Reading time:

2 minutes

Word count:

329

In this episode 7, I review my experiences of using in a real situation recruitment agent-less (or is it agent-free) job platforms. I look at Hired, Otta and Cord. There is that dream of magic employment or contract, where you get business without relying on a third party, the client is easily able to find […]

Reading time:

1 minute

Word count:

179

Hello March 2023, I bought this Pozzani IX 600 Water Filter for a brand new kitchen installation at home. My fitter installed a brand new kitchen in April 2023. They also installed the Pozzani water filter. It appeared to be working, but after the fitters left, I realised the filter is very slow almost a […]

Reading time:

3 minutes

Word count:

628

2020 And yes it is impossible to reboot the year 2020. On Wednesday, 1st January 2020, I had no idea what COVID-19 meant. It might have been a News Years Day tomorrow off some infection into China, but like for many of you, I was too busy sleeping off the night’s celebrations. Little did we […]

Reading time:

17 minutes

Word count:

3713

I have been involved in a few projects that are considered digital transformation. The term has a wildly convoluted meaning inside the industry. Some people think that this is about bringing about Agile software practices to laggard organisations, others believe that it is all about converting monolithic systems to micro-service oriented applications and, still, others […]

Reading time:

10 minutes

Word count:

2212

We have just had the twentieth edition of JavaOne in San Francisco. This would be my twelfth attendance in unbroken series since 2004. What are the biggest lessons that potentially shed a light into the Java’s future. Modularisation struggle It has taken almost nine years from the first mention of modules at Java 2007, or […]

Reading time:

5 minutes

Word count:

1074

Contractor rates have not been tracking inflation in the United Kingdom for the past decade from 2004 to 2014. I found some information from the IT Jobs Watch site to back this claim. Source data: IT Jobs Watch site on Java People complain about contractors being expensive, but we have to take care of our […]

Reading time:

5 minutes

Word count:

967

This is a disturbing post for me, and probably for you.  I am an IT contractor in 2013, at least. It was not always that way, because I worked in long term permanent positions before now. I have said many times before I did not aim to be an IT contractor: it just fell in […]

Reading time:

6 minutes

Word count:

1146

It is a simple question. So why don’t you get more training? Do you feel that you operate already effectively? Is there no more stuff to learn? Do you think that you are already “good”? Sometimes,  just when we are walking about and we feel everything is going smoothly, then the bottom drops out of […]

Reading time:

12 minutes

Word count:

2494

I remember the year 2010 for the FIFA World Cup Final in South Africa watching the amazing tournament matches on BBC TV. Sadly, 2010 marked end of the JAVAWUG, I stopped leading the Java User Group, because attendance to the monthly talks nosedived in the summer mouths. I had had enough of running a user […]

Reading time:

2 minutes

Word count:

303

Prince And The New Generation – Don’t Matter 2 Nite – One of the Purple Man’s very best songs that he has ever written, sung and performed. I remember listening to this sound way back in the 1990s. The first time was during my time beating the recession in the 1990s. There was no Euro. […]