Professional software developer

I can’t discuss which of these made me snigger on the grounds that I might incriminate myself.

Hopefully you will recognise something from your working day…

cheers

simon

Awsome video

This is probably not suitable for work, and the music is ace.

I think I saw some spreadsheeting near the end.

Just like a day in the office near me.

cheers

simon

Excel VBA tutor

Someone emailed me looking for an Excel VBA tutor in the London area.
Anyone know anyone?
cheers
simon

Apple v Google

Santa was very generous at Smurf towers this year. Especially considering how some people hadn’t really delivered on their blog updates and conference organising commitments.

I got a Nexus 7 tablet and a ipod touch. In that order.

The Nexus 7 was the worst unboxing set up experience of my young geek life. That thing is infested with Google spyware and intrustive ads. horrible. and technically impossible to use due to retarded set up requirements. (you need to go on line to set it up, but it wouldn’t let me set up a functioning internet connection with the hotel wifi. totally shit. You can’t move files on and off it via USB (in Linux). Maybe you can now several months on with some faff, but really that stuff should work out of the box. and it just did not. at all.

Google forced me to set up a new user ID whose credentials I promptly forgot. They now want me to pay them to retrieve them. Seriously. I have to pay for a password reset? Foook off.

So when Google are bragging about how Google+ has passed 1% of facebooks popularity and swiftly heading for 1.1%, bear in mind 90% of those accounts are probably zombie accounts that no one can access. Raahbish.

I used it for a few hours then I put it away and now it just weighs my bag down. It must be close to 2 months since I turned the thing on. total waste of money, not to mention the scamful cover farce with the PCWorld sharks (Yes I was so desperate to own this revolutionary piece of tech I bought from PCW!). 10 quid discount on the cover, oh, but its by internet rebate. no sorry forgot to mention there is a 3 page form to fill in. Serves me right, but lesson learned.

Compare and contrast with my iplop touche…

Great set up, limited spam, same games my kids play (their high scores tend to be min 10x mine!) and Facetime. Pur-lease – this is truly the killer app here, and all tucked away in Apples walled garden.

Our whole family is facetiming all our family and friends. Also since a few high profile kid/credit card haemorrhages its now quite simples to set up an Apple account without registering a credit card.

In retrospect I think there is a lot of sense in buying hardware from a hardware company that know what they are. If you buy from an ad pimp they are always going to be scouring through your most personal activities looking for the opportunity  to sell you Excel consultancy services!

I notice Google won’t even search properly any more unless you are logged in so they can record your every move. They are now a truly creepy company. I know they bypassed Msft’s market cap in 2012 (as predicted) but they are getting a little too crap and too heavy handed for my liking, as well as creepy and intrusive.

I know lots of people are waiting for Apple to founder, and iPhone 5 seemed to be pretty close, but whilst they have a huge stock of mini fanbois on ipod touches desperate for iPhones I think they are fairly safe.

Unlike Blackerry. My BB Bold has been the most unreliable phone I have ever owned (and I had one of those truly shitty motorola droids), everytime I unlock the screen its hit or miss if the thing is alive. I have even been contemplating replacing it with an iPhone! imagine that!!

I could probably sell or palm off my nexus, iplop and BB and scrape together enough to buy an old secondhand not too battered iPhone. Or not.

So in summary:

Google: creepy crap, Blackberry: unreliable crap, Apple: actually quite expensively good at the mo.

Have you enjoyed or endured any tech updates recently?

cheers

simon

the only spreadsheet angle here would be the fact that if any of this tech has a spreadsheet app, I haven’t tried it, or felt the need to. Anyone thinking of implementing newly draconian office app licensing might want to think about that…