Scargill

Archive for March, 2010

This is what a normally pristine clean cat looks like after emerging from someone’s coal shed… probably ours.

I was just sitting catching up on Facebook when in she walked looking like she’d been down a mine (photo on the left).

Right now she’s off cleaning somewhere – I hope not on a bed!  Meanwhile her offspring seems have recovered remarkably from having his bits removed at the vets this week!

Rosie’s normal clean look is seen on the photo on the right…

It’s a lovely Sunday morning here in Aberdeen at the seafront. The FSB’s conference which I’ve been working on since Tuesday is now all done and dusted, is all done. It would all have gone without a hitch had it not been for some idiot turning the electricity off at the last minute, losing hours of valuable time for our IT support guys.

Conference is always a great time, meeting people you’ve not seen for a year or more, the political wrangling, new places to visit, new technologies to try out. I’ve spent the past few days struggling with my new Dell Studio XPS laptop which has been acting up and new video software as I put myself in charge of “voxpops” which means processing vast amounts of video data for just a few moments of results. The whole thing has been interesting and at times, quite exciting.

My last duty last night after dinner (something like 700 attendees) was to announce, along with our recruitment chairman and a very enthusiastic staff member the results of a competition for the best interviewee (we had a roving cameraman along with said staff member doing interviews throughout the event, asking members their views on a range of subjects). Even that had it’s political elements as the outgoing secretary amazingly managed to call the staff member up on stage while totally ignoring the fact that myself and the recruitment guy were a key part of the presentation. Fortunately between us we expertly rescued the situation and I got up on the platform with the mic for a few short minutes, which in itself was a nice end to the occasion.

Hard work, hard play and non-stop for days on end… This morning it all seems different, everything is very quiet, the sun is up already and it’s boding well for a quiet morning driving home. Next week we start afresh, new senior executives, no doubt new ways of doing some things, but life moves on and I’m sure I’ll enjoy every minute of the changes… not so for some folk who’ll now be considering retirement as the job they’ve done for years and years suddenly disappears from view.

And now a quiet breakfast, possibly a trip to the seafront – and then we start the long drive home. If the conference is of any interest, visit the website or even the mobile version.

For most folk, the FSB conference in Aberdeen was a 3-day affair beginning with the AGM on Thursday night followed by 2 days of motions, talks and entertainment.

For those of us in at the deep end it was more like a week. I arrived after a 4.5 hour drive on Tuesday night and am heading off tomorrow. Maureen joined us last night. (That’s Lorraine Kelly on the left incidentally – during one of my few excursions down to the exhibition hall).

Most folk have no idea the amount of work that we put into these exhibitions – but lets suffice it to say the raw materials come to thousands of photos, 30+ GIGABYTES of video, many thousands of lines of reporting – and a lot of running around, getting stressed and most importantly – having fun.  Leading the whole thing I had tremendous support from my head of Systems and Data Ian Martin, from the teams at SoftwerX and DRP and from Melanie-Jane and Michelle Almond.  More later…

According to the press “Internet access remains an unaffordable option for many in the Commonwealth, leaving them unable to reap the benefits of the web, according to the Queen”

The Queen has said that the Internet remains unaffordable for too many people in the Commonwealth.

For HEAVENS SAKE – what with our misguided government wanting to give computers (at cost to taxpayers) to every NON-taxpayer, even though many DON’T ACTUALLY WANT to use the Internet and now we have the QUEEN wanting to help the rest of the commonwealth.

We’re in the middle of the worst recession in living memory, businesses are going bust left-right and centre and we want to make sure everyone has the Internet forced down their throat… why stop at the commonwealth, why now just TAX US TO DEATH so the whole WORLD can have a computer courtesy of the BRITS- then there’ll be even MORE people trying to HACK it to bits in their spare time!

Apparently of those people who don’t currently use the Internet, 71 per cent thought that they should have the right to access it.

Well, they WOULD, WOULDN’T they. I don’t have an APPLE TABLET and I WANT ONE so maybe some other shmuck should buy me one – that’s sounds good to me – does it sound good to you?

As someone interested in technology, by that way of thinking I should have a RIGHT to get all the latest gadgets for FREE, paid for by the government no matter what the cost to taxpayers.

Give me a break.