isis eye

I arrived at a client the other day to “set up” a small RF network. What should ostensibly have been a simple one hour task, ended up being a three hour vigil in what can only be described as a sauna. Here’s the day in pictures…

I arrived at the reception, I was studiously ignored by the resident security. Despite the traditional British actions of clearing my throat and coughing, no-one noticed. Being resourceful, I called my contact on their mobile and they arrived in reception to collect me, unaware that I hadn’t signed in, or registered my presence on-site in any way. They escorted me to their office.

I’m now on-site at a multi national food company an no-one knows I’m here.

I’m now told I have to wear the traditional garb for Health and Safety reasons.

After a good twenty minutes I find myself dressed in safety shoes, a white (paper) coat, a yellow Hi-Vis vest, a hair net, a hard hat, safety glasses and ear plugs.

Now, deprived of all my senses, I’m supposed to be safe.

I can’t walk properly, can’t see properly through the safety specs, can’t hear any danger, and my coat may set fire at any point, but I’m safe because my hair is captured in a net.

I’m taken through the factory, to be shown the area containing the router and ADSL line.

As my guide looks heavenward, I realise that the entrance to the area is a hatch twenty five feet in the air, and up a vertical metal ladder. The joy I feel is palpable, in my head the bunting is out, flags are waving…

After assisting me to lift two computers and my frame up the ladder, whilst still wearing the safety equipment, my contact disappeared. The adventure had begun.

The area I had entered was, despite the fact I had travelled upwards to get there, like Hell. It was 103 degrees farenheit, full of huge humming three phase mains cables and very hot pipes. There was the constant peril of the open hatch on the floor and the fact that my movement was hampered by the large shoes and silly glasses. I feel a picture story coming on …

The gate to Hell, Cerberus is hiding just inside… “Don’t go into the light” I hear you screaming…

“Permit to Work” .. that’ll be a Northern term I think. No-one seemed to take any notice. As long as you were wearing your safety hat, hair net, white paper coat, fluorescent vest, safety shoes, safety glasses and ear plugs… you could fall from this 25 ft high hole of death. It would be tragic though if the last words you saw were “Permit to Work required before entry”.. I’m guessing that a rapid exit doesn’t therefore require a permit.

Hidden in the white, on the white wall is the BT socket. They were the only white things in this desolate arrid place. You’ll notice the large cables. These are 1000 Amp, 415V 3 phase cables. They audibly hummed.

I wonder if there could be some noise on the line !!!

The really big cables are providing RF shielding for the more sensitive CAT5…. Note the ADSL socket in the background.

You’ll also notice the lagged pipe… that contained very hot water. This is necessary to ensure the air temperature in this roof space never falls below 103 deg F, below which I think the Mango Chutney would be ruined…

Ah… The Cisco router. I wondered why this was a strange shape and not rectangular. Then I realised it had melted in the heat and started to run….

Blurry, but recognisable. If anyone at the site sees this, they won’t let me on site again….. so someone let them know quick… I wasn’t wearing the ear plugs OR the safety specs… the ear plugs safety cord had melted on a pipe and the glasses had been caught in some lagging and cut my nose… so I had lost both of these…

I spent nearly three hours here, I miss it now. Particularly the mango chutney smell and the steam… and those pipes were very very hot. It’s well insulated in line with European standards so none of the heat escaped.

You can just make out the bucket of coals in the corner. Note the special H&S plank. You can see the safety specs on the bench. Except it wasn’t a bench and they melted too. My trousers are melted at the back, but the white paper coat and the hi vis vest covered this up….

Both thanks and congratulations are due to Gavin Langley for submitting the best (and only) entry in the completely unadvertised “Al Pacino look alike” competition.

Cunningly plagiarizing the ISIS Blog he has created a work of true genius. Nothing at all to do with bar codes and therefore in the true spirit of this site.

The gun theme has gone down well with the marketing folk at Isis, the claim that “Our clients all have a smile on their face” now carries more weight, as it seems the use of force is acceptable…

I’ve just driven up and down a very wet M1. It simply amazes me the numbers of drivers who don’t indicate. I’m surprised that there’s not a factory option “Delete Brake Lamps” when one orders a car.

After all, it seems ridiculous not to tell people where you’re going, but to be forced to show that you’re stopping.

I’m sure the uptake of this option would be huge. It could fit alongside privacy glass, private registrations, and sunglasses (sorry Shades) as the latest must-have invisibility accessory.

I need to think of an acronym for this…. we have had ABS and ESP and GTi, now in the world we have BOIL (Brake Operated Indicator Lamps) and SAIL (Steering Activated Indicator Lamps), maybe you readers could suggest something ?

There are two key spin off benefits to the Lampless system, car design could be so much more svelte, and Global Warming is massively reduced by not having to illuminate anything.

What I find funny about this “I know where I’m going” indicator culture and the Lampless brake light system, is that when barcode scanning technology is being discussed, the volume of the beep, and brightness of the lamp are paramount in many a buying decision.

The Datalogic Gryphon is a good scanner, possibly not quite as aggressive as the Motorola Scanning offerings, but the fact it projects a huge beam of green light when a good read is forthcoming has sold many thousands of these. Some of them have even sold to people who don’t bother indicating…mmmm

So, acronyms please, there’ll be a prize for the best one.

I was in a newsagent at the weekend. There’s nothing interesting about this I guess, except that I noted that magazines seem (certainly in the realm of motoring publications) to contain headlines such as (and this is an example) “New xxx model totally eclipses old model”, or “latest zzz moves the model into a whole new league”…

Well this got me to wondering how it could be that an evolution of something current could be such a massive improvement, and why it is that I have never experienced this.

Sure, new things are usually better looking (except if they’re made by BMW) and almost certainly improved, but emotive words like “eclipse” or “relegate” seem a little over stated.

Well that’s maybe because they are. I guess that if a magazine was honest and stated something like “New Porsche 998 … has a better sound system than the 997, and bigger tyres. It also handles better but you’ll never notice” this probably wouldn’t help its ABC figure, so the use of “trounces” and “raises to a whole new level” are simply to sell magazines.

Then I thought how this related to the world of Auto ID barcode hardware. In the early days of barcode technology, the rate of change was very great. Every new model had a new operating system, and a some sort of new technology barcode scanner, it was also more rugged and had much improved battery life.

Now however it seems that all terminals run some flavour of Windows CE and have a choice of laser scanner (EAN /GS1 barcodes ITF etc / whatever)  or 2D image scanner ( for QR Code PDF417 DataMatrix etc ). Battery life is slowly improving and features are creeping. 

The differentiator now between various manufacturers hardware has become the service offering.

Which I guess is again a reflection of the automotive world, where the badge prowess and the efficiency of the dealer network have proven to be the key differentiators. 

So, when you’re buying some terminals, look at the service options (Motorola’s Service From The Start is so good I’d buy it), and the dealer (we’re pretty good !) 

http://www.bar-code.co.uk/

Not one to promote the competition websites, but while I was searching to see if Google had ranked us any higher than the last time I searched (today, ten minutes ago) I found this… turn your speakers up !

Nothing really to do with barcodes, probably very little to do with radio frequency (other than appearing frequently on the radio), but probably quite a lot of networking going on. I wonder if Boris Johnson uses marketing speak ?

At the recent Motorola sales kick off event we heard some amazing and new (to me and Trevor) phrases… I expect you’re agog with anticipation now, thinking “I hope he illuminates us to just what these nuggets are”… well, never one to disappoint, here goes …

We have the old ones first …. Product Ecosystem

How can a product have an ecosystem ? The Eco bit refers to ecology and the system is a “series of events in balance”. The word is defined as (and I quote from www.dictionary.com) :-

A system formed by the interaction of a community of organisms with their environment.

A community of organisms together with their physical environment, viewed as a system of interacting and interdependent relationships and including such processes as the flow of energy through trophic levels and the cycling of chemical elements and compounds through living and nonliving components of the system. 

So.. where does this fit in with a load of electronic hardware ? Everyone in my world incorrectly has an “ecosystem”.

The next word up for evaluation is “Space”. Apparently working in the “medical space” means selling equipment to hospitals (loose translation), and the “educational space” is a school. 

And “Traction”. One gains traction in a space. This means that your product or service gains acceptance in a market and more folk start to evaluate it.

Then “Execute”, meaning to perform an act. And if the act is very onerous, one has to “execute hard”.

“The Perfect Storm”… a film with George Clooney, a fishing boat, and a big wave is probably what you’re thinking ? No… it’s marketing speak for everything coming together and thus enabling traction in a space. (try to keep up here, there’ll be a questionnaire later).

For example, in the medical space MRSA and its ecosystem is gaining traction. People need to execute a plan to eradicate it, and execute hard. This is the Perfect Storm for someone selling antibacterial handwash into the medical space. they could execute the concept of gaining traction very hard indeed and before you know, their ecosystem would be prevalent.

This is of course complete rubbish. If there were a Perfect Storm where I live, roofs would be blown off, people would suffer, it would be noisy and wet and dark, and probably very dangerous. So, forgive me but when I hear the Perfect Storm phrase, I think of disaster !

Now, I’ll introduce the concept of horizontal and vertical. In the olden days, we called this broad, and specific. So if something has a horizontal market, it broadly appeals to lots of “spaces” and (this is a word that was made up by some marketing person I had to listen to) if a market becomes (here goes) “verticalised” then it becomes more specific. So the antibacterial handwash is targeted vertically (probably towards the ceiling in a jet !).

The next things up for analysis are “Thesis”. Graham Somebodys Thesis had a lot of exposure at the conference. And his work entitled “Crossing the Chasm” was a positive Bible for the ecosystem types. So, let’s analyse this… reference to dictionary.com says that a thesis is defined as …

A proposition stated, or put forward for consideration.

So, it’s not proven, it’s just someone’s idea. We can all have a thesis.

This means that the “crossing the chasm” tome is just postulation. All we got out of the talk on this was that someone had drawn a normalized distribution curve, then rubbed a section out, called it a chasm, then attempted to sell training courses to facilitate sales of your product or service “across the rubbed out bit”… cynics ? Us ? 

So, after a strenuous day at the conference, Trevor and myself verticalised ourselves, executed motion of our ecosystems from the conference space towards our (separate) bedroom spaces, gained traction and then horizontalised ourselves, thereby entering dream space. We had ensured the perfect storm, by ensuring we were exhausted by all the lingual analysis.

Remind me to tell you about some other phrases at some point…

“From carpet to concrete”

“Blue collar space to white collar space”

Mmmmmm, now where did I put those questionnaires ?

Well, it was actually last week. The UK Sales Kick-Off on 23rd April 08 in the De Vere Grand, Brighton … and what a nice hotel the Grand is - fantastic service and a feeling of old style comfort. I’m pleased to report that my bath had the benefit of jacuzzi like bubble equipment - unlike my colleague, Trevor, who was forced to create his own bubbling bath. 

The conference was good too, free walkie-talkies and a special light emitting pen (l.e.p) for invoking Batman for extra help on those difficult installations.