Ed's Place

Reminds me of growing up with cats

Ed Francis — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 10:22:59 +0000

Yep. Been there!

Saw this and was immediately transported back to typing furiously at my keyboard doing college assignments only to have one of the cats come over and walk across the keyboard to get my attention!

Neither of them sat on my hands though. This cat’s a genius!

Christmas Meals

Ed Francis — Sun, 18 Dec 2011 14:54:48 +0000

OK, so I’ve had all the Christmas meals for this year (apart from the important one) and can now reveal that the big £30 a seat one I went to for our work do was quite simply nowhere near as good as the one I had in the company eatery for £3.50.

I’m not saying the one at the hotel wasn’t serviceable or enjoyable, the food’s always a bit ropey at these kinds of things (more school dinners than fine dining) but that’s usually part of its charm! The DJ was OK as Christmas party DJs go and the casino theme meant we could all merrily gamble away with bits of plastic. The company was pretty good too. I managed to bump into two of my oldest friends (the friendships not the people!) there. Getting a chance to catch up was great and I’m sure we’ll use that as an excuse to find our way into a pub soon for a proper natter.
I still have to go back to the food though, it really was frozen TV dinner kind of quality and served to us by what I’m assuming were new recruits as many of them had no idea how to carry two plates on one arm. I’m not saying I’m an expert but I learnt that in my first week at a pizza restaurant!

Never mind though, the company and joking about more than made up for the food quality. Even if most of the jokes were about the food!

What was a welcome surprise for me was last week when I went with my team mates down to the cafe at work for their Christmas spread. In a word, spectacular! Orders of magnitude better than the expensive one at the hotel, simply brilliant. What I especially liked was the obvious attention to detail they had getting the basics right, everyone at our table had a great meal. Not a single complaint and that’s saying something for my lot!

Moral of the story: Get the basics right and the rest may very well follow. Get them wrong and the rest won’t matter.
Oh and make sure you try the food at the cafe, its better than you expect!

Visual Basic Express

Ed Francis — Sat, 03 Dec 2011 14:06:08 +0000

Well, its that time again where I start getting the bug to write little silly programs and get the geek out of my system so I thought VB would be a good place to start. Yes, I know, I should be teaching myself Powershell but I want to have a bit of fun while I’m at it so I thought trying to write a command line app to do various things might be fun.

Yes, I’m very sad like that but hey! I enjoy it and its not hurting anyone (that I know of!).

If you fancy having a go at anything like the stuff I’m doing, I’d advise you check out the Visual Studio Express 2010 products available for free download on the Microsoft Website here.
Anyhow, my download’s finished so I’m off to play for a bit!

Muffins!

Ed Francis — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 18:29:10 +0000

As anyone who knows me will agree, muffin madness seems to decend on me occasionally and I end up making loads while trying to perfect my recipe. Once I’ve got it right, I’ll get it up here for people to try. Until then, you’ll just have to do with a photo!

Important Information!

Ed Francis — Sun, 20 Nov 2011 16:01:58 +0000

Just in case you’re in that situation….

Carsitting But Not Bored

Ed Francis — Sat, 05 Nov 2011 12:02:36 +0000

I’m sat here in her majesty’s car waiting for her to come out of the Rock and Gem Show and it STILL amazes me that with the help of an iPhone, a magazine and bottle of Coke I can merrily sit here indefinitely!
I could sit here all day and be perfectly content. Sure beats doing the shopping or redecorating the flat!!

Presentation Controllers

Ed Francis — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 16:41:06 +0000

I do have to admit that I’m a huge fan of these things. Yep, it’s geeky but it’s true!

If you’ve never used one, shame on you!

Lazy Days

Ed Francis — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 19:00:00 +0000

Well, its been pretty manic at work recently as we’re gearing up for our Windows 7 rollout across the organisation. I’ve been repackaging software for the last few months and have been utterly shocked at how bad that part of the computing industry is. The process involved with the creation of a package is straightforward enough its the fact that you have to practically con the installers to get some to work and the workarounds you find yourself contemplating are truly shocking.

Where’s the elegance? Where’s the brilliant lateral thinking I’m used to seeing in IT solutions? For shame IT industry, for shame!

Anyhow, I digress. As per my manager’s advice, rather than continue my episodes of rocking in the corner or growling at my PC screen, I’ve taken a couple of days off. No work, just some blogging and generally sorting lots of things out for a day or two. Its day one and I’m already feeling a lot better. Strange how taking a day out really can pay you back in spades.

Ahhhhhhhh!

Geek Central!

Ed Francis — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 11:45:04 +0000

Woohoo! Thanks to the guys at ebuyer for the infographic (I love those things), I can safely tell you that I live in a pretty damn geeky town!

Alright! Go geeks!

This infographic was brought to you by Ebuyer.com, the UK’s largest independent online electrical retailer.
If you want to find branded laptops at discount prices, look no further than Ebuyer.com.

Who you tryin’ to get crazy with ese? Don’t you know I’m local?

Ed Francis — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 16:30:27 +0000

Trying to log in to a local account in Windows 7?
Missing that little log in to dropdown from the good old XP days telling you the computer’s name?

Rather than working out the name of the PC and using it as part of the username (ie computer_name\Username) just cheat and let the PC fill that in for itself.

.\Username
Password

Easy!