Some industries get a bad reputation; telecoms, including ISPs, is one of them.
For almost five years we got our broadband from Zen. They aren’t the cheapest out there, but they provided us with a solid service that I can only recall flickering once or twice in all that time. When necessary, their staff were helpful and pleasant.
When fibre hit our area we ended up moving away from Zen (BT seem to offer the best balance of cost and features on the service). I expected to be paying an extra month’s charges for the 30 day notice period on our contract. Instead, they sent me a statement saying I was £16 in credit with them. Today I received another letter, asking for bank details so that they could send the £16.
I suppose it shouldn’t be remarkable that a company is offering to refund a customer money that they overpaid, but it is. So, well done to Zen.
For an SF nut, I never really got Doctor Who. I remember watching Peter Davison and Sylvester McCoy when I was a kid, but don’t remember them as being very good.
The current, eleventh, Doctor has really grabbed my attention, though. I’ve been well and truly sucked in, and it’s some cracking TV. The BBC has been making some interesting science fiction over the last few years. Russell T Davies, the showrunner for the previous two modern Doctor Whos (Eccleston and Tennant) seems to have had something to do with bringing the genre back into the mainstream, landing Doctor Who on Saturday evenings, then getting more mature with Torchwood (Children of Earth was a stormer).
Today’s tune (the first here in quite some time) is from the soundtrack of last year’s series of Doctor Who. It’s from the first episode, and introduces the Eleventh Doctor’s theme. The soundtrack for the series is very high quality, and this is probably its high point.
“I Am The Doctor” [Spotify]
I got my access code to Orchestra.io today. It looks interesting if you’re a PHP-type. Haven’t had a chance to get anything running on it yet, but look forward to doing so, albeit mainly for the novelty. It appears to be something similar to Heroku for PHP, but the difference is that whereas Heroku seemed to get traction because it provided easy Rails hosting (something which I understand — I’m not a RoR guy, so I may be wrong — used to be at least a bit of an issue for some), but now focuses on fitting into your workflow for easy deployment, that latter seems to be where Orchestra comes in, since PHP hosting definitely isn’t an issue. We’ll see how it goes.
Basecamp is the web-based project management software all the cool kids apparently use. We rely on it pretty heavily at Banjax, too. I’m not much of a fan, but it’s there as an “it’ll do until someone comes up with something better” kind of option. If you’re in need of some PM workflow gubbins, the free plan has been beefed up a bit, so it’s maybe worth giving it a whirl.
Finally, Apple’s World Wide Developer Conference sold out in less than a day, yesterday. A technical conference, aimed at developers, sold out in hours. That’s nuts. Someone’s doing something right, it seems. And no, I’m not going. This year is not that year for me.
For several years I’ve been telling a friend of ours, Alex, he should write a blog. He’s an interesting and thoughtful fellow, and I had an inkling it would be worthwhile. He’s now taken up the challenge, at The Gap Films, where he’s working his way through those movies in the IMDb top 250 that he hasn’t seen. Worth a read.
On a bloggy note, the shortlists are out for the Irish Blog Awards. Handy if you’re looking something new to read.
Finally, Brian Houston played a gig last month that I missed, but you can grab a CD from the rehearsals. Always a good listen.
Ugh. Metablogging. I, too, hate it. So please accept an apology in advance.
This blog has become dormant over the last year or so, maybe a bit longer. There are a whole bunch of reasons for that. Most of them come down to how radically different my life has become to what it was.
Obviously, there’s parenthood. That’s the biggest thing. I must observe that it just keeps getting better and better; that kid’s amazing.
Also, it is happening again. Wow.
Work-wise, too, things are different. Quite a while ago, now, the project I was working on with CCWA (NI) came to an end. Long story short, I’m now working full-time as web developer with a small studio in Belfast, doing generally interesting work with some generally quite interesting clients. I split most of my time there between Facebook apps, Expression Engine work and Magento development. With the latter two I get to spend a very satisfying amount of time building custom add-ons to augment their functionality. That’s fun.
Then there are the various personal/side projects I am/have been working on. All still in dark mode. Time, you know (see a couple of paragraphs above).
All of which adds up to less blogging, which disappoints me. My first post to a blog was eight years and twenty-four days ago. I don’t want to let this thing go gracefully after all that time, so here we go again.
The plan is for more of the same, but with some other stuff thrown in, too. I’ve often thought about tackling more technical blog content (code, general computer/tech stuff, gadgetry and so on) as well as the random personal stuff and occasional photo, but am totally against having more than one blog. I think I’ll try mixing the two and see how it goes. Bear with me with the bits that aren’t your thing.
The blogroll (old word for those sidebar links) is well out of date. I’m still deciding what to do about that; it may disappear altogether in the meantime. And this place is definitely due for a bit of a visual refresh.
Meta-blogging over, for now. Let’s go, then.