Vivodi is currently giving higher preference to callers enquiring about new connections than tech support for existing customers.

Dial 13880 –

press 3 for tech support, wait 10min to talk to clueless agent

or

press 8 to talk to sales agent, wait 5 seconds – agent available and happy to take your sales call.

CLEARLY GROWTH IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN SERVICE

It’s one more device when we should really be converging devices rather than adding to the pool. The P800 was (one of) the first converged devices, If I was to add another device it would be this:

I want an iPod that is wifi enabled, widescreen, 80GB+ of Flash – no more moving parts, No ITunes necessary, direct download to device, IR Port, induction chargable, solar panel on the back, make the surface out of bullet proof lexan, and why on earth do I have to buy a separate microphone anyway.

I use outlook tasks and categories to organise my workload. Sometimes successfully, most times not.
Outlook of course doesn’t call them Tags but Categories. This must be one of the most underused features in Outlook but one that is just so useful for producing historical stats.
So when the beancounters and headchoppers come around soon, I’ll pop open Outlook and prove my worth.

I’m about to write some VBA to pull stats from the categories/tags. I’ll post the code when Im done.

More than a year ago I wrote a scathing blog entry about an ECDL test we underwent and how terribly run it was. Although ECDL Hellas were not the testing provider per se, I felt  they needed a mention.

Today, I had a chance to meet and talk with  group from ECDL Greece and the company running ECDL, Peoplecert. I must say I liked what I heard.

First, ECDL testing in English is now fully available in interactive format. This is something we fought for bitterly. We have yet to take an interactive test but we aim to during the next round of testing.

I’m still of the view that the interactive test presents a much better testing scenario given that there are very few points of failure in the testing system overall. This in stark contrast to the paper/diskette based method.

The company is now employing over 110 people 90 of which are IT gurus and they’ve expanded into other countries including China !

I’m impressed and hope you guys keep up the good work.

I haven’t posted in ages. The only reason being that I’ve been involved in an integration project that has been one constant nightmare for the most part of a year now. Well, it’s almost over thank goodness and I might be ready for the next one soon.

We have a burly young gentleman of 4.1kg. Born by CS. I’ll put pics up as soon as I take them. M has been super. First night was a little easier than with Panos two years ago. I guess we knew what to expect. Thanks to all friends who came to visit, called or sent messages. We will be home as of Friday. Baby G is exactly 2years, 2 days and 2 hrs younger than Panos.

Started playing with the great software that is Mathcad for another child project I’m getting into. I’m considering trying both MatLab and Mathematica too. They say these two are far more complicated but far more powerful. At this stage Mathcad is just perfect for what I need. The project has to do with Image Processing and a little bit of AI.

 

Stay Tuned.

Heard today that “Die Groot Krokodil” is dead. Apparently he died peacefully. Personally I can’t imagine he was very peaceful given all that happened under his rule. Still RIP PW.

On a funnier note, while surfing following on from reading the PW article I stumbled across the Truth and Reconcilliation Commission website.They have a list of applicants who had applied for amnesty crimes/atrocities committed under apartehied. Some granted some denied. Im taken aback by the sheer volume of killings that took place. One site actually lists operations undertaken by the ANC during that time. WOW almost every second or third day they were actually blowing stuff up. In some cases very near to where we were located. Anyway this post is actually about one guy, ROBIN HOUSTON HOLMES, who applied for amnesty to overturn a conviction for “illegal production, printing and distribution of banned T-shirts” !!! One shirt titled “We are everywhere – Even in the kitchen” I’ll give him one thing – at least his action was non-violent and apparently he didn’t even make a quick buck on the back of the struggle.

“Memory failure owes more to interference from irrelevant information than to an inability to focus on relevant information”

I am tired. My brain is full. I either need a reboot (not a boot to the Head) or a memory upgrade. Since the upgrade’s not available yet, I’ll settle for the holiday (kind of like a reboot). I am literally unable to remember more than 3 digits at a time when noting down a phone number. The other day the boss stood accross the room and quoted a number for me to dial into the phone. I got it wrong three times in a row. He took over. I hav since reverted to carrying a large blue notebook around everywhere I go, noting things down, moving them off my RAM. Seems to be working and my productivity is slightly up – still, time off after the 25th for a couple of weeks.

 

More and more staff are streaming audio (music and news) into their offices, sucking up bandwidth and Quality of Service from others. One idea (N!) was to try and bring in one copy of a stream and then run a streaming server from within the network where users can connect to. Then, we won’t need to bring down multiple copies of BBC or CNN or whatever at +32Kbps each time for each user.

After some research this evening/morning, I came up with Peercast which seems to do the trick, allowing multiple “Re-Broadcasts” or  “Streaming Relays”. I’m going to suggest we run a couple of experiments with it next week to see how it holds up and if QoS gets any better while using it.

Ideas by themselves are not worth anything. As Paul Graham wrote, there is no market for ideas – you can’t sell them because nobody wants to buy them. It’s all about execution. You put your ideas in to practice and create something of value.

 

Note to self: You need to brush up on your execution. You’re full of ideas but finishing them is a different matter.

Been a long time coming and his hair was getting really long (for the orthodoxically uninitiated: we cant give him a haircut before he’s baptised) The ceremony was great, a really cool priest who seemed high on something or other, a great group of family and friends as guests and vast quantities of food and wine thereafter. Thank you all for coming and thanks so much for the wonderful gifts.
pcitures are at http://www.flickr.com/photos/stavrosmessinis/

In mathematics, we are usually concerned with declarative (what is) descriptions, whereas in computer science we are usually concerned with imperative (how to) descriptions. — Abelson, Sussman, and Sussman in Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs, p.22

 

Bob Gouldie, you were a dick but you were right, calculus would have been useful. Pity we had a pair of failures. I failed to learn it and you failed in teaching it to me. Nevertheless, my attitude has always been “If you want something done, do it yourself” so here goes.

So I’m gonna be a little cheeky:

If you’re inclined to buy me an Xmas prezzie this year, here are a few suggestions:

Magazine Subscriptions: Get me the Electronic version and we’ll save some trees or Get me a paper magazine and I’ll promise to donate the mag(s) to the local school.

Popular Science
Popular Mechanics (cheap!!)
MAKE Magazine
WIRED
Nuts and Volts

Geek Energy:

Rechargable AA and AAA Batterries, preferably over 650 mAh – do they last a little

More Geek Energy:

A portable solar panel

 

Gee thanks !!

This is for you D.

Jay Adelson, CEO of Digg says: If your business idea fails, at least you will make the contacts and gained experience that will help you to make a success the second time round and unless you’re totally incompetent, you will still have enough trust from them to help you succeed.

Why is it that every time I need to talk to customer service from any (and all) cellular providers in Greece, I need to explain my problem to at least 4 people only to be told that my issue will be dealt with much later than I can possibly find acceptable?

You guys probably have a queue so long that it’s your strategy to pass customers on from agent to agent in order to buffer them while the actual knowledgeable agent is freed up to deal with them.

Instead of stringing me along for 40mins why dont you just say something like this “Hi, Im a junior buffer agent, I can’t help you right now but if you like we can chat about something other than your problem for a while. When the real agent is availble, I will connect you. So, whaddayawanna talk about …..”

Vodafone, Your customer support sucks – TIM, Your customer support sucks – Cosmote, Your customer support sucks

 

Nuff said

 

ZeFrank said some cool stuff a while ago:

One way to ensure that you never run out of ideas is by never executing them. Tell yourself you don’t have the time or resources to do them right. That way they stay in your head. It feels good to be full of ideas. Like “Brain Crack”, no matter how bad things get, at least you still have those good ideas. That “Brain Crack” is really addictive. Some people hold on to an idea, planning every detail of how perfectly that idea should be executed. I prefer to execute an idea immediately. I dont want to get addicted to that “Brain Crack” and chances are i’ll get it wrong at least three times before I get it right. But I’ll still have three times more experience than the guy addicted to “Brain Crack”

 

Great stuff ZeFrank

 

Had some friends visiting Athens tonight and took them to Filistron, my absolute favourite taverna in the world (happens to be in Athens) with the most amazing view of the Acropolis. We went early, around 7:30 so got a really good table on the roof garden without a booking which was superb. The food as always was brilliant and the service, top notch. Good food, good company. A great night out.

Filistron Website

Fodors Review

Finally, after about 6 weeks delivery time, I received my first BOE Bot from Parallax.  I’ll start playing with it and writing some small bits of code for it over the next few days. My ultimate goal (giving something back) is to use the BEO Bot platform to teach programming to kids. I’ve dabbled with Logo, Kids Programming Language and Lego Mindstorms all of which are great but the one system that impressed me most is the BOEBot. It uses PBasic which is generally easy enough even for the most basic of user and what I really like about it was the fact it covers basic electronics as well, something that Lego Mindstorms doesn’t as much.

 

They say composing an SMS message using T9 is pretty quick but not as quick as keying in the message using a single button on the phone and using morse code.

 I’m not a big SMS sender but have been wanting to learn morse for years so I started a couple of weeks ago and already have a few letters (K, M, S, O, E, R) under by belt. Im learning using Koch’s method and Farnsworth timing via a free app called JustLearnMorseCode. It’s like touch typing really, kind of like brainwashing to learn to recognise patterns.

We need to realize that: Software must be soft. It has to be easy to change because it will change. Despite our desire to get it right first time, we never will. Needs change. Constantly.

 

Congrats to the team. You were all great. I was honoured to be there with you and win the first prize. I had to make some difficult decisions and I hope I didn’t upset some of you. We were the winners in the end so WELL DONE !! To the others: Catch us if you can !!

(Must give credit to the Nobility for this. It was his idea.)

I’m getting a little fed up of the “It’s not My Job” mentality that has beset my workplace recently, So, I decided a couple of days ago to print off a few Nike signs as shown here.

A truly inspiring message if you ask me. 
Simple black on White A4. A laser printer put to good use.

Attitudes vary of course. We have “Can Do” Attitudes, “Can’t Do” Attitudes, and “Won’t Do” attitudes. I can deal with the first two. We Love the first, We can teach the second but really now, can we accept the third?

Anyone that gives me the “It’s not My Job” attitude, gets a sign as a little gift.

To be fair, and because If I ever lead, I’d like to lead by example, I’ve given myself one first. It’s pinned above my desk for all to see.

One or two other colleagues have actually asked for copies so they can start handing them out too. Love it.

JUST DO IT.

In the everlasting efforts to increase my skillset, today I attempted an install of Win2003 Srvr and Sharepoint Server 2003.

There’s a major glitch in the install which dogged me for an hour or so until I found some enlightenment on a newsgroup. Something about a “hosts” file and SQL. Fixed.

After playing about with it for 30min or so I am fairly impressed, although it does taste a little like a dummies intranet. No doubt there’s tons of coolness I have yet to discover so over the next few days that will be the focus of my attention. Please don’t distract me with puny things like work.

6 Weeks 5 days – He/She waved “Hello Mum & Dad” at us. Tres Cool !!

Now that I’m playing with Web Services like Amazon ECS etc. I can’t wait for IMDb, another Amazon owned company to start offering web services. Then I’ll start a video collections project.

It was getting ridiculous,

apologies to those writers who were getting spammed.  The bots are Dead Dead Dead and need to get clever before they can spam us again. I’ve added a captcha function now so it isn’t so easy anymore.

Resources used:

b2evolution.net

gudlyf’s AuthImage code implemented by:

Whoo Captcha for b2evolution, explained

The booklists project took a bit of a boost last night and some of it is up (See the sidebar). When I look at the data I’m struck by a number of things.

1) I’m paying too much for books locally. Amazon US has them at nearly 40% cheaper.

2) I have as many books as I originally estimated. Must be close to 2000.

3) You can tell a lot about a person by looking at their booklists (kind of scary) – perhaps I’ll add a function to allow some book titles not be public.

4) I am certainly not as intelligent as I should be ! My Booklist suggests otherwise. I wish. Perhaps I buy these books to convince myself I am !!

 

I hope to have it up and running in public pretty soon at a my new domain http://www.mybooklists.com/

I read somewhere yesterday (i’ll post the link when I find it) that one reason intranets fail is that when users see RSS or XML, it makes them feel dumb. I can understand that. I’ve had RSS newsfeeds on our intranet for about 2years now and very few actually use them. Do you think I’ve been insulting my users? I should probably be doing something to build up knowledge about what RSS feeds are and what great benefits they provide. On the Task List.