Friday 27 February 2009

Music

We went to someone's house for a meal last weekend and they streamed music all night from a laptop - something called musicovery.com. I remembered and tried it tonight and it's pretty interesting. It's probably very old fashioned and I've only just found it but that's OK. I wonder what a "peoplecovery" tool would look like - mood, temp, genre, decade etc. Also it works on iTunes but not on an iPhone! It's free of course.

Tuesday 24 February 2009

Information Security Report

Invited to brief the Senior manager's at yesterday morning's weekly meeting about the paper that we put together for ISC on short, medium and longer term responses to the risks we perceive around information access and security isssues. I had seen an article late last week in The Times that was circulated to the UCISA lists and took that issue along too - the risks we are monitoring can change quite quickly and we need to be able to adapt - this related to the announcements that further website monitoring was being proposed in the area of monitoring "extremism" on campus. Being more proactive has potential resource implications for us.

Monday 23 February 2009

Rollercoaster

We took a few days holiday over the February half term and visited Bristol, Stratford-Upon-Avon and Alton Towers theme park. The weather was kind so we were able to wander around the docks at Bristol where the SS Great Britain is moored and enjoy the re-developments that have taken place since we went to University there in the mid 1980s. Stratford was a bit like an upmarket theme park with all the shakespeare-inspired stuff but not too full of tourists at this time of year. They are also re-deloping the RSC and the waterfront area with landscaping. I'm not keen on rollercoasters etc but always end up on them to avoid family humiliation and usually don't regret it. This time it was the turn of Oblivion and Air but fortunately for me some of the others like Nemesis were closed. On balance, I prefer the squirrel nutty rides

Thursday 12 February 2009

e-revolution book

Some time ago I was fortunate enough to be involved with a small group of people that met to consider issues around Higher Education and the impact of IT (the so-called e-revolution).

JISC has now published this as an e-book and there will be an interactive blog hosted by Jos Boys the editor and driving force behind the whole initiative. ‘The e-Revolution and Post-Compulsory Education: Using e-business models to deliver quality education’. The aim is to offer senior managers in further (FE) and higher education (HE) best-practice guidance for applying e-business approaches to their institutions. This is about being business-like as opposed to being corporate. Given the recent economic downturn and seismic shifts on a global scale, it will be interesting to reflect how the e-revolution will play out in the next year.

Wednesday 11 February 2009

Bolt in 3D

We went to see the new CGI animation from Disney in 3D called Bolt. I think this is Disney's first full movie in 3D and we have been lucky enough to see 3D short films at the Disney Parks and this was just as good. It was so good that after a little while you became immersed and didn't notice the 3D effects. Well worth watching on the big screen and the £2 supplement for the glasses!

Friday 6 February 2009

IT Services Newsletter #6

Welcome to the first newsletter of 2009 - there is a lot to report as it has been a very hectic period for IT Services. With apologies if some of you already know some of this information. As always comments and feedback welcome.

Launch of power management solution - saving energy and greening IT

A power management solution has been implemented by Alastair Wills which affects all of the student PC "clusters" located in Richmond, Chesham and JBP Buildings. The total number is around 350 computers. A web page provides students with the locations and availability of all these computers in real time and it can also be viewed on mobile devices (smartphone etc) and on plasma screens in the JBP Building.

It is an extension to the system which automatically maintains each of these student computers. So as well as managing the cluster computers on a room by room basis when to maintain themselves (e.g. to download software patches or new versions of application software) we can also set machines on a room by room basis to shutdown after a variable period of time and also at what time of night they should shut themselves down. They don’t however shut down if either there is someone logged on or they are due to maintain themselves that night. The nightly shutdown can be set for individual days so that where rooms are open 24 hours a day (for example all of the computers in JBP Building) we may leave them on but during the weekend they will shutdown when the rooms are locked.

Based on the ICT Energy Footprint toolkit, and making a number of general assumptions about power use and existing use of standby modes for PCs and monitors, this has probably delivered an annual 15% saving in electricity usage equivalent to 10,000 kWh (estimated about £1k per annum)

E-Learning Showcase and IT Futures Events

During January there were 2 events organised by our colleagues in the Centre for Academic Practice which involved a number of people in IT services. The first event was an e-learning showcase and I was as one of the "rapporteurs". You can read my observations on this event here.

Change Management Programme

This programme is now up and running and Peter Bollands has had introductory meetings with a number of people. You can find the documents for the project initiation meeting which provides a fuller explanation at H:/Exchange/ProjectManagement/Projects/IT Services Change Management/.
One of the tasks that Peter facilitated in January were four self-assessment workshops based on the Information Systems Management and Governance framework. Robina Chatham provided a half day workshop for LSS Board members at an event on January 9th titled "understanding each other and the art of influencing". Jermyn Consulting have begun the business continuity work and met with Jeff Lucas at the end of January to begin that process.

Positive feedback on Office 2007 roll-out

A number of members of staff have recently commented on the proactive and professional way in which the roll-out of Microsoft Office 2007 has been handled including the training and software upgrade components. Thank you to all those who are involved in this activity.

Supporting services over the Christmas/New Year period

As you know students and staff returned on Monday January 5th this year with an immediate start into examinations. This means that students were busy revising and accessing learning materials throughout the Christmas/New Year period. All major IT services remained available throughout this period for access both on-campus and off-campus. In addition, major electrical works at the Emm Lane campus meant that backup generators were being used to power services including our wide area network links to JANET and the Internet. My thanks to those people who agreed to be available on a call-out basis over this crucial period for our students

Major successful changes during Christmas "at risk" period

A number of major changes and upgrades were implemented during the agreed at risk period including launch of new data storage capacity (for staff filestore on Novell), upgrades to the email service, hardware upgrades to the SAINT test, development and web environments, and Blackboard software patches. Thank you to all those involved in planning and executing these major service changes.

Successful launch of Computer Aided Assessment Sunray Cluster

The facility on F Floor Richmond Building will already be familiar to many of you involved in setting up and commissioning the service. Initial feedback on the pilot launch of the facility has been very positive although making it happen required a very significant amount of resources - people and computer hardware - and while the student experience was excellent there are many things to sort out before the service can be launched on a production basis. Congratulations to Sara Eyre and her project team on making this happen on time.

Service Status now more transparent
T
here were also some service disruptions in this period including a day without the email service and a service interuption during part of a weekend on the University web server. Many staff have commented on whether we could arrange for a day without email on a more regular basis! Seriously, this was a very major disruption and we are grateful to Geoff and his team for resolving the problems without losing any of our emails, and also others who managed to keep excellent communications via the web and telephone to keep people informed. The new service status page was a huge success with thousands of "hits".

Note about Dates for Summer 2009 re-sits

Agreement was reached at the Learning and Teaching Committee at the end of January that the Summer resits would move to week commencing 17 August (noting that Clearing 2009 starts on the 20th August). Sara wanted to alert in case staff are affected by this e.g. support for online exams.

Sunday 1 February 2009

Lake District Weekend

We just had a great weekend in the North West Lakes at a place called eskmeals house which sort of looks like it does in the photos (probably in the Summer) but less so on a bitterly cold January weekend. There were only eighteen of us so plenty of room in this rambling old house for all of us and we managed two grand walks, a pub meal and rather a lot of wine and beer. On Sunday we had a walk around Wast Water and up onto the steep hillside including picnic lunch before heading home about 5pm. It was windy enough to be blown off your feet but it was also sunny with snow on the tops. Snow when we got back home too so gritted the road by hand (again).