Rants and comments on lifestyle, virtuality, software engineering and other worthy issues
I like taking photos. Since my digital SLR is too bulky to carry around all the time, I often shoot at things and people using my mobile phone. Every now and then, a photo taken with my phone comes out sort of… interesting.
CesarGon at ACE Meeting
On the Train
Train Station
There.
Exactly four years after version 1.0, OutlookConfig 1.1 is available now from my website.
OutlookConfig 1.1 helps you change Outlook’s SMTP server settings as you move your laptop from one place to another. If you use different Internet access providers to access the Internet from different locations (work, home, hotel, etc.), you may need to use different SMTP servers for each access provider. You may also probably have multiple e-mail accounts, and changing the SMTP server settings for each of them as you roam from site to site is extremely inconvenient. OutlookConfig helps you do that automatically.
Version 1.1 incorporates an SMTP Port setting that allows you to set the port for each configuration as well as the SMTP server name.
Some people have told me that this is wrong, and that I should not be doing this. I am not quite sure why though. It’s up to you to download and use my tool or not. 
Nothing Ever Happens turns four tomorrow.
I remember creating the ASP.NET blog engine at my place in Lavender Bay, coding at night on a Dell Latitude listening to the rain outside. Amazing.
Since then I have changed jobs twice, written a book, moved across the world and abandoned the custom-made blog engine in favour of WordPress. Oh well. All for good!
So. Happy fourth!
A couple of months ago I announced an opening for a PhD student at the Heritage Lab where I work. The deadline for applications is closing on 15th January, so I encourage you to have a look at the call ASAP if you’re planning to apply.
My Nokia 6288 has been acting up for some time now. It resets randomly a few times a day, which is quite annoying if you happen to be in the middle of a conversation or typing a text message.
So, when Vodafone came up with the BlackBerry Storm, I thought I would have a look at it. It starts at 19 € if you sign up for the top flat rate voice and data contract, which may be a bit over the top for me. But I am still willing to pay a bit more for the machine if I like it. What I would really like to own is an iPhone, but there are two reasons why I can’t: first, only Telefónica sells the iPhone in Spain, and I will not enter into business with Telefónica under any circumstances (well, maybe I would if my life and the life of my loved ones’ were depending on it); secondly, my colleague Sara Atán owns one and she says it’s got a few glitches and functionality shortcomings that I am not ready to live with. So, no iPhone for me. Shame. It’s pretty. So Apple.
This is why I love my job. I get to do all this experimental stuff and I get paid for it!
Okay, let me explain.
We are undergoing some reorganisation at work. In case you still don’t know, I work at a research lab of over 40 people where I try to apply software engineering to cultural heritage. Most of my workmates, however, are archaeologists, historians, anthropologists or soil scientists. Anyway. A few weeks ago we decided that we should define a few key roles that people should be playing at the lab. How do you define a role? Mmmmm… Well, ISO/IEC 24744 says that a role is a collection of responsibilities that a producer can take, where a producer is, usually, an individual in an organisation. I like ISO/IEC 24744 because I believe it can be applied to much more than software development methodologies, and the definitions are quite good. The fact that I was a key contributor to it has nothing to do, of course.
Continue reading ‘Wirfs-Brock responsibility model, ISO/IEC 24744 and organisational roles’
