Ben Gillam’s posterous

Just good songs - Spotify Playlist

I put this together to listen to at work

Some of the artists on the list:

Dire Straits
Nirvana
Europe
Pet Shop Boys
Dr Dre
Bob Marley
Queen
Rolling Stones

Many more...

http://open.spotify.com/user/bengillam/playlist/4uIe1Cxkp7WBe48cSqKMYM#

Hope you enjoy :)

Missed breakfast got up to late so ended up with this at work lol :)

Quick Review: The Invention of Lying

I don know about you but I find Ricky Gervais a bit hit and miss, sometimes he cam be quite funny and other times
quite repetative. This time he was onto a winner.

Gervais plays Mark Ellison a screenwriter in a surreal world where nobody can lie until one day he suddenly discovers he I the only man Im the world who can tell porkies, but he quickly gets himself in in a world of bother.

Admittedly this probably won't be the film of the year but it's a good lighthearted family comedy worth a watch. 3.5/5

My Posterous is open!

As part of my ongoing plan to focus my blogs more this will hopefully become my main area for personal blogging and stuff thats on my mind, whereas the main site will remain focused on internet and tech stuff.

And just for the hell of it here is a video of Ruby playing with a laser :)

Whats wrong with the UK

I'm sure I'm not alone on this one but it cannot be denied that in this country most people are pessimistic about everything, kids are going mad (read playing with knives for the hell of it) and people these days rarely have a friendly conversation or even say hello to people they don't know. I've just moved into a small village on the outskirts of Uckfield where there is a very friendly atmosphere, when I walk to the village shop people say hello or have a chat in the shop, its quite a stark contrast compared to living in a bigger built up town, but why is it? Its not like people in the towns are horrible or bad people but its become the norm to keep yourself to yourself and interact only with your existing friends and family.

Passed BCP-213 :)

Not been able to post much lately, been very busy with work, studying and most importantly getting our housing situation under control, but thought id slap a quick post up. The day didn't start too well, I got to work, got the sat nav ready, checked what i needed to take and set off. I got to the exam center in good time, then they asked for my two forms of ID, no problem i thought and went to get my credit card and drivers license... WTF its not there, then i remembered that I had taken it out of my wallet and put into the plastic wallet along with the counterpart as I'd rented a van a few days ago and apparently forgot to put it back...DOH!! (in true homer, echo fashion!), but they were nice enough to let me take the exam later in the day which meant i didn't have to waste the £76 entry fee, so a big thanks to ADA Computer Services in Burgess Hill. This time round i found the exam easier as it was server based which I had a lot more experience of as well as an extensive experience of Microsoft exchange, but there were still a few tricky questions i fell down on but my scorecard will help me target areas i could do with improving. So now ive got the Blackberry Certified Server Support Specialist title under my belt. It feels good now that I am working hard towards some meaningful qualifications for my line of work, after making a pigs ear of my GCSE's its nice finally be able to prove myself in something im interested in :)

Homemade Reflector Test Shots

I had been meaning to do this for a while but today i finally got myself round to making a reflector for photography use. Its a fairly basic construction, some tin foil round a piece of card but it does make quite a difference. Here are a few tests i did with a soft toyand you can see how the reflected light make the shot much more interesting.  Im planning on taking some macro shots of plants at the weekend so i might try and make another one with a hole in the middle for the lens to go though for a kind of cheap alternative to a ring flash kind of thing. Let me know what you think. [Gallery=20]

BCP-211 Passed :)

Just a quickie post to say I just passed the first of my two blackberry exams on the track to become a BlackBerry Certified Server Support Specialist :). The exam I did was the Supporting BlackBerry Devices in an Enterprise Environment exam and was actually surprisingly tough for me. I have not had a huge amount of experience with the handsets themselves, only having had one for daily use for around 2 months since I started my new job. A lot of the questions were very fiddly and based on how to get to a menu in the desktop software or on the device itself. I took the exam at a testing center called ADA Computer Systems in Burgess Hill, it was quite easy to find and everyone there was helpful and got me setup and ready as soon as I arrived. I'm hoping the next exam (BCP-213 - BCP-213 Supporting a BlackBerry Enterprise Server in a Microsoft® Exchange Environment) will be a little bit easier as I have had a fair bit more experience with the servers than the handsets! and I have also recently been on the 3 day training course at the RIM office in Slough. I'm going to try a bit more reading up and then go for the exam in a couple of weeks.

Exam booked

It's now been just under two months since my training at Research in motion in Slough and after reading the training manual cover to cover and administering our in house server and devices I feel ready to take the exam. I booked it via Prometrics UK call center as their website seems to be permanently broken and was able to get a slot tomorrow morning at a local testing center. Wish me luck!!

Britains got talent - Allegedly!

I wont ramble on here, but it seems to me that the standard of entries for Britain's got talent has gone through the floor, so much so that were now forced to listen to a crazy sod trying to play the sax with his voice. That said i think Flawless and Diversity are both fantastic and a breath of fresh air from the usual boring nonsense that they let through, but the pessimist in me tells me that it'll be a singer again this year.