Writing ... or Just Practicing?

Oh well, back to work, holidays over for another year. At least I managed to morph from a sickly shade of pale to a faint shade of tan, and without catching airplane 'flu or any other weird tropical disease (at least not one that's shown up so far). In fact, it was one of the most hassle-free and relaxing holidays we've had. I even managed to forego the doubtful pleasure of email for a whole six days without caving in and searching for an Internet cafe. Read More...

With appropriate acknowledgment to Phil and Kirstie, this week's random blather seems to have evolved with a dislocated theme; and rather more so than is usual in my weekly ramblings. It started with a series of events that made me wonder if I am somehow dislocated from the rest of my corporate employees and the huge organization of which I'm part. Mainly due to some unexpected emails that popped up in my Inbox. Read More...

After what seems like a nightmare week of aggravation, it looks like I'm finally connectivity-wealthy. Downloads take seconds, uploads are relatively quick, and I'm probably even redundant connection-enabled. Though tests of the load-balancing and failover router have exposed some uncertainty around it's operating capabilities. Maybe it's something to do with the fact I bought the $250 one instead of the $1900 one that my colleague (who works for Cisco) recommended. I think he's planning a world cruise, and had his eye on the commission. Read More...

I'm fast coming to the conclusion that you actually need to be quite stupid to use a computer these days. Within a few years those with even a minor modicum of capability, or just a hint of innate common sense, or even mental agility that verges on a level around normal, will find themselves completely excluded from the ever-present, always-connected, online virtualness and technological future of man (and women) kind. We'll be reduced to writing on stuff called "paper" and sending these hand-written messages to others by buying "postage stamps". Or actually talking using ordinary words over a voice connection called a "telephone". Read More...

I suspect that there is a crisis at our local council offices at the moment. They've obviously run out of things to waste taxpayer's money on, so they decided to publish a ten page full-color pamphlet containing really useful information about our local community. On page three, it says that - in case we hadn't noticed - work is underway on the open-cast coal mine just across the fields from where I live. Really? I would never have guessed that the brand new railway, dozens of huge trucks, and a hole half a mile wide and a hundred feet deep were connected with that. Read More...

Oh dear, could it be that my brief career as a documentation engineer is about to come to an abrupt and unexpected end? Has my recent sin been so dreadful that I will be thoughtlessly cast aside, and once again reduced to wandering aimlessly around conference circuits and local dev shops with all my worldly goods in a shopping cart, trying to scratch a living by talking and writing about enterprise software architecture? Next time you see a sad and lonely figure dressed in a grubby (but geeky) T-shirt and scruffy jeans, clutching the tattered remains of a book on design patterns in one hand and a seriously out-of-date laptop in the other, spare a thought - it might be me. Read More...