I was about to purchase a Yeti USB microphone when I remembered I had this little baby tucked away in a cupboard.
Friday, 16 March 2012
Sunday, 11 March 2012
Clutter Clearance Burst
Possessions can be a bit overwhelming can't they? They slowly and gradually take over your life.
I have always been a hobbies person. Over the years I have immersed myself in music, photography, computing and reading. All of these interests bring their associated paraphernalia such as books, manuals, accessories, tapes, cables, etc. As a consequence of this I have filled my house to bursting with the accumulation over the years. I am not thankfully in the hoarder class but am somewhere down that road.
It got to the stage where I could never easily put my hand on things I needed. I would waste hours searching for my capo, a lens or a specific book I needed to refer to. It was inconvenient but I could have happily continued like this but for the death of my father.
Without going into too much detail I can say for sure that dad was a hoarder. After his death my sister and I spent weeks clearing and sorting his possessions. There were drawers and cupboards overflowing with things that I remembered from childhood and knew them to be junk even then.
A combination of these circumstances started me on the road to a clutter-free life with the ambition of disposing of unnecessary possessions which would hopefully leave me with only the things that I needed.
Here is an example of my home office before I started. Almost everything you can see in this photograph is now gone.
It has been a slow start but I am getting into my stride now.
Goodbye floppy disks full of midi programming files from studio sessions in the late 1980’s.
Goodbye RAM for old laptops that run slower than the Simon game I have on my keyring.
Goodbye master tapes of old studio recording that nobody cares about.
Goodbye to the last of my vinyl collection.
Goodbye to boxes full of old music transcriptions.
Goodbye cassette tapes.
And goodbye to the storage all the above was contained in.
To end on a happy note here is my capo which finally turned up on the bottom of a box full of midi cables.
I have always been a hobbies person. Over the years I have immersed myself in music, photography, computing and reading. All of these interests bring their associated paraphernalia such as books, manuals, accessories, tapes, cables, etc. As a consequence of this I have filled my house to bursting with the accumulation over the years. I am not thankfully in the hoarder class but am somewhere down that road.
It got to the stage where I could never easily put my hand on things I needed. I would waste hours searching for my capo, a lens or a specific book I needed to refer to. It was inconvenient but I could have happily continued like this but for the death of my father.
Without going into too much detail I can say for sure that dad was a hoarder. After his death my sister and I spent weeks clearing and sorting his possessions. There were drawers and cupboards overflowing with things that I remembered from childhood and knew them to be junk even then.
A combination of these circumstances started me on the road to a clutter-free life with the ambition of disposing of unnecessary possessions which would hopefully leave me with only the things that I needed.
Here is an example of my home office before I started. Almost everything you can see in this photograph is now gone.
It has been a slow start but I am getting into my stride now.
Goodbye floppy disks full of midi programming files from studio sessions in the late 1980’s.
Goodbye RAM for old laptops that run slower than the Simon game I have on my keyring.
Goodbye master tapes of old studio recording that nobody cares about.
Goodbye to the last of my vinyl collection.
Goodbye to boxes full of old music transcriptions.
Goodbye cassette tapes.
And goodbye to the storage all the above was contained in.
To end on a happy note here is my capo which finally turned up on the bottom of a box full of midi cables.
Thursday, 8 March 2012
Goodbye London, Hello Bellshill
iOS Update
iOS 5.1 was finally released last night. Get details here. I updated all four of my iOS devices quickly and without any untoward incident. Battery life does seem to have improved somewhat in my iPhone 4s based upon a single morning’s unscientific observation.
The iPad 3 keynote is now live on the Apple homepage.
Avaya
I had a meeting today with Avaya, one of our communications technology partners. Usually a meeting for me involves trains, planes and automobiles as they are generally held in or around London. I live in Glasgow which is a place most tech companies don’t seem to know exists. I had a total door-to-door journey time of 15 minutes from my home to their office in Bellshill.
The meeting was fascinating as we are getting to grips with they typical large enterprise problems relating to platform proliferation. Industrialisation of platforms and processes is the order of the day and this is not an easy task with voice and communication systems. With a mixture of almost every type and age of PBX you could imagine the challenges are immense. Even where there is a single platform the integration options are limited due to the mixed use of SIP and H.323.
I am not sure where this is going to lead but the journey is starting to look interesting.
Wednesday, 7 March 2012
Paradise for Techs
Where to begin?
I spent several hours today working on a strategy for evolving our global voice estate and associated services. We have a mixed estate comprising Avaya, Cisco, Siemens PBXs with limited integration. Even within a single platform such as Avaya there are integration challenges due to the use of both SIP and H.323 in different countries. And let's not even think about the issues with dial plans.
I am meeting our Avaya account manager tomorrow to put the pieces of the puzzle together and agree next steps. He is coming to Glasgow which makes a nice change from me having to travel to London.
I spent several hours today working on a strategy for evolving our global voice estate and associated services. We have a mixed estate comprising Avaya, Cisco, Siemens PBXs with limited integration. Even within a single platform such as Avaya there are integration challenges due to the use of both SIP and H.323 in different countries. And let's not even think about the issues with dial plans.
I am meeting our Avaya account manager tomorrow to put the pieces of the puzzle together and agree next steps. He is coming to Glasgow which makes a nice change from me having to travel to London.
Apple Next-Generation iPad Event
I am worrying fascinated by the launch of a device that is probably only going to be a little bit better than the one I already own.
Watching several liveblogs and the best seems to be from engadget.
I can’t imagine why Apple doesn’t stream these events.
Watching several liveblogs and the best seems to be from engadget.
I can’t imagine why Apple doesn’t stream these events.
iTunes Podcast Management
My mission for today is to get to the bottom of the consistent failure of iTunes to sync podcasts across my iPhone and iPad.
I have tried everything I can think of including completely unsubscribing and resubscribing but it still doesn’t work properly.
I have tried everything I can think of including completely unsubscribing and resubscribing but it still doesn’t work properly.
Tuesday, 24 January 2012
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