Mick Moignard’s Blog

Time for Change

Mick Moignard — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 16:22:06 +0100

No, I'm not leaving the Yellowsphere. But I am leaving Unipart, my employer of 28 years, as they've decided that Lotus Notes consulting isn't core business and are closing that business unit.

I'm setting up on my own - to do Lotus Notes and Domino business rather much as I have been up to now. Starting off working with some loyal customers whose business I appreciate and treasure. I'm hoping to be able to find the time also to go find new customers, learn some new skills, and hopefully have some fun doing so. I'm a reasonably positive sort of person, so none of this is getting me down - to be honest, I'd rather seen it coming anyway. At least, I figured that the thing itself would happen, but not exactly when.

So now I have even more reason to spend as much of Lotusphere 2012 as possible in the bar, er, I mean networking. See you all there.

Someone’s missed a trick here...

Mick Moignard — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 12:09:21 +0100

It's been quite a wait for a Sametime client for iPhone/iPad/iPod devices, and the two come along almost at once. And one of them is rather more useful than the other.

IBM's is at least free, but requires first that you have Sametime 8.5.2 IFR1 installed and also that you have a Sametime Proxy server installed as well. While you can get the app right now in the Apple AppStore, you won't be able to use it for a while.

However, Conundrum have had their QuipIM product in the app store for a few weeks now. It's not free (�2.99), but it works with earlier versions of Sametime, and it does just work. I had to set it to use Port 80 rather that 1533 to get to my corporate site, but it could see im.bleedyellow.com directly via port 80. And it does just appear to work. It can also log in to two separate Sametimes at once. I can't see whether IBM's can do that, but then again, as it can't connect to either site I tried, I don;t actually know whether it can do two simultaneous Sametimes or not.

I've suspect that IBM 's version has all sorts of features and functions that QuipIM doesn't, but when you're faced with a choice of a product that works now and one that doesn't, which will you go for?

Tsunami Clinic: now available as Handouts

Mick Moignard — Tue, 8 Nov 2011 18:14:43 +0100

I was asked at the Slim gauge Circle meeting last Sunday if I could make a version of the Tsunami slides that isn't 51 pages. There's a handouts version of the slides as a PDF on the downloads page.

Mick

Clinics at NMRA Bournemouth - slides posted.

Mick Moignard — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 21:01:01 +0100

Slides from my two clinics at the NMRA BR Convention in Bournemouth are now posted on the downloads page. I hope you find these useful, and for those hardy souls who came to the Sunday one on Tsunamis, where my laptop was playing up, I don't think you - and I - actually missed much, now that I've looked again at the slides.

Do let me know iif there's anything that needs expanding, and if anyone would like me to come and do these clinics at their club, let me know.

Traveler and iOS5: just works. Well nearly.

Mick Moignard — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 16:08:25 +0100

Installed iOS5 on my iPod Touch last night and this morning.

Like many people, I got the stuff downloaded last night, but suffered the 3200 error with Apple's servers being busy and could not complete the install. So I did the actual install this morning, where it worked first time, though only the standard apps worked once it "completed" the setup. Took a complete power-off of the iPod and a restart of Windows and iTunes before iTunes would see the iPod again and put everything back on it.

And Traveler continues its reputation: it just works. Mail is fine. I've not seen any mail issues with any of it in playing with it sporadically during the day,. There's a few changes you'll see quite quickly - such as Mark as Unread on an inbox item is now just Flag - and you have the choice to Flag it or Mark it Unread. Mark Unread syncs back to Notes as it did before, but the new Flag doesn't. I'm also not entirely keen on how conversations display in the inbox if there's more than one unread item in the conversation, or when an unread item isn't the most recent in the list, but I guess that's an Apple gripe rather than a Traveler one. What I'd really like to see is All Documents synced to the device: which the iPod does seem to be able to do with Gmail - showing All Mail.

Contacts seems to work just fine. Not seen any issues here.

However, there is a calendar issue which is quite serious: it seems to be totally lost on repeating meetings that were set up in Notes. One example: I have one that I set up yesterday, that repeats 4 dates, 2nd and 4th Tuesday of the month for 4 meetings. Notes has it as 25/10, 8 and 22/11 and 13/12. The iPod has 25/10, and if you open that entry, it says it's repeating weekly. However, it also only appears on the correct dates. Another example is one that was set up for 17 June repeated every 3 months, which on the iPod appears from 17 June onwards repeating every two weeks: and actually appears on the iPod calendar on those dates. Moral: check back with your Notes calendar via iNotes or the client!

IOS5 has a new reminders app. Not wanting to undermine the efforts of the guys behind NotesF1 - which doesn't yet work on iOS5 - but it would be nice to see this reminders app connected to the Notes to-do list.

Some other Notes-related things I've tried also work: SnappFiles, and the IBM Connections app both work OK, too.

Putting your head above the parapet. You may get shot at.

Mick Moignard — Wed, 10 Aug 2011 10:35:34 +0100

No, this is nothing about the riots over here in the UK. It's about making statements and opinions, and finding that other people may disagree with you.

DominoPower magazine is running a my review of Eric Mack's eProductivity Essentials, which is one of his family of Getting Things Done toolsets. This new version is a free but limited capability version. You install it and it is supposed to work as the full version for 21 days, and then, if you don't purchase a license key, backs down to the limited-function version. The key issue here is that the limited version supports only 25 open actions. The app comes preloaded with a bunch of content that acts as a rather neat tutorial, which you work through, learning the product and creating actions along the way. All well and dandy, except that at the end of the 21 days, if you've not completed - or deleted - those sample actions, you'll run out of slots to create more actions.

The copy I installed didn't do that, and I wrote that it didn't. I didn't see it as a major issue, noted what I did to get out of it (deleted actions and generally cleaned up), and moved on. However it seems that this part of the review has riled Eric a little, and we've had an exchange of emails. Seems that the issue is that because I've previously installed a version of eProductivity, some expiration date or other timebomb is stored somewhere on my computer. This new installation found that, and as a result has gotten itself a bit bent out of shape. It , in that it considered that the free period had already expired. But the Mind Coach, which also is supposed to expire after 21 days, was still working. And it still is. Maybe something has got more bent than it should have done.

I've looked at the license details. Find these on the Action Bar at eProductivity/Installation Tools/Manage License Information. It says:

It's at feature level Professional. I don't recall getting and adding a license key or activation key to upgrade it. I also note that it says that it will expire on 31/08/2011. I installed it on the 05/05/11 - at least, that's the database creation date,and that's way beyond any 21 day limitation. I've just added a load of actions, and the 25-action limit that I saw is now gone.

So what's going on here then?

Now, don't take this all too much to heart. I'm not going to tell you now what my conclusions were, you'll have to read DominoPower again next week. But, regardless of what's being going on here, and I'll happily accept that these functionality entitlement issues may well be down to interactions with previous installations, this is a good product set. If you think you need some personal organisation help, look at this stuff. If you've ever looked at it before, you might want to ask eProductivity how to completely remove any previous installation, so that a new one behaves as you and they think it should.

Micosoft Buys Skype. Why?

Mick Moignard — Tue, 10 May 2011 13:26:04 +0100

Microsoft are to pay $8.5bn for Skype, apparently to use it to perk up their online and mobile strategy, according to a BBC report. How this deal will play with the Nokia/Windows Mobile deal is yet to be seen.

Skype doesn't make a lot of money. Only two years ago, it was valued at a bit over $2bn, so what is it that Microsoft have seen in Skype that nobody else has, that can generate that sort of premium? The BBC post suggests that there's a lot of potential, to deliver a variety of new services to new audiences beyond teleconferencing such as remote education and training, patient care, and so on. They also note that Microsoft will have an uphill task both with explaining to shareholders what they are doing, as well as actually making future product and service value by integration of Skype. eBay failed to make much of Skype while it owned it, so what can Microsoft do with it?

Nokia and Microsoft; Suicide or Desperation?

Mick Moignard — Fri, 11 Feb 2011 16:27:14 +0100

Following Stephen Elop's downbeat assessment yesterday of Nokia's situation, they've now decided to go in with Microsoft to make gear based on Windows Mobile 7,and shed a large number of jobs round the world.

The BBC report says that Nokia will sideline Symbian and go with Mobile 7 across the range. You can see some logic in that argument; supporting two operating systems - three if you include Nokia's not yet shipped MeeGo - would cost more, but I can't imagine the changeover will be cheap - unless of course Microsoft are going to fund it, which I suspect that they will, at least in part.

Nokia may still be big in Europe, but they aren't the force they used to be. These days when I visit business customers here in the UK, or talk to friends, I don't see Nokias as much as I used to, certainly at the smartphone end of the scale - I see Apples, Blackberries and Androids, mostly. Our Lotus Traveler has 5 Nokias listed, against 159 Apples - but does have 33 WM5/6 devices, and 6 Androids. When I spoke with Kevin Cavanaugh at Lotusphere, I asked him why he'd not mentioned WM7 as a device that Lotus would concentrate on, and he said "because I've never seen one'. And figures I've seen suggest that WM in all its versions has way under 10% of the market, possibly under 5% - though our Traveler suggest otherwise.

So, is this a last-ditch attempt by Microsoft to get someone big in the market to do WM7 - and they targeted Nokia, as being one of the weaker players, and run by an ex-Microsoft man, to boot? Is this decision suicide on Nokia's part, desperation on Microsoft's or some combination of both? What will the outcome be?

My speculation is that it won't result in serious sales, and that it will be the beginning of the end of Nokia as a serious player in the mobile phone market. I'd also suggest that it will wound Microsoft, too. Failure with Windows Mobile so far in what hasn't been very big-name gear in the market is one thing, but taking down Nokia would be quite another, should that be the end result.

A few months back when Ray Ozzie announced he was to leave Microsoft, I said "Look at the FTSE 100 or Dow Jones indexes of 30 years ago. How many of the top companies then are top companies now? How many of those companies of 30 years ago still exist? How many of them failed because their market walked away, and they failed to react. Will the indexes of 2020, 2030 still contain Microsoft as a player? ". Will this new announcement make that more or less likely?

Lotusphere 2011 in words.

Mick Moignard — Sun, 6 Feb 2011 16:43:50 +0100

Just completed my writeup for Dominopower and submitted it for the editor's blue pencil. Should see it appear over the next few weeks. Please keep an eye open...

I squirted it thru IBM's Word Cloud to see how the emphasis went: see for yourself:

Let Lotusphere begin

Mick Moignard — Sat, 29 Jan 2011 12:01:54 +0100

Or rather, judging by last night's crowd in the Dolphin lobby bar, it already has. ...

Ray Ozzie Leaves Microsoft. What does that mean for Microsoft now?

Mick Moignard — Tue, 19 Oct 2010 12:17:35 +0100

The BBC is reporting that Ray Ozzie has resigned from Microsoft. Not the first one to go recently, but probably the most important.

Back in 2005 when he "joined" Microsoft wen they purchased his company, I speculated that Ray might only stay at Microsoft for a couple of years. Then in 2006 I wondered whether the purchase of Groove was the only way that they could get Ozzie on board, and whether he really held the future of Microsoft in his hands. Seems that he didn't - indeed, it's hard to see how he's changed Microsoft at all, at least from the perspective of business collaboration. Microsoft seems stuck in the document-oriented paradigm of Word, which I've discussed before, rather than the content and context-based collaborative powers of Notes, of course, Connections, and all the other public collaborative offerings - Facebook, Flickr, LinkedIn and so on.

The BBC report gives little away about why Ray is leaving, but my guess is that he's had enough of not being able to get things done, and not being able to change Microsoft's view of the world. Indeed, you have to start wondering if this is part of the beginning of the end of Microsoft itself. They don't have their original visionary any more - Bill Gates, their next visionary has just left, they're struggling badly in the mobile/smartphone market - even tho they were an early player. They apparently only really make money from Office and Windows, both of which now have serious competitors - and I'd say both are also risking complete eclipse, as the marketplace moves on.

Look at the FTSE 100 or Dow Jones indexes of 30 years ago. How many of the top companies then are top companies now? How many of those companies of 30 years ago still exist? How many of them failed because their market walked away, and they failed to react. Will the indexes of 2020, 2030 still contain Microsoft as a player?

Lotus Traveler on iPod/iPhone Folder Limit?

Mick Moignard — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 09:42:48 +0100

I've just had a query about folder support through Lotus Traveler to iPhones:

Is there a limit to the number of folders that traveler / iphone can support. ?

The reason for the question is that I have 2 people with a large number of folders, and the sync stops working correctly, emails that show on the laptop client do not show on the mobile device, other users with fewer folders work fine.

I've found a number limits and quirks in this area, but no positive answer about the number of folders supported.

Things I have found that may be relevant include

- contents of folders ages on the device along with the inbox as per with the settings for how many days to sync
- folder contents don't appear to push back to Traveler unless you nominate them on the device
- the show recent messages appears to affect folders
- delete on the device is a hard-delete in Notes
- while Notes supports having a document in multiple folders, the device doesn't, so the item will show up there in the last folder it was placed into in Notes.

And I'm sure there are more "features" around, too.

Domino Admin Client 8.5.2 Expands my hard disk.

Mick Moignard — Wed, 1 Sep 2010 20:07:54 +0100

I thought I had a 60Gb disk in my laptop. Domino Admin client 8.5.2 finds otherwise!

If I set the display to All Files and All displayed, it gets even bigger:

Nice. If only it were true!

How to quieten a Sugiyama Goose mechanism.

Mick Moignard — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 19:19:49 +0100

Many HOn3 modellers of you will have experience of Sugiyama/Flying Zoo Goose mechanisms, and noted in particular the noise that they generate, all of which comes from the straight-cut spur gears of the primary drive

I fixed one of these a while back, in a quite drastic manner, by replacing the whole mechanism in a #2 Goose with a Con-Cor one. Here's an easier one, that doesn't require a new mechanism, costs USD5 in parts (GBP 2.50, EUR3.20) and should take less than an hour to implement.

It's a belt drive from Nigel Lawton - see his sub-miniature drive components page. You need a 3mm and a 5mm pulley, and the 10mm belts. I aimed at a shaft separation of around 9.5mm, which Nigel's calculator suggested might not work very well, but in fact it works fine for me.

I'd already added a Mashima motor to my mechanism, but this should work OK with the original slot-car motor too.

Here's what you have to do
1. Remove the existing spur gears. Mine were held on with grub screws.
2. If you want to replace the motor, now is the time to do it. My Mashima can be seen in the photos, but almost anything that will go between the two end pieces and can be mounted with screws into the end will do - so long as it has a 1.5mm shaft. I'd suggest that if you have to drill the end-plates - mine were already drilled and slotted but I've seen ones that are not - you drill the holes around 10mm above the secondary drive shaft, and slot them up and down about 0.5mm. The end-plates on mine were slotted with the slots centered 8mm above the secondary shaft, so I filed them upwards a bit to get a shaft separation of a little over 9mm.
3. Carefully press the 3mm pulley on to the motor. Don't go all the way down to the bearing, leave it a couple of mm clear, so that it can be above the lower pulley. The pulley comes with a 1.5mm hole, and mine was a snug fit after I'd deburred the hole. If yours ends up a little loose, fix it with a small drop of superglue. If it's very loose, try again with a new pulley. Reinstall the motor.
4. Carefully bore or ream the 5mm pulley out to a 2mm hole. I used a blunt (= undersized) 2mm drill with the pulley held side-to-side in a vice (not across the grooves!). Just be careful while you do this. I then reamed it out with a 5-side broach until it just went on to the secondary drive shaft. If you have a pillar drill and some means on clamping the pulley, then use it. Once opened out, press it onto the secondary shaft until the pulley is directly below the motor pulley - that's why you reinstalled the motor. Again, if a little loose, fix with a small drop of superglue. Make sure the pulleys are lined up vertically.
5. Add the belt. Lubricate the motor and secondary shaft, sparingly, but don't let oil on to the belt.
6. Test. Be amazed at the quietness.
If the belt pops off, check that the two pulleys are aligned. If it's too loose, move the motor upwards a little. That's why the motor mount holes need to be slotted.

Also note that the mechanism will operate backwards to the way it did before, because the gears that you removed reversed the mechanism direction, and the belt doesn't. So swap over the motor wires, or, if you use DCC, adjust CV29 (I swapped the motor wires).

Enjoy! Now you can fit sound, too!

Here's a couple of pics of the converted mechanism.

Running Lotus Notes on an iPod Touch.

Mick Moignard — Tue, 25 May 2010 15:43:12 +0100

I've just been running Lotus Notes on a iPod Touch, or rather, using Lotus Notes on an iPod Touch.

There's a free Citrix Receiver client app on the AppStore - search for Citrix. I installed Citrix Receiver 2.2.1 - and note that there appears to be two versions, on for the iPhone/iTouch, and one for the iPad which may be the same thing, may be different. The config for connections to Citrix servers is simple: five things to enter. Connect up, sign on, and start the Notes client.

It worked well, with the performance that you'd expect with Notes running on Citrix - I was using Notes 8.5.1. The Citrix App has gestures for zooming, panning and scrolling, so wandering around the screen is pretty easy, zooming and panning as relevant. Entering data is more of a challenge; what takes a little more effort and care is to hit the screen accurately. I found I could take several attempts to get the cursor into a field, or to click a control such as a button, field helper, OK button on a dialog, and not then accidentally fill fields up with carriage returns. I found myself zooming in and out a lot, to be sure that I was hitting what I wanted to hit, but then be able to see enough of the Notes screen to be able to do what I wanted. So actually entering data was a bit of a chore - not something you'd want to do a lot of. It does portrait to landscape switches well, and that also helped.

Given that the Notes app I played with was one that's a data entry app, with pulldowns, validations and so on, which meant that I was moving around the screen a lot to deal with dialog/picklist windows, I'd say that the usability was reasonable - say 3 out of 5. With a Notes application that's more sensitive to the screen size, and one that is more oriented to reading than data entry, I'd say that it's perfectly usable.

How strange is this?

Mick Moignard — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 10:42:02 -0400

In an application I'm working on now, from a given document - a Claim, I need to look up a value on a connected document, a Partner. In this application there is a function to do just that, fetch a Partner document based on a value in Claim; The code snippet looks like this:

'is the partner tax exempt?
Dim ClientInsurer As NotesDocument
Set ClientInsurer = GetPartnerDoc(claim.ID_ClientInsurer(0))
If ClientInsurer Is Nothing then

And when this is run, ClientInsurer is invariably Nothing.

GetPartnerDoc looks like this:

Function GetPartnerDoc(IPCode As String) As NotesDocument
Dim pDB As NotesDatabase, insurers As NotesView
Set pDB=GetPartnersDB
Set Insurers=pDB.GetView("LookUpIPCode")
Set GetPartnerDoc=Insurers.GetDocumentByKey(IPCode,True)
End Function

When I look at this with the debugger, I can see that the last line of getPartnerDoc populates getPartnerDoc with a NotesDocument data type, and it is indeed the partner document that I want - getPartnerDoc seems to work OK. Yet that value, that I can see ready to go when it's executed the last line of GetPartnerDoc doesn't get back in to ClientInsurer in the invoking code. How strange is that?

I've bypassed it by replacing the call to GetPartnerDoc with a direct lookup to the same view, and that works just fine.

Btw: this is with Designer 8.5.1 FP1, Notes 851FP1 client and a Donino 851FP1 server. However when the code runs on a 7.0.something server, it also generates the same erroneous result.

The Date of the UK General Election?

Mick Moignard — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 07:22:12 +0100

All the indicators discussed so far point to May 6. Here's another one: local school around here that are used as polling stations are now being booked out for that date.

Uploading session slides to Ben Langhinrich’s Lotusphere Sessions database

Mick Moignard — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 15:04:23 +0100

Each year when I get back from the 'Sphere I've downloaded the slide decks from LSOnline and then uploaded them to Ben Langhinrich's venerable sessions database. Then you have the slides in context of the session abstract, speakers, etc, which makes them actually useful.

It occurred to me that you might like to do this too, or even that Ben might care to add the functionality himself. Here's how to do it:

1. Download the slides (and other materials).
For this year, if you've not done it already, you're a bit late to do it now. However, if you have downloaded some or all of them, or found them at the speakers blogs, you can still do this. Make sure that all filenames start with the session number (such as AD122.pdf, or AD112Files.zip).
Put all the files in the same directory on your harddrive/thumbdrive/whereever.

2. Open the database in Designer, and go to the Forms.
You'll find two copies of the form aliased JournalEntry, one Notes client, one web. Edit these, and find the field called Resources. Go to the HideWhen for this field, and remove the checks on Hide Paragraph from NotesR4.6 or later and also from Web Browsers.

3. Create a new Actions Menu/Run Once agent.
I called mine Load Session Slides, you can call yours anything you like. The code is in an attachment on my downloads page.
Change the marked literal for the location of your downloaded material.
Save the agent

4. Run it.
Once it's run, you'll see that the database views (try the SessionID view) will show an arrow next to the speaker name. That indicates that there are attached resouces for that session.

If they aren't there, check the document properties. Is there anything in field Resources? Is the field HasResourceLink got the value "Yes"?
Run the agent with the debugger. See anything I've missed?

As ever, it works for me. YMMV, and of course it's always possible that in next year's session database, Ben has changed something that prevents the agent from working.

UK Post Office still failing.

Mick Moignard — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 11:41:19 +0100

So far today, the package hasn't arrived: we watched the postman drive away without delivering anything a bit after 9:00, so clearly the complaints department aren't linked to the Aylesbury delivery office very well.

Called them again, and they really didn't seem to have any idea what was going on. Said that they'd get on to the delivery office in Aylesbury. So far, no package.

Update: the called me mid-morning yesterday to say that it would be delivered between 3 and 3:30. It arrived at 3:15. Contrary to the card, I didn't have to sign for it. Come on guys, you really need to be able to do better than this.

UK Post Office still losing its way

Mick Moignard — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 16:41:03 +0100

Just like last time, the UK Post Office excels at customer service. Another package from the US, with customs duty to pay, so they leave a card in the door Saturday. No item number on it, by the way, but directions to a web site (www.royalmail.com/fee2pay) to pay the charge.

This website is pretty casual; it allows you to pay for the item without quoting a reference number for it - which I didn't have. You fill in all the details based on your postcode, and what the card says you have to pay - nothing, apart from the card, to correlate item to payment. The card also tells you that you can use this website to request re-delivery as you pay the charge. Well, you can't, directly. You have to go back to the homepage and start all over again, identifying yourself, postcode, and so on with information from the card, again.

Anyway, I specifically requested that the package be delivered on Tuesday, because someone would be at home. Not Monday, Tuesday. Yes, they tried today, Monday. Another card through the door - this time, with a package number, sorry you were out, that sort of thing. However, the package number didn't work - their website requires 13 characters, but the number on the card was only 12. And even then, the website required me to complete checkboxes from those marked on the card, but would not actually accept those that were checked on the card! How much of a FAIL is that?

This time when I rang the number on the card (0845 6112980), one of the choices was complaints. I went for that, and it was answered on the first ring. So I explained the issue, and he said he'd sort it,and arrange delivery tomorrow. I can't check that, of course, because I don't have a tracking number that works. I also reminded him of the last time this went wrong - and to my surprise, he seemed to be aware of it!

It might be funny, but for the fact that it isn't. Someone needs to bang some heads together, fast, before the whole thing implodes completely - as it certainly appears to be doing.