Archive for the ‘Work’ Category

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Orienteering at Hursley

Tuesday, July 24th, 2012

1037I’m using some vacation to catch up on a few blog posts (which I’m going to shamelessly back-date). The end of July saw the last in SOC’s Summer Series of events which was notable for a) actually feeling like Summer unlike most of the other events in the series, b) being on a new area: the IBM site at Hursley and c) being organised by me! Simon Bevan had done a great job of the map, building on some initial work by Charlie Richardson. Given the lack of traffic on the day, I think I had been overly cautious in marking all of the car parks as out of bounds which limited the shape of the courses. On the day, I also spotted a couple of places where I’d been a little careless with the overprint that meant route choices weren’t as clear as they should have been.

Anyway, I didn’t hear any complaints on the day which I suspect had as much to do with the sunshine as anything else. It was certainly good to see so many people staying around for the prize giving and barbecue afterwards. Christine and I picked up first place certificates for the series. We have been to all but one this year which, when set against the fact that we are currently slipping down the British Orienteering rankings having completed insufficient ranking events, says a lot about our orienteering at the moment! We got to know some new club members particularly well when we discovered that Duncan had turned the car lights on at some point and we needed their assistance to start the car.

Thanks go to IBM for allowing the event and in particular Rick Kellaway for his support. Hopefully this will be the first of many orienteering events at Hursley!

Posted in Orienteering, Work | Comments Off on Orienteering at Hursley

WebSphere Appliance Management Center

Tuesday, April 24th, 2012

I haven’t posted anything product related since the release of WebSphere ESB 7.5 in June last year where I hinted at pastures new. Those of you that I’m connected to on LinkedIn will know that I subsequently became Technical Lead for a product called WebSphere Appliance Management Center. WebSphere Appliance Management Center provides off-box management and monitoring of multiple WebSphere DataPower SOA appliances. The development for the management component of the product moved to Hursley shortly after the initial release (named 4.0 after the coincident firmware release). The new team put together a fix pack later in the year which delivered support for the new Service Gateway XG45 appliance.

Today saw the announcement of the next chapter in the WebSphere Appliance Management Center story. Significantly, you will find this in the WebSphere DataPower Appliances firmware V5.0 announcement letter as the next version will no longer be a chargeable product in its own right. Instead, it will be freely downloadable and supported free of charge for all customers with a current support entitlement for a WebSphere DataPower SOA appliance.

Not only will it cost you less – but we’ll also be giving you less! The team has been working flat out to create a much lighterweight offering which is faster to install and less resource intensive. The management user interface has also been extensively reworked to be more responsive and better support user interaction patterns. In particular, the current restrictions around managed set membership will be lifted allowing much great flexibility for firmware and configuration deployment. In addition to the existing domain management capabilities, you will also be able to manage configuration at the service level. All of this will be available for download on June 26.

For those attending IBM Impact next week who’d like to find out more about this exciting new release, I’ll be co-presenting on WebSphere Appliance Management Center (Monday, 5:15-6:30pm, Lando 4305). We will also be hosting a series of round table sessions in Toscana 3701 (Monday, 10:45-12:00; Tuesday, 1:20-2:45pm; Thursday 3:15-4:30pm) which will be your chance to shape the future direction of the product. Alternatively, please feel free to contact me directly or post questions in the DataPower developerWorks forum.

Posted in Appliance Management, DataPower, Work | Comments Off on WebSphere Appliance Management Center

Racing at work

Monday, November 21st, 2011

974I’m going to be upfront – I’m about to do some gross back-dating of posts. This post is actually being written in January 2012 as I’ve been hopeless at blogging in the last couple of months of 2011 – not helped by having to re-instate a months worth of posts from Google’s cache when an enforced AWS reboot seemed to send my image back in time. Don’t expect volumes of text though: just a few words and an excuse to link to some photos. The one’s about the running race that I organised at work as part of the inter-departmental games. It was three laps adding up to (approximately) 5km. There was a good turnout, helped by the . I got a bit of stick for being too far out in front although still took 19:15 (the course did have a few hills). It actually transpired that I wasn’t far enough ahead as, having applied the World Masters 5k grading (my rules), I actually ended up back in 4th place. One way to look at it is that I don’t need to get faster – I just need to get older and not get slower! Andy Piper did a nice write-up on eightbar.

Posted in Running, Work | Comments Off on Racing at work

WebSphere ESB 7.5 available

Friday, June 3rd, 2011

WebSphere ESB 7.5 is generally available from Passport Advantage as of today (as are WSRR 7.5, WebSphere ESB Registry Edition 7.5 and the 7.5 BPM stack) and the InfoCenter is also live. Having been the Development Lead and then Release Architect, I feel a certain sense of parental pride in this delivery but, as always, the credit goes to the wider team. It shall also be my last as I am parting company with the WebSphere ESB development team and moving on to pastures new. I can’t say more at the moment but all will be revealed sometime this month.

Posted in WebSphere ESB, Work | Comments Off on WebSphere ESB 7.5 available

WebSphere Technical Conference

Sunday, October 10th, 2010

A quick post to highlight that I’m in Düsseldorf this week as a last minute stand-in for my colleague Simon Holdsworth at the WebSphere Technical Conference. I’ll be giving his Introduction to WebSphere ESB and WebSphere ESB Best Practices and Performance Recommendations on Tuesday afternoon, What’s New in WebSphere ESB V7.0 on Wednesday and then running the WebSphere ESB Birds of a Feather session that follows. I’ll also be at the Connectivity Panel Q&A on Monday afternoon which is probably the best place to catch me if you’d like to meet up at some point for a chat about the product or just to say Hi!

Posted in Travel, WebSphere, WebSphere ESB, Work | 2 Comments »

Scared of Santa

Sunday, December 13th, 2009

On Saturday we took Emma to see Santa in the clubhouse at work (obviously where he hangs out at weekends). There was a bit of a queue but the guys had done a good job of providing entertainment once you made it in to Santa’s grotto: snowing Christmas trees, dancing Santas – that sort of thing. Emma’s favourites were the toy trains. Unfortunately, when the moment came to meet the big man Emma’s nerves kicked in and she just cowered behind me.

I was suitably impressed by the monetary value of the presents that Santa was doling out although, given Emma’s present was aimed at 12 months – 3 years, you can imagine that it might not keep the attention of a bright 2.5 year old for a long time. Emma also wasn’t too impressed by the magician whose voice was blaring out of the speakers in the sports hall. They were also out of mince pies so we just retreated to the playground outside. Once we were safely at home Emma declared that she wouldn’t be so scared of Santa next time. We’ll find out on Wednesday as I believe he’s due to be visiting nursery then…

Posted in Family, Work | 2 Comments »

Tri-Department Games Running

Thursday, October 1st, 2009

Tuesday was the Tri-Department (MQ vs Transaction Processing vs the Rest) Games Running Race at work. Last year Sam Massey sprinted past me on the run-in and I was determined to get my revenge (although we’re actually on the same team!). The plan was to go out fast and put plenty of space behind me. I did start to stuggle on the inclines during the second lap of the site but had enough of a lead to keep Sam at bay, finishing the 2.7 mile course in 15:57. I’m glad to say that the MQ Mavericks also recorded a team victory for the event.
(more…)

Posted in Running, Work | Comments Off on Tri-Department Games Running

Windows disk confusion

Friday, July 3rd, 2009

I wasn’t best pleased this morning to find that I couldn’t log on to my laptop. I’d get as far as the logon prompt at which point any key press would cause everything to freeze. The only other noticeable effect was that the backdrop was missing. Safe mode made no difference but I could boot happily off a Linux Live CD. Needless to say a call to IBM’s European Service Center (which most certainly isn’t in Europe) was suitably frustrating. Why, given my serial number, they can’t work out where I am and what my machine, is I’ll never know. I guess I should just be grateful that at least there was an option not to have any music whilst on hold!

(more…)

Posted in Technology, Work | Comments Off on Windows disk confusion

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »