I am a big fan of Netvibes but also follow the ongoing development of Google Reader with interest. Increasingly, I find myself tempted to convert to Reader permanently. Speed - Google Reader has a set of keyboard shortcuts that make scanning a large number of feeds quick. Really quick. While Netvibes also offers keyboard shortcuts, out of habit, I tend to use mouse-clicks to navigate between tabs and articles. Flexibility - You can read related blogs that are grouped together (e.g. Oracle, Wordpress), read an individual blog or quickly skim over a river of news. Sharing - Occasionally, I want to save an article for future reference or potentially sharing with others. These items might be interesting or useful snippets of information quickly noted in passing which I wouldn’t necessarily blog about. The most obvious place to mark these items is right here in the RSS reader as opposed to a static bookmark. The list should (obviously) be visible as an RSS feed. Google’s shared and starred items make this easy (single keystroke). Flexible interface - I really like the full screen mode and the options for ’list view’ where articles are condensed apart from the current article and ’expanded view’ (all articles are expanded). Statistics - I can’t decide whether the trends page about your personal reading habits may actually be useful or just a gimmick. Here’s a Flickr set of annotated screenshots to illustrate the functionality in Google Reader and the flexibility of the interface. I think the recent addition of subscriber counts to Google Reader will show that Reader has a substantial and rapidly growing share of the RSS reader market. Stowe Boyd and Tom Raftery are already noting a Feedburner spike as a result. ...

In recent weeks, I have been peppered with increasing amounts of spam to my Blueyonder account despite the fact that I rarely use or divulge this email address. I guess I have become spoiled by Akismet and Gmail which both do such a sterling job of automatically detecting spam. Anyway, it turns out Blueyonder do have a spam filtering capability. If you log onto Webmail, under Options, there is a section called ‘Anti-spam and Antivirus Preferences’. ...

Yesterday afternoon at 16:09, in Surrey, a sales rep in a red Vauxhall Vectra shunted a plumber driving a white van on the middle lane of the M25. Twenty years ago, the following cars would have quickly stopped to allow the protagonists to pull over to the hard shoulder. Twenty years ago, a heated exchange would ensue. Then both parties would calm down and exchange insurance details. Twenty years ago, the white van driver would resume his journey while the Vectra owner waited for a tow from The AA to a local garage to replace his pierced radiator. ...

Email You use ELM on a VT220. You use Emacs and Gnus. Corporate standards force you to use Microsoft Outlook and you don’t even mind. You use Gmail for all work and personal email. Documents Quill and parchment. XEmacs. Microsoft Word with 37 macros. Microsoft Excel for all documents . Google Documents for all correspondence. Newsgroups What are newsgroups ? You use Emacs and Gnus. Your company doesn’t run an NNTP server for security reasons. Newsgroups are just another data source mashed into your aggregator. Home Page ...

Student fined £80 for making a 4 foot penis in the snow.

As part of my job, I often have the pleasure of walking around call centers where agents use headsets to enable them to interact with a computer while conducting a telephone call with a customer. I have often wondered whether it would be cool or nerdy to use such a headset myself. To date, where possible, I tend to use my mobile phone on speakerphone so I am free to continue to type. For lengthy conference calls (abroad), this isn’t a particularly cost-effective option but please don’t tell the CFO. ...

Despite a scattering of snow in London that normally brings the country to a complete halt, my return flight from Copenhagen was on time and blissfully uneventful. Unusually, I was hoping for lengthy queues at passport control in T3. I was praying for four flights to land simultaneously and for the resulting queues to snake around the corner and past the toilets. Why ? Because today it is finally going to happen. After, inexplicably not flying abroad for 6 months, I had finally managed to arrange my rendezvous with Iris. Tonight was the our first date. ...

Blueyonder Webmail is down which is unusual. Welcome to the brand new, exciting world of Virgin Media. Still, at least they have a nice friendly, Web 2.0 style apology. The marketeers must be busy planning the launch party and deciding which dress Richard Branson will wear.

Many years ago, a customer thanked me which was a pleasant surprise and quite unusual. Most simply ask ‘When will your report be ready ?’ This particular customer remarked on my ’logical and methodical approach’ to understanding this long standing complex problem, proposing a plan of action and, on this rare occasion, resolving it. I was interested by his choice of the words ’logical and methodical’. As an aside, I was convinced I heard a surly DBA murmur ‘slow, laboured and hopeless more like’ which hurt terribly. ...

Over the past couple of days, much to my surprise, I have actually managed to answer some questions. The parameter ‘ExtractStartDate’ was set to ‘11/01/2007’. This means that Siebel will ignore all appointments and tasks prior to this date. The default value of ‘ExtractStartDateFormat’ is ‘MM/DD/YYYY’ which equates to ‘01 November 2007’. Install Cygwin, sed -n -e ‘x,yp’ < bigfile.log If the Exchange Connector and SSSE Engine component are run by accounts in different domains, trust must be established in order for RPC calls to work correctly. Alternatively, use two separate accounts (least privilege) in the same domain. In the heart of London, surprisingly. Install OHS from the OAS Companion CD F11 And now for the questions… ...