I’m doing some work for Jawbone and they have just released there bluetooth mobile headset in Europe yesterday. But I have so say its quite an amazing bit of kit! The noise suppression on it is something else! They have a demo on their website of what a call is like and it really is like that. I was talking to a mate in my house then walked outside into my car and then down a busy local motorway and I asked him if he could hear my car and he still thought I was in my house! anyway kinda cool, anyway check it out…

Escape have announced a 100% free course funded by SkillSet. Not only that you get paid UK minimum wage through the period of the training, you get 4 weeks work experience at a post production house (oh and you get paid for that as well)! I think you’d be stupid not to apply. The course runs from 11th August for 18 weeks and then the 4 weeks in industry. More info can be found on Escapes website.

They have also just launched a competition to win £10k worth of free 3D/CG VFX training! Its in conjunction with Channel 4 and you can find more information at the 4Talent website. All you have to do is write in 50 words or less why you love 3D animation, what you aspire to do in the future and how the Escape course will help you get there!

More info http://www.artlebedev.com/everything/optimus/

I copied and pasted this from their site…

“Escape Studios are offering you a chance to win a course.

The winner, who will be announced in one week’s time on Monday 9th July,
will be offered the course of their choice at Escape Studios absolutley free!

That doesn’t leave much time so if you’re interested you’d better get a move on!

To enter the prize draw all you need to do is fill out the questionnaire that can be found on the
following link.”

http://www.escapestudios.com/news_07.php?id=36

Now a competition has been setup by Weird to find the best snapshots. Highlights include a guy taking a leak, the actual Google Van taking the 360-degree photos but my all time favoruite a photo of 524 Haight St San Francisco, and the google van exceeding the speed limit! Classic!

I haven’t found any UK street photos but guessing this may not happen for a while due to tighter controls on privacy.

We received bad news last week. Tom Donnelly, the trainer that taught myself and Mike snowboard instructing died during the week, the day after his fathers funeral. He was the BASI examiner who I was training with most of the season in Wanaka.

I never forget when during heli-boarding in the Harris mountains in south island. The guide (a skier!) said that a ledge was fine to jump off, he ollied off it and found it to be a huge jump. It ended in his puffer jacked de-puffering, the cracking of his mobile and the destruction of an iPod… he always knew where the best hits were at TC, even down runs you’d been down 1000s times before and never even noticed!

He asked not to send flowers but to give money to his favourite charity (Angela Donnelly, 13 Harberton Park, Belfast, BT9 6TW).

You’ll be missed man!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkIj1lyNysU

Off to snow planet tonight for some snowboarding. Its open 365 days a year. I asked them how many people came on christmas day and they said it was totally packed out! Bizzare!

Oh in tech news McAfee FAILED the 100% virus scan at VB. Virus Bulletin tests a load of virus scanners for “100% virus detection”. They failed to detect viruses running on Vista, ironically enough Microsofts’ OneCare also failed.

The first is the actual 60second film and I remember having about 3 hours of other footage which made the thing make sense but we strangly couldn’t fit it into 60secs. The second is a test reel we did to try out a couple of locations and how we were going to do things…

Well you have to start somewhere!

Lost Identity

Lost Identity Test Reel

http://www.google.com/tisp/

Yup we’ve had a Lahar… (lar-har). Yes everyone one was going on about the Lahar involving one of the New Zealand volcanoes… had no idea what on earth they were going on about. As it was involving a volcano I thought it would be a good idea to find out :). Quick search on wikipedia sorted everything out. Its basically a lake a the top of a volcano that has burst its banks and a load of mud and water poring down.

The NZ government have set up quite a neat system for alerting everyone so that s cool… no probs BUT I get a call from my parents. They are travelling down to Wellington on the train and the track had been washed away. Luckily they had stopped for lunch (the train stops for an hour or so, so everyone can get off and have lunch!!! how bizarre!) anyway they had to go the rest of the way by coach.

Should be getting the video of me jumping off the SkyTower next week…

More info: NZ Herald

On wednesday morning an email is sent to everyone in the office… “As you are all free this evening we have booked 10 tickets for the skyJump at 5pm, it will be followed by a meal in devonport”. The office goes quiet… you can hear the jaws dropping from all around… For those that do not know the SkyJump is a virtually freefall jump from a tower no just a smallish tower… its the biggest tower in the Southern hemisphere… nice!… ok, you don’t jump from right at the top but at 640ft tall and going 85kph its still very, very high and fast… and i’ve just received an email saying that i’m going to do it… NO WAY!!! … oh and the added pressure being that they have paid for it so you have to do it.. the panic starts the set in. I’ve seen people doing it, hanging in no mans land waiting to fall… I start to go into a strange laughing hysteria which lasts most of the day… unfortunately my window looks out at the sky tower it dominates the Auckland skyline.

At 4.35pm we get in the taxi and leave the office… 4.50pm we get to the sky tower looking directly up the tower… it looks big… very big.

We get our harnesses and jump suits, I ask for another harness but they says its pointless as your only attached to one cable… nice… I ask how long the person has been working for SkyJump… the reply “one week”, right. Confidence high!… not. Were taken up to the lift and we go up the sky tower. The lift is a glass lift, you can look down and see the bottom of the lift shaft and look directly out of the window to the world. I keep my eyes firmly on the back wall of the lift, not looking out. We get to the top and one by one go onto the little ledge. I have this recollection of the guy saying “Are you ready?” to which I reply “Yes” and wonder why on earth I’ve said yes? because agreeing to a stranger to push you off a building at 192 metres just sounds stupid! and well … unwise! Anyway I didn’t have much time to think about it because he shouts out 3 … 2 … 1 … and i’m gone…

Note the clenched fist! the second photo isn’t great because of the strong lights from the base of the building and night fast approaching. You get a better idea from the video on the website.

http://www.boreme.com/boreme/funny-2006/james-blunt-p1.php

Yes, there was an earthquake on wednesday just north of auckland out to sea… and where was I??? just north of auckland snowboarding at snow planet. Did I feel anything?! .. nothing. I was talking to a local who has lived in auckland for 20 years and has never felt an earthquake, and i’m in snow planet falling over and don’t notice a thing. Then at 11pm there was another but smaller and I didn’t feel that either. Oh well… maybe next time.

Generally Auckland isn’t geared up as much as Wellington for earthquakes. While I was down in Wellington a couple of weeks ago I took some photos of equipment etc in the buildings in Wellington.

On the floor of the building I was working there was a civil defence cabinet:

On top were “Readi-safe survival packs for emergency relief and natural disasters”. The packs can sustain Five adults or Two adults and three children for up to three days. I didn’t check to see what was in the cabinet but the “perishables” replacement list on the front had: Batteries (AA Radio) x3, Batteries Torch (D Cell) x8, Readi-safe survival packs x2, Tampons 1box, Light Sticks 12 hour 15, Water purification tablets 1 box of 50. All interesting stuff

And then downstairs on the ground floor was the “Orange Box”, a safe room incase of disaster… basically an empty room from what I can see

Private Importers Custom Charges

Ok books are free… yupiee! but look at the other stuff! Golf balls are free, golf clubs are free yet golf bags are $7? “Linen - table cloths” are $5 yet “Linen - Kitchen Linen” is free?? and what about the lego?! $7 for lego bricks?!!! Bizarre!

http://www.gtdev.net/crimbo2006.mp4 - Mpeg4

http://www.gtdev.net/crimbo2006.wmv - Windows Media Player

Its only a very rough cut, and it goes on a bit. But you get the general idea. For all those who want to know I ran the footage through a de-interlacer and then colour corrected it to give it a little bit of a filmatic look.

I posted it earlier this year to my blog but definatly needed a bit of work… so here it is:

Peer Reviews

Peer review — an activity in which people other than the author of a software deliverable examine it for defects and improvement opportunities.

Its one of the most powerful software quality tools available. Peer review methods include inspections, walkthroughs, peer desk checks, and other similar activities. After experiencing the benefits of peer reviews for nearly ten years, I would think twice if I had to work in a team that did not perform them. That said peer reviews can really benefit a project especially in this age of “agile programming”. BUT and it’s a big but. If they are not run correctly they can go spectacularly wrong! And really damage a development project.

Why do a peer review?

The projects that I have found peer reviews to be the most valuable have been the projects that have little documentation, no really formalised development process, or are iterative projects where the documentation never keeps up with the actual project or isn’t in depth enough. This is because the peer review acts as:

- Training

- Risk management

- Playing to everyone’s strengths

- Quality Assurance

- …

But if that hasn’t turned you around just take a look at the statistics:

.. software testing alone has limited effectiveness — the average defect detection rate is only 25 percent for unit testing, 35 percent for function testing, and 45 percent for integration testing. In contrast, the average effectiveness of design and code inspections are 55 and 60 percent. Case studies of review results have been impressive:

• In a software-maintenance organization, 55 percent of one-line maintenance changes were in error before code reviews were introduced. After reviews were introduced, only 2 percent of the changes were in error. When all changes were considered, 95 percent were correct the first time after reviews were introduced. Before reviews were introduced, under 20 percent were correct the first time.
• In a group of 11 programs developed by the same group of people, the first 5 were developed without reviews. The remaining 6 were developed with reviews. After all the programs were released to production, the first 5 had an average of 4.5 errors per 100 lines of code. The 6 that had been inspected had an average of only 0.82 errors per 100. Reviews cut the errors by over 80 percent.
• The Aetna Insurance Company found 82 percent of the errors in a program by using inspections and was able to decrease its development resources by 20 percent.
• IBM’s 500,000 line Orbit project used 11 levels of inspections. It was delivered early and had only about 1 percent of the errors that would normally be expected.
• A study of an organization at AT&T with more than 200 people reported a 14 percent increase in productivity and a 90 percent decrease in defects after the organization introduced reviews.
• Jet Propulsion Laboratories estimates that it saves about $25,000 per inspection by finding and fixing defects at an early stage.

Code Complete
By Steve McConnell

[ Steves book Code Complete is HIGHLY recommended to anyone who codes, full over very useful information ]

Training

As you are going through the review the junior developers are learning from the developers with decades of experience. Introducing the junior developers to advanced concepts that they wouldn’t usually have access too, therefore bringing there level of coding up.

Risk Management

Problems and design flaws come up before its too late. And as a manager you get a chance to see how developers who work for you think.

The risk of the key people who wrote the code going on holiday / leaving taking the knowledge of how the system works is reduced because everyone knows about the code and how it works, or at least knows where to start if something goes wrong.

This of course is not as good as a documented system, but I’ve found it useful when management can’t see the reasons for spending time on documentation, especially if its out of date the moment its written.

Playing to everyone’s strengths

There maybe people on the team that have strengths in different areas of development; Security, databases/SQL, OO patterns etc. This then allows to let them have their say in to improve the code and also pass the knowledge to other developers.

Quality Assurance

The obvious quality assurance that will come from developers peer reviewing the code. More manageable code, more readable, less bugs!

But there are many others, giving the developers the chance to talk about their code in front of their peers to build up their “public speaking” experience, empowering the developer by giving them responsibility for identifying specific code issues, the list goes on…

How to run a peer review:

The reviews I’ve had in the past we have given specific roles to people in each review meeting:

Moderator - This really needs to be someone “grownup”. One person with authority who isn’t going to be commenting directly on the code. A referee who has the power and shut someone down if need be. Developers take code personally and it’s important to remember that! The moderators prime role is to keep the review moving fast enough to be productive but slow enough to find the most issues. They would also distribute design or code to be reviewed and an inspection checklist, setting up the meeting, reporting inspection results and following up on any actions.

Author - Quite obvious, the coder of the code

Reviewer - Anyone who has an interest in the code. The reviewers take a look at the code before the meeting and discuss any bugs or questions during the meeting.

Documenter - This could be the role of the moderator if the group is small, but should not be the role of the author or reviewer (as its got a bit of a conflict of interest). The documenters role is to record the bugs/issues and the assignments of any actions during the review meeting.

Management - No way, this is purely a technical review so the focus is technical not political. Managers could receive a review report (list of actions from the review or notes on the checklist) very simple report which can be written during the meeting. But this shouldn’t be used to evaluate developers in any way.

REVIEW RULES:
I’ve followed a number of rules in the past for the review:

- To have checklists which focus the reviewers attention on areas which have been problems in the past.

- The emphasis is on bug/issue detection, not correction.

- Reviewers prepare for the review meeting beforehand and arrive with a list of issues/questions.

- Information is passed on to the next review to improve future reviews (eg: adding/removing questions on the checklist)

- The meeting is for technical people and not management.

- Under no circumstances should the review results be used for performance appraisals, its just like killing the goose that lays the golden eggs. It doesn’t make sense anyway performance should be based on final products/projects and not work that isn’t finished. Another reason why there is no management. It just means everyone is a lot more free to say what they think.

- The meeting should have a minimum 3 people and maximum of 6 people; any bigger and the review gets too big to manage and ends up becoming a hindrance.

GENERAL PROCEDURE FOR THE REVIEW:

In the past I’ve broken reviews down into 9 possible stages but its really up to you how things work. Have a play at different ways of running the review until it fits in to your organisation:

Planning: The author gives the code/design to the moderator. The moderator then distributes the code to the people they think should review it including the checklist which focuses the attention of the reviewers so they don’t waste too much time looking at the code. Usually the developer has developed using the checklist which highlights the key corporate issues.

Overview (optional): The overview is used only if the reviewers aren’t familiar with the project. The author will spend some time just describing the project. This is generally a dangerous practice because the reviewer could end up glossing over issues. The design or code should speak for itself, the overview shouldn’t speak for it as that’s what the whole exercise is all about.

Preparation: Each reviewer works alone to become familiar with the design or code. The reviewers use the checklist. For every 700 lines of code the reviewer “should” spend about an hour but its really down to what works best in the organisation.

If you provide printouts for the review meeting make sure they have page numbers and line numbers.

One company I worked for we even had an additional step during preparation. That was to check the code with a static code analysis tool (PMD for Java development) to reduce the meeting time down by pre-catching issues. Also the static code checkers tend to catch a lot of important issues that many developers miss.

Review Meeting: To start the review meeting usually the author reads the code/design. They will explain all the logic including each branch loop and each logical structure/object etc… while they are talking the documenter records any issues/bugs but all discussion of the issue stops as soon as they have been recognised. The documenter also notes the type and severity of the issue and the review moves on.

As I said above the meeting needs to keep moving otherwise you’ll loose concentration. So, depending on the project this shouldn’t take longer than 30mins/1hr. Everything needs to stay focused, I worked in one place where the group was banned from even discussing weather an issue really was an issue because they assumed that if one person is confused enough to think an issue existed then it was an issue and so the design, code or documentation needs to be clarified.

Another good idea is to do a few peer reviews at the same time as long as people are focused. Sometimes this isn’t always possible but having three or four people go the same day can really take the edge off. If you put your most good natured, thick skinned, or well liked developer first you can set the tone of academic civility that will keep everything smooth and help eliminate passionate discussions between developers.

Developers will find many faults and list them gleefully, they feel they have to but its up to the moderator to keep everything in task. I also find that people fresh out of uni or college are very self confident and ready to argue. They also take things a lot more personally and you can end up in long drawn out discussions.

Inspection report: The moderator creates a review report usually during the meeting that lists each defect including its type and severity. At this point you could just put them straight into a issue tracking system while in the meeting as this will save time, and the report can be a list of these bugs. This therefore helps to ensure all the issues will be corrected and can also be used to develop the checklist which will in time highlight problems in coding etc… it can also give a good indication on the number of issues/bugs found. From the report you can find out the time spent on the issues over time which can be used to prove the usefulness of a review by giving hard data otherwise you are just left with saying reviews are good … because they are! This is also a good guide to see if they are working or not.

Rework: The moderator assigns issues/actions out to someone (usually the author unless its a larger project) for repair and the assignee resolves each defect on the list.

Follow-up: The moderator just checks to see how the issues/actions are being carried out.

Third-hour meeting: The peer review or review is just that… a review so the people in the meeting shouldn’t be discussing solutions, but of course you will, so its better for those who wish to discuss different solutions to do this at another meeting either straight after the review meeting or at another time, this also allows it to be a bit less formal and get more people involved and also doesn’t tie up other peoples time who are not interested.

Fine-tuning the review: Hopefully over time the checklist will become more refined and things will be added and things will be dropped. You should find the same common issues appearing on the checklist and you can work on refining how you work to fix them.

The Checklist:
As mentioned above this is used to track common issues so the developers use this as a guide when developing. It shouldn’t exceed more than one sheet of paper, an example of one is below, based on a PHP project:

Peer Review Checklist
1. Are the standard headers / footers being used?
2. Are functional javaDoc / phpDoc comments being used? And exports are correct
3. Is there enough documentation to work out what the system is doing?
4. Is there enough error handling relating to the importance of the work?
5. Does the code follow naming conventions?
6. Does the code follow formatting conventions (bracketing)?
7. No Magic Numbers/Text
8. Any duplicate code or code which could be marked as reusable in the repository?.
9. Removal of code which is not being used.

An Example of the Review Notes:
This was of a unified login system. A simple system to allow a single point sign-on to login to an ASP and PHP based system:

Peer Review
23/03/2004

Uni-Login Script Review

Moderator: Mr X
Author: James X (PHP), Peter Y (Architect)
Reviewer: Alistair X (Senior DB)
Reviewer: John X (Java Developer)
Reviewer: Simon X (Technical Documentation)
Reviewer: Tim X

Reviewers: Please make sure you prepare for the review meeting beforehand so you can become familiar with the code and arrive with a list of issues/questions and make use of the Checklist below.
Author: In the meeting you will be expected to read the code/design and explain all logic including each branch loop and each logical structure/object.

Code to be Reviewed:
http://internal-cvs/cvs/cvs.php/Common_SQL/LMSUniLogout.asp
http://internal-cvs/cvs/cvs.php/Common_SQL/LMSUnifier.asp
http://internal-cvs/cvs/cvs.php/Common_SQL/LMSkeepalive.asp
http://internal-cvs/cvs/cvs.php/forumsUnifier.php
http://internal-cvs/cvs/cvs.php/account.php

Related Files:
S:\web-sw development\Documentation\Code Reviews\Code Review Checklist.doc
S:\web-sw development\Documentation\Code Reviews\Uni-Login Script.doc

Results From Review:
ForumsUnifier.asp
ACTION: Missing Header/Footer
ACTION: ASP Comments (including related files) missing
ACTION: Use include to lmskeepalive.asp rather than static code

LMSUniLogout.asp
ACTION: Header/Footer missing
ACTION: Point to gatekeeper (update link)

ForumsUnifier.php
ACTION: Header/Footer Missing
ACTION: Not enough documentation
ACTION: Remove code which is not being used (Line 15,17,34 to 40, 41)

account.php
ACTION: Header/Footer needs to be updated with latest versions, with more information
ACTION: Line 247: Needs a header refresh to index.php and remove acountDetails() reference and function.
ACTION: PHPDoc comments missing.
ACTION: Line 97 – 99, 229 comment removal
ACTION: Lines: 127 to 171; Remove echo’s and drop out of php instead.
ACTION: Line 113; Remove magic numbers
ACTION: Line 114, 113; Remove rand functionality
ACTION: Line 212; replace “relevant” with “Company Systems”
ACTION: Line 218; change to “Back to website.com”

CheckList Items Added:
9. Any duplicate code should be put in a separate module for reusability.
10. Removal of code which is not being used.

Duration: 1 Hour

====

Yes, the phantom of the opera! .. it was either that or a french maid!

Dean went as “Chile” and Joy the new zealander went as scotland:

Yannis won the costume competition, I don’t know what country he came as… I don’t think anyone cared, he came as a maid. The funniest moment was when we all had to walk from the hotel to darling harbour to pick up the boat. The looks from the Japaneese tourists was priceless! also the wolf whisles and the bemused faces of people as he walked by:

Other photos:

Demiti works for GT in Jakarta, Indonesia and it was his first time outside the country… and the first time he has seen how we party… never seen a christmas cracker before… generally in shock most of the night but he did get into the swing of things. He managed to borrow a couple of elements of costumes from different people to make his own costume:

Picture from the boat looking back at Sydney:

My Crimbo Hamper:

Video to come!

BBQ at St Kilda:

It is interesting that this week Google Execs this week told their developers to stop creating so many applications and now look at adding features to the existing applications. Also to concentrate on getting them more integrated. It is definatly needed. Yes the spreadsheets app is good but I wouldn’t use it. I think if Google should go towards the idea of ThinkFreeOfice, offer a large amount of space to save files I think they can really get into the thin client integrated enterprise space. Create and edit any of your files in word, excel, powerpoint, calendar and email and allow them to be shared to whoever you want at any time. Powerful! Oh and if there was a calender integration for Outlook, i’d use it! …

Windows Vista RC2 has been released for anyone to download it! It will be the last release before it goes into production. Here are some screenshots of Vista. Its nice… very Mac like

Firefox 2 RC2 has been released - quite a few new features but its more stable, i’m hoping they have fixed the memory leaks which seem to plage me!

“The Father turns 60. His family, which is a big one of the kind, gathers to celebrate him on a castle. Everybody likes and respects the father deeply…or do they? The Youngest Son is trying to live up to The Father’s expectations. He is running a grill-bar in a dirty part of Copenhagen. The oldest son runs a restaurant in France, while the sister is a lawyer. The older sister has recently committed suicide and the father asks the oldest son to say a few words about her, because he is afraid he will break into tears if he does it himself. The oldest son agrees without arguments. Actually he has already written two speeches. A yellow and a green one. By the table, he asks the father to pick a speech. The father chooses green. The oldest son announces that this is the Speech of Truth. Everybody laughs, except for the father who gets a nervous look on his face. For he knows that the oldest son is about to reveal the secret of why the oldest sister killed herself.”

It was quite a good show, I especially liked how they represented everyone getting ready for bed. They had one bed centre stage which was used by all the characters in the scene at the same time but acting out their own little scenes totally independantly… worked really well

On the way back on the plane the cabin crew announced that the film was about to start and I overheard a passenger saying that it was a really good film, so I thought I should tune in… The film is called Kenny and was about Kenny Smyth who delivers pora-loos. He’s ignored and unapprciated, but its hilarious! … It was really bizare! on a plane at 30,000 feet, trying not to laugh. In the end I just gave up trying to hold it in, the rest of the aircraft was laughing so much! Toilet humour at its best! From what is says on IMDB it doesn’t have any release dates outside Oz at the moment, but I hope it does! Its the second film in as many months that has come out of Australia that has been great.

Homemade flight sim, I want one!

Its amazing what you find on the internet. But on the 11th January 1797 at the Old Bailey. Look who got arrested for stealing 50 pieces of wood pipe and a wooden boat! In the end jury found him guilty and confined to “The House of Correction” and fined a shilling. I wonder if he is any relation?

On the same day in another case, James Waring (Aged 16.), William Green (Aged 13.) and John Milton (Aged 14.) were all found guilty for:

“burglariously breaking and entering the dwelling-house of John Printon , about the hour of six in the night of the 5th of December, and feloniously stealing a black silk cloak, value 26s. six yards of muslin, value 18s. and a muslin cap, value 1s. the property of the said John ;”

They were all sentenced to death… over 200 years ago.

It all started one dusty day in April. I embarked on a research project to find the best laptop to do digital compositing and digital effects. It needed to be a laptop because I knew I would be travelling quite a bit over the next year or so and I wanted to had a bit of a beast to process all the high-end graphics. The first decision was do I go with a Mac or a PC… in the end I decided to stay with a PC because I knew how to use it ok probably not the best argument but hey!

The Research:
My list of requirements was this:

• The system needed to run Shake for Linux; this is a digital compositing package which I will be using the most
• The system needed to run Maya for Windows
• The system also needs to run Adobe products ok enough to do work on them… so After Effects, Premiere etc
• Built in microphone for conference calls
• Bluetooth for linking to my mobile

The main thing which I knew was going to be an issue was the graphics card. After looking at the technical specs your basically locked down to an Nvidia Quadro graphics card, there was basically an alienware MJ-12 or a… alienware MJ-12 the only problem being that it didn’t have built in bluetooth, but hey I can live without that.

End of May: The purchasing:
I knew that I was going to Australia at the end of may, so I looked into seeing if it was cheaper to buy the laptop in australia or the UK, because alienware have a website in the UK and Oz. Now the Australian website didn’t sell the MJ-12 laptop so I went onto the UK website and changed the delivery address to australia. When you do this all the prices change to dollars and it became VAT free. I checked the import duty to Australia and it was 10% so I made 7.5% saving already, and also the price was a lot lower so I made in all an £800 saving. Some eStores have difference prices for products depending on where they are being shipped, so if they want to get into a market they drop the price.

I mulled over if I should get it went back to the site and suddenly when I changed the delivery address to Australia it changed the price to… wait for it… Euros!?!?!?!! ok it was working with dollars the week before I’ll ring them up. So I rang them up basically saying I can pay either in Oz dollars or pounds but not euros otherwise I would get charged 2.5% in bank charges. First of all I was fobbed off that there was a problem with the website. I rang back a couple of days later and still a problem. So I ask them if I could buy it over the phone and pay using pounds, they said they would find out and ring me back… they didn’t … so I ring again and again each time being old something or other, in the end I gave up and ordered it on the internet using Euros… I rang my bank just to say that a large transaction was going through and it was a mail order which wasn’t going to my house in the UK. They said that would be fine and they would authorise it. Just to be on the safe side I ring them up a again and ask them if there was anything on the system and they confirmed that I had asked for this transaction to be accepted.. cool!

So on 28th May 2006 I purchased the laptop, knowing I was going to be in australia in a couple of days time for just over a month, plenty of time to ship the laptop.

On the 30th May I get an email asking me to ring up and confirm my order, which I do and they say that they have processed the order and everything if fine, I ask when it will be dispatched and they say its about 7 days sometimes less.

31st June:
I get and email saying:

“The bank will not allow us to perform an AVS check (a name and address check on the card). The country you are resident in does not allow us to perform an AVS check as either they are a data protected country or will not check the details over the phone for security reasons”…

Interesting! its a UK bank card… all banks that I know use AVS and the country is the UK?!?

1st June @ 15:53 (isn’t skype great!):
I give them a ring and ask them whats going on. They say I need to photocopy both sides of my card, and a card statement or an offical letter from the bank. I said it was a british card and its been authorised and I can’t see how it could have POSSIBLY been declined. Me now being in australia, I just didn’t think about bringing a bank statement with me, silly me! So they want a photocopy of my card! BOTH sides after thinking I decide that they aren’t getting it… I can’t even get to my bank statements anyway. So I know i’ll ring the bank just to check whats happened. I ring the bank.. they reply saying that no transactions have been declined at all. In fact no transactions from anyone in the last couple of days declined or otherwise. Right… so what your saying is Alienware isn’t telling the whole truth…

3rd June @ 10am:
I ring alienware and manage to persuade the person on the end of the phone that they can charge my card with the delivery address details and it will work FINE!… and after a bit of persuading they do it… and guess what … it WORKS!

I took a look at the alienware website and they have a nice little page which tracks your order status. It says on Pre-processing.. it hasn’t even got to the card charged bit, I wait a day or two because it may just update at night or something so it could just be out of date. I say I need it quite urgently and they put the order on priority.

5th June:
Its still on the pre-process stage. I ring them up to be told that the status page is not linked to there system and has to be updated manually and sometimes this doesn’t happen… GREAT! But you must be nearly done because I was told it would take 7 days to dispatch? and I am told its been delayed because of missing parts. Great only 2 weeks before I leave Oz!

13th June:
For the last couple of days it says its been saying that payment has been received but not a lot else. I give them another ring to check the progress and they say they have received the parts today and they are building now and it should be dispatched on friday! yupiee!!

16th June:
I ring up to check the progress of the order and its been shipped! I ask for shipping ref and it was on DHL Express so I would get it on wednesday for my flight on the friday to New Zealand for a filming project that I needed the laptop for.

I track the shipping online and see it going from Dublin to London to Sydney…

19th June (5days before flight):
I check the DHL website and it says “Clearance delay” … clearance delay? its in sydney but its stuck in customs. I ring up DHL and ask what that means and they say that its been delayed because it has missing paperwork! ARGH! and could take up to 3 days to be approved. ARGH! I ring up alienware, they ring DHL and fax over the paperwork.

20th June:
I go to the depot and pick up the laptop as I need time to install things on it before I fly to New Zealand. Yupiee!!! I have a laptop!

I install things on it…

I start doing some graphics work and try and increase the resolution… strange I can’t get higher than 1440×900. But the laptop I ordered was 1920×1200… they have installed the wrong screen! ARGH! no built in camera, no Wide UXGA 17″ screen.

22nd June:
I can’t bare to ring Alienware so I send them an email saying about the problem with the laptop… I get no reply. But I need to use the laptop but I make sure I keep the plastic over the screen.

8th July:
I send them another email… still no reply…

12th July:
I ring them and ask what I need to do, they ask me if I notified them… which I did and after AN AGE they find my emails…

After communicating with them some more I they ask if I want a refund as its cheaper than sending the laptop back to them. Which I would love to do but unfortunately I need the higher res and better screen so that I can see the colours better for my digital comp / graphics work. The screen and the graphics card was the only reason I got the laptop in the first place. So I suggest to them that I send it to Australia as they are based out there… Each time they say they will call me back .. each time they do not.

One point I ring them to be told by a sales or receptionist that they are all in a meeting… ALL of customer service!!! how bizarre!

…

29th August:
I ring them and I get someone who says that someone else is now dealing with my call, but he’s unavailable but will call me back by the end of the day. So I ask her to DEFINATLY send me an email by the end of the day or ring me even if nothing happens. You never guess what happens… yup… nothing… I even say that I will be contacting Trading Standards on wednesday next week if this hasn’t been cleared up.

3 months and 3 days since I attempted to purchased the laptop online … and counting.

Ok this is cool, its visual look of flight paths going over the US, using US flight data over a 24hr period.. over 19000 planes in the air at a peak time!!

I’ve re-found pimpthatsnack.com a great website with recipes’ for “pimping up your snack” … I think a mate created a huge cookie using a recipe on the site. I am going to make the kitkat bar! so watch out supermarket, here I come!!

Synthetica is a great easy to use look and feel framework for Java; AT LAST java doesn’t look square, blocky and horrible.

They specialise in contact centre systems and services, but they go a couple of steps further than a lot of the major contact centre systems (Oracle, Siebel, Peoplesoft, SAP). Their product can fit 100% into a companies business processes. It has a SOA based architecture to allow web, SMS, Interactive TV etc etc interfaces. The client I will be working with in Auckland is a very company looking at making all their services self service. I’m quite looking forward to it. I’m off to Melbourne later in the month to meet the team over there and do a spot of training on there contact centre system GTx.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNF_P281Uu4
Found this cool vid on youtube.com. This guy gets around the world showing off his expert dancing skills!

http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/315702
Online game. Its quite easy until you get to level 16 & 23 which I got stuck on for a bit… think its already done the rounds but its quite fun.

http://poignantguide.net/ruby/
This is a great site if you want to learn Ruby, you can even download a ruby virtual machine from VMTN so your up and developing in… well the amount of time it takes to download! ooh how I love VMs

http://www.google.com/gmm/tour.html
You can now get Google Maps on ya mobile, you can plot a route and even see it via satelite too. I used to use wap to get rail times quite a bit. Every now and again I always wanted to get maps on my phone too, but now you can

Finally I give an award to the most “inventive” post to the iPod Shuffle story:

“Hi. The iPod was shorted out by a cabal of Jewish engineers who perfected the science of invisibility and secretly control the entire universe including Burger King, but not McDonalds. They call to me hypersonically from the little holes in the electrical sockets telling me to produce movies about phony messiahs who didn’t really exist. The dead iPod is NOT an example of the Holocaust although their are millions of dead iPods which have been burried in mass graves in Croatia. Hi, sugartits. ”

Truely bizare!

Saturday night in Ohakune

Well that was a week ago and i’m still in Auckland, really good snow! and its still snowing!! It takes about 3hrs to drive to Ohakune and then about 30mins driving up the mountain… or should I say volcano… BUT it only went active about 10 years ago and wipped the lift system and mountain cafes off the face of the mountain one… but you try not to think about that

I’ve now got a flat on the docks right next to the centre of Auckland. It takes about 10mins to walk into the centre of town. Out here its so cheap, there is no council tax and the top rate of tax is 33% and no national insurance so its basically another 10% cheaper. You do have to pay doctors fees which is about £10 per visit but you can get insurance for aroun