All too quiet

Oops

Bit quiet on here isn't it, don't really know what the landlord's up to, but he doesn't seem to be looking after the place much.

I hear on the grapevine he's been flat out in his day job, keeping the team alive, working on the new stuff. Bit of a change of direction, but familiar enough to people who know him.

He's kicked off his side project again as well, with a bit of a tribal addition to it.

May be that we'll find out more in the coming weeks

Anyway, you ain't seen me, right?

SSL Certs & Nokia mobiles... and other stuff

Forgive me Internet for i have sinned. It's been ten and a half months since my last blogpost although I have tried to write, albeit not very hard.

There's been a lot of changes here at Wavysworld over the last year or so, so this post is going to be about the tech side of things. If you're not interested in the tech stuff, you know what to do...

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Adam Lambert

Last year, those of us who watch the endless parade of TV talent shows were at last rewarded for our patience/dumb stupidity with the emergence of a talent the likes of which only comes about once every ten years or so.

When I first saw Adam Lambert featured on Season 8 of American Idol, I realised that it hadn't all been in vain. As the weeks went on and he grew in confidence, his performances didn't just outstrip his fellow contestants, in pure vocal ability and showmanship, they also cast a shaming light on 99% of established artists performing today. Come the final, even the eventual victor, Kris Allen, looked shocked that he'd beaten Adam. During that finale, the two performed with the remnants of Queen, Brian May and Roger Taylor, May himself saying after the show that he'd love to work with Adam in future. Hardly a surprising judgement to be made about the finest and most natural rock vocalist since Freddie Mercury, even from the Queen legend's closest musical collaborator.

On Thursday, I took Lynn to her first major concert, the KL stop on Lambert's Glam Nation tour, at the Putra Indoor Stadium Bukit Jalil (think Wembley Arena, but with slightly poorer acoustics).

As usual, PAS Youth had been stirring things up, as they do every time a western artist performs (or tries to) in Malaysia, saying that his show "promotes a gay lifestyle" (what is the "gay lifestyle", anyway? A penchant for dressing up in comedy outfits, a la Village People, and growing bushy mustaches? Saddam could have fallen foul of that one), and corrupting Muslim Youth. Apparently, they were outside the venue before the show. There could only have been a handful, because we didn't see a thing, aside from noticing that we were in a tiny minority of adults.

The show: in two words, absolutely astounding. From the first number, Voodoo, you could tell that Lambert has come a long way in a year. The vocals were acrobatic, yet somehow restrained, but what impressed more was his utter showmanship. This is a choreographed show, which I usually don't go for much, but in this case the performance would have been poorer without it. Lambert's background in music theatre shows, as he absolutely owns the stage. Voodoo was the first of a medley of tracks from his debut album, plus his American Idol version of Ring of Fire, complete with the Led Zep, Kashmir feel.

Following that came a quieter segment, including a stripped down, acoustic version of Whataya Want From Me, before the darker Sleepwalker, a superbly camped-up Strut, before the final crowdpleaser and obligatory singalong (though mercifully no left vs right) of If I had You. The very short encore consisted of a souped-up Mad World, much more reminiscent of the original than his Idol rendition, and 20th Century Boy (well, it is the Glam Nation tour).

All the way through, Lambert was superb, bringing light and dark to both his vocal and theatrical performance. Yes, this is as much a piece of theatre as a rock show, but that's always been this case with this guy.

As I said above, I consider Adam Lambert to be possessed of the most outstanding rock voice I've heard in many a long year. It will be very interesting to see how he matures, and how he copes with "difficult second album" syndrome. Personally I think he'll cope with the pressure just because of his background. Now he's recognised as an artist in his own right (with writing credits for six tracks on his album, to boot), the world's his for the taking.

As I was saying...

It seems time for a "Oh crap, I haven't written anything for far too long" posts.

Over the eleven months or so since the last entry I've been insanely busy, then had periods of absolutely nothing. The blogging hiatus started due to a manic period of working, mostly trying to put various bids together. One in particular came to nothing (at that point), whereas another led to a year's placement for one of the team in China, and to me making my first trip there to kick off the engagement by reviewing their Domino and SMTP architecture. Since then we've implemented Sametime instant messaging and Traveler mobile email (think stripped down Blackberry), and made a host of performance, stability and process improvements. Not bad for six months.

In May, the UK had its first general election of the post-Blair era, bringing back the Tories, with their figleaf of a LibDem party trying to convince the populace that there wouldn't be a return to the ideological targeting of services such as we saw in the eighties and early nineties. Ed Miliband now has to work hard to establish a new narrative for the Labour party, which isn't going to be an easy trick.

The summer was dominated by the World Cup (and for me, the opportunity to burn up lot of days off in lieu of time worked out of hours watching it).

Since then, there's been more work, including steering the development of our migration strategy for customers from MS Exchange 2003 to 2010. Happily, the guy on the team I asked to run this really seems to "get it", producing work of the highest quality, just as his colleague in China has been doing on the Lotus track. Elsewhere, we're in the process of bidding for the re-tendered work alluded to above, which is a major piece of directory integration.

Currently, though, I'm enjoying a few days respite, trying to catch up on this site and the Thames Ironworks place. taking my long-suffering wife to her first concert (more later) and celebrating her birthday tomorrow.

Note: Promises to write more regularly are not to be considered binding.

For the Fallen

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old;
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.

Condensation

I was playing with the macro end of my 18-55 lens. I quite like this shot.

The Trees

This used to be the view from our balcony:



Now, it looks like this:



I used to like looking at those trees.

Bohemian Rhapsody as never before

This is quite simply amazing: Bohemian Rhapsody as produced by a heap of old tech gear

Barack to visit West Ham

According to the Ilford Recorder, President Barack Obama is intending to take a little time out from G20 discussions to visit Upton Park

A West Ham insider told the Recorder: "We have all been told that the President is coming and some of his enormous bodyguards have been down to look around the stadium for security purposes.

"We have all been sworn to secrecy, but this sort of thing always gets out, and we are not sure exactly when he is going to arrive anyway. We've been told to keep the kettle on just in case."

The President will be shown round the stadium by US international Jonathan Spe-ctor, who, like Obama, hails from Chicago.

Bug in XPages?

I must start this post with a warning: Technical content ahead!!! Luddites among you venture ye no further.

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