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Category: General

The upside and downside of working for a Large corporate

Filed Under: General by Species5618 — 1 Comment

March 17, 2012

Working for a large corporate as I do, has many upsides

Good Pay
Great flexibility
Agile/home working
Great Leave entitlement
I also get free broadband
and in this case a corporate that does not do compulsory redundancy

However there are some downsides too (driven by trying to maintain shareholder value)

Many many business transformations (re-orgs)
Many Cost reduction challenge/initiatives
with re-orgs & cost come staff ?head count challenges

Did I mention they don’t do compulsory redundancy. well that is one saving grace

So as of 10th April i am classed as a redployee, in the “transition centre” where I still get paid for looking for an internal post, re-training is available, so I could take the opportunity to gain some decent Cisco, Oracle or Linux skills. Time will tell.

On the plus side, looking forward to a NEW challenge and NOT collecting a P45….

Tags: Life, Work

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First Impression, A Month of GiffGaff

Filed Under: General by Lee Delia Hampton-Whitehead — Comments Off

July 11, 2011

So, coming to the end of my first month on GiffGaff, the Mobile MVNO powered by O2, so what can i say about it?
First impressions are excellent. Quick simple well managed, my number port in was amazingly smooth, coverage is great (will expand in this later), certainly sorted the issues I had with Vodafone and a few rural towns I frequent.

I am running an HTC Desire HD, with Cyangenmod7, and it got the APN setting first time, I did however use the community provided android app to fine tune the APN settings. An excellent example of the community support model that GiffGaff owes its success to.

Fantastic value for money, 8p / min for most call unless you get a goody bag, I am using the 10 quid goody bag, 250 mins, truly unlimited SMs and truly unlimited internet (but you are not allowed to tether). Even if you brought a brand new android device for say £400, it comes in cheaper than a contract device over 14 months!!! Yes 14 months, NOT 24 and a loads of minutes you don’t need..

Auto top up on low credit, auto top up for goody bags is in the pipeline, so while being a PAYG service, it has all the flexibility of a contract and more.
Only TWO issues I can see at the moment.

O2 does not have the best 3G coverage in the UK, but does have outstanding 2G/edge to back it up, so for calls, text & email you can’t beat it, the foursquare app get a bit upset on 2G, but every other app I used just gets on with it
I would like more than a TOP5 breakdown on my call and SMS usage, online perhaps, that said this is a rare feature for a PAYG service.

Get your GiffGaff SIM Here…….?http://giffgaff.com/orders/affiliate/species5618

Tags: GiffGaff, Mobile Phone

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A step away from the norm

Filed Under: Geekdom, General, Technology by Lee Delia Hampton-Whitehead — 3 Comments

April 12, 2011

Still not sure exactly why, but i have been considering a tatto for a few months. However I don’t get the traditional tattoo artworks, gothic imagery, skulls, names etc etc.

So the hunt was on for something different, original and most of all very me.

Thought about various electronic references, ohms law, resonant frequency or Q formulas, but a bit to obscure for main stream people.

So along came bar codes, plenty of forums later, I started to look at standard type 39 barcodes, but to get something meaningful in, and have a chance of it scanning, it would need to be VERY long
So 2D barcodes had to be considered, QR Code seems to be the current 2D format that most people recognise, and is supported by plenty of moble phone scanners.

Still has to be quite large to scan, but it just had to be done.

After 2.5 hours sat in a Gloucester tattoo studio, I now have a QR Code Tattoo, best of all it scans too!
Though i am not sure if Greg will ever do another QR Code.

Tags: QR Code, Tattoo

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bees in garden

Filed Under: General by Species5618 — Comments Off

April 8, 2010

bees in garden, originally uploaded by species5618.

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lady bird

Filed Under: General by Species5618 — Comments Off

April 8, 2010

lady bird, originally uploaded by species5618.

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As a planet we must start to be more careful, but Fines/Punishment is not the way to do it

Filed Under: General by Lee Delia Hampton-Whitehead — 1 Comment

April 3, 2010

At a Microsoft Architect Conference this week,?? Dave Colpin said RFID tag in bins (and collected data) should be used to educate NOT punish, for example “Did you know you waste is 10% lower than the average house hold of your size”

Positive feedback on the good things, not negative feedback (or punishment) for the bad things. This is the same approach Tanya Bryon uses with unruly children. This can be extended to almost any walk of life???

Pence (or CO2) Per Mile meters in cars instead VSP. ??Encourage the drivers to slow down and protect the environment, rather than have some computer TRY and fix a problem which has already occurred.

GPS for insurance / road tax in cars, should be sold as a way to thank careful drivers with money back not an additional charge/ punishment for drivers who driver on clogged roads drive at unreasonable speeds. Yeh ok the end result is the same, but more people are likely to join in.

For the simple minded, this could even be reduced to a RAG (Red, Amber, Green) status system. My EON smart meter does just that for my instantaneous power consumption. It took my wife just three weeks to start asking ???who is using all the electric??? when the red light came on..

As a planet we must start to be more careful, but Fines/Punishment is not the way to do it

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How NOT to wire up PSTN and ADSL

Filed Under: General by Lee Delia Hampton-Whitehead — 1 Comment

March 25, 2010

I recently stumbled across some of the worst PSTN/Broadband customer premises wiring I have ever seen. TWO lines, both with ADSL, and proper ADSL faceplates on the Master Sockets., All sounds good so far. TWO other rooms, each with extensions in for both lines, but this is where it heads south.

1. The extensions are TWO wire connected not the usual THREE
2. The extensions are connected to the telco side of the master socket, not the customer side of the master socket, so are not filtered for ADSL/PSTN use properly

The net result was, the phones do not ring, the lines is noisey (as ADSL is not filtered properly) and the modem/router only connects at 7.6Mb/s despite being only 5 meters (yes 5 Meters, that is NOT a typo) from the exchange equipment…

Yes you guessed it this is INSIDE a village telephone exchange………….

Tags: adsl, BroadBand, pstn

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Persistance of Stupidity (The Proof)

Filed Under: General by Species5618 — Comments Off

March 8, 2010

A while I scribbled an article on ???persistence or stupidity??? a rough review on the effect of todays internet + a few friends and their ability to capture the moment when you do something really stupid and post it in the internet, youtube.com, epicfail.com, facebook.com is full of such precious gems of entertainment. Mind you it is nothing new, the tabloid press have been making millions of the odd photo or a knickerless or drunken celeb.
I too have various photos (on film, remember that !!) of my mates in our more outrageous years, so I am not immune. But appear to have got of lightly so far.
Not so for some friends of friends of friends on Facebook.com, where photographs of teenagers (just) can be seen smoking, in school uniform on school property. One can only assumed that this level of stupidity will stand them in good stead when they apply for their Darwin award in years to come.

Tags: stupidity, Teenagers

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