Actually, not a good week. Arsenal were very poor against ManYoo, suffering a 4-0 defeat in the F A Cup. It was a busy night on the M6 as a few thousand dejected Arsenal fans headed back South, and tens of thousands of happy ManUre fans headed back South (or headed to Manchester airport to catch flights to Belfast, Dublin, Oslo, etc). Bacary Sagna missed the game after the sudden death of his 28 year old brother Omar.

The mid-week 0-0 draw against AC Milan wasn’t a disaster but certainly makes the away tie difficult. Mind you, a 1-1 draw would be enough to go through.

So, today it was back to the league, with Arsenal hoping to at least maintain a five point lead. Things couldn’t have started in worse fashion with Eduardo suffering a horrific broken leg in the second minute. The injury was so bad that Sky declined to show a replay – but later Match of the Day did (after issuing a warning), and now I wished I’d looked away. No wonder the Arsenal players looked so distraught. That’s Eduardo out for a year. I am glad that Arsene Wenger retracted and apologised for his earlier comments about Martin Taylor, the unfortunate perpetrator of the tackle – I was planning a post to say that I thought Wenger was wrong to make the comments, and ‘excessive’ was exactly the word I would have used.

However…

Wenger has a right to feel aggrieved about other incidents in the game. Birmingham scored from a free kick which was dubious in it’s award to say the least. Later, 2-1 up, Arsenal had a clear penalty claim ignored when Adebayor was held back. But worst of all was Birmingham’s awarded penalty – Gael Clichy was judged to have brought down Stuart Parnaby. But replays clearly showed that Clichy reached the ball first, thus making it a legal tackle. Well done the ref… a closet ManYoo fan perhaps?

Still there was always the hope that Newcastle could get a draw or even a win against ManUre, and surely Newcastle couldn’t suffer a defeat as bad as the last time they met the South East’s favourites (6-0). It certainly wasn’t as bad… but 5-1 was bad enough. What happened to that team who stuffed ManYoo 5-0 in October 1996? David Ginola, Les Ferdinand, Alan Shearer, Philippe Albert… even Darren Peacock… come back, your former club needs you.

I hope Arsenal take the Premier League title, but much more so I hope Eduardo makes a full recovery and is playing again as soon as possible. To me it’s only a game, but to that unfortunate 24 year-old it’s a career and a way of life.

Despite the small version number increment, there’s a heap of new stuff in Notes / Domino version 8.0.1 (made available this week). There’s some new compression technology which can see your mail box and other valuable Notes application shrink in size by around 35%. There’s some new stuff in the calendar form, like a dedicated place for conference call information rather than putting it in the subject field… get the picture? You know who you are. Sametime 8 is integrated throughout the client, the Symphony editors are mail-enabled, and there’s the Quickr side-shelf (once Quickr 8.1 is made available later this quarter). On the Domino server there’s free in-the-box mobile e-mail in the form of Traveler.

However, the big new feature is ‘My Widgets’ – but I should say “features” as My Widgets is a set of capabilities. Here’s what you can do:

• Add a Notes view, web page, RSS feed or Google Gadget to the Notes sidebar – the cool thing about this is that the sidebar is no longer necessarily the domain of the developer, it’s in the hands of the end user.
• See recognised ‘live text’ which has associated actions – and create your own recognisers to recognise items which are important to you. More on this later.
• Associate your own actions with selected text – see below.

My frolleague and long-time Lotus stalwart Alan Lepofsky posted (internally to IBM) some examples of widgetising your Notes client, and I only had to look at one before getting the idea. The first thing I did was followed Alan’s example of performing a Wikipedia search on highlighted text from an e-mail. Easy. And following the same process I then created another action for finding a person in IBM’s corporate directory BluePages. And then a highlighted word in dictionary.com – this was all too easy. How about a bit more of a challenge?

So, wouldn’t it be cool if you saw a postcode in an e-mail or calendar appointment, and that postcode was ‘live’ so that clicking on it plotted the location on a Google map? Answer: yes.

Okay, the first thing Notes had to do was recognise the text. UK postcodes (usually) have a format like TW18 3AG. A bit of hunting in Dogear (part of Lotus Connections) produced some info on recogniser formats, and thus a UK postcode requires the following format:

[A-Z]{2}[0-9]{2}[ ]{1}[0-9]{1}[A-Z]{2}

Once this recogniser has been created, Notes will put a green dotted line (default option) under postcodes and any other text it recognises. But now you need an action to go with the recognised postcode. The key to doing this is to grab the format of the URL that Google Maps (UK) will use – so for Lotus Park in Staines it will be:

http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=TW18+3AG

You then create the widget via the ‘Getting started with widget’s toolbar button and select ‘Web Page’ from the list. Hit ‘Next’ and then select ‘Web page by URL’ and paste in that URL. Hit ‘Next’ again and then select ‘This Web Page’. Hit ‘Next’ again, the web page will display, but carry onto the next stage. Edit the component name, and then you see that one of the input field contains TW18 3AG. Turn on this field with the check box, but remove the postcode from the right-hand side to leave the field blank. At the bottom select ‘ Wire as an action’ and hit ‘Next’. In the next stage you utilise your recogniser by selecting ‘Recognised content’ and then ‘Postcode’ from the drop-down list (you can create a new recogniser at this point). Select where you want to see the results – sidebar panel, new window, floating window or new tab, that’s up to you. Hit ‘Next’ and you’re finished.

Now you can go find a postcode somewhere and try it out. The picture above shows a right-click, but you can set the action going with a single left-click.

Addendum: some UK postcodes have only digit in the first set (e.g. SE1 9PZ), so the recogniser expression needs an ‘or’ operator (|) followed by the other possible expression, as follows:

[A-Z]{2}[0-9]{2}[ ]{1}[0-9]{1}[A-Z]{2}|[A-Z]{2}[0-9]{1}[ ]{1}[0-9]{1}[A-Z]{2}

A quick synopsis. First of all, two well-deserved awards for the Foo Fighters (best international group and album) – anyone else winning those would have been a travesty in my humble opinion.

Best live band – Take That? Well, their New Year’s Even gig shown on t.v. was actually quite good, but you could imagine Muse feeling a bit hard done by. Mark Ronson won the best male artist – despite the fact that I thought his set at the Electric Proms was excellent, you have to consider that this is an award won by a man who has essentially produced an album of covers. What does that say about the range of options?

Amy Winehouse stayed sober and upright long enough to sing twice, but during her second performance she jigged and squirmed and clutched at her dress like someone needing the toilet. Or perhaps in need of something else.

Now here comes my gripe. What do people see in the Arctic Monkeys? I just don’t get it. Best album and best group. Huh? I’m in my, errr, early forties, perhaps I’m not supposed to get it. Mind you, I like the Foo Fighters, Smashing Pumpkins, Incubus, Muse, The Flaming Lips, Manic Street Preachers, Supergrass – my point is I’m not a Val Doonican fan in a rocking chair (yet). I just don’t get what people see in the Arctic Monkeys.

And finally, an outstanding contribution to music award for Sir Paul. About time too. Other than that the whole thing was rather forgettable.

I have been given permission by the incredibly handsome and well-educated owner of this blog to request the assistance of the numerous visitors who frequent this excellent site. [Darren's note - I didn't add that, honestly]

I am Steve, brother of the aforementioned handsome chap and I live in Florida with my family. We are here on an E2 Treaty Investor Visa, which means that we get to invest a large sum of money in a US business, employ US citizens, pay our fair share in taxes, but get not a lot in return in terms of being able to stay here indefinitely.

I would like to direct your attention to a web site that Darren has helped me set up to try and address some of the issues involved with being in the US on this type of visa.

The web site is www.E2Reform.org. Please take a look. It might appear somewhat familiar to you.

A bill was introduced into congress last year which would have gone some way into improving our situation, but as it is an election year, most politicians will not go anywhere near it as it deals with immigration. It might as well say “make 12 million Mexicans citizens” for all the support it has received.

On the site, you will also find an on-line petition, where you can add your support to help the thousands of other E2 Visa holders in the same predicament.

Or you could visit it directly from here… http://www.petitiononline.com/mod_perl/signed.cgi?E2Reform

I will close with a threat. When our children reach the age of 21, they are no longer covered by the parental visa and would be forced by the US Government to return back to England. That means that a number of their parents who may have spent many years in the Florida sunshine will be returning to the UK with them. The skin on some of us is so tanned and dried out that we look rather like alligator skin handbags… you wouldn’t want that would you?

Thanks in advance for any support you are prepared to give.

Steve

September 2006… I had a meeting in Aberdeen and then Matt, Kemal and I journeyed to Edinburgh in Matt’s car. When Matt dropped me off at my hotel, I picked my bag up out of the boot (trunk if you’re American) and immediately noticed it was warm. Closer inspection showed that the ThinkPad T40 hadn’t suspended and had been running for three hours inside the bag (ironically, having two batteries attached is normally a good thing). The hard disk had roasted so I had lost everything (including the presentation I was due to deliver the next day), and this proved to be a monumental pain in the arse for weeks and months to come. Just as annoying as losing work stuff, I also lost the last ever pictures I’d taken of my dad. I think I also came close to physically assaulting several people who said “oh, I hope you had backups”.

Shortly after this I acquired an external USB drive.

February 2008… I’d taken the ThinkPad (a newer one, a T60 which has an annoying aversion to external monitors and projectors which means I still have to cart the T40 around sometimes) to the in-laws to show them the family tree progress and to grab some info from their memories and some birth, marriage and death certificates (jolly way to spend a Sunday). After Sunday dinner we went for a walk, then Lauren spent a while surfing the interweb before we made our way home. I shut the T60′s lid and stuffed it into the Lotusphere 2007 rucksack.

Back at home I experienced a sense of impending doom… the whole bag felt really hot and there was a, well, not burning smell but the smell of electrical stuff that’s got really hot. The T60 was very warm, much warmer than I remembered the T40 being. The battery warning light was flashing and it was back at the boot-up password screen. My first thought was “oh no, not again” and my second was how much of a pain in the arse it was going to be for months, not to mention tomorrow, if everything was gone.

I took the battery off, left it open to cool, went for a bath, and then thirty minutes later with great trepidation attached the power and booted up. I don’t think I’ve ever been so glad to see the Windows logon screen.

Two things I have been reminded of today. Always check your laptop has actually suspended before you put it in the bag, and back-up important stuff even more frequently than you do already. Phew…

I think I’ve used that rather poor-quality play on words before. Anyway, my older brother Florida Steve (who might have had a more prolific career as a guest blogger here) is now the proud owner of his own WordPress blog. There were a few challenges in setting it up, most of which went away when his hosting company moved him from a Windows server onto a Linux server (say no more).

His debut posting features an account of a no-doubt deafening evening at a gig by a reformed Van Halen at the Amway Arena in Orlando. I know we’ll all be looking forward to a double helping of wisdom and balanced opinions from the Adams brothers in the future.

Datamation have announced their ‘2008 Products of the Year‘ winners. As it’s only February I feel it might be a trifle early to assess the whole of 2008, but it’s probably like the Brit Awards 2008 where they announce the best of 2007 (but without the booze, drugs and egos).

A few mentionables among the winners… Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 won the Enterprise Linux category (there can’t be that many potential winners there, surely), the Apple iPhone’s mantelpiece gets a shade heavier, and IBM’s Innov8 wins the Business / IT Alignment category “by a landslide”.

However, most notable for me is the winner of the Office Productivity Software category… IBM Lotus Symphony. This win is described as “a major eyebrow raiser” and “a huge upset”. An upset for who? I’m not upset about it. This just shows that some people are prepared to be bold and break free from the perceived norm. If this were just a vote for open standards, you might have expected OpenOffice to grab the honour. The page promises to provide in-depth coverage of the winners over the next few weeks, so hopefully we’ll get to see why Symphony took the crown.

I was working at the Camberley office today when I heard an all-too-familiar noise. I looked out the window and saw our most frequent-visiting vixen calling her mate who trotted up to her a few seconds later. The female was last seen sun-bathing beyond the rhododendrons on Sunday, and then she ventured into our garden for a quick drink from the bird-bath. Today the ginger twosome (named Basil and Roxy by Lauren) both had a drink – and then while Roxy sat on the steps waiting patiently, Basil scampered off to annoy next door’s dog (Tommy). I bet the cunning devil knows that Tommy is restricted by an electrical circuit running round the garden. After a few minutes Basil returned, nuzzled his mate, and they disappeared into the bushes.

Lauren has mixed feelings about the foxes as they’re one of the reasons we’re not having a pet rabbit. Personally I love seeing them, but I just wish they’d stay away from the dustbin.

Call me an unromantic old cynic, but isn’t St Valentine’s Day just another occasion promoted by greetings card companies and florists to swell their own coffers? Isn’t it strange that the price of roses suddenly peaks on February 14th?

Okay, I bought the wife a card and a very nice tasteful gift. But while I was in the card shop looking through the selection of over-priced printed cardboard I noticed cards that sons could send to their mums and cards from the family’s dog. Wikipedia describes St Valentine’s Day as “the traditional day on which lovers express their love for each other”. So, sending THAT sort of greetings card to your mother, I believe that’s known as Oedipus Syndrome. And receiving one from the dog, quite frankly, that’s just not right.

Mother’s Day is less than a month away (florists, rub your greedy hands with glee). Then Easter… I don’t think we’ve ever been in the habit of sending Easter cards, but greetings card companies would like us to remind our friends of Christ’s resurrection with the words “Happy Easter”. Was it a happy time for Jesus? I don’t think so. Then Father’s Day. If they’re looking to plug a gap in the calendar where people are inconsiderate enough only to celebrate birthdays, I’m sure you’ll find “Happy Summer Solstice” cards in your local shop. And then perhaps “send your friend a piece of printed cardboard” day.

Please remember to recycle, because we’re running out of rainforest.

Warren Elsmore has announced that the UKLUG meeting will take place on the 18th and 19th of September 2008 in London. This follows directly on from Collaboration University (which you’d be mad to miss) so a busy week for those who follow the divine Lotus path.

The UKLUG 2007 meeting was a great success, although the free venue very generously donated by ComputaCenter had a limit of one hundred attendees. This meant a large waiting list and a great many disappointed people. But buoyed by the interest and the turnout, not to mention the number of customers prepared to stand up and talk, Warren is planning two days this time round, and a venue that can accommodate at least two hundred people and possibly two tracks.

Like the SNUG (Scottish Notes User Group) and ILUG (Irish Lotus User Group) events, UKLUG will be free (and by the way, is not an IBM event). To cover the costs we’ll be looking for sponsors – this is a big ask given that many of the usual suspects will already be funding ILUG, which this year is a whopping three-day event on the 4th to 6th of June (in Dublin, of course).

As for SNUG (you’ll appreciate we couldn’t call it SLUG), planning gets under way this week, and I think we’ll be looking at a Spring event.

A big thank you to the passion of everyone who makes these events possible… Warren and Kitty, Paul Mooney, Bill Buchan, Matt White, Julian Woodward, Tom Duff, Mike Smith, and apologies to anyone I’ve missed. Not to mention Graeme Clark and all the guys from Standard Life, Mark Calleran from the Salvation Army (a big hit last year and a huge appreciation of the work that his wonderful organisation does worldwide), Brian Ford from HSBC, Neil and Darren from Prudential, Steven Haugen from Scottish & Newcastle, all of the other customer speakers, and last but not least, the very generous sponsors.