Naquada

Hitachi, always one for being ahead of the crowd has put a lets say, novel support page up on their site..

Its name the hard drive death throw… bad head ? head crash? slow spindle motor or head stuck to platter (phaser noise). Hitachi reinvent the ‘I’ll name that tune in 3..’ with their top 6 of dead drive noises..

‘The Death Throws of a Dying Drive’ page appears in Hitachi’s Knowledge Base under the seemingly simple question;

My hard drive is experiencing some strange noises but I am unsure if the drive is failing. How can I determine if the noises are due to a failing hard drive?

The simple answer is ‘if you hear these noises… your drives toast..’

My personal favorite the is oh so cheap sci-fi weaponness of ‘Head stuck to platter (phaser noise)’, possibly followed by the woody wood pecker on prozac of ‘Bad Head’ or the Japanese chef with a grinding stone tones of ‘head crash’

you’ll see on the right, that I’ve updated my resume / CV and added it in, this reflects my work since 1992 and details the Data Integration Work I’ve been doing since 1998.

I’m still really proud of the recognitions I’ve got over the last 7 years;

2004

I was speaking with someone yesterday morning about Derren Brown, a once magician thats now turned superstar, well I guess mentalist (thats being able to seemingly control, read or manipulate someones mind, as opposed to just being a complete nutter!)

I find everything he does insanely interesting for a number of reasons. Firstly its incredibly clever, I can say that I know he doesnt use stooges, or actors in the sets he does, as really there is no need to. and secondly, its just insanely clever

Derren uses a number of techniques to get the response he needs from subject. These include, but are not limited to, NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming), Cold Reading, Suggestion, Waking Hypnosis, body language, behavioural trends (eye movement, muscle reading and more)

I knew of Derren along time ago, when I used to go to magic conventions alot.. he was funny then and more than a great ‘close-up’ magician. Over the last year or so I’ve read a lot of his books and manuscripts that he wrote and compiled during that transition from magic to mind, although he still says that his current career is a mix of magic and suggestion..

So how does he do what he does… Lets take the case I was talking about;

A women is taken into a room, shes stood in front of a window and spoken to about whats going to happen.. shes then taken to the side of the room and asked to walk across it (back to Derren) and stop at some point, Derren closes his eyes and grasps his hand into a fist at the point he wants her to stop. funnily enough she stops (without being able to see derren) at the point he makes a fist.

She’s then brought back to the side of the room and asked to walk across its entire width. Again, without her seeing Derren makes a fist and she stops, this time unable to move from the spot, and clearly stating that she is ’stuck’ and ‘unable to move her feet’

So how does this work ? Derren uses (I believe) a number of techniques here;

Interruption of her habitual framework, which in turn leads to a state of hypnosis, Anchoring, and the rest.. is showmanship (or something I call showboating, which is doing something to make it look like your doing it, but your not!)
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An interesting article was sat on vunet this morning as i waited on platform 5 at Reading station.

In it Bill Gates talks about collaborative working and more specifically ‘blogging’

Speaking at Microsoft’s Chief Executive Summit the company’s chairman and chief software architect Bill Gates predicted that ‘bottom-up’ collaboration would be the new way of working.

Describing the corporate dilemma over how to give staff freedom without creating problems for the business, he said: “The next generation of collaboration is about bottom-up collaborative websites, where the IT department doesn’t get involved.”

He also pointed to blogging and Rich Site Summary (RSS) notifications as easing the sharing of information.

“What blogging and these notifications are about is that you make it very easy to write something that you can think of, like an e-mail, but it goes up onto a website. And then people who care about that get a little notification. The ultimate idea is that you should get the information you want when you want it,” he said.

Gates outlined Microsoft plans to use knowledge it has gained from the Microsoft Developer Network to create community-centric Office features.

The idea of corporate blogging is a great one where ’shared’ information is important but a fast simple subscribable method of delivery is paramount.

Many times I’ve suggested a set of ‘technical’ blogs in our company, but it falls on deaf ears…

posted on the 7.17 from Reading to london

Success, motivation, and teamwork are the goals of the guys on the top for those of us trying to work away at the bottom. I found some interesting thoughts on ideas in a book on amazon..

Responsibility – Why stick your neck out when you can stick your head in?

Communication – Speak softly and carry a big bag of excuses.

Teamwork – In the office body, there are many armpits.

Service – “Start each day with a smile – and get it over with.” – W.C. Fields

Priorities – Feather your own nest while others around you are moulting.

Productivity – Anything worth not having is worth not working for.

Success – After clawing your way to the top, get used to your new title

These and other ‘gems’ of survival in cube world are in ‘Soar Above The Madness Surviving Office Politics Without Losing Your Mind, Your Job, Or Your Lunch’. If your in the UK you can buy it from
amazon.co.uk or if your a USA reader you can order it from amazon.com.

Chris Pratley one of the microsoft developers (I think he worked mainly on OneNote or OneNote has been his main devlopment) has a nice post on his blog about ‘chippy’ the microsoft office assistant, and that the User Experience Team at Microsoft (or the UX team) intended for it…

to me its still an annoying feature that instantly gets removed as soon as i see it.. Any problem ‘help’ or ‘assistant’ should be just that.. a sensible useful method of helping the user experience and move on with their task..

An assistant should do just that.. it should assist with the task in hand.. not pop up half way through a letter and state ‘Oh it looks like your writting a letter… do you need help…??’

We have a User Experience group in our company headed up by a very clever man

I’ve seen what hes done in user experience and I think.. this is just right, this is user experience no paperclips, just a tool working in my daily life.. the way i need it to work.. the things i need to know are there.. wher ei can find them, the things i dont know.. are in easy reach… the things i dont know i need to know are just sat there waiting for me..

Had a great day riding round Swinley Forest, I did a good few miles from the start point at the lookout up to Ceasers Camp and then back to the lookout round the edge of the forest via Rapley Lake, Mill ride and the Mill pond

It was a great day with nice views and no work…

The bike wasn’t too muddy, so cleaning was a breeze… now its time to relax with wine, music and a good book…. and convince myself I have to have that GPS for the bike…

With the demise of ‘wombat’ our slimline PC that held our music in mp3 format we’ve been looking for a suitable replacement for some time..

I tracked down the Pinnacle Systems ‘Show Center’

The show center is basically a slimline pc with no harddisk and no fan that streams Audio, Video and Pictures from a central ‘Media Server’ onto your TV..

It will read MP3 and PCM format audio, and MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4 and Xvid AVI video, JPEG, BMP, PNG and GIF picture fomats. It also supports (with the latest firmware) Internet Radio, and it has a web browser in it!!

The ShowCenter box provides has all audio and video outputs you’d need, Scart, Component Video, Composite Video, S-Video, Stereo audio outputs (RCA,Optical and S/PDIF) (provides dolby 5.1 for videos encoded with it apparently as well!)

It also has a built in Network socket and a PCMCIA slot for a wireless card.

The ‘Media Server’ PC holds all your music, photos and movies and you can navigate and play them from the TV box via a remote control, multiple Media Servers can be connected into a single ShowCenter (read unlimited storage!!). The PC application on the media server PC handles all the streaming and playlists, and best of all the box is firmware flashable..

The bandwidth is pretty low although a wired network is really needed to view fullscreen video, and the GUI although still needing some work is useable..

We’ve currently got about 100 of my 2000+ albums encoded onto it at the moment streaming and shuffling them all.. isnt technology great… ?

Its nice to be back home again after spending, lets say a ’stressful’ few days in the USA..

Although I saw lots of old friends, and some new ones, its when your away you really realise what you have back home, and how so much more important that is..

..I’d like so much more time to be able to do all the things i’ve been putting off for… ooh the last 6 years…

..time will tell