Archive for the ‘life’ Category

Birmingham Regeneration

Thursday, March 27th, 2008

The other day I was on the train past the Hawthorns and Jewellery Quarter going into Birmingham and saw all the abandoned warehouses and factories just sitting there doing nothing. It got me to thinking about a good use of these buildings and came up with a few ideas with Katie. Some of these were

  • Vegan/Vegetarian cafe
  • Recording studio for musicians
  • Office space for small companies/design firms that need somewhere cheap and easy to work
  • Bloggers cafe/lounge

The last item is the one I thought the most about. I have an idea that I would love to get open one day. Allow me to expand if you will.

The idea is a basic one. Its a coffee lounge that’s more aimed towards the home workers/mobile workers, the people who work from laptops where ever Wifi is available. Its a place where there are plenty of large tables to sit down at, comfy seats, power sockets, wifi (perhaps free). And you could expand that really. Have lockers for people to put their laptops if they need to pop out for half an hour, offer printing facilities at a small cost, offer PO box services, allowing people to get packages delivered.

The theory behind this was that people who can work anywhere, may not want to work from home, they might want to spend it somewhere else, with other people, but still be able to get everything done that they need to. You could come here and spend the whole day working away, get food and drink, and get that project or web page sorted.

Now this may not be a great idea. But the theory is to play on not the people on their way to work, but the people who want to sit and work in a friendly environment, where they can feel safe, and be surrounded by similar people.

I suppose my hopes are that some of these buildings could be reused and help to build up a strong sense of independence in Birmingham, where small businesses can get a good start. It could be a hive of artistic, musical, creative thinking folks. You could have community centres for groups to meet, have a flea market for people to swap and sell things to people who would appreciate them.

I realise that this is difficult to get started. You need capital to buy these buildings, make sure they’re safe, kit them out with all the necessary gear, and of course get the work out to the people you are targetting to get people to come. I would like to build on this idea if possible.

If anyone has any ideas, suggestions, or information that would be useful, please do leave me a comment.

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Posted in life | 3 Comments »

Look out fire, just reached the frying pan. You’re next!

Friday, March 7th, 2008

That title may not make much sense, and thats cos its a really far off simily (look it up) to my current work situation.

As I said before, I’m currently impending redundancy, and this week, we reached the end of the consultancy period. What does that mean? Well they are now at free liberty to give us our 30 days notice at any point. There has to be some formal dismissal hearing, and then 48 hours, but basically we’ll be going soon.

What does that mean for me? Well of course I’m looking for a new job. I wanna take this as an opportunity to get out of my industry and into IT. So I’m spending my time looking at IT Technician, Help desk jobs, anything that I can get for a good starting job, where I can do hardware and software repairs, and if possible, some travel.

I think I wanna get into network admin. At least that’s what I feel like I wanna do so I’ll follow that path unless my heart says otherwise.

So if you’re interested in hiring an aspiring IT Technician, who is A+ certified and working on his Network+, then please drop me a note and make me an offer.

Otherwise, I’ll keep trawling those online job search sites, and watching the hours tick away at work, as the share price drops, as well as my level of concentration and focus.

Until then, I’ll be working more on the new site, perfecting the theme for launch. Which hopefully won’t be too many more weeks away.

And speaking of that, is there anyway of getting my posts on the old blog to auto-forward to the new blog? Maybe not but worth asking. I’d just like to drive traffic away from the old, and make sure I’m still getting visitors to the new one for the same searches. Leave me a note in the comments.

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Busy doing Nothing

Wednesday, February 27th, 2008

So ever since the news came out at work about there being redundancies, the office has been really quiet. Consultants and IFA’s alike are staying clear of the office, only coming in when they really have to. And work wise, its been dead. So much so that I have spend a large portion of the last three days sitting around staring at my empty inbox and todo list seeing that there is nothing I can do right that moment.

So what did I do today? Well besides checking my account to see that I had been paid, I read some of Getting Things Done by David Allen. I also looked on Flickr and on some blogs for Moleskine ideas.

I got my first Moleskine at Christmas and haven’t actually done anything with it yet. But today I started on that. I printed out  a handy year planner, as well as setting up some pages. To keep in line with GTD ideas, I’ve got my Next Actions page, Someday/Maybe lists, as well as a Douglas Furs page where I have made some notes about the band. Have a look at the photos below.

(more…)

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Redundancy

Tuesday, February 5th, 2008

Today I received a bit of bad news. My company has decided to close all its sales offices in the UK, and centralise the work in Manchester. This, as you can guess from the title, means bad news for me. My office, along with a few more from around the country will be closing in the next few months. We’ve entered a consultation period at the moment, and that will finish on 5th March. Then notice periods will be issued, or at least begin to be issued.

For me, this means that I will get my 1 month notice either in March or April. During that time, we’ll have to pass on our group schemes to Manchester as they all get centralised up there. And then we will probably have to clear out the office, so relocate files, remove the literature supplies we have, the desks, computers, switches and servers, phones, chairs, and everything else. Everyone else in the office is in the same boat, so we’ll all be looking for new jobs.

I guess I’m in a slightly better position as I’m already looking for new jobs in IT. But everyone else will have to adjust to the fact that we’re being fired, and then get into job searching mode.

In terms of redundancy pay, since I’ve been there for 19 months, I should get about 5 weeks pay, which isn’t fab, but its better than nothing and it should tide me over till I can get another job.

In the mean time, I’m sure business will dry up, and the attitude in the office will be low. No one is going to have the spirit to work particularly hard, which will make things more difficult.

So over the next few months I’ll be blogging a bit more about my job, and keeping you reader(s) up to date with the comings and goings of my job. And of course my hunt for a new job. For now, I’m just dealing with it, and thinking about my trip to Athens that I will probably never get.

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I’m qualified to…Technician

Wednesday, January 16th, 2008

That makes no sense but I just wanted to share my knowledge that today I passed bmy 220-602 IT Technician Exam and am now fully A+ qualified. So I have something extra to put on my CV/application forms now.

For information, it took me abotu 25 mins to go through the 90 multiple-choice questions, and then another 20 to review them. I passed with a 875/900 so a whopping 97%! Pretty good eh!

Well thanks to New Horizons on Edmund Street for putting up with me. Or at least taking my money for the exam!

From here, its job searches. But all thats gonna wait till the weekend.

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Do you really care who I am?

Saturday, January 5th, 2008

Its been done time and time and time again. I could do it again myself, but I’m lazy, so I’ve decided to do a 365 project of myself over 31 days, or at least January alone.

So check out my Flickr set for my photos. I’ll probably post them every few days so don’t bother checking daily! Plus am I really that interesting?

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VMWare Fusion

Friday, December 14th, 2007

As I posted before, I took my A+ 220-601 exam recently and as part of the study, I got a few books that came with CD-ROM’s. They all contained test engine software which I was looking forward to using, but of course, cos of the narrow minded people, it was Windows only. Since I don’t have Leopard yet (Jan ‘08 after payday and I get an external drive to backup so I can clean install) I was encouraged by a friend to get VMWare Fusion. So I took the plunge and forked out the £45-odd quid for the software.

I downloaded the dmg file and installed the software, and put in the serial number supplied via email. And there I was, ready to install Windows. I pulled out a disc I had nearby and got to work on the dreaded install. I’ve already done this a few times with Boot Camp beta, so was more than familiar with the many many many many updates needed when you install Windows, and because they don’t do bulk updates like Mac OS gets (only their infrequent Service Packs) It took about 4 reboots, to install around about 90 updates, hotfixes, bug fixes and new software, included the fantastic(!) IE7.

So I finally got that sorted, downloaded Firefox, TweakUI, Acrobat Reader, and got them installed. Finally I was ready to actually get studying, but before that, a good nights sleep.

Well it seemed to do the trick cos I passed the exam, and now I have XP working for the future. I’m going to keep the virtual image on my laptop cos it will no doubt come in handy next time I need to tech support for my parents.

The next step for me is to set up a Ubuntu install. Its all done (off the Live/Desktop CD) and now just updating that. To make it work smoother, I need to install VMWare Tools, to allow shared folders and other business. Luckily, this website provides a great step-by-step for this  as it seems a bit tricky.

So I’ll be a triple boot system soon, which is nice to have. And certainly one to impress the friends and family, and people at MMUG.

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Posted in life, macosx | 2 Comments »

Success with an A+ (almost)

Wednesday, December 12th, 2007

So today was the culmination of about 14 months of slow studying towards my CompTIA A+. Today I took my 220-601 A+ Essentials exam. And I am glad its over.

I arrived at the test centre (thanks to the kind people at New Horizons, Birmingham) and within 30 seconds of arriving, the fire alarm went off, so I had to stand out in the cold for 20 minutes before I got started. But we went back inside, and I got to it.

I took the sample exam, which was too much really. 15 questions on the universe (none of the answers were 42), and then got stuck into the actual exam. I blasted through the 100 multiple choice questions in about 20 minutes, then spent another 20 reviewing my answers, making some changes and then ended the test. And there it was on the screen. I’ve passed! Scored 780 out of 900 so did quite well considering I was half expecting to fail.

Only query, why did I get three questions, all relating to anti-static wrist straps? Seriously are they worth testing that much? Not that I complained. A few easy questions.

Now I’ve got  90 days to sit the 220-602 IT Technician exam and then I’m fully qualified. That means I’m job hunting soon, and not soon enough.

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Posted in life, study | 1 Comment »

iPhone - Setup, and First thought

Friday, November 9th, 2007

So I am home, I’ve got my iPhone and its all working.Setup was  simple. Plug in, go through the iTunes registration, select price plan, give your iTunes Account ID, and give any number transfer details. Once that was done, you wait for activation, and for me this took less than a minute.Once thats done, you can go ahead and sync. Like everything else, choose your playlists, your bookmarks, email accounts etc, to sync. and thats it. iPhone sorted.So far I’m just trying to reduce my music so I can get some videos on it. Apart from that its great.I’ll be giving it a true test run this weekend so a more detailed report soon.  

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Live blogging from the Apple Store - Birmingham

Friday, November 9th, 2007

I arrived at 10.15, had a drink from Starbucks and went to wait. It wasn’t until about 12pm that the first people started the queue, and then I made my move. I’m now sitting here, in 4th place on a cold hard floor waiting for my iPhone.There’s 7 people so far (12.44pm) and its bound to grow.Check out Flickr for photos during the day!  

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