RIP WYG Ireland

18 years ago almost to the day, I walked into an engineering office in Lower Baggot Street in Dublin for an interview. The position was as a Cad Monkey, a very junior Cad Monkey at that, and was only meant to last 2 weeks.  Well I got that position and stayed there for 12 years.

Over the course of those 12 years, the company grew and grew. The company changed as it grew and so did its name. Parts of the original company were got rid of and new directors came on board to lead the company into the future. Along side all those changes, my role was changing too. No longer was a I junior Cad Monkey, I became the Cad Monkey, then became the Cad Manager and finally I became Systems Manager (covering CAD and IT). As my work load grew, so did my salary and to say I was happy would be an understatement. Sure not everything went to plan and not every day was a good day, but the good times far outweighed the bad. I think the key factor there was the staff, we all got on. We all liked to socialise together and we were a team, a bloody good one at that.

In 2002 things started to change. We got taken over by a multi national. They had their own ways of doing things and imposed them on us. It didn’t always go down well… They had different ideas on how to do things and they made it known. My role within this new company changed too. I went from being a Systems Manager for one Dublin office, to being IT Manager for three Dublin offices. I then was made temporary IT Manager for Ireland, a role which would soon become a permanent role. With this new role, I got to travel and meet staff in other offices through out the group and I developed friendships that I still have to this day.

As I said, after the takeover in 2002, things changed. Much as I liked many of the people I worked with, I didn’t really enjoy working there. It really started to eat away at me and by 2005, I was itching to get away. I wanted to go back to being a Cad Monkey, but due to the position I had reached, I found it difficult to find a company that would let me downgrade my career… Eventually in 2006, I got a call out of the blue and on the spur of the moment, I handed in my 30 day notice and set about getting my affairs in order. To be honest, I was a little sad to leave those people behind, but I was delighted to have left. The company I had joined all those years before, was no longer there… The soul had been ripped out of it by this corporate regime.

You are probably wondering where I am going with these ramblings. Well earlier this week, I heard the sad news that the company I left back in 2006, had gone in to liquidation. For me, it’s sad on two accounts. The first obviously being that there are people losing their jobs at a difficult time, people who have been there a long time. That’s not an easy thing to get over and there are limited jobs in the engineering market as it is here in Ireland. The second is a more personal sadness. The company I joined all those years ago in 1994 is no longer there. Sure it ceased to be back in 2002 when it was bought over, but the heart of it, the history of it, the very fibre of it, was still there. There was a family tree if you like, and sitting proudly in there, amongst all the other companies that were taken over by White Young Green (the company in question) was Cuthbert Condron Associates, a place where I learned so much and was given as much support as I needed to grow my abilities.

That lineage is now no more…. Much as I bitched and moaned about WYG to my friends and colleagues, it’s still a sad sad day to see it go from the heady heights of the Celtic Tiger to its death bed. I do believe I’ll miss the place and I never, not for a moment, thought I would say that.

 

***** Update *****

Just a brief update, it’s been reported that the WYG Offices in Northern Ireland are not affected by the above news and are trading profitably.

Charging paused. Voltage too high….

I’ve had my Samsung Galaxy S2 for almost a year now and apart from some minor issues (a lockup here or there, an unrequested reboot..), it’s been hassle free. It’s a great phone and coped with everything I could throw at it!

Then yesterday happened and I started to get the dreaded message above constantly… Click OK and it would return minutes later. Beep beep beep beep, it was enough to drive me mad, specially when it happened in the middle of calls! I could put the phone into silent mode, but then I would miss calls….

I Googled and then Googled some more and none of it looked good. Most posts out there seem to think that it is a corrosion issue in the USB port and suggest that you gently clean the port with a brush, toothpick, compressed air… I tried them all (apart from the compressed air, I was all out), to no avail.

For the hell of it, just in case it was a glitch in the matrix, I reset the phone to factory settings. I thought it was fixed, but no, the dreaded pop up and beep started all over again. I eventually gave in and returned my phone to where I bought it. Just as well, if I had waited a few days, it would have been out of warranty! I’m told I should have it back within 5 to 10 working days.

So here I sit with my backup phone, an HTC Hero, almost 3 years old. It was a fantastic phone in its day, but after using the S2 for so long, I find it incredibly slow. I shouldn’t complain though, after all, it’s still working after 3 years, unlike the S2!!

 

***** Update *****

I got my S2 back from the repair shop tonight. Not sure exactly what they fix was, they just say they replaced an electronic part and updated the system software. I presume the electronic part was the USB charging port.

RIP Neil Armstrong….

Heard the sad news tonight that Neil Armstrong has passed away aged 82. For those that don’t know, Neil Armstrong was the first man to set foot on the moon.

 

Back to School Time….

Summer is almost at an end and people are getting ready to go back to school or college. For budding engineers and architects, there are plenty of free Engineering tools out there to check out.

Draftsight, from Dassault Systèmes is a free 2D CAD Package that is compatible with AutoCAD DWG files. Best of all, it is free to use in a commercial environment also. In fact it’s my CAD package of choice at the moment. For more information, click here. Available on Windows, OSX and Linux.

I mentioned AutoCAD above. It should be noted that Autodesk make their software packages available for free to students. Unlike Draftsight above though, they cannot be used in a commercial environment. Take a look here for more information on how to sign up to the Autodesk Education Community. AutoCAD is available on Windows and OSX.

Google Sketchup, is no more… It’s now known as Trimble Sketchup. Fear not though, only the name has changed. The free version of Sketchup is still available and can be downloaded from here. Unlike other CAD vendors out there, Sketchup Professional is not available for free to students, but can be bought at a very reduced rate. Click here to read more. Available on Windows and OSX.

MicroStation PowerDraft V8i is available as a free download from Bentley. When I started as a CAD Monkey, you chose Microstation or AutoCAD. Most went for AutoCAD as there were more jobs available… I’d love to tell you more about Microstation, but I have no working knowledge of it!  For more information on their free packages for students, click here. Available on Windows.

There are other CAD Packages out there, some have free Student Editions, some don’t, but the packages above should get you started.

Next on the list is Office Software. Most famous of all is obviously Microsoft Office and it comes in a Student version, but at a price. Shop around and you may find it cheaper than listed on the Microsoft website. Available on Windows and OSX.

If you don’t feel like paying for office software, check out Libre Office. It’s not as fancy looking as MS Office, but it reads and writes MS Office file formats and does the job. Like Draftsight above, it is what I use at work. Libre Office can be downloaded here. Available on Windows, OSX and Linux.

Unfortunately, Adobe haven’t seen the light and unlike Autodesk above, charge ridiculous money for student versions of their software. Check out the prices here! Available on Windows and OSX.

There are some free alternatives out there though. GIMP, unfortunate name aside, is an excellent Photoshop alternative and can be downloaded for free from here. Inkscape is an alternative to Adobe Illustrator and does an admirable job. Inkscape can be downloaded here. Available on Windows, OSX and Linux.

One last piece of software that I use is the excellent Convert for Windows by Josh Madison. To quote the website “Convert is a free and easy to use unit conversion program that will convert the most popular units of distance, temperature, volume, time, speed, mass, power, density, pressure, energy and many others, including the ability to create custom conversions!” Convert can be downloaded here. Available on Windows.

So, that’s my round up of software for engineering and architectural students. With out doubt I have missed out on some piece of software, so feel free to tell me about it in the comments below.

4G LTE BlackBerry PlayBook….

 

Blackberry announced today that the 4G LTE version of the Playbook Tablet would be available to users in Canada from August 9th and in the US, Europe, South Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean in the coming months.

I shan’t be upgrading to this anytime soon though, and that’s not because of some hatred towards RIM. Far from it actually, I love my Blackberry Playbook, it’s just that there are no 4G networks here in Ireland at the moment!

To read more about the new tablet, check out the following sites.
Blackberry.com and Crackberry.com