Well I got the fist exam of the year out of the way last Monday with a solid 80% so I am now, finally, a Microsoft Certified Professional.
Looks like the next one will be less studying but more exams due to changes at the training provider I use, of which I will post more on when the situation clears up.
In the meantime back to the hang over.
So after a number of years of Windows system administration I jumped from the good ship Redmond and bought myself an Apple Mac. Now if you like me have ever gone into any Starbucks in a major city or town you will have seen Them. You know Them the smug look, the very bohemian attitude with every. little. thing. Just. So. The centre piece of this smugness? normally the Apple Mac they are on. As with nearly all Apple products there seems to be a very studied approach, a very deliberate attempt to be cool, and you know what it seems to be working out for them.
Think back a few years to when the iPod first came out, the MP3 is just taking off and Apple, who were at that point were not long come from a spell of making utterly horrible products have just welcomed Steve Jobs, one of the founders of apple, back to the fold. He brought with him a new focus – Design. This design focus has two objectives: firstly to create a desirable product and secondly to make the user interface as easy to use as possible. These two principles are summed up in the Ipod, the simple clean lines, the revolutionary interface made it an instant hit with people as they hadn’t seen anything like it before. Even people who were not normally gadget orientated (and shame on them!) wanted to be part of this, they too wanted a piece of the ineffable cache of cool that the Ipod seemed to represent, and so a phenomenon was born.
But everything isn’t so simple as that was it? No, with the launch of the iPod came the launch of iTunes which, love it or hate it, is now the biggest music retailer in the States which is a fairly big claim for a company who had never made a music player or online service before. It was a very smart move by apple to integrate a music store with the software you use to manage your iPod. That being said however they did cop for some flak as they tied your music purchase in with DRM or Digital Rights Management, it is essentially a copy protection but something I will go into more in a future post as it is slightly off topic for this piece. However even with this flak it marked an upturn in the fortunes for Apple.
The Mac resurgence continued with the iMac. If you watch any American based TV you will have seen one, an all in one computer that looks like a screen with a lamp base (or it did at the time). Again a simple an elegant design that most importantly is not a beige box with another beige box attached to it for a screen. The iMac was white and curvy and again was projecting the a factor of cool as it looked and was different.
The final three stages of Apples resurgence came in the following items: The Intel Dual Core Processor; the Macbook and the iPhone.
When Apple announced they were dropping their previous chip lines and moving to Intel chips the geek world was all of a chatter, most of which your host ignored with an air of complete indifference – “so the Mac’s now use Intel chips, so what PCs have had them for years” and then went on with my day. I had really missed the point. With the adoption of the Intel chips makers of PC software suddenly had a really god idea how to make their programs run on Mac hardware, and makers of emulation software would be able to make Windows run on the Mac. As a change of direction it was huge and ushered in a wave of new development.
This new development included the Macbook, which to this day remains the best selling Mac Apple have ever produced. Take a look at the Macbook and again there is that “cool” factor we have been discussing. It has very simple lines which are not disrupted with ports for this that and other strewn willy nily around the case meaning it has a very distinctive look, and of course has the Fruit logo set inverted on the lid so that when you open the screen you announce to the world just what you are using. But if you actually sit an look at what is inside these machines you may be surprised as they generally feature more power then a desk top at the time and included wireless, Bluetooth fire wire, an integrated webcam and either DVD/CD Writer or DVD/DVD writer on on all the models. A very high spec for what is for most of the range a 13.3” (or 33.78cm for our metric friends) laptop. The spec and the software (another post) made for a very attractive package.
Lastly we come to the iphone, an object which at its heart is a phone, you make calls on it and everyone wants one. Including me. Again there is Apple’s design principals at work, a simple non fussy casing with an elegant user interface. Damnit them it is like crack…. The latest iteration of the iPhone is of course the iPhone 3g which won so many awards for :gadget of the year” last year I think Apple must have been sick of the awards and have given up counting. At this point I am going to stop talking about it however as currently I am an informed spectator where as soon I will be an owner so will talk about it more then.
One of the things I have avoided talking about so far is the price as this is normally the argument that people make against Apple products, however I will cover this but again it will be in a future post.
The next few posts are likely to be continuing this subject with a discussion about the Mac software and my experiences and frustrations so far as another post, so join me for our continuance in a couple of days. As right now I am off for a vodka and some food.
So New year, new start and all that? Well not in an attempt to sound cliched but managing it all the same so what do I want out of this year? Money, women, an Adonis like physique, oh you expect me to be serious and grown up about this? Really? fine if you want to play like that I will even split them into work and personal.
Work
I need to pass 4 Microsoft Professional exams this year they are
i also need to pass a personal communications course, as apparently I don’t play well with others. Now shockingly I know but I don’t believe this is the case, people get the messages I send out, it just happens that the majority of the messages are, “no you are doing it wrong” and “Why yes you are a cock, please go to the head of the class”. My boss tells me that this doesn’t go down well.
However in all seriousness he gave me some feedback which I did find interesting in that I used “closed” language a lot. For example I will write “you will” instead of “you should” and because of this I come across as dictatorial and aggressive when this is not necessarily the case.
Personal
Well my personal goals are slightly less well defined and mostly fitness related
Oh well the objectives are set – lets see if I make them.
Some of you may be wondering why I am posting in a blog called TheBadMonkey when I have already introduced myself as Dave and have revealed my hair colour to the more observant of you…
well the answer can be found here at the Security Monkey Blog as told by my supervisor “Graycat”
Enjoy
We rejoin your scampering host once he has departed London for the cooler, wetter climbs of the North, sat on the train with his trusty laptop showing episodes of season 2 of The Unit on DVD. Earlier that day my friend and colleague Captain Graycat had provided me with this desktop background:
The observant and Bond loving geeks amongst you will recognise this as the background of the laptop that ‘M’ (Dame Judi Dench) uses in Casino Royale.
At this point in my monkey migration I had just finished DVD 2 of The Unit (very good show by the way) and was swapping the DVD’s over and had minimised the VLC player I was using. The following is a factual account of what happened, names have been changed to protect “the stupid”.
The Stupid: “*ahem* are you sure you should be advertising that?“
TheBadMonkey: “Sorry, What?” while taking the headphones out of my ears.
“Are you sure you should be advertising the fact?”
“What fact? I’m sorry, I’m really not following you here.”
Pointing at the screen The Stupid clarifies “You know, who you work for…”
I look at the screen and look at her in disbelief, how can anyone be so daft? “that’s just a picture, I work for an engineering firm”
“Nah, it says where you work for on the screen”
“Really, in all seriousness I work for an Engineering firm”
The Stupid looks at me, looks at the screen and a sudden light of realisation dawns in The Stupid’s eyes. Perhaps there is hope for the human race after all…
“oh I understand” says The Stupid, taping their nose knowingly “say no more.” at which point they sit back and smile in the fact they have met a real life “00″ and will be able to trade the story for drinks later.
It just goes to show, that I am not always right….
I have been doing my job for a little over a year and about 7 months into the new job I found myself chatting with the company accountant and a software engineer who was working out some kinks in the new time sheet and accounting package that we were having installed. I had just come from the monthly IT meeting which is normally an exercise in tedium as the agenda never changes, however the meeting on the auspicious day was even more brain rottingly dull then normal, especially when the simple instruction “Archive this data or all data that is older then this date will be deleted” turned into a 40 minute conversation.
For the sake of everybodies sanity (and for you host not to crawl into a bottle of vodka by way of compensation) we shall skip forward about an hour to the conversation between myself (TheBadMonkey) the accountant (Mr Racing Snake) and the Software guy (The Software guy – he doesn’t get a fun name)
TheBadMonkey:”…I thought I got away from such stupidity when I stopped working for the government, I mean Christ how difficult is the concept Archive it or gets deleted? I mean seriously this is not an advanced concept here.”
Mr Racing Snake: “Oh! I forgot you worked for the government”
At this point Software guys ears perk up.
MRS:”Yeah wasn’t it MI5?”
Software guy near gives himself whip lash he looks round so fast.
SG: “You were in MI5?” – bless him you could see the hope of 00 stories he could tell people, either that or a contact for a nice fat government contract, to be honest I couldn’t tell.
[interjection]
Now at this point I was really confused, how had Mr Racing Snake come to the conclusion that I worked for MI5? When ever asked I stated that I worked for the “government”, but this was mainly due to the fact I didn’t like saying to people “Revenue & Customs” as at the mere mention of that particular government organ a strange thing occurs. Your counterpart in the conversation seems to develop a sudden urge to see what an interface between a large blunt object and yours truly’s cranium would look like, and more to the point if it is indeed possible to knocks someone’s head clean off a la David Gray in the video for Be Mine. So to avoid the whole sticky Monkey decapitation scenario I tend to just say “government” but how does one make the leap from “government” (I must admit at this point quotation marks were never used) to super secret bad ass spy?
[/interjection]
TBM: “Sorry? What Mr Snake? where did you hear that?”
Software guy edges closer
MRS: “You know, around”
if software guy gets any closer to the edge of his chair he will be eating carpet.
MRS: “so I take it by that you didn’t work for MI5?”
I swear Software Guy only has one cheek on the chair at this point and is straining to look uninterested why listening intently.
TBM: “I can’t say I have worked for any of the security services, I worked for HM Revenue & Customs.”
SG: “what?”
At this point Mr Racing Snake and I turn and look at the Software Guy who visibly deflates and carries on with what even black magic and voodoo he was doing before. Mr Racing Snake expressing his disgust, asks me to vacate his office as he wont have “scum” there, and not wishing to upset the guy who processes the wages quickly I swiftly exercised the better part of valour and knuckled off as fast as my monkey arms and legs could carry me.
Hello, lovely to meet you and just how the devil are you? Please do come in and may I welcome you to this, my little corner of the interweb. Well, first things first I suppose should be introductions all round, my name is Dave, I live in Leeds (north UK) and this will be a record of whatever shiny object or idea grasps my attention like an over ambitious magpie.
Most of my time is misspent working for an engineering firm providing one half of a dedicated IT team. As such I will warn the unwary that there is a heavy inclination towards the geekier side of life, and should this be a deal breaker please feel free for us to part ways now with no hard feelings.
Waits….
They gone? Good, in which case I will raise a glass of vodka to you, your health and your kin (should that be three glasses?) and invite you to walk with me on the geekier side of life.
