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It’s been a long ol’ month, and busy in both IT & my personal life. At the start of this month, I was full of beans  feeling good. A few trips to the GP and a diganosis of High Blood Pressure later however (follow events on Twitter, search for #NHSExperience), & I felt a bit bummed out I had to say. I’m also getting a bit fed up with London, the people, the hustle & bustle, the expense! £500 a month on travel, & yet its still cheaper than a car! Welcome to the UK!

A trip back ‘oop North to see my good friend @ahartconsulting & my parents, and a little perspective setting seemed to help though. I’ve been making some pretty radical changes to the things I do in terms of work, my attitude & the way I think about getting things done.  I’ve taken up Meditation & Yoga, along with upping my exercise reigime (I’m about to start spinning classes – good lord) & I’ve absolutley stopped eating monster portions of food once a day. Never thought Breakfast would be so good!

In technology its been busy, I’ve attended the IPExpo 2011 at Earls Court, along with taking @jamesjhedges along to the Soho Hotel for a Mortimer Spinks event, both were pretty good, & I’ve blogged about them here, & at my company site, Leading Edge  I’m about to start #ChristmasBytes podcast with @julianbdavis & @kwasig which I’m totally stoked about, and we’ll be rounding up the year in technology & our respective careers in IT, Social Media & Finance. It’ll be jovial, there’ll be beer & we may even sing carols! Check it out on the Digibyte website, and head over to @kwasigs 100% Goodtime Blog Solution. Thankfully my other companies all seem to run themselves now which is very good!

So with blogging, round the clock work with Leading Edge developing everything from their organisation, their process & there social media, its been pretty busy & nice to sit back in Costa, (as per usual), grab a green tea & catch up with myself & thoughts. I never managed to actually celebrate my 31st birthday this year, which I was totally bummed about, but do get together with buddies from all my old companies like Libertine, Ticketmaster, and such like, so its nice to see pals. That reminds me, I must catch up with @TBev0 pretty soon (reading this!?)

I’m not quite sure what 2012 will bring, I’ve been overall pretty happy with 2011, but perhaps just perhaps I’ll learn to spend a little time on me. I’m hoping to next year;

- Get to 1000 followers on Twitter (@mariodc if your interested!)

- Travel More again (including Whistler, Vegas, Singapore & Miami)

- Stress out less (harder than I thought)

- Stay in more hotels, I love hotels, don’t know why, just my ‘thing’

- Learn to switch off, including leaving the iPad, iPhone & laptop out the bedroom!

- Finish off my long awaited charity bike ride, remember that Mario!? Check it out here

- Stress out less, oh wait a minute, I’ve said that!

Stay tuned!

Love, Mario x

So after a rather badly organised door entrance procedure, we got to IPExpo 2011 & must say, we were delighted at some of the stands that made it. Isilon/EMC, BlueArc, HP & Citrix were all there. We were first met by Titan, the robot you may have seen from the Gadget Show. On first look, Titan looks like the most incredible Robot you’ve ever seen, walking, talking, cracking jokes, and impersonating everyone from Frank Sinatra to Pat from EastEnders. We however, still think there’s a man inside. You can judge from yourself, by watching the video later in this post.

The highlight of the day was a keynote with Steve Wozniak (of Apple) from I.O-Fusion. After his Banana’s and monkey analogy (that ol’ chestnut you can see here )We felt sorry that he was trying to discuss new pathway electronics, their revolutionary add-on cards for increased data I/O & all anyone wanted to talk about was Apple. The fan boys were there, and in the Q&A session, when poor old Steve caveated “please, I don’t want to talk about Steve Jobs“, the first question was “so do you think Apple can still innovate now Steve Jobs has died“…oh dear. We were pretty sad to learn also there were plenty of non tech journalists at IPExpo, taking up valuable space from the people who really needed to be there, but we digress…

Steve highlighted after one rather interesting audience question (ahem), about whether bedroom innovation is still possible in todays world, whereby every youngster now learns ‘apps’ and not programming in the traditional sense. “dont be scared to innovate, its still possible, and dont be scared to question why things are done the way they are, and ensure you are always your worst critic” was some of Steve’s very interesting insights.

Other interesting stands & keynotes were Citrix, who were demonstrating the power of their VDI & Distributed desktops – really interesting to see the power of the new platforms & how seemless distributed desktops can be. Showcasing the ability to ‘bind’ computing power to specific VM’s, using a technology called Flexcast. Perhaps your organisation has 80% admin/office use, but 20% niche high end, you can bind dedicated hardware such as graphics cards & increased RAM to that 20%, whilst still using the same desktop image for everyone else. In effect, modifying the build as its distributed, depending on usage requirements. Incredible really.

On the subject of virtualisation, and in lieu of a recent upcoming virtualisation project we’re working on here at LET, we toddled across to Microsoft’s stand (one of many) who were showcasing there latest incarnation of System Manager & System Monitor, which ties in to Hyper V. I’m still sure that Hyper V is a very immature technology, but in a demo environment, they showcased building an infrastructure using a GUI, dragging across CPU horsepower, Hard disc space, Apps, (Office, etc), The version of Windows, and then publishing that as a VM which became live. You could potentially in effect, build a ‘private’ cloud for a companys IT infrastructure.

Then System Monitor took over, managing deep level monitoring across the VM down to component and app level, even understanding and highlighting when an App crashed, exactly where, & what it was doing. One of the key features was its ability to tie in to a Visio-Style diagram. Perhaps you could publish this to a sharepoint site. As you build your infrastructure & deploy, it documents itself – we all know documentation is the bane of an IT Pro’s life!

Other points to note were Wyse’s thin clients, we know about Wyse, they’ve been around for over a decade, but are now working with Citrix and delivering true thin based computing both as PCoIP, (PC over IP), along with dedicated dumb terminals such as notebooks & such like, which can boot from a Citrix syncronisiation server.

All at IPExpo this year acknowledged the power of the cloud, and stands were everywhere showcasing distributed & cloud based technology. If your a business wondering whether to adopt this technology, really you should. Its going nowhere. Other points which regulary cropped up & acknowledged to further back the future of the cloud;

- Most IT use is now ‘App’ driven, we don’t paticularly use high density software anymore, just single use Apps.

- Tablet computing adoption – making the workforce truly mobile and in effect turning your screen into a computer without the need for a computer.

-iCloud in paticular, let’s get one thing straight, iCloud represents the single biggest potential change in computing for the last five years. As more and more data is synced to iCloud (and various other manufacturers iterations of it), we will only start needing tablets, and smart-phones (basically just screens) and we’ll do all our computing .. without the computing! Not only pictures/photos/music/personal settings, but entire desktop delivery, apps, office suites etc. This was also highlighted with products such as MS Azure, Microsoft Lync & Office 365.

All in all, a good morning. We could of spent all day getting lost talking to manufacturers, getting excited at all the new equipment & such like, so we’ve registered for 2012. Who knows, we may even get a stand there next year!

On Twitter? Search for @leadingedgeuk & hashtag #LETIPExpo, or me personally at @mariodc, hashtag #IPExpo

Well if you’ve been following me on Twitter (@mariodc) in paticular my hashtag #NHSexperience, you’ll know I’ve not been well of late. At thirty one years of age, having been fortunate enough to never have anything wrong with me, for the first time in my life, I felt ‘odd’.

At first I thought it was diabetes, my father had diabetes, and the symptoms I’d managed  to convince myself I was going through, was a need to pee. Thing is, I dont have diabetes. It turns about my need to pee we thing is a small minor imflammatory infection, I blame it on some dodgy Camembert (how very middle class, up their with spilling Chateux Neuf  De-Pape on my iPad) Thats a good thing. (not having diabetes, spilling wine on my iPad would be a fckn disaster) Besides, I dont paticular eat vast amounts of sweet sugary processed foods (correction – never) and after a test of my wee wee, it wasnt that.

So as part of the troubleshooting (sorry, diagnosis), turns out I have high blood pressure. Us humans should have around 120-130, mine at certain levels was 170-180! It doesnt help that I’m so nervous when I go to the GP, I end up a sweating wobbly anxious mess, so both myself & my GP arent convinced true readings are being given.

So I find myself with a 24 hour BP monitor attached to me, in some Part Man, Part BP machine meld, which will take my BP every twenty minutes and report that telemetry back to my GP, you know, I feel like an F1 car at the moment talking to the pit crew – just precautionary my GP tells me, to see if we can do some trend analysis (this is my blood we’re talking about here, not Social Media!)

Oh, I also have to go in and have an ECG test, again, just precautionary, but still quite unnerving when you’ve never had to go to the doctors before.

My GP is not to be messed wtih, he told me ‘cut out the salt’ and god dam that’s what I am going to do. I think with a combination of salt, (not because I eat lots of salt, I dont, but my portion sizes are bananas!), and my stress, I need to make some changes. Meditation, thats what Im going to do, my jobs mental, I dont want to be one of these white collar bozo’s with a bunch of cash in the bank, but a heart attack at 36.

If I hadnt of seen my Gp  Id of never had my BP measured, and it could of been a ticking time bomb, so I recommend to anyone (even if your healthy) get the occasional MOT – and watch that stress – especially in high level IT, cant spend the money if your dead hey!

In terms of technology Id like to see the same hardware they use for F1 drivers, whereby (they dont often publicize this, they do it with a lot of professional sportsmen) you swallow a transmittor pill (which is basically a bunch of dyamic sensors on a RFID chip embedded in something the size of a paracetomol) and this then bluetooths or wifi’s the data back to say, an iPad app within range.

Watch this TED talk on this very subject (above), so you know I’m not making it up

They do actually do this, some people even have wafer thin RFID transmittors embedded under the dermis, and you simply get scanned like a bag of frozen peas at the supermarket. Imagine this technology in healthcare, and not just sports. Instead, I’m going to be bolted to a machine for 24 hours like the  Borg – we are one!

Follow me on Twitter @mariodc and check out hashtag #NHSexperience for more information. I’m doing fine, just!

Well, we’ve waited (some of us anyway) for this day, which is seemingly up their with Armageddon, the second coming, & Bruce Forsyth getting a knighthood, the launch of the Apple iPhone5! (insert your own fanfare, round of applause etc here).

Live from Apple’s Cupertino HQ, with Tim Cook steering the fruit flavoured ship, the show began first talking about how epically awesome Apple has been since time began, you know, the kind of stuff we knew already.

You know, I wanted this post to be all whizz bang about the latest features and the razor slim design, a screen so large you could cut Sushi on it and tricked out with the latest technology but all we get is the 4s, a few increased enhancements such as downloads, a better camera and 4g network support, but overall its a little bit lame. I have to say, Im pretty happy with the faster CPU but the phone is plenty fast enough as it is, so I’m not sure how I’m going to benefit from that – its not like I play that many games or use any software which typically requires a faster CPU- The overview of features are as follows;

1. Faster processor:The iPhone 4S features an Apple-designed dual-core A5 processor, which SVP of worldwide marketing Phil Schiller claims delivers up to 2x faster CPU performance and up to 7x faster graphics performance.

2. Dual networks:The iPhone 4S works on both GSM and CDMA carrier networks; the older model was one or the other, but not both.

3. Download speed:The iPhone 4S promises twice the download speed of the iPhone 4–14.4Mbps compared to 7.2. It supports HSDPA but not LTE.

4. Much-improved camera:The camera on the iPhone 4S is significantly improved–30% sharper, with an aperture of f/2.4, a third quicker to capture images, with an 8 megapixel sensor that takes 3264 by 2448 pixel pictures. It’s also capable of HD 1080p video.

5. Voice-powered “assistant”:Meet Siri, which plays a starring role on the iPhone 4S. The software describes itself as “a humble personal assistant,” if you bother to ask. It allows the user to control phone functions  through voice commands and even answers questions. For example, saying “Wake me up tomorrow at 6 AM” to Siri prompts the software to set the iPhone’s alarm clock app. This technology looks both impressive and useful.

Some useful links about the phone & the various blog sphere entries are below also for you interest;

http://www.informationweek.com/news/mobility/smart_phones/231700257

http://www.techradar.com/news/phone-and-communications/mobile-phones/iphone-4s-our-first-impressions-1031450

Useful video but turn the volume down, as the music is crap

Here’s what I think – Firstly, I’ll get it. I have to, my mind implant tell’s me to, but in all seriousness its all a little lame. I’ll move onto the iPad 3 shall I!