General

We had a new house built a while back, and in a few rooms there was a double switch: one for the light and one for a fan.

But which is which?

Now the old way to do that would have been to put a label on each one. Seems like a reasonable idea but unless that’s a braille label, and you can read braille, that’s not going to help you in the dark. You want to just reach in and turn on the correct switch. That’s easy enough to do, but it really only works if the electrician who installed them followed a pattern i.e. the switch furthest inside might be the light, and the one closest to the door might be the fan.

2020-10-20

Many years ago, I spent a lot of time in universities. I ended up finishing my studies at QUT in Brisbane

and I have a great and continuing fondness for that institution. Earlier on though, amongst other universities, I did quite a lot of study through Charles Sturt University

Over the years, I’ve maintained a continuous link with my friends at Charles Sturt University (CSU). Back when we used to run Code Camps for both developers and DBAs, CSU were only too pleased to jump in to help us. From the minute we arrived that first day in Wagga Wagga, I knew it was going to be good. Associate Profession Irfan Altas was an amazing help and remains a friend to this day. I’m always pleased to get to chat to him.

2020-08-16

I’ve seen a lot of people lately complaining about meeting burnout. It seems that in our pandemic-isolated world where staff members and others are available pretty much on call all day long, it’s become really common to have a much larger number of meetings than we used to.

I’m interested in why this is. Perhaps it’s the lack of contact leading to a desire for more contact and conversation, but if there were a lot of unproductive meetings before, nowadays that seems to have increased so much that it seems almost silly.

2020-06-02

I work with many different clients and I see work that’s great and I also see work that’s not so great. But the work that frustrates me the most, is inconsistent work.

When we built a house a while back, there are a number of rooms that have a combination light switch like the one shown in the main image. One switch is for the light, one is for something else: most likely a fan in a bathroom, etc.

2020-05-26

In some countries, post office boxes are quite anonymous. And for that reason, some vendors aren’t keen to send goods to PO Boxes. But that’s not all countries. In Australia, for example, you have to provide all sorts of ID to the post office to be able to get one.

Why PO Boxes?

The fundamental reason that many people use PO Boxes is to have a relatively safe location for their mail to be collected. At so many houses, letter boxes are quite unsafe. And for people living in apartments, the situation is often far, far worse.

2020-05-19

Most websites that I visit have a link at the bottom of the page that suggests that you can use it to contact either the website team or the company that owns the site. (Might not be the same people) Based on years of trying, my expectation of ever getting a response from using one of these links is close to zero.

If you have a website that has a contact link, does it lead anywhere sensible?

2020-05-12

I hear about frequent drive-by shootings in some countries. Fortunately that doesn’t happen where I live. But what I come across all the time on Q&A forums, is what I’d like to call DBTs (Drive by trashings).

It usually starts when someone makes a genuine effort to try to help answer a question. The DBT (drive-by trasher) pops in and leaves a nasty unhelpful message. It could be “That’s misleading” or “That’s wrong” or “You don’t understand how it works”.

2020-05-05

Today I wanted to call out a common mistake that I see at websites all over the country. Don’t add pages to your website if you’re not going to update them.

I’m particularly talking about pages with names like “News”, “Articles”, “Blog Posts”, etc. They’re often added when someone first builds a website and is full of hope for how it will be used.

And then it isn’t.

Old News

I’ve lost count of how many sites I visit where there’s a News section and when I visit it, there are two or three entries, often years apart. Or worse, there are a few entries from five years ago when the website was first created.

2020-05-01

I was working with another client recently, and they were changing the working IT environments for their staff. What struck me as odd was that they called the new environments the Modern ones.

Modern was actually the name of the environment. I’m sure they currently see the environments as the modern ones, but soon enough, it won’t be modern or new, and then the name looks really, really odd. In a few years’ time, they’ll have more recent ones, and it then gets tricky. Are they then the Even More Modern environments?

2020-04-21

I work with a number of clients in a variety of industries. I’m constantly amazed by the larger companies that simply do everything they can to avoid paying for things that they should be paying for.

I’ll give you two simple examples.

Many companies use TeamViewer. It’s easy to use and it works well for what it’s intended for. However I’d say that over 90% of the clients are using it as the free personal edition that says all over it for non-commercial use. I don’t get why companies that are turning over tens of millions of dollars, or who are managing billions of dollars of other people’s funds struggle to pay the correct licensing for basic utilities that they depend upon.

2020-04-14