Early Adopter or Follower?

I don’t especially regard myself as an early adopter but I hate to think of myself as a follower.  I think I sit somewhere in the middle, take up new technology after others have proven it but before it is mainstream.

And so the agonising decision 20 months ago about an iPhone or something else.

The iPhone was new and lacked some sophistication I thought was paramount, like decent editing, ability to read files in different formats and good email access.  The Blackberry fulfilled many of my needs.

So I selected the Blackberry Storm – very new on the market.  Oops, I found myself as an early adopter.

In the following 2 years the apps and features on Bruce’s iPhone improved enormously, but the poor old Blackberry seemed left in its wake.  And when we moved homes recently, the reception on the Storm was “useless”.

After many calls to Vodafone I believe they came to regard me as a serial nuisance.  In my anger and frustration I attempted to purchase an iPhone online to replace my current handset.  I was subsequently told this was not the way around replacing my handset – I would have to wait in the queue for one of these rare devices.

Amazingly, my “failed” online order resulted in a parcel in my mail box (the tangible, physical style mail box).  So now I am now the proud owner of an iPhone 4.

Perhaps I can now help Hayden test his iPhone apps?

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Learning PHP

It is wild and windy outside, not a good day to be out and about, so I spent some of my day learning the basics of PHP. I created a test site, with a form to key in some information and output calculated values.

More particularly the form asks for your name and your birthday and tells you how many days old you are.

When I asked Bruce to test it, we discovered that today he is 22,999 days old and tomorrow he will be 23,000 days old – perhaps we could celebrate!

The challenges I faced included:

  • getting the local time rather than the server time
  • creating a form
  • converting numbers entered into the form into date format
  • converting both “today” and the entered date into Julian format
  • remembering to put a semi-colon (;) at the end of each line of PHP code
  • sorting out the differences between PHP and HTML coding, including comment lines
  • So that is my Sunday. A good day’s work!!

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    Why am I here?

    I have started a new life – living off the funds accumulated over a previous lifetime of work.  It’s called retirement.

    This is an opportunity to do all the things I’ve been meaning to do in the other lifetimes, and to talk about it.  So here goes.

    Hayden is home (again) and encouraging me to “go for it”.  First step is to import blogs from Blogger and link to my Flickr account.

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    I am retired!

    After 43 years in the computer industry (yes, I am an early adopter) and 7 years at Inmatrix-into-SunGard, today I retire.
    It will be hard not focussing on the next activities I need to undertake at work, and I am truely sorry to leave SunGard at such an exciting time after a long journey through Inmatrix.  But 18 years of childhood and 43 years of work – I must now concentrate on other things, so here goes…
    Perhaps I will be better at updating this blog!

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    35 into 25,000

    Last week the little company I have worked for during the past 6 years was “acquired”.  Vale Inmatrix, hello SunGard.

    Inmatrix was a small software developer specialising in Financial Analysis applications, currently with 35 people on board.  It is going to be a big change for us, being a drop in the ocean of SunGard’s 25,000 employees.

    Expectations are high that SunGard will put more oooomph behind us, greater credibility and client confidence.

    I also hope that our younger people will have greater opportunities to broaden their horizons in a large, multinational, privately owned company.

    UPDATE 2025: so in the following years Inmatrix was acquired by SunGard which was in turn acquired by Fidelity Systems Information. Hardly recognisable.

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    Hayden is coming “home”

    Wherever home is for Hayden… In my mind it will always be Australia, and wherever he is living now is temporary.  Well he doesn’t plan to stay in THAT place forever, and if he keeps moving as planned, the only place he can really call home is here in Australia.
    So the good news is that Hayden will be HOME, that’s right – here in Australia, between 19th April and 2nd May.  Not a long time, but time enough to celebrate his birthday and spend some time in the office of Caffeine Concepts (aka the kitchen table).
    So I, for one, am looking forward to Hayden being home for a short while.

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    Evan is home

    This morning we picked Evan up from Melbourne airport.  It was a long journey home from Mexico via LAX, but he travelled well.  Sally was especially pleased to see him.
    To our delight he didn’t stop talking all day – brunch at the Brown Cow, a walk on the beach and a few loads of very smelly washing before Kate, Alex & Iain joined us for dinner.
    We were always concerned about Ev & Steph’s safety in Central America, but they had no serious issues and lots of wonderful experiences.  Evan tells me his highlight was watching just hatched turtles head to the water.  That is ahead of volcanoes, lava flows, flying toucans, hot springs, the Panama Canel, overcrowded buses and wonderful Mexican food.
    Steph arrives home next week and then we will celebrate a belated Christmas and hear of more adventures.

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    Summer nights and more eight legs

    It is lovely to sit outside on a warm summer evening, and even better when we can watch the golden orbs spinning their amazing webs.  Of course the webs are gone in the morning, gobbled up at dawn.

    I’d also spend all day resting after such a big night out.

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    Blast from the past

    One of my Christmas presents this year (actually the one to me from me) was a film scanner.  So now I am digging up old slide photos.  This is one I came across recently, when I was sorting out Dotty’s past photos.  Me with my young cousin Michael Smith at his christening.  It was taken approx 1967.  Love the ‘white’ lipstick!!

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    eight legs…

    We holidayed at Sorrento starting 24th December.  That is the day I found a white tail (spider).  Nasty little creatures that can make a sting.
    Came home today, with a heap of washing.  It was in the laundry that I found another 8 legged creature, a very venemous red back spider, so hard to photograph.

    Is it safe to leave home?

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