The madness of SMC

Posted on April 16, 2008 by alex

Well I’ve a little bit less hair today due to an ancient SMC 7301TA ISDN router. It seemed like it was going to be a simple job. Configure an ISDN router to DUN1 into a remote system for maintenance. How hard could it be? Pretty hard it turned out.

Continue reading →

Share
Posted in IT | Tagged , | Comments Off

UK Biobank & Privacy

Posted on March 22, 2008 by alex

I got an invite from the UK Biobank project to participate in their project. They are asking 40-69 year olds to come along for 1.5 hours and answer lots of questions about their health, families and lifestyles, provide blood and urine samples and have a set of tests. These tests are for lung functions, bone density and other health related metrics.

On their web site, they go to great lengths to say how safe the data will be; that the DNA and other information will be held anonymously and that they definitely won’t give the information to anyone (except if told to by the legal authorities). Except, the data isn’t held anonymously.

Continue reading →

Share
Posted in Life | Tagged | 4 Comments

Jasper and Cat Doors

Posted on July 15, 2007 by alex

Yesterday, Jasper, one of our cats, managed to ‘lock’ himself into the house next door. I say ‘lock’, but that was merely his interpretation.

Jasper on Duvet

He decided he would go next door for sleep (and probably food), but there is a slight problem: the cat door sticks slightly in the exit direction. So Jasper thought it was locked and thus “couldn’t” get out. So he stayed in. Jill and John (next door) knocked on our door after 10pm and Helen went to fetch him. He was very happy to be home and got some treats for his ordeal. Today, he has basically slept all day – a very typical Jasper day.

Share
Posted in Cats | Comments Off

Born Global

Posted on July 14, 2007 by alex

I was reading the June/July 2007 edition of the IET Engineering Management Journal and was struck by a piece of research that’s been done in Finland by a Siv Karlson around companies that don’t bother to develop their national markets first; they just hit the global market.

Her blueprint for success includes:

  1. The company’s products are unique, ingenious and inovative.
  2. The company’s founder (or other key person) has wide experience and an extensive contact network from previous work in similar industries – does LinkedIn count I wonder.
  3. The company has strong relationships with key personnel from large, successful organisations.
  4. The company has good relationships with influential figures in the industry.
  5. All the personnel in the company are very involved and eager for it to success.

I guess what’s interesting to me is that all (or at least) most of these characteristics are important for any company to be successful in the ‘global’ economy.

Share
Posted in Business | 1 Comment