The New Interview Platform

I've written in the past about interviewing, on how to present yourself well to others in these situations.

What might not be obvious though, and something I entirely bypassed in my discussion, is that you are always being interviewed.

Think for a moment. How many of us take part in social networks in some way be it Flickr, Facebook, Google searching (trust me, this feature is coming someday), IM chats via Google Talk or MSN Messenger. We all project a digital personality which search engines find and present to those who want to find out more information.

I've done a search for a few friends, and the engines turn up more and more detail on older and older material from them. Not all of it is what I'd tend to call 'interview material', some is just plain filler and crap but thankfully so far none of it is damaging to their reputation.

Even the questions they are asking are part of the search result fabric with sites such as Stack Overflow presenting itself to Google for indexing.

But I think this is all great stuff for a few reasons!

• If you are good and use the tools as you should us them, i.e. the web, then you leave a digital trail showing how you used the web asking questions and hopefully too how you contributed to the web.
• If you are bad, you either won't have an online presence, or what you do have online will show you haven't really scratched the surface of the thing you are being interviewed to do.

Someone wrote 'try to be an expert in your field'. This makes sense since the footprint you leave will be more impressive and deeper.

I'd say this works for a large percentage of programmers and professionals out there, only a few are awkward like me and refuse to focus on just one field.

However my advice overall is simple - Live by your values - if you believe in something, tell it from the heart, always. This way, you won't even have to write a resume...

(follow me on Twitter)

Google Sites

I've been sort of roped slightly into doing a site for someone and have been looking at several options.

Only recently started playing with Google Sites expecting it would be fairly good, but on reflection I'm quite impressed at what you can do with it.

Immediately, I should mention that I expect to shape the site, deliver it and handover the day to day publishing since I don't much fancy being a glorified typist.

So the Google offering allows me to:

• Create a site in moments. Really, it is that simple.
• Create forms to capture input. This works pretty well, data is captured to a Google spreadsheet
• Create a photo slideshow from a Picasa album
• Setup page links and hierarchical structures
• Secure the site
• Host comments and attachments
• Other things, go Google for yourself.

I'm no stranger to web development. I recognise that Google have limited the features more advanced users may want. So I can't for example use iFrame's, JavaScript and a bunch of other things. This makes site mashups tricky if not impossible, a shame in the 2.0 world... It's a tradeoff though.

But the elegance of the product really leaves me wondering if it's not just perfect for my needs. It's just so darned quick to throw up posts and alter basic content, and after all content is king right?

What do you think?

Would you use it?

Have you created a site for someone else less technical than you to then take over and publish to?

What did you use?

(follow me on Twitter)

Back It Up

So the home Windows computer now has over a 1TB of storage. How did that happen? Perhaps less important is how, more important how to back up all this data safely!

We have around 8 years of pictures, 10 years of my music collection, 15 years of files I've scanned or documents I've typed up, all my contacts I know, all my emails, licence details for software I own (you get the idea, lots of digital stuff).

Backups are traditionally very painful to do. People either think they are too complicated, think they take too long to run, or think they are too expensive to do.

I wanted the least pain to make sure backups happen, so here's what I use. Hope this helps convince you to do similar.

1. Buy an external hard drive and install this making sure both it and your PC use USB2.0 for speed.  I picked up some 750Gb for around £50. Just make sure this is big enough for all the things you want to backup.
2. Download and install a copy of Microsoft's SyncToy 2.0, it's free
   
3. Create a folder pair.  There are options when creating the pairs, but essentially you are telling SyncToy "I want you to copy this source folder (left folder in the screenshot) to the destination folder (right folder in the screenshot).
4. Run the sync.

What's pretty smart here is SyncToy takes care of the delta process.  That is, if a file changes in the left folder, the right is updated by SyncToy.  If a file is deleted on the left folder, the right can (optionally) remove it too.

The initial sync can take ages depending on the size of the left folder and the speed of the drive and connection between your PC and drive.

Within the Help menu is a helpful (odd that) description of how to schedule this process so your folder pairs are automatically synchronised. Means you don't have to concern yourself with remembering to run backups.

You have no excuses now. Don't come crying to me when it all hits the fan...

I'm interested to know, does anyone do anything else from this? Anyone backing up to the Internet, how and at what cost / speed?

(In fact, small lies above. I have a second internal drive and an external drive. I prefer to schedule the backup to the internal drive to happen weekly, and run the backup to the external drive every month storing the drive out of the house for safe keeping).

Old Acquaintances

Feeling a tad misty-eyed today.  It would have been the 40th birthday of an ex-colleague and friend, Michael Roser.  Mike was unfortunately in a fatal road accident earlier this year.

Just wanted to mark the event by writing a few short things about him and my memory of him, hope you don't mind reading them.

He was a slightly quiet, slightly grumpy bugger, but certainly a smart one. Very warm natured and close friend to those who stuck around long enough to see past his occasional scowl.

Always pushing himself, always challenging things, always learning, always sharing, always amazing. This shone through in his physical training he took part in, his technical work, his conversation about software and other things, his diverse interests (making wrist watches being one!), in fact nearly everywhere.

I always left with the impression that Mike's life was a huge training exercise to prepare him for something immense. And when it came, boy would he be prepared!

Sorry you left so soon mate. Far too soon for my liking.

Like A Hole In The Head

When I was a kid, I had a lot of time on my hands, most kids do. I chose to spend a fair whack of it playing games on the Commodore 64, the Spectrum, Amstrad, Amiga, Megadrive, Saturn, etc...

i.e. I played a hell of a lot of games.

One of my friends who I played games with in those days recently said he didn't think he'd be alive when a game as good as GT4 came out (yes, GT5 looks better).

However, I've just finished looking at footage for GRID for the PC.

Take a look at this video if you can
http://uk.gamespot.com/video/939158/6191707/grid-crash-damage-engine-demonstration

For me, I was always aware the graphics side would reach these levels, and clearly will continue to improve. But the physics engine that demo shows just looks utterly stunning.

So, do I need another game on my list of things to play? No more than a hole in the head.

But it's still utterly stunning what developers can achieve these days.

(yes, probably will end up getting this, looks far too nice to miss out on).

Delicious shared items

For anyone who follows my del.icio.us links via the RSS feed from this blog, I've decided to move these off of the RSS feed here onto a separate feed.

Subscribe to my shared items (including del.icio.us shares) on http://feeds.feedburner.com/MarkAitkensSharedItems

Will splice in more shared items in there when I get time.

iPhone 3G - worth it?

I'm a sucker for gadgets, and the new iPhone is very tempting...

Look at the features at a glance
- 3G connection
- Stunning touch screen UI
- Google maps
- Unlimited data (with reasonable usage of course)
- TV Out support
- iPod feature
- etc...

I won't even try to replicate the list, Apple already did that.

There are obviously a few niggles, but most I think people could live with.

So I'm again debating do I need these features?

The answer is a definite yes, of course I do. That's precisely what Apple marketing makes me feel, and there is no doubt that Apple's marketing is first rate. We all live in a connected world and all want access to information when we need it at our convenience.

It's the lifestyle thing, isn't it? Don't you just want to be the person to be seen using the most up to date phone with all that connectivity to the world?

I thought I did...

After the 18 month contract, with the 16gb model and the £35 per month package, it's a cost of £789.00. That's without taking out insurance, or itemised billing, or anything else I've not included.

That's a hell of a lot of money for anything, isn't it?

My car probably costs me around that per year in depreciation, and I'd consider that to be a reasonably big expense. Hell, I could buy a superb new computer for that, or an amazing flat screen, or a holiday for crying out loud!

So my reluctant conclusion at the moment has to be that I'd need to be off my rocker to think I REALLY needed that sort of device at that particular cost. I just can't see past the cost at the moment but fawn over the thought of the features you can have!

What do you think? Is the iPhone worth the cost? If you are considering it, how are you justifying the cost to yourself?