Category Archives: Technical

In search of a digital camera!

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I am traveling overseas in a couple of weeks time – for work to IBM Denmark but will hopefully have some spare time for some sightseeing.  Will be my first trip to Denmark.  I probably need to invest in a digital camera before that and looking for suggestions.  I am not a photographic professional like Andy so do not need anything fancy and complex.

Mainly looking for something that can take decent pictures, have good zoom capabilities and is fairly small with a fair size memory card.

While I am at it, I will also appreciate advice on things to see and do when in Denmark — I am mainly going to Copenhagen. And what type of clothes to take — probably will go there the first or second week of April — what is the weather like then?

Any advice will be appreciated.

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So frustrating — this $&^$#& Internet is SA

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I do not know whether it is Telkom or IS (my ISP is a IS affiliated one) but for the last couple of days/weeks my international connectivity is shocking.  As I sit or should I say type, I cannot even access Google.

This is a damn Saturday morning and everybody should be sleeping so it cannot be to little bandwidth so it is something technical which somebody should be able to easily fix.  But then we have so much morons in this country running companies that it is only interested in screwing us and pocketing the money.  There I got if off my chest but it did &$&^$& to my Internet connectivity .. I still cannot access most International sites.

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Wisdom from NASA on Project Management

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While reading John Tolva’s blog I came accross some NASA wisdom around projects and I quote:

“If a major project is truly innovative, you cannot possibly know its exact cost and its exact schedule at the beginning. And if in fact you do know the exact cost and the exact schedule, chances are that the technology is obsolete.”
— Joseph G. Gavin, Jr., discussing the design of the lunar module* that landed NASA astronauts on the moon.

Now at IBM we strive to be innovative for the customers we serve … does this mean that we as Project Managers should not be bound by fixed project cost and fixed project schedules?

Being innovative means that some leeway must be provided for.  To be innovative also means that there is no history and/or experience on which costs and schedules can be based.  However what goes hand in hand with this is to make sure you have good Risk Management processes in place since being innovative also means that one must take more risks.

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IBM vs Microsoft on Open Standards

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I wanted to comment on the spat that is going on between IBM and Microsoft and Open Standards.  Actually it is not really a spat since all IBM is saying, support a ratified open standard like ODF rather than getting another quasi standard like openXML from Microsoft.  Now Microsoft is blaming IBM for taking sides.  Glyn Moody summed it up well in his post titled “Microsoft’s Fruedian Slips”.  I quote

What Microsoft glides over, of course, is that the choice is within the standard. There are now a number of programs supporting ODF, with more coming through. That’s choice. I doubt whether there will ever be a non-Microsoft program that supports fully its own XML format: there will be no choice, just lock-in under a different name.

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Found a new host

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A while back I blogged about searching for a new web host.  I eventually decided on one after reading good comments about PolurNet.  I settled for their smallest and cheapest reseller option.  It has all the options I need and seems that their support is very good.  Already had a support question for them and they responded and resolved my query very quickly.

One of the first things I am doing on it is testing WordPress 2.1 on a domain I setup there.  This is a pre-amble in upgrading this version (which currently is 2.0.7) to WordPress 2.1

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So it was D-day for MS Vista

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Yesterday Microsoft officialy released Vista to the wider public. So why would one upgrade?

From the little bit I seen about Vista and read about it, I can find no reason to upgrade. Firstly you would probably need a new faster CPU, more memory and a much more powerfull graphics card with lots of memory. And what do you get for this .. juts more bling. You will still write the same documents, fill the same spreadsheets, play most of the same games and all this will probably be slower than on your existing Windows XP.

Rather than upgrade to Vista, why not switch totally to some Linux distribution. No hardware to spend money on, no OS to spend money on and your machine will in all likelyhood be faster so you will be more productive in the end. And you would have access to thousands of software applications for FREE — let me say that again FREE — it is going to cost you nothing.

So what is the ultimate goal why Microsoft want you to upgrade to Vista — make more money. You as the consumer will not get much value for that hard earned money you going to give Microsoft. So use the money rather to enjoy life and change to something thats not going to cost you any money and give you freedom of choice, ie Switch to Linux.

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SPAM and what to do …

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I have a couple of email accounts (that does not include my work [IBM] address) which I have to monitor on a daily basis.  Over the years these accounts have landed up in the clutches of Spammers which meant that I receive close to 500 SPAM emails each and every day.

I use Thunderbird as my mail client which work well in catching all this Spam but it means that I have to download all the email from my email servers.

Since a couple of weeks ago I started using MailWasher Pro from FireTrust.  What a difference this has made .. basically you can setup as many email accounts in it and then it will download only the headers and first couple of lines of the email.  It will then apply all its build-in SPAM rules and any other rules that you might have defined to mark the mails as either SPAM or Legitimate.  It support Whitelists, Blacklist, Blacklist Servers and Friendslists. When it is done marking all the email you just process it and MailWasher Pro goes and delete all the unwanted Spam and Junk from your email server. So when you use your email client (Thunderbird in my case) to download you email, all that is left over to download is Legitimate emails.

Here is some stats from my use of it:
mwsummary - 2007-01-04

And how the SPAM was classified:
mwspam - 2007-01-04

The Pro version is a Shareware version and if I do not find anything else with the same capabilities over the next week or so I will register this.  I prefer to use Open Source software but have not come accross anything with the same features as MailWasher Pro.  If anybody know of a Open Source/Free product with this features then please let me know so that I can have a look at it.

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Dreamhost — what a disaster!!

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As mentioned before, I am looking for a new hosting company.  I came across  Dreamhost and using their $97 coupon meant that I could get a year’s hosting for around $22 which is a very good deal.  It looked liked they offered everything I needed so I went ahead to signup for a Dreamhost account.

Everything seemed to go fine until I received a note from them that I should print out some form.  Hand filled it in with an image of my credit card on it, and fax this form back to them.  Being on holiday and not near a fax machine (who still uses fax machines in any case), I decided to take a digital photo of the form and email it to Dreamhost.  The digital image was actually very good, probably a lot better than what the fax would have been.

What a surprise when I received a automated message from Dreamhost that they do not accept attachments in email and that I must upload the attachment somewhere and send them the URL.  After doing that and sending them the URL, got another response saying that they will only accept a fax. If I cannot do that then they will just cancel my sign-up which they then did.  I am sure they did not even bother looking at the digital image of the signed form.

Well, I would never recommend them to anybody ever.  And here I though we are living in a digital world. 

Off to search for another host that want my business .. any recommendations?

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Today I become a IBM guinea-pig !!

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They will be loading some IBM software on my work laptop today to allow me to access the IBM internal network while still being connected to my customer (Safmarine) network.  This will be through some VPN connection and I am looking forward to seeing how this will be working.  At last I might have access to all things IBM and internal contact to all the IBMers I allready met via non-IBM means.

That reminds me — first thing I need to do is find out where the Leave system is.  Need to put my leave in for the the Christmas holiday period :).

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