Greg McDougall's blog

Paper is dead, long live paper!

I don't post too often, but this is really interesting.

Russell Davies on why books (and their ilk) are the next big thing.

Lyddle End 2050

Whilst I wait for my property to arrive for the Lyddle End 2050 project kicked-off by Russell Davies I'll share where my brain's at currently:

• should the look be "Children of Men" / "Blade Runner" in a kind of dystopian cyber-punky way?
• how would 42 years of progress actually impact on a typically English village?
• putting it under a dome seems a little too straight-forward - stilts maybe?

I clearly have too much time over the Christmas & New Year! Just hope it arrives in time.

Cloud Computing - descending the beanstalk

I've spent a fascinating few weeks looking into how Amazon's Web Services might be used in large enterprises. It's a fascinating set of services for renting computing capacity by the hour (plus storage and lots of other great stuff).

Like most rental services, the business case starts to break down the higher the usage goes (think car rental vs. lease vs. ownership) but that's not wanted I wanted to cover here.

I'm particularly interested in how businesses will integrate these services into their existing infrastructures. I even have a name for the product or service which will deliver this integration! It'll be called "Beanstalk" and will join up cloud-based infrastructures with traditional "terrestrial" enterprise infrastructures. We'll need this service to handle integration back into all of the trivial (or not so trivial) things like monitoring, administration, auditing/compliance, configuration management, etc, etc.

A number of prominent bloggers have written authoritatively on the impending chaos if/when departmental IT cotton-on to the power of cloud-based services to enable IT via credit card. This is a divisive issue - some see this as a natural evolution of business driven IT whilst others see it as a descent into chaos. I'm currently verging towards the latter - as a Transition Manager I've seen what happens when weak corporate IT leads to departmental point solutions. The thought of these disappearing into the cloud fills me with dread.

I'll return to this post and add some much needed links to the content I've referred to. For now, I'd appreciate any thoughts.

'Been a while...

I am horrified to see that it was July when I last posted. It's been an odd six months, but next year should be better.

In the meantime, it's taken crying happy tears A LOT to drive me to share this with you. It's from "Another little Disappointment" and, as I said, it made me cry.

Oh, btw Monty Python is now on YouTube.

A problem shared...

This is just a quick post to recognise Dave Gorman's pain. Finding stories like this is a bit like shooting fish in a barrel - I like Dave's particularly because the solution he comes up with is simple and brilliant. Let's see...

Update 31.07.08
Dave has posted an update to his problem. Some good points here, but overall a tail of woe. There are others, and the press has picked up on Dave's experience. Someone really needs to look into this.

Why do we need this?

I'm sorry, but why do BA need a policy on something called Split Families? There is obviously another world out there where the sentence "On arrival at the destination the child will be handed over by crew to the parent/guardian. Crew can offer the parents the opportunity for the child to be brought to their cabin after others have disembarked or they can wait for the child on the jetty. Hand-over form to be signed by parents, wherever possible." is absolutely fine. I will reserve complete judgement, and think on whether I would book myself into First Class and my kids in Economy if I could afford it.

Precocious, moi?

I have been blessed with two daughters, 6 & 4. Now, we tend to spend most of our time encouraging them to discover where their strengths might lie and encouraging them to be happy, confident, outgoing, etc, etc. I'm reconsidering that whole strategy - inertia is certainly the way forward (if you'll excuse the pun). What's brought me to this revelation? Well, I'd like to share with you this short exchange between my firstborn and I.

Picture the scene - I've written a short sentence on a piece of notepaper for her to copy. My daughter takes a moment to digest this simple sentence, then picks up a pen and decides to "mark it" (just like her teachers, it appears). This is what she wrote (I have corrected her spelling, the meaning is what's important):

"You forgot your full stop so I had to do it for you. A grown-up would have known that by now. I am a little disappointed because you could of written a bit more"

Well, soorrrry! She needs to stop aging right now. No more confidence, etc, etc, is required thank you very much.

What you want, when you want it.

I work for Capgemini, in their Outsourcing business. My current focus is on virtualisation. I'd like to write something about it, but it's one of those words that cover a broad range of sins. Gartner came up with this pithy nugget last year:

"...agile, open, service oriented, on-demand, scaleable, perfectly reliable, heterogeneous, lights-out and billed by the unit..."

I haven't the inclination to dissect the above, word by word. Suffice to say that when you get this right it ceases to be something you notice. There is a reason why we call it Utility Infrastructure and I think our challenge isn't in realising the Gartner vision (because lots of clever people have done that bit), it's in working out exactly what sort of opportunities this opens up when your enterprise infrastructure tracks your business needs exactly, and you only pay for what you want, when you want it.

That's what I'm working on...I love my job.

Greg likes to...

So, thanks to Claire for the pointer to a second post. The power of Google to provide strange and wonderful insights into who we really are...hhhmmm. For other examples you could take a look at Claire's and Anna's results. You type "<Your Name> likes to" into Google and discuss.

Sleepy Greg, likes to sleep. Well, yes - don't we all? I try and restrict myself to sleeping in my bed, but have been known to grab forty winks on the M40. I am sleepy and do actually like to sleep. Weird, and a bit spooky - isn't Google clever.

Greg likes to do his favourite song. I don't actually have a favourite song (i.e. of all time) and if I did, I'm not sure I'd like to do it, as such. We'll chalk this up to PageRank or some other such wizardry and pretend Google knows me better than I do.

Greg likes to hop bins. I haven't hopped a bin since Marc Brown's stag do. I chipped my elbow, and didn't realise it until the next day when I couldn't straighten my arm. Happy Days.

Greg likes to play racing and sports games and loves the game Burnout. I think Google has overestimated my free time, amongst other things. I actually cannot get the hang of racing and sports games (except Wii Sports) and prefer doing and watching (respectively) the real thing. As for Burnout, what can I say apart from "What?".

Even though he has his own show, Greg likes to steal. We enter strange territory here. I am positive I would get very few viewers for my version of The Truman Show. My wife knows the ending, and my children prefer Cbeebies (I'm not as entertaining as Mr. Tumble apparently). As for the stealing bit, well you can't prove anything.

Greg likes to get email from people, especially those who have visited his website. Yes, I do. Nuff said. Actually, there's a small caveat - if you're an African prince then the cheque's in the post - stop emailing me.

Greg likes to pee on rookies. Now this is just plan weird. Is there secret filming going on here?

Greg likes to lift his leg and fart. What other way is there?

Greg likes to greet passers-by with a friendly wave of his middle finger. This sort of suggests I'm sitting in the window of a cafe somewhere watching people go about their daily business, directing random insults. Sounds fun.

Greg likes to talk about food. Talk. Eat. Whatever. I will admit to a fascination with vegatarians.

Well, there you go. Thanks for the bandwidth. There are a lot of very odd people of out there, and I feel I've now joined their ranks...

What better first post...?

So, it's my first ever blog post. I've to'd and fro'd over what to write about. Should it be a resume? Should it be a more personal piece on what delights me? Should I have a bash at humour? None really moved me to write.

Well, I'm fortunate to have the opportunity to read many, many inspiring and insightful pieces on the Internet and I came across this just the other day. I figure this is a perfect start - combining one of my favourite authors, the power of the Internet, and a truly insightful piece at the same time (it also gives me an opportunity to give a nod of the hat to one of my favourite bloggers).

Douglas Adams wrote this in 1999 (two days before Apple launched the G4 for heaven's sake). For the avoidance of doubt, that was NINE YEARS AGO (sorry). As far as I'm concerned, this is just as impactful as it was then:

"We are natural villagers. For most of mankind’s history we have lived in very small communities in which we knew everybody and everybody knew us. But gradually there grew to be far too many of us, and our communities became too large and disparate for us to be able to feel a part of them, and our technologies were unequal to the task of drawing us together. But that is changing. Interactivity. Many-to-many communications. Pervasive networking. These are cumbersome new terms for elements in our lives so fundamental that, before we lost them, we didn’t even know to have names for them."

This piece reverberates through time. I came across it via Euan Semple's iPhone post reference to this monster post from David Smith.

Well, I quite enjoyed that. I'd be interested to hear where you came across the Douglas Adam's piece, and as ever, feedback on the post is always welcome.