People : Co-Workers We Remember

Today everyone has some form of social media, at least in this business, LinkedIn, Facebook, twitter or this blog!  They're all examples of being able to keep in contact with people out there, either bi-directionally in the case of LinkedIn & Facebook, or uni-directional in the case of Twitter and this blog.

I like the latter, I like people to be able to find me; if they know me, or just discover me.  I recently had a message from a chap involved in my first Rack Mount Mistakes posts.  His name is Stuart, and he was a very nice chap, he helped with the clean up and was my second when we had to confront and appoint the blame for the debacle on the chap responsible.

He contacted me to say "hey, I remember this"... Which is exactly what this blog is about, but I had to tell him I didn't clearly remember him...

After a little discussion we came to a conclusion, he found me to be a pain in the bum, fun and good at my job, but I was young, much younger than him, but in charge; which he didn't like.  I was early twenties, he was early thirties.  Now he's entered his fifties he looks back on those days with fondness and even said "I thought back then I had the nous to do your job, that you were pushy, but I know now I could never had been like that with people, never told them what to do and get those jobs done when I was that age".

Two things struck me about this, firstly that he was complimentary, but also I realised why I didn't remember him clearly.  He was one of those rank and file kind of guys he did his job, he fitted in, and he got the task done.

Because he never rose above the surface level he was never a nail head needing me to drop on him like a hammer...

To my fault this made me place him in my "of least concern" perimeter, so as time has gone on I've forgotten that he was diligent, forgotten that he was a good developer, forgotten even his surname.  This is good and bad.

However, taking this tail of thinking further, I realised I remembered lots of the bad ones... The bad egg, the nail which poked up and needed hammering into place, the ones who didn't get on with their jobs, the ones who disappeared from their desks for hours on end, or who missed deadlines, even some whom even today I chase around bad code they've left in their wake.

I don't contact either group of ex-co-workers, very few of them can directly contact me, perhaps this is good for the bad ones, but it's certainly not ideal for all those good ones I've met and worked with over the years....

Andy S

Max B

Paul D

Leon B

Dave P

Ravi S

Steve W

Tony

Andy K

Richard (Dad!)

And the valiant few I still work with and like to work with where I sit today, I salute you all.... Anyone not on the list... I either forgot about you or I don't like you; you decide which!

People: I am Xelous (Someone else has an Identity Crisis)

I bring this to the public attention of these pages as I had what could only be described as an ill conceived lecture last night about my name, now let us be clear we all know "Xelous" is not my actual name, it is however a name I have use and evolved online since 1996.

If you google "xelous" you will find me.. I admit also a young lady on Picorama... but you find me....

If you google my actual name you will find the Gillingham Goal Keeper, and a well known film franchise, you will not find me.

You will like-wise NOT find me vaunting myself on LinkedIn, again I have been challenged about this.  My first reason for not really embracing Social Media in this manner is that I get a lot of spam, an awful lot of spam, the second is that it's simply not mature enough for me yet, Facebook is too much a dictatorship and not professional and LnkedIn is not mature and insecure.

I noted how that LinkedIn hack disappeared from the radar pretty quickly in the Summer... I however remembered it.

I've had the comment that "Xelous" is a silly name, it's a name... It is actually a name, I thank "Nacel Xelous Elal Ybab" of the Philippines for letting me make this point.

I have worked professionally in the Entertainment Software industry under the pseudonym "Lord Xelous" as well, and it is the name on my YouTube channel.

So to that nay-sayer, you were wrong, and sounded silly.  Indeed I looked you up online, with your buttoned down collar supposedly "correct" name, you were WWAAAAY down the google search listings and even came second on the LinkedIn listing and your surname is quite unique in of itself!  FAIL!

Google Goofs with Plus

I'm an avid YouTube watcher, I enjoy many topics, but the number of the subscriptions I have whom are mentioning the Google+ comments bullshit on YouTube... We have...

Jingles... "It sucks doesn't it"

Boogie (aka Francis)... "I tried to put up with this new Google+ bullshit"

Dave (aka EEVBlog)... "Hello McFly... Hello... I'm approving... It's retarded... It just doesn't work"

This debacle is just on going... I personally hate the system, they've removed functionality I enjoy, such as the addition of a time into the comment so you can link what you're saying to a specific moment, then it used to allow me to reply to a comment, right now I don't know how to address a comment to a specific recipient.

And then the "Real name" thing.. I've seen Hitler posting... And the big JC... Santa and fucking Gandalf... Like he's not busy enough... it's like What the fuck!?!!?

This is Google's biggest visible change ever, and its abigger flop than anything that they've had flop before.  I hate google+, I only use my google account for gmail and this blog, it happens they own YouTube so that's linked in there too, but I don't specifically use Google+... I like blogspot, and I like YouTube, and I used those services on their own merit.  The fact they're piggy backing Google+ on those more used, more popular interfaces says a lot, if Google+ was as all invasive and defined the social space then fine, but it doesn't, so to make it impact on YouTube is a pain in the back side, stupid.

And as that mad Aussie bloke says better... "this is just Evil".


Addendum, after writing this yesterday, Boogie has been back on camera, lets see him in action:

Another Addendum, I've made one reply to one message in the new system... Look what appears in my inbox linked to my YouTube account... This is new, it never did this shit before...

That's just an hour in my small inbox, on a small comment on one video, I usually post all over... And I went into my Video Manager area to look for my YouTube inbox... No, my YouTube inbox is gone, its sending messages out to my own personal e-mail... just swamping me in mails, I can't imagine how terrible this would be for a content maker.

And then I've spotted more issues with the new system itself... Like if someone has relied to a comment, you used to be able to click "Show Comment", so the new message could be linked back in a tree to the comment it was about, this is called a discussion, and its how we as humans converse...  Now however, you only get the name of the person you're replying to, and you click it and the site takes you to their profile page... Not to the comment... So the context which 90% of comments sit in has been lost, totally lost.

I'm beginning to really hate the new system, and I'm happy to see big contributors, like boogie standing up to this shit.

EVE Expansion, Social Clicking and more DDO

It might actually be time for a me to return to Eve-Online, with ever more news being released about the next Expansion due out in May, May the 18th to be precise, my appetite has been whetted.

EVE Online | Tyrannis

Unfortunately, I sense some foreboding about the new features. Planetary Interaction, or PI as it's being called, looks awesome and it very well might be, however, I have a feeling it'll be the exclusive domain of 0.0 alliances, and out of the reach of anti-social high-sec miner spunk monkeys, like me.

I did however like the look of the new Scorpion. Having flown a Scorp in fleet engagements, I know how quickly they get made primary [everyones hates ECM], but I also know how ugly they are/were. So, I have a semi-stoked game boner for that little gem...

I have tonight however been doing three things... the first was play some "Social City" on Facebook and when I use the word play I do so in the loosest sense of the word, you know like you'd play with peeling paint... or... you'd be made to play with the kid from class who got the Chicken Pox first.

Here we see the burgeoning "Xel City" at level 3... a lot of clicks later... and you end up with this...

Erm..... Thrilling....

The next thing I did however, was more interesting, I played some more DDO. I made myself another Rank of level 1, and played a little more of the initial story line. This time stopping occultist baddy people hitting a crystal. For my efforts I got a nice pair of new bracers.


I have to say that I am over my initial downer about DDO, I'm coming to grip with the interface, after three good play sessions of about 2 hours each it is comming more naturally, however, I still have this nagging feeling that really it shouldn't have been up to me to change my needs from the game. It does seem to lack some basic information, access to quite what to do doesn't come easily. And I'd have to say some of that problem comes from information overload. There are a lot of NPC's, a lot of interactions to get used to and the tooltips lag terribly [even on an overclocked Quad Core CPU on 8GB of RAM with dual 8800 Graphics cards in SLi Mode????].

I did however come across some rather lush graphics, the lighting in DDO is done very well... the shadow stenciling however, is not... more about that in an up coming post.

The other thing I did was re-watch the Top Gear USA Special, there's something so heart warming watching a BBC crew being run out of "a hick town" in a hail of stones.