This content is 7 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.
I recently heard a Consultant from another Microsoft partner talking about storing “IL3” information in Azure. That rang alarm bells with me, because Impact Levels (ILs) haven’t been a “thing” for UK Government data since April 2014. For the record, here’s the official guidance on the UK Government data security classifications and this video explains why the system was changed:
Meanwhile, this one is a good example of what it means in practice:
So, what does that mean for storing data in Azure, Dynamics 365 and Office 365? Basically, information classified OFFICIAL can be stored in the Microsoft Cloud – for more information, refer to the Microsoft Trust Center. And, because OFFICIAL-SENSITIVE is not another classification (it’s merely highlighting information where additional care may be needed), that’s fine too.
I’ve worked with many UK Government organisations (local/regional, and central) and most are looking to the cloud as a means to reduce costs and improve services. The fact that more than 90% of public data is classified OFFICIAL (indeed, that’s the default for anything in Government) is no reason to avoid using the cloud.
This content is 7 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.
The weekly weeknotes are no more… whilst it’s great to catalogue my life, each post was taking 3-4 hours to write (and much of it is on Twitter anyway!). Even in chunks through the week, that’s a lot of time, though I seem to have found another time hoover to fill the void (edging out Twitter): Sim City.
I may still publish some weeknotes in 2018… they might just be in a slightly different format…
So, what’s been happening over the last 3 weeks?
Locked on a train
Hey, @EMTrains. Perhaps you could change your procedure to and check the train is empty before locking doors? Luckily I managed to grab attention of platform staff to let me out of 1F02 at Sheffield… pic.twitter.com/ESl38ozvx4
(After the train arrived at its destination, I sent an email and used the lavatory before getting off but it seems the Train Manager was more keen to get away than I was…)
Azure subscription woes (caused by credit card changes)
A withdrawn credit card led to some worrying emails about my (PAYG) Azure subscription potentially being disabled.
2010: Azure: PaaS is real; AWS nah… IaaS is where it’s at ;-) Sometimes you have to do what the market is ready for. Some customers are ready for functions… and some haven’t even got their heads around production VMs in the cloud, let alone containers… https://t.co/nARNaLnyxq
I got the chance to give a presentation about architecture (in IT form) to some colleagues, which let me draw parallels with architecture (in construction form). That gave me a reason to pull together some images from a visit to Kings Cross and St Pancras International last summer:
I’m presenting to the #risual Cloud Infrastructure team today about architecture (in an IT context). I’ve used these pics that I took last summer at London St Pancras International and at Kings Cross. Both feature stunning architecture (in a building context) pic.twitter.com/SxhlhYlWzc
Could there be a correlation between the alcoholic theme and my being relaxed enough to see photographic opportunity?
A trip to York
My family had a little mini-break in York between Christmas and New Year (narrowly avoiding the chaos that ensues when the UK gets a few centimetres of snow…). Of course, being on holiday inevitably led to more photos:
So, that wraps up another year – and 2018 will be this blog’s 15th! Thanks to everyone who keeps reading and who follows me on other social media channels. I wish you all the very best and a happy new year!
This content is 7 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.
I wrote this post a few months ago… and it crashed my blog. Gone. Needed to be restored from backup…
…hopefully this time I’ll have more luck!
One of the advantages of being in the MVP Reconnect programme is that I occasionally get invited to webcasts that open my eyes to technology I’ve not had a lot to do with previously. For many years, one of the big holes in my knowledge was around Microsoft SQL Server. That was until I saw Brian Kelley (@kbriankelley)’s “Brief overview of SQL Server”. The content’s not restricted, so I thought I’d republish some of it here for others who are getting their head around the major on-premises components of the Microsoft Data Platform.
SQL Server Editions
There are several editions of SQL Server available and these are the key differences (updated for 2017):
Express Edition (previously known as MSDE) is a free version, with some limitations around database size, etc.
Standard Edition lacks some enterprise features but has high availability and suits many application workloads.
Enterprise Edition is the full functionality product (but can be expensive)
Developer Edition (not licenced for use in production) offers the full feature set but can also run on a client operating system whereas enterprise will only run on server-based operating systems
Web Edition has reduced functionality and is intended for public websites (only available to service providers)
Compact Edition is another free version, intended for embedded databases in ASP.NET websites and Windows desktop applications
Although SQL Server is often thought of as an RDBMS product, it’s really a suite of systems, under the SQL Server name. Usually that means the database engine but there are many parts, each of which has a distinct setup (i.e. you don’t need the database service for SQL Server Analysis Services and vice versa).
SQL Server Analysis Services (SSAS)
SSAS (since 2007) is an online analytical and transaction processing (OLAP) tool intended for data warehousing and data mining.
One advantage of OLAP is to run jobs during the night for pre-generated calculations (used for roll-ups – e.g. totals and averages, etc.). It can provide fast results to business users who would otherwise need complex calculations in a transactional system (e.g. sales data based on region, month, quarter, etc. can be done ahead of time).
SSAS is comparable to IBM Cognos or Oracle Essbase (normally packaged with Hyperion for accounting, etc.).
Some SSAS jargon includes:
Star schema/snowflake schema – database design differs from transactional design. You can do these things in RDBMS but use SSAS on top.
Cubes
Dimensions
Tabular model
Data analysis expressions (DAX) – a language to do things in SSAS
SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS)
SSIS (since 2005) is heavily used for extract, transform and load (ETL) workloads – i.e. to get data from a source, manipulate it and pass it to a destination. It can be used to build a data warehouse, then data marts or to move data between systems. Basically, it’s a back-end batch processing system that performs the data mining.
SSIS is a replacement for Data Transformation Services (DTS). It’s not limited to SQL Server for source/destination so can talk to Oracle, Excel spreadsheets, other ODBC connections, etc.
The drag and drop interface is very powerful with the full functionality and flexibilityof Microsoft.NET behind it.
SSIS is comparable with Informatica (or Clover, etc.).
Some SSIS jargon includes:
Packages (whatever is processing, contains all the logic)
Tasks (what’s being carried out)
Dataflow tasks (how you go from source to destination – could be multiples)
Transformation (manipulating data)
Business Intelligence Markup Language (BIML)
SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS)
SSRS was introduced 2005 and became so popular it was ported back to SQL Server 2000!
It is a reporting engine, used to publish reports in-browser. Early versions were built on IIS but since 2008, SSIS has run directly on http.sys.
SSRS can be integrated with SharePoint (for report security based on SharePoint security) or the native, standalone mode is browser-based to look at folders, find reports, and run a report with parameters. Used to print via ActiveX control but now (since 2016) prints to PDF (or opens with a PDF reader).
There are two ways to build reports: Report Builder (a web-side interface for BA-type power user) or Report Designer (a full product for complex designs). There is also a subscription capability so users can subscribe to reports.
SSRS can be compared with IBM Business Objects and Tableau.
SSRS jargon includes:
Reports
Data sources
Datasets
ReportServer (API to integrate with other products)
Native mode vs. integrated mode (SharePoint)
SQL Server Database Engine
The SQL Server database engine is what most people think of when SQL Server is mentioned.
It is traditionally a relational database management system (RDBMS) although it now contains many other database capabilities. It was originally derived from a Sybase product (until SQL Server 6.5).
SQL Server supports both multiple databases per instance (which can connect and join across) and multiple instances per server (from 2000) – the first is a default instance, then named instances can be created.
SQL Server uses a SQL language variant called T-SQL to interact. A GUI is provided in SQL Server Management Studio but it’s also possible interact via PowerShell.
SQL Server also has a scheduler (the SQL Server Agent), which can alert on success/failure and allows the creation of elaborate scheduling routines with notifications and the ability to run code. It is comparable with IBM DB2, Oracle, PostgreSQL, Sybase, MySQL and MariaDB.
SQL Server 2016 features include:
High availability options, including Always On failover clusters; Always On availability groups (which are more flexible because they don’t have to replicate and fail over everything); Database mirroring (one database on multiple systems; deprecated now in favour of availability groups); log shipping.
Several encryption options including built-in (certificate, asymmetric keys, symmetric keys); Enterprise Edition also has Transparent Data Encryption (TDE) to encrypt database at rest and stop copies of the database from being loaded elsewhere; connection encryption (SSL/TLS since 2005); Always Encrypted is new for 2016 (transparent to the application and to SQL Server) – data stored in encrypted form within the database.
SQL Server and Windows authentication (server or Active Directory). Can have Windows or both, but not just SQL Server-based logins.
Replication options to move data between servers.
Other security features include audit objects (who did what?); granular security permissions; login auditing (failed logins are written to the SQL Server Error Log text file and to the application event log); dynamic data masking (depending on who needs to see it – e.g. store social security numbers and only show part of the data; only obfuscation as data is still in clear text); row-level security (to filter rows).
Each new version brings performance enhancements, e.g. columnstore indexes, in-memory OLTP tables, query optimisation.
New Technologies in 2016 include:
JSON support. Query and return data in JSON format. Administrators have been able to use SOAP and XML since 2005 but this is now deprecated in favour of JSON (which is popular for RESTful systems).
Master data services.
Polybase (not to be confused with a clustering solution – it’s about talking to other data sources, e.g. Hadoop, Cloudera and Azure storage, to be expanded to include Oracle, Teradata, Mongo, Spark and more).
R Services/R Server (R within the database and also R Server for data science/big data queries).
2017 builds on 2016 to include:
Linux and Docker support. Starting with SQL Server 2017, SQL Server is available for either Windows or Linux systems and it’s available as an installable application or for Docker containers.
SQL Server R Services has been renamed SQL Server Machine Learning Services, to reflect support for Python in addition to R.
This post provided a quick run-down of some of the major on-premises SQL Server components but, just as with Microsoft’s other products, there are cloud alternatives too. I’m planning a follow-up post to cover these so watch this space!
This content is 7 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.
Another week means another weeknote and this one finished on a high because last night was the risual Christmas Party!
risual does Christmas parties rather well and I won’t go into the details here but suffice to say, a good time was had. I knew the weather forecast though and needed to be sober today (Mrs W wasn’t too happy about the idea of driving home in the snow) so I can bask in the delight of not-having-a-hangover.
Anyway, it was a joy to wake up in a Country House hotel this morning and see how the landscape was transformed. I took quite a lot of photos on my iPhone but Dropbox is currently refusing to upload them for me, complaining that one is corrupt (but not telling me which one!). I’ll edit them next week and post them then…
Then I drove home in the snow and ice. England can’t cope when it snows (or indeed with any other extremes of weather: too wet; too sunny; too windy). We do mild-grey really well though.
The week
My week was the usual mix of consulting (paid work), training and pre-sales. I was fortunate to spend a day at Microsoft in Reading on Tuesday, topping up my Microsoft 365 (Office 365, plus Windows 10, plus Enterprise Mobility + Security) knowledge. I’m hoping that, time permitting, some blog posts will come out of that.
I’ve been driving around the UK almost 30 years, and driving for work for most of them. This week drove home to me (excuse the pun) just how overloaded the UK’s road infrastructure is, when it took me more than 5 hours to drive to Reading and back (about 75 miles each way), then around 4.5 hours the next day to drive 190 miles on nothing but motorways and trunk A roads (180 miles of which were dual carriageway). It seems likely that the first place autonomous vehicles can take a hold is on major routes like this and I for one can’t wait. Maybe one day we’ll have segregated autonomous driving lanes on the motorways, where the cars can drive closer together (in constant communication and not constrained by human reaction speeds) and maybe even faster (if the law is changed).
Today’s UK motorway delights brought to you by the M1 and the M25! Glad to be working from home for the rest of the week! pic.twitter.com/CpUI1mAn6F
This week also saw the quarterly Milton Keynes Geek Night, which I’m proud to have attended every one of! I’ve made a lot of contacts over the 5½ years it’s been running – some of whom I can now count as friends and this event had one of the best set of talks in a long while including:
Simon Collison (@colly) on “The Internet of Natural Things”
Laura Sutton (@L_Coull)’s “Non-geek’s guide to the Galaxy”
Dr Neil Smith (@neilnjae) showing us “Beatles vs. Rolling Stones: using data science to prove which band is best”!
Joe Leech (@MrJoe) wrapping up with “UX, Psychology and the Power of 100”
The next one clashes with my wedding anniversary, and Mrs W has even agreed to come along with me as an honourary geek!
At home
We’re hoping to convert our loft next year and the initial notice has been submitted for planning purposes. It seems that, now that councils are better at sharing information, marketers are scraping it to bombard us with offers of storage, home improvements, etc. Apparently, our neighbours will be getting mailshots from lawyers too… all very irksome…
Initial planning notice was submitted this week for our loft extension… since then, I’ve received lots of marketing post from home improvement, storage, etc. companies. Has anyone else in UK experienced this? Would @MKCouncil be making my details available to 3rd parties?
It’s really noticeable how many people are now sleeping rough on the streets of Milton Keynes. The Bus Shelter are trying to do something about that – but they need to raise funds to convert a double-decker coach to provide emergency shelter. To quote from their website:
“Homelessness can hit anyone – most of us are just three pay packets away from losing our home. With your help we can provide over 5800 safe, warm nights for people forced to sleep on the streets and help them find a positive future.”
Look out for the bus in the Intu part of the Shopping Centre (Midsummer Place) and please donate, if you can:
At the other end of the scale… I passed a man on the mean streets of MK proudly proclaiming that the best place to get a car parking space is the electric charging bays… it may not be illegal to park a petrol/diesel car in an electric space but it is selfish (especially as there are normal spaces free)…
Other stuff
Barclaycard sent me a new credit card “for security reasons”. It was nice to find that my Apple Wallet updated automatically on my phone and my watch. Sadly the many websites where I had the details stored for recurring payments (Apple iTunes, Microsoft, Amazon, M6 Toll, Transport for London, etc.) didn’t.
Pleasantly surprised to find that my card details were automatically updated in my Apple Wallet when my old card was cancelled. That is a nice feature #IDontThinkIUpdatedThem! https://t.co/Cv0gaSM8qD
That reminds me… I wonder when my Curve card will show up… It seems I’ve been stuck with about 1500 people ahead of me in the queue for weeks now… in fact, the number seems to be going up (but if you use my referral link above, I can move back up the queue…)!
On the topic of referrals, my energy switch to Bulb completed this week. It was painless (though I will have to wait to get my credit from First Utility, my previous provider – who seem more interested in selling broadband to me now than reducing my energy bills…). Unfortunately, neither I nor my friend have received our promised referral credits from Bulb. Enquiries are ongoing…
My son and I needed to force-quit an app on my Amazon Fire TV Stick but weren’t sure how. This blog post helped by pointing us to Menu, Settings, Manage All Installed Applications where Force Stop is one of the options.
Just got this message on my Amazon Fire TV Stick… seeing as I bought it to get YouTube back on my Samsung TV, I guess it will be returned to @AmazonUK! This article from @verge suggests ongoing Google-Amazon spat; consumers lose out: https://t.co/SnWg2d0Tcvpic.twitter.com/dIszVcPqXy
I’ve been watching Channel 4’s series about Donald Trump’s rise (An American Dream). I’ll leave the politics aside but it’s fascinating to see how the wealthy can grow to take such a position of power…
I noticed that my Nextbase Dashcam was showing the wrong time (1 hour ahead) and every time I changed it, it reverted after the next power cycle… then I realised there was a timezone setting and it was still on GMT+1 (BST). After changing to GMT, all was good. It seems that it picks up the time from the GPS, so the timezone is the important setting…
Whilst I was at MK Geek Night this week, I spotted that War Horse is coming to Milton Keynes Theatre next autumn. I enjoyed the film and I’ve heard good things about the National Theatre production too, so tickets are booked for a family cultural treat:
My phone has decided that, when I get in the car, I’m headed for the local Tesco Express… that’s a little worrying (I wonder how does Siri determine my travel patterns?):
Bit worrying how my phone thought I was off to the shops when I got in the car… pic.twitter.com/CHveAkOdQC
I’ve mentioned before that I listen to a lot of podcasts. One of these is the Microsoft Cloud Show. Sometimes, it can be a bit too developer-focused for my tastes but I enjoyed Episode 223, which pretty much encapsulates the conversations I have with customers as an Architect working with the Microsoft cloud!
I also got the chance to catch up with Matt Ballantine this week (one half of the WB-40 Podcast). It’s been a while since Matt and I had a chat but I really enjoyed bouncing around our thoughts on modern collaboration and team working. and team-working. Like Matt, I’m finding myself drawing/writing on screen more (at least when working, using a Surface Pro – my MacBook lacks any sort of touch capability) though it’s also showing how unpracticed I’ve become at writing!
Wrap-up
Anyway, before I get too far into Sunday evening I need to sign-off and check my children haven’t continued building their snow-wall across the neighbours’ drives…
Next week looks like it should feature a lot less travel (at least by road) and a return to cyclocross with my son. I might even be home a few evenings and maybe, just maybe, I’ll write a blog post that’s not one of these weeknotes! I live in hope…
This content is 7 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.
Milton Keynes – Rochdale – London – Leicester. Not quite New York – London – Paris but those are the towns and cities on my itinerary this week.
Every now and again, I find myself counting down the days to the weekend. This week has been different. It was manic, squeezing work in around lots of other activities but it was mostly enjoyable too.
The week at work
My work week started off with an opportunity to input to a report that I find quite exciting. I can’t say too much at the moment (though it should be released within the next couple of weeks and I’ll be shouting about it then) but it’s one of those activities that makes me think “I’d like to do more of this” (I already get referred to as the extra member of the risual marketing team, which I think they mean as a good thing!).
Bills have to be paid though (i.e. I need to keep my utilisation up!), so I’ve also had some consulting in the mix, writing a strategy for a customer who needs to modernise their datacentre.
Then, back to work on Thursday, squeezing in a full day’s work before heading to the National Space Centre in Leicester in the afternoon for the UK MVP Community Connection. I’m not an MVP anymore (I haven’t been since 2011) but I am a member of the MVP Reconnect Programme, which means I still get invited to some of the events – and the two I’ve been to so far have been really worthwhile. One of my favourite sessions at the last event was Tony Wells from Resource IT (the guys who create the Microsoft Abbreviation Dictionary) talking about storytelling. This time we had a 3-hour workshop with an opportunity to put some of the techniques into practice.
The evening started with drinks in the space tower, then an IMAX film before dinner (and a quiz) in the Space Centre, surrounded by the exhibits. We returned the next day for a Microsoft business update, talks on ethics and diversity, on extending our audience reach and on mixed reality.
Unfortunately, my Friday afternoon was hijacked by other work… and the work week also spilt over into the weekend – something I generally try to avoid and which took the shine off things somewhat…
Social
I’ve had a full-on week with family too: my eldest son is one of six from Milton Keynes who have been selected to attend the Kandersteg International Scout Centre (KISC) in 2019 and, together with ten more who are off to the World Scout Jamboree in West Virginia, we have a lot of fund-raising to do (about £45,000 in total). That meant selling raffle tickets in the shopping centre for the opportunity to win a car on Monday evening, and a meeting on Tuesday evening to talk about fundraising ideas…
Meeting parents and young people to kick off our fundraising plans to send 10 young people from @MKscouting to World Scout Jamboree and 6 to the Kandersteg International Scout Centre in 2019. We need to raise about £45,000 so if anyone has ideas, I’d love to hear them!
So, that’s out every evening, and a long day every day this week… by Friday I was ready to collapse in a heap.
The weekend
No cyclocross this weekend (well, there was, but it clashed with football), so I was on a different sort of Dad duty, running the line and trying not to anger parents from the other team with my ropey knowledge of the offside rule…
It’s also December now, so my family have declared that Christmas celebrations can begin. Right from the moment I returned home on Friday evening I was accused of not being Christmassy enough and I was forced to listen to “Christmas Music” on the drive to my son’s football match (the compromise was that it could be my Christmas playlist).
Even I was amused to be followed in my car by a certain jolly chap:
Look who followed me in my car today! It seems Father Christmas has traded his sleigh for a convertible Morris Minor? pic.twitter.com/2c74NeZCNH
My part in decorating the house consists of getting everything down from the loft, putting up the tree and lights, and then finding myself somewhere to hide for a couple of hours until it all looks lovely and sparkly. Unfortunately, the hiding time was actually spent polishing a presentation for Monday and fighting with Concur to complete my expenses… not exactly what I had in mind…
New tech
A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned that we now have a teenager in the house and my eldest son has managed to save enough birthday money to buy a smartwatch. He was thinking of a Garmin device until I reminded him how bad their software is when we sync our bike computers so he went for a Samsung Gear Sport. It looks pretty good if you have an Android phone. I have an iPhone and an Apple Watch (as you may recall from my recent tales of woe) but if I was an Android guy, I think the Gear Sport would be my choice…
Ghost trains
I forgot to add this tale to last week’s week note but I was travelling back home from Stafford recently when I noticed a re-branded Virgin Pendolino at the platform. My train wasn’t due for another 10 minutes so I didn’t check out where this one was going, so I was a little surprised to pass it again as I arrived in Milton Keynes two hours later, after I’d gone the long way (via Birmingham) and changed trains…
Checking on Realtime Trains showed me that I could have caught a direct train from Stafford, but it wasn’t on the public timetable. Indeed, although it stops at several stations, it’s listed as an empty coaching stock working (which is presumably why it is pathed on the slow lines including the Northampton loop). So, in addition to trains that stop at Milton Keynes only to set down (southbound) or pick up (northbound), it seems that Virgin run “ghost trains” too!
Listening
I listen to a lot of podcasts when I’m in the car. This week I spent a lot of time in the car. I recommend these two episodes:
Credit is due to the social media team handling the @PremierInn account for Whitbread, they quickly confirmed that it is a J not an I (though I had worked it out).
@HolidayInn were equally on the ball when I complained about a lack of power sockets (and traffic noise insulation) at their Leicester City Centre hotel. Thankfully they replies were limited to Twitter and email – not midnight calls as my colleague Gavin Morrisson found when he tweeted about another Holiday Inn!
Last time I complained on Twitter about sockets at a HI, they tracked me down and the hotel manager called my room at midnight asking what the problem was. I was not amused.
This content is 7 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.
This weeknote is a bit of a rush-job – mostly because it’s Sunday afternoon and I’m writing this at the side of a public swimming pool whilst supervising a pool party… it will be late tonight when I get to finish it!
The week
There not a huge amount to say about this week though. It’s been as manic as usual, with a mixture of paid consulting days, pre-sales and time at Microsoft.
The time at Microsoft was excellent though – I spent Tuesday in their London offices, when Daniel Baker (@AzureDan) gave an excellent run through of some of the capabilities in Azure. I like to think I have a reasonable amount of Azure experience and I was really looking to top up my knowledge with recent developments as well as to learn a bit more about using some of the advanced workloads but I learned a lot that day. I think Dan is planning some more videos so watch his Twitter feed but his “Build a Company in a Day” slides are available for download.
I’ve seen many Azure demos and @AzureDan‘s #BACIAD is one of the best. Covered IaaS and PaaS topics running through networks, VMs, containers, DevTest Labs, App Service, Logic Apps and Cognitive Services – all in one day! #Azuredandemohttps://t.co/b0Qzgm9cVk
On the topic of Azure, I managed to get the sentiment analysis demo I’ve been working on based on a conversation with my colleague Matt Bradley (@MattOnMicrosoft) and Daniel Baker also touched on it in his Build a Company in a Day workshop. It uses an Azure Logic App to:
Monitor Twitter on a given topic;
Detect sentiment with Azure Cognitive Services Text Analytics;
Push data into Power BI dataset for visualisation;
Send an email if the sentiment is below a certain value.
It’s a bit rough-and-ready (my Power BI skills are best described as “nascent”) but it’s not a bad demo – and it costs me pennies to run. You can also do something similar with Microsoft Flow instead of an Azure Logic App.
Black Friday
I hate Black Friday. Just an excuse to shift some excess stock onto greedy consumers ahead of Christmas…
…but it didn’t stop me buying things:
An Amazon Fire TV Stick to make our TV smart again (it has fewer and fewer apps available because it’s more than 3 years old…). Primarily I was after YouTube but my youngest is very excited about the Manchester City app!
My weekend involved: cycling (my son was racing cyclocross again in the Central CX League); an evening out with my wife (disappointing restaurant in the next town followed by great gin in our local pub); a small hangover; some Zwift (to blow away the cobwebs – and although it was sunny outside, the chances of hitting black ice made the idea of a real road bike ride a bit risky); the pool party I mentioned earlier (belated 13th birthday celebrations for my eldest); 7 adolescent kids eating an enormous quantity of food back at ours; and… relax.
After posting my 7 days 7 photos efforts last week, I saw this:
I’m not doing the black-and-white photo challenge thing but I am using it as an excuse to share Marcin Ryczek’s man feeding ducks and swans from a snowy bank in Kraków: pic.twitter.com/h7XktzOT9h
I’ve switched the home connection from OpenDNS (now owned by Cisco) to 9.9.9.9 and will report back in a while…
This ad tells a great story:
Regardless that it’s really just an ad for smart energy, it’s interesting to read this story of how the establishment ignored John Logie Baird as he tried to pitch television in the 1920s ? (back page of today’s @MetroUK) pic.twitter.com/Mo5jujYikN
We recently switched back to Tesco for our online grocery shopping (we left years ago because it seemed someone was taking one or two items from every order, hoping we wouldn’t notice). Well, it seems things have improved in some ways, but not in others…
This afternoon, I learned @Tesco Maths. Quite right we didn’t pay more, but we also got 75% of what we ordered, for the same price. Then “Customer Services” had the cheek to tell me I had accepted the substitution… Next time, their driver can wait whilst I check every item… pic.twitter.com/9miZl6fOrM
On the subject of less-than-wonderful online shopping experiences, after I criticised John Lewis for limiting website functionality instead of bursting to the cloud:
It seems they got their own back by shipping my wife’s Christmas present with Hermes, who dumped it on the front doorstep (outside the notified delivery timeframe) and left a card to say it had been delivered to a secure location:
Rushed home for @JohnLewisRetail parcel due to be delivered by #HermesUK between 17:00 and 21:00 only to find it was dumped on the doorstep sometime this afternoon…
Finally, for this week, I borrowed my son’s wireless charger to top up my iPhone. Charging devices without cables – it’s witchcraft, I tell you! Witchcraft!
Next week, I’ll be back with my customer in Rochdale, consulting on what risual calls the “Optimised Service Vision” so it was interesting to see Matt Ballantine’s slides on Bringing Service Design to IT Service. I haven’t seen Matt present these but it looks like our thinking is quite closely aligned…
That’s all folks!
That’s all for this week. I’m off to watch some more Halt and Catch Fire before I get some sleep in preparation for what looks like a busy week…
This content is 7 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.
Another week, another weeknote…
There’s not much to say about work this week – I’ve mostly been writing documentation. I did spend a good chunk of Monday booking hotels and travel, only to find 12 days of consulting drop out of my diary again on Friday (cue hotel cancellations, etc.) but I guess that’s just life!
Family life: grime, rap and teens!
Outside work, it’s been good to be close to home and get involved in family life again.
I had the amusement of my 11 year-old and his friends rapping to their grime music on my car on the way to/from football training this week (we’re at the age where it’s “Dad, can we have my music on please?”) but there’s only so much Big Shaq I can take so I played some Eminem on the way back. It was quite endearing to hear my son say “I didn’t know you knew about Eminem!” after I dropped his mates off. I should make the most of these moments as the adulation is dropping off now he approaches his teens!
Talking of teens, my eldest turned 13 this week, which was a big day in the Wilson household:
I’m not sure how this little fella grew into this strong chap (or where the time in between has gone) but we introduced him to the Harry Enfield “Kevin the teenager” videos a few months ago. I thought they were funny when I was younger but couldn’t believe how accurate they are now I’m a parent. Our boys clearly understood the message too and looked a bit sheepish!
Tech
I did play with some tech this week – and I managed to create my very own chatbot without writing any code:
It’s also interesting reading some of the queries that the bot has been asked, which have led to me extending its knowledge base a few times now. A question and answer chatbot is probably more suited to a set of tightly bounded questions on a topic (the things people can ask about me is pretty broad) but it’s a nice demo…
Very interesting to read the #markbot1 logs (to then tune the knowledge base)… looks like someone asked “how fat are you?”! https://t.co/2FeGO9Jyol
I also upgraded my work PC to the latest Windows 10 and Office builds (1709 and 1710 respectively), which gave me the ability to use a digital pen as a presentation clicker, which is nice, in a geek-novelty kind of way:
I have an Amazon Prime membership, which includes access to Amazon Prime Instant Video – including several TV shows that would otherwise only be available in the US. One I enjoy is Mr Robot – which although completely weird at times is also strangely addictive – and this week’s episode was particularly good (scoring 9.9 on IMDB). Whilst I was waiting for the next episode to come around, I found that I’d missed a whole season of Halt and Catch Fire too (I binge-watched the first three after they were recommended to me by Howard van Rooijen/@HowardvRooijen). Series 4 is the final one and that’s what presently keeping me from my sleep… but it’s really good!
I don’t have Netflix, but Silicon Cowboys has been recommended to me by Derek Goodridge (@workerthread). Just like the first series of Halt and Catch Fire, it’s the story of the original IBM PC clone manufacturers – Compaq – but in documentary format, rather than as a drama series.
People have been telling me for ages that “the latest iPhone has a great camera” and, in daylight, I’m really impressed by the clarity and also the bokeh effect. It’s still a mobile phone camera with a tiny sensor though and that means it’s still really poor at night. If a full-frame DSLR struggles at times, an iPhone will be challenged I guess – but I’m still finding that I’m inspired to use the camera more.
7 Days 7 Photos
Last week, I mentioned the 7 days, 7 photos challenge. I’ve completed mine now and they are supposed to be without explanation but, now I have a set of 7 photos, I thought I would explain what and why I used these ones. I get the feeling that some people are just posting 7 pictures, one a day, but these really do relate to what I was doing each day – and I tried to nominate people for the challenge each day based on their relevance to the subject…
Day 1
I spotted this pub as I walked to Farringdon station. I wondered if “the clerk and well” was the origin of the name for “Clerkenwell” and it turns out that it is. Anyway, I liked the view of the traditional London pub (I was on my way home from another one!) and challenged my brother, who’s a publican…
Day 2
I liked the form in this photograph of my son’s CX bike on the roof of my car. It didn’t look so clean when we got back from cyclocross training though! I challenged my friend Andy, whose 40th birthday was the reason for my ride from London to Paris a few years ago…
Day 3
Not technically a single photo – lets’ call it a triptych, I used the Diptic app (as recommended by Ben Seymour/@bseymour) to create this collage. I felt it was a little too personal to nominate my friend Kieran, whose medals are in the lower left image, so I nominated my friend James, who was leading the Scouts in our local remembrance day parade.
Day 4
I found some failed backups on my Synology NAS this week. For some reason, Hyper Backup complained it didn’t have enough storage (I’m pretty sure it wasn’t Azure that ran out of space!) so I ran several backups, each one adding another folder until I had all of my new photos in the backup set. I felt the need to challenge a friend who works in IT – so I challenged my friend Stuart.
Day 5
My son was cake-baking, for Children in Need, I think – or maybe it was my other son, baking his birthday cake. I can’t really remember. I challenged a friend who runs a local cafe and regularly bakes muffins…
Day 6
Self-explanatory. My son’s own creation for his birthday. I challenged my wife for this one.
Day 7
The last image is following an evening helping out at Scouts. Images of attempts to purify water through distillation were not that great, so I took a picture of the Scout Badge, and nominated my friend Phil, who’s another one of the local Scout leaders.
(All seven of these pictures were taken on an iPhone 8 Plus using the native camera app, then edited in Snapseed and uploaded to Flickr)
On the topic of music, look up Master Boot Record on Spotify:
Master Boot Record has an album called C:>AUTOEXEC.BAT where each song name appears to be a valid autoexec entry. Amazeballs. pic.twitter.com/dqkvk9Grbn
I added second-factor authentication to my WordPress blog this week. I couldn’t find anything that uses the Microsoft Authenticator, but this 2FA WordPress plugin from miniOrange uses Google Authenticator and was very easy to set up.
Being at home all week meant I went to see my GP about my twisted ankle (from the falling-into-the-sea incident). One referral later and I was able to see a physio… who’s already working wonders on helping to repair my damaged ligaments. And he says I can ride my bike too… so I’ll be back on Zwift even if cyclocross racing is out for the rest of the season.
Cycling
On the subject of Zwift, they announced a price rise this week. I understand that these things happen but it’s gone up 50% in the US (and slightly more than that here in the UK). All that really does is drive me to use Zwift in the winter and to cancel my membership in the summer. A more reasonable monthly fee might make me more inclined to sign up for 12 months at a time and create a recurring revenue for Zwift. Very strange business model, IMHO.
I particularly liked the last line of this article:
“Five minutes after the race
That was sooo fun! When can I do it again?!”
I may not have been riding cyclocross this weekend, but my son was, and Sunday was the popular Central Cyclocross League race at RAF Halton. With mud, sand, gravel and steep banks, long woodland sections and more, it looked epic. Maybe I’ll get to ride next year!
I did get to play with one of the RAF’s cranes (attached to a flatbed truck) though – amazing how much control there is – and had a go on the road safety rig too.
And of course, what else to eat at a cyclocross event but Belgian fries, mayo and waffles!
Finally, my friends at Kids Racing (@kidsracing) have some new kit in. Check out the video they filmed at the MK Bowl a couple of weeks back – and if you have kids in need of new cycling kit, maybe head over to HUP CC.
Wrap-up
That’s it for this week. Next week I have a bit more variation in my work (including another Microsoft event – Azure Ready in the UK) and I’m hoping to actually get some blog posts written… see you on the other side!
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Another week, another week note. And I really should try and publish these a bit earlier (it’s late on Sunday evening again!)
After I’d fitted the bars, I noticed a small dent in one of them. I had been super-careful when fitting them, so I can be pretty sure that it wasn’t anything I did. I emailed roofracks.co.uk and, whilst the dent is only visible in certain light conditions and difficult to photograph, they said they couldn’t clearly see the dent in the pictures I sent (including this one):
(Is it just me? I thought the red ring would help…)
They wanted me to return the damaged bar at my cost so they could inspect and send a replacement (I’d already said it wasn’t worth it but asked if they could apply a small discount). For that reason, I can no longer recommend roofracks.co.uk. Which is a pity, because they have competitive pricing (presumably based on volume sales).
Subscription fatigue
I also referred to subscription fatigue in last week’s weeknote. I knew that my friend David Hughes had written about it somewhere, but I couldn’t remember where… he pointed me to his newsletters (issue 2 and issue 4).
“Each developer that moves to this business model says “it’s just the price of a cup of coffee” every month, and it is. But my […] issue is that many apps are moving to this business model, and that starts to add up.
I could be in the position where I am spending hundreds of pounds a year to essentially rent software.
That is not for me.”
Hear, hear!
Travel
I spent half the week in the north west of England. Rochdale to be precise.
As it’s so difficult to get a parking space near Milton Keynes station after about 8:00 on a weekday, I caught a bus from home. I found a great website that uses open data to list all UK bus services. Bustimes.org.uk is not an official resource but, like realtimetrains.co.uk, it is an incredibly useful one!
I’d bought a ticket from Milton Keynes to Rochdale and back which, despite showing as only valid via Manchester, was not clear about whether it could be used on trams between Manchester’s two main stations (Piccadilly and Victoria). Manchester Metrolink later confirmed that the ticket wasn’t valid (so it’s a good job I played safe and bought a tram ticket then!).
If only Transport for Greater Manchester took a leaf out of Transport for London’s book with tickets that include public transport transfers (cf. Underground between London termini on through journeys) though it seems you can get a ticket that is valid for tram transfers – I just don’t know how!
No worries. It needs to say either CTLZ or Metrolink City.
I found it interesting to see that people on Twitter thought £67.50 was expensive for a return trip from Milton Keynes to Manchester (I thought it was a bargain). It’s certainly not expensive when compared with demand-based pricing on peak Manchester-London services (which can be over £300) or with the cost of driving ~400 miles to Rochdale and back…
Anyone who’s spent any time in and around Manchester will know it’s a city with a reasonably high chance of precipitation. Stupidly, I forgot to take a coat that fits over my suit to Greater Manchester. Muppet. Luckily I had an umbrella in my work bag…
Also worth knowing (from my travels further south at the end of the week): the rear First Class section in Thameslink trains is declassified until further notice. I have no idea why but it’s useful to get access to some power:
Hi Mark, First Class has plug sockets & is declassified in the rear carriage of the new trains until further notice. ^Isana
A couple of nights in Rochdale also gave me a chance to catch up with an ex-colleague and one of my most supportive former managers, Alan Purchase (@AlanPurchase). He’s at Capgemini now – who seem to be hoovering up a lot of people with Microsoft skills (as are Microsoft themselves). Meanwhile, I got one of the regular LinkedIn contacts asking me if I’d be interested in a fantastic opportunity from someone I’ve never heard of who won’t even say who they are working for but this one was really special: it would involve moving my family to Ireland. Tempting though it may be to keep my EU citizenship post-Brexit, thanks but no thanks.
The rest of the week
As mentioned above, I was back dahn sarf for the second part of the week and spent two days in London with the first one at Microsoft learning more about the capabilities of Azure with regards to data and the intelligent cloud. I’ve been trying to grok this for a while (my background is Infrastructure). The second day was more mundane, supporting a colleague on a consulting engagement.
I tried using Apple Maps for turn-by-turn navigation on my watch whilst riding my Brompton to Microsoft on Thursday. Unfortunately, Apple Maps lacks cycling directions (it only has walk, drive, public transport or taxi) and I got a bit lost with the various “no cycling” routes in Regents Park which made for an interesting route map!
7 Days 7 Photos Challenge
I’ve been “challenged” for the 7 days 7 photos challenge on Facebook. The rules are simple:
Seven days, seven black and white photos of my life. No humans. No explanation. Challenge someone every day.
Some people are critical of this – saying it’s not a challenge, and suggesting it’s just creating a bunch of poor black and white photos on Facebook. I’m actually finding it a great opportunity to think about what I’m doing and to capture something from the day. Anything that gets me thinking creatively about capturing images has to be good, right?
3 days in and my efforts are on Flickr – see what you think so far…
Other stuff
I was signposted to John Naughton (@jjn1)’s 95 theses about technology by Matt Ballantine (@ballantine70). I think it should be required reading for anyone in a senior technology role…
I do most of my geek stuff with my eldest son, so I asked the youngest if he fancied a play with a BBC Microbit. Our inventor’s kit arrived this week:
We had a lot of fun and it was fantastic to see his face light up when his Microbit started playing the sounds and displaying the letter of the notes as he had instructed.
I’ve played with the Relive app a few times to generate a birds-eye view of a route I’ve cycled. GPX Hyperlapse takes a different view – using Google Streetview to help view a route (perhaps in preparation for a ride).
IBP Index looks interesting as an approach for measuring the relative effort of different activities (e.g. cycling, running, etc.).
Today was Remembrance Sunday and a particularly poignant one where I live in Olney as so many local men were lost at the Battle of Passchendaele, exactly one hundred years ago. It’s always good to see so many people turn out to pay their respects but such a shame the traffic wasn’t halted for the 2 minute silence, as it has been in previous years.
That’s all for now
Right, that’s all for now. If you read this far, thanks for sticking with me. These posts take a long time to write so any feedback is welcomed – it would be good to know I’m not just writing a diary for my own benefit!
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After some positive feedback on last week’s newsletter-style blog, I’ve decided to keep going with the format for at least another week.
So, please indulge me in a little narcissism as I write about a week in the world of Mark… although this post is a little late as it’s now the following Monday (I ran out of weekend…)
New bike carriers
Last week I wrote about racing cyclocross with my son. I have a 4-bike carrier that fits on a towball on my car but it’s just a cheap one from Halfords and, to be honest, it’s not that great. I’ve been considering getting a roof mounted system for when I have just a couple of bikes (i.e. not the whole family’s) and, I decided to buy a good product this time (buy cheap, buy twice…).
That meant a Thule system – and their website helped me to work out which parts to buy but I was still looking to do better than recommended retail price. After failing to land a couple of Thule ProRide carriers on eBay, I bought the whole setup from RoofRacks.co.uk, including matching locks as standard and free standard delivery.
One thing I thought long and hard on was whether to go for silver or black finish (my car has black roof rails). In the end. I decided on silver – the 10% premium for black parts is simply not worth it – especially as the silver rails/racks have some black components.
Survey marks
Whilst walking in Dorset last week, I spotted a strange disc bolted to a pavement, with the words Survey Mark on it. I asked Ordnance Survey if they knew what it is and they responded to say it’s a “historical bolt style benchmark” – a legacy system for recording the height above sea level.
thats a fine example of a historical bolt style benchmark – details may be here- https://t.co/M5ChLwqSqX— Ordnance Survey (@OrdnanceSurvey) October 30, 2017
Back to work (highlights)
After last week’s holiday, it was back to work this week – with a bang. My employer, risual, was headline sponsoring Microsoft’s Future Decoded event – which meant a couple of full-on (but enjoyable) days at London ExCeL in a mixture of stand duty (chatting to delegates, capturing potential sales leads), presenting (4 short sessions on digital transformation) – albeit in a theatre “room” at the side of the main exhibition hall (so not the best environment) – and joining the keynote sessions (though I missed all of the breakout sessions). Added to UK Azure User Group events on Monday and Tuesday evenings, it was a very busy few days!
I really enjoyed the presenting opportunity – I’d like to do more if I get the chance, though I do prefer to create my own content (rather than presenting material created for me). I also saw some pretty cool presentations that I hope will result in some blog posts of their own – particularly the ones around Quantum Computing and DNA Storage.
Accessibility
Hobbling around with a twisted ankle (after last week’s unexpected fall into the sea) has given me a little insight into what it’s like to have limited mobility. I’ve still walked, but more slowly than usual – and not the distances I’d normally expect to cover. No cycling, running or circuits this week either…
The closing keynote at Future Decoded had a major focus on inclusivity and accessibility – including the surprising statistic that 1 billion people in the world are disabled in one way or another (hidden or visible).
Every one of us has reduced ability from time to time – not just people who are disabled. That may be permanent, temporary (as in my case) or situational (such as when holding a child whilst on a phone call). Assistive technology is something that we can all use to make the most of our senses and get the best use of time – the most important thing we have!
iPhones…
Readers of last week’s post may remember that I fell into the sea, with an Apple Watch Series 3 on my wrist (water resistant) and iPhone 6s in my pocket (not water resistant). As well as the discomfort from the twisted ankle, that’s turned out to be quite an expensive slip…
After a couple of days drying out, my phone was working (sort of), with notifications (and even a phone call) on my Apple Watch – and my computers could “see” the iPhone. But the screen wasn’t working so I couldn’t unlock it.
The damage to the phone was covered on my home contents policy as accidental damage but it was going to take a couple of weeks for the insurers to get their agent to collect, assess and then potentially return a repaired device to me. I don’t want a repaired device. Water damage leads to all sorts of longer-term issues, particularly when combined with corrosion, so they agreed to replace my phone if Apple would certify that the device was beyond economic repair due to liquid damage.After seeing the bright red liquid damage indicator, Apple was happy to do that. Unfortunately, they valued my iPhone 6S at £299 – apparently the replacement price for an upgrade. Take off £100 excess and I had £199 in the bank but no working phone.
Soggy iPhone sitrep: dead screen, battery, camera and salt residue all over electronics. Bright red liquid damage indicator! pic.twitter.com/vJJvFJnPag— Mark Wilson ???? (@markwilsonit) November 3, 2017
I’d only been saying how expensive the new iPhone is and how I’d keep mine for a bit longer the day before I trashed my old one… now I’m paying for that expensive iPhone 8 Plus over 20 months, with interest-free finance through the Apple Upgrade Programme (AUP… or “ay-up” as the staff referred to it… I thought I’d suddenly been transported to Yorkshire). It also gives me the option to exchange for a new phone in a year’s time (iPhone 8S, 9 or 11 or whatever the next one is called), and it includes 2 years’ Apple Care. Let’s hope the camera is as good as I was led to believe by some of my friends (that’s why I got the plus, and why I got the 256GB version).
Unfortunately, iCloud wasn’t backing up as much as I hoped and a restore to my new phone was a little underwhelming. I had backed up my photos manually but there were a few I hadn’t got, and I had some expenses I really wanted to click “upload” on. I searched the ‘net for a local Apple repair specialist to see how much a new screen might cost and found Northampton Apple Repair, who helped me out with a temporary screen and battery so I could take a full iTunes backup of my phone. Having seen the inside of my phone (lots of salt), they were amazed it even booted.
I can install a different version of iOS to restore an iTunes backup (and it would be so much more helpful if Apple’s message told you that the backup is from a different iOS version – rather than corrupt or incompatible!) – that’s another one that will hopefully turn into a blog post of its own this week.
Patrick at Northampton Apple Repair is a complete superstar and I cannot recommend his services highly enough.
Other stuff
The Carrot Weather app has an AR mode and it’s pretty cool:
After a few months of using Todoist Premium for free (thanks to discount codes), I’ve signed up for a year… it must be good because I suffer from subscription fatigue and am trying to avoid adding to the pile of products that I use for “less than the price of a cup of coffee” a day/week/month/whatever. They add up to a lot of coffee…
Weekend
No cycling for me this weekend but a good opportunity to get together with friends for a bit to eat and drink, followed by fireworks. After reading some night-time photography suggestions from Apple I downloaded a different iOS camera app ( Procam 5) but didn’t really get the opportunity to try it out before the live display…
Taking photos of fireworks is never easy – particularly on a smartphone. I’m quite pleased with some of the firework pics I took last summer though…
I fitted the new roof bars on Sunday – they look pretty good. I tested the bike carriers too but took them off until I need to use them.
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Inspired by David Hughes (@DavidHughes) and Christian Payne (@Documentally), a few weeks ago, I ran a Twitter poll to see if anyone would be interested in a newsletter of some of the stuff I’ve been up to. The responses were mixed, but some went along the lines of “the email format doesn’t resonate with me” and “I like reading what you’ve been up to on your blog”. My blog has been falling by the wayside in recent months and I do want to write more, so I’ve decided to write a weekly (ish) newsletter here instead. In between, I’ll stick write the usual tech-inspired stuff but this will be more eclectic. Matt Ballantine (@ballantine70) does something similar with his weeknotes – but he must be incredibly disciplined to get them out every Friday. I spend Fridays trying to end my week.
So, here goes for issue 1. I’m still not sure what this thing should be called?
A week off
I’ve just had a week off work. I needed it. My previous blog post describes some of the challenges I’ve had lately and I really needed to decompress. After the initial weekend madness (just like every weekend), the first half of the week was spent at home, mostly sorting stuff out (more on that later), then a few days away with my family…
The weekend before…
My eldest son has started competing in the Central Cyclocross League and I’ve been joining in the novice races whilst he races in the Under 14s (both races take place on the same course at the same time).
I seriously considered not racing last week after a very hard practice lap but then my son instructed me to “put your numbers on and race your bike”. Oh, OK then!
I’m reasonably fit for long distance stuff (I recently completed the rather hilly inaugural Velo Birmingham 100 mile sportive) and my Caveman Conditioning (circuits) a couple of times a week help with general fitness but cyclocross is something else. Particularly when you’re using a mountain bike because your son is riding his CX bike (how inconsiderate!). I think it may be time for an n+1. Certainly if we do this again next season!
Unfortunately, being ignored in the LBS doesn’t leave a very good feeling. Being ignored on social media after sending the tweet even less so…
Dropped into @TrekMK yesterday. 3 staff behind the counter. All ignored me. Guess my n+1 won’t be a #Trek Boone then… #CustomerService
I don’t often wear a suit for work these days – but there are occasions where it’s still expected (first meetings, particular customers, etc.). I’ve been putting off buying a new suit for a while because a) there are two in the wardrobe that I really should slim down into b) I’d rather spend the money elsewhere. This week I gave in and bought something new.
I took one of my sons with me and he happily browsed the John Lewis technology department whilst I was suit shopping. He thinks I spent a lot of money though and suggested I get a blazer with some M&S trousers like his school uniform for a fraction of the price! Welcome to the world of work, son!
Whilst he was browsing the technology, I spotted this:
The Windows Premium collection appears to be Windows 10, running on a selection of higher-end PCs (Dell XPS 13, HP Spectre, etc.). First time I’d heard of it though…
Administration
I spent a good chunk of my week off working through an administration backlog at home. Ultimately that results in a lot of scanning (on my Canon ImageFormula P-215 desktop scanner), some shredding and a little bit of filing (for those few documents that I do retain in paper form).
After hunting around for PDF editing tools (ideally command line) to remove some pages I didn’t need inside some existing PDF files, I found this comment on the MacRumors forums:
“Preview does all of this quite well, fyi.”
Sure enough: open the PDF in MacOS Preview; delete the extra pages; save. Job done.
Karting, photography and train travel
My youngest son wanted to go to a friend’s go-karting party this week whilst my wife and eldest were heading down to Dorset for a few days. No problem, he could stay at home with me whilst I did some of my admin and then we’d follow on by train.
The karting inspired me to get my Nikon D700 out again. It may be big and heavy but I love the control of the DLSR experience and the results. I’ve tried some pro apps on my iPhone (like 645 Pro) but it’s just not the same!
Afterwards, the train journey to Dorset gave my son and I a mini-adventure (bus, train, tube, another train) to join the rest of the family – and with a Family and Friends railcard it was less than £30!
Walking
Last Friday was a gorgeous day – almost no wind and bright sunshine didn’t seem like late-October! My family took the chance to go for a walk along the South West Coastal Path from Swanage to Studland (for a pub lunch).
Afterwards, I walked back with one of my sons – and what a treat that was! Glorious views and late-afternoon sunlight meant lots of photo stops but it was certainly my favourite part of the walk!
On the beach
Saturday’s weather was less impressive but, after lunch at our favourite Swanage coffee shop (Java), coincidentally located next to my favourite Swanage restaurant (Chilled Red, where my wife and I had eaten the night before), we took the boys to the beach. They were happy with their wetsuits to keep the cold at bay whilst they played but I decided to stay dry. At least that was the plan.
I was walking out on one of the groynes to take a picture of the boys, when I found that walking boot soles have almost no grip once they meet wet wood and, faced with the choice of falling face-first (or probably chest-first) onto a large wooden beam or throwing myself towards the sea, I chose the latter… managing to twist my ankle on the way, and then realising that my wallet and my iPhone were in my pockets.
I’m hoping that the phone will be covered on the household building and contents insurance – we have accidental damage cover and I’ll be making that call tomorrow… otherwise I could be getting an iPhone 8+ sooner than planned!
In the meantime, I’ve found out a lot about the water resistance of various Apple products:
My son fancied having a go on my Tacx Vortex trainer today, so we tried to get it working with Zwift for him.
Normally, I use the iOS app on my iPhone but, as that’s still drying out, it wasn’t an option. Zwift is currently available for Windows, MacOS and iOS but not (yet) Android so we went back to my original Windows PC-based setup with Zwift Mobile Link as a Bluetooth bridge. After spending a lot of time trying to get it working this afternoon with my son’s Android phone, it seems that I may need to update the firmware on my trainer for it to be recognised as a controllable trainer via the Android version of Zwift Mobile Link and Bluetooth LE (currently they only see it as a power meter and cadence sensor).
Wrap-up
That’s about it for this week… let me know what you think of the whatever-this-is (newsletter? blog post? something else?) and I’ll think about writing another one next week.
