My haiku
Washed up
Love you
Back soon
Sent via text from the 6.10 am train to London whilst rushing off to work last week, I thought it was kind of cute, can’t say Donna agreed though… not particularly sure it counts as a haiku either, c’est la vie…
Finally my new glasses have arrived. I say finally, but that really not fair, they only took a week.
I’ve been having more headaches lately, and increasingly painful ones, and it was pretty obvious that it was my eye sight letting me down.
It’s been at least fifteen years since my last pair, and they had held out for a fair while, but I could tell my sight had been degrading.
Worse than I thought though, I’ve been told I need these for anything that takes concentration, including watching the TV and driving.
Just getting used to them, it’s nice not to be so close to the screen again to be able to see what’s on it.
A number of reasons drove me to redesign the site, in part due to frustration with the existing one and inspiration to try something different.
My main frustrations were due to the fact I was posting a wide range of material whose messages I felt were getting mixed up.
One of the criticism’s people had of my blog was that it jumped around between high (detailed overviews of UK Gov. G2G sysetms) and low brow (going for a walk) too quickly. It had been my original intent to go with this, and that’s why the blog was originally called ‘eclectic’, but I’ve found it’s a little too jarring for people to handle, and I suspect was turning them off. By getting them to choose between different categories I’m hoping that they’ll pick up on that ‘channel’ and become familiar with it before trying the others. I think of this issue as one of signal to noise, however I suppose different readers signal is another’s readers noise.
Most people who have been through this learning curve move to multiple blogs, but I wanted an aggregated page, plus I had fun overloading some of the Roller macros to allow category specific functionality.
My frustration is that I’m sick to the gills of Facebook and the ilk, they are all just so much lock in to closed systems. Frankly I want all of these social applications to integrate. Now. For instance rather than have LinkedIn, Namyz, Xing, etc. keeping records of my professional contacts I just want a blended service where all my professional contacts are visible to me in a single data set, even if they are actually separate and multiple data sources (and wherever the data might actually be).
And I don’t want this applications to be shunting my data around in a haphazard manner, I’d rather just be able to view the information as a unified stream.
Just because the big three of MySpace, Facebook and Google have said that they will ‘play nice’ they are all, to a man, going to be ring fencing their user populations. They will attempt this with guile initially, then with ‘attractive’ *new* features, and finally with strong arm tactics. Eventually they will lose out, because if it’s not open, how ‘social’ is it really.
I’d started to feel that what was needed was a non-Facebook Facebook profile page, and once I’d seen Cal Henderson’s ‘iamcal‘ it all started to fall into place. Cal’s page was a real source of inspiration, and I hope that if he sees my current design that he likes it.
What I’m effectively going for is ‘Radical Transparency‘, mainly as put forward by Clive Thompson’s Wired article “The see through CEO“, and by Chris Anderson’s blog ‘The Long Tail‘ (in fact check out this recent article “You may be on Facebook, but the money’s in the Long Tail“).
Last week I was coming back from London on the late train from Euston and bumped into Chris Loughran from Deloitte, who was also doing the London to Birmingham trek. I was really pleased when, after showing him the new design, he immediately said ‘Radical Transparency’, because I knew I had ‘hit the nail on the head’ as it was obvious to him what I was trying to achieve.
You can see what I mean if you have a look at my new front page over at: https://blogs.sun.com/eclectic/
You should be able to see that I’ve collated recent blog entries, by ‘Category’, over on the left hand side (each of the Categories loads a different look and feel, which I’m hoping won’t be too disturbing for the readers, but will keep the separate nature of the contents in mind).
The centre is taken over by a tag graph combo, along with stuff I’m doing (including books I’m reading, music, films, all via All Consuming, sms via Twitter, online ‘radio’ via Last.fm, and a photo stream from Flickr).
Over on the right are some contact details, about the site, upcoming talks and presentations, and other pages accessable via the site.
The last section is a rss feed of the last blog post of my four favorite blogs, those of Alan Mather, Bill Vass, Mick Farren, and Tim Caynes.
I hope you like the new design, it appears to be popular, in that I’m converting more hits to page reads and multiple pages too.
There are a couple of things to complete, such as tidying up some of the code, finish re-implementing the multi-locale aspects of the site (although I doubt I’ll post machine translated blog posts again anytime soon), and finishing off a sitemap.
Here’s a free, as in beer, Blog Directory and Search Engine Site Submitter I wrote which works by sending out an XML-RPC Blog Ping.
“In blogging, ping is an XML-RPC-based push mechanism by which a weblog notifies a server that its content has been updated. An XML-RPC signal is sent to one or more “ping servers,” which can then generate a list of blogs that have new material. Many blog authoring tools automatically ping one or more servers each time the blogger creates a new post or updates an old one.”
– according to the Wikipedia article: ‘Ping (blogging)‘.
One of the things I have noticed most across the blogosphere and the wider ‘net during my time blogging, and it’s been just less than a year, is the obsession people have with “SEO”, or ‘Search Engine Optimization‘. There are a huge number of blogs dedicated to the subject and who simply go on about the whole SEO thing alone.
Frankly I feel that if I’m going to be putting effort into blogging then I might as well make it easy for people to find me and I’m sure plenty of other people feel the same way. If using technologies like blog pinging and other techniques like SEO is the norm, then it’s almost as though you are forced into doing the same to compete for readership; a technical ‘arms race’ in the competition for the attention of your readers.
So I wrote a program to help me notify the largest number of directories and search engines possible, in a simple and convenient way, and you’re welcome to use it as well.
You may find that if you click on the link to the file above, and you have Java installed, that it will attempt to run the application from where it is, so it’s probably best to do a ‘Save as…’ and save a local copy.
Please don’t deep link directly to the file above, instead link to the page you are currently on at: https://horkan.com/2008/04/22/blog-ping-search-submitter-seo
Here’s what the application looks like in action:
It notifies a variety of Blog Directories and Search Engines that your blog has been updated recently, which is often followed by those Blog Directories and Search Engines checking your site for new content, using a technique called ‘Spidering‘. Once verified by these ‘Web Crawlers’ they list your new content, postings, etc., in their directories and search results.
The list of Blogs is configurable, as is the the list of Blog Directories and Search Engines Servers (with a maximum of one thousand), and the application has a default list of those Servers, which includes some of the most popular that I have tested the application with successfully.
C’mon, now you’re just being silly, of course it won’t.
Again ‘No’, only you can do that by engaging your audience.
Yes.
Yes, but very much dependent on the volume, quality, and cadence, of your blog posts. I’ve tested it against sites with small volumes of blog posts and poor cadence, and I have found that despite being listed in those blog directories, etc., it does not generate page hits.
Fundamentally you need three things, but you need these anyway to create a blog which gets regular readership, and that is:
Maybe, maybe not, you’ll just have to see. It’s very dependent on the answer to the question above…
I recommend that you use it when you’ve initially set up a site to make as many Blog Directories and Search Engines aware of your new site as possible. You should probably be aware that a number of them require you to create an account with them, however the default list included in the application aren’t any of these.
After that I recommend that you only use it after posting a new blog entry and definitely not more than once a day (even with new posts and content).
It will load up, along with the libraries it is bundled with. It uses the vanilla java swing libraries, as well as the apache xml-rpc project libraries.
Once loaded up it’ll do nothing until you either:
An installed copy of the the Sun Java Runtime Environment (JRE). I set the software to be compatible with JRE version 1.5 and above, although I’ve only tested it from JRE 1.6 onwards.
Whilst writing it I used the Java Development Kit (JDK) version 1.6.0_0.5 (or 1.6.0 update 5, as it’s also known, the latest current version) so the JRE which matches this will definitely work.
You can get the Sun JRE here: https://java.com/en/download/index.jsp
Yes, it very much should, and because of Java’s platform independence, meaning programs written in the Java language have to run similarly on any supported hardware / operating-system platform via the Java Virtual Machine (Java VM or JVM). It should work on any system for which there is an available JRE.
For a full list of Operating Systems, System Configurations, and platforms, supported with a JRE (version 1.6) from Sun Microsystems, please see this page: https://java.sun.com/javase/6/webnotes/install/system-configurations.html
Easy peasy, once the JRE is installed, two choices, command line or desktop environment.
If you are using the command line the following command should run it:
java -jar BlogPing.jar
Otherwise you should be able to simply ‘click’ on it from your desktop environment for it to start up.
For this to work files of the type “jar” (a ‘Java ARchive’) need to be registered as being associated with Java (notably the Java executable). You may find that the application doesn’t start in this instance and a common cause is that another application, most frequently compression and de-compression software like Rar or Zip (or there windowed versions, like WinRAR or WinZip), have already made this association and thus will be started up instead of Java.
I’ve used screen grabs to show how to use the program, you can resize these images using the “Body Image Size” function over in the top of the right hand side bar (options are “Small”, “Medium”, and “Large”, and they should be set on “Medium” when you first come to the page).
When the program loads this is the first screen, and as it is such a simple program there is not much to it.
There are four menu items of note: “Exit” (under “File”), “About” (under “Help”), “Add Blogs” and “Add Pings” (both under “Menu”).
This screen shows the two menu item which you need to use to get the software to ping the servers you want to notify. You need to let the program know which blogs to tell people about and which directories and search engines to notify.
If you don’t have any blogs configured it will ask you to add one.
You need four pieces of information for this:
If you choose ‘OK’ above it will have saved your blog, and you are free to add more, edit whats already there, or delete some.
Afterward add, editing and deleting blogs choose ‘OK’ to save them or ‘Cancel’ to ignore all the recently made changes.
If you don’t have any servers to send blog pings configured it will ask you to add some.
You can choose to add them individually, or to load the default list.
Having choosen to load in the default list of servers to ping, you are free to add more, edit whats already there, or delete some.
Afterward add, editing and deleting servers to ping choose ‘OK’ to save them or ‘Cancel’ to ignore all the recently made changes.
All servers to be sent blog pings are saved in a text file called “ping.txt” which should be in the same directory, or folder, as the one the ‘BlogPing.jar’ program was started in.
When adding a blog directory or search engine ping service you need just one piece of information: the URL for XML-RPC blog pings for that site.
Here the program is working through a processing cycle of blogs and servers to ping. The results are posted in the main notification output area. Once it’s finished going through all of the blogs you call grab the output and copy it into a text file.
Here’s the about box, it loads a page from this blog, which means I can update the page and make sure news and information about the program is kept up to date.
Because I could and because I wanted more flexibility in using blog pinging over and above the default blog ping functionality in my blogs platform (Roller Weblogger, created by Dave Johnson, is used exclusively to host https://blogs.sun.com).
You may find that you have a similar requirement, even if your using another blogging platform such as WordPress, Movable Type, LiveJournal, or the like.
Plus I really dislike elitism, especially ‘technology’ elitism based on arbitrary things like what or how much you know, for me experience of having ‘done’ something matters more. Giving this software away and distributing it in the way that I am is an attempt to bring this capability to the non-programming, non-scripting, and much wider, blogging community.
Probably, in the longterm yes, as this is partially a tactical ‘fix’, done primarily to see if I could do it reasonably easily, of which the answer was definitely ‘yes’.
I also wanted more control and granularity when notifying Search Engines and Blog Directories of updates to my site, in fact I initially used it to make sure my blog was listed on as many global sites as possible.
The Java Development Kit (JDK) 1.6.0 update 0.5 (and of course, as stated above you’ll need a compatible JRE to run it).
NetBeans version 6.0.1, which you definitely don’t need to run this program, available here: https://download.netbeans.org/netbeans/6.0/final/
Please note that the latest version of NetBeans (6.1) is currently in RC, or ‘release candidate’, form and that I’ll likely update Blog Ping to have been written in that in the very near future.
The Apache XML-RPC libraries, version 3.1, also which you don’t need to run this software, available here: https://ws.apache.org/xmlrpc/
The ProGuard libraries, version 4.2, also which you don’t need to run this software, available here: https://proguard.sourceforge.net/
Yes, my default set of blog ping services, which I’ll post later, and that I obfusticated the code using the latest version of ProGuard after being inspired by this article written by Geertjan on how to obfusticate java code written using NetBeans.
Possibly that I wrote it whilst listening to Flanders and Swann, notably “Madeira M’Dear”, famous for its syllepsis.
And maybe that I wrote this blog post listening to New Order, specifically Blue Monday (’95 tweleve inch version), and thanks to Walter Milner I think the Pink Fairies got in there somewhere too.
Nowt, yadda, zip, nothing, I just wanted to see if I could do it, and found that I could. If you use it, and you like it, please tell people about it, blog about it, add links to this page and this blog (but not the download itself), and leave a comment if you have time.
I’m especially interested in hearing from anyone who downloads and installs Java and the JRE as a result of wanting to use this software, so please let me know if you have.
Link to my blog here: https://blogs.sun.com/eclectic/
Link to the Blog Ping application page here: https://horkan.com/2008/04/22/blog-ping-search-submitter-seo
And comments here please: https://horkan.com/2008/04/22/blog-ping-search-submitter-seo#comments
There are also online services like ‘Pingoat’ and ‘King Ping’ which act as ‘Blog Ping aggregators’ for you, you can find them at https://www.pingoat.com and https://www.kping.com respectively. Whats nice about the software here is that you can configure it to use these ‘Blog Ping aggregators’, if they have an XML-RPC interface, which in the case of ‘Pingoat’ and ‘King Ping’ they both do.
By the way, there are other free Blog Ping software out there, notably Blog Pinger (a Linux command line utility, which as it’s written in Python should run on any OS where you have a compatible Python instance installed) and Submit’em now (a Firefox Add on).
Go check them out, they might be more to your liking, and diversity is good.
Maybe, it depends on three things: demand (from you guys), use (for me), and time (i.e. what gets priority over this).
Probably spend some time learning more about the XML-RPC blog ping call protocol, I’m sure I could generate much higher volumes of Blog Ping successes if I did.
This instance uses the Creative Commons License. Copyright 2008, Wayne T. Horkan.
If there is enough demand for the software, and more importantly changes to the software, then I’ll consider putting the effort into setting it up as Open Source. However, frankly, it’s a very minimal and trifling set of code at the moment.
This is my personal weblog and on it I do not speak for my employer. However the program was written using Sun technologies and I do work at Sun (although I put this software together as a home project and my current role at Sun rarely involves writing code).
No, definitely not, nag me about it, not Sun, and do that in the comments section of this page please.
The tool is implicitly amoral, it’s the user that constructs a moral or immoral pattern of usage.
Using this software aggressively to send falsified blog postings will likely, and deservedly, get search engines and blog directories to block your site, potentially even de-listing it, so please don’t be irresponsible in using it.
Have a look at the following Wikipedia article for more information on White Hat versus Black Hat SEO techniques.
I’ll be presenting tomorrow at the “Enterprise Architecture Practitioners Conference 2008”.
As usual this Enterprise Architecture (EA) Practitioners Conference is being hosted by the Open Group, the custodians of the extremely popular TOGAF EA Framework (it stand for “The Open Group Architecture Framework”). TOGAF is currently used by 80% of the Forbes Global Top 50 companies, and has emerged as a leading framework amongst Enterprise Architects for developing information systems architectures.
The strap line of the conference is “Successful Enterprise Architecture” and through the use of working application case studies and peer-group discussion, the event will demonstrate how the framework used is central to the development of an effective Enterprise Architecture.
I’ll be presenting “Case Studies of Enterprise Architecture“: exploring a number of 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 successful Enterprise Architecture is dependent on achieving the proper Governance model.
This is the 18th EA Practitioners Conference, and is being held in Glasgow, Scotland, at the Radisson SAS Hotel. It will be the third one that I’ll have presented at now, having done the previous two “European” versions of the conferences: Paris in 2007 and London in 2006. There are a variety of posts about these conferences on this blog and the best way to find them, and the content I presented, is via the tag for enterprise-architecture-practitioners-conference or for more general posts with EA content at the tag on enterprise-architecture.
I’m not the only Sun guy presenting at the conference, Dan Berg (CTO Global Sales & Services and Vice President EMEA Systems Engineering) presented “Architecting the Sun” on Monday, and Rakesh Radhakrishnan (Chief Identity & SOA Architect, Sun Microsystems, US) is presenting “Aligning ADM and SOA for Successful EA” today.
Sun were originally founding members of the Open Group and thanks to Scott Radeztsky championing EA in Field / Customer Engineering in the US we have recently rejoined the Open Group as Platinum members. This has also led to a TOGAF certification programme being rolled out in the US, and I very much hope that we can see a similar programme in Europe and the UK.
Here’s the main link to the event: https://www.opengroup.org/glasgow2008/
Here’s the link to the program for the event: https://www.opengroup.org/glasgow2008/program.htm
Here’s the link to the Open Group synopsis of my presentation: https://www.opengroup.org/glasgow2008/horkan.html
Just been listening to BlogTalk Radio, who’ve kindly been hosting a number of slots for us on our Sun Startup Essentials programme in conjunction with WebMission08.
Web Mission 2008 sees twenty UK web2.0 startups traveling to San Francisco and exploring new opportunities for growth with key people across Silicon Valley.
Sun are a key Technology partner for the event and it is being covered by Sun’s local expert on Startups (based in the UK and beyond), Stewart Townsend.
More on the UK Startups page, hosted by Stewart, here: https://blogs.sun.com/startups/entry/20_uk_startups_and_one
So I’ve been spending time lately providing better international support to the blog.
In fact check out the variants I’ve put together:
For the translator I used the Yahoo Babelfish translation service, rather than Google Translate (which I use to produce on demand translations of the site, at the time of posting this it should be at the top of the right hand sidebar), because I didn’t want to become tied in to a single Translation Service Supplier.
During translation I switched to using “blog” rather than “weblog” for the title, as many of the languages would translate blog but not weblog (possibly a weakness of the translation service).
I was alluding to the new multi-language pages and the new multi-lingual nature of the blog in the post on St. Patrick’s Day, however I’d only translated some of the posts, not internationalised the site itself, and so it wasn’t really time to go live, but I did want the posts to start being spidered (and the post “Weblog language translator – blog translation on the fly with Roller specific functionality” explains why).
There are a number of ways to internationalize a blog running over Roller Weblogger, for instance at the Aquarium, another Sun Blog, they use multiple blogs instances, like the Japanese Aquarium, I didn’t go for this approach as I wanted to keep to a single blog instance (due to maintainability basically).
I approached the problem by having a language resource file which loads as the session begins based upon the locale determined in the URL.
At run time this is done dynamically like this:
A number of language resource files were needed, all of which I populated with text based named variables (obviously the name of the variable stays the same, just the content per language resource file is different).
Then I replaced all the specific uses of text across my roller templates with calls to those variables.
This is a code snippet example of the code which decides which language resource file to load, and yes, before you say it, it’s not aesthetically pleasing, but I’m the only person who’ll be debugging it, so I’ll let myself off on that one. As you can see it checks which locale the page is being called from (based on the URL, but you can’t see that bit), once it finds a positive it loads the language specific resource file (notice I also ensure to load a default at the end if a match can’t be found).
#if ($model.locale == "en") #includeTemplate($model.weblog "_lang_en") #elseif ($model.locale == "zh") #includeTemplate($model.weblog "_lang_zh") #else #includeTemplate($model.weblog "_lang_en") #end
And here’s an example of a specific language resource file, in this case this is the start of “_lang_de”, one of the files that would have been loaded based on the logic in the above piece. As you can see it has my (string) variables allocated and populated.
#set ($gtTitle = "Blog Wayne-Horkans: eklektisch") #set ($gtMostPopTags = "Die meisten populären Umbauten") #set ($gtSitePrefs = "Aufstellungsort-Präferenzen")
Here’s an example use of the $gtTitle (string) variable from above within the Roller Weblogger template, which Roller builds dynamically at run time, obviously if the page was being
$gtTitle
Probably the worst part of this was being adversely effected by Roller timezone and localization sensitivity issues as documented in ROL-1337 “all components involved in weblog rendering need to be locale & timezone sensitive”.
For instance when generating blog specific URLs in my templates, not all of the Roller Weblogger functions, macros and variables are timezone / localisation safe, and so for a number of them I’ve had to step though the templates modding the code to be timezone and localization safe as I go.
This meant that I had to bodge parts of the code with temporary ‘fixes’ to make up for the incomplete coverage, but it will do for now.
A couple of the most obvious issues was one with dates, as “$utils.formatDate” only produces day and month names in English, and another with “$entry.permalink” as it produces a non-locale specific URL
## Replaced instances of $entry.permalink with $entryLSP (Locale Specific Permalink) #set ($entryLSP = "https://blogs.sun.com/eclectic/$model.locale/entry/$utilities.encode($entry.anchor)")
I may also have to write alternate macros which are locale specific, including the one that generates a list of recent entries:
#set ($rEntries = $model.weblog.getRecentWeblogEntries($chosenCat, $rEntriesTotal)) ## Have to use this as locale settings don't yet effect "getRecentWeblogEntries" #showWeblogEntryLinksList($rEntries)
I don’t want to give the impression that non of the Roller Weblogger timezone / locale specfic functionality works. In fact a lot more than I assumed would, did. Including the menu (content) functions and Tag URL functions, and I was very pleased that there was the level of support in Roller that there is for internationalization.
I’ll be providing more multi-lingual content, specifically the content rich, article like posts I’ve been doing, so far I’ve translated three posts of this ilk:
Last night I was at a BCS ELITE networking event, very kindly organised by Yva Thakurdas, with help from Mandy Bauer, and co-hosted by the indomitable Roger Ellis (in the Chairman, David Tidey’s absence).
BCS ELITE are one of the BCS’s Specialty Groups, a forum for IT Directors and CxOs.
Obviously the event was a good one, I had an enjoyable time, and in the words of Mr. Rodríguez: “Make new friends and keep the old. One is silver and the other’s gold.”
It reminded me that I hadn’t posted the photo that Yva had sent me from the BCS ELITE Winter Gala, where Scott McNealy was presented with his Distinguished Fellowship of the BCS at the stunningly magnificent Goldsmiths Hall (on his Birthday I might add).
So here it is:
From left to right are: Rebecca Smith, Simon Culmer, Scott McNealy, Kim Jones, and Enzo Tolino.
Many thanks for the photo Yva, and again for setting up the event last night.
A big welcome to the blogosphere to Peter Hoots , Enterprise Architect extraordinaire at Sun, who starts his Sun blog , as I’m sure he means to go on, with a post about EA Framework ‘Completeness’ . …..
So the ‘battle’ for Mayor of London is being called ‘the Ken vs. Boris show’.
Strange to think that in the majority of the search results I’ve generated whilst researching the subject most of them came up with ‘Ken vs. Boris’, rather than the other way around, almost as though Boris Johnson is in the stronger position of the two, both in and out of the sentence.
That Ken Livingstone has a battle on his hands this time round is without a doubt. I spend the majority of my working life in the City, and frankly I haven’t heard a good word said about him in almost ten years, when I was still at Harrods, building Harrods Online (yes, I know, pretty isn’t it, although it’s been almost eight years since I spent three ‘heady’ years there, and I expect it’s probably been re-engineered since then, although you never know, as software I engineered is still in commission after over fifteen years).
Of course the battle for the position of the Mayor of London should not be confused with that of the Lord Mayor of the City of London, which is something completely different.
Over on the BBC website they are asking the lowest common denominator question of ‘does it matter outside London ?’, and given the wholesale reliance that the UK economy has on the Finance and Trading industry centered in London, it’d be extremly hard to see how it isn’t.
That the people of London choose both the best Major for the City and it’s re-energisation, it’s imperative that they also choose someone who can help re-energise the Financial ‘Engine’ of the UK which sits at the heart of the Capital. This is especially true given the ongoing credit crisis, made even worse yesterday with the annoucment that Bear Stearns would sell massively under their expected value.
Andrew Sparrow, a journalistic political blogger over at the Guardian website, has a nice piece ‘Boris invites Ken to get on his bike ‘, which includes the following snippet, in regards to the ‘green’ agenda:
Boris, of course, was funnier. Ken, apparently, never learnt to ride a bike, and, after a question about cycling, Boris urged him to “show a lead” and learn now.
Other headlines include the Telegraph with ‘Boris Johnson prances round Ken Livingstone’, the Times with ‘It’s Horrid Ken v Chaotic Boris’, and I’ve found you can even get betting odds on the ‘competition’ along with the tag line of ‘Red Ken vs Blue Boris ‘.
Frankly it must be the Brummy from Nechells in me, but I actually thought the funniest caption ended up being the Sun’s ‘barmy Boris VS crazy Ken’.
Let’s just hope that the City gets someone who at least attempts to live up to their promises, and who can genuinely help to revitalise not just local authority politics in London, but the Financial sector too, for the sake of us all in the UK.
Farewell to another hero of mine with the demise of Arthur C. Clarke earlier today.
I have fond memories of Arthur, mainly from the ITV series ‘Arthur C. Clarke’s Mysterious World’, and of course from the parody done by the Goodies in the episode ‘Big Foot’.
Arthur’s work was prescient, and he well understood the symbiotic relationship between Science Fiction, and that of Science, Technology, and Innovation:
I’m sure we would not have had men on the Moon if it had not been for Wells and Verne and the people who write about this and made people think about it. I’m rather proud of the fact that I know several astronauts who became astronauts through reading my books.
As a ‘retired’ table top RPGer my favourite quote of his, which I heard, I think from Paul Cooke, was:
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
Whilst this following quote amusingly goes very much against Okham’s Razor (which itself is a principal I like, and use, a great deal):
The truth, as always, will be far stranger.
I also like these quotes by Arthur too:
How inappropriate to call this planet Earth, when clearly it is Ocean.
Sometimes I think we’re alone in the universe, and sometimes I think we’re not. In either case the idea is quite staggering.
Somewhere in me is a curiosity sensor. I want to know what’s over the next hill. You know, people can live longer without food than without information. Without information, you’d go crazy.
Apparently another of his most famous works, ‘Rendevous with Rama’, is being adapted and produced as a film, and according to IMDB will be ready for release in 2009. Let’s hope so, and that it’s a fitting adaption.
He leaves the the Arthur C. Clarke Foundation to carry on the good work of promoting Science and Technology in his name.
So here’s to the man, who along with Stanley Kubrick in the adaption of 2001: A Space Odyssey, managed to change the entire World’s understanding of what ‘Space’ might sound like, especially when spaceship’s ‘dock’. Less whoosh, bang and zap, and more ‘An der schönen blauen Donau’ (also known as ‘On The Beautiful Blue Danube’ by Johann Strauss II).
私達の市役所の仕事の使用中日最後の火曜日(第4)私が IntelのFasterTradingの前 日曜日の人が、壮麗なサヴォイの場所のIETのHQのナイジェルWoodward催した得られた後、 2008年の でき事に。 私は実際にそれを見つけるでき事を最もよい売り手の操業の1つ、市場の表面仕上げ、私によってがまだに行っているでき事楽しんだ。 ナイジェルおよびIntelのチームは実際に彼らの原料を知っていた、それはそれらを聞く喜びだったある最高のスピーカーをしっかり止め。 . …..
Nachdem ein beschäftigter Tag bei der Arbeit in unserem Stadtbüro letzten Dienstag (der 4.) ich in der Lage war, Intels FasterTrading an das Ereignis 2008 entlang zu gelangen, bewirtet von einem Exsun-Kerl, Nigel Woodward, vorbei am Hauptquartier des IET am ausgezeichneten Wirsing-Platz. …..
Över på HQEN av IETEN på den storartade savoyen förlägga, efter en upptagen dag på arbete i vår tisdag för jumbon för stadskontoret (4th) jag var kompetent att få along till Intel den FasterTrading händelsen som 2008 varades värd av enSun grabb, Nigel Woodward. ….. 1 Trackback
在一繁忙的天在工作在我们的市政厅最后星期二(4个)之后我能有 英特尔的FasterTrading 2008年 事件，主持由前太阳人，奈格尔Woodward，在IET的HQ在壮观的开胃菜地方。 我真正地享受这个事件，发现它一个最佳的供营商奔跑，市场饰面，我去的事件。 奈格尔和英特尔队巩固了真正地知道他们的材料的一些第一流报告人，并且它是乐趣听他们。 我划分了什么我夺取了反对每位报告人，并且如下他们的沥青(因为 这里 参考 是更多关于报告人和那里个体沥青. …..
Na een bezige dag op het werk in ons Bureau van de Stad vorige Dinsdag (de vierde) die ik kon aan de gebeurtenis vooruitgang boeken van FasterTrading 2008 van Intel , door een ex-zonkerel, Nigel Woodward, over bij HK van IET op de prachtige Plaats van de Savooiekool wordt ontvangen. …..
Après qu’un jour occupé au travail dans notre bureau de ville mardi dernier (le 4ème) j’aie pu subsister à l’événement 2008 de FasterTrading d’Intel , accueilli par un type d’ex-Sun, Nigel Woodward, plus d’au QG de l’IET à l’endroit magnifique de la Savoie. …..
Po Tym Jak ruchliwie dzień przy praca w nasz Miasto Biurowy ostatni Wtorek (the 4th) I być sprawnie sprawnie Intel FasterTrading 2008 wydarzenie, gościć ex-Słońce facet, Nigel Woodward, przy the HQ the IET przy the wspaniały Savoy Miejsce.
I naprawdę cieszyć się the wydarzenie, ono jeden the najlepszy sprzedawca bieg, targowy obszycie, wydarzenie I targowy iść. Nigel i the Intel drużyna zabezpieczać niektóre niektóre mówca kto naprawdę znać ich materiał, i ono być przyjemność.
I łamać puszek co I chwytać przeciw co mówca i ich smoła ich (gdy odniesienie tutaj być odniesienie o the mówca i tam indywidualny smoła zbyt) i I używać ten poczta jako sposobność i write-up przegląd the aktualny status the Europejczyk i UK Finanse i Rynek Handlarski przemysł, zarówno jak i the temat smoła the wydarzenie, che być the aktualny technologia “Ręka Ścigać się” wokoło wzrastający Handlowy prędkość wydarzenie i the wpływ narosły Handlowy prędkość na handel.
The poczta dzielić w the następujący sekcja che głownie podążać the kurs che the wydarzenie (oprócz the ostatni sekcja, che być mój odbicie i myśl o the wydarzenie i swój zawartość).
George Andreadis, Głowa AES Płynność Strategia przy Kredytowy Suisse, przedstawiać “Wyzwanie the handlarski ręka ścigać się”.
Nasz pierwszy mówca zakrywać the fragmentaryzacja w the handlarski rynek przez the UK i Europa i dlaczego UK być i on dać przykładny przegląd UK.
Opłata różnorodność powód, the liczba Targowy System handlowy i Rynek przez Europa (właśnie w the UK) być wartko, the Europejczyk Rynek Handel rynek, wielki rywalizacja. On pójść dalej:
Przy bardzo podstawowy poziom the Rynek w Pieniężny Instrument Zarządzenie (MiFID) być legalny zgoda między the Europejski Ekonomiczny Teren naród i handel w otwarty sposób, i prowadzić the “otwarcie otwarty” the Europejski Handlarski Rynek, i ostatecznie the aktualny fragmentaryzacja widzieć w tamte rynek.
Ciemny Płynność ogólny znaczyć płynność che wyjawiać, i gdy zbierać wpólnie ono być w Ciemny Basen. Książka być daleko-wprowadzać na rynek kolekcja Ciemny Ciecz dokąd tam być pragnienie bez pokaz na rozkaz książka. Ponieważ płynność wyjawiać potencjalny rynek uczestnik móc targowy głębia. Rynek być pożytecznie dla handlowiec ogromna liczba część bez themselves the rynek otwarty, i ogólny używać i targowy wpływ gdy handlować wielki rozkaz (który inaczej ruszać się the rynek jeżeli znać).
Niski Utajenie być obecnie bardzo “gorący” temat dla Handlowiec “(1) millisecond przewaga w zastosowanie konserwować być wartym $100 milion rok“. Ono skupiać się w kierunku napędowy puszek Handel transakcja utajenie równie dużo ewentualny.
Niski Utajenie Handel być o the transakcja prędkość redukcja pieniężny przewaga. The olbrzymi różnica w transakcja utajenie przez the Świat prowadzić żądanie dla z system który móc the niski utajenie ewentualny, w rzeczywistości jeden the najwięcej uderzający różnica który on mówić wokoło być the porównanie w utajenie przez the świat, utajenie w the USA być tak dobre jak 5 ms, the UK być około 20 ms, podczas gdy the Europejczyk średnia być równie biedny 40 ms.
On także mówić o Mądrze Rozkaz Numer banku (SOR) w poważanie Mądrze Rozkaz Egzekucja (SOE).
W przeszłości Skupiać się bardzo mocno o the ilość the handel i skupiać się powszechnie dzwonić Mądrze Rozkaz Egzekucja (SOE). Gdy ty mieć jeden rynek, tak jak the Londyński Giełda Papierów Wartościowych (LSE), ty potrzebować równie dużo pieniężny wartość z the handlowy “prawy” ewentualny.
Z the pojawienie się nowy Handlarski Rynek, pieniężny wartość móc dostarczać che handlarski rynek dawać ty the najlepszy nagroda dla twój handel, i być bardzo mocno o być z, być typowo dzwonić Mądrze Rozkaz Numer banku (SOR).
SOR spojrzenie the pytanie: “handel I wysyłać mój handel the zyskowny handel”.
SOE odpowiadać the pytanie: “jak i kiedy I ustawiać i transact mój handel the zyskowny handel”.
Oczywiście Niski Utajenie Handlarski wpływ i być obecnie w symbiotyczny związek z SOR.
Peter Randall, CEO Chi-X, przedstawiać: “Nowy rynek handlarski model & technologia”.
Nasz następny mówca dać przegląd dlaczego Utajenie być więc zwalniać w the UK (i przez Europa) przeciw the handlarski utajenie znajdować w the USA. Jego opinia być że my w the UK komputeryzować spadek, istota ludzka skupiać się, rozwój biznesu, i nigdy naprawdę ruszać się zdala od zachęcanie który modelować. Podczas Gdy the Amerykanin dostarczać skomputeryzowany system handlowy, che polegać na ludzki/organicznie przerób.
The nowy wymiana jak Chi-X wziąć the Amerykański podejście i zaczynać z proces projektować dla elektroniczny system od the outset. Średnia być główny powód dlaczego Chi-X handlarski utajenie być równie niski 7 ms, właśnie 2 ms daleko the Amerykański (NASDAQ) średnia, całość 13 ms szybki the UK (LSE) średnia, i 33 ms szybki the Europejski średnia!
The pragnienie w Ciemny Basen, Peter pozować the retoryczny pytanie “System handlowy umożliwiać the transformacja the Europejski rynek i the przyrost te Targowy system handlowy?” ono:
I myśleć że tam być dużo tutaj dla the inny (dane) system handlowy inny, i punkt który atrybut jakaś taki system potrzeba pomyślny, oprócz the oczywisty wymaganie dla prawdziwy “Biznesowy Potrzeba”:
Kevin Houstoun, CTO BidRoute, przedstawiać: “Wygrywać the rasa płynność & nowy usługa”.
Kevin być popularny postać w the Finansowy przemysł, jako ewangelista dla the DYLEMAT protokół, che on być w idealny pozycja w ten sposób jako the co-prowadzić the DYLEMAT Protokół Globalny Komisja Techniczna, on także prowadzić the przechowalnia grupa robocza i the sieć usługa grupa robocza.
On dać przegląd Oferta Trasa jako dostawca SOR opierać się rozwiązanie, architektura wokoło SOR architektura.
Widownia członek the Ochrona Technologia Analiza Centrum (STAC) przynosić w górę niektóre dobra uwaga o the ruch w kierunku znormalizowany SOR opierać się handlarski architektura i the wzrost w dane dostępny wokoło the występ system handlowy (che, oczywiście, STAC jechać).
Tony Biskup, poprzedni Naczelny Architekt Wachovia ONO (sponsorować wspólnie Verari i Wachovia), przedstawiać: “Szybkościowy handel: specjalizować się rozwiązanie”.
Tony dać możliwie jeden the najlepszy przegląd dopasowywanie czynnościowy wymaganie (w ten przykład jeden handel) jeden technologia. Ono być znakomity gdy ono pracować na dwa poziom, the przegląd między the związek między czynnościowy wymaganie i technologia być dobry, ale więc być the dopasowanie the technologia tamte biznesowy wymaganie. On kierować i w jeden obruszenie, i szczerze I bardzo imponować.
On kontynuować dalej the technologia uprawomocniać, on mówić o the technika on uprawomocniać przy Wachovia ich przewaga pod względem handlowy prędkość w the USA, che zawrzeć:
I przypuszczać, bez zaskoczenia, I cieszyć się Tony prezentacja najwięcej, wydawać dużo mój kariera w ONO Architektura rola, i jeden mój główny interes jak technologia uprawomocniać prawdziwy biznesowy potrzeba.
W rozmowa z Tony po the wydarzenie on powiedzieć te rzecz:
Pavel Yegerov, Naczelny Architekt Pieniężny Usługa przy Intel, przedstawiać: “Przyśpieszenie technika dla the stać na czele-biuro infrastruktura”.
Podstawowy to być przegląd the Intel mapa samochodowa, well przedstawiać i stawiać wpólnie. I zakładać niektóre the łączny praca który the Intel Finanse drużyna robić wśród the przemysł (prawdopodobnie Nigel dla przynajmniej dla dla, on wstawiać się the wczesna praca wokoło DYLEMAT przy Słońce około sześć lub siedem rok temu).
Tam być przedstawicielstwo od the następujący firma (z przykrością I łapać the imię, właśnie, reprezentować):
Przywoływać dużo od ten część the wydarzenie, chociaż the kumpel od BEA mówić o Powikłany Wydarzenie Przerób (CEP), proponowanie który the WYSIWYG narzędzie dla Rozwój Biznesu Inżynieria (BPE, i ono być bliski krewny, Rozwój Biznesu Re-engineering, lub BPR) móc łatwo umożliwiać przy pomocy jego firma toolset (przypuszczać być być być dzwonić WebLogic Integracja, lub WLI, nad the WebLogic Rozwój Biznesu Kierownik, lub BPM, che bpm biegać nad the BEA J2EE Serwer Aplikacji).
On sugerować że pamięć zostać dopuszczalny technologia należny the ruch “pamięć” pamięć.
Szczerze I myśleć ten niezwykle sporny, ten narzędzie, równie, swój rodzaj, abstract tak dużo techniczny złożoność w oferta ich działanie używać Biznes Analityk the punkt który używać potencjał tak jak prędkość, występ, i niezawodność, wywierać wpływ używać.
I napotykać ten zagadnienie przed, i ono być specyficznie z the nadmierny abstrakcja rozwiązanie, the punkt który ono ignorować, lub raczej brać w rozważanie, the techniczny przymus.
Ono móc oczywiście demonstrować dwa sekwencja diagram, jeden jak the Biznesowy Analityk/Projektant myśleć ono pracować zasadzony na the Czynnościowy wezwanie ono robić, i wtedy jak ono właściwie pracować zasadzony na the Zasadzony wezwanie ono robić. Nawet jeśli ty rozumieć sekwencja diagram ono musieć przynajmniej że tam o wiele więcej iść na the osoba te proces być świadomy.
Tutaj być przykład Sekwencja Diagram, widzieć przy the Czynnościowy Poziom.
Tutaj być the ten sam Sekwencja Diagram, widzieć przy the Widzieć Poziom.
Gdy ty móc otwarcie tam dużo iść na “pod the kapiszon”, i być musieć odprawiać wyłącznie wzrost w dostawa/urzeczywistnienie czas. I robić poczta właśnie na ten temat w the pobliski przyszłość.
Tutaj być sekcja the rzecz który przychodzić podczas i po the wydarzenie…
Przywdziewać Grantham, EVP dla nasz Globalny Sprzedaż i Usługa (GSS) Organisation (podstawowy Don być the głowa the całkowity “Pole” lub “Klient” inżynieria) mówić w jego główny wątek the UK organisation “miara przemysł ty dbać dla, ponieważ ty przychodzić dla przychodzić ty mierzyć”, i mierzyć leżeć u podłoża mój przemyśliwanie na the różny HPC system przez the świat, i przez the przemysł.
I znajdować że “the różny HPC system przez przemysł definiować the pomiar przypisywać”, więc dla HPC system w edukacja i badać top500 być typowo teraflops i the podobieństwo, the materiał the Top500. Ale dla HPC system w Finanse typowo mierzyć w handlowy utajenie, handlowy zadość i handlowy prędkość. Podczas Gdy dla Google i the inny Internet opierać się “obłoczny compute” HPC siatka the ostrość być pomyślny odpowiedź w dawać czas okres.
Gdy the czynnościowy wymaganie być różny, nawet jeśli dzielić the ten sam poniekąd poniekąd skala i występ wymaganie, the architektura i topologia przez HPC system być różny, prowadzić Przemysł Odmianowy Siatka i HPC.
I przypuszczać pozornie być dosyć oczywisty, ale I znajdować ono być the oczywisty, rdzeniować atrybut, materiał że ludzie gubić ostrość i pozornie zapominać. The Infrastruktura między the HPC typ, warstwa przemysł, móc mnóstwo podobieństwo przy the infrastruktura warstwa (prędkość, występ, technologia składnik, sieć, topologia i.e jak ono dostosowywać wpólnie), jednakże odróżniać się ogromnie jeśli chodzi o the podaniowy/logiczny i czynnościowy warstwa.
Mój seria przesyłanie wiadomości system przegląd na zewnątrz the przemysł na przesyłanie wiadomości system w Rząd inny przemysł, zawierać: handlowy ziemia (the Giełda Papierów Wartościowych i ich rodzaj, the Targowy Dane system handlowy, DYLEMAT, FIXml, Jerzyk i SwiftNet, Etc.), użyteczność ziemia (Moresco, the DTC, Etc.), energia ziemia (gaz, olej, i inny energia i zasoby handlarski wymiana), handel detaliczny (B2B, Etc.), (podaż i popyt), środek (wiadomość, i targowy dane zbyt jeżeli ty być Reuters), i Telco (klient i usługa przeniesienie i transakcja).
Sprawa te przesyłanie wiadomości system uwydatniać być że sprawa być udzielenie biznes, i że włączenie i uczestnictwo sprawa.
Zarówno jak i the ruch re-engineer the handlarski rynek spadek Rozwój Biznesu, inny sposób prędkość być the inny dane słownik podczas handel odnosić sie Prosto Przez Przerób (STP).
Tłumaczyć wewnątrz i z lokalny zastrzeżony dane słownik, zamiast używać DYLEMAT jako the rodzimy dane słownik przez cały handlowy transakcja.
Dopo che un giorno occupato sul lavoro nel nostro ufficio di città martedì scorso (il quarto) potevo ottenere avanti all’evento 2008 di FasterTrading dell’Intel , ospitato da un tipo di ex-Sun, Nigel Woodward, sopra al HQ dello IET al posto magnifico della Savoia. …..