(UPDATE: The new blog's feed is available here: http://www.not-so-rapid.com/philipstorry/s3blog/not-so-rapid.nsf/rss/blog.xml)
This is the last entry on this blog, folks.
Not my last blog entry. Just the last here.
I'll be switching to Blogo tomorrow, which will require changes in URIs and all sorts - so basically, this blog will become defunct. I'll try to keep it here as an archive, but my longer term goal is to move the content across into Blogo itself.
Which will be a interesting little project, I suppose. It's not actually something I'm looking forward to having to write, but it is something I want to write - I feel compelled to do so, in fact. So I guess you can be (pretty) certain it'll happen.
Eventually.
Oh dear. I'm starting to ramble. Even on my last entry, I can't keep it tight. How fitting is that, eh?
The one last thing I want to do is apologise for the long delay. It's been close to a month since my last post, and I wasn't posting regularly at that point either. The reason can be summed up in one word: Work.
But I'll leave it at that for the now, and will hopefully explain more in my next blog.
The Phoenix's egg is twitching, and the fires are rising. Within the day, the fire will consume all but the egg, and the ashes will nestle it warmly...
philipstorry April 11th, 2007 14:05:54
I just noticed that comments are broken. I'll have a look at that when I get a chance, but right now I'm incredibly busy at work (hence the need for IBM support as mentioned in my last post), and can't really say when I'll next be back here.
See you all soon, I hope!
Comments (0)
philipstorry February 15th, 2007 23:33:03
Parody, presented without further comment:
Dan Lyons is far and away the most horrible journalist on the planet. Sure, people grumble about other journalists. But that's nothing compared to how people feel about Dan. People hate Dan. As in, they want to change planets just so they can stop reading his articles. I'm pretty sure there are shrinks who have built practices around it. I read exasperated blog entries from people whose companies have copies of Forbes in the foyer, saying that of all the bad things about having to work for their company, by far the worst is having to offer Dan's writing to guests.
Comments (1)
philipstorry February 13th, 2007 08:37:54
I feel I've reached a decision on what I'm doing with this blog...
First up, I'd like to thank Steve Castledine for his excellent DominoBlog template. It's brilliant, and I couldn't have blogged without it. The fact that IBM bought the design says a lot about how powerful and flexible it is.
Having performed the upgrade, I have to say that I really do like the "blue rinse" look and feel. The upgrade itself was a snap, thanks to an agent that Steve provided (despite not being obliged to!).
The one problem I had was down to my own stupidity (and probably NTL's caching web proxies) more than anything else...
The only real issue I have with the upgraded blog template is the new editor, something I know Steve's aware of and hoping to deal with. And I can live with the new editor for the moment anyway.
But despite all of the great work that's gone into it, I still find myself drawn to Blogo. And that's for two fairly simple reasons:
- Blogo does almost everything via the web, whereas some things in the IBM Blog template need to be done via the Notes Client
- Blogo makes Articles easy
The latter item is very important to me. I want to put up more articles in the near future. Specifically, I've got a new shadow at work, and need to train him. I've had this crazy idea on compiling a kind of "open courseware" of brain dumps on pertinent topics, kind of like Show 'n' Tell Thursday but with a "teaching a geek" focus.
I'd rather be able to write and correct that kind of thing whilst still at work. (I have no NRPC hole in our firewall, so can't use a Notes client to do that.)
I'd always meant to make those kinds of articles available with DominoBlog, perhaps by creating pages. But I can only do that from a Notes client, which is why I'd never gotten around to doing anything about this.
Blogo makes it easier by allowing Articles, which can be rated by commenters if they wish - that should be useful. In fact, the whole Blogo articles system should allow a kind of "public conversation" between me and my shadow(s). Plus the text itself is something that could be re-used elsewhere if people want to.
Basically, Blogo's simplicity and focus on a web interface make it much easier for me to work with to do what I want to do.
Blogo is not, by the way, perfect. I'm going to have to build on Blogo to get all that I want from it. I intend to do more than a mere paint job on Blogo if I can, and hope to feed back anything I build to Ferdy as a matter of courtesy. I rather like the option to close commenting after
As and when I find a niggle, I intend to do what I can to fix it. (Blogo's lean 'n' clean design is what gives me hope that I can do this, by the way.)
A word on BlogSpere, before I close. Specifically, why I didn't evaluate it.
BlogSphere is great. It's a fantastic competitor to DominoBlog/the IBM Blog Template. And as such, I just felt it was a little too large for what I wanted. There's been a friendly arms-race between the two main blog templates for a while now, and that's resulted in more features and more complexity than I really want from a blog.
I had a quick look at BlogSphere, in its current beta incarnation. But to be absolutely honest, Blogo had already been (irrationally, emotionally) chosen and I felt that to do an evaluation in those circumstances was less than fair. BlogSphere has plenty of users in the Domino community, so I know it's a good reliable bit of code.
I also know, by that token, that the masses think I'm wrong.
Let 'em think that.
Diff'rent strokes for diff'rent folks, and all that...
Comments (1)
philipstorry February 11th, 2007 16:46:18
Vince Schuurman tells us of Philips' move from Notes and Domino.
I find it difficult to believe that this will save them money, and with a migration of this size tere's probably a considerable risk of the loss of data fidelity - to say nothing of functionality.
Here's the quote I found intriguing.
“We want to make our IT systems as easy for employees to operate as their home PCs.”
That's from Daniel Hatert, their Chief Information Officer.
My phone at work isn't as easy to use as my phone at home. When I want to dial someone outside this buiding, I have to put a 9 in front of the number. Unless it's someone in a building we also own, in which case I have to use a "normal" four digit number as always. I'm lucky that my direct dial number actually bears some resemblance to my internal extension number - many of the numbers assigned since don't, for reasons I don't quite understand. The voicemail system is cumbersome - I have to dial it, then give it my extension number, then give it a pin code. Then there's a big long menu system. Oh, and woe betide me if I need to call anyone in another country. That's not going to happenw ithout having to jump through hoops.
Is my employer's phone system suitable for business purposes?
Absolutely. My phone at home is simple because it assumes one user, in one fixed location. My employer's phone system has no such luxury.
Very few things in a well run organisation will ever be as simple as they are for a home. The needs are different. Anyone who doubts that should try looking around their desk at work and counting the differences each device brings.
It is, I'll admit, a laudible goal to make things easy to use. But comparing the home to the office seems crass. I would be very worried if someone told me that their large organisation could organise their documents as easily as teh average home organises its recipes or its postal mail. The scales, the purposes, the legal aspects and the governance required are just poles apart.
I note that Vince updated this entry to say that they're looking at outsourcing. It seems to me that any part of Philipsthere's which makes money - and wbuildingvoice-mailhappenwithoutlaudabletheishes to continue to do so - should probably make their own IT arrangements if they can. Whilst I'm not privy to the plans, everyting I've seen before tells me that these signs point to a plan which will see Philipseverything paying more for less service.
Ah well. At least Sony won't be alone in their shambolic loss-making position in the industry... 
philipstorry February 8th, 2007 14:16:00
Gah.
I was off ill yesterday. Today, I went in to work early. (Seven-thirty early.) At eleven, I found myself unexpectedly in a meeting.
Unexpected meetings almost always bring unexpected work. My day turned into a twelve-hour one to accommodate this.
And I have to be in to work at seven thirty again tomorrow, as work has been done on the firewall server that the BES system sits behind - should there be a problem, my delicate steel-toe-capped touch may be required.
This is why I am rudely ignoring four people's kind, generous comments.
I'm going to get some sleep now. Until tomorrow, folks!
And sorry for the delays. Expect something early tomorrow...
Comments (0)
philipstorry February 6th, 2007 23:10:00
Domino and Notes are moving faster than I can keep up, it seems.
I'm still running DominoBlog, and haven't upgraded to IBM's blogging template yet. And because my employer is stuck on R6.5.3, I'm not likely to anytime soon.
IBM's embracing of DominoBlog is great, but leaves me somewhat wondering what to do next. I like DominoBlog, but I'm currently wondering whether or not I should upgrade to 7.0.2 or just switch to some other blogging software.
(And I don't want to move to 7.02 unless I have to - the ability to edit work templates on my home machines in an emergency without worrying about recompiled LotusScript causing problems is worth a lot to me!)
Currently way ahead of the pack is Blogo. I've got a test blog running here, and I'm pleasantly surprised at how easy it was to set up and how functional it is. It's not perfect - ratings seem to be linked to commenting, which is a little odd. That's about it, though. On the plus side, its handling of tagging, new article creation and so forth is very good.
Later this week, I'll tinker with customising the look and feel and see how far I can get there. But later this month, I could well be archiving this blog and moving to a whole new set of URLs. Consider yourselves warned...
Comments (7)
philipstorry February 5th, 2007 21:28:00