Just Me

On tuesday last, Ireland witnessed one of the worst traffic accidents in our history. It’s been covered plenty on breakingnews.ie so I’m not going to go into details here, my sympathy goes out to all those involved and their families and friends. This was a truly terrible accident, myself and Elly passed the scene about 10 minutes before it happened. I hope you’ll forgive me for feeling relieved that we weren’t involved.

Something positive has to come from a tragedy like this and I hope it’s helped others to think about the way they drive, the way it has made me think about how I drive. The question that comes to my mind is “so, how fast should you drive in fog?”

Tonight, I did some calculations and worked/puzzled this out. At 120Kph you move a little bit more than 33 meters every second. That’s obviously far to fast to be travelling if you can only see 20m or 25m and thats still only a light fog. If you come up to a stationary object it’s already too late to brake.

So what speed is safe?

Lets say you can see 20m. That’s about 65 feet. What distance can you stop your car in, from what speed? is 70Kph slow enough? Well, you travel about 19.5m in 1 sec. Could you react and stop your car in 1 sec? I know I don’t want to find out.

Even at half that speed you only have 2 secs to react and avoid something thats happened 65 feet ahead. Think about that next time you start your car, I know I will.

Lets make that the positive thing that comes from this, think about how you drive. Not just the speed, your road manners as well. Indicate when you’re going to make a turn or change lane not as you do it. Don’t stay in the overtaking lane if you’re not overtaking and leave earlier so you’re not in a hurry. and maybe we’ll all help make our roads safer for us all.

This week is a bit of a deviation from the script as it were. I’m leaving the reviews for now and I’m gonna post about FireFox 2 RC 2 (that’s release candidate) so this isn’t the final release but very close. That’s a very strategic play by Mozilla as Microsoft are about to release IE 7 as a “Critical security update” and essentially force the IE 6 users to upgrade whether they like it or not.

Anyway back to FireFox 2, whats new? well it’s not the tabbed browsing although they have added a “close” button to each tab which is a nice touch.

There is a new spellcheck as I type feature which for some reason doesn’t seem to work on my laptop but does on my office desktop, even though it’s enabled on both. That could be due to the laptop though but I will come back to that later.

My personal favourite new feature though is the “recover my tabs” feature, essentially if the browser is stopped unexpectedly you can open all the same tabs the next time you start FireFox. It also means that if you just leave the browser open when you shutdown your machine, your given the option to open the exact same tabs when you reboot. so if your like me and open tabs as you see interesting links but don’t always get to read them they are there when I next open the browser. It’s also great if windows falls over.

The last thing I want to mention is how efficient the code this browser uses is. The reason I mention this is because of my newsed laptop. As some of you are aware I recently acquired a second-hand Sony Vaio 505 notebook, it’s about 8 years old and the is limited by a 333Mhz Celeron CPU and 128Mb of ram not a giga-anything in sight I have been using it as a web browser, newsreader and of course for blogging as it’s small and light and means I’m not hogging the Media centre if someone else wants to use it.

I had tried to load the original FireFox on this machine but found it unbearable slow even with only a single tab open, whereas I barely noticed a difference in performance with IE 6. I am typing this post on an 8 year old laptop in FireFox 2 with 5 tabs open and 3 of those are web 2.0 sites. Mozilla I don’t know how you’ve done it but I’m stunned with the performance I’m getting on my retro hardware

It will be interesting to see how this stacks up against IE 7 and even more interesting to see how long it takes for Mozilla to finalise this release candidate. Looks like the browser wars are most definitely back on.

Hi all and welcome to the first installment of Musical Monday, before we get into the meat of this weeks article I just wanted to let you all know what I’m listening too as I type. Well, I have Pandora playing “Swinging Cheese radio” for those of you who aren’t familiar with Pandora, give this a read

Anywho onto this weeks feature. Turn that S**t off!I saw this story a while back and I’ve been meaning to post about it since so I think there is no better way to start a weekly music feature than reminding people that in order to enjoy music fully you need to be able to hear it fully. This is something I can speak with some authority on, in the past I worked in the music industry and having stood in front of a 6500 watt+ PA for 5 or more nights a week for almost 3 years I can say that I am very lucky not to have severe hearing damage, but in reality luck had very little to do with it and ear plugs had everything to do with it.

Unfortunately, I do suffer from some minor tinnitus which has over the last 10 years gotten slightly better, however does tend to leave me with sleepless nights if I go to a Gig or concert.

My case is a little extreme in that I was in front of a PA almost every night for 2-3 hours minimum. I should be far worse off but I was lucky enough to have been warned of the dangers by a rather kindly middle aged drummer, he explained it rather well. It’s not so much really loud noises that do the damage as those that are higher pitched and close by.

If you go to gigs you may have already noticed this but in general the older a drummer gets the further away their cymbals get from there head, this is because they have recognised that high pitched noises (like cymbals in particular) tend to do more damage than say a more bass sound.

Now before we (the human race) discovered amplification and industrialisation of the world, hearing problems were far less common than they are today, unfortunately our modern world gives us plenty of opportunities to damage our hearing without us doing it deliberately.

Where that BBC article goes wrong, imho, is that it focuses on MP3 players as being the evil ear damaging device. This is not entirely true, yes they provide the sounds but it is the headphones that deliver this sound to you. By and large most headphones that are sold with MP3 players are small and do not block much ambient noise out, as a result the wearer ends up turning the volume up to block out the other noise so they can hear their music choice clearly, the irony being that this behavior will lead to hearing loss. In fact I challenge anyone to sit in a quiet room and not hear a buzzing sound at some level when the room is in fact silent. That buzzing sound is damaged hearing. It is almost impossible to avoid in our modern society but there are a few simple things that you can do to avoid unnecessary damage.

I have been using Firefox as my browser of choice for a while as I like the tabbed browsing. Wow do I have egg on my face, as a result of having started using “The Old Girl” I have been using IE 6.0 again for the first time and I’ve discovered that my blog does not format right in IE.

I guess I just learned the first lesson of web-development, always check your work in more than one browser.

So I apologise, to all the IE 6 readers and I ask you for your patience while I use my limited knowledge of HTML, PHP and CSS to resolve the formatting problem over the next few days, actually if anyone has any suggestions I’m all ears.

Woot! My Sweetie got back from her business trip on saturday, finally. God I missed her, not just because she is the light in an otherwise bleak existence but also because she was carrying my “newsed” laptop home with her from the US, where it had been delivered to a friend of ours (Thanks Harold) after winning the ebay auction.
I am now the proud owner of a Sony Vaio PCG-N505VE possibly the most perfect laptop ever assembled! It’s small, compact, light, retro enough to have cred, while recent enough to do most of what I want and stylish enough to give even the mightiest of Apple fanboy’s Powerbook a run for its money and all this despite being a Sony product.

This isn’t my first post to be written on it, but it is the first to be published. The first post written should be available on friday as part of my new series of regular features, but more on that in another post.

There were a couple of things that “the old girl” needed, so a new battery is on order (first one to make a wise crack about Sony laptop batteries gets a slap ;)) until that’s delivered I’m tied to the wall socket, even though I did manage to pick up a wireless card for it, in of all places, Tesco. Boy was that a surprise a reasonable brand (Buffalo) for just a smidge under €40 while the local PC World’s most cost effective option was €70!

Now I could wax lyrical for days about the evil, profiteering of IT retailers but I never I’d see the day when a grocery chain would out do an IT retailer at their own game, tis a sad sad day for IT retailers everywhere…

A long time ago in a IT retailer far, far, away… Well not really, it was Compustore on the longmile road. As some of you know I used to work there. It’s were I “did my time” as a retail sales person.

Some people slag me for it but when I started with Compustore there were 2 stores when I left there were 5 and about 10-12 franchises, so I like to think I played my part, and even if I didn’t I had a hell of a lot of fun and met some great people while working there.

And, if you’ll indulge me I’d like to tell you a story about one person I met there a little more than 8 years ago.

It was a Saturday afternoon and I’m pretty sure I was hung over, I was hung over a lot in those days, hell it was right in the eye of the storm that was the Celtic tiger. So life was a constant party, we liked to think we worked hard and played harder and there were times that was the only way you could stay sane

Anyway, I digress, I was prowling the shop floor doing my best to avoid the time wasters and be available to the people that were there to spend money, hey, a good months sales made the difference between getting the bus home after work or a drink after hours and a taxi later

Anyway, I see this group come wandering in what looked to be fairly good suits, on a Saturday afternoon, so I’m seeing a “cure” there’s 2 guys and a lady, different ages and very obviously serious business people. So I make my way across towards them doing my best to play deaf to the scumbag looking for help reading the system requirements of some piece of software and see the fantastic looking shoes the tall skinny guy is wearing.

Cha ching, I’m thinking:D

So I introduce myself and the tall guy takes the lead…

“You don’t sound terribly local?” I inquire as we start to wander toward the display of shiny new state of the art PC’s.

“naw, I’m from the U.S.” he says.

“ah ok” I say,” so your in town for business?”

“Yup, so why don’t you show us your best selling PC?”

“Ah nuts” I’m thinking cause I know our best seller is also the one I make the least commission on. So I start to nudge him a bit about what he wants the machine for etc. Trying to get a bit more info for the up sell I’m thinking of

Then without any prompting he starts talking plural and I’m all of a sudden thinking “give him exactly what he wants get the deal and if he’s looking for a few, sure that’ll make it worthwhile. Little did I know…

I’m settling into my patter now about our best seller it was a Compaq Presario If memory serves, it was definitely an AMD K6 2 powered model, a budget model with most of the bases covered.

All in all we talked for about 20 minutes a lot about business and how the different chips were sizing up against each other and so on and so forth, it was refreshing to speak to a middle aged man who actually new a fairly decent amount (As I thought) about computer technology, please don’t think I’m being patronising or ageist with that statement if you had worked there at the time you would understand what I mean, it wasn’t unheard of but it was rare.

Anyway, it was at this point, after I had pitched an AMD powered PC to him, discussed the virtues of the CPU over the Intel alternative at the time, that he introduced himself as Craig and handed me his card…

INTEL COO

And as I was apologising he asked me to stop and thanked me for being “straight and honest” with him explaining that it was rare that he got the chance to speak to people like me that new so much about “his” market.

At this point as we were saying our farewells, I’m thinking that’s a bit much “his” market, jaysus like you run one Intel factory in Ireland, get a grip mate. God I was so naive/dumb.

As soon as he had left the store our head technician, Rob, comes running out from behind the tech counter asking who the guy that I had just been talking too was. Keep in mind Rob, like myself, wasn’t the smallest lad in the world and I don’t ever remember seeing him move that fast before.

I said it was some bloke from Intel, to which Rob replied “yea he pulled up in a massive stretch limo.

Slowly the penny was starting to drop, I pulled his card out of my pocket and as Rob saw it he just looked gob smacked and goes “George you do know who he is?”

I reply “yea he’s some big cheese out in Lucan” and Rob starts shaking his head.

“no George, that’s THE big cheese in Intel”

Ker klunk finally, the penny drops. I can still hear Rob laughing when I told him that I ‘d tried to sell him an AMD PC.

I learned some very valuable lessons that day.

The value of honesty in all your dealings as you just never know exactly who you are dealing with.

The truly clever people will always listen to and value everyone else’s opinion, before forming their own.

Always remain humble, you will gain far more respect from people that way than telling them how fantastic you are

And the most important lesson?

Listen to your elders, chances are they have seen and done it before you or else they have a PHD

Hehee, I’m stunned by the things that make it onto the internet. Take this for example, when are you ever gonna need this? If you have access to the internet surely the device your using has a clock?

I made some changes on the sidebar today, mostly the order, the excellent photo my sweetie took of me when we went for a Photo walk earlier and I’ve added a feed from my favourite online radio station.

So why do I like this more than other web radio? Simple, When you subscibe to these guys you can create your own stations by just telling what bands\artists\songs that you like and through the voodoo that is “the music genome project” they find tracks that are similar to it and use those for the station.

As the tracks play you can customise “your stations” further by giving a thumbs up or down to any track. This has helped me, since I started using it, to find some of the most unusual and pleasant new music I’ve heard in a long time. Bands such as Skalpel (Jazzy Groove Radio), Guttermouth and Gob (2 great punk revival bands on “Nerf Herder Radio”)

So give it a listen and see what you think yourself.

The title of this post was to be “So, Music?” but it started with a lie about what i was thinking about in traffic this morning and then wandered on a tangent so I’ve changed the title and I’ll come back to the other another time…

So while I was sitting in traffic this morning, I was thinking how bloody dumb is it to sit in a car for an hour and a half to travel about 6 and a half miles?

I mean, here I am doing my utmost to get a bit fitter and more importantly to loose some (a lot, if I’m being honest) weight and I’m sitting on my fat ass in a car that’s travelling at an average speed that’s slower than me walking!

Then tonight I get home from work late, on a friday evening, change and rush out to the gym to go do a 90 minute workout??? (That I didn’t have the energy to finish) when did the world get so messed up?

Now I know what your thinking, well why don’t you just ditch the car and walk then or cycle? well I work in sales, I’m a customer facing member of the company who has to present a professional image and lets just say smelling like I just walked/cycled to the office would not be acceptable.

So instead of walking/cycling to the office and arriving fresh and awake to begin my days work, I arrive to the office having had to get up before the sun and slowly build stress for an hour and a half before my day begins, I get to arrive to work, like most who work in Dublin, stressed and in a bad mood, this is our burden to carry until next May/June when the primary school kids stop driving to class for there summer holidays.

The sad Irony is there is no real need for me to be in the office 9 to 5.30 every day. What?

Think about it I work for the largest Internet hosting company in Ireland. All the tools of my job are available to me from anywhere, with one exception and that I could actually get around with a little help from one of our support staff.

To explain, the tools of my job consist of the desk phone (easily forwarded to my company mobile)the company web site (it better be available on my broadband connection) my CRM application which is also web based, and my outlook e-mail (thats the bit that I need help with) oh and of course the company IM.

So why can’t I either work from home unless I’m actually due to be meeting a client or at the very least start my day from home so I don’t have to sit in the rush hour traffic? well I’m kinda hoping it’s cause I ain’t asked (see ya monday Boss ;))

Now here’s a thought, I can’t be unique in this, have a look at your own job if you work in an office, chances are you use a PC of some sort to access files and your e-mail and maybe some special software that relates specifically to your job or company and a phone and maybe an IM app of some sort.

Newsflash we live in the 21st century, if it’s on a computer it can be accessed from anywhere over a secure web connection. I’m not going to get into how cause that would be to much like work but it can be done.

Now think about how many people you know in the same situation in Dublin. Why aren’t more companies doing this?

Is it lack of Broadband? well possibly outside of Dublin but most people commuting to work here have access to Broadband.

Is it the cost of the computer systems, possibly, but they can be offset by the increase in productivity.

Is it because the boss is a power mad megalomaniac? more than likely not

So why are we sitting in traffic day in day out when we could be working from home, there by reducing the number of cars on the streets and improving everybodies quality of life, while lowering greenhouse gas emmissions?

I’m starting to think it’s cause we the workers haven’t asked, and I don’t mean asked once I mean asked regularly, if I were to change job in the future I think this will have to be part of the package. I’d recomend anyone who’s tired of rush hour and the stress it brings to talk to your boss about this, maybe they’ll listen maybe they won’t but I think if we don’t ask and keep asking we’ll never have the option.

The newest gadget I have, as it was only launched in the last few days, is looking like it’s going to be used an awful lot for the foreseeable future.

Basically this is a web based application that alows me or anyone else to blog anywhere from there mobile phone or blackberry.

it’s fairly straight forward and you could say a litte limited in terms of functionality but I like it you can add any HTML you want into your post for links or formatting or post first and then add the links and formatting through the wordpress interface when you get to a full browser.

I love the simple clear interface and the fact that it looks great even on the 240 x 240 display of my smart phone.

While I’d love more features I’d far rather that it remains as easy to use and quick to load and post as it is currently.

What is it?

You can find more info here and click this link to signup for the service yourself.