Stuart Ford

For the past week or so I’ve been working on an IT and AV installation job at a friend’s house in Salford. It’s a large Victorian house which he bought and is in the process of having it gutted and extended.

As part of this he wanted a fully integrated IT, telecoms, TV and and audio system installation, which he’s asked myself and Chris to do since we’ve some considerable experience with such things. He knows nothing about such things since he’s a GP, and so is trusting our judgement on what to install and buy. I hope he doesn’t regret doing so!

Phase 1 is first fix, so basically the hard work of pulling 80 runs of CAT6 and loudspeaker cable through the house (67 runs of CAT6 and 13 runs of speaker cable, including outdoor cables to the gardens). Once this is complete (on Thursday) we then have to wait for the builders to finish ready for second fix (where the cables are connected to sockets and patch panels). This forms Phase 2.

Phase 3 then becomes the really fun bit where we install all the specified equipment, including a computer network, a 9.1 speaker home cinema system, a distributed satellite TV system, a zoned audio system and other smaller features. After that comes the housewarming party where our friend gets to impress everyone with our work :)

It’s a manual job but it’s a fun job and it’s something I’ve done many times before so I don’t mind doing it. It’s not every day someone asks for a structured cabling system in their house, let alone on the scale of this one. Luckily, since it’s an old house, it has a cellar and lots of voids through which cables can be run. Ironically newer houses are harder to retrofit in this way unless it’s done at initial first fix because they simply don’t have such spaces, usually in the name of cost saving and profit maximisation on the part of the developers.

Here are a few geeky pictures of Phase 1. Apologies for the poor quality, they’re iPhone pictures. I’ll replace them with nicer ones if I remember to take any.

AV cables ready for home cinema installation

Many of the cables run through the cellar

The smallest bedroom is being set up as an office and so has trunking

Plant room in basement, where cables will terminate in a rack (image helpfully rotated by Wordpress)

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For the first time in a number of years now I have purchased a new computer. The last computer I purchased for myself (i.e. wasn’t a work computer) was my Macbook in 2006, itself now on its last legs and due for a replacement. My new computer is a new (face-lifted) Mac Mini, which replaces my old Mac Mini, which is also of 2006 vintage. The new computer has a dual-core 2.53 Ghz processor, 4Gb of RAM and a 320Gb hard disk. This is in stark contrast to my old one, which has a single core 1.5Ghz processor, 1.25Gb of RAM and a 60Gb hard disk, and as a result had become remarkably difficult to use over the past year ever since it became my main desktop machine. It’s now been turned back into a media centre, which it seems to be much happier doing. The new one is unbelievably fast. Its only bottleneck is the graphics controller which shares the main memory, but it’s not as if I’m going to use it for any hard-core gaming anyway (the most hard-core it’s going to get is Homeworld 2 and Spore).

One of the main advances of the face-lifted Mac Mini over the old design is the fact that it supports dual-monitors. Up until the release of this model last year if you wanted dual-monitors on a desktop machine you either had to get a Mac Pro or connect a second monitor to an iMac, both expensive options if you’ve already got your own monitors from a previous machine, so it was a dream come true when they added two monitor ports to the Mac Mini because it’s such a cost-effective option.

So yes, I’m very happy with it. Next is my Macbook as mentioned before, which gets replaced with a 13″ Macbook Pro later in the year, or whenever my Macbook gives up, whichever comes sooner.

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Google’s new brower, Google Chrome, certainly isn’t a new thing. But it is only recently that Google have finally released a version for Mac OS, so I’m a bit late on this particular bandwagon.

Chrome is based on the WebKit engine, which is the same engine used by Apple’s Safari browser. WebKit used to be a little ropey but ever since the release of Safari 3 it’s actually been very good, certainly comparable to the quality of the Mozilla engine, which is what Firefox is based on.

Its best feature is that it’s very lean and fast. Certainly, it seems to use less CPU than Firefox and Safari. It also uses a different thread for each tab, which means that while it may use a little more memory it also means that should a web page crash or become non-responsive due to a badly coded Javascript procedure or a crashed plugin it won’t cause the entire browser to quit, like it would in other browsers. Chrome simply kills off the non-responsive tab and the others carry on as normal.

Development tools are the same as Safari’s (the WebKit Inspector). These aren’t quite as well developed as the Firebug plugin for Firefox but they do an adequate job. I use Firefox to do most of my development with anyway and then test and modify sites to work in Safari (and other browsers if necessary).

There are of course a few niggles. If a page contains advertisements and an ad-server isn’t responding, this can cause Chrome to believe that the entire page is broken and it will refuse to render the page, eventually killing it off as a non-responsive tab. It would be better to ignore problems generated by loading content from non-responsive servers if they are not the same server from which the main page is being loaded.

The design of the master window means that most of the time you can never read the full title of a web page, since the title of each page is only displayed within the tab, rather than the title bar of the window, which in Chrome does not exist. This can be a little annoying when, for example, you have multiple BBC News pages open, since the title of each one is prefixed with “BBC News | Section name | …”, which usually takes up the whole width of the tab, meaning that all BBC News tabs appear labelled the same in the tab bar.

Other than that there’s not much to moan about and I’m sure it’ll improve with further development anyway. I would recommend it to anyone who’s tired of their existing browser, especially Windows Internet Explorer users. It’s available for Windows, Mac OS and Linux.

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I am often asked by friends and family about which broadband service to buy and time and again my honest advice is ignored in favour of price and/or offers. Recently, certain amongst my friends have come-a-cropper as a result of this and have learnt their lesson, so I have decided to impart my advice to everyone, officially.

First, there are four simple DO NOTs:

1. Do not order BT Broadband.
2. Do not order Sky Internet.
3. Do not order Virgin Media Internet.
4. Do not order broadband from your mobile phone operator.

I don’t care how cheap these services are or whether or not they’re bundled with anything else. They’re bundled and/or cheap for a reason and with broadband it very much is a case of you get what you pay for. That’s the harsh honest truth. If you want a fast, reliable and un-crippled Internet connection then you’re going to have to stump up a bit on your monthlies.

Once this is established, this is my definitive, boilerplate, standard advice:

1. Buy this router. That one. Not a cheaper one, that one. No, you cannot use your existing BT Internet, Sky Internet or Virgin Media router.
2. Order this service, or this one (the “Pro” version) if you download lots of movies or use iPlayer (and similar) frequently.

This isn’t the cheapest router in the world, nor are they the cheapest ADSL services in the world, but there’s a very good reason for that. They work. All the time. You get what you pay for. It really is not worth trying to save what amounts to a matter of a few pounds per month for what is nowadays an essential service.

You are of course free to ignore either or both of these, but do so at your peril and if you get into difficulties with your broadband service having ignored one or both then I at no point want to hear about it.

I would also take this opportunity to point out that whilst Wifi is a useful technology, you should not leave yourself dependent on it. Most wireless networks work fine, but at the end of the day there is no substitute for eight strands of copper. There is a plethora of variables that can affect the performance of a wireless network, so if your Internet connection is critical, use a cable.

YMMV.

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Microsoft’s new operating system, Windows 7, has been released to manufacturing following a successful release candidate. Windows 7 really is what Windows Vista should have been in the first place.

Although I’ve been ensconced in the OS X and Linux world for some years now, I installed the last release candidate in a virtual machine and had a play with it the other week and I have to say that I’m reasonably impressed. Microsoft may have finally got their act together over their historically and notoriously awful operating system.

Windows Vista was a terrible embarrassment to Microsoft. Although Windows XP was long in the tooth, it was, once patched up with all the necessary service packs and software updates, a stable, useable and relatively lean operating system; a workhorse that served most of the world’s desktop computing needs. Windows Vista, on the other hand, was an absolutely awful replacement for it, burdening users with stiff system requirements and features that were unnecessary, awkward and to an extent crippling with regards to day to day usability. Because of this, uptake of Windows Vista was poor at best, people simply preferred Windows XP. Manufacturers started to offer “downgrade” options on new PCs, which is frankly absurd. Microsoft had to extend XP’s sales cutoff dates over and over again due to the demand.

In reality, Windows 7 is not much more than a giant service pack on top of Windows Vista rather than an entirely new operating system. But it’s a wide-reaching service pack that puts all the wrongs right and it is important that Microsoft give it a new name/major version number in order that it can be distanced from its abominable predecessor.

Parallels can be drawn between Windows Vista/Windows 7 and Mac OS X Leopard/Snow Leopard, the latter being Apple’s forthcoming major operating system update which promises refinement on the existing operating system rather than any new features. Most notably it will halve the disk space requirements due to Apple dropping PPC support and thus an end to the need for huge universal binaries.

However, the two operating systems continue to differ greatly when it comes to price. Apple will charge $29 for a single Snow Leopard upgrade, whilst Microsoft will want $219 for an upgrade from Vista. That price is for the “Ultimate” version, which I’m using for comparison because Apple doesn’t have all this “Home, Home Premium, Professional, Ultimate” nonsense, they just have one version with everything included. It’s a staggering price difference, Microsoft want nearly eight times what Apple want. In this regard, Microsoft haven’t learnt anything.

As good as Windows 7 is, it’s not going to tempt me away from the Mac OS X world. There are various reasons for this. Firstly, it’s a little bit “too little, too late” from Microsoft for me, but mostly it’s because I feel much more “at home” with OS X due to its UNIX underpinnings. It’s not even about the Apple hardware that makes me a “fanboy” in this regard; I would gladly run OS X on any old black box given the ability. The fact that Apple’s hardware is nice and shiny is simply a bonus.

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Up until a few months ago I used Zend Studio as my IDE (Integrated Development Environment). I’d used this for a number of years, since 2005 I believe, and the version I was using (5.5.x) was starting to show its age. Zend do have a new version but I never got on with it, largely I suspect due to its Eclipse underpinnings. Whilst Zend Studio 5 was dedicated to PHP, Zend Studio 6 seemed little more than a plugin for a different IDE that was more geared towards Java developers, and it just didn’t work for me. The price didn’t work for me either, at €399.

Then along came Aptana. which I stumbled across whilst doing some research into Adobe Air (which came to nothing, incidentally, I’m not going to bother with it). Apatana takes all the good bits of Eclipse, adds to them and packages them up into an IDE that’s aimed at web developers in general, whether your poison is PHP, Python, Ruby or whatever else. It’s aware that the software you’re developing is web software, and so knows about things like CSS, Javascript, Javascript libraries, XML, JSON and so forth. It just feels like it’s geared towards you as a web developer, rather than a generic software developer, which is how Eclipse makes you feel.

Aptana is brimming with features, too numerous to list here. Suffice to say that, if you are familiar with modern IDEs, all your bases are covered and then some. For those who don’t use an IDE I would suggest Aptana as a good starting point in the IDE world because of what I mentioned before about it not being completely generic.

It has its shortcomings, as any piece of software does. My biggest gripe is that it’s written in Java, which brings along all the usual problems associated with software written in Java, i.e. large memory footprint, high CPU usage, messy crashing, etc. That said I appreciate that Java has allowed Aptana to be cross-platform, thus reducing development costs and, ultimately, keeping its price tag at a very reasonable $99. It’s certainly the best $99 that I will spend this year.

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I’m a little underwhelmed with the iPhone 3GS, if I’m honest. Although I will take advantage of a free upgrade to a 3GS in January (because why wouldn’t I?) I certainly couldn’t justify either buying out the remainder of my contract now, or indeed the extra cost of a 3GS over a 3G if I was buying a new one.

The 3GS has four advantages over the 3G. Two features, the faster processor and the much improved camera (with video capabilities) are fair game, I’m not going to argue with those. But the other two seem virtually useless in comparison, those being voice control and a compass, of all things. I guess these two features might help people who use their iPhones whilst driving, but it remains to be seen just how useful they prove.

The OS 3.0 software update, however, is much more valuable and important than the hardware update. Although I’m disappointed that there’s still no support for running applications in the background, OS 3.0 has a plethora of improvements that make using an iPhone generally better.

Most notable amongst the new features is MMS, which is fantastic, but I’m still annoyed with Apple for having taken nearly two years to implement it on the iPhone platform; there was really no excuse for not having it from the start. Other features of note include Spotlight search and cut and paste facilities, something else that people have been crying out for for ages.

Internet tethering is another feature that would be amazingly useful had O2 not made it virtually impossible to use by applying punitive “bolt-on” prices to anyone who actually wants to use it. iPhone users are supposed to be on an “unlimited data” tariff with O2, but if you want to download that data to a device other than your iPhone then you have to pay for it again.

There are hundreds of other improvements. I’ve found a comprehensive list of them and a detailed guide about how to get the best out of them if it’s not clear to any iPhone owners who are having trouble noticing the changes after updating.

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It’s not amazingly new technology, but the price of Powerline networking equipment has recently come down and so the other week I bought three adaptors for use on our home network to replace a couple of creaky wireless connections which were really starting to annoy me. The trouble is that in my apartment building we are surrounded by 40 odd wireless networks, and even with careful channel selection the local wireless spectrum can get very congested very easily, which leads to problems, particularly when streaming music to the AirTunes in the bedroom.

The powerline adaptors really are plug and play – not a single bit of setting up is required. You just plug them in and they work, very impressive. So now I’ve got the MacMini and the bedroom AirTunes on what is effectively wired ethernet and they both perform very reliably. The speed’s nothing amazing, but I’m not fussed about that, as long as the devices remain available and have reasonable speed then that’s all I’m worried about. The technology boasts up to 85Mb/s, but I don’t know how close to that I’m getting. It’ll work with 4 gangs but apparently the speed is reduced if you try to use it with surge protectors.

I detest wireless more and more these days, it really isn’t the convenience utopia that everyone makes it out to be. I hate setting it up, I hate troubleshooting it and I hate it when it craps out on you when it’s lease convenient, so the ability to eliminate wireless connections without having to take a chisel to the wall is very welcome! Very highly recommended if your wireless is up and down more often than Tower Bridge.

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Here’s a very insightful post from a Slashdotter on the subject of the recent and seemingly unstoppable trend of hiring cheap labour in the IT market. As you know it’s not often that I recycle stuff straight out of Slashdot so when I do you know that it’s special:

I entirely agree that individually you need to be as valuable as possible. That’s why all the CCNPs I know are working to finish their CCIEs and the CCIEs are working on their Juniper/Avaya certs. All of this is on top of their technical degrees.

The problem is that you and your “invaluable” skills really aren’t being taken into account. It doesn’t matter if firing you would cripple the company because we’re typically thinking 90 days at a time. If you replace a $150K CCIE with a $20K wanna-be, then you as a manager can claim a $130K dollar “savings.” Hooray for you, here’s your bonus.

When that $20K wonder takes all of your customers down — and here’s the beauty part — you aren’t blamed for it. No one is currently drawing the line between your $130K savings and the customers that walked with their millions of dollars.

The really scary part? I frequently work on municipal, hospital and 911 systems. Infrastructure disasters here can cost lives. I’ve watched the cheap guys take down emergency systems, and I tried not to think about the calls that were getting dropped as I fought to get them back online. I push the frantic calls for help out of my mind, because if I let my imagination run with what an unanswered 911 call could mean…

The cheap guy’s response as I berated him for putting lives at risk? Basically, what do I care? It’s not my country.

Every one of the guys I know are putting in 60-hours weeks routinely. Hours like that mean divorces. They mean early heart attacks. They mean neglected children left to raise themselves. They mean broken homes with the societal carnage that goes with it.

It’s the classic tragedy of the commons. The people who lead our country are insulated from the carnage associated with gutting our workforce. In the meantime, my country is falling apart. I’ve got a CS degree from a prestigious college, a CCIE, and a decade of international experience and even I am feeling the heat. I weep for those not as lucky as I.

We’re gutting our middle class. We just are, and if you don’t see it, it’s probably because you’re young. I hear your “Well, it’s not a problem if you’re the best of the best” bravado, and I wonder what you propose to do with the other 99% percent of the population, because they’re not just going to just disappear.

I was downtown during the LA Riots of ‘92. Rodney King and Daryl Gates might have been the spark that set it off, but that riot burned on the fuel of unemployed people. Last time I was in LA, more than a decade later, the damage still hadn’t been repaired.

I’d really prefer not to see that happen on a country-wide scale. But me and the other gray-hairs are worried, especially the people I know out in LA. We’re getting that “vibe” again.

Things are stretched beyond breaking. Our teachers have flat-out given up. Our cops are showing the sort of violent and unstable behavior you would expect from PTSD. The wave of earnest enlistees that flooded the military after 9/11 have become the sort of weary jaded bastards that could put the most burned-out Vietnam Vet to shame.

We are, for the first time in history, routinely using mercenaries in almost every level of our military and law enforcement. I’m seeing military families, families with generations of service, hang up their uniforms and forbid their children from serving.

Our hospitals are literally allowing people to die from neglect in the ER. Our bridges are falling down. Our electrical grid is one snapped breaker from going dark.

Katrina should have been our moment of clarity. The fact that it so clearly wasn’t scares me to death.

But you go ahead, and keep humming that “I’m the best, I’m the best, I’m the best” mantra. Keep closing your eyes as tight as you can and shut your ears tighter. Find a good teddy bear, because the old man, the old man has seen all this before.

I’m terrified of where this train is going.

OneIfByLan (1341287)

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Myself and H received our free iPhone 3Gs the other week, and they’re absolutely great. I wasn’t displeased with the original iPhone, which I bought in January, but there were some notable features that were missing from it, in particular 3G and the ability to install third party applications. Both these shortcomings have been resolved with the new version and also has proper GPS now too instead of the poor-man’s version which attempted to triangulate your position from mobile masts. The best thing about the upgrade was that it was free and Envirofone are giving me £115 for my old one, so, result!

I’ve a mandate from work to think about developing applications for the iPhone, because my boss has one too and is very fired up over it. Unlike Microsoft, Apple give their development platform away for free, rather than charging thousands for it, so that’s a good start. The only problem is that Apple software development, whether for Mac OS or the iPhone, is all done using Objective C and C++, which I have absolutely no experience with, so I did a fair amount of shopping on Amazon for some suitable O’Reilly books last week with the intention of getting to grips with it, if myself and my lackey can fit it around our current commitments.

I have of course installed all sorts of new applications on my iPhone, ranging from arcade games to news feeds to website specific applications, such as those provided by Facebook and Google, but the “killer app” that I’ve found is Apple Remote. This application allows me to play music from either my iTunes library or H’s (on separate computers) to any set of remote speakers in the flat (we have a set in the living room and a set in the bedroom), as well as on the computer on which the library resides, of course. So we can sit in bed and summon up any music we want, including Internet radio, and have it play wherever we are. Either of us can control it, at the same time, using both our iPhones too. It’s brilliant, and I actually don’t understand why it doesn’t ship with the iPhone since it’s written by Apple and made available for free anyway.

Still no picture messaging on the new iPhone though, which surprises me, I would have thought that would be very easy to implement, especially given the 3G support.

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