I have always been more of a magazine than book reader but these days there is only one magazine that I read on a regular basis and that is WIRED. It covers technology issues in an engaging and interesting way. All the articles are readable whether they are about green issues, gadgets or films.

For the last few years I have been picking up copies either when I have been stateside or from WH Smiths. Problem is that it is an expensive read costing about £4.50. I have toyed with subscribing but while it would cost only $10 if … Read the rest

I have been using Windows Live Writer for blogging for quite a while now and really prefer it to the online interface provided by WordPress. Of course one of WLW’s strengths is that you can work on posts off line ready for posting when it is appropriate. In my case I have scraps of posts waiting for me to finish them off and post them.

Another thing that I need to be able to do is work on posts on both my home machine and my laptop. This implies being able to synchronise between both machines – something that … Read the rest

Until very recently I had a mobile phone provided by the company that I worked for. When I left I reverted back to a personal phone I had with a t-mobile u-fix deal. Unfortunately this is a pay-as-you-go/contract hybrid and quickly proved to be costly as I was toping up every few days, No problem I thought, I will move on to a contract.

A call to t-mobile quickly showed that was going to be more difficult than I expected. If I wanted to move onto a contract from PAYG I would need to extend my existing u-fix contract by … Read the rest

I am pleased to be able to announce that I have now setup my own business, Ammat Consulting, offering strategic consultancy and tactical support to software companies of all sizes. This business makes use of the over 20 years I have in both software development and running of software based businesses.

The website was launched this week which gives further details of the services on offer. You can visit the site here http://www.ammatconsulting.com.

I have already secured a number of clients but still have some time available. If you think that I may be able to help you … Read the rest

Looking for technical information? The the web is a great place to start but there is just so much out there, where do you begin? Also sometimes it is nice to have an offline copy to refer to.

Today I stumbled upon a great site that has collected together a whole load of technical resources to download, somewhat imaginatively title The Quick Reference Site it has a collection of both quick reference guides and ebooks. Unfortunately it doesn’t seem to have been update in quite a while but there is still plenty there to get your teeth into.

If you … Read the rest

This must be one of my favourite sites at the moment – what the font. It allows you to upload an image that contains some text. The site then uses character recognition to match your text against a database of fonts and tells you which are the closest matches. It works well, particularly when the characters in the images are of a reasonable size.

I originally thought that that this would only be of limited use on an infrequent basis but I have found myself using it regularly. I have never made a note of the fonts used in … Read the rest

The BBC has been reporting from SXSW this week and today was reporting on how email use is being replaced with status posts to the like of Facebook. While I agree with the premise of the argument I don’t agree with the reasons given.

This shift in communications is, I believe, more of a generational thing.

My grandparents were of an age where they wrote letters and if the message was urgent or time bound then they would send a telegram. We have, for example, a telegram sent from my Grandfather to my Grandmother during the second world war but … Read the rest