Recently I’ve been looking for a new [product] to replace the free, open source and somewhat buggy [product] that my [client] is currently using. I tested out some commercial replacement [products] and found one that I really liked.

I wanted to find out approximately how much it would cost so I could do some calculations and work out the best way to present a technical and business case for moving away from [product]. But could I get a price out of these people?

After two phone calls and two emails they were pushing for meetings, timescales, for me reveal the details of my client and the stakeholders, full information about who would sign the contracts and how long they would want to purchase the licence for.

Maybe this is how it works in the business and sales world, but I’m a technical person. I can poke my head in, relate to people, and live up there for a while, but I don’t like bullshit and I’ll go somewhere else if you piss me off.

When you say that you want to:

optimize [my] software investment with pricing that is customized for [my] situation, based on how the product will be used and deployed

I know that you’re really saying:

we want to work out how much money we can get out of you and squeeze you for as much of it as possible

I liked your [product] technically, but if you can’t meet me half way, I’ll find someone else who I can work with.

Like I said in my first email, I was looking for a general idea of how much [your product] was likely to cost so that I could work out the best way to put forward some kind of business case for moving away from [existing product]. I’d tested out a number of [products] and was impressed with the performance of [your product].

It’s obviously a complicated process to work out the cost of a licence, so for now I’m going to use the price of [your competitor] as a base line and forward the [competitor] and [your] details to the appropriate people in my client’s Procurement and Operations departments.

I don’t know what processes they use or what the timescales are likely to be, but I’m going to leave all discussions from now on up to them.

Thank you for your time, and my apologies for not being able to progress this further.

Anyway, back to my beloved code.

I’ve been using Twitter for nearly three years now. I love this particular form of interaction, and it’s because of Twitter that I have my current job.

As great as Twitter is, there are some things about it that I don’t like. I like Twitter when it’s doing what it does best – sending and routing messages between millions of users. I don’t like Twitter when it’s showing me things I don’t want to see, and hiding things from me that I do.

To make Twitter better for me, I started writing a twitter proxy back in September. It acts as layer between twitter and all of my Twitter clients so that I can control, in one place, the flow of information between me and Twitter. I’ve been using it on my desktop and iPhone ever since (both Tweetie and Twitterrific support specifying a different “API URL”). I’m planning to make it ready for public consumption over Christmas.

Some of the things it supports/will support are:

• Ignore @user for [period]
• Ignore tweets from [@user1, @user2] containing [text]
• Ignore all tweets containing [text]
• Show all tweets from @user (including all of their @replies to people you do not follow)
• Ignore all tweets containing topics that are currently trending

I don’t know exactly how I’m going to release it, but it will probably be a combination of:

• Publicly available on GitHub (BSD license – you can run it yourself)
• A paid-for version running on a soon-to-be-built server (so you can use it without having to setup Apache, SSL certificates)

If all goes well this will happen just after the new year.

Update: This is still in development. I am using the current version, but have a number of constraints on my time and haven’t been able to get it to a point where I’m willing to release it to the public. Hopefully soon.

How to go off floor adventure triking. Lesson 1 – First, get trike off floor onto sofa like so:

Lesson 2 – Join trike on sofa:

Lesson 3 – Board trike, taking care to keep wheels perching precariously over the edge of the sofa:

Lesson 4 – Once on board, look behind before reversing. Spot potential hazzard and stop just in time:

Lesson 5 – Decide reverse isn’t all its cracked up to be. Go full speed ahead along the sofa instead:

I miss my little man. Follow him on twitter here.

It’s now just over 18 months since Galen popped into the world.

Among other things, he loves watching videos of tractors on YouTube.

That’s my boy.

After being over here for nearly a year, I exchanged my driving licence for a UK one.

Amazingly, I’m allowed to drive the following types of vehicle:

• Car
• Car with trailer
• Up to 7.5T Box Lorry (!!!)

So for the move we rented a 7.5T Mercedes Atego 816 for a day. We picked it up from Bridgwater and I then drove it home, loaded it up, drove it to Nailsea, unloaded it, and then drove it back to Bridgwater.

This isn’t it, but this is basically what I drove:

Driving to our cottage from Bridgwater, I couldn’t believe I was allowed to drive such a massive machine without any kind of lesson or training. Except for a slight scratch of the indicator against a wall while I was reversing away from the cottage, it all went well. I’m not in any hurry to drive one again though.