I’ve battled and worked at fever-pitch with this blue-blog template for over a decade. Dealing with ropey embedded CSS and non-sticky text attributes, not to mention the ropey formatting and narrow fixed width column. Well NO MORE. Whilst I always liked my blog & website to match, a bit like my collars and cuffs, I am embracing the newer styles of WordPress themes that are available to me, and from this post here, for it will be my last. You should definitely head here for more 100% blog action from Mario De’Cristofano

I love you all. x

So, what’s happening in Super Mario World then? Well, quite a lot. As you know, I’ve now settled back here in the Midlands. I’ve got used to the fact that around every corner there is NOT a Costa Coffee, and I rarely get anything higher than three bars of mobile service, (all you can eat data – forget about it!) but good things such as no Tube, no Tube, oh and no Tube! So overall its a good result. The gun crime is no way near as bad as anyone says, although it’s interesting to see what a Australian thinks of the place, when @jamesjhedges comes to visit later this month.

Technology is still blistering ahead, I’m busy with @servercentre and Microsoft Lync, I’m putting together a few websites in my spare time, but mostly I’m moaning & whining about continual crappy customer service from a range of places,  in particular including 02 (#o2) who I have to say have been pretty useless when it comes to wholesale opportunities. After spending what felt like an eternity on the phone with some guy in Botswana, and clearly stating I wanted XYZ, the message recorded was that I wanted ABC. Broke communication? Lack of Communication? Leaves on the line? I don’t know, but I do speak and communicate perfect Engrish so I’m not sure what went wrong – MAYBE I NEED TO ENUNCIATE BETTER or something, but the flaccid response I got by way of apology was pretty piss poor.  Why people don’t care I don’t know. Anyway I tend to blog at Server Centre so head over to http://servercentre.net/blog for more ramblings.

I’m pretty happy to be helping out in my local Catholic Parish again, after some time away. I’ve not sung in the Choir for just over a decade! Good Shepherd http://www.goodshepherd-arnold.org.uk/ is not only my local Catholic Church but is also part of the school community my wonderful partner works in a nearby Catholic School and its great to get involved. I’ll be helping out as much as I can with a bit of volunteering work. That brings me neatly onto some charity work this year – a couple of things to note;

Race for Life – This is for Cancer, which affects more & more people every day. Its a annual charity event, Just Giving page here, http://www.raceforlifesponsorme.org/rebeccafarrelly?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=newsfeed&utm_campaign=editpage

Alzheimers Memory Walk – Im doing this alongside my partner, and would be delighted if you could sponsor us, Just Giving page here http://www.justgiving.com/rebeccas-memory-walk-2012

Technology in Africa – Close to my heart, getting IT & networking out to the poverty stricken schools in Africa, I’m running a 5k at Wollaton Park in June this year, Just Giving page here http://www.justgiving.com/Mario-De-Cristofano and more about the event here

 Thats about it for now. 

More Soon. x

It’s only April, it already feel’s the year is nearly done, we’ve not yet had a summer, and I’m thinking about Christmas, so all in all, I’ve barely had time to stop and think. It has however, been the best year I could have imagined so far, wanting to do something, putting it into plan & then achieving it (to some degree) is a great feeling!

No more dealings with this type of character, thank goodness.

Works great, it’s lovely to be working for @servercentre, whom continue to amaze me at how things should be done, effortless & easy, it’s such a nice thing to be involved with. It’s like working with Germans, and we know how efficient they can be! I’m due a checkup at the GP’s before the middle of the year is out (#NHSExperience), (although if I was any more relaxed at the moment I’d be asleep) so I really must get onto that, but finding time what with my running, spending time with parents & still trying to arrange both a leaving party in London and a housewarming party here in Nottingham I’m really struggling for time across the board. Having said that an imminent trip to London happening as we speak will help that somewhat.

Other things have hit me at thirty-one also, an overwhelming urge to do all the ‘big’ stuff like buy a house instead of rent (although recent conversations suggest there’s no real benefit in this at the moment), take care of my parents more, want children, and generally you know, be a grown up. Whether I will be grown up or not will remain to be seen however!

Moving house is so hard.

The industry I’ve grown up with and loved like a mother continues to move at a hundred miles an hour. I’ve seen the iPad3, moved to Blackberry (albeit a half and half measure), and even exhibited at the Convergence Summit North this year. It was fun to do a conference again, I miss speaking sometimes, & I miss mixing with shiney shoe’d aggressive IT sales people! They are all a bunch of *BLEEP*. I’m kidding, they are no worse than recruitment consultants and estate agents, and I’d put them all in a sack, float them out to the Antarctic, and take pot shots at them with a rifle!

A summit, somehow, somewhere

The Convergence Summit is a bunch of Telecom based people getting together, showcasing the latest industry tech and networking in an effort to extend the channel, and sell within it & to each other & the business world at large(!). Its a great & interesting way to see what the future of Telecoms will be, which is basically your computer in a nutshell. Forget actually using a phone, that’s just going to go away. What to know some of my thoughts about converged communication in business, course you do! Head over to our company blog, and get the Lowdown on Microsoft Lync (here)

What an a-grade plonker

I’ve moved from London and don’t miss the place one bit. Boris, you can keep your over-priced, highly inefficient & crippled public transport infrastructure. Stuff it in the same place as your high priced taxes and badly planned Olympic games! Build that floaty airport on the Thames if you wish, whilst Terminal 5 continues to crumble under the strain of people, and in my opinion, bad design. Oh boris.

So it’s April, I still have lot’s to do, I’m hoping Christmas 2012 will be a good one, and I’ll be fully settled, there’s a lot hitting me at the moment, but I continue to grapple with everything, and port some form of semblance onto my thoughts, sanity and impatience.

Love

Mario

Laundry! It get’s dirty, smelly, & if you don’t take care of it regulary, it starts to get flys hovering around, you trip over it, and generally it makes the place look bad, right!? So I’m sure as part of your home cleaning routine, part of that is to do the laundry. Now, “come on Maz, that was a little abstract for this time of the morning, what are you talking about” I hear you ask!? Well…

The Facebook Shuffle

Facebook, woven into every aspect of our lifes. We dont just use it for keeping up with friends, we use it for dating, being nosy, spreading gossip, self love (who doesnt like a little self love now and again!) & in particular with the Y Generation (See more on my talk about genetics and Y generation here) we use it as a virtual schoolground, spitting vitriol and spreading our dirty laundry (you see what I did there!?) all over the Internet. I’m still baffled that people have no idea that anything put on the internet is like wiping your private bits in cement. You can clean your private bits right up, but the impression in the cement lasts forever.

The anatomy of a Facebook User

There’s only a few real types of Facebook post;

Excerpts from this were taken from the BBC News site here http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-17595209 All information & work published is unless otherwise stated my own, my beliefs & opinion & not that of any of the companies I am associated with (C) 2012 Mario De’Cristofano

So yesterday, was the announcement of the much hyped iPad3 from Apple. Pretty much the entire Western Civilised world waited for the keynote, one of Tim Cook’s first major keynotes, which started at approx 6pm GMT. I decided personally to not live blog about it like I usually do with Apple keynotes, and it was nice to see Bloomberg showing the keynote later in the evening, which is where I caught most of the action. So, what’s new with the ‘new iPad’?

Well, not a lot. Firstly, there’s that Retina quality display, squeezing in more pixels into the screen than a HD display, to the tune of a headache inducing 2048 x 1536. I hear the screen picture quality is truly astounding, and all the key apps have been redesigned from the ground up, to take advantage of the new display. Squeezing in 3.1 million pixels, approx 1 million more you’d typically see on a average 1080p HD TV, that’s some going Apple! From there, there’s a quad core CPU (ish) based around the  A5X chip, I say quad core ‘ish’ due to the performance being on the GPU in paticular. Offering quad-core graphics capabilities, Apple stated that the A5X performs 4X better than the NVIDIA Tegra 3 mobile GPU! To accomdate this screen/CPU combo, the iPad is an ounce heavier to accomodate the slightly larger battery, giving it the same 10 hours as of the iPad2.

Thankfully, we received an upgrade to the previously woeful camera, to 5mp and an ability to record in full 1080p, which is much  needed. Cosmetically, no real change, a slightly tapered finish, but a little heavier. If you were expecting a new look with your new iPad, then you’ll  be dissapointed.

All price points are the same as ever, with 16gb starting at around five hundred bucks. I won’t bother talking about the 4G/LTE support, as here in the UK, that’s simply too far away, but in a nutshell,

• 5 megapixel iSight Camera on the back. Backside illumination.
• A5X processor with quad-core graphics
• Video recording at 1080p.
• Voice dictation
• 4G LTE
• iPad now has 21Mbps HSPA+ and DC-HSDPA at 42Mbps, with LTE taking the cake at 73Mbps.

I’m pretty dissapointed overall. Tim Cook, was more wooden than a coffin, (which I’m probably being unfair about), and Apple once again have released a ‘bridge’ device,  whilst they continue to develop something truly innovative (we hope) with the iPad HD or iPad3 proper, or whatever they want to call it. I’m not sure how much longer  I can continue to be forking out £500 everytime Apple release something,  which is’nt quite what it should be.  Cook mentioned audio dictation, but no Siri, which I found strange, and bar a few new apps, the release asked more questions than it answered overall.

In regards to IOS, no IOS6 just yet, but IOS5.1 has just been released, so make sure you update that. I’m sure Apple will continue to make lots of cash, with stock priced this morning at nearly $600 which I’m sure will rise!

Dontcha just love em!

http://events.apple.com.edgesuite.net/123pibhargjknawdconwecown/event/index.html

I’m not actually as arrogant as I act, nor do I think I know as much as I may give the impression. In my still relatively young 31 years on this planet though, I’ve seen some things, and experienced things, a lot of things a lot of people simply havent. I’m always amazed & feel eternally grateful not only do I have some great friends, but they actually ask for my thoughts occasionally, so I do like to put effort into it.

I’ve recentley been asked about how you potentially tackle a quick step up to fill someone else’s shoes when you’ve only just started your job. It’s a complex one, full of politics, toe stepping, peoples feelings, and the whole ‘poisoned chalice’ potential. I recommend two rules, (two rules actually you can probably run with all your life & in every aspect of it) 1) tell the truth 2) be nice. You just can’t go wrong.

I used to work for a company whereby I had an option to look after a small part of it, or the entire organisation. At the time, being young, heady & ambitious, I chose the latter as soon as the opportunity presented itself. I never worried or gave second thought to other people, I just felt I was worthy. I wasnt.  I should have spent a few more years looking after the small part, nurturing it, building the part into something bigger all on it’s own. More importantly I should of spent time building me, into something bigger.  I was therefor shocked when I had the reigns of a much larger chunk of business, but with it, the loneliness, the stress, the feeling of letting all the people in the small part down, whom I was made to feel I’d turned my back on, for a quick fix of limelight and hero status.

The worse thing was, it was that opportunity I cut my teeth, and whilst ultimateley I made my future right there, right then, I would have perhaps taken it slower and with more sensitivity to other people with that deliciously wonderful thing called ‘hindsight’. Perhaps juggling so many parts of the business would be akin to trying to have several mistresses. At some point, they are all going to get jealous that your spending more time with the next, and before you know it, you have several mistresses wanting to serve your private bits up on a chopping board.

If I’d of known what it would be like to have several mistresses, before I actually took them on, perhaps it’d of been a smoother ride. Ultimately I was a virgin at the time, and I was eaten up & spat out. Without that experience however, I wouldnt be who I am.

My advice to anyone wanting to forge their career is by all means go forth, take into consideration other peoples feelings, dont step on peoples toes, and remember that two step rule 1) tell the truth 2) be nice. Learn the business, not just your ‘niche’. For IT people, that means whether you like it or not, your day’s are numbered. No one wants on premise kit, no one wants bearded Linux engineers (sorry no offence), no one wants complexity.

Technology & systems are commercial now, SaaS, PaaS, that Exchange server you’ve been holding together with sellotape & scissors, no one cares, because for £11 a month you can have hosted Exchange all backed up, secure, scalable, & simple. (check out servercentre.net by the way!) so if you want to add real value as an IT Pro, learn what the business does, and how IT can help it do ‘its’ business better.

If you work for a burger company, learn everything about burgers. Learn how to make IT help the company, make burgers quicker, faster, cheaper & better quality. Be seen to be doing that, & you’ll elevate yourself beyond just IT. Because whether you like it or not being an IT person in the future, means not being an IT person at all.

1) tell the truth 2) be nice.

Mario x

It’s been a hectic week in technology. Jerry Yang, co-founder of Yahoo! left this week, leaving pundits asking whether this is the beginning of the end for the Internet giant. Apple jump into education with self-publishing iBook’s & even starts to consider getting all social with us. Let’s not even speak again of PIPA & SOPA, the two imminent US passed bill’s which could re-arrange the landscape of the Internet forever! Until we killed them.  Oh, and I pass 600 followers on Twitter - whoop! (@mariodc)

There’s more happening in my life too, it would appear (some have said) that I could be on the verge of being very happy, I approach this with all the caution of a hunter approaching a grizzly bear, armed only with a pea-shooter however. I’ve got a couple of really big announcements which will come soon, & a couple of very big conversations I need to have with people, the front end of 2012 has been already eventful. It’s probably fair to thank @julianbdavis for late night discussions & advice, you should probably go & check him out on Twitter, as he’s one of the good ones!

I’ve been busy working on virtualisation over the last few weeks, and re-iterating websites for a bunch of companies. I like being busy, & I love technology, but I still feel fairly unfulfilled with a bunch of the things I’m doing. I do crave mutual peer passion about technology & innovation, and yes I do bang on about it, but never has it been so important to me.

Virtualisation is pretty straight forward by the way, if you pay attention to the details. I notice the biggest issues are Microsoft licensing, so watch for that when planning your migrations. I should knock together a couple of blog posts on this very subject soon.

Recent #NHSExperience has been positive, with my blood pressure coming right down. I run 5k every other day now. That’s right, ‘run’. Who’d of thought it! I even like it, which has surprised me immensely. You can, if you’re interested, check out my routes via the great Runtastic app, here http://www.runtastic.com/en/users/Mario-De-Cristofano/dashboard

I’ve been spending time in my hometown of Nottingham more & more & remembering the great social scene I left behind, great place for eats including @thecurrylounge, bars like @houseofcocotang, @fatcatnotts & Pitcher & Piano, along with all my other old favourites like the Living Room, Saint, SaltWater & Brass Monkey. I do miss going out with friends, whom ultimately is who I miss the most. Can’t wait to be back next weekend.