Blog of Shaun McCran - Architecting robust, elegant technical and business solutions - General Interest

Adventures in Lego: the UCS Millennium Falcon (75192) – post 4 - bags 9-12

Mon, 29 Jun 2020 23:16:00 -0000

This is my ongoing blog series on building the Lego Ultimate Collectors Series Millennium Falcon, here's a link to the Lego site: https://www.lego.com/en-gb/product/millennium-falcon-75192

This is a 7500 piece kit, so its a big build! The biggest Lego set created in fact!

A quick recap of where we are 8 bags in. We've got a complete Technics framework, a couple of of room areas, the front V shapes and the back end. This article will deal with bags 9 through 12.

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Adventures in Lego: the UCS Millennium Falcon (75192) – post 3 - bags 6-8

Sun, 14 Jun 2020 11:45:40 -0000

This is my ongoing blog series on building the Lego Ultimate Collectors Series Millennium Falcon, here's a link to the Lego site: https://www.lego.com/en-gb/product/millennium-falcon-75192

This is a 7500 piece kit, so its a big build! The biggest Lego set created in fact!

A quick recap of where we are, 5 bags in. We've got a good sized Technics framework, and a lot of detail in the four room areas and the back end. This article will deal with bags 6,7 and 8.

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Adventures in Lego: the UCS Millennium Falcon (75192) – post 2 - bags 3-5

Fri, 12 Jun 2020 16:52:00 -0000

Following on from the last post, where I unboxed and started the build for the UCS Millennium Falcon, I thought I'd outline the next few stages, so you can see how it builds, and what issues you might find in the building process.

The first article was opening the box, looking through the manual and steps 1 and 2. This article will cover 3,4 and 5. Also some minor back tracking due to my inability to count spaces properly!

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Adventures in Lego: the UCS Millennium Falcon - 75192 - unboxing

Sun, 07 Jun 2020 20:45:00 -0000

I had the pleasure of picking up an Ultimate Collectors Series Millennium Falcon recently, so I thought I'd write up my findings on opening the set, a stage by stage view on building the set, and generally how the thing translated into Lego. [More]

A career change, a blog hiatus, but I’m back to it now

Sun, 26 Apr 2020 14:38:00 -0000

It has been a while since I wrote any blog articles with any consistency. Like so many things in life, it was not a conscious decision to stop blogging or sharing knowledge. More that my day to day activities changed, and, as many of us do, I found new opportunities to drive myself forward that did not necessarily align to my historical skillset. The hands-on work started to take a back seat in my day-to-day timetable. Coding, Information Architecture and User Experience design. All these things started to get left behind, while I moved through Architecture roles, eventually leading teams of people in the roles I'd previously held. The things I really enjoyed during previous roles became hobbies that I practiced in the evening, such as mobile development and JavaScript apps. As you distance yourself from skills you used to use on a daily basis, skills you used to teach others through mentoring programs, the opportunity to blog about them became smaller, and my focus turned to driving my new skills to a point of maturity. The process of becoming the trainee again, in new skills, such as understanding team members personalities, defining Enterprise Strategy, effective team management and successfully engaging with C grade stakeholders was a great personal challenge. The opportunity to step outside your comfort zone and learn new things is something I've always relished, but it does lead you to a place where you have a sharp learning curve, and you are no longer a master in your field. That tends to impact on your ability to blog on a subject with authority, or as a subject matter expert. So! Its been a long journey. I've moved across several new disciplines, and now I'm getting that nagging feeling in the back of my head again. I've got views to share, best practices to push into the public space to talk about, and collaborate over. Its time to start blogging regularly again.

How Swindon Inchcape Audi destroyed my faith in the brand, and that specific dealership

Sun, 16 Feb 2020 15:50:00 -0000

How my Swindon Inchcape Audi meeting destroyed my faith in the brand, or at least that specific dealership. - Friday 17th January 2020 To set the scene, I'm 3 years into a 4-year PCP. this is the first Personal Contract Purchase vehicle I've owned, so its all a new experience, and as it's a premium brand, I'm was expecting an actual 'Experience' rather than a basic journey through facts and figures. With that in mind I booked an afternoon appointment to go through figures and options for a 3-year-old PCP, Audi A4, and look at booking in a set of test drives for replacement vehicles. Our appointment was with a salesperson that we didn't have a previous relationship with, as ours, Richard, left a few months after selling us the car. Let's call the new chap Lee, that was his name, so let's use it. We sat down and had a brief intro, I asked him if he was having a good Friday, as typically people find Fridays to be a happy day of the week, to which he replied, 'it's another day, at least its not the weekend'. So not a glowing start, and a slightly weird beginning to the conversation. [More]

MIT autonomous Cheetah running and jumping over obstacles

Tue, 02 Jun 2015 15:56:00 -0000

MIT University recently released a video of their Cheetah project jumping over obstacles. The Cheetah project started a few years ago, the aim was to develop an autonomous robot that could perform under difficult conditions. Every now and then MIT release a video showing their progress with this. The most recent video shows the Cheetah detecting the distance and height of an obstacle and adjusting its step length to accommodate jumping over it. You can view the Youtube video here. This is pretty amazing stuff when you consider that this is entirely automated, it's a self-evaluating robotic Cheetah. This really shows that with a dedication of focus, thinking in the same direction, for a dedicated period of time, people can really bring something exciting and innovative into being. What will happen next to the Cheetah? Where will the MIT team take it? Well I'm excited to find out, and so should you be, as I think this could develop into many different industries and technologies, and bring about real, significant change to robotics and logical thought processing. Read more about the MIT Cheetah here: http://biomimetics.mit.edu/

EE creates multi-tiered customer experience with 50p call queue-jumping charge

Wed, 27 Aug 2014 05:58:00 -0000

The mobile operator Everything Everywhere has recently caused a bit of controversy by introducing a 50 pence call fee for customers who want to jump the call waiting queue. This is available for Pay monthly (Contract) and sim only customers.

This raises some interesting questions and issues, specifically about the split in the customer base because of this. EE have effectively created a tiered customer service system with this move. Intentional or not they now have priority customers and second class customers.

Why not allow this for all your customers?

This is likely due to the spending profile, when you look at the different spending profile for Contract and pay-as-you-go customers the latter are far less likely to spend money on a premium service. Their PAYG habits mean that they are less likely to require support, and far less likely to pay for it, it typically has a more independent nature.

The dangers of a two tiered customer experience

Allowing some customers to jump the queue raises difficult questions around customer priority, and service levels. If I already have a contract that I am paying reasonable money for, why should I pay more for a support service?

Also is this queue jumping pushing other customers back? Probably. At the same time, if this is viewed as a revenue stream to EE, doesn't that encourage them to present the outward view to the customer that they are very busy, and that you should be paying for a premium service? Chances are the call centre staff are being measured on how many 'paid customers' they service rather than 'free' this will be a new KPI. By creating a bigger gap between the paid and non-paid service they can outwardly justify the fee. You can call them and receive free service, but you might be waiting a REALLY long time.... Or you could pay 50p to skip the REALLY long queue and talk to an agent sooner.

Whether this is real or not is debatable, but it does show that by creating two customer experiences ('we a care a lot because you paid' and 'we don't care because you're free') you are creating a dangerous class divide.

I'm really hoping that this isn't a trend and that other call centre providers don't follow suit. News article here: http://www.mobiletoday.co.uk/news/industry/30471/ee-introduces-50p-call-queue-jumping-charge.aspx

Is it the end of the road for the telephone landline?

Thu, 14 Aug 2014 12:19:00 -0000

OFCOM recently published this year's communications market report detailing digital trends and usage amongst different age groups. [Link] There report starts off with a particularly punch quote: "As a result of growing up in the digital age, 12-15 year olds are developing fundamentally different communication habits than older generations, even compared to the advanced 16-24 age group." It goes on to explain how its children leading the digital revolution with mass adoption of online applications and channels. The following graph shows the 'weekly exposure to devices': One thing that this report does highlight is that over the generations surveyed landline telephone usage is on the decline. This raises some interesting questions, and a few intriguing possibilities. I put a an example case to you: When I was a child the Landline was the ONLY telephone in the house. Now it's pretty much an ornament as modern mobile contracts tend to come with so many inclusive minutes that I only ever use the landline for premium numbers that are free on that over the mobile. All of the adults in the house have thousands of inclusive minutes. Why would they ever use the landline? Despite that I still pay a month fixed line fee though, but the actual usage bill is regularly in the pence cost bracket. The OFCOM report is showing exactly this behaviour in children. Mobile usage is massively up, for a number of reasons, such as barriers to entry lowering, i.e. handset costs and contract allowances, and increased stability and speed in mobile networks means that the quality of service is always improving. Just search for 4G coverage in the UK.

What are the reasons for having a landline?

So why do people still have landlines?

1. The first reason is to make calls.
2. The second reason is because of other over-the-top services such as broadband and TV services
3. The third is as a bundled product. Often service providers will cut you a discount for taking many products instead of just one. For example if I remove my landline from my Virgin Media bundle I'll actually pay MORE for not having it.

So what is the Landline used for now?

So realistically that leaves the second reason as the most valid. Some providers are still using the landline for TV broadcasting or device communications rather than their satellite network (I'm looking at you Sky). But doesn't that seem counter intuitive? Having to have a landline to support increasingly bandwidth hungry Hi-definition TV channels? What the OFCOM report shows is that the newest generations of our society don't use a landline at all. When they come of age as to be moving into their own homes and having the conversations with service providers about 'requiring a landline because you have TV' there is going to be a serious customer backlash.

Death of the landline

So I'm predicting that he landline has to find another purpose. Or its Dead. It's not good enough to be in a bundle of service, or to merely be a cost differentiator. It has to do something. Otherwise 'digital natural selection' will occur and Broadband and satellite comms will consume it. It will follow the usual pattern of decline in as much as customer uptake will drop, meaning that the cost will rise. Suddenly all the cost and effort in dropping new lines into new housing estates and renewing old lines will start to look like a bad expenditure to the big telecoms companies. The landline will price itself out of the market, and investment in it will shrink. You just watch. Next years annual OFCOM report will show even less landline usage in the youth generation.

Sony confuses its customers with product fragmentation

Tue, 10 Jun 2014 06:17:00 -0000

So E3 is here again, along with a flurry of consumer news, games and future predictions on the trends of technology, or at least where the big entertainment companies would like us to think it's going anyway. This is our (the consumers) big window into their (the mega corp entertainment company) plans and products that we are all too excited about buying up for the next year.

Sony released big news about new games, old games being redone in HD, new devices and new online services. The key take home message for me was all about Sony Saturation. I can't quite decide if their Vision is saturate the market in devices that all do the same thing, or whether they just don't have a Vision at all, which has led to product development, where all their devices can do the same thing. Either way what we consumers are looking at is a dizzying array of Sony hardware and software services, much of which does exactly the same as its counterparts.

Sony already have Smart TVs, many of which are getting the ability to play older PlayStation titles. Now we are also hearing about the PlayStation TV, a set top box ($99,USA only at the moment) Which seems to be able to stream PS4 content to another TV (Sony MagicEye anyone?) Then of course you've got the PS4, which cannot play older titles, only high end new ones. On top of that there are numerous rollouts of PS Now and Sony store implementations across PS VITA and Smart TVs. What's PS Now? Well it looks like a cloud based service you access through your TV allowing you access to older games and movies, oh, and you don't need a console, all the grunt work is done at a Sony server somewhere in a datacentre.

So what's the problem with having several different types of device doing the same thing? Well for both Sony and its consumers it brings a couple of interesting pitfalls, both of a technical nature and of a customer nature.

1. The product offering is confusing. As a consumer how do I select products with overlapping capabilities? Do I want a console, or a TV I can use to play similar games?
2. How do I manage my games collection? Are there custom versions of the Sony store per device to stop my buying the wrong product on the wrong device? Account management will become a much more intelligent process.
3. What impact does all this have on existing devices? How difficult are these things becoming to use? All these additional layers of software can't impede the customers too much, otherwise no-one will participate.
4. How does Sony keep them all up-to-date? TVs are notoriously bad at being updated, the big TV manufacturers would rather you buy a new TV every year than produce an upgrade roadmap for you. With more devices come more development, more testing and more releases. None of this comes cheap.

So for now, I'll wait and see how each of these pans out, but it does feel a little like Sony are rather randomly shooting at fish in a lake and seeing which one they hit first.

For further reading you can check out the BBCs article on E3 opening presentations here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-27774813

SMS turns 20 years old today

Mon, 03 Dec 2012 07:09:00 -0000

"On December 3 1992, engineer Neil Papworth sent the first SMS message to Richard Jarvis of Vodafone. It simply read "Merry Christmas", and Jarvis had no way of replying." The Short Message Service turns twenty years old today. It's hard for us to consider a world without such common technologies as the SMS and easily accessible mobile communications but think about that statement for a second. SMS is only twenty years old. Only twenty years ago a technology came along that has radically changed the way people communicate, in both business and social environments. Think how much harder things would be now if SMS wasn't easily available? The most amazing thing about SMS is that is isn't all that complicated in comparison to most smartphone functionality. SMS is accessible to everyone with a mobile, through a common interface. It doesn't require a special network protocol or data system, it is truly available to everyone, all around the world. Think about the impact that SMS has had on changing the English language, think of how much English has changed due to the short nature of messaging, look at terms we are all familiar with now (Lol, BRB) that have come around specifically due to human interaction with the SMS technology. From its humble beginnings things have changed. People are innovators, and they have driven the SMS message on to greater and greater things, like MMS and now modern messaging services like WhatsApp and Skype. These are all essentially driven from the SMS concept. You can read a lot more information about the background of the SMS here, from the Telegraph: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/mobile-phones/9718336/Text-messaging-at-20-how-SMS-changed-the-world.html Or the Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/may/06/sms-text-messages-20th-birthday My thinking is that the mobile landscape is still a very new and exciting environment. The technology landscape is still forming and innovations like SMS are frequent and game changing. The coolest thing about SMS technology for me? Working for the company that made SMS a reality, and that 4 billion people use every day.

NHS Launches Blood donor mobile app

Tue, 11 Sep 2012 07:15:00 -0000

I've donate blood for a few years now. I view it as a relatively easy thing to do, that causes no harm to me, and can help save someone life. I won't miss the blood they take, my body will just create more of it naturally, and there is a reward card system where they change the color of your card based on the number of donations (I'm a sucker for any kind of reward based system). What's the biggest problem with donating blood? Finding and booking a session. [More]

Blogging and Zombies: 'Feed' by Mira Grant

Sun, 02 Sep 2012 07:07:00 -0000

A few months back I had 'Feed' by Mira Grant recommended to me by Tim Blair (https://twitter.com/timblair) mainly because it is based on Zombies and Blogging and I'm a fan of both. This is what I thought of it. [More]

Apple suing Samsung on the on going patent war

Wed, 01 Aug 2012 02:42:00 -0000

In the last few days the latest court case between Apple and Samsung has kicked into action. This isn't something I'd usually comment on but I am feeling quite annoyed about the continuing trend that has become the technology industry's default stance on competition. What ever happened to innovation? This isn't so much a discussion on the court case, but more my own view of its impact on us, the consumers. [More]

How Business and Government are trying to manage your Google experience

Fri, 20 Jul 2012 05:28:00 -0000

Governments and businesses are continually trying to interfere with how users find their web content. Not by the same means as developers and marketers, IE good SEO principles and an actual strategy, but by trying to change fundamental elements of the search system. [More]