The Wharf is the most awful place known to mankind.

I’ve started to contract in FS, and happily I don’t often need to go to the Wharf.

Even on a cracking day rate, the Wharf robs you of your soul, your humanity, your common decency, your empathy and your will to live. YMMV.

This might make an interesting read for some on here. Or then again, maybe not.

NY Times piece on the consumerization of IT

Nice edit Random – loving the venom!

😆

Good call!

Not really

In other words bullseye – raw nerve ahead. Did she dump you for a Mac fanboi?

Duckers – have I touched a raw nerve? That’s a bit of a low blow to suggest that I don’t ride a bike just because I’m having a teeny wee pop at IT types. Shame on you!

Molgrips, doubtless other departments burn through cash wastefully too – but picking on them is not nearly as much fun as winding up you IT types 👿

Cougar has a fair point about everyone thinking they are an expert about IT. I clearly am because I use a computer. IT bosses who last wrote a line of code 12 years ago are clearly expert in the web because they’re on LinkedIn.

Happily I’m not selling anything – I’ve just been called in to dig a web project out of the mire. The project is in the mire because it was run by enterprise IT guys who then foisted it on an unsuspecting populace.

The problem with the project is that it was run with no end-user focus whatsoever. Hence it’s not doing what the other bits of the business that IT over-ruled need it to do. It was techy for the sake of being techy.

I get enormously frustrated by these depts burning through huge piles of cash by being less than open with the less informed. Happily there are genuine solutions like the cloud looming into view so that IT depts will need to work harder to justify their existence in future.

I agree that the cloud is not right in every instance, nor indeed is PHP. What I do believe those is that very many IT depts in this country – particularly those wedded to MS and .Net – are severely lacking in any useful user focus or progressive thought.

I am making a gross generalisation about the culture of IT depts, but in my long experience of corralling them during web projects I have seen their culture up-close and found it unhelpful in the extreme.

I do know what a Ponzi scheme is, but I thought it was an appropriately troll like word to use to indicate my belief that IT depts are frequently scamming the rest of the businesses of which they form part.

And how I wish I was still an adolescent – rather than someone ground down by the repetition of hearing no, no and no from enterprise IT types.

It’s up now – good job putting 50p in the metre. So, if you’re a wee agency, why you defending the profligate ways of departments?

Sniff, you must have a block so that Apple users can’t see it – we clearly wouldn’t understand your developmental genius. Doesn’t work in FFX or Chrome – you looking at it on an external connection or a cached copy?

Sniff – your website seems to be down. Shurely shome mishtake? Did you forget to feed the hamsters?

An eclectic selection to include the finest pure pop song of the 80s, bar none.

I think you’re right about there not being any bad ones among them.

Rose look like a good addition to the mix.

Mikogo is what you want. Free software for sharing your desktop with a bunch of people and you just dial them in via phone or Skype for audio. Actually works really well. I like it.

Pick up a tub of magnesium supplements from Boots for about £2.50 and take two when you feel restless legs coming on – that’ll stop them in record quick time. Magnesium is also really good if you suffer lots of headaches.

Be warned – more is not necessarily better. Take three of the pills and you’ll be making a be-line for the bathroom due a rather laxative effect.

I’ve done that drive many times, but the best is really just to take the M5 out of Sydney and pick-up the Bruce Highway.

Any of the alternatives would put hours and hours on your journey.

Everytime I’ve done the trip Lake George has been empty, but I believe it’s quite full now and should be spectacular.

About three hours from Sydney to Canberra if you “fang it”.

I might be late to the thread, but I definitely win.

Ektron.

Poor beyond belief.

Pork chop and a banana for breakfast most mornings. iDave would be proud.

Don’t you hate it when you wade into a thread in the hope of a good debate …and find that you’re too late as the thread has run out of steam!

Hang on, hang on, there is daft romanticism taking place here – the printers that he confronted were not heroes. They were anything but.

The printers ruined it for everybody because they took the piss to such an extent – dozens of printers claiming two and three salaries under alias names like Donald Duck the Junior.

If management, not unreasonably, challenged them on this, the union would see that everyone downed tools and no more papers were printed until some extortionate ransom was extracted from the company.

Now, that’s not to say what happened at Wapping was right – but it needed to happen, and the problem is that because the Troublesome Inkies pushed it so far, that when retribution came it was brutal. And as a result the cause of industrial relations in the UK was set back decades, and we are miles away from a progressive situation where unions and management can work together in mature fashion for win, win outcomes.

If any union activists or sympathisers want to know why they hold so little sway these days, blaming Rupert is misguided. The blame lies within the union movement itself for failing to stop the excesses of the print unions in the 70s and 80s.

And that’s a real shame because I often wonder what my union subs really pay for.

Some great ideas here – hadn’t thought of Grenoble, and Cape Town might make a lot of sense. I won’t say what the business is because while I’m still investigating its feasibility I don’t want any competition! Let’s just say that while I need a lot of space, it is a lifestyle business.

Yeah, visas become a secondary consideration if you are able to start a business with an investment about a certain threshold. Typically 100k dollars. And the (day dream) business idea I have would certainly cost that.

These are great thought starters people, thank you.

I’d be looking for a workspace/idustrial unit of about 6,500 sq ft of space – does that alter the viability of any of these places I wonder.

I’m liking the San Sebastian idea.

It looks lovely: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Sebasti%C3%A1n

Oh, Barcelona – that’s a good idea. What’s the biking like there?

But Brizzle is also cold, no?

Not been to Vanc – the climate there worries me. It gets cold, no?

But definitely a contender

Breakfast is easy.

Pork chop on the Foreman grill. Broccoli and cauliflower in the microwave for 3.5 minutes.

Job done.

Not a fatty – just not yet ripped enough 🙂

Thanks iDave, I’ll see about including some. I had wondered if I was eating too little, but it’s just so counter-intuitive to eat more for fat loss when being force fed a diet of conventional wisdom by the media and the masses.

Interesting thread … well, not really. But relevant! I’m in a similar boat to Leffeboy, tho probably with a slightly smaller budget. But I’ve got to be able to do high quality colour.

So, putting aside purchase price for the mo … of the billion different makes out there, which is the cheapest to run?

Of course, why didn’t I think of that … or not! 🙂

Bugger Zedsdead – that would have been perfect.

Looks like I’m going to be able to delay until tomorrow and go in daylight, so it’ll be no problemo.

I’d echo the comment above about diet – doubtless you’ve tried this, but the NHS takes a resolutely conventional (and flawed) approach to this sort of stuff. If you cut sugar out your diet completely (no carbs like pasta, no processed foods and little fruit) I’d be really surprised if you didn’t see a marked improvement.

I’m not a trainer and I recognise that there is bollocks being talked above. I am the stereotypical cardio bunny, yet I know I get more benefit in every way from intervals and weights. Treat large chain gyms with suspicion – look at the people going there, how many are getting results you want to emulate? Go smaller and gnarlier for more results and fun.

A conventional gym will get you conventional results. What you want to be doing is this: http://www.crossfit.com/ I’ve not long started and have been making fantastic progress.

Berocca is a thing of wonder. I think the magnesium in it helps.

The auctions. I got a cracking wee Renault Clio with a year MOT for £160 🙂 Bangernomics make sense…

You have no idea how much I lusted after one of those… I desperately wanted the Perthus Pro with a 753 frame!

Don't what happened to them, but it's not right!

Mr C, that's a brave admission to make in public… world's least trendy band!