Haven’t posted here for a while!

So I’ve been planning on getting an iPhone for a while now, and today the day finally came!  Went upto London at 7am to meet up with Jason at Moorgate, and when I got there, I was presented with a nice long queue….which was going to take upto 4 hours :(  Luckily there was a Carphone Warehouse round the corner which has a much smaller queue!

In the queue we met some interetersting people, and got some strange looks..Although I can’t work out why.

Got the phone eventually after 20 minutes of standing at the Till and nearly not signing a contract(silly sales woman), and headed off to work.

8 hours later and I still can’t get the damn thing to work - APPLE PLEASE MAKE IT WORK!!!!!!!!

Rant over

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Update.

Spelling error corrected by Daniel Holland

I have now completed my first month at work! It has been a very good first month, and I have only once been bored. The work I’ve been doing is very varied, mixing between project management, technical support, testing, bug reporting, (re testing), going to level3(more on that later).

I’ve mainly been working on implementing CMO COMPLIANCE - http://cmo-compliance.com/ for a number of clients all over the world, including America and Ireland. CMO Compliance (CC) is aimed at the auditing and certification sector, but is very adaptable and can be used for anything really that involved scheduling forms and people. For those that are interested, it is build on asp.NET, talking to a MS SQL 2005 database running on Server 2003. There is also a PDA and tablet (laptop) version, which allows using to sync their audits, go offline, complete them and then sync them back when online. This is ideal for situations that a wifi or 3G/GPRS connection in impossible/too expensive to justify.

There are a few other bits I’ve been working on, including a collaborative server-based teaching system and a property management system.

I’ve also kinda been allocated “server bitch” role within CMO, as we’ve had a whole bunch of server related things to do since I started! Bonus! The most awesome job was going to Level3 in Angel. Level3 are a big internet communications provider, that have a load of connectivity and servers all over the world. They also carry a LOT of the internet traffic. Anyway, the building is very, very secure, and had a big ‘ole metal door on the front. Once in they have swooshy doors (not as epic as spooks though), and you have to sign in and get a pass.

Then went to get our 2 servers from the post room (one HP-DL380 (2u) and a HP-DL580 (4u) and took them up in the MASSIVE lifts, up to the suites. To actually get into the server areas, you have to scan your card, put in your number, and then scan your hand. Well cool. Inside, it is very noisy (as to be expected) and all of the racks are in their own area with metal walls separating what’s yours and what is another companies equipment.

So we installed the servers, tested them, and hey presto, two servers on the interwebs with super fast connection.

On a slightly different note, I went to see Minority Influence at Sound in Leicester Square last night. After being served by possibly the MOST incompetent Maccy D’s worker in existence, I found the place, paid my £6 to listen to ONE AND A HALF SONGS!! The stupid club had forced them to move forward to 8:00 instead of 8.30. Now, my brainy brain thought, why not try to get a refund?? I also thought it would be very difficult to do such a thing, but we had no problems in getting one whatsoever. Now I would much rather have seen them play, but it meant more money for when I buy an iPhone :P. After that, we went to spoons, the saviour of everything. The End.

PS. If you want a very awesome video, check this out - ?http://www.kontraband.com/videos/12393/The-Great-Office-War/

First week of work is now over.  It has been a very good, and different week.  My office is in Elephant and Castle, which takes about an hour door to door from my house.  The office is relatively small (pics on flickr) with a total of three people in at the moment, with two more joining soon.  The company also employs people in Australia, India and Russia.

My official job title is “Project Manager”, which is what I’ve been doing a lot of, building specifications, emailing companies etc.  Also I have three meetings on my first day, one face to face and two over Skype.

My desk, is in the corner, next to two balcony doors which is nice for when it is sunny.  Also the air con in there rocks.

I’ve mainly been working on the flagship company product, CMO Compliance.  It is a fully customisable soulution to companies that need to audit things, and companies that issue standards certificates.   ( http://www.cmohandheldsoftware.com/Handheld_Software_PDAs_XDA2_02-imate/easy_audit/easy_audit_handheld_software_system.html ) .  I’ve also seen a couple of other products, but they are more customised solutions like for teaching.

As the office is part of South Bank Uni, we get our internet through them…..nuff said.  Fast, but unable to dial in remotely (at the moment).  The upside of it being at a university, the cafe is dirt cheap, £2 a meal.  Also the cafe in the actual office building does epic coffee and kebabs.

On a seprate note, I had a lovely trip to Bognor 2 weeks ago, the most memorable part being the MASSIVE broom at a train station!

Well, the University year for 2008 has finished for myself, and the fact of that has been celebrated by going to gobble with Pete and a couple of other rugby guys on wednesday night, which was great, except waiting 40 mins to get in, and another 30 mins to get a drink! Get it sorted SU!  Got a taxi home which was possibly the hottest vehicle I have ever been it.  It was like a sauna.  Fortunatly that mean I would fall asleep to be woken up in Stafford.

We had the finalally the final game of the season to play on Saturday against Notts 5ths.  We lost 8-5, and I only played for about 15 minutes as I twisted my knee in a ruck, which ended up in some torn cartilidge in my left knee, and what looks like a baloon attached to it in swelling.  Luckily there are no more rugby games this season, as I can’t play for 4 weeks.

It is heeling up quite well, and I can pretty much walk on it without a limp now, which is a bonus considing I am going to Center Parcs next week (Yay), and will be in the swimming pool for most of the time.

For lunch today Pete, James and myself went to the amazing Chinese buffet out near junc 14 of the M6.  As usual, delightful.  Still need to refine my buffet-eating tactics though, as don’t think I am maximising my buffet potential.

I read today about a security vulnribility in the random number generator used by OpenSSH and OpenSSL on Debian and Ubuntu systems, and apparently keys generated since 2006 could possibly be exploited.  So get your keys re generated!

Hello people of the internets.

I finally got a placement sorted out.  It is with a company called CMO Global - www.cmoglobal.com.  They are based in Covent Garden, which will be a lovely place to work.  They also have offices near Elephant and Castle but i’m not sure where I will be working.  Either way, nice and easy to travel to.

About CMO.  They develop bespoke software and websites plus their product CMO Compliance which is a auditing system used by lots of companies to manage their inventories.

I will be dabbling in project management, testing of software, client demonstrations amonst other things.  I think I will be able to have a go at anything as they are a relatively small company.

Anyway, I am looking forward to starting, and looking forward to going on a shopping spree for work clothes!

Went to see iron man today, was really good.  Plus the extra ending after the credits.  Bad MOFO.

Tomorrow is Keele 7’s tournament, which was a right laugh last year, except from the sunburn I got.  Hopefully this won’t happen again this year.  The boys had a good day on Wednesday, which BTW we should have been playing (beating) Nottingham 5ths but they cried off (waterlogged pitch).  Anyhoo, a bunch of them went up to Stoke to play in a touch tournament, where we finished joint 2nd.  Good times, and hopefully a reflection of how we will do on Saturday.

Sunday I am having a BBQ at mine, so weather, if you’re listening BE SUNNY!

Happy May Bank Holiday!

Well Uni has finished for my second year.  Two thirds the way through now.  Doesn’t time fly.  Only now I have exams to revise for and get a placement!

Anyway.  Went swimming today for the first time on yonks, and actually really enjoyed it.  Unfortunately where I smashed my knee on some stairs last year it was quite painful, but with a bit more practice it will hopefully stop hurting as much.  I’d also forgotten how good swimming is for fitness in general, so I will start going more and more, especially with it only being £1.70.

Regarding FYP for next year, I was informed today that any work I choose to do on it during my placement year, technically cannot count towards it!  Great.  Still, here are some of my thoughts as to what I could do:

Network Security Monitoring: Something like AAA but open source like ldap with something)

Network Simulation: Develop a system of re creating different link speeds, latency etc to test applications on and how they cope.

Comparing open source vs closed source NOS:  Server 2003/2008 vs Ubuntu Server/BSD etc

Clustering + Failover: Linux-HA (Thanks to Joe)

Centralised config using subversion : http://www.shrubbery.net/rancid/

Just browsing around on Digg, and found this http://dvice.com/archives/2008/04/how_does_jack_b.php

It is an alarm clock that where you have to work out the code within 30 seconds  before it blows up or something.  Brilliant!

This is my first official blog post on my new site, chrisbudden.co.uk

Thanks to Jason & slip7.net