Stevie Wonder

On Saturday night we went to see Stevie Wonder in concert at the Brisbane Entertainment Centre.

Being one of my all-time favourite artists, this was a rare treat, and he didn't disappoint. Both Stevie and his band were magnificent.

There were a couple of small let downs. First, while he got through most of his hits, he didn't do some of my favourite songs, such as 'Do I Do' and 'Blowin' in the Wind' (yes, I know that last one was a Bob Dylan cover), instead choosing to sing some more obscure songs which I, and everyone else judging by the lack of reaction, didn't know. They were still good though. Second, he let some 14 year old competition winner go up and sing 'I Just Called to Say I Love You', and she killed it (not in the good way).

He did a few jazz numbers, which is always fine by me, making use of the wide range of instruments in his band. He even started off with a Miles Davis number, showing off his skills on the harmonica.

All in all it was a really good night - 2 and a half hours of great music.

Maybe, Just Maybe

As the Chelsea v Liverpool game was on at midnight our time last night I recorded it and watched it before work this morning.

With Chelsea being unbeaten in the league at Stamford Bridge for 86 games, I was expecting yet another goalless or 1-1 draw between the two sides.

Incidentally, the last team to beat Chelsea at home, 4 and a half years ago, was Arsenal, and they went on to win the title.

You never know, you just never know.

I've Got Brain Ache

I'm very busy on the work front at the moment, both in my day job and with the internet business.

In my day job I'm involved in a major, very complex, government PKI project. PKI stands for Public Key Infrastructure and is basically a set of systems that can be used for issuing and signing digital certificates that can be used for encryption, authentication and other security type things. The thing about PKI is it's all about trust. If you're going to use a digital certificate to encrypt your communications, or use it for authentication (such as to gain access to a website, or even to a building by putting the certificate on a building access card) both you, and the owner of the systems, need to have confidence that the certificate hasn't been compromised in any way.

What this means is that every aspect of how the certificate is created, issued, renewed, revoked, used, and stored has to be managed in a way that covers all the potential security risks.

My job is to create a framework of rules around the entire PKI, covering everything from the physical security of the buildings and servers which will host the PKI, the security procedures for the operation of the PKI, the HR procedures to ensure the people operating the PKI can be trusted, to the technical security controls of the particular systems.

The framework has to be specific enough so it covers all the risks, but generic enough so that the PKI can be future-proof and used for multiple different purposes.

I've also got to write the audit procedures so that they can get an outside auditor to come in and carry out annual audits of every Certificate Authority that wants to operate under the PKI (of which there may be many covering multiple government agencies) in accordance with the procedures I've written.

To say it's making my head hurt is an understatement. There's particular international standards that I need to make sure it complies with, as well as fitting in with government standards around authentication and identity management.

My little brain is struggling to cope!

As for our internet business. IPChitChat is doing pretty well. We've had some good feedback on the new site, and most importantly, revenue was up for last month considerably from Sept 2007. We're still some way from making a full-time living out of it but it's growing, slowly but surely.

We've also launched EzeeQuit, which is more of an experiment than anything else. Probably won't be a long term venture but it demonstrated we can now react to new opportunities and get an e-commerce site up relatively quickly.

We've also changed the name of our company. We originally registered the company as Autonomy Business Solutions Ltd when we had the idea of creating an IT Managed Service for medium to small businesses. Our business model has changed considerably since then and we're now concentrating on building internet-based brands.

We're really interested in the whole new phenomenon of cloud computing, the whole idea of applications moving away from the desktop to being purely web-based. With that in mind we've now changed our business name to NetCloud Ltd, which we believe better reflects the ethos of the business. We couldn't get netcloud.co.uk so our domain name for NetCloud Ltd is www.netcloudgroup.co.uk. This is ok as NetCloud will effectively be a group of companies under the netcloud banner. There's not much on that website yet but it will grow as our underlying businesses grow.



So our existing websites are keeping us busy, there's day-to-day management of the site, marketing and development of more features, as well as troubleshooting the odd issue that comes up here and there. I'm currently putting together the next newsletter for IPChitChat which you can sign up for on our site.

And of course there's the development of our next sites. The social networking site I've mentioned previously has been completed (to some degree) by the developers we hired in India, and I'm now working on developing features and content. Not sure when we'll get this one off the ground as it's a major project but it's certainly an exciting prospect.

We also have a couple more ideas for e-commerce sites that we're investigating.

All in all life is busy on all fronts.

Who's Got My Go Card?

Yesterday when I went to get on the bus to work I realised I'd forgotten my Go card, which is basically an electronic card you can use with the Brisbane transport system - I can top the balance up online and simply touch on and off buses and trains, and it automatically gets deducted (it's basically an RFID card like the Oyster system in London).

Anyway I had a look round for it this morning and couldn't find it, so I went online to check the last transaction. It seems some cheeky twat has been using it for the last 2 days. I can see that he/she got on a bus this morning on my route and got off in the city, obviously using my card to get to work and back.

I've rang up and cancelled it but of course, it's not as simple as cancelling the card and sending me a new one. I have to order a new one (which will cost $10), and then complete and post a form for them to transfer the balance of the account from the old card to the new one. All of which will probably take weeks knowing how council departments work.

I'm not sure whether I lost it or someone pick-pocketed me. I've realised it must have been Wednesday evening. I remember Wednesday evening because we had a monsoon. I got off the bus to walk the remaining distance home and got caught up in absolutely amazing freak weather conditions. Apparently during that brief storm, which lasted about an hour, we had over 3000 lightning strikes.

I've never seen anything like it. Only muggins here was stupid enough to be outside walking the streets in it. I remember having this gut feeling that I was going to be struck by lightning any second, as everyone else was inside or in their car (apparently your car is the safest place to be during lightning). Also, living in sunny climes I didn't have a jacket or umbrella with me so I was absolutely drenched by the time I got home. At least it was warm rain.

According to this Brisbane Times story it dumped down nearly 60mm of rain in that 1 hour and 32,000 homes lost power.

Introducing EzeeQuit.co.uk

I am pleased to announce the launch of our latest website - www.EzeeQuit.co.uk

You may have heard news stories, such as featured on the front page of bbc.co.uk/news today, about the revolutionary Electronic Cigarette. This product is win-win for smokers and non-smokers alike as it allows smokers to beat the smoking ban in pubs, whilst it offers no risks from passive-smoking as it doesn't emit smoke, like a traditional cigarette.

We have Electronic Cigarette Starter Kits in stock now and depending upon the interest we'll be looking at adding other related products.