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Wayne Horkan's weblog - eclectic

Wayne Horkan's weblog - eclectic
Wayne Horkan's weblog - Chief Technologist for the UK and Ireland at Sun Microsystems. A 'blog about the IT Industry, Technology, Enterprise Architecture, Business Information and other stuff too...

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Congratulations to Peter Ryan newly appointed EVP for Sun's Global Sales an
2008-06-03 00:58:00
Congratulations to Peter Ryan , newly promoted EVP for Sun's Global Sales and Services organisation (GSS). Peter has recently led the combined AMER Sales organisation (AMER stands for 'Americas') over the last year and a half, and prior to that he very successfully led the EMEA Sales organisation as EVP for the region. Having worked with Peter during his tenure as EMEA EVP I'm sure he'll be looking at fresh ways to engage with our customers, as he is immensely customer focused, with a real thirst for his role. Peter's remit will also be covering a newly created Sun Business Unit, that of 'Emerging Markets', predominately made up the fast growing 'BRICA' countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China and Africa). Good luck in the new role Peter, I'm sure you're more than up to it ! Of course all the very best of luck to Don Grantham, who is moving on to new opportunities.
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My haiku
2008-05-27 16:25:00
My haiku Washed up Love you Back soon Sent via text from the 6.10 am train to London whilst rushing off to work last week, I thought it was kind of cute, can't say Donna agreed though... not particularly sure it counts as a haiku either, c'est la vie...
More About: Haiku

Dr. James Martin's 'Target Earth', the 2008 Turing Lecture
2008-05-27 13:19:00
I promised a couple of months ago to do a review of the 2008 Turing Lecture, but I've changed my mind, and here's why... Basically I enjoyed it so much I think you should see it yourself, here's the link from the IET.tv site, so go to it. 2008 with James Martin Target Earth : The IET/BCS Turing Lecture James Martin Speaker: James Martin, Savoy Place, London, UK 2008-02-19 12:00:00.0 IT Channel >> go to webcast The Lecture was done by Dr. James Martin, the "RAD father"[1], or at least the father of RAD (Rapid Application Development). Dr. Martin reminds me of another hero of mine, E. Gary Gygax (who sadly passed away recently), the father of the RPG, without whom we wouldn't have MMORPGs as we know them today. Of course without James Martin, and his work developing RAD, it's likely we wouldn't have it's progeny, like RUP, DSDM, XP, SCRUM, or any of the other myriad of agile, re-iterative and rapid approaches to development (certainly not in ...

Congratulations to Shez Rawsthorne-Houghton newly appointed CTO for Sun's G
2008-05-27 09:53:00
The title of the post says it all: here's all the very best to Shez Rawsthorne-Houghton who's recently been appointed CTO for Sun's Global Services Practice. Shez is based out of the UK, having spent a number of years working in the UK organisation prior to moving into corporate, and is a fellow blogger. Here's hoping that she will still have time to write blog posts, especially about her most frequent subjects: ITIL, Service Management and Farming. Congratulations Shez!

New Glasses
2008-05-15 02:03:00
Finally my new glasses have arrived. I say finally, but that really not fair, they only took a week. I've been having more headaches lately, and increasingly painful ones, and it was pretty obvious that it was my eye sight letting me down. It's been at least fifteen years since my last pair, and they had held out for a fair while, but I could tell my sight had been degrading. Worse than I thought though, I've been told I need these for anything that takes concentration, including watching the TV and driving. Just getting used to them, it's nice not to be so close to the screen again to be able to see what's on it.
More About: Glasses

Oh no, not another redesign...
2008-05-15 01:51:00
A number of reasons drove me to redesign the site, in part due to frustration with the existing one and inspiration to try something different. My main frustrations were due to the fact I was posting a wide range of material whose messages I felt were getting mixed up. One of the criticism's people had of my blog was that it jumped around between high (detailed overviews of UK Gov. G2G sysetms) and low brow (walking the dog) too quickly. It had been my original intent to go with this, and that's why the blog was originally called 'eclectic', but I've found it's a little too jarring for people to handle, and I suspect was turning them off. By getting them to choose between different categories I'm hoping that they'll pick up on that 'channel' and become familiar with it before trying the others. I think of this issue as one of signal to noise, however I suppose different readers signal is another's readers noise. Most people who have been through this learning curv...
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Presenting at the Open Groups "Enterprise Architecture Practitioners Confer
2008-04-22 12:35:00
I'll be presenting tomorrow at the "Enterprise Architecture Practitioners Conference 2008". As usual this Enterprise Architecture (EA) Practitioners Conference is being hosted by the Open Group, the custodians of the extremely popular TOGAF EA Framework (it stand for "The Open Group Architecture Framework"). TOGAF is currently used by 80% of the Forbes Global Top 50 companies, and has emerged as a leading framework amongst Enterprise Architects for developing information systems architectures. The strap line of the conference is "Successful Enterprise Architecture" and through the use of working application case studies and peer-group discussion, the event will demonstrate how the framework used is central to the development of an effective Enterprise Architecture. I'll be presenting "Case Studies of Enterprise Architecture": exploring a number of major customer engagements, including an Enterprise Architecture team which led its company into a 70+ million pound 'pitfall',...
More About: Tech , Groups

Free XML-RPC blog ping site submitter: "Blog Ping"
2008-04-22 11:15:00
Here's a free, as in beer, Blog Directory and Search Engine Site Submitter I wrote which works by sending out an XML-RPC Blog Ping . "In blogging, ping is an XML-RPC-based push mechanism by which a weblog notifies a server that its content has been updated. An XML-RPC signal is sent to one or more "ping servers," which can then generate a list of blogs that have new material. Many blog authoring tools automatically ping one or more servers each time the blogger creates a new post or updates an old one." - according to the Wikipedia article: 'Ping (blogging)'. One of the things I have noticed most across the blogosphere and the wider 'net during my time blogging, and it's been just less than a year, is the obsession people have with "SEO", or 'Search Engine Optimization'. There are a huge number of blogs dedicated to the subject and who simply go on about the whole SEO thing alone. Frankly I feel that if I'm going to be putting effort into blogging then I might as well m...
More About: Free

WebMission08: Twenty UK web2.0 Startups "face-to-face" networking across Si
2008-04-20 22:24:00
Just been listening to BlogTalk Radio, who've kindly been hosting a number of slots for us on our Sun Startup Essentials programme in conjunction with WebMission08. Web Mission 2008 sees twenty UK web2.0 startups traveling to San Francisco and exploring new opportunities for growth with key people across Silicon Valley. Sun are a key Technology partner for the event and it is being covered by Sun's local expert on Startups (based in the UK and beyond), Stewart Townsend. More on the UK Startups page, hosted by Stewart, here: http://blogs.sun.com/startups/entry/20_uk _startups_and_one
More About: Networking , Twenty , Face

Internationalizing a Roller Weblogger based Blog
2008-04-06 03:55:00
So I've been spending time lately providing better international support to the blog. In fact check out the variants I've put together: Chinese ??Horkan???? ?? http://blogs.sun.com/eclectic/zh/ Dutch Wayne Horkan's blog: eclectisch http://blogs.sun.com/eclectic/nl/ French Blog de Wayne Horkan : éclectique http://blogs.sun.com/eclectic/fr/ German Blog Wayne-Horkans: eklektisch http://blogs.sun.com/eclectic/de/ Italian Blog del Wayne Horkan: eclettico http://blogs.sun.com/eclectic/it/ Japanese ????Horkan????: ??? http://blogs.sun.com/eclectic/ja/ Korean Wayne Horkan ???: ???? http://blogs.sun.com/eclectic/ko/ Polish Wayne Horkan's blog: eklektyk http://blogs.sun.com/eclectic/pl/ Portuguese Blogue de Wayne Horkan: ecléctico http://blogs.sun.com/eclectic/pt/ Russian ???? Wayne Horkan: ?????????? http://blogs.sun.com/eclectic/ru/ Spanish Blog de Wayne Horkan: ecléctico http://blogs.sun.com/eclectic/es/ &...
More About: Blogg , Roller

Scott McNealy BCS Distinguished Fellow
2008-04-05 02:13:00
Last night I was at a BCS ELITE networking event, very kindly organised by Yva Thakurdas, with help from Mandy Bauer, and co-hosted by the indomitable Roger Ellis (in the Chairman, David Tidey's absence). BCS ELITE are one of the BCS's Specialty Groups, a forum for IT Directors and CxOs. Obviously the event was a good one, I had an enjoyable time, and in the words of Mr. Rodríguez: "Make new friends and keep the old. One is silver and the other's gold." It reminded me that I hadn't posted the photo that Yva had sent me from the BCS ELITE Winter Gala, where Scott McNealy was presented with his Distinguished Fellowship of the BCS at the stunningly magnificent Goldsmiths Hall (on his Birthday I might add). So here it is: From left to right are: Rebecca Smith, Simon Culmer, Scott McNealy, Kim Jones, and Enzo Tolino. Many thanks for the photo Yva, and again for setting up the event last night.

Welcome to the 'blogosphere Peter...
2008-03-20 22:06:00
A big welcome to the blogosphere to Peter Hoots, Enterprise Architect extraordinaire at Sun, who starts his Sun blog, as I'm sure he means to go on, with a post about EA Framework 'Completeness'. Peter's blog can be found over at http://blogs.sun.com/PeteHoots/ Good on you Peter, here's looking forward to more of your EA focused posts and wisdom already. N.B. Those of you with a keen eye will recall I've used this blog title before.
More About: Blogosphere

The Ken vs. Boris Show
2008-03-19 03:25:00
So the 'battle' for Major of London is being called 'the Ken vs. Boris show'. Strange to think that in the majority of the search results I've generated whilst researching the subject most of them came up with 'Ken vs. Boris', rather than the other way around, almost as though Boris Johnson is in the stronger position of the two, both in and out of the sentence. That Ken Livingstone has a battle on his hands this time round is without a doubt. I spend the majority of my working life in the City, and frankly I haven't heard a good word said about him in almost ten years, when I was still at Harrods, building Harrods Online (yes, I know, pretty isn't it, although it's been almost eight years since I spent three 'heady' years there, and I expect it's probably been re-engineered since then, although you never know, as software I engineered is still in commission after over fifteen years). Of course the battle for the position of the Mayor of London should not be confused...
More About: Show

Goodbye Arthur C. Clarke
2008-03-19 00:59:00
Farewell to another hero of mine with the demise of Arthur C. Clarke earlier today. I have fond memories of Arthur, mainly from the ITV series 'Arthur C. Clarke's Mysterious World', and of course from the parody done by the Goodies in the episode 'Big Foot'. Arthur's work was prescient, and he well understood the symbiotic relationship between Science Fiction, and that of Science, Technology, and Innovation: I'm sure we would not have had men on the Moon if it had not been for Wells and Verne and the people who write about this and made people think about it. I'm rather proud of the fact that I know several astronauts who became astronauts through reading my books. As a 'retired' table top RPGer my favourite quote of his, which I heard, I think from Paul Cooke, was: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Whilst this following quote amusingly goes very much against Okham's Razor (which itself is a principal I like, and use, a great dea...
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Happy Saint Patrick's Day!
2008-03-17 19:42:00
Beannachtaí na Féile Pádraig! ??????????! De gelukkige Dag van Heilige Patrick! Le jour heureux de Patrick de saint ! Glücklicher Heiligen Patricks Tag! Giorno felice del Patrick santo! ????????????! ?? ???? ??? ?! Szcz??liwy ?wi?tobliwy Patrick Dzie?! Dia feliz de Patrick de Saint ! ?????????? ???? ?????? Saint! ¡Día feliz de San Patricio! Lyckliga Sanktt Patricks dag! ???? ???? ?????? ?? ?????! Happy Saint Patrick ???????????! Beannachtaí na Féile Pádraig! --> Beannachtaí na Féile Pádraig! -->

china test
2008-03-13 01:00:00
china test
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FasterTrading 2008 and the fragmentation of the UK and European Trade Marke
2008-03-11 18:49:00
After a busy day at work in our City Office last Tuesday (the 4th) I was able to get along to Intel's FasterTrading 2008 event, hosted by an ex-Sun guy, Nigel Woodward, over at the HQ of the IET at the magnificent Savoy Place. I really enjoyed the event, finding it one of the best vendor run, market facing, events I've yet gone to. Nigel and the Intel team had secured some top-notch speakers who really knew their stuff, and it was a pleasure to listen to them. I've broken down what I captured against each speaker and their pitches below (as a reference here's more about the speakers and there individual pitches too) and I've used this post as an opportunity to discuss and write-up an overview of the current status of the European and UK Finance and Market Trading industry, as well as the topic of the event itself, which was the current technology 'Arms Race' around increasing Trade speeds and the impact of increased Trade speeds on trading itself. The post is divided into ...

Goodbye Gary Gygax
2008-03-09 02:54:00
So farewell to E. Gary Gygax the father of the modern table-top role playing game and genre who passed away on Tuesday (the 4th). Probably most fondly remembered as the man behind 'Dungeons & Dragons', 'Advanced Dungeons & Dragons' and 'TSR Inc.' (now incorporated into 'Wizards of the Coast'). This obituary for Gary from the Times Online summarises his life and work better than I could, so I'll focus on my thoughts and memories as a Role-Playing gamer. Probably no surprise that I spent a significant amount of time playing (and thinking) about role-playing games, mainly during my school years and just after, and that most of my school pals were members of the school RPG club, kindly hosted by Mr. Watkins, our Geography teacher. I 'got into' RPG-ing almost as soon as I arrived at senior school (at eleven), in part because of the recently opened 'Games Workshop' store. It had appeared, almost magically, like Mr. Benn's mysterious shop keeper, in the Bull Ring. It w...
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Ouch !
2008-03-01 01:27:00
So I went and asked one of my friends at work what they thought of my blog, and after sending the following reply they asked me if I'd be posting it (albeit anonymously the little scamp !). So here it is... As promised over lunch, some honest feedback on your Blog. I only took a quick look at it, but here are my thoughts. If this looks like I am letting off steam about blogs in general, then you are right. Good Points It's better the Xxxx's, mostly because... There is some content that might be interesting to someone (not really to me, but that's not your fault). Bad points A lot of content of a lot of blogs, yours and Xxxx's included, is about blogs. I think it is a little odd that so much content in blogs is about blogging as it implies that the only people interested in blogs are people that have blogs themselves (which is mainly true, I think) , and probably adds to the perception among members of the blogosphere that they make up a significant and important pr...
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Fine. Fine ! Fine ?
2008-02-28 12:32:00
Well apparently these sort of things come along in three's... Fine . First off Network Rail has been fined £14 Million in a record settlement. BBC article "Record £14m fine for rail company":http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/72 67658.stm Now whilst I'm sure you'll agree £14 Million is a lot of money, it's nothing like this one... Fine! European Union fines Microsoft $1.4 Billion. BBC article "EU fines Microsoft record $1.4bn":http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/busine ss/7266629.stm The Inquirer.net article "Eurocrats hit Microsoft for $1.3 billion": http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/ne ws/2008/02/27/european-commission-fines Now that's a fine... a little discrepancy about the figures from the news vendors but what's $0.1 Billion amongst friends. Fine? And last, but never least, Yahoo, who are being sued by seven of there own shareholders about the way the recent Microsoft bid was managed. BBC article "Yahoo sued over handling of bid":http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business. ..

Case Studies of Enterprise Architecture - Event Update
2008-02-28 05:53:00
Just a short post re: the "Case Studies of Enterprise Architecture " event I presented at last week for the Birmingham Branch of the BCS. Pleased to say that the event went very well, with a very good turn out, and I was told that it was almost twice the size of the average group meeting and the largest for the preceding year. Sadly I only presented a few slides, although I spoke for almost two hours, and I won't be posting them in the short term for two reasons, first, there were only a few slides with no electronically captured notes, and second, I have a couple more presentations and talks to give on the topic, and this material will be the basis for them (more details below). Basically the areas I covered, without giving too much away, were: What is Enterprise Architecture ? Public Definitions of Enterprise Architecture (EA) My Definition of EA (as a practitioner) An overview of the major EA frameworks A comparative analysis of the major EA Framework variants, with parti...
More About: Event , Update

Get ready for JavaOne 2008 !
2008-02-28 03:36:00
Get ready for JavaOne 2008 , the leading annual Java event, this year held at the Moscone Center, San Francisco, between May the 6th and the 9th. The conference main page and registration site is at: http://java.sun.com/javaone/sf/index.jsp And the conference "Content Catalogue" has just online, where you can view sessions, check out the labs and demo's, and prepare to meet like minded folk at the birds-of-a-feather meetings, over at: https://www28.cplan.com/cc191/sessions_ca talog.jsp
More About: Ready , Get Ready

The U.S. Air Force and China, who next ?
2008-02-28 03:13:00
So the U.S. Air Force and the People's Republic of China have something in common - they both ban blogs - according to a recent Wired article titled "Air Force Blocks Access to Many Blogs". Given the length of time, and amount of money, that the Chinese administration has limited access to blogs with the Great Firewall of China perhaps the U.S. Air Force should ask them for some help. Hilariously (sic) the article goes on to say this: At least one senior Air Force official calls the squeeze so "utterly stupid, it makes me want to scream." It's not hard to see that this is an almost impossible task, it's an Internet technology security arms race between the users and there respective administrations. The same senior Air Force official also identifies some of this saying: "I'm certain that by blocking blogs for official use, our airmen will never, ever be able to read them on their own home computers, so we have indeed saved them from a contaminating influence. Sorry...

Sun and VMware announce OEM agreement
2008-02-27 11:36:00
Just been informed by Brian Glynn (one of our Senior Consultants in the Systems Practice) who is currently at VMworld 2008, that Sun Microsystems and VMware have announced an OEM Agreement adding VMware Virtualization to our x64 Server and Storage systems. The basic message here is that Sun's x64 Server and Storage range is a qualified and ideal platform for consolidation of IT estate using VMware Virtualisation. Read more at the public announcement here: http://www.sun.com/aboutsun/pr/2008-02/su nflash.20080227.1.xml
More About: Vmware

Target Earth - the 2008 Turing Lecture with Dr. James Martin
2008-02-20 22:00:00
Last night, after work, I was lucky enough to be able to go to one of the Technology highlights of the year, the annual Turing Lecture (2008 ). Obviously named after Alan Turing, the Computing Science pioneer, who along with being one of the main participants at Bletchley Park leading the war effort in breaking German ciphers and codes, invented both Turing Machines and the Turing Test. The lecture was called 'Target Earth ' and I thought it was excellent and well worth attending. I won't divulge the lecture details to you, as it's still got two nights to go, first at Manchester tonight (the 20th of February) and then at Glasgow (the 21st of February), and I wouldn't want to spoil it for those who plan to attend (although I'll probably do a proper review in a few days once it's finished it's 'tour'). I was pleased to say that I was not the only Sun person to attend, as I was joined by Nick Baker, one of our most senior Storage Consultants in the UK. We hadn't planned i...
More About: James , Martin

You really know you're using software heavily...
2008-02-20 18:13:00
... when you're raising bugs against it. So my first Roller Weblogger bug, ROL-1667 or, rather, "Date URLs incorrectly use updateTime to sort entries". Basically the get entries pager is selecting entries based upon 'Updated Date' and not 'Published Date', so accessing entries via entry date, which you'd assume would use 'Published Date' actually displays them based upon 'Updated Date'. This effects all date based blog entry selections, so access via date string based URLs or via the Calendar (either large or small variant, whose selections resolve to date based URLs) are all effected too. Thankfully Dave raised it for me on the roller bug traq site, although I've since created my own account too. Given the Open Source paradigm, I've decided to try and contribute directly and fix it myself, if no one gets to it before me that is. Dave was kind enough to give me the following advice re: contributing to Roller: I usually point potential contributors to this:...
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First time at #1 most popular blogs on http://blogs.sun.com
2008-02-16 22:32:00
"Cripes !", as seemingly countless British comic book characters have said over the last century, I appear to have got the most popular blog on http://blogs.sun.com for the first time ever in my blogging lifetime. Let's hope it's because of interest in the talk and presentation I'm giving on "Case Studies of Enterprise Architecture" this coming Monday (which I reported a couple of days ago) and not because it's a slow news day at Sun... I was pleasantly surprised to find I'd made #1 most popular blog on our collective blog server after finishing off some work tonight (ah, I hear you think, the shear excitement of weekend work). Here's the screen grab - which as you can guess I'm kind of proud of (third column along: "Popular Blog s " - lol). Screen Grab taken on the 16th of February, 2008, at 19:47 Since writing this entry marking this landmark (sic) I'm even more surprised to find that I'm the victim (or is that 'lucky winner' ?) of comment spam. Although...
More About: Time , Http

Case Studies of Enterprise Architecture event this coming Monday
2008-02-14 16:28:00
I'll be presenting three Enterprise Architecture case studies on Monday at a joint Birmingham BCS Branch and Professional Institute Network West Midlands (PIN WM) event called "Case Studies of Enterprise Architecture". The event, 6:00pm for 6:30pm until 8:30pm, on Monday the 18th of February, 2008, is being held in the Trophy Suite of the Tally Ho Sports & Conference Centre (Pershore Road, Birmingham, B5 7RN, next to the Police Training College). Your welcome to come along and see me present and talk on the subject, and if you do come along because of reading this blog entry then make sure you say "Hello". There's more information on the Birmingham BCS Branch event page "Case Studies of Enterprise Architecture" (and is also listed with PIN WM too). There's a free buffet available from 6pm. Please contact Walter Milner (w.w.milner-AT-bham.ac-DOT-uk) if you intend to be present, so the amount of food and drink for the buffet can be planned. For those not familiar with Ent...
More About: Event

Goodbye Bobby Fischer
2008-01-18 17:50:00
I'm saddened to hear from this entry on Terry Gardener's blog that Bobby Fischer passed away yesterday (Thursday the 17th of January, 2008). Bobby was one of the cleverest, and yet yampiest, Chess players ever, "mad, bad and dangerous to know", and it'd be a real surprise if you hadn't heard of him. Even if you weren't keen on Chess, Bobby was a 'larger than life' figure, often getting in the Press, and had even had the Musical Chess based upon him. He achieved a FIDE estimated ELO rating of 2785 after winning the 1972 World Chess Championship against the outgoing Grand Master, Boris Spassky. Unfortunately there's a danger that it's likely to be some of his behavior and some of the comments he made that he will be remembered for, rather than his Chess playing, or the innovations he brought to Chess (both theory, practice and the game itself). In an effort to promote Talent and Creativity, rather than an encyclopedic Analysis of Chess openings, and generate more...
More About: Goodbye , Bobby Fischer

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