I hate writing CVs. But I love reading them. I recently had the chance to review applications for some fairly senior positions at work. I'd like to talk about some of the common - and downright weird - mistakes people make on them. I promise you these are all real - only lightly adjusted for privacy. Hopefully they'll help you realise that even senior people make mistakes. Bring your whole self …
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Way back when Blackberry was the smartphone, my team at Vodafone obsessed over the idea of the "Unified Inbox". "What if," the marketing chaps said, "you could see all your notifications in one place!" Imagine a single inbox where your MySpace friend requests mingled with your Email. And your Facebook and Google Buzz notifications were in the same list. It was a lovely idea. And users all…
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I'm right about everything. My opinions are wholly rational and a product of logical analysis. Your opinions are scattered thoughts and half-remembered fairy-tales. That's how most of us think, right? The only way we can get through the day is by thinking we're correct. I want to examine some of the things I think I'm right about - but secretly worry I'm wrong about. Let's start with a gentle…
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My friend, the superhero Jess Rose, posed an interesting question. are you giving your interview questions to the candidate in advance? If not, why not? I've just conducted interviews for some senior roles at work. We run a structured interview process where every candidate gets asked the same set of questions. The interviewers record their scores. Then, after all the interviews are done, we…
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I've been building digital products and services since the dial-up era. I spent many years working in the private sector. Good design is seen as a necessity. Customers will switch to another service which is easier to use, has a better app, or offers a nicer experience. I now work in the public sector, where things are a little different. Jeffrey Allen@jallen300We're hiring #servicedesign-ers…
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I'm hooking my solar panels up to the Internet! Installation Inverter API & Code My solar panels have an API! It tells me the total amount of power they've generated each day. But there's a small problem... I have panels on the East and West sides of my roof. My solar inverter has two MPPT "String" inputs. That is, East and West supply power separately. Luckily, there's an API for that! …
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I'm hooking my solar panels up to Twitter! Installation Inverter Fronius provide a comprehensive API guide - I wish more companies did this. There are lots of unofficial libraries in a variety of different languages. I've written this code in Python3. This is a general tidy-up of the code I wrote several years ago. Here's how it works.... Every minute, the script runs from crontab. If it…
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Having solar panels on your roof is great - but you need something to turn their wicked DC electricity into pure and godly AC. This bit of kit is called an "inverter". It's a big box which lives in your roof working magic. This is what ours looks like: We chose a Fronius Primo inverter - they're a reliable brand which we used in our previous build. I've been impressed that every few months my…
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A few years ago, we installed solar panels on our roof in Oxford - I've enjoyed blogging about them. I've released open data from them, inspected them with a drone, and measured what happened during a solar eclipse. They've even been on the BBC! But the best thing I did, was release this little Twitter bot. Edent's Solar Panels@Edent_Solar AutomatedToday I generated 17.37kWh of solar…
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At a recent Staff Away-Day, we were encouraged to write a "Manual of Me". A quick summary of the general ways that you like to work. I don't spend much time on introspection and I found it disturbingly personal. So here's mine for you to enjoy! Excuse my crappy drawing and even crappier spelling. Here's a cleaner version with a bit more detail: Conditions I like to work in Quiet I hate…
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Once in a while, I'll see someone Tweet a "link" to file:///C:/users/... - that's the Microsoft Windows way of representing a location on a filesystem. Usually this means that the user has tried to either drag 'n' drop something, or copied a link from their file explorer. There are some (mild) infosec risks you should be aware of. Find local user names - this shows you what their username is…
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*sigh* These scams are really common. And pretty easy to pull off. Renting an expensive sports car for a day is relatively cheap. Drive it to some fancy locations, wear a couple of rented designer clothes, perhaps pay for a pretty model to pose as your girlfriend, take a load of photos and you can fool Instragram users into thinking you're rich and successful. And then you tell people on…
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