I set off for Africa today, more specifically the country of Eritrea which is situated on the northern border of Ethiopia.

These days going back to Eritrea is in some senses, but obviously not all, like going home - I’ve been there so many times. The people are friendly and welcoming, the country is warm and inviting. It is quite frankly a pleasure to be their regardless of the fact I’m always there on business and never pleasure.

I miss the folks back home but at the moment it’s a welcome break from the UK where work has been busy to say the least! And I have always enjoyed travelling.

The only part of travelling I don’t enjoy is the waiting. I prefer to set off at some ungodly hour in the morning becuase you know there is no waiting around, once you’re ready you go.

So for now it’s goodbye. I’ll be back soon though.

Internet Explorer 8 is coming soon and the developers at Microsoft have a huge decision on their hands that could send them the way of Netscape or squash all other browsers in one foul swoop. As a ‘net developer ’standards’ and each browsers own interpretation of them causes me more headaches than you can care to imagine.

Joel Spolsky of Fog Creek has written a fantastic article on the decisions that lay at the feet of the IE8 team. Read ‘Martain Headsets‘ and then comment with your thoughts.

Come back here after you’ve read it.

Personally I think the IE8 team will turn the ‘IE7 mode’ on by default. Considering the fact that if they don’t, as Joel says, most users will uninstall it and use either IE7 or Firefox without even trying to work out what’s wrong. The whole idea of making everyone stick to standards was never going to happen. Someone with an ounce of business sense would have come along sooner or later and said:

“Hey, I’ve got a lovely new browser. It understands this piece of code, which does this and it’ll make 20% more customers come to your website because it can do this. It won’t break other browsers, they just won’t understand it and they’ll leave it alone but for those customers who do have my browser it’ll make your browser look fantastic.”

Suddenly, your standards have gone. The organisation in charge of standards no longer has control. The business world does. Why does that sound so familiar! Oh yes, it’s because that’s where we are today.

(If you’re not in the slightest bit geeky or code-orientated then please look away now. You will either find this really dull, or find this really, really dull. Burton, look away now.)

I run an iMac setup at home, have done for about a year now and I’m chuffed to bits with it. I still run Windows at work, not only because it’s the de-facto standard in business and I don’t think I fancy spending time trying to get all the various domains, exchange, citrix etc to run and talk but also I spend most of my time developing in either .net or Oracle Forms. We have hard enough job finding time to work on the network and domain as it is.
Anyhow back to the main thread, the iMac. On the iMac I run Parallels with an XP install so I can test various builds of code and do bits and pieces at home that just can’t be done on the mac. Within the XP environment I have a VPN link to the office (also have one on the mac but I find it easier to work around a Windows network from a Windows OS) and over the VPN I can run RDC onto the servers and WinVNC onto my work desktop.

Still with me? Well done.

In the office we run a DMS. INVU to be precise (fantastic API Nick!) and in INVU we store lots of our document (well you would wouldn’t you - what with it being a DMS). The licensing information for our software packages are stored in the DMS. So late one night when a colleague needed a license key we found neither of us had it to hand. It was in INVU.

So (and this is where I might lose you if I haven’t already) over Adium (IM program on the mac) he asks me if I have access to INVU, which I do in a sort of convoluted fashion. So I open up Parallels on the mac and start the XP environment. This takes about 15 seconds. I then start up the VPN link to the office. From there I open up a WinVNC session to my desktop and from there (desktop in the office) I launch INVU.

Within INVU I grab the document I want, open it and select the data I want. Using the mac shortcut (cmd+c) I copy the text. Moving the mouse over to Adium, I paste the info directly into the conversation. God knows how many different OS and application hooks were involved in that one process but it’s one sweet reality check of how far computing has come in just the last few years.

Over the past few months, and for others over the past few years, I’ve lost touch with most of my close friends. Work has been busy and doesn’t show any signs of letting up soon (Off into the city today, Africa next week, then back into the city) but it is no excuse, time must be found.

To those of you expecting me at Tandoori Nights to see Gary Glen it was at that point of realising I wasn’t going to make it that I realised just how out of touch I had become. I had no-one’s mobile number to call and apologise. The only occasional contact I have with those of you still at Redweb and others now dotted around the country is via this blog and facebook. Hardly methods used for close friends.

For Duncs, Paul, Gareth and those used to seeing me on Xbox Live again an apology is in order. I used to be up their at the cutting edge of gaming with the rest of you but recently I’ve slipped down and now play more of “Catch-Up” than anything console based. I remember weekends away and our holiday to Centre Parcs as the highlights but recently - I’ve not kept in touch. Duncs, Ben must be a teenager by now I know new projects have come about and I wish you all the best for them, I only hope I can catch you on Xbox Live more often in the future - last Saturday was a blast!

Remembering the heady days of presenting Game Guru on Sky, it all seems like an entire generation ago. And days spent on West Bexington trying to catch Mackerel (sp?).

I’ve lost touch and it’s up to me to regain the friendships I hold dear.

I’m currently away from home on business, installing our insurance software package into a new client out here. For some reason I feel as though I have a link to this place. Having lived on Portland for a large part of my life I’m well accustomed to living on a piece of rock, connected to the mainland by only a thin piece of land and where walking somewhere usually involves going completely uphill. Maybe it’s also to do with the fact that my step-father was in the Navy and I seem to remember him being out here once or twice.

Travelling over on the plane from Gatwick was great as Kirstin and I found ourselves sat next to the IT team for FoxyBingo! We spent the entire trip talking about servers, programming languages, modern computing practices, consoles, favourite old-school computers and almost every other geeky topic going. What a great way to kill a couple of hours. Many thanks to Denis for actually talking to us! (Check out his website - The Free Online Dictionary of Computing)

The landing was like a ride at Alton Towers with the high winds, which had in fact caused the flight before and the flight after us to be diverted to Malaga. No kidding, the plane was almost pointing 45deg off the landing strip to keep in the right direction!

Gibraltar is a very cramped yet quaint place. The roads are narrow and the pavements narrower! The high street is full of recognisable names such as Marks and Spencers, Wilkinsons, Natwest, BHS etc and it seems that most of the people on the rock are Spanish, yet all the police seem to be English!

So far the trip has been successful. We spent a few hours puzzling over a problem that turned out to be a mis-configured 3com switch - we’re also attempting to set up various VPN connections to multiple sites, which is daunting on the model of Watchguard Firebox installed here. But we’re getting there.