Loving The New Board Games

Gabriella Davis  January 4 2009 10:40:15 PM

If you don't have children and you're having an at home holiday break - you have to set yourself goals to achieve, or laziness sets in and the time flies away (at least that's what I've found).  This year's xmas break goals weren't terribly exacting, I had 7 or 8 books to catch up on and we were severely behind in our board game playing, we also had a ton of old movies to watch but they never happened.  Tim and I both love board games and have a huge collection but don't get the free time to play that often.  The best game this year was a new one published by Fantasy Flight games out of nowhere at the end of December.  Fantasy Flight games produce the fantastic Arkham Horror board game based on the H P Lovecraft stories and their new game is a full on Science Fiction game called Android.  Android game mechanics remind me a lot of Bladerunner and it includes both a murder mystery and a secret conspiracy.  Our first attempt to play took over 5 hrs from beginning to end but there was a fair amount of stopping to review the rules.  The 2nd attempt took a lot less time.  

If you like board games with a literary tie in and good atmosphere (like Arkham Horror and Android) then I also recommend Touch of Evil which is basically Sleepy Hollow as a board game with town elders who can have hidden secrets.  None of these are good for very small children (I'd say below the age of 12).  Next up is Last Night on Earth.

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iPhone and T-Mobile Pain

Gabriella Davis  December 19 2008 04:31:23 PM

I have a UK based iPhone with an O2 contract which allows me to roam in other countries at some horrifically expensive rate.  For the 26+ days I was in the US recently the iPhone would attach itself to the 'best' network in any region.  This was fine when the network was AT&T but when my iPhone found T-Mobile, it would connect then immediately drop to zero bars and lock the SIM.  I'd switch off reception and back on again and it would do the same thing - connect to 4 bars, drop to zero bars then lock my SIM.   There is no way on the iPhone (unlike on the Blackberry) to tell it NOT to choose a provider it thinks is strongest, so Tim and I could be sat next to each other both with iPhones and his would be happily on AT&T and mine would be stuck on T-Mobile refusing to connect.

After a particularly bad day when it stuck on T-Mobile all day then suddenly switched to AT&T at 6pm and received in 20 SMS messages from people who had been texting me during that time - I cracked and did some research.  Turns out the T-Mobile 3G network is incompatible with Apple's 3G network, so as soon as the iPhone connects to T-Mobile and tries to use 3G the SIM locks.  The only way to avoid it is to turn off 3G on the iPhone completely at which point it will happily continue to use the T-Mobile network.

Apparently this is true for T-Mobile and Apple worldwide so I'm leaving 3G off as a default when roaming just in case (mostly I use wireless to browse anyway).

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Blackberry version of Lotusphere Sessions DB Now Available

Gabriella Davis  December 17 2008 01:51:15 PM

We are very pleased again this year to link up with Ben's Lotusphere sessions db and produce a Blackberry version which is installable OTA.  The sessions db is missing some data right now as times are still be finalised for some sessions and the product showcase stands aren't published, but once installed you can do "Load Data' from the app main menu anytime to get an update directly from the sessions db itself.

This year alongside the ability to add sessions to your Calendar on the BB, we have included Ben's 'Feedback' form allowing you to post questions and comments in response to a session.

To download simply browse on your Blackberry to http://lotusphere.turtleweb.com/bb and install.

For those of you wanting an offline iPhone application that isn't browser based - we have produced one that also links to Ben's session db.  Unfortunately to distribute it to you it first has to make its way through Apple approval to the app store.  More news on that here soon.

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Delighted By The Internet - Courtesy Of Google

Gabriella Davis  November 21 2008 01:02:56 PM

I've missed the heyday of 'Life' magazine by some way but I've always loved and often bought old collections of their photographs that record vividly places and times I find impossible to imagine now.  In fact many of their images are so unvarnished and true to life they've become icons of history.

So I'm overjoyed (and I don't care if they have evil reasons behind doing it) that Google have put the entire Life photographic catalog online where you can browse by event or by decade from 1860s - 1970s.  You can then click on a picture and order a copy framed for as little as 80 USD.  I've spent countless hours browsing already and I look forward to spending more, it's both fascinating and moving.  Go here to get started.

Now for some of those Magnum photos online as well .......

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New Track, New Speaker

Tim Davis  November 20 2008 06:04:01 PM

This year at Lotusphere, I am honored to be actually speaking. My session is part of the new 'Show and Tell' track, and I will be speaking together with Jason Hook on the subject of: 'Developing Mobile Applications - Techniques for Running Big Applications on Small Devices' (SHOW109).

The idea is for us to take the attendees through the steps needed to get a Domino app made available on mobile devices, such as mobile browsers and BlackBerrys. I am also hoping to talk a little about what you can do with the iPhone.

Here at Turtle, we produce the BlackBerry Lotusphere Sessions App each year (based on Ben Langhinrichs' Lotusphere Sessions Database), and so I hope to cover the techniques we use to make that, and talk about moving beyond it to include pushing data from Domino out to your BlackBerry apps. This year, we are also producing an iPhone version of the Sessions App, and so I will talk about what is involved in doing this, too.

Jason will be talking through how to create a consistent browser UI that will work across the variety of mobile browsers, covering the various standards, tools and tricks you need to know.

Its very exciting to be part of this new track, and to be part of Lotusphere itself, after so many years coming to this great event!

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Lotusphere Sessions 09 - All Shiny and New

Gabriella Davis  November 20 2008 01:25:11 PM

This year I have 3 shiny new sessions - all of which I'm excited about for different reasons. I'm not much good at conveying that excitement in short descriptive sentences but here goes....

BP205 Go "Advanced" with Lotus Sametime.  
I've been working with ST Advanced since early last summer and i've been amazed about how little information is out there for people on how it works, what it does, how it integrates with Sametime for Domino and how all its moving parts fit together.  I'm going to cover all of that in this session plus a few of the painful pieces of the install you can watch out for

BP207 IBM Lotus Domino Admin to IBM WebSphere Application Admin -- in an Hour!
Chris Miller and I came up with the idea for this session earlier this year when we both realised (well I guess Chris knew but it took me a while to realise) how much of our Admin work is now WAS based because of the number of Lotus extended products that are based on it.  Quickr J2EE , Sametime Advanced, Sametime Gateway,  Connections, the list goes on.  Basically if you want to start working with the more advanced collaborative tools at some point you need to start working with WAS.  What we hope to do here is talk WAS language to Domino admins - showing you the WAS equivalents for server options and features in Domino and how to configure them.  

SHOW101 ID Vault, Roaming and DAOS: Get Ahead of the Curve with IBM Lotus Domino 8.5
In the new Show and Tell track I'm doing my first session with Paul Mooney (see how i cleverly align myself with much better speakers) where we're going to show you how to configure and work with the 3 most exciting features in the Domino 8.5 server.  In fact I believe these 3 features alone are a good enough reason for you to be upgrading your servers to 8.5 and hopefully by the time we've shown you why and how - you'll be ready to do just that.

So 3 completely new sessions to write and this year about 3 different topics I hope someone out there is as interested in as I am!  

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A Play With MS Surface And Some Photos

Gabriella Davis  November 19 2008 09:46:47 PM

This week I'm working in New York (where it's freezing cold btw) and staying at the Sheraton in midtown.  In the lobby of the Sheraton we discovered they have one of the new MS Surface tables with a touch sensitive screen so Tim and I sat down to have a play.  Some photos and details below but there were things I liked and things I didn't.

• It was incredibly touch sensitive which meant I kept accidentally rotating album covers or photos by brushing the heel of my hand when I lent forward or if Tim tried to work on one part of the table whilst I worked on the other
• There was something very satisfying about swinging pictures and albums around the pushing them flying across the table with a flick then overlaying other items on top of them by sweeping across the screen
• I couldn't grasp the playlist interface, the albums were on a scroll but you had to drag the album off the scroller then click on it to rotate it (as per coverflow) then click on a track to start it playing and add it to the playlist - a lot of steps and the idea that it kept stopping the playlist and starting with the newly added track was dumb
• It was stunning how much it looked and behaved like the Apple behaviour such as Coverflow, 'spinning' an album round to see the tracks, using pinch and expand to shrink and grow a picture and finger 'spin' gestures to rotate

After testing,  I don't think it's usable unless you can 'lock off' a part of the table to disable the touch sensitivity there, otherwise you've got yourself a table you can never touch or rest anything on and what's the point of that?  Oh and i'd like to thank Tim for being such a glamorous hand model in the cool photos we took below !

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Logging and monitoring your BlackBerry Enterprise Server - recording available online

Mike Smith  November 19 2008 01:29:35 PM

If you missed Gabriella's webcast on logging and monitoring your BES you can still catch it online by going to the Lotus User Group page here:

http://www.lotususergroup.org/VUG

Just scroll down and click on "Click here to view the presentation", register your details then you will be able to access the recording.

To give you some background our own Gabriella Davis gave this online presentation at the last Lotus User Group Virtual Meeting on Monday. Basically your BES integrates tightly with your Lotus Domino environment but its many services actually sit outside Domino and are not readily accessible to, or known by, most Domino Admins. So this presentation takes you through how to monitor each of the BES services and what they do. Its ideal for anyone who is concerned their BlackBerry server 'just runs itself' and wants to achieve a greater level of control.

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Blackberry Monitoring and Logging - Free Webinar

Gabriella Davis  November 13 2008 04:29:02 PM

If you manage a BB server and have trouble working with the logs, monitoring the services, or are just curious about what options are available, you may be interested in a free Webinar I am presenting on behalf of the Lotus User Group.  It's taking place this Monday 17th November at 12.00 EST (5pm GMT).  All you have to do is register on the Lotus User Group website to attend and since I'm staying after work for an entire hour to present it, it would be nice to think there was someone listening at the other end :-)  

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Leaving Gelsenkirchen In One Piece and Dubious Confessions

Gabriella Davis  October 29 2008 12:42:45 PM

So far the week is going reasonably well.  I've just finished my last session at Admin Camp in Gelsenkirchen and it's been a great conference, a big turnout of interested attendees and great organisation by Rudi and his colleagues.  It's not their fault that my German isn't good enough to attend many other sessions.  Nor that I couldn't read enough to understand that lunch and dinner were laid on each day and so I didn't eat for 2 days, or that I couldn't translate the words 'free beer' last night.  I bring these things on myself.

We're about to head for the long drive home which will involve several hours in Belgium rush hour traffic but first Andrew's closing session entitled "Confessions of a Penetration Tester" - I'm just hoping that there's no accompanying video or a boom-chicka-chicka soundtrack frankly.  

I did manage to buy the world's slowest USB drive - 16GB for only 20 Euros which estimated 5 hrs to transfer a 4GB VM from Paul's hard disk when plugged in.  The pain generated by the ST Advanced work I've been doing this week deserves its own blog post later when I can breathe normally again, now it's time for a bit of fresh air before 10 hrs in the car.

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