Tony is a Geek

Well.....to be able to use it, you need to be able to code for it... https://quantumzeitgeist.com/boston-based-quantum-startup-zapata-releases-orquestra-a-new-software-platform/ Despite skeptics having doubts about the ‘realness’ of the imminent field of quantum computing, there are many strides forward made even now. IBM recently released an ambitious roadmap that is hardware-based, and Zapata, a Boston-based quantum computing startup, announced its commercial release of Orquestra.  It is an advanced software platform used to create repeatable quantum and quantum-based workflows and algorithms and can be used across industries and cases. The process involves a quantum engine that systematically groups together information and resources even when they are spread across both quantum and classical devices. Orquestra is designed for quantum use cases such as writing, manipulating, and optimising quantum circuits as well as running these across various devices. These devices include qu...

There are a ton of tools out there, everyone has their "go to" tools and the occasional new one pops up when you talk to someone else, but here's a website that collects them all together, categorises them and let's you see the new one's that come on the scene. Nifty reference site:  https://cui.tools/ CUI Tools is a directory of the best conversational design tools and resources to help you master your next voice or text-based bot project. Made by Olivier Heitz .

Thoughtful article: https://towardsdatascience.com/will-gpt-3-kill-coding-630e4518c04d I guess these people were not around when the whole "4GL is going to take over the world" commotion was going on in the late 90s & fading out in the early 2000's. What's a 4GL? a 4th generation language. It was meant to be procedural and "program-generating" software.   It was meant to be so simple that if someone could use M$oft Excel, they could build an application without the need for those pesky expensive programmers. Whilst this was okay for outputting boilerplate / templated code that created generic and bland / functional applications they did feel a little bit "soul less'.  That's an interesting choice of words I use there.  How can code or an app have a "soul".  Well, it can't, it will have the representation of the artists (programmers) personality expressing what the end user would like to use.  Some people like to drive boring ca...

I should subtitle this as: "learning to say no".  I'll explain. I was put into an interesting position earlier this week, I was asked to commit to doing a piece of work for the next 5 weeks, starting in 2 days time.  This task would most likely take up a good 20-30 hours of my working week. " That's not a problem ", I hear you say, " I'm sure you could juggle things around to make that fit ". Well, that was the other problem, it's also a nice problem to have, being asked to help out on more things, but there comes a time when you have reached maximum capacity and you need to identify that, otherwise what you'll end up delivering for other people is going to be of lower quality than what you want it to be.  Sure, for some people this might be okay, do a lot more things, drop the quality a bit, it's no problem, someone else will pick up the slack,etc...etc... That doesn't work for me.  If I commit, I'm all in.  C...

So, here's a photo of a bunch of books that just happen to be sitting on my work desk, looking all majestic and intellectual. This is the sort of thing that a lot of people over the past few weeks have started to strategically place behind themselves for those all important conference calls, where other people will be looking and trying to eye up, "so what books do you have behind you?....oh, maybe I should read some of those and then I'll be as smart as you". That could be why these books are not behind me, they are infront and to the side, I can see them but you cannot.  What is behind me? hang on, let me turn around and look......a MASSIVE 3D printer with a Playstation 2 Time Crisis gun on the bed (absolutely no idea, maybe I found it in a cupboard and it was making it's way off the "games room", but I got distracted), some photo's of my MG F over the years taken by professional photographers as I was entering "event/shows" and a...

Okay, so whilst I've been championing the "Do Something else...." mantra (and then promptly did some work over the weekend, but it was by choice, not pressured), I managed to hookup the equipment that I had for my old radio controlled boat. Now, I confess, I did not build this boat.  I did have a boat that I built when I was about 14-ish, it was a 4ft massive beast that I built with my grandad, he managed to get hold of an old glow-plug engine that baffled me and before we had the chance to fit it, I returned home and the boat never got finished.  Then when I was about 21-ish, I sold the boat to my sisters husband (at the time), who was an RC car enthusiast, he rebuilt the engine and got it working, but never fitted it into the boat - I then bought the boat back and was going to get the radio gear and finish it off......then it sat in a cupboard for many many years until I eventually decided it should go to someone who will finish it off, yep, I put it on eBay and it w...

If it's a clear night outside and you have the opportunity, it's always a nice thing to take time to look up at the stars above and put things into perspective. Last night, Venus was shining away super bright over to the west.  Quite a few normal satellites criss-crossing overhead - I must live on the M4/M25 crossroads as there are quite a lot going over my house! and then, just for a treat, there are these little beauties who zoom overhead making a great scene: https://findstarlink.com/ If someone hasn't heard of them, or even know about them - that's quite a lot of people, to be fair, then it's a great wind up (in the current climate), that the Aliens are driving in single file and making their way over to London, oh look.... there they go....  :-D You can select to see where they are in real-time, or see the Visible Times and you can plan when to go out into the garden.   have fun! UPDATE: Found a great website that shows you all satellites in 3D...

Those people that have known me for quite some time, know that I don't just do work-work.  I used to.  Oh, yes....I used to do that a lot.  I'm probably from the generation of IT guys that screwed it all up for the newer generation.  Why's that? Well, IT was fascinating in the late 80s and all the way through the 90s....the possibilities, the basic-ness of it all.  Yes, you as a single person "could" do it all.  you could be the person that knew about hardware, knew about infrastructure, could make your own 10-base-2 (or was it 10?) cables (the one's that used TV aerial cable), before cat5 cables took over - but hey, you still did that too.  You knew how to network PCs together, different network cards, token networks connecting to the 10-base-2/10/T (whatever), how to configure Windows or even Novell Netware (wow, there's a blast from the past for you) to use that networking....and you even knew how to write code, so you could write the application...

....and other grouchy grumblings from an old IT guy :-D Okay, first I'll say, I've been knocking around with IT since the early days, yes, yes, yes, that means I'm biased, IT racist (if you will) and very set in my ways about how things should and should not work with IT..... in fact, I'm not.  I'm actually quite the opposite.  I'm very flexible and open-minded.  That's how I've managed to stay relevant over the past 25+ years.  I've evolved with IT......where it makes sense. I've been cautious when I needed to, I've thrown caution to the wind on the odd occasion and just went with the flow to see where we'd end up. However.  All this new nonsense about A.I (Artificial Intelligence) and the term "Data Scientist" as a job role just rubs salt into a paper cut for me. 1st you are not a scientist.  yes, okay, you probably were very good as maths (correct spelling) and statistics at school, did that weird class you could d...