I decided to make a belated entry to the Current Cost meter craze (in Hursley) when some were being sold off at half price before Christmas. (For those not in the know, the device measure electricity usage for the entire home with the important addition of a serial output port.) I started off with Dale Lane’s GUI app at which point I was disappointed to realise that the historical data held by the device was only averaged.
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Archive for the ‘Technology’ Category
Current Cost
Friday, January 16th, 2009WordPress upgrade
Friday, January 9th, 2009I’ve finally had a chance to upgrade to WordPress 2.7. It’s relatively painless since I’ve switched to updating via Subversion. The only problem I hit was with text widgets. I was seeing an error along the lines of “Warning: array_keys() [function.array-keys]: The first argument should be an array in wp-includes/widgets.php on line 1044” which, if you Google it, currently appears at the top of a whole host of other people’s blogs. Deleting all (three) of my text widgets and recreating them seemed to fix the problem. It’s good to see that threaded comments have finally made it in to the base product. I’ve previously experimented with a couple of plugins but never turned them live for users as I’ve never been entirely happy with the way they’ve been implemented. (As a consequence though you’ll see that some historical posts already have threaded responses from me.) I have to say that, right now I’m not a big fan of the revamped admin pages but that may be just lack of familiarity…
WebSphere ESB 6.2
Friday, December 12th, 2008One of the disadvantages of being back in development is that much of my work is confidential. As the quantity of technical posts on here recently demonstrates – this is not conducive to blogging. Thankfully Version 6.2 of the entire BPM stack became generally available today so the flood gates have opened. developerWorks already has articles covering the new functionality in WebSphere Integration Developer and WebSphere Process Server so, rather than just relisting the features, I’m going to provide a slightly more personal view, focussing on the new content in WebSphere ESB.
10 years on
Wednesday, November 19th, 2008Being presented with my “10 year pen” at a departmental meeting on Monday seems like a good excuse for a bit of a retrospective on my career with IBM…
No danger of CrackBerry addiction
Tuesday, November 18th, 2008As part of IBM UK’s transition from O2 to Vodafone we’re all being issued with new mobiles. I’m a bit behind the curve as most people were moved over whilst I was in Norway. Today, the SIM card for my new BlackBerry Pearl has finally been activated. Sadly, like most employees, IBM hasn’t given me a data service. This is considered a “personal option” and I could get it for £16pm (providing my department agreed to match that approximately to cover the server-side costs and support which is highly unlikely in the current climate). I largely understand that decision – I already have a data card for my laptop if I need to read e-mails on the move. What I don’t understand is the decision to give me a BlackBerry. It even says on the box “Vodafone Email Solutions”!
It’s also a shame that it’s only a Pearl 8100. If it had Wi-Fi support then at least I’d have some form of connectivity on the phone. As it is, I can’t even work out how I’m going to sync contacts from Thunderbird, Plaxo or Google Apps via the USB cable. No danger of me becoming a CrackBerry addict then…
Heart still beating
Monday, November 17th, 2008My Garmin has failed to read my heart rate for a few weeks now (probably longer as I actually rarely look at the trace once downloaded). Rather than replace the battery again, I thought I’d use the spare strap that Garmin sent me last time they replaced my watch. Although I knew the transmission between strap and watch was coded, what I hadn’t realised was that the pairing was a one off process and the watch thereafter remembered which strap it should be talking to. Fortunately it’s a simple matter (once you’ve consulted the manual) to select Settings > General > Accessories from the main menu and then, for the heart monitor, select Restart Scan. And voila, I once again have a heart beat. I’ve even added the heart rate back on to the main display of my watch so maybe I’ll actually start looking at it!
Rails update
Saturday, November 15th, 2008It’s that time of year where I get my online orienteering system out of mothballs ready for the next JOK Chasing Sprint. My first task was to update the application to the latest Rails 2.1.2 which proved to be harder than I had anticipated. I’m used to working with enterprise software where it’s a given that you can’t break users’ existing applications.
XP upgrade install under VMware
Friday, October 31st, 2008I’m currently in the process of moving everything from my loan Thinkpad to my shiny new T61p. I thought that I’d try and make a cleaner divide between work related and personal applications by putting the latter in a VMware image. Having just disposed of an old desktop machine at home, I had a spare Windows XP Pro licence to use for the purpose. Unfortunately, I have an upgrade CD and when it came to the point in the installation where it asked for the old Windows media it refused to recognise the Windows 98 CD I had. I started to get suspicious when a Windows NT CD also didn’t work. After searching around the forums I bit I eventually discovered that the installer doesn’t realise that you’ve swapped over the CD. The secret is to take the original CD out, hit Enter, and then when it prompts you again, put the new CD in.
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