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Showing posts from June, 2018

Is is Filmable? Red-Storm Rising

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I've often asked this question "is it filmable", such as the age old argument that the Lord of the Rings was not filmable before Peter Jackson proved that theory wrong... Sort of (cough). So what don't I think is filmable?  Well, the Tom Clancy novel "Red Storm Rising". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Storm_Rising I really like this book, I read it every couple of years and get really engrossed in the concept of what a war in the Europe of my youth would have been actually like. Remember, I'm a kid who played on the beaches of Skegness (in the UK) when A10 Warthogs were flying low over the coastline in dummy strafing runs, we could find spent 50'cal bullets (metal and a stone line practice bullet too) from their activities and we read up avidly about the new to service Tornado jet. I have a vivid and expectant concept of that that war might have been, everything from blistering nuclear instant death, to a lingering radioactive malaise, to the starv

Technology CV's and Me

I've a small gripe with technology recruiters, if any of you out there are reading this (which since I just cast my CV around, you should be). And this is their penchant for skills lists... I have a very minimalist CV, one page of A4, it covers the primary software languages I like (C++, C, C#) makes mention of my favourite working styles (Agile/Scrum) and it has my history and pertinent academic background. That's all... Minimal, just me, my page one shot done. Anymore and it never, ever, gets me anywhere.  It apparently comes across as "hey look at me" attempts to garner and keep attention with the right buzz words, which I myself despise.  Or it comes over as not having a lot to talk about in the interview, as everything you want to know might very well be in this tome of a CV, and I myself reading them find that I want to ask every question I can in the interview stage, so having it all there you disengage, hurting both your interest in the candidate and their cha

CPU Speed : That Time I got Conned

As a technologist I've always been interested in the newest kit coming out, and many moons ago this exact demand for kit made me very mad. For you see, the previous year I'd built my first 2 ghz machine, and it was very costly.  Hyper threading was new to the market, at least in the Pentium 4 range.  And as usual I had need for more power from my machines. So I hit the interwebs and found a machine (on ebay I think) which was 2ghz... A nice CPU was mentioned in the specification... But the memory and graphics capability were lacking... I could make the difference up from my spares bin, so I took the dive ordering this machine as a base on which to work. It duely arrived, I plugged it in, and was dismayed to find it clocking only around 1.1 ghz.  Baffled, I check the advert, "Dual core 2 ghz chip" was definiately there, with the sub-note "exact type may vary, select Intel or AMD preference". Back to the machine it is dual core, but it is not 2 ghz, no where n