Category: Technology

Why ask how, when why is so much more fun?

OK. So the original quote from Spawn is exactly the opposite, but let’s go with it… 🙂

A few times in the past I’ve been asked questions and started to give a direct answer, then someone smarter has jumped in and asked the killer question. Why? Quite often it’s easy to answer the initial question, so rather than understand the reason for the question, you just respond and pat yourself on the back. That’s great, but without knowing the context of the question, the “right answer” could actually be the “wrong answer”. As Tom always says, “The answer to every question is *it depends*!”

I had another situation like that recently. The questions was, “How can I install VNC on a Linux box?” Pretty simple answer and I know a guy who wrote an article on that, so I pointed them to the article. Job done!

Then I got a pang of guilt and the conversation went like this…

  • Q: Why do you want to install VNC?
  • A: Because my boss told me too.
  • Q: By why does your boss want you to install VNC?
  • A: Because the network connection breaks sometimes, making a “ssh -X user@host” a dodgy solution.

Now I have nothing against VNC itself, but installing it on a server is one more attack vector to worry about, especially if it’s not necessary. Knowing the context allowed me to talk about silent installs, command line DBCA, running things in the background, even the screen command.

If the person goes away and installs VNC, that’s no skin off my nose, but just answering how, without knowing the context could well have opened them, or me, up to criticism down the line.

So next time you answer a question and are about to enable smug mode, ask yourself if you have actually helped, or just taken the easy route.

Cheers

Tim…

[Cloud | On-Premise | Outsourcing | In-Sourcing] and why you will fail!

I was reading this article about UK government in-sourcing all the work they previously outsourced.

This could be a story about any one of a number of failed outsourcing or cloud migration projects I’ve read about over the years. They all follow the same pattern.

  • The company is having an internal problem, that they don’t know how to solve. It could be related to costs, productivity, a paradigm shift in business practices or just an existing internal project that is failing.
  • They decide launch down a path of outsourcing or cloud migration with unrealistic expectations of what they can achieve and no real ideas about what benefits they will get, other than what Gartner told them.
  • When it doesn’t go to plan, they blame the outsourcing company, the cloud provider, the business analysts, Gartner, terrorists etc. Notably, the only thing that doesn’t get linked to the failure is themselves.

You might have heard this saying,

“You can’t outsource a problem!”

Just hoping to push your problems on to someone else is a guaranteed fail. If you can’t clearly articulate what you want and understand the consequences of your choices, how will you ever get a result you are happy with?

Over the years we’ve seen a number of high profile consultancies get kicked off government projects. The replacement consultancy comes in, hires all the same staff that failed last time, then continue on the failure train. I’m not going to mention names, but if you have paid any attention to UK government IT projects over the last decade you will know who and what I mean.

Every time you hear someone complaining about failing projects or problems with a specific model (cloud, on-premise, outsourcing, in-sourcing), it’s worth taking a step back and asking yourself where the problem really is. It’s much easier to blame other people than admit you’re part of the problem! These sayings spring to mind.

“Garbage in, garbage out!”

“A bad workman blames his tools!”

Cheers

Tim…

PS. I’ve never done anything wrong. It’s the rest of the world that is to blame… 🙂

Update: I wasn’t suggesting this is only an issue in public sector projects. It just so happens this rant was sparked by a story about public sector stuff. 🙂

MobaXterm 8.6

MobaXterm 8.6 has just been released. The downloads and changelog can be found here.

For SSH and X emulation, this is the best! I keep saying it, but give it a go. You won’t regret it. 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

Video: SQL Server Databases on Microsoft Azure

I mentioned in a previous post, the whole look and feel of Microsoft Azure has been rejigged. As a result, I had to do a run through of the SQL Server DBaaS stuff to update the screen shots in and old article on the subject.

Azure : SQL Server Databases on Azure

Since I was doing that, I figured I might as well do a video for my YouTube channel.

Cheers

Tim…

MobaXterm 8.5

MobaXterm 8.5 was released at then end of last year. The download and changelog can be found here.

If you use a Windows desktop and you ever need to SSH a server or use X emulation, you need this bit of software in your life. There is a free version, or you can subscribe to support the development.

Give it a go. You won’t regret it.

Cheers

Tim…

WordPress 4.4.1

WordPress 4.4.1 has been released.

You can see the list of fixes here. Your site will probably auto-update soon if you can’t be bothered to give it a nudge before.

There is also an update to the Twenty Sixteen theme, which you will have to trigger manually, if you are using it of course. 🙂

Happy blogging.

Cheers

Tim…

WordPress 4.4

WordPress 4.4 has landed. As usual, early on you will need to manually initiate the auto-update. I’m guessing in a day or so it will just happen by itself.

I did the update on 5 installations and all went through with no dramas. There will no doubt be a slew of updates over the next few days, which is pretty common after a big release. The auto-update feature means you can take the lazy approach and just let it do its thing. 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

 

Microsoft Outlook : When Bad UX Attacks!

I guess there are lots of problems with the User eXperience (UX) of Microsoft Outlook, but the one that kills me is the popup menu in the folders pane.

I’m not sure how other people use this, but for me, the number one thing I do is “Delete All”, closely followed by “Mark All as Read”. I have a bunch or rules that “file” irrelevant crap, which I later scan through and typically delete en masse.

So what’s the problem?

The folder operations are higher up the menu, so I’m constantly doing “Delete Folder”, rather than “Delete All”, which drives me mad. Especially when I don’t notice and all my rules start failing.

Like I said, I don’t know how other people use this stuff, but I would hazard a guess that the clean-up operations are used more frequently than the actual folder maintenance operations. This is one situation when having the most frequently used sections of the menu being promoted to the top would be really handy.

Of course, I could just pay more attention… 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

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