Get ready for JavaOne 2008 !

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Get ready for JavaOne 2008, the leading annual Java event, this year held at the Moscone Center, San Francisco, between May the 6th and the 9th. …..

Case Studies of Enterprise Architecture – Event Update

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Just a short post re: the “Case Studies of Enterprise Architecture” event I presented at last week for the Birmingham Branch of the BCS.

Pleased to say that the event went very well, with a very good turn out, and I was told that it was almost twice the size of the average group meeting and the largest for the preceding year.

Sadly I only presented a few slides, although I spoke for almost two hours, and I won’t be posting them in the short term for two reasons, first, there were only a few slides with no electronically captured notes, and second, I have a couple more presentations and talks to give on the topic, and this material will be the basis for them (more details below).

Basically the areas I covered, without giving too much away, were:

  1. What is Enterprise Architecture ?
  • Public Definitions of Enterprise Architecture (EA)
  • My Definition of EA (as a practitioner)
  • An overview of the major EA frameworks
  • A comparative analysis of the major EA Framework variants, with particular attention to Zachman model (and the ZFEA) and the Open Group’s TOGAF
  • The relationship of EA to other technical architecture disciplines (Application Architecture, Systems / Infrastructure Architecture and Solution Architecture)
  • The relationship between EA and other major “Macro IT” initiatives, such as ITIL, Cobit, CMM, etc.
  • Case Studies of Enterprise Architecture
    • A large Utility company: and how an EA team led it’s business into a £70 Million black hole, and what we had to do to “rescue” the situation
    • A large Government department: and how EA can enable the definition of SOA Roadmaps and Transformation plans
    • A large Government organisation: and how getting the right EA Governance structure is key to ensuring the success of the overall IT change programme
  • Recommendations & Summary
    • A variety of recommendations when implementing and governing EA programmes
  • Q & A
    • An open session

    The responses to the event were very positive, Howard Hewitt, Senior Consultant at Syntaxnet kindly dropped me an email after the event saying:

    “Just a quick note to thank you for the talk in Birmingham on Monday night. It was very informative and useful.”

    Whilst another comment sent in by email was:

    “I enjoyed your presentation on Enterprise Architecture, thanks. I thought it provided a pragmatic view; something sorely lacking within the world of IT!”

    My friend, and the person who taught me the C programming language many years ago, Walter Milner, said:

    “Gadzooks!”, to go back a further century. On behalf of the BCS, thanks Wayne.

    And it was especially nice to see Micheal Flaherty, with whom I worked on the 1901 census website, at the event too.

    As to the upcoming events which I’ll be presenting the next iteration of this material, they should be another BCS event, an IET event, and this year’s European leg of the Open Group’s “Enterprise Architecture Practitioners Conference, 2008”.

    Reader’s of this blog may be aware this will be my third year presenting for the Open Group on Enterprise Architecture, having presented at the “Enterprise Architecture Practitioners Conference, 2007” in Paris, and the “Enterprise Architecture Practitioners Conference, 2006” in London).

    More details on these upcoming events as I get further confirmations, dates, locations and times.

    Sun and VMware announce OEM agreement

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    Just been informed by Brian Glynn (one of our Senior Consultants in the Systems Practice) who is currently at VMworld 2008, that Sun Microsystems and VMware have announced an OEM Agreement adding VMware Virtualization to our x64 Server and Storage systems . …..

    You really know you’re using software heavily…

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    …when you’re raising bugs against it.

    So my first Roller Weblogger bug, ROL-1667 or, rather, “Date URLs incorrectly use updateTime to sort entries“.

    Basically the get entries pager is selecting entries based upon ‘Updated Date’ and not ‘Published Date’, so accessing entries via entry date, which you’d assume would use ‘Published Date’ actually displays them based upon ‘Updated Date’.

    This effects all date based blog entry selections, so access via date string based URLs or via the Calendar (either large or small variant, whose selections resolve to date based URLs) are all effected too.

    Thankfully Dave raised it for me on the roller bug traq site, although I’ve since created my own account too.

    Given the Open Source paradigm, I’ve decided to try and contribute directly and fix it myself, if no one gets to it before me that is.

    Dave was kind enough to give me the following advice re: contributing to Roller:

    I usually point potential contributors to this: https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/x/2hsB

    You can also contribute by telling us where our wiki and docs need improvement.

    – Dave

    During our email exchange about the bug I also asked Dave about overriding existing macros, especially the macro code for things like get weblog entries (the paging macro getWeblogEntriesPager) and the large calendar (or hCalendarTableBig as it’s also known).

    He gave me the following advice:

    Two places to look for additional info on macro coding:

    1) Template Author Guide (get it here: https://roller.apache.org/download.cgi)
    Lists all models, macros and shows HTML generated by each.

    2) weblog.vm (https://tinyurl.com/yuwfvu)
    Source code for all of the Roller macros.

    – Dave

    I found this bug whilst doing some template enhancements, around differing content per category, which once this bug is fixed I hope to implement. It showed up because of the tag policy I had implemented, and subsequently had a large number of blog entries which had been updated.

    Target Earth – the 2008 Turing Lecture with Dr. James Martin

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    Last night, after work, I was lucky enough to be able to go to one of the Technology highlights of the year, the annual Turing Lecture (2008) . …..

    First time at #1 most popular blogs on https://blogs.sun.com

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    “Cripes !“, as seemingly countless British comic book characters have said over the last century, I appear to have got the most popular blog on https://blogs.sun.com for the first time ever in my blogging lifetime.

    Let’s hope it’s because of interest in the talk and presentation I’m giving on “Case Studies of Enterprise Architecture” this coming Monday (which I reported a couple of days ago) and not because it’s a slow news day at Sun…

    I was pleasantly surprised to find I’d made #1 most popular blog on our collective blog server after finishing off some work tonight (ah, I hear you think, the shear excitement of weekend work).

    Here’s the screen grab – which as you can guess I’m kind of proud of (third column along: “Popular Blogs” – lol).

    Screen Grab taken on the 16th of February, 2008, at 19:47

    Since writing this entry marking this landmark (sic) I’m even more surprised to find that I’m the victim (or is that ‘lucky winner’ ?) of comment spam. Although I’ve also noticed that they stopped at adding comments on my blog entry about Tom Hanks being a Villa Fan and so, in the style of one of the Catherine Tate sketches doing the rounds “the dirty, Villa dodging… ” (expletive optional).

    I’ll do some analysis of the comments as I’m not sure yet whether to moderate (basically delete) them, it’ll be my first time at that too.

    And to think that I didn’t even have to hold Frank Zappa over my face to get all these page hits (although I hope to join in the ‘sleeveface’ phenomenon as soon as I can find where I’ve buried the last of my vinyl).

    Case Studies of Enterprise Architecture event this coming Monday

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    I’ll be presenting three Enterprise Architecture case studies on Monday at a joint Birmingham BCS Branch and Professional Institute Network West Midlands (PIN WM) event called “Case Studies of Enterprise Architecture”.

    The event, 6:00pm for 6:30pm until 8:30pm, on Monday the 18th of February, 2008, is being held in the Trophy Suite of the Tally Ho Sports & Conference Centre (Pershore Road, Birmingham, B5 7RN, next to the Police Training College).

    Your welcome to come along and see me present and talk on the subject, and if you do come along because of reading this blog entry then make sure you say “Hello”.

    There’s more information on the Birmingham BCS Branch event page “Case Studies of Enterprise Architecture” (and is also listed with PIN WM too).

    There’s a free buffet available from 6pm. Please contact Walter Milner (w.w.milner-AT-bham.ac-DOT-uk) if you intend to be present, so the amount of food and drink for the buffet can be planned.

    For those not familiar with Enterprise Architecture, my current definition is:

    Enterprise Architecture is a technical discipline concerned with gaining a contextual understanding of an IT estate, so that IT estate can be described, communicated, managed, and planned for.

    N.B. Don’t be overtly concerned with the use of the word ‘contextual’ here, substitute ‘High Level’ or ‘Big Picture’ if that feels more comfortable.

    Large (and, increasingly, smaller) enterprises have embraced Enterprise Architecture as a key tool to interpret and strategically manage the complexity of their IT estates, and it’s not surprising that many of them have assembled large teams and spent many millions of pounds to achieve an ‘Enterprise Architecture’.

    These case studies explore my experiences with Enterprise Architecture in three major customer engagements, including an Enterprise Architecture team which led its company into a 70+ million pound ‘pitfall’, the use of Enterprise Architecture to define a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), and an example of how much Enterprise Architecture is about achieving the proper Governance model.

    Look forward to seeing you there…

    Welcome ! Tim Holyoake joins Sun Microsystems as Chief Technologist for UK Public Sector

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    Very pleased to say that Tim Holyoake has just joined Sun Microsystems in the UK. …..

    Goodbye Bobby Fischer

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    I’m saddened to hear from this entry on Terry Gardener’s blog that Bobby Fischer passed away yesterday (Thursday the 17th of January, 2008).

    Bobby was one of the cleverest, and yet yampiest, Chess players ever, “mad, bad and dangerous to know”, and it’d be a real surprise if you hadn’t heard of him. Even if you weren’t keen on Chess, Bobby was a ‘larger than life’ figure, often getting in the Press, and had even had the Musical Chess based upon him.

    He achieved a FIDE estimated ELO rating of 2785 after winning the 1972 World Chess Championship against the outgoing Grand Master, Boris Spassky.

    Unfortunately there’s a danger that it’s likely to be some of his behavior and some of the comments he made that he will be remembered for, rather than his Chess playing, or the innovations he brought to Chess (both theory, practice and the game itself).

    In an effort to promote Talent and Creativity, rather than an encyclopedic Analysis of Chess openings, and generate more interesting and vibrant Chess games, he developed Fischer Random Chess (‘FRC’ or Chess960 as it’s now, more frequently, called).

    Other Chess innovations he provided us with included the Fischer Chess Clock.

    Personally I hope that it’s these and his Chess play that he will be remembered for as time passes, because essentially he was an outstanding player.

    It was extremely unlikely that I was ever going to join this list and now I’ll definitely never get the chance.

    Bobby’s Chess Hero was Paul Morphy (another hero of mine too), of whose unprecedented Chess playing talent he said:

    “he was the greatest of them all”

    Howard Staunton, the man credited with giving us the Staunton Chess set was so afraid of playing, and losing to, Paul Morphy, that he hid away saying he was too busy ‘annotating the works of Shakespeare’ to play the young Morphy.

    This article points out the many similarities between Bobby and Paul Morphy: they were both prodigies, they both dominated the other players of their time, they were both were American (unusually in times led by European and Russian play), they both quit in their primes, and they both suffered in Psychological terms. It’s well worth a quick read.

    Goodbye Bobby Fischer – you’ll be sorely missed.

    Tom Hanks, Oscar winning Actor, Producer, Director and… Aston Villa Fan

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    Blimey, to think I actually have something in common with Tom Hanks…

    Turns out Tom supports Aston Villa, probably the best football team in the whole wide World.

    Whilst he was over in the UK to promote the premiere, and release, of “Charlie Wilson’s War” (a comedy film where Tom plays Texan Congressman Charlie Wilson, secretly assisting rebels in Afghanistan in their war with the Soviets, which contributed to the collapse of Soviet Union, and then led to the rise of the Taliban and Islamic Radicalism), Tom recently said:

    “I’m big on Aston Villa because the name is just so sweet. It sounds like a lovely spa”

    I’ve always liked Tom, and his films, but now I really like him. :-)

    However he obviously wasn’t about during the festivities in nearby Lozells and Handsworth in the 1980’s.

    Actually that’s a little harsh as Aston Villa is located by (and named after) the beautiful Aston Hall – I’ve got some photo’s knocking about from when we did our last family visit and I’ll get them up on the site soon – a stunning Jacobean Hall, which even got caught up in the Civil War.

    I was born and brought up around Nechells, Aston, Lozells and Handsworth, spending many an hour playing at Aston Hall park, next door to the Villa Ground.

    I even ended up going to King Edward VI Aston, which ‘sandwiches’ Aston Hall Park, and Aston Hall at it’s centre, with the Villa Ground, and thus spending even more time by the Villa (Hall, club and park), the Holte Pub (56p for a half a pint of Cider) and the “Chippy” opposite the ground.

    The Birmingham evening news had this to say about Tom being a Villa fan:

    What he really knows about football may be open to debate, but Tom is in good celebrity company because also following the Villa are the likes of Prince William and Black Sabbath rocker Ozzy Osbourne.

    Others include Fast Show comedian Mark Williams, violinist Nigel Kennedy, international hockey player Jane Sixsmith, Bank of England chairman Mervyn King, pop group Ocean Colour Scene, Radio WM presenter Phil Upton and members of Duran Duran.

    What the Birmingham post doesn’t go onto say is that that list includes Wayne Horkan esq. too.

    Thanks to Tony Harris, Head of Sales for Health at Sun in the UK, and another fellow Villa fan, for alerting me to this story.

    Relevant links:

    This post is dedicated to James Carlin, the biggest Villa fan I know, Warren Walker, my longest running Villa pal, Wilfred “Wilf” Cashmore, and, of course, to Peter James Horkan, my Dad.

    “AVFC 4 ever” as they say.

    Links for DD-MM-YYYY Not Likely

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    A response to Alec Muffett‘s recent post “A disappointed (occasional) reader…” on his excellent blog.

    I’m sure Alec won’t mind me having posted the following comment in response to his article:

    Hi Alec,

    Although I sympathise, especially as a fellow ‘blog writer it appears one has to produce a very regular cadence to ensure continued, and growing, readership, I have to agree with your reader, mentioned above.

    The fashion for producing a blog post which is simply titled “Links for DD-MM-YYYY” and contains nothing but links is becoming ubiquitous – and even sadder is in full sway across blogs.sun.com.

    Like anyone I like to see interesting sites and links, however I go to blogs to read blogs, to gather opinion, see what peeps are chatting about, etc., etc., not to checkout someone else’s bookmarks.

    I believe that one has to think very hard about what blog postings are for, and if indeed “Links for DD-MM-YYYY” type postings are an adequate and appropriate mechanism for sharing bookmarks with one’s readers.

    Personally I feel that links, and bookmarks, are acceptable if introduced to the readers during a posting (or even as reference at the end of a posting), for me there has to be some posting ‘meat’ to go with my ‘link’ vegetables (terrible analogy, but it won’t be the worst thing you’ve forgiven me of).

    However I suspect that whilst the “Links for DD-MM-YYYY” helps to produce a regular cadence, and continued readership, it will sustain it’s use as a blog posting across the blogosphere.

    And for the record I really like your blog, as you can probably guess from the number of comments I keep leaving.

    All the best, Happy New Year, etc.,

    Wayne

    I’ll be trying my best to avoid using blog posts as bookmark aggregators, but this is a personal decision, and each to their own.

    To back up my assertion that the “Links for DD-MM-YYYY” type posts have become a staple at blogs.sun.com checkout this link to blogs.sun.com’s search facility, as of today it returns 1,092 results for posts which include “Links for”.

    In fact, given the number of people writing these types of posts, perhaps that’s where I’m going wrong… :-)

    Tic, Tag, Toe

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    Or rather “tagging, tags, and blog tag policy” or even “what’s the best / most optimal tag nomenclature / syntax”. After redesigning the blog interface I decided to start to rationalise my tags – and to institute a ‘tag policy’.

    Tag Policy

    1. Use “-” to delimit multi-word tags
    2. Use all lower case characters

    But “Why ?”

    For a long time I had been using the “+” symbol to link multi-word tags, but I found that Google Translate (which I use for the language translation capability, up on the top right of the page if you’re reading the blog at https://blogs.sun.com/eclectic/) was having problems processing URL’s which contain “+” or “%2B”.

    Here’s a little table I whipped up documenting the issues I was coming up against using multi-word tags, after trying out a number of delimiters, not just “+”, against a variety of technology.

    Delimiters tested were: “+”, “%2B”, “_”, ” “, “%20” and “-“. Sites / technology tested were: Roller Blogger (4.0-dev, the version we currently run https://blogs.sun.com on), Google Translate, Google Search, Technorati, Del.icio.us and Slynker.

    “+” (plus sign) “%2B” (encoded plus sign) “_” (underscore character)
    Roller Weblogger 4.0-dev Will save and retrieve posts which use tags with “+” in the editor
    Will not resolve tags URL which use “+” (actually the main site will, but individual blogs can’t)    		 Will save and retrieve posts which use tags with “%2B” in the editor
    Will resolve tags URL which use “%2B”    		 Will save and retrieve posts which use tags with “_” in the editor
    Will resolve tags URL which use “_”
    Google Search Will search and retrieve multi-word tags as they are written, i.e. with the “+”, search produces a small number of results because of the infrequency of using “+” to separate written words Will search and retrieve multi-word tags as they are written, i.e. with the “%2B”, search produces a small number of results because of the infrequency of using “%2B” to separate written words Will search and retrieve multi-word tags as they are written, i.e. with the “_”, search produces a small number of results because of the infrequency of using “_” to separate written words
    Google Translate Attempts to resolve tags URL which use “+”, encoding the URL to use “%2B” instead (which Roller can serve, see above), then promptly fails Fails to resolve the correct URL to translate using “%2B” Resolves tags URL which use “_” and continues to translate them successfully
    Technorati Resolves tag URLs which use “+” correctly
    Replaces the “+” with ” ” and produces good results based upon that    		 Resolves tag URLs which use “%2B” correctly
    Replaces “%2B” with ” ” and produces good results based upon that    		 Resolves tag URLs which use “_” correctly
    Produces smaller, but not unreasonable, results, due of the infrequency of using “_” to separate written words
    Del.iciou.ois Resolves tag URLs which use “+” correctly
    Produces results based upon using “+”    		 Resolves tag URLs which use “%2B” correctly
    Replaces “%2B” with “+” and produces results based upon using “+”    		 Resolves tag URLs which use “+” correctly
    Produces results based upon using “+”
    Slynker Fails to resolve “+”
    Produces no results    		 Attempts to resolve tags URL which use “%2B”, encoding the URL to use “%252B” instead
    Produces results based upon using “+”    		 Resolves tag URLs which use “_” correctly
    Produces results based upon using “_”
    ” ” (space) “%20” (encoded space) “-” (minus sign)
    Roller Weblogger 4.0-dev Will save posts which use tags with ” ” in the editor
    Will not retrieve posts which use tags with ” ” in the editor, instead it separates the words, retrieving them all in alphabetical order
    Will resolve tags URL which use ” “, encoding the URL to use “%20” instead    		 Will save and retrieve posts which use tags with “%20” in the editor
    Will resolve tags URL which use “%20”    		 Will save and retrieve posts which use tags with “-” in the editor
    Will resolve tags URL which use “-“
    Google Search Will search and retrieve multi-word tags as they are written, i.e. with the ” “, search produces a large number of results Will search and retrieve multi-word tags as they are written, i.e. with the “%20”, search produces a small number of results because of the infrequency of using “%20” to separate written words Will search and retrieve multi-word tags as they are written, i.e. with the “-“, and will replace the “-” with ” ” as well, thus retrieving the most amount of related information
    Google Translate Attempts to resolve tags URL which use ” “, encoding the URL to use “%20” instead (which Roller can serve, see above), then promptly fails Fails to resolve the correct URL to translate using “%20” Resolves tags URL which use “-” and continues to translate them successfully
    Technorati Resolves tag URLs which use ” ” correctly, after re-encoding the URL with “%20”
    Produces good results based upon using ” “    		 Resolves tag URLs which use “%20” correctly, replaces the “%20″ with ” ” and produces good results based upon that Resolves tag URLs which use “-” correctly
    Produces smaller, but not unreasonable, results, due of the infrequency of using “-” to separate written words
    Del.iciou.ois Resolves tag URLs which use ” ” correctly, after re-encoding the URL with “%20”
    Produces results based upon using ” “    		 Resolves tag URLs which use “%20” correctly
    Replaces “%20″ with ” ” and produces results based upon using ” “    		 Resolves tag URLs which use “-” correctly
    Produces results based upon using “-“
    Slynker Attempts to resolve tags URL which use ” “, encoding the URL to use “%20” instead
    Produces results based upon using ” “    		 Resolves tag URLs which use “%20” correctly
    Replaces “%20″ with ” ” and produces results based upon using ” “    		 Resolves tag URLs which use “_” correctly
    Produces results based upon using “_”

    As you’ve probably surmised by now the issue is actually about the convergence of two technologies, and the incompatibilities they currently have. Principally that of tagging blog posts (and other stuff too) and that of URL encoding. It is not due to the limitations differing web1.0 and web2.0 platforms have around tag syntax, specifically multi-word tags, but of the correct adherence of these platforms in there support of RFC 1738: Uniform Resource Locators (URL) specification.

    The problem is that tagging generally uses a relatively free form syntax (driven mainly by the communities which use and propagate said tag nomenclature, or “Folksonomy”), when and where possible, but that URL encoding has a variety of reserved characters, which conflict with the characters used in tags.

    Characters for special use in defining URL syntax include the following “Reserved Characters”, and should be encoded where possible (although as the data in the tables above prove even the encoded URLs fail to produce the expected, or required, results).

    Character Hex Dec
     “$” (the dollar sign)
    “&” (ampersand symbol)
    “+” (plus sign)
    “,” (comma symbol)
    “/” (forward slash)    		 24
    26
    2B
    2C
    2F    		 36
    38
    43
    44
    47
    Character Hex Dec
     “:” (the colon)
    “;” (the semi-colon)
    “=” (equal sign)
    “?” (the question mark)
    “@” (the ‘at’ symbol)    		 3A
    3B
    3D
    3F
    40    		 58
    59
    61
    63
    64

    Given that the above are “Reserved Characters” when it comes to URL encoding, and that they include some of the most popular delimiters used by multi-word tags (specifically “+” which is used a great deal, especially on Technorati). And, as I have found in the investigation above, have a number of issues in being used both in multi-word tags and in URL encoding, I have decided to standardise on “-” as the multi-word tag delimiter of choice.

    For me it has a number of advantages:

    1. saved and retrieved correctly in tags in the Roller edit post page
    2. the URL is encoded correctly in Roller too
    3. it resolves correctly whilst using Google Translate
    4. it returns all search results for both “-” and ” ” in Google Search – an unexpected bonus, in terms of returning search results (and thus being included in said search results)
    5. it returns reasonable results from Technorati, based upon “-“
    6. it returns reasonable results from Del.icio.us, based upon “-“
    7. it returns reasonable results from Slynker, based upon “-“

    As to the issue of upper versus lower case, I have standardised on all lower case, as this has little effect in searches (outside of Technorati, which returns slightly differing results, albeit with a low delta between the results returned).

    You may be able to see that I have started to retroactively replace the tags so far created with this new standard – however I have focused on the most popular tags for the time being, and I will continue to use this format from now on.

    I found this article on “URL Encoding (or: ‘What are those “%20″ codes in URLs?’)” provided a nice overview of the issues of URL encoding, and of RFC 1738 itself.

    Excellent article by Glenn Brunette on the Top 5 Solaris 10 Security Features

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    Excellent article by Glenn Brunette on the “Top 5 Solaris 10 Security Features You Should Be Using” . …..

    Out with the old, in with the new – blog design that is…

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    Given I’ve just redesigned the site, I thought it would be nice to keep a visual comparison of the old 2007 look and feel versus the new 2008 blog interface and design.

    Sadly image rendering in IE and Firefox lags behind that of Opera and Safari (the four browsers I review the site with), so these images may be a little ‘out of focus’. If that’s the case for you please get back to me and I’ll see if I can do anymore to improve the issue, prior to the two ‘largest by volume of users’ browsers catching up of course.

    Example 1: UK Government G2G Messaging Sub-Systems

    2007 version

    2008 version

    Example 2: Messaging Sub-Systems in the UK Government

    2007 version

    2008 version

    Example 3: Comparison of Major Messaging Sub-Systems in the UK Government

    2007 version

    2008 version

    Example 4: Evolution of UK Government Messaging Systems

    2007 version

    2008 version

    Welcome ! Alain Andreoli joins Sun Microsystems as Senior Vice President for Europe

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    All the very best to Alain Andreoli in his new role as he joins Sun as Senior Vice President, Global Sales and Services (GSS) for Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) . …..

    Radical Alex Cox ‘Repo Man’ inspired weblog redesign

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    Thanks to Alex Cox I’ve radically redesigned my ‘blog inspired by the product branding used in his seminal 1984 film ‘Repo Man’.

    Written and directed by Alex, with the ex-Monkee Michael Nesmith as Executive Producer, Repo Man stars Emilio Estevez and Harry Dean Stanton as repossession agents on the trail of missing car with a little extra in the boot (a stolen ‘nuke). It’s a satirical and surreal comedy, widely seen as one of the first truly independent movies (along with it’s stable mate, the excellent ‘Rumble Fish’). It has a great, mainly Punk, soundtrack, including Black Flag’s ‘TV Party’, and songs performed by Iggy Pop, Suicidal Tendencies, The Circle Jerks, The Plugz, Burning Sensations, Fear and Juicy Bananas.

    I was really struck by the product branding used in Repo Man – it’s pure and simple function over the aesthetic (with a good dollop of humorous irony thrown in for good measure).

    After writing to Alex to ask his permission to use the branding as the basis of the look and feel of the site I was very happy to receive a reply (in quick order too).

    Here’s Alex’s response:

    You’re welcome to use that look.

    It was originally the brainchild of Ralphs Supermarket in Los Angeles, who gave us all their generic stuff. The only labels we had to make said Drink and Food.

    John Lydon also used it for his PIL album, ALBUM aka CASSETTE.

    So you are in good company!

    All best

    Alex

    —

    Permanent US bases in Iraq? Afraid so.

    https://www.alexcox.com/ed_current.htm

    I was really pleased about getting a reply as I’m a big fan of Alex, and of his work, and not just because he does the best Jimmy Carl Black impression I’ve ever seen.

    As Alex rightly points out the look and feel was later used by John Lydon’s post Sex Pistols / Post Punk band Public Image Limited for their generic release, called ‘Compact Disc’ or ‘Album’ or ‘Cassette’ depending on the format (the branding extended to the singles released, the promotional materials, and the merchandising too).

    There are other people for me to thank for different elements of the new look and feel, and of especial mention is Dave Johnson.

    For those of you who don’t know Dave, he is the creator and driving force behind the Roller Weblogger (now a project in the Apache Software Foundation) used at Sun Microsystems as it’s ‘blogging platform of choice (it powers blogs.sun.com), as well as being a fellow Sun employee.

    Whilst recently reading Dave’s blog I had an idea that the colour scheme and basic layout he used would be a near perfect springboard for the ideas I had around using the product branding used in Repo Man as the basis for my sites look and feel redesign.

    Thanks to Dave, or rather his blog I’ve rebuilt the basic layout of this site, incorporating the Repo Man inspired look and feel. To properly credit Dave I added “Derived: Dave Johnson’s Rollerblogger blog CSS” to the header of my CSS file.

    Additionally theres a few more people to thank including www.khmerang.com, who’s post on ‘Real World Bar Graphs (with some CSS)’ helped my develop the Tag Pareto / Bar Graph, which I’m using as a page leader rather than the ubiquitous Tag Cloud (although there is an obligatory Tag Cloud on my archives page).

    Then there’s blogs.sun.com/junkfood, who’s multiple posts on Roller Hacking, specifically ‘Roller: Re-ordering the Category Bar’ helped me develop the code for sorting the Tag’s by frequency.

    That then led my to develop two other new pieces of functionality using Roller’s in built template scripting language ‘velocity’.

    Firstly a new menu which incorporates both the page menu functionality and the category menu functionality – it’s included in the banner at the top of the page.

    Secondly a new recent posts menu which both adapts to the currently chosen category and instead of linking to the individual page for an entry it instead links to an anchor on the page of the main blog (also current category dependent). The advantage here is that the reader still has the choice of reading posts around the target post – if they attract the eye

    I also have to thank the friends and colleagues who read reviewed my blog. A constant theme that came out in the comments made by them that the nature of the site was too diverse. Amusingly Walter Milner had this to say, which I thought was the most succinct (and most humorous):

    So relating to blogging – we have multiple aspects of our personalities, and I suspect that if you mix them on the same ‘channel’ you construct a confused message. One aspect is working at Sun/programming in C/PRINCE, another is a bizarre experience of a walk-on role in ‘The Birds’. I think you should separate them.

    And why have you got some 5 channel paper tape as your banner? ;-)

    However many of the reviewers wanted different things from my blog. Family (and some friends) generally wanted light fluffy stuff, like what’s going on at home, and what music am I listening to. Work friends generally wanted Sun Microsystems specific content. Whilst friends I had made in the IT Industry generally wanted generic technology information and opinion. Personally I also wanted to be able to blog about contemporary issues and news, in fact to use my blog as a diary of the significant events occurring around me.

    In an attempt to reach a compromise I ratiionalised my blog categories, ‘boiling’ them down to only four categories (not including root, or ‘All’, which makes five). The four are: (1) Home – personal stuff, what record I’m listening too, etc., (2) Life – contemporary news, etc., (3) Tech – from micro IT to macro IT, technology and the technology industry, and (4) Work – stuff about Sun Microsystems, etc.

    I’m hoping that by simplifying the categories down to four core areas, and by providing category specific functionality (now and more in the future), it will be easier for readers of this blog to navigate and find the stories and information pertinent to them.

    And for those of you who haven’t seen Repo Man, obviously I recommend seeing it, and here’s a link to the theatrical trailer (hosted over at YouTube) for you to either get a ‘taster’ of the film, or remind yourself of it. In one scene in the trailer you can briefly see Emilio Estevez, as ‘Otto’, eating out of a can simply labeled ‘food’ – wonderful.

    Link to above clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=554AX4l1tmw

    Relevant links: