I finally succumbed and signed up for Second Life this evening. I have resisted to-date on the basis that I have more than enough to do in this life without trying to run a second one in parallel. However, I’m interested in whether such virtual worlds can enhance collaborative working in a distributed team. So, if you bump in to Tom Wright at the IBM meeting next Tuesday, say hello!
Archive for the ‘Technology’ Category
Starting a Second Life
Saturday, September 9th, 2006PlusNet lose database connectivity
Thursday, September 7th, 2006Anyone trying to access this site yesterday will have just received an error message about lack of database connectivity. Fortunately, some twelve hours later, PlusNet have managed to restore database access and, on this occasion, without losing any data. Memo to self: backup tonight and increase urgency of search for new host.
Supported J2SE JMS client
Thursday, August 31st, 2006I’ve previously mentioned the “Client for JMS on J2SE with IBM WebSphere Application Server” on alphaWorks which enables Java clients running in a non-J2EE environment to access destinations on a service integration bus defined in a WebSphere Application Server (or Process Server, ESB or XD) cell. This client has now graduated to a fully supported version. There is now a small install process to take you through the license agreement but you still end up with a JAR file that weighs in at only 2MB. If you also need to suport retrieval of JMS resources from JNDI then that adds around another 0.5MB.
Canon 400D announced
Friday, August 25th, 2006As Andy reports, my “new” camera has already been trumped by the recently announced Canon 400D. Improvements include a 10MP self-cleaning sensor and a larger LCD. You can’t win with electronic gadgets though: there is always something better just round the corner. Just think how much I’m saving on disk space though.
The good loaf
Sunday, August 13th, 2006We have finally retired our Kenwood Rapid Bake breadmaker after many years of frequent use. The bearing in our second replacement bread pan had disintegrated in the same way as the first and the whole machine was making such a racket that it was no longer possible to put it on overnight. After a whole ten minutes research we plumped for the Panasonic SD253 currently retailing for £80 on Amazon (a lot less than the Kenwood cost originally). From the two loaves we’ve had so far I’d rate the Panasonic pretty highly. We have a greater choice of loaf sizes than with the Kenwood and the paddle leaves less of a hole in the bread. Bake times seem to be longer than for the old machine but this isn’t a problem as we can once again leave the machine on overnight. Indeed, it’s so quiet you can sit next to it and barely know that it’s on. Just have to work out why the nut dispenser didn’t drop seeds in to the last loaf…
Making space
Sunday, August 13th, 2006In anticipation of having to reduce the number of peripherals I tote round, set about clearing space on my primary hard disk to copy some essentials off the secondary disk. As on previous occasions, I found SpaceMonger to be an excellent tool in locating the disk hogs and had soon freed up around 30 gig. Hopefully the subsequent defrag will also help bring some life back to my increasingly sluggish laptop. While using VMWare last week I could no longer remember whether the disk light was meant to stay on permanently!
Broken Firefox update
Saturday, July 29th, 2006Firefox updated itself to version 1.5.0.5 on my work laptop yesterday at which point it would no longer connect to the web. It was only after half an hour of playing with the Check Point Integrity Flex desktop firewall today (which claimed that Firefox was allowed to connect to the internet) that I finally checked the “Changes Frequently” option, at which point Firefox sprang back in to life. Phew – just a few hours of being forced to use IE was more than enough!
PlusNet grief
Tuesday, July 18th, 2006I have used PlusNet as my ISP for nearly a year now and my disillusionment is now pretty much complete. At the time I moved over they came highly recommended and, unbelievably, their website is currently trumpeting that they were top of a customer satisfaction survey by uswitch.com.
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