27/01/2008

Race to the finish line

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This week is my last week as a contract Lotus Notes & Domino Administrator. Next week, w/c 04 Feb 2008, I start back as a permanent Lotus Notes & Domino Administrator.

Whilst I'll miss the freedom of contract work, i.e. -- not being tied to the same employer for any length of time, and the decent paycheck that comes with contract work -- I certainly won't miss my current 700 mile weekly commute. If anything, I'm really looking forward to just being at home with my wife and daughter, and being part of a family again. I know it sounds corny, but I have missed just hanging out at home with Lynne, and being my daughter's personal Taxi service. I guess my views will change after being back home for a while, but for now, next week can't come quick enough for me.

Once I get settled into my new job, I'll have the time again to compose and post some technical articles on all things admin. Stay tuned!

25/01/2008

Goodbye Office, Hello Symphony

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A picture named M2

I know I'm way behind on this, but I've now ditched my Microsoft Office installation in favour of the excellent (and free) Lotus Symphony.

25/01/2008

Burns Night

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Fair fa' your honest, sonsie face,
Great chieftain o' the puddin-race!
Aboon them a' ye tak your place,
Painch, tripe, or thairm:
Weel are ye wordy o' a grace
As lang's my arm.


--"Address to a Haggis" by Robert Burns

Enjoy your Haggis, Neeps & Tatties everyone!

24/01/2008

And Another ...

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The shennanigans that go on at Lotusphere ...

24/01/2008

I'm Ed Brill

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Too good not to post.

22/01/2008

AvP:Requiem

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If your a fan of either the Alien or Predator movie franchises, like I am, then you may well be disappointed with the latest offering "AvP:Requiem".

I think I just expected that wee bit more from this installment, as I really enjoyed the last offering "Aliens vs Predator". I felt that this movie didn't really deliver on what I'd come to expect from the franchise. Still, it was entertaining enough to sit through all 94mins of it.

I guess if your a fan, you'll probably go see the movie for yourself and make your own mind up. However, if your undecided, I think you might want to wait for the DVD release instead.

21/01/2008

Lotusphere OGS live

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Just waiting on the Lotusphere OGS to get underway, and I'll be able to "tune in" thanks to www.lotuspherelive.com. Kudos to Carl Tyler & Chris Miller for relaying the Lotusphere goodness, as it happens.

20/01/2008

Happy Birthday Bill Buchan

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Bill "Two Fish, The Billderbeast, Wild Bill" Buchan is a sprightly 41yr old Today.

Happy Birthday Bill!

18/01/2008

When you bleed ...

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... do you bleed yellow?

18/01/2008

Cleaning up

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Thanks to this very helpful article by Rob "Captain Oblivious" McDonagh, I was able to mess around and successfully import some new page skins into my blog. I'm not too sure how long this new look will stay, but for now I really like the uncluttered and clean look of things around here.

17/01/2008

Lotusphere 2008 - A Non-Attendee's Survival Guide

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Since I won't be attending Lotusphere (again!) this year, I thought I would put together a brief "survival guide" on how to cope with things being stuck back at home, whilst everyone else is in Orlando. While this isn't what I would consider to be a completed or comprehensive survival guide, it does offer some useful suggestions as to how to deal the information overload that bombards us from Lotusphere each year:-
  • If you can, try to work your day job around the conference hours. It sounds silly I know, but if you can then you'll be able to catch up on a lot of things as they happen. Orlando is GMT-5. So, if your UK based, most of the information from the conference starts to flow from about 1300GMT onwards. That's lunchtime for most of us, so grab a sarnie and move on
  • It's always nice (IMO) to get a feel for the conference from those on the ground. There are lots of great Notes & Domino bloggers who will be reporting from various sessions throughout the duration of the conference. Keep an eye out for these guys, especially the ones who have offered to live blog a number of the key sessions, including the opening general session
  • Like every other year, there's bound to be a ton of news coming out of Lotusphere this year. Some of it will come from official sources (i.e. - Lotus/IBM official press releases, product vendors, etc), but the bulk of it will come from the Domino Blogging community, on the ground in Orlando. Whatever the source, and whatever the news, you can guarantee that there will be a slew of blog postings covering it from every angle! If you haven't already done so, get yourself a decent RSS reader, and start hooking in to the Gigaquads of content available from the Blog-O-Sphere
  • If all else fails, and you can't be bothered with the hassle of setting up and filtering individual RSS feeds, then save yourself some time and trouble and head on over to Planetlotus.org. Yancy Lent has done a fabulous job of creating the "Mother of all Domino feed aggregators", which sucks in, filters, and centralises content from the entire Domino Blogging community

And remember:-
  • Your getting all of this cool information, (albeit second hand), but at least your not having to walk miles and miles to obtain it, which is what all the poor conference attendees will be doing
  • OK, so your not actually in Orlando soaking up the atmosphere of the conference, but at least you'll know what cool things to expect from Lotus/IBM over the next year
So what happens if you still crave more Lotusphere goodness? Then don't worry! Lotus/IBM are bound to be running their "Lotusphere comes to you" events during Feb/Mar 2008, in a city close to you. That way you can get a small taste of what it would be like to be at Lotusphere for yourself.
 
Anyone want to sponsor an Admin to go to Lotusphere 2009?

17/01/2008

Upgraded to Blogsphere 3.0.1 Beta 8a

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In conjunction with my recent upgrade to BBMetaBlog 1.2.2 for the BlackBerry, I have also upgraded the design of my Blog to the latest release of the BlogSphere template, as available over at OpenNTF. Some more testing to follow ..!

14/01/2008

Testing BBMetaBlog 1.2.2

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Just testing out Jason Hook's latest release of BBMetaBlog for the BlackBerry. Next stage is to upgrade to the latest release of the Blogsphere blogging template.

14/01/2008

Catching Up On Podcasts

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The only cool thing about the 6hr drive I do every Sunday and Thursday, is that I get to catch up on my Podcast subscriptions, via my iPod and Griffin iTrip Auto FM transmitter combo. Last night I reached episode 72 of the Taking Notes podcast.

Bruce and Julian were talking to Yancy Lent, about all things Planetlotus.org. It's a very cool podcast, and if you haven't listened to it yet, I would thoroughly recommend that you do. Yancy is quite an interesting guy, given all that he manages to squeeze into/out of his daily life!

Likewise, if you haven't looked at Planetlotus.org yet go check it out. It's got TONS of Lotus and non-Lotus related content, plus handy links to pretty much every Domino Blogger out there in the Blog-O-Sphere. Great work Yancy!

13/01/2008

Eclectic

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I dunno what made me look, but I decided to check my Top 25 Most Played songs on iTunes. The results made interesting reading:-

My eclectic musical tastes

Does anyone else have similar, eclectic musical tastes?

13/01/2008

New Book - Lotus Notes Domino 8: Upgrader's Guide

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Some linkage to a publication on upgrading to Notes & Domino 8.0. Thanks go out to Mac Guidera for the heads up. Hopefully this will come in handy when I start my new job

12/01/2008

Posting from My Blackberry

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Like Bill, I've been bitten by Jason Hook's excellent BBMetablog app for the Blackberry.

Essentially, BBMetablog allows me to add new content to my blog via my BlackBerry 8820 handset. It is *very* cool ..! ** Edit : OK. I managed to post the story from my BB8820, but it did some funny stuff to my blog. So, in order to get things back to as normal as possible, Im using one of Jason's suggested workarounds, and I'm manually editing this Blog entry.

10/01/2008

Apologies

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My apologies if the RSS feed from this Blog goes a bit "nuts" in the short term. When I upgraded my Blog template from BlogSphere 2.5.X to BlogSphere 3.X, I somehow managed to leave a pile of previously-written-in-BlogSphere-2.5.X content behind. That's now been fixed, and all the cr@p that I have written previously is back here, where it belongs!

So, apologies (again) if your RSS reader of choice is currently being spammed by me.

10/01/2008

Upgrading a Domino Server with a customised Domino Directory Template

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One of the things that I have learned from my Domino 6.5.4 to Domino 7.0.3 migration project work this week, is that you need to take care when you are upgrading servers which are using a customised Domino Directory template. If you don't, you could easily lose any custom additions to your Domino directory, and potentially corrupt entries within it (worst case scenario!).

During the recommended sequence of upgrade steps, you will need to update the design of your Domino Directory to the latest release, prior to updating the Domino Server code. It's at this point of the upgrade process that you will need to merge any existing customisation(s) -- (Views, agents, etc, that you have made) -- into the ND7.X.X Domino Directory template (Pubnames.ntf). Once you have done this, you can re-save this newly customised Domino directory template as whatever you want, and then set about refreshing/replacing the design of your Domino Directory.

Once you have successfully applied the new customised Domino Directory template, you'll want to make sure that you don't accidentally replace the design of if with the default Domino Directory template, when you upgrade the Domino Server software. In order to avoid doing this, add this line into your server's NOTES.INI, prior to upgrading your Domino Server software:-

  Server_Upgrade_No_Directory_ReDesign=1

Better yet, if you have a Global Configuration document (i.e. - one configuration document for all servers in your domain), be sure and add the above line into the NOTES.INI Settings tab. That way, you won't have to remember to update the NOTES.INI for each server. So, once you start your newly migrated server up for the first time, it won't upgrade the design of your Domino Directory, as is the default.

06/01/2008

Moving to a New Organisational Certifier

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No, this doesn't relate to one of the projects that I have on the go at work just now, but it does relate to something that I posted about in my 2007 year end review.

I've been working approx 360 miles away from home, during weekdays for about the last 6 months. In that time a lot has changed for Lynne (my Wife) and I, which has made working away from home during that time pretty tough to bear. Thankfully, that's all about to change very soon, as I have been offered a new job much closer to home. I'm delighted to be able to blog about this now, as I've known since about 21 Dec 2007 that the job was mine. I didn't want to go public with this news until I had a chance to resign officially from my current job, which I did last week.

The new role itself is -- well I'm sure you could have guessed -- Lotus Notes & Domino Administrator. However, there are a couple of cool things about the new job and the company I'm going to be working for, which really sealed the deal for me:-

- My new work location is only 10 miles (i.e. -- 350 miles CLOSER than where I work just now) away from home. So, I get to spend a lot more time with Lynne and my daughter again, which is something I am looking forward to immensely

- I get to be more than just the Notes Admin guy, as I'll be expected to work on and enhance my Notes development skills (woo-hoo) Believe it or not, this is a first for me. Any Notes Admin gig that I have had in the past, has always been just that - a Notes Admin gig. I'm really looking forward to getting my hands dirty on both Admin and Development projects

- They love Blackberries, (the RIM devices, not the fruit), and want to grow their Blackberry user base, whilst extending some of their Notes apps to BlackBerry hand-helds

- My new employer is a market leader in their field on a global scale, and they have operations in the USA, Europe, Asia & China. If I'm really lucky, I'll get to see some of our international operations for myself.

So, all I need to do now is finish up my project workload with my current employer during the next 4 weeks, which in itself should be fun, as there are some cool things to be done. Then, on 04 Feb 2008, I start my new job. I can't wait!!!

03/01/2008

Re-adjusting

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Life is slowly getting back to normal around here, now that all of the Christmas and New Year festivities have passed. So much so, that I've started working on documentation for some projects at work, involving a Domino 6.5.4 to 7.0.3 migration (I did press them to go 8.0.1, but would they listen to me?), a complete user migration to a new OU structure, and a step-by-step breakdown of the Lotus Notes password recovery process. All to be done for Monday 07 Jan 2008. Eeek! I'd better get a move on.

02/01/2008

Read This

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If you manage an email system, then you'll want to have a read at this, as this looks to be the first in a planned series of articles by Jack Dausman, discussing the evolution of messaging and collaboration technologies, and why they are here to stay. It's good stuff!

01/01/2008

Happy New Year

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Happy 2008 everyone! Have a safe and prosperous New Year.

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