Author: Mark

Reading the emergency card

A kind-of followon  to my earlier post about safety briefings. I just got off a flight where I was sitting next to a dead-heading pilot on her way to another job. Before takeoff she very carefully reviewed the safety card. That struck me as unusual – it’s one of those things I only expect first-timers to do.

Though I have to admit I can’t see those cards without thinking of Fight Club.

I’m not really that colour

I didn’t know this video had gone live, and found it by chance while looking for something else.

I think it was the first time I’d done anything long direct to camera, and that shows. And I’m not really that John Boehner/Dale Winton (trying to cover different country reference points) colour. But it was a fun thing to do one afternoon while we were writing the book last year. Hopefully the video release means that the final edited version of the redbook is closer too.

 

How simply can you describe MQ?

Came across this XKCD graphic, trying to describe the Apollo 5 rocket using just the most common 1000 words in English. Which has led to this page, allowing you to try to express an idea with the same limitations.

So I started to wonder about how to explain MQ, and quickly found that “message” is not in the permitted list. It could be made easier if there were a linked thesaurus, but that takes some of the fun away.

I did get as far as “conversation between computers can continue even when one not running”.

This post was last updated on November 18th, 2019 at 03:36 pm

Show, don’t tell. MS0P education on youtube.

I’ve just released a new version of SupportPac MS0P V7.1.0.2 containing a couple of new features. This package started out as my attempt to learn Java programming and it did one thing only, formatting MQ event messages into readable text from within the MQ Explorer.

MS0P Event Formatter

Over the years it has grown into a collection of utilities, still mostly for the Explorer, but all aimed at making it easier to use MQ. Although the package contains documentation, we all know how much people read the books (at least it’s not an InfoCentre format). And so I decided to produce video demonstrations as an alternative.

Continue reading “Show, don’t tell. MS0P education on youtube.”

This post was last updated on November 18th, 2019 at 08:56 pm

Bigger Brother draft redbook also now available

The first public draft of the full V7.1 and V7.5 redbook is now available. The (very) big brother of the new MQ primer has about 450 pages of information and scenarios. As a draft, again, it’s subject to change before final publication.

This book is completely new. It covers a mix of features on both distributed and z/OS platforms.

Draft MQ Primer available (for a short time)

In a previous post I wrote about getting the 1999 MQSeries Primer updated.

Now other people can get to see if it was worth it by going to http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/abstracts/redp4930.html  http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/redpieces/abstracts/redp0021.html where they will find this short document.

Update: The draft has moved location – part of the process of giving it the same form-number as the predecessor redpiece. Annoying it happened during this draft process, but the draft address has always been temporary anyway,

Redpiece 4930 cover
MQ Primer – cover

Read more about the draft here

This post was last updated on November 14th, 2019 at 06:42 am

Storm Avoidance

 

I was due to fly to New York this weekend, but unsurprisingly the meeting got cancelled. It will be interesting to see just how long it takes for my credit card to get refunded for the ticket – taking money out seems very fast but for some reason the other direction is incredibly slow.

But I’m glad I wasn’t in the air for this one. I was just talking with a friend who flew home through Miami 2 days ago and he said it was the worst turbulence he’d ever experienced. (Matt doesn’t travel as much as some, but he does do enough to have some idea of “normal” bumpiness.)

It reminded me of this supposedly short flight that I was on a few months ago.
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Grab your ankles – or why the safety video is not required

Anyone who flies a lot knows the safety videos and demonstrations given at the start of the flight. We can probably recite it ourselves (except that because almost all my trips use the same airline, I do get a bit of a jolt when travelling on a different one and the words are in a slightly different order.)

But a recent flight showed me just how unnecessary this demo is.
Continue reading “Grab your ankles – or why the safety video is not required”