Things have been a bit hectic in the McDonald household, we had a new addition to the family last week, a beautiful baby girl. My posting frequency has been a bit slow, but I am getting back in the saddle this week.
Our thanks to everyone who has given us such great support, gifts (pink of course!) and love during this time.
Angus McDonald
Sunday, October 23, 2005
Wednesday, August 31, 2005
Snowy Software - Software Asset Management Tools
Our new endeavour, Snowy Software, is an ecommerce website with a range of great software asset management tools (stuff that does software audits, license management, usage tracking/metering and software deployment administration).
There is even a FREE 30-day trial (yes, free as in beer) available for most of the products. Also check out what we are doing with Cattle Dog, especially our new IT asset management blog, the Round Up!
There is even a FREE 30-day trial (yes, free as in beer) available for most of the products. Also check out what we are doing with Cattle Dog, especially our new IT asset management blog, the Round Up!
Friday, August 05, 2005
Political Islam
In reading Wikipedia tonight I found myself learning about the difference between Islamist and Islamic. Basically the former is a political movement holding that Islam is not just the ideal religion but also the ideal political system for governing the state. Most Muslims are NOT Islamist, but Islamic.
Having said that, there is also an interesting online website called NO to Political Islam Petition, which attracts signatures as a way of showing disagreement with the Islamist principles. If you are Muslim then I invite you to do so, if not, then you might want to visit them and see what they are about anyway.
For some reason the world seems a brighter place for knowing this - although I feel foolish for not having done the research myself after 9/11.
UPDATE: The International Crisis Group has an interesting article called Islamism, Violence and Reform that points out that Islamism is not a unified movement, especially amongst Sunni supporters of it. Again, worthwhile reading.
Having said that, there is also an interesting online website called NO to Political Islam Petition, which attracts signatures as a way of showing disagreement with the Islamist principles. If you are Muslim then I invite you to do so, if not, then you might want to visit them and see what they are about anyway.
For some reason the world seems a brighter place for knowing this - although I feel foolish for not having done the research myself after 9/11.
UPDATE: The International Crisis Group has an interesting article called Islamism, Violence and Reform that points out that Islamism is not a unified movement, especially amongst Sunni supporters of it. Again, worthwhile reading.
Thursday, July 21, 2005
Generating Random Boolean Sequences Using Cellular Automata
Today vbAccelerator became my favourite site for VB tips and great usable source code. Those of you that know me well, understand that programming in VB6 is not my idea of bliss, but sometimes it is the most effective tool available (as it is today).
One of the vbAccelerator tips that could be applied to almost any programming language demonstrates Generating Random Boolean Sequences Using Cellular Automata.
This is a randomisation method that the author adapted from Stephen Wolfram's book "A New Kind Of Science". Which is also available online. Unlike existing randomisation methods in VB, this allows for a much closer approximation of true randomness.
The embarrassing thing about this is that I've had this book gathering dust on my bookshelves for a while now, and I can think of at least one use of cellular automata that I could have applied since then!
One of the vbAccelerator tips that could be applied to almost any programming language demonstrates Generating Random Boolean Sequences Using Cellular Automata.
This is a randomisation method that the author adapted from Stephen Wolfram's book "A New Kind Of Science". Which is also available online. Unlike existing randomisation methods in VB, this allows for a much closer approximation of true randomness.
The embarrassing thing about this is that I've had this book gathering dust on my bookshelves for a while now, and I can think of at least one use of cellular automata that I could have applied since then!
Wednesday, May 04, 2005
Macaw Discussion Board
Those wacky Europeans are at it again! Serge van den Oever has announced a free list template for Windows SharePoint Services, the Macaw Discussion Board... the way SharePoint discussions should work... and now do work!
Discussion boards are a sore point for many SharePoint users that have experienced the richness of more mature discussion/bulletin board user interfaces (e.g. phpBB).
Macaw, a Dutch (in case you hadn't guessed) IT consultancy have produced a really nice list template that solves many of the problems that SharePoint discussion boards have. The list template is documented in Serge's blog post, and is available for free download from Sourceforge.
Discussion boards are a sore point for many SharePoint users that have experienced the richness of more mature discussion/bulletin board user interfaces (e.g. phpBB).
Macaw, a Dutch (in case you hadn't guessed) IT consultancy have produced a really nice list template that solves many of the problems that SharePoint discussion boards have. The list template is documented in Serge's blog post, and is available for free download from Sourceforge.
Tuesday, April 05, 2005
Thomas Nelson's Corporate Blogging Guidelines
Michael Hyatt, President and COO of Thomas Nelson Publishers recently published a 2nd draft of their new Corporate Blogging Guidelines for public comment. They have worked hard to create a set of guidelines that is easy to understand (i.e. uses plain English) but that also protects their company and employees. I particularly like the fact that they encourage employees to seek blog hosting for themselves - adding credibility to their blogs, and removing a potential issue when employees leave.
The main source of protection is reminding employees that what is expected of them as bloggers is the same as what is expected of them as employees, and setting some ground rules about playing nice in the blogosphere. The incentive to blog is given by their intention to create a blog aggregator page on their main website that links to all employee blogs, and allowing employees to write blog posts during company time. It will be interesting to see how effective this is, but I would imagine that because they are in the publishing industry this form of self-publishing will appeal to many of their employees.
What is nice about this is that Michael was smart enough to elicit comment from the readers of his Working Smart blog to ensure that the guidelines were appropriate. Thanks to their feedback what they ended up with was much more user-friendly than their first effort which was a dismal set of legalistic rules.
The guidelines also set out why Thomas Nelson is looking at encouraging blogging:
The main source of protection is reminding employees that what is expected of them as bloggers is the same as what is expected of them as employees, and setting some ground rules about playing nice in the blogosphere. The incentive to blog is given by their intention to create a blog aggregator page on their main website that links to all employee blogs, and allowing employees to write blog posts during company time. It will be interesting to see how effective this is, but I would imagine that because they are in the publishing industry this form of self-publishing will appeal to many of their employees.
What is nice about this is that Michael was smart enough to elicit comment from the readers of his Working Smart blog to ensure that the guidelines were appropriate. Thanks to their feedback what they ended up with was much more user-friendly than their first effort which was a dismal set of legalistic rules.
The guidelines also set out why Thomas Nelson is looking at encouraging blogging:
At Thomas Nelson, we want to encourage you to blog about our company, our products, and your work. Our goal is three-fold:How many of your employees already blog? What guidelines have you given them to protect their jobs and your reputation? What could blogging do for your business?
- To raise the visibility of our company,
- To make a contribution to our industry, and
- To give the public a look at what goes on within a real live publishing company.
Thursday, March 17, 2005
Ajax: A New Approach To Web Applications
Adaptive Path's Jesse James Garrett has an interesting essay title Ajax: A New Approach To Web Applications. The ideas discussed in it are not as revolutionary as they are presented, developers have been using the XMLHttpRequest object since IE 5 using ActiveX, and Mozilla/Netscape and Safari have recently followed suit using Javascript.
The really interesting point is that we now have a technique that runs across most browsers (not IE only) that can add significant interactivity to our web applications.
The really interesting point is that we now have a technique that runs across most browsers (not IE only) that can add significant interactivity to our web applications.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)