July 2011 was a rather frustrating month for my Mac. As is my preference, I backed-up all data from the machine before wiping it clean, ready for its upgrade from Snow Leopard to the radically different Lion.
I've been a devotee to OS X since 2001's 10.1 release, and have always regarded it as by far the best operating system on the planet, mostly because of the way it slips quietly into the background, allowing me to focus on my work. There were very few distractions or interventions from the OS itself, certainly in comparison to the Windows machines I was still (at the time) forced to use at work.
So in spite of some worrying comments I'd read about Lion's attempt to ape iOS, as a self-confessed fanboy I downloaded 10.7, popped it onto a USB stick and proceeded to do a clean installation, expecting never to look back as I had not once needed to in the 10 years preceding. Sadly, within two weeks I found myself going through the same process all over again, backing-up and wiping my Mac, in order to revert back to Snow Leopard, the OS that my Mac shipped with.
I'm no luddite when it comes to technology, and especially anything Apple related, so what went wrong? Well, for the first time since my 'switch' from PCs to Macs, I felt Apple had got something horribly wrong. My Mac felt sluggish (yes, even after Spotlight had done its thing), the CPU fans were kicking-in more regularly and I somehow felt less productive. Suddenly I was 'aware' of my Mac - it was distracting me. On top of that, my initial reaction to Apple's rather clumsy attempt to 'iOSify' OS X was entirely negative. Was this really a full release of OS X? Are they sure it's not a beta? Granted Apple is now selling many more iOS devices than Macs, but suddenly it felt as though Apple were on a mission to undermine the essence of its desktop operating system. Lion felt like the result of a train crash between iOS and OS X, counter-intuitive, slowing my workflow.
It wasn't all negative. I liked the removal of the coloured lozenges used for buttons and scroll bars, and full-screen mode, such a simple thing, which seems to me a great way to promote a return to single-tasking, app multitasking having done so much damage to my ability to concentrate on my work. But really, for me, the dislikes were so far outweighing the likes that I felt no alternative but to revert back to Snow Leopard. Doing so brought instantaneous relief, almost like going home again, and my Mac cooled down and began to zip along once again. I really didn't miss anything about Lion throughout its year of tenure, in spite of all the tantalising articles and the inevitable subconscious peer pressure from the Mac faithful.
So now it's July 2012, and a new cat has prowled onto the scene. I liked what I was reading about the changes and refinements, and I'll admit the ludicrously low price gave me that 'what the hell, might as well try it' feeling. I also decided to take the plunge and invest in a Magic Trackpad at the same time, having heard all the positive comments about the gestures. And so the backup was made, Mountain Lion was downloaded and yesterday my Mac was wiped-clean ready for the big installation. This time I wanted to like what I found on the far side, and I'm delighted to say that - 24 hours later - I do.
It does seem to me that Apple is openly experimenting with its loyal Mac user base, but as John Siracusa points out in his excellent and exhaustive review of the new OS, traditional Mac users are unlikely to be the primary focus of the big Apple now that vastly more of its profits are coming from the millions of iPhones and iPads it's selling every quarter. The reality is that the way we interface with our computing devices is changing, evolving. Touch screens are becoming more common in our lives and the way applications behave and interoperate is being increasingly driven by the cloud services we are using more every day. iCloud is by no means the first, but the point is the integration at the OS level, impacting decades of file system traditions. My feeling is that we're in the middle of a migration from the desktop of old to the infinitely versatile computing device of the future, and right now OS X has a foot in both camps. The old guard lovers of the traditional desktop OS may have to accept that Snow Leopard was the last of the line, from Apple at least.
These matters of taste aside, Mountain Lion feels ready for prime time to me, in a way Lion immediately did not, almost from the moment I began using it. My Mac seems happy running it (even at the dot zero release), and the extras make it a more compelling upgrade for me. I also have to say that as long as my fingers are cool enough to use it (it's been extremely hot in the author's study this week), the Magic Trackpad is quickly becoming my new pointing device of choice and I love the gestures. Tip for those new to these things; don't rest your wrist on the table but try to float your arm - I think it's a healthier way to use the thing.
So, to wrap this up, Mountain Lion is, I would say, worthy of your attention if - like me - you balked and rejected Lion. You won't like everything about it if you're a long-time Mac user, but the irritating elements are (fairly) easy to ignore. For me, the pros now outweigh the cons, so I think I'll be sticking with this particular cat.
What do you think? Are you a desktop traditionalist still clinging to Snow Leopard, or a diehard fanboy who'll lap-up anything Cupertino waves in front of you? Whatever your leaning, it would be interesting to hear your thoughts.
Sunday 29 July 2012
Monday 30 April 2012
Making a career move
If you've arrived here via the @AvayaData twitter account, welcome! :-)
After lengthy deliberation, last week I made the decision to leave my current employer (Avaya) and take-up an opportunity to evolve my career in a new direction.
This wasn't an easy decision to make. My 'serious' career began back in 1994 when I joined what was then Northern Telecom, and which later evolved to become Nortel. Following the demise of this once grand company, the division I worked for was acquired by Avaya at the end of 2009. That makes 17.5 years of career evolution within essentially the same company!
The downfall of Nortel was a terribly sad thing to witness first hand. The heady days of the year 2000 were cruelly cast into memory as the company shrank from almost 100,000 employees down to little more than 20,000. The rounds of redundancies ran into the teens during the decade that followed the bursting of the dot-com bubble. As one of my colleagues put it, it was like working against a constant headwind, and don't get me started on the stock price!
What was so hard to square as an employee through all this was the fact - and it is a fact - that Nortel had excellent technology and innovation leadership in its markets, particularly in the data networking product line, on which I focused the majority of my time in the company (I'm glad to say that technology lives on and is evolving within Avaya today). The technology was certainly never the reason for the demise. Acres of articles have been written on this topic, so I'll leave it there. Let's just say I remain very proud to have worked for that great company.
One of those oft-debated topics is how often one should ideally change companies. 17 years with the same employer is a rare thing indeed in this post 'job for life' era. For me it's all about maintaining career development, and Nortel gave me the opportunity to make three step changes, from manufacturing support through IT and finally into presales. No wonder I stuck around.
Finally, I've had the privilege to work with some extremely talented, friendly, supportive and professional colleagues during my years at Nortel and Avaya, without whom the experience would have been much less enjoyable. The people make the company, and to be honest it's a lot tougher saying goodbye to the people than it is the company. Of course it's easy to keep in touch these days, and we have so many options for doing so, but we all know the reality is that it's never quite the same once you leave. Ah well, so be it. You've got to break some eggs to make an omelette.
So now the time has come to take a bold step from big vendor to small vendor, from large multinational corporation to feisty, ambitious niche player. And it's also time to move my career on to its next phase as well. For a while now I've been eyeing a move into Technical Product Marketing, and that's exactly what I'll be doing next. I'll post more about that another time.
Once I've started in the new company I'll be setting up a new Twitter account as that's proven a powerful and enjoyable way to build a virtual community of people who share a common interest. For those of you who've joined me on the @AvayaData journey (and there are 622 of you at the time of writing), please be assured I'll be handing that account to a worthy successor who I'm sure will keep things interesting. I'd love you to join me at my new account if you've enjoyed my tweets. I'm moving to another networking vendor, so it'll still be industry-relevant stuff. Details will follow in a subsequent posting here.
I'll close with a quote from a 'Congratulations' card I received from my Mum. It's by a lady called Helen Keller...
After lengthy deliberation, last week I made the decision to leave my current employer (Avaya) and take-up an opportunity to evolve my career in a new direction.
This wasn't an easy decision to make. My 'serious' career began back in 1994 when I joined what was then Northern Telecom, and which later evolved to become Nortel. Following the demise of this once grand company, the division I worked for was acquired by Avaya at the end of 2009. That makes 17.5 years of career evolution within essentially the same company!
The downfall of Nortel was a terribly sad thing to witness first hand. The heady days of the year 2000 were cruelly cast into memory as the company shrank from almost 100,000 employees down to little more than 20,000. The rounds of redundancies ran into the teens during the decade that followed the bursting of the dot-com bubble. As one of my colleagues put it, it was like working against a constant headwind, and don't get me started on the stock price!
What was so hard to square as an employee through all this was the fact - and it is a fact - that Nortel had excellent technology and innovation leadership in its markets, particularly in the data networking product line, on which I focused the majority of my time in the company (I'm glad to say that technology lives on and is evolving within Avaya today). The technology was certainly never the reason for the demise. Acres of articles have been written on this topic, so I'll leave it there. Let's just say I remain very proud to have worked for that great company.
One of those oft-debated topics is how often one should ideally change companies. 17 years with the same employer is a rare thing indeed in this post 'job for life' era. For me it's all about maintaining career development, and Nortel gave me the opportunity to make three step changes, from manufacturing support through IT and finally into presales. No wonder I stuck around.
Finally, I've had the privilege to work with some extremely talented, friendly, supportive and professional colleagues during my years at Nortel and Avaya, without whom the experience would have been much less enjoyable. The people make the company, and to be honest it's a lot tougher saying goodbye to the people than it is the company. Of course it's easy to keep in touch these days, and we have so many options for doing so, but we all know the reality is that it's never quite the same once you leave. Ah well, so be it. You've got to break some eggs to make an omelette.
So now the time has come to take a bold step from big vendor to small vendor, from large multinational corporation to feisty, ambitious niche player. And it's also time to move my career on to its next phase as well. For a while now I've been eyeing a move into Technical Product Marketing, and that's exactly what I'll be doing next. I'll post more about that another time.
Once I've started in the new company I'll be setting up a new Twitter account as that's proven a powerful and enjoyable way to build a virtual community of people who share a common interest. For those of you who've joined me on the @AvayaData journey (and there are 622 of you at the time of writing), please be assured I'll be handing that account to a worthy successor who I'm sure will keep things interesting. I'd love you to join me at my new account if you've enjoyed my tweets. I'm moving to another networking vendor, so it'll still be industry-relevant stuff. Details will follow in a subsequent posting here.
I'll close with a quote from a 'Congratulations' card I received from my Mum. It's by a lady called Helen Keller...
"Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing"
Sunday 25 March 2012
Cooking Challenge
I'm the first to admit it - I'm no fan of cooking. Allow me to draw an analogy. I love riding my motorcycle, tipping it into corners, accelerating around obstacles, the sense of freedom. What I enjoy far less is tinkering and fettling the bike. Don't even get me started on the topic of cleaning the damn thing.
And so it is with food. I LOVE food, the eating of it and even the rituals associated with it. Almost all kinds of the stuff. Love it. What I really DON'T enjoy is all the preparation, the faff, the constantly having to wash my hands, the mess, and the inevitable clearing-up required afterward.
In my defence, at least I do actually cook real food - no ready-meals in this house, thank you very much. However, my lack of love for the preparation of a 'proper' meal means there's quite a lot of repetition and focus on quick and simple, often to the detriment of nutritional quality.
Lately I've been trying to establish ways to improve said nutritional quality, although at my ripe old age old habits do die somewhat hard. Visiting websites and Likeing nutritional writers on Facebook does not, I'm reliably informed, constitute 'doing something about it', even though there are some good sites, like this one I stumbled across: Engine 2 Diet
A friend of mine has a thing about including all the colours of the rainbow in her diet, and takes great pleasure in lambasting the lack of variety in mine, so I can't say I was hugely surprised when these items were handed to me in a gift bag as a belated birthday gift last night...
My challenge, it appears, is to take the item on the left and use it to do something creative with the items on the right. My first instinct is to stick the whole lot in my smoothie-maker (excluding the book, silly) and fabricate something approximating to soup, but to be quite honest with you, I don't even know how to make that! Unimpressive.
In other words, my selection of the word 'challenge' above was quite deliberate. The challenge is only exacerbated by the fact that - so I'm told - the items on the right will not wait indefinitely for me to figure this stuff out. The horror! Time to open the book and quit procrastinating by writing a blog post, methinks.
In closing then, two questions for you, dear reader:
Please share your thoughts via the comments. Oh, and wish me luck! :-)
And so it is with food. I LOVE food, the eating of it and even the rituals associated with it. Almost all kinds of the stuff. Love it. What I really DON'T enjoy is all the preparation, the faff, the constantly having to wash my hands, the mess, and the inevitable clearing-up required afterward.
In my defence, at least I do actually cook real food - no ready-meals in this house, thank you very much. However, my lack of love for the preparation of a 'proper' meal means there's quite a lot of repetition and focus on quick and simple, often to the detriment of nutritional quality.
Lately I've been trying to establish ways to improve said nutritional quality, although at my ripe old age old habits do die somewhat hard. Visiting websites and Likeing nutritional writers on Facebook does not, I'm reliably informed, constitute 'doing something about it', even though there are some good sites, like this one I stumbled across: Engine 2 Diet
A friend of mine has a thing about including all the colours of the rainbow in her diet, and takes great pleasure in lambasting the lack of variety in mine, so I can't say I was hugely surprised when these items were handed to me in a gift bag as a belated birthday gift last night...
My challenge, it appears, is to take the item on the left and use it to do something creative with the items on the right. My first instinct is to stick the whole lot in my smoothie-maker (excluding the book, silly) and fabricate something approximating to soup, but to be quite honest with you, I don't even know how to make that! Unimpressive.
In other words, my selection of the word 'challenge' above was quite deliberate. The challenge is only exacerbated by the fact that - so I'm told - the items on the right will not wait indefinitely for me to figure this stuff out. The horror! Time to open the book and quit procrastinating by writing a blog post, methinks.
In closing then, two questions for you, dear reader:
- What would you do with the items on the right?
- What are your favourite nutritional dishes involving minimal preparation?
Please share your thoughts via the comments. Oh, and wish me luck! :-)
Sunday 18 March 2012
Twitter tips
Last week I created version 1.0 of Simon's Guide to Twitter, a short presentation for my colleagues at work, designed to evangelise Twitter, encourage an increase in their use of the service, and to provide some guidance for those getting started.
One of the slides contains a list of tips which I thought made a good starting point for the newbie. Some I made up myself, and some I 'borrowed' or were shared with me after an initial request for contributions.
I thought it might be worth sharing here, and also using this opportunity to ask for your thoughts on what should be included. If you're new to Twitter I'm keen to know whether you find these helpful and encouraging, and if you're a seasoned pro, I'd like to hear your thoughts on how this list can be refined. The aim is to get the 'top tips' onto a single slide, so it's certainly not intended to become an exhaustive list.
Please have a read-through and share your thoughts in the comments.
One of the slides contains a list of tips which I thought made a good starting point for the newbie. Some I made up myself, and some I 'borrowed' or were shared with me after an initial request for contributions.
I thought it might be worth sharing here, and also using this opportunity to ask for your thoughts on what should be included. If you're new to Twitter I'm keen to know whether you find these helpful and encouraging, and if you're a seasoned pro, I'd like to hear your thoughts on how this list can be refined. The aim is to get the 'top tips' onto a single slide, so it's certainly not intended to become an exhaustive list.
Please have a read-through and share your thoughts in the comments.
- Have a theme you tweet predominantly about
- Mix professional and personal* tweets
- * not too personal :-)
- Ensure your bio describes you and what you’re about
- Try to tweet at least 2 or 3 times a day
- Reach-out by sending ‘@replies’ – aim to increase conversations as % of tweets
- Use your real name in either ‘username’ or ‘name’ - eg. My username is AvayaData, name is ‘Simon Tompson’
- Use a photo of yourself (nobody follows an egg)
- Alcohol and twitter do not mix
- Consider anything you tweet will be public in perpetuity
- Use a #hashtag to join a conversation about a specific topic
- Don’t feel obliged to follow people who follow you
- Use Twitter search to find people covering topics that interest you and who may be interested in you
- As the number of people you’re following grows, use Lists to categorise
- Beautiful 20 year-old women who follow you are 99.9% guaranteed to be spammers
Sunday 8 January 2012
Facebook experiment ends, but...
OK, so last month the experiment ended. To be very honest, I didn't miss Facebook at all during the break, but did begin to miss interacting with a select few people who I know very well will probably never look at another social network. Everything I wrote in my last post still applies - Facebook is still, in my view, not a very appealing or attractive social networking site, but there are a couple of reasons why I decided to re-activate my account.
First-up, I'm human. A couple of good friends of mine gently nudged me with 'we're missing your updates on Facebook' comments, and when one of these came in a Christmas card I thought perhaps I should get back on there and begin sharing again. It's not like it's going to kill me.....right?
Secondly, my interest in social media (especially for work) is growing fast and the reality is that if you're going to be interested in something, you need to be actually, you know, using it. The ever-increasing ease of sharing and the ever-improving tools for doing so mean that a Facebook account is worth having, even if it's not your primary network.
Almost immediately after I de-activated, Facebook introduced a number of changes which sought to address some of the major criticisms, and also the much-discussed Timeline. Having gone back in I'm still not sure I like the overall feel of the place. It's a bit like being forced to use a Windows PC when you're a Mac guy (like myself). Sure, it works, but it's really not that pleasant a place to be.
Last, but most importantly, I decided that if I was going to go back onto the site, I'd address my number one criticism from my last post - noise. One of the things which made it such a huge time-sink previously before was feeling obligated to 'friend' every human being I'd ever so much as met since the day I was born. I've had the good fortune to know a lot of cool people over the course of my lifetime, but I've come to the conclusion that life is an ever-evolving and changing process, and as part of that process people come into your life, and then at some point they go out of your life again. It's no reflection on them whatsoever, but they're simply no longer part of my contemporary life, and it's safe to say that will be for a reason, assuming I wanted to analyse it. The bottom line is that I don't much care to read all the trivial updates from their lives, or have them know mine. That all seems rather pointless to me now.
So, I decided to purge all these 'friends' who are no longer in my present-day life and just use Facebook for family and the friends who I am still actively engaged with in some capacity. For the most part I've also discarded people who were only 'friends' because I happen to work with them. If I wouldn't go out of my way to go for a drink with them, then I'm unlikely to be too interested in whatever their baby barfed all over them that morning!
So, taking all those 'friends' out, and bearing in mind several of my friends aren't on any kind of social network at all, I'm left with around 30 people (compared to around 110 previously). Much more manageable, and a fair bit more intimate too. I like the fact I'm just talking to, and listening to, those people who I see from time to time in the real world. It also means I won't have to think quite so broadly about all the people who will see what I post before I do so.
I'm still mostly tweeting and having those sent to Facebook, but I have started toying with other mobile apps which can post directly to Facebook, and of course I can now interact with posts which others put on there. I'd still rather everyone were on Google+, but I suspect that's going to take a while, and with the average age of my friends/family may happen never! You know what they say, you can't teach an old dog new tricks!
First-up, I'm human. A couple of good friends of mine gently nudged me with 'we're missing your updates on Facebook' comments, and when one of these came in a Christmas card I thought perhaps I should get back on there and begin sharing again. It's not like it's going to kill me.....right?
Secondly, my interest in social media (especially for work) is growing fast and the reality is that if you're going to be interested in something, you need to be actually, you know, using it. The ever-increasing ease of sharing and the ever-improving tools for doing so mean that a Facebook account is worth having, even if it's not your primary network.
Almost immediately after I de-activated, Facebook introduced a number of changes which sought to address some of the major criticisms, and also the much-discussed Timeline. Having gone back in I'm still not sure I like the overall feel of the place. It's a bit like being forced to use a Windows PC when you're a Mac guy (like myself). Sure, it works, but it's really not that pleasant a place to be.
Last, but most importantly, I decided that if I was going to go back onto the site, I'd address my number one criticism from my last post - noise. One of the things which made it such a huge time-sink previously before was feeling obligated to 'friend' every human being I'd ever so much as met since the day I was born. I've had the good fortune to know a lot of cool people over the course of my lifetime, but I've come to the conclusion that life is an ever-evolving and changing process, and as part of that process people come into your life, and then at some point they go out of your life again. It's no reflection on them whatsoever, but they're simply no longer part of my contemporary life, and it's safe to say that will be for a reason, assuming I wanted to analyse it. The bottom line is that I don't much care to read all the trivial updates from their lives, or have them know mine. That all seems rather pointless to me now.
So, I decided to purge all these 'friends' who are no longer in my present-day life and just use Facebook for family and the friends who I am still actively engaged with in some capacity. For the most part I've also discarded people who were only 'friends' because I happen to work with them. If I wouldn't go out of my way to go for a drink with them, then I'm unlikely to be too interested in whatever their baby barfed all over them that morning!
So, taking all those 'friends' out, and bearing in mind several of my friends aren't on any kind of social network at all, I'm left with around 30 people (compared to around 110 previously). Much more manageable, and a fair bit more intimate too. I like the fact I'm just talking to, and listening to, those people who I see from time to time in the real world. It also means I won't have to think quite so broadly about all the people who will see what I post before I do so.
I'm still mostly tweeting and having those sent to Facebook, but I have started toying with other mobile apps which can post directly to Facebook, and of course I can now interact with posts which others put on there. I'd still rather everyone were on Google+, but I suspect that's going to take a while, and with the average age of my friends/family may happen never! You know what they say, you can't teach an old dog new tricks!
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