New Toy!

This summer, just a week before going to Brasil, I received a new gadget (I prefer to call them Toy’s). The Nokia 5800 Xpress Music.

I love it! Really, it joins together the kind of functionality you’d like in a mobile device. It has a few drawbacks which I can imagine more advanced and experienced smart-phone users miss. However for me, as the first phone with a camera on it (..!!..) I love it!

PRO’s

• WiFi
• GPS
• 3.2 mp Camera + Low res camera for video calls (if you do any ?)
• position sensor (screen rotates as you rotate the phone)
• Easy to extend, make your own apps and widgets
• Quite long battery life

CON’s

• No keyboard (on screen keyboard works fine though)
• GPS is slow, assisted GPS uses a GPRS carrier making it very expensive (believe me! I was roaming in Brasil and forgot to switch that off :S )
• 3.2 mp Camera is considered low res for some people nowadays’
• Not too many free applications to download
• Menu’s too static, no real (android) desktop feeling

Im really impressed! I have seen the iPhone, and thought it was too big. The blackberries…, I simply find they have too much of the “Business Flavour” and are just boring (sorry!?). The only phone I actually had in my hand and can be seen as serious competition, is the HTC Touch running the Android OS. I liked the Desktop idea I miss a bit on the 5800. This all, looking at the low cost range of course!

I already built a small application for it, a rip of the iPhone mosquito repellant. If you’re interested, drop me a comment, and I can send you a copy.

It is all Over, It is all starting… again!

The holiday season officially ended yesterday with the Kids going back to school in Spain. Bad Weather came to Barcelona this weekend, with the local weatherman declaring the end of summer. My holiday’s ended already more than a month ago, and it looks like there will be none at least untill X-mas. It is all over!

The last few months where great though! I really enjoyed my trip to Brasil, and the summer months in Barcelona are great too. The Neighbourhood parties, day’s and Nights at the beach and loads of Kite Flying!

I really managed to recharge batteries for the sprint ’till christmas. Due to the above reasons, it has been really quiet here (on this blog). The last post was even before FC Barcelona won the 3 titles they opted for and broke almost all historical records.

At work quite some things changed too! The management structure has been made more agile and I moved to a new team. At the moment, we are analysing my Job-Title, and description, to see if it still fits my position.

The new team I am working in now is called Service Assurance. This name explains most of what this team takes care of. Make sure the service is running, work on improvements and raise the quality of the work done. I also increased a level within my position, meaning … a little bit more cash in hand, and quite some more responsibilities and tasks.

The good news here is that in my new team I am tasked with the Intranet project. This is nothing new, but the new part is that I can dedicate 100% of my time to it, and I can make use of more resources.

During the last month, I have been working hard to get the first version of the Intranet online. It is there, and we launched it officially last week.

Since I changed teams, I am managed differently. Differently in Italic, as I was very close to write better. To be honest, there where quite a lot of discrepancies between me and my manager in many things. Even though I could understand, or at least try to understand most of his decisions. Now I have a new manager. after now 2 months, I can easily say I have the feeling we are on the same line. Which is good. This helps me a lot in Completing projects, as I have a sense of support from higher up the chain, which I had the feeling I lacked a bit before.

As I mentioned before the intranet project is really getting a shape. We have launched the first version running on a small (20gb) Virtual 2003 Server running WSS. This is, after all the investigation and plan-making a lot less than we originally aimed for, and the effect is visible.  Now we have to start making a case to upgrade the server to a full moss, and an SQL server for storage.

We also decided to make release 1 of the intranet as standard as possible. Fully based on templates, and only a few custom lists. This to make sure we could build a case for a more expensive MOSS Server (the idea was that if we could show that we could do it, we’d have a better buy-in from the management team).

To be honest, the possibilities of the standard WSS installation, with the 40 Famous Microsoft templates is giving us about 75% of all the functionality required.  The gaps we have identified will be mostly filled when we move to a full MOSS Server and are mostly related on how we store information and to align that with the spanish law on data protection.

Today, first 1-2-1 personal review with my new manager. She was happy, the intranet is there, on time and with a lot more functionality then we all expected… -> Im Happy!

It is all starting again!

Messi para Iniesta, xuta Iniesta…..

I Gooool!!!

Aquí teniu el fragment d’audio del gol d’aquesta setmana. Possiblement el millor que es pot baixar de l’internet en aquest moment

(en mp3, així ho pots posar en el mobil)

Here’s the audio fragment (the one I liked most) from the goal against Chelsea in the Champions league Semi-final:

http://alex.k.bcn.googlepages.com/GOL3.mp3

!!Gol de lo puto gusiluz!!

Vaio, First Steps

After a week playing with my new Vaio laptop, I am starting to get used to it. Well most of it.

To be honest, the laptop itself is great, I really like its minimalist design, and the keyboard is very comfortable. There are still some features I haven’t played with, like the optical interface, or for example the backup partition it has.

What I have to get used to most is the Vista operating system and additional software delivered with it. Personally I am really into building the machine from scrap. I therefore always owned a PC, build from parts. The first steps where usually:

1. Build the partitions I need (or thought I needed at that moment, because they changed a lot over

2. Create a XP custom install CD with BAT PE builder, which allowed me to remove the windows features I did not like, and change some of the basic configuration.

3. Install Windows, and the necessary applications

4. Setup the Users files/Folders (Documents and Settings) on a dedicated partition

And that’s it. As you can see, I was a bit lost in a pre-configured and pre-installed system on a single drive. Also the fact that the laptop was delivered with approx. 20 gig. of software did not really help. What happened with the CD’s or DVD’s that used to come with a new system? With these you could choose the things you would like to install.

I bvelieve that here is probably the biggest mistake one can make. Which is: Start using all the pre installed stuff.

MS Office 2007, very nice and pretty but a 60 day’s version… After that? uninstall and end up with a bunch of useless documents you’d have to convert to something to use them again?

Norton 360, looks very safe to me. A bit too safe maybe. To me it gives me the feeling I am untouchable. which for most of today’s threaths is probably true. However, after 60 day’s… this protection will disappear. Meaning that me, and the others in my house using my machine would have to change our online mentality and customs a bit, if we dont want to end up with any unwanted stuff happening on our new fancy laptop.

A set of games, some downloadable, was also preinstalled. However, after trying the first game, I was aked how I wanted to pay for it. Something I do not really like. (paying for it I mean… after all I am Dutch;) ).

The Sony Vaio Software is good. It does the job, is for free, and do not occupy too much space either. This is one of the few pre installedsoftware packeges I am happy with.

Now I have more or less tried it all, I will start planning the computers future. There are so many questions yet to awnser…

At this moment, I am not sure wether to set up a second partition for documents and another one, to dual boot with XP, or Ubuntu. What I do know now, is that I got rid of almost all of the preinstalled stuff and I am getting used to Vista, which to my surprise is very straight forward and I would even call it pleasant. I will post more about that for sure!!

ooooooohh yesssss

Finally!! After many sleepless nights I have made my choice.

Allready for about two months I am looking for a new pc. After 21 years with a desktop tower PC I have decided to replace it with a laptop.

A tough decision though especially if you are used to the flexibility and upgradablility a desktop offers. And off course the money. A laptop purchase is much more expensive, and I am not even thinking about upgrading it (its not even delivered yet!). But, end of last year we moved into a smaller apartment, and the place for the PC is not as comfortable as before anymore. Therefore, I started looking for a portable solution.

My interest went out to a good machine, a little bit of gaming, some graphics apps (photoshop etc.) so my wish-list ended up to be something like:

Processor: Intel Dual Core T7XXX Series
Memory: Min. 2 GB and expandable
HDD: Min. 160GB
Graphics: Tough call, there are sooo many cards on the market now…. “A Nice one” no need to be State of The Art
All this had to be found with the budget of 1200€. “Not that hard”, I thought 2 months ago….

Yesterday I finally ordered my Vaio AR21E here she is:

And if you’re interested in the spec’s:

Check it out!

Got-it!

The results from the exam I did a couple of weeks ago have arrived! I passed and am now the proud owner of the Foundation certificate in IT Service Management!

Another Starter

Since I am starting this blog, I might as well explain a bit about one of my biggest hobby… no, not my Platonic relationship with my PC, no. FISHING!

Since I live in Barcelona where my GF is from, we often go out fishing. My “in-laws” have a little boat at a village about an hour drive from the city. We usually go with the whole crowd, my gf, her parents, her aunt, and usually friends of them accompanying us. We fish about everything that moves below, Small tunas, squid, octopus, spider-fish, etcetera… The biggest problem explaining here is that most names for fish-species are very hard to translate. Most of the I know in Catalan and these names already vary from on area to another. Ill write something after or next trip. for the moment Ill attach a few pic’s of one of our adventures.

Waiting….

@work, we are all sent to an ITIL ITSM certification course. I believe the initiative behind it is very good, although maybe a bit late. A lot of my co-workers, most of them L2 IT support analysts are in daily contact with customer IT management, and I have the feeling that the importance of speaking (more or less) the same language is underestimated here.

The quality of the course was surprising. We did 2 mock-exams, and we all passed. However, what, in the age of 2.0 I find surprising that it takes the Test agency more than 2 weeks to get the test graded, and sent to us.

result…. still waiting…

HAHA!! I am up again!

well, after some (good/bad/…) experiences on myspace or msn spaces, I believe I found a good spot to write about… err … stuff.

-Me- First comment on … myself is that I really like working aka. playing with computers. I have still not been able to define any limits here. I have had a larghe variety of jobs and hobbies, and most of them included a pc. Currently I am very busy with the development of web-based applications for Lotus Domino.