Why oh why???

Well if the rest of the internet is to be believed, see slashdot.org or iPodLounge as examples, Apple and Motorola are going to announce a mobile phone that has iTunes built in. Why oh why????

It used to be called convergence but that terms seems have been dropped lately. Why does everything, and in particular cell phones, need to do everything. I was looking for a new phone earlier in the year and was offered a Motorola Razr - went online to read some reviews and discovered it wasn't that great a phone according to the star ratings. But when I read the reviews it turned out it was just fine as a phone but apparently the camera isn't that great! I wasn't looking for a camera I just wanted a phone - and it's a really neat phone.

So shortly I should be able to get a phone that runs iTunes and lets me hear music, provides all the pda organiser features I'd ever need, has a squigapixel camera, has GPS to tell me where I am and how to get to the coffee shop and when I get there will let me surf the net over WiFi... That's if I don't turn it on for too long because, with that lot, the battery life is going to be rather short and I'll have to upgrade and reinforce the pockets in my jacket so that my phone will fit in and stay in. Fume.... I'm quite happy with an iPod for music, the GPS in the car, my pda to tell me what to do next and something with a sizeable screen if I want to surf the net. I think Donald Norman was right with The Design of Everyday Things when he suggests that specialisation will always win over generalisation.

Moving on to Agility

With the PMP Exam out of the way, I think I'm going to go back to re-read the Scrum book by Ken Schwaber. I've also got the Barry Boehm book on Balancing Agility and Discipline - that might need another read too.

This months books

The books I've read this month have all been in relation to the PMP exam:

Passed the PMI PMP Exam

Passed my Project Management Professional exam this morning – have a look at www.pmi.org to find out what I’m talking about. Quite a relief really – it would have been kind of embarassing to fail given that I’ve been involved in project management for over 10 years now. In the end I was quite happy with the result.

It’s been an interesting process and has definitely helped to fill in some of the gaps in my project management experience – there is always more to learn.

See more progress on: Get PMP certification

learn to play the harmonica

I’ve just added this as a goal to 43things.com. But now that I’ve done it I realise I’m now going to have to find out how to buy a beginners harmonica. I’ll have to ask my mate Alan at grapefruitmoon.co.uk who seems to know and play every musical instrument you can think of.

See more progress on: learn to play the harmonica

Nearly finished studying for the PMP exam

Not long now to my exam and seem to have hit a bit of a barrier on the sample tests front. I seem to be consistently passing ok but there are a class of questions that I just don’t seem to be getting right – kind of esoteric questions that you could easily end up having a debate about rather than finding a straight answer. Just makes the exam a bit too unpredictable.

See more progress on: Get PMP certification

Gmail looks fresh - Google does it again

Well, thanks to Thomas Munkholt I’ve got a gmail account.

The interface looks cool but I’m not quite sure what I’m going to use it for yet – at least it’ll let me have a go at Google Talk.

See more progress on: Get a gmail account

Cowboy Junkies streamed video

Just found this - a Cowboy Junkies special recorded for RTE, the Irish TV Station earlier this year. There's a link at the bottom of their page for some pretty high quality streaming video.

Defining Objectives and recording achievements

You’ll see from the list down that’s down the right side of my blog that I’ve now got a list of things that I’m doing or that I’ve set myself as goals to do. The list is set up at www.43things.com which seems like a great place to define those kind of things.

See more progress on: Try out 43 Things

Bad Smells in Project Management

Do you ever have, what you think is, a new thought but then realise that maybe it's just something you've just read about a while back? I was thinking about project management today - that's what I tend to do during business hours. Anyway, I was thinking that I could probably apply the design and code "Bad Smells" technique described in the agile methods literature just as effectively to Project Management.

But now that I think about it maybe I've just read it in the Scrum book or maybe that Barry Boehm book that compares standard vs agile approaches. I'm going to have to go off and investigate...

Electronic Books

I've just finished reading, "Preparing for the Project Management Professional (PMP) Certification Exam", Second Edition by Michael W. Newell. The book itself was less than exciting but it is the first book I've ever read from start to finish online, on a monitor. And I have to say that, despite the fact that I usually give up on the second paragraph of a website, the book reading experience wasn't too bad. books24x7.com keep the formating simple which helps I guess.

I've read a few electronic books on my old Palm-based PDA and my newer Pocket PC - but that's different somehow because you still hold the book in your hand and can carry it about the place. Big PC monitor was ok for a text book, I doubt I'd want stick glued to the screen for something fictional.

Interesting fact...

Apparently according to similarminds.com I'm just like:

What Famous Leader Are You?
personality tests by similarminds.com

Hmmm... maybe I can see where they're coming from - I do quite fancy riding round South America on a motorbike. But then again I don't ride a bike and I don't do air travel so that seems a bit unlikely.

Project Management Body of Knowledge in my Pocket

I've just taken the Project Management Body of Knowledge from the Project Management Institute and transferred it onto my Pocket PC. It's a pdf file but I've got a version of Adobe Acrobat Reader for Pocket PC so I can see it on the screen, whether or not I'll actually be able to read a 403 page document on that size of screen is another matter. Either way it should fix my insomnia...

In the beginning...

I had no idea what to write, but I better put something in here to see if it all works!