiet pub.

So there we go, 25 random things about me.

New Blog

After the tech related post that I put up yesterday it was commented that some of the usual readers may not actually be as interested as me in that sort of thing.

This is very understandable so I've setup a new blog which will be the new home for any of the tech related stuff I decide to post out on t'interweb.

I will now return you to your randomly scheduled updates.

Running JBoss5 with Eclipse3.4

This is the first of the techy type stuff I mentioned in a previous blog post, and details the steps I went through to get the latest Eclipse download working with the latest JBoss download.

1. Download the JEE development version of Eclipse and unzip to a local directory.
2. Download the latest version of JBoss and unzip to a local directory. Ensure there are no spaces in the path to this directory.
3. Download and install the latest maintenance build for the Web Tools Project (WTP). This is required for support with JBoss5 otherwise you may hit errors later on.
4. Start the Eclipse workbench
5. Open the JEE perspective (if not already open)
6. In the servers tab, right click and select New->Server
7. Choose JBoss5 from the list
   
8. Click 'Next >' and on the next panel enter the location of the JBoss installation you unzipped in step 2. If you get an error saying that mail.jar can't be found then the latest version of WTP hasn't been installed correctly.
   
   
9. Click 'Finish' and the server will appear in the Servers tab.

From here you can start the server which will launch it and send the output to the console. If you get Exceptions being thrown then the first thing to check is whether the JBoss location contains spaces in the path.

If the start takes longer than the configured time allowed then double clicking on the server will open the configuration page which will allow you to increase the startup timeout to a value which allows the server to start within that time.

From here everything should be setup ready to develop applications and deploy them to the server.

Have fun.

Playing with Tech

One of the things I always liked about being at University was the opportunity to play with new technologies. Whether it was programming languages, operating systems or seeing what was coming up on the horizon.

Once I started working full time, there was still some of that with learning a new product and the technologies it employed. However as time has moved on there's been less of this kind of learning required and I've been working on other things that haven't required quite so much technical knowledge.

This year I'm hoping to get back to some more technical stuff. To that end I've picked up a new PC and am currently learning some C#, which may seem strange for a Linux/Mac/Java fan, but professional considerations need to be taken along with personal feelings about business practices.

We shall see what comes out of all this, I already have a design for one application I want to write so I may use this blog as a place to write up anything I find or to rant about things that don't go so well.

Alongside this I've started using a Twitter account I created ages ago and never got round to using. The more followers the merrier, just be prepared for the random outpourings.

Feeling very sleepy

The weekend, a time to relax and chill out after a week in the office.

Well that should be the plan, however when you're holding the call out phone (or at least have it diverted to you) there's always that risk that you'll need to look at some kind of customer problem. Well that happened last night :(

Having decided to not stay up watching TV and be good about getting some sleep the phone went off. Two hours later I got to bed, but it's tricky to sleep when there's a chance you'll have to get up again. At 6am I did need to get up again but fortunately not for as long.

Fortunately it doesn't look like this one is going to reoccur this weekend and I'm really hoping that nothing else comes up.

Everything just be cool OK!