SharePoint, WordPress and Me

It’s been about 2 weeks since I last posted and my god it feels like an age. I’ve been a touch busy lately and the first thing that falls by the wayside is my blogging usually followed by my twittering.

So, what’s been going on?

Well, a few weeks ago I swapped jobs. I’ve moved out of a scientific department in into a corporate IT role. Same company but different people. To be honest the size of the place means it may well as be a new company. It’s only a secondment lasting 10 months but it’s a step in the right direction for me. It puts me closer to social computing, it puts me closer to SharePoint and it means I can start to bite off some big things rather nibble around the edges when I get chance. The first few weeks have been going well, I think anyway.

At the minute I’m delving deep into some SharePoint functionality. I’ve mentioned before I have a love hate relationship with SharePoint and that is continuing. The problem is when it comes to anything E2 related. SharePoint just doesn’t cut it. The blogging is getting better and there’s a couple of tag cloud work arounds that mean you can start to employ folksonomy rather than those terrible categories that SP blogging relies upon. The wiki is just a bit rubbish, nowhere near as good as any other wiki. After spending a lot of time in MediaWiki I also find it weird to move back to a WYSIWYG editor. Once you get used to wiki markup I actually think it’s quicker and easier than WYSIWYG. No deciding on what font or size a title is going to be, no figuring out how indented your bullets are. There’s other things I’m not to keen on in SP wiki but I’ll not go on.

Then we get onto SPs strengths and there are quite a few. The best one is the content web editor. With it you can do some wonderful things to dress up a lot of dull stuff. So far I’ve used it for simple instruction panels and also to embed video into sites. Then there’s the functionality it offers out of the box. Task scheduling, notification, meeting workspaces etc are all a massive step forward compared to what used to be available inside the corporation. Integration with InfoPath is pretty impressive as is the way you can manipulate your document management systems to work with both folksonomy and taxonomy. The way I’m looking at SP is that it’s a stepping stone. It’s starting to get people out of the silos they so enjoy and out into the open for the benefit of everyone. At first I actually hated the access control but it’s so bad it’s good. People hate it so much that they try and avoid it like the plague. The easiest way to do that is just to leave everything open.

Outside of work I’ve been messing around setting up my own site. After a few teething issues I finally got www.danielsiddle.co.uk and www.danielsiddle.com registered and I got myself some hosting space. At the minute I’m trying out streamline.net but I must say I’m not liking them too much. Any suggestions would be welcomed before my free trial runs out! The plan is to sort that out as my wordpress blog and move all the action over there. I don’t want to do that until I get my theme sorted and until I get onto some hosting that I like. The theme could take a while because I’m learning CSS from scratch and want to write my own.

Other than that my massage course is going OK. Haven’t had much time to practise, much to the disappointment of my girlfriend. I start my case studies soon though so that means I’ll be getting my teeth into it. If anyone wants to volunteer as an Indian Head Massage test case then just drop me a line.

That’s all for now.

iTunes makes me go green.

As well as iTunes making me go bankrupt it’s also about to make me go green.

I have a lot of stuff on my iPod that I just haven’t got round to watching.  I must have 10 or so Ask a Ninja podcasts to watch as well as a couple of Stephen Fry’s and now I’ve just been on a podcast subscription feast which means I have a good few hours of stuff to watch.  The problem is I have no downtime.  I’m always doing something else.

I figure the best downtime is travel time which gives me two options.  I can either get my girlfriend to drive everywhere and then I can watch my stuff and ignore her, or I could get public transport more places.

I’m going to go for the public transport option.  There you go Apple, a new slogan, “The iPod that makes you go Green!”

I love stew and dumplings

Look at them, gorgeous.

Good old hearty food.

Remind myself I have a first-life.

Every now and then I need reminding that not everything revolves around my computer so today I’m wearing one of my favourite t-shirts…

You can pick one up at T-Chest. I picked mine up at their store in Bath down Northumberland Place.

What a weird day.

I was going to say what a crappy day but on reflection it’s not been too crappy, just weird.

For the first time I heard the words “governance panel” and “social software” in the same sentence.  Quite strange.  It was OK though since I was being asked to be on the governance panel.  Not sure what I’m going to govern with the other people on there but I guess we’ll figure it out.  The good thing about it is that we’re seriously moving forward with social software at work and that can only be a good thing.

The other weird thing was I found myself waxing lyrical about SharePoint which I haven’t done for a while.  I was explaining to someone about how to create simple to-do lists and run labs based on them and how they could ditch about 5 different excel sheets in favour of one list with a variety of views (See I’m even getting excited about it now!)  That was counter balanced with the look on her face when I started talking about access control.  There was a look of relief when I said she could just ignore it and in true social style just leave it open to everyone.  (Microsoft – If you’re listening, ditch all of the access control in SharePoint and replace it with two options, you can do everything or you can do nothing, I’ll even let you have a read only option if you want.)

Then the other thing, the one that nearly pushed the day into the crappy category, was the amount of corporate crap I had to wade through today.  One thing you can get used to, addicted to even, when you start living the social software lifestyle is the ease and simplicity that accompanies everything.  You ask someone to do something and if they can then they say yes, if they can’t they say no.  You suggest something and people tell you when it’s a good idea and even better they tell you unanimously when it’s a rubbish one.  With the old school corporate rubbish you waste three hours in meetings while someone with an over-inflated ego tells you why you should do something a certain way because that’s what he thinks.  Anyway, let’s forget about that shall we and focus on how good social software makes life in general.

Right, I’m off to watch the rest of Fifth Gear (much better than Top Gear these days!), then plan my weekend of rugby watching and then get stuck into a book I bought when I was having coffee after work.

Laters.

Death by iTunes

iTunes is going to kill me.  It’s going to take all my money turf me out on the street and I’m going to freeze during the winter.

I’m quite a big music fan and have been since a fairly young age.  Aside from the occasional blip in music buying (my first CD was Cotton Eye Joe by the Rednex) I’ve built up a fairly decent collection of CDs and vinyl.

The good thing about physical items like CDs are the look and feel, the restrictions it places on you for buying stuff because you can’t be bothered to shop and the paper inserts.  The bad things are that you don’t have as much choice as online.

Now that I’ve transfered all my CDs across to my iPod I’ve started buying a few things from iTunes too.  I tended to stay away from iTunes though since I’m quite old-fashioned really and like to have something physical in my hand.  Now that I’m getting into iTunes though it’s flipped the whole paradigm on it’s head.  You have a pretty much unlimited choice, you don’t have to head to the shops and you get instantaneous gratification.  The bad things are the lack of a physical item but I can get over that.

The problem with instant gratification though is it’s addictive.  It’s only really a problem for the consumer, I bet Steve Jobs is laughing all the way to the bank!  Take last night for instance.  I sat down and watched School of Rock with Jack Black. (That’s the film had Jack Black in it, I was actually sat with my girlfriend.)  I though, “That’s quite cool, why have I never bought a Tenacious D album?”  5 mins later it was in my collection as a digital download.  I also nearly did it this morning.  Woke up with the radio alarm and Arctic Monkey’s Teddy Picker was on.  So I thought I might by their latest album.

So if you see a little badge appear in the bottom of my blog with a registered charity number then chances are it’s because I need some money to pay my mortgage.

My mood today…

London + Wheelchair = Not too bad really

I had my first experience of getting a wheelchair round London yesterday.  My sister was visiting and we fancied going to see a show and a few other things.  She doesn’t get down to London much so we thought we’d try and get around as much as we could.  Only problem is that she’s in a wheelchair and for any of you who have ever been to London you’ll start to figure out that the prospect of getting one around is pretty daunting.  Anyway, turns out it wasn’t actually that bad.

The Getting Round London Guide is pretty much all you need.  It covers buses, tubes, taxis and everything really so kudos to Transport for London for putting that together.  But it does make slightly disappointing reading when you realise how inaccessible the tube is.  I guess you’ve got to expect that since the whole system was built ages ago.  The new Jubilee line looks like it’s pretty good.  We did decide to walk everywhere though, just to keep me fit and so that Jess could see some bits of London.

So the list of good bits…

• The Apollo Victoria Theatre…for being brilliant about rearranging seats so that we could get in.  The guys on the wheelchairs ramps were awesome, very matter of fact about the whole thing and not to sympathetic.  The girl who took care of us was great too, I really wish I could remember her name.  Not only that but Wicked was, well, wicked.
• Madame Tussauds…again for being brilliant in helping us get round the attraction with minimum fuss.  We actually got in free because they realise it’s not the easiest place to get around but to be honest I wouldn’t have minded paying.  The lifts are a little small but that’s the only complaint.  Ley, the lass who helped us get between floors was excellent too.
• The staff in UNo.  Very good over the phone when I was booking.  Explained what access was like and apologised about the lack of disabled toilet facilities.  On the day a little bit over attentive but I can’t really fault them too much for that.  We did get free champagne from them since we looked like a “nice couple”.  I didn’t have the heart to tell the waiter we were brother and sister.  Great food too although I should have checked the bill since I ended up leaving a fairly hefty tip on top of the one they’d already put on the bill!
• The taxi driver who gave us a lift from Victoria station to St Pancras.  Couldn’t fault the guy.  TBH, the fact that all black cabs in London are wheelchair accessible is a god send.
• All the shops with no steps into them, especially EAT on Regent Street where we stopped for lunch.  Something you never think about when you’re walking around but a lot of the coffee shops in London have a single step up and a door that opens outwards.  Nightmare with a wheelchair.

And the bad bits…

• The Tube…it’s going to take a while for the tube to be a viable option for wheelchair users but they’re getting there.
• Pedestrians.  I don’t know what it is but if something is below shoulder height it seems as though people’s peripheral perception goes out of the window.  Lot’s of people backing into you or tripping over the foot rests.  One guy really annoyed me when he flicked his fag ash away, right into Jess’ face.  I think I was more annoyed than she was though.
• Building works or roadworks that encroach onto the pavement.  Absolute bugger to get round.  Actually, the state of the paths and walkways in central London leave a lot to be desired.  Even the littlest of dips or steps can cause problems.
• Too much help.  I know I shouldn’t complain because people are only being nice but a person in a wheelchair is just another person.

Overall it was a pretty awesome day but it needed a lot of planning.  In my naivety I kind of figured everywhere would be set up for disabled access and it wouldn’t even be an issue.  It’s a real shame but there’s a real sense of segregation when you have a wheelchair.  Everything is a little bit more trouble, not much, but enough.  While I congratulate what people have been doing over the recent years there’s still a way to go before wheelchairs users can be completely integrated into the environment.