Andy's Blog » linux

The BBC and Johnny Foreigner

andy — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 16:55:52 +0000

When’s the time you would usually use a service like the BBC’s iPlayer? A service that lets you view TV shows shown over the past 7 days? Answer: When you are away and not able to view your usual favourite progs.

…and what has the BBC gone and done? They’ve gone and stopped me ‘cos I am in a country with some ‘Johnny Foreigners’! Don’t get me wrong, Spanish TV is not that bad, but the adverts between can be longer than the program in total.

Time to have words methinks and remind them who pays their wages! I already have had to do this once when they launched the iPlayer and insisted I use Micro$oft Windows instead of my beloved Linux.

New Year, New Toy… New Habit?

andy — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 14:33:38 +0000

Just before I flew out to Madrid for Christmas with the in-laws I got myself a little early Christmas present. As some of you will know I am an avid gadget freak and my latest toy is the Nokia N810, which is the latest version of Nokia’s Internet Tablets (which I now have a full suite of).

Well colour me impressed! I haven’t put the damn thing down all Christmas, much to the annoyance of the wife, and am now fully mobile after installing some of my must have apps;

Throw into the mix the pre-installed RSS Reader, which is currently downloading all my BBC podcasts, plus the Internet Radio streaming – you find yourself with one happy Troozers

In fact this article was written using the N810! Which brings me to the new habit… actually updating this ste on a more regular basis. Now I have the ability to do this from anywhere, let’s see if I can keep this particular New Years resolution (and try and update it at least as often as Mr Fitchett!)

Happy New Year Y’awl!

When the brown stuff hits the whirly thing

andy — Sat, 30 Jun 2007 14:05:17 +0000

As Robert F. Kennedy once famously said; “we live in interesting times”. Now as most of you probably know ‘living in interesting times’ is not necessarily the best of places to be. This, however, is definitely where we are at work.

A product that has taken an inordinately long time being delivered to the customer has now, on the eve of its launch, been shown not to be able to deliver what it promised…. by a country mile! Instead of supporting the 500 concurrent users it supposed to be able to do, it can only just manage 83!

For the past week teams of guys here, including my fair self, have been working around the clock to re-engineer the architecture and understand where it failed. But it doth seem that the Gods are against us. I present to you the prosecution against the Gods;

At the same time the failure was found, the computer room air-conditioning has failed and now requires teams of developers to blow on the servers in an attempt to keep them cool whilst tests are ran.
The only person who knew the local administrator password on the servers, at the hosting company, has disappeared on holiday.
Key personnel from our Company also disappeared on holiday BEFORE the problems occurred (hmmmmm)

Not a huge list I grant you, but at the end of 18 hour days it doth seem somewhat suspicious to already paranoia ridden minds.

Ah well, I am in work on my lonesome trying to figure out the best way to cool down a server room which is slowly cooking servers…. as I said to my manager; “This wouldn’t be happening if we were using Linux”.

…his response was VERY rude!