Paul Taylor’s Post

I don't know who else does this, but since the death of optical media on desktops I orient my main PC back to front, so all the ports I need are in front of me.

Can we be honest about cloud? It's convenience at a cost. It's renting other people's hardware and software. Little of what it does is specific to cloud, apart from the monthly cloud bill and the proprietary configurations you need to conform to. You can orchestrate containers outside of cloud. You can even do auto-scaling to some extent with a redundant server or three, and it might actually be cheaper. I'm personally sceptical about auto-scaling. While it's great for those sudden demand firms previously mentioned, it also enables and makes you pay for non-performant systems. Automated deployments can be done with anything. Don't get me wrong. It's perfect for some use cases and firms. It really suits cases where you can have a huge surge in demand, such as a tickets site selling a popular festival. Conversely, it's also really good for low-traffic sites while they're getting off the ground. I run a cloud-based website and it costs me about £17 a month because it's not popular (ha!). In the middle, I think people genuinely need to consider whether cloud is the best option for them. Too often, it's just the default. It's convenient. If we're using cloud because it absolutely suits your use case, fair play. If we're using it as a crutch, perhaps we need to walk on our own feet again.

Great day yesterday at the inaugural Hotelplan UK IT away day. A lovely surprise to win an award, but most of the credit belongs to my team and colleagues, something I recognised in the morning stand-up. A special well done to Syreeta Deller who deservedly picked up two awards, not including the medal she deserves for putting up with me. Thanks to all who had a part in sorting a wonderful day out. It was much needed by all.

Bit of a first for me today. spent a couple of hours working in VR. Three giant virtual screens replicating my three physical screens. As someone with low vision, it is a genuine game changer and I'm left thinking it would have an equally profound effect on many people that that wouldn't necessarily be the target sales demographic The elderly would be a case in point. a truly enabling technological refinement. we've come a long way from The Lawnmower Man.

I used to do a fun test when interviewing people for coding roles. We'd yank one of the worst pieces of legacy code from our repo, and then ask them to comment on how they might improve it. It was a great way to gauge where folk were at, what they thought important and whether or not they practiced clean code. I reckon this sort of test has more value than ever in the age of ChatGPT. Unless you have cast-iron standards of invigilation, I think it beats online coding tests any day of the week.

I really don't like the state of laptops these days. Time was, you could provide a giant performance boost just by upgrading your RAM. That's looking to be increasingly done and dusted. The prevalence of soldered-on memory has rendered laptops a disposable commodity with a cynically-limited shelf-life. It's no longer about replacing components. It's about replacing an entire machine. Some might say "well, that's the cost of miniaturisation", and that's certainly true, but if form factor is nerfing functionality and product longevity, perhaps we can afford to carry a little more weight. We managed before, after all.

Playing about with a mapping API. I started my coding career at Ordnance Survey, therefore I find it impossible not to get geeky about maps.

Delighted to have finished my first few days as Integration Lead at Hotelplan UK! Thanks to old colleagues and customers for the LinkedIn recommendations and sharing my Open To Work post. A special thanks to my daughter Kira Taylor for convincing me to post it. At my age, you can be too proud for your own good. People trawl that hashtag every day; use it. Thanks to my new colleagues for making me feel so welcome and arming me for the challenges ahead. It's difficult to enjoy a Friday when you're out of work, so you'll forgive me if I enjoy tonight. Thanks again, everybody. Have a great weekend.