The hot site project is continuing with the installation of the flooring and fibre. The fibre is in and ready for use and the flooring is ’setting’ as I type. We are about to hit up Bunnings to get the tools we need to fix the holes in the walls which will be followed by the room being painted. Check it:
Next step: Painting, lighting, air conditioning.
We’ve spent a significant amount of time over the last 8 months expanding the IT infrastructure at work to better suit the needs of our members, and to bring the internal network up to speed with the latest trends. We’ve deployed new servers, introduced a number of iMac workstations (as well as an OS X Server test bench) and have commenced with what I like to call our ‘hot site project’.
In a nutshell, the hot site project involves transforming one of our empty offices located within our building vault into a mini-datacentre to house an almost identical setup to our external assets located at a privately owned datacentre, hence the name hot site. Suitable datacentre flooring, air conditioning, power, monitoring and security have all been designed to allow us to continue operating if our external assets faced some sort of major failure or disaster.
The first step was the removal of the existing equipment and flooring. A colleague and myself went about removing the flooring and supporting brick work and then planning how the cabling is going to enter the room.
Photos below of the empty and dusty room!
Next step: Installation of new flooring and Amcom fibre! More to come.
This weekend was a good change in weather which presented an opportunity to catch up with Heath for a bit of a cruise and photo shoot. With the recent purchase of my Nikon D700 it was good to get out and take some shots and thanks to Heath I actually learnt a thing or two!
I was introduced to some very windy roads down the back of Heath’s place which provided some hair-raising entertainment. Within 2 minutes of setting off from his place I managed to lose slight traction through a roundabout which frightened the crap out of my passenger but as expected, the Evo showed just how good it is when things start to get scary… it pulled itself out of mischief and rapidly caught up to the speedy GTI in front! The next half hour saw me playing cat behind a little black mouse with ease!
We soon arrived at the Fremantle port area to take some photos before we lost daylight. Heath was busy taking some ‘action’ shots when 2 WA Police paddy wagons pulled into the carpark and parked smack bang in the middle. Intimidation much?
Proudly presenting Centro Perth Short Stay. I completed the site this week after a long delay due to work commitments and the clients are very happy. When time permits an automated booking feature will be implemented along with a real time booking schedule for potential customers to see when the place is available.
After a 27 hour stint working non-stop, I finally finished version 1.0 of the new mobile membership system for work this morning. In a nut shell, it allows our membership team and recruitment group to access details on our members while out on the road, completely optimised for the iPhone.
We had originally considered developing this system in Cocoa as an iPhone application, but found we would have greater success leaving it web based as we are expanding our internal systems over the next 12 months and would be forced to make continual application updates around any changes.
So what’s next? A meeting was held with our new Vodafone business manager this morning and we promptly ordered 15 brand spanking new iPhones! These units will be custom configured and staff will be assigned their ‘own’ handset. Not only does it make the staff more efficient out on the road which directly benefits our members but the staff see it as a definate perk.
The first official Apple store opened in Australia on the 19th June 2008 in George Street, Sydney. Conveniently it was just down the road from the hotel I always stay in when visiting Sydney so I wandered down the other night to check it out.
It’s hard to miss! The front entrance is totally enclosed in glass with a massive Apple logo lit up that I could see from the front of my hotel. Three storeys of Apple goodness. I didn’t have my camera on me but I did have my trusty iPhone! Here are some photos:
Last week I noticed that the local import car dealer had a Mitsubishi Evolution 7 in their yard. It’s French blue in colour with few kilometres on the clock, Recaro ‘blue stitch’ seats and interior, and a very clean, well kept exterior. I was disappointed when I saw images of the new Mitsubishi Evolution X last year. Truth be told I’ve kept a close eye on each release since the incredible Evolution 6. For a 7 year old vehicle it still looks like its just off the showroom floor and with low kilometers I was instantly attracted.
So after working my ass off for the last 12 months I thought it was time for a reward. The paperwork has been signed and sealed!
Check out one of my all time favorite videos from the ever popular Top Gear showing the Evolution 8 taking on a Lamborghini Murcielago around the track.
I recently hit up Sydney to attend CeBIT 2008, the world’s number 1 marketplace for digital solutions, trends and innovations. I spent little time in the exhibition area itself but was fortunate enough to check out the Transaction 2.0 conference and I was impressed by the presentations from Jason Calacanis, CEO of Mahalo.com, Phil Morle and Mick Liubinskas, Co-Founders of Pollenizer and Paul Slakey from Google. Having moved back into development from a technical role in the last 12 months it was a chance to get a refresher on the latest trends and more importantly what to avoid in the market place.
I spent Thursday night bumping shoulders with some impressive people and networking my ass off! Unfortunately I was without camera but the most interesting things were already caught on video! Entrepreneurial Insanity, presented by Jason Calacanis was awesome. Check it out here.
Also worth watching are presentations by Phil and Mike from Pollenizer. Phil’s can be found here and Mike’s can be found here.
Looking forward to next year!
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