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]]> http://www.guyontechnology.co.uk/2011/08/24/new-theme/feed/ 0 http://www.guyontechnology.co.uk/2011/03/30/decision-making/ http://www.guyontechnology.co.uk/2011/03/30/decision-making/#comments Wed, 30 Mar 2011 13:47:59 +0000 Guy http://www.guyontechnology.co.uk/?p=578

It’s been far too long since I last posted and that is something I wish to change drastically over the coming months. I’m a full time business support consultant for a small firm in the Midlands, UK. My job role entails a wide range of information technology (I.T) roles, from architect of new networks all the way through to physically deploying new infrastructure.

I had never intended to be in the I.T industry, I originally trained as a structural engineer but seemed to slip into a support role for a company I was working for at the time, this snowballed into a full time career of nearly a decade.

I would be a liar if I said I didn’t enjoy my job, I get exposed to vast amounts of technology which as you should know is one of my passions. I also get to meet and work with some incredible people, as a self confessed socialite this is a great position to be in. What I don’t enjoy about the job is the stress involved when dealing with multi-million pound companies, there is a level of pressure which I have put up with over the last five years that has become increasingly tiresome. The invasion of work on my personal life has been deep set too and although not always necessarily in the number of hours worked, is often more about my mentally exhausted state at the end of a day.

One of my other passions is writing and the sole reason I started GuyOnTechnology, a method for me to make my ideas and opinions available to an audience. It was never intended as a revenue generating opportunity, more an outlet for my enthusiasm for technology. I like to think I have come a long way with writing, when I look back at the early days of this site, its apparent I started as a complete novice but have evolved over time into a more experienced writer. This experience has become apparent to a number of parties, who have asked me to write for a fee web and printed content.

So where am I heading with this post?

Recent events in my life have made me realise that I’m at a point where I can no longer do both to the capacity I would prefer and so its time to make a decision on which career path I continue down. The stability that my career in I.T has provided has been invaluable but also acts as a method of keeping me in the industry, where as my relatively short writing career has vast opportunities in the near and distant future. My initial thoughts are to slowly decrease my I.T role as I gradually increase the articles I do and forge a solid career in writing.

Have you been in a similar situation? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

[Image courtesy of pmtips.net]

This is an ink post from the Acer 1825 PT using a Pogo Sketech capacitive stylus. Video coming later.

I have previously mentioned that me and Steve ‘Chippy’ Paine are swapping phones for a week, he currently has my HTC Desire and I’m expecting anytime soon now his Sony Ericsson Xperia X10.

Well he has began to post and tweet his thoughts on the Desire already, you can follow them on his Xperia section of Carrypad and follow @chippy for his tweets.

Also if your interested in finding out more about bloggers sharing you can visit the site www.bloggerssharing.com and search twitter for #bloggerssharing

My work life has been very hectic of late and posts have been few and far between. I’m currently in the process of evaluating my working methods and trying integrate my extracurricular activities in a more streamlined way.

There are plenty of posts in me, its just making the time to publish them in a professional and high quality manner.

I’m going to start by writing a post per week and we will see how things progress from there.

For my micro updates then follow me on Twitter; @GuyOnTech and also keep you eyes peeled for my review of the HTC Desire, the fastest smartphone I’ve ever used.

Well for the last couple of days I have been laid up in hospital with a severe throat infection. I’m a lot better now but that’s a different story.

I was lucky enough to have a few of my gadgets brought in for me which included my Asus EEE 1000H but not my gadget bag which contains my Palm Treo Pro. The Palm is perfect for tethering as it uses the Windows Mobile operating system. With it, I simply connect it to my laptop via the USB cable and open the internet connection sharing application which is built into Windows Mobile as standard and the computer is online, no additional software or configuration required.

So I have a laptop, I have a mobile but no cable to connect them. I had a look on the application market but the only real option is an app called ‘Wifi Tether for Root Users’. This turns your Android device into a router using the mobile network as a connection to the internet. It would have been perfect but I unfortunately couldn’t get it to work on my HTC Hero. A little searching later using the Hero’s browser and I stumbled across this forum entry on the applications Google Code pages. Its actually a Sprint Hero user with the same problem but the result was a beta version from the developers which works perfectly and finally allows my laptop to connect via wireless and access the internet!

Speeds from my hospital bed are in the region of 2Mbps which is perfect for catching up on feeds, emails  and the of course this post.

The beta version is available here to download but the usual rules apply, it is beta code and so be wary of that when installing on your device;

http://android-wifi-tether.googlecode.com/files/wireless_tether_1_61-pre1_htc.apk

The only complaint about using this method is of course the battery drain on the Hero, with both Wifi and HSDPA radio under heavy usage I can’t see the phone battery lasting more than 5 hours. I have a phone charger here so its not so much a problem but if you spend a lot of time on the move and require your phone to last I would suggest maybe another method of connectivity.

Also whilst typing out this post, the doctors have told me I can go home today which is great news.

Those who follow me on Twitter will already know that I plan to follow in the footsteps of Kevin C. Tofel from jkontherun and replace my Windows Server 2003 file server at home with Windows Home Server.

I will go a little more in depth into the installation and my impressions in the coming week so check back if you want to follow the action.

Also this post was from my Windows Mobile based Touch Diamond via moBlog. More on that coming soon too.

Yesterday I updated my version of the Chrome Beta to 2.0.172.23 and since  then my blog displays the mobile friendly version.

I will look into it this weekend but I fear the end result maybe disabling the mobile friendly version until I can resolve it permanently.

Sorry for any inconvenience but please bear with me while I work on resolution.

UPDATE: Thanks to Clive the issue has been resolved. It was a coding error which this version of Chrome seemed to be picky about, where as others are not.

Its amazing really as its only a short drive from our home and practically on the doorstep yet it feels like a world apart from the busy towns.

Things have changed a lot here in recent months, all executive villas now receive WiFi, albeit not at the fastest connections speeds but adequate for firing a blog or two off and reading my many feeds;

Also the speed has been fairly consistent, unlike the speeds the jkontherun guys have experienced at the recent mobilize conference. I would try the mobile data speeds but there isn’t much point as currently my T-Mobile signal only gives GPRS data connectivity.

What has been a real winner here is the newest addition to my gadget bag, my Asus EEE 1000H.

It added very little size or weight to the luggage which was already greatly increased due to all the many additional baby items needed on this sort of trip and has been used more by my wife than it has by me.

What is impressive about the Asus is the power adaptor, I know on my brothers original EEE 701 the power brick is included on the actual plug and even though with this incarnation of the EEE range, the brick is a separate entity on the power cable, its still tiny compared with many laptop power adaptors. Here’s a comparison of my MDA Compact IV, the EEE adaptor and Simon’s normal laptop adaptor;                                               

Another bonus for me is the SD card slot of the EEE, my Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ3 takes SDHC cards so getting photos off the card is a very simple cableless operation, which also means less clutter for the gadget bag.

Those fathers out there will know and appreciate that many hours can be passed whilst feeding those little ones. In a bid to gain back some of that feeding time I’ve found that I can bottle feed my daughter and flick through the 100+ feeds I like to keep track of.

Whilst usually I would use my new HTC Touch Diamond with Opera Mobile, Google Reader Mobile and simple finger screen flicks, on a laptop this can be slightly more tricky. What with touch pads, mouse clicks and the inability to move very far its a blessing that Google Reader has keyboard shortcuts.

Some of your eagle eyed readers may be wondering a few things;

1) Why is there a red elastic ban on my daughters bottle

2) What was the picture taken with

Well the answer to no.1 is; the elastic band marks this particular bottle as being Lily’s water bottle and more on no.2 coming very soon.