I’ve long been an advocate of people not needing ‘formal qualifications’ to get into the computer industry. And by formal I mean university degrees or 48 GCSE’s (or whatever your age 16 school exams are called).

However, that’s a subject matter for another time and another post. What one can’t avoid, so it seems, is the need to have a technical certification. Companies seem to turn a blind eye to experience and especially recruiting agencies. I know for a fact that certain agencies in the UK use an automated scanner looking for keywords for certain roles – so your CV arrives and is never seen by a human until after it’s been vetted by a machine. This is life now and so if you’re wanting to get into the network field, then as  bare minimum you’d need to start with a Cisco Certified Network Associate (or CCNA) certification.

This one exam (or two depending on route taken) certification is seen as the ultimate Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s one I’ve managed to miss before – so many things, so little time …

Anyway, regular readers will know that I’m a fan of keeping my children safe online and by extension all children.

I’ve long been an advocate of everything and anything that helps to promote the safety of children and not just online. Anyway, it would appear that InSafe host an annual “Safer Internet Day” and this years theme is:

Think B4 U Post!

I agree.

So what is SID? In their own words:

Safer Internet Day is organised by Insafe each year in February to promote safer and more responsible use of online technology and mobile phones, especially amongst children and young people across the world. The topic for 2010 is “Think B4 U post!“.

To read more, simply click on the image above.

And by the way, it’s today!

… create a PDF.

I forget at times just how easy it is to do things and it’s usually when my wife asks “how do you…” that I realise I’ve been glib or dismissive in trying to pass on knowledge.

So today I bring you 4 ways to create a PDF.

1. Buy an application. Honest, this is probably the expected way and there are many, many options here. From the original Adobe PDF (not the reader) to CutePDF to Foxit … well, google’s your friend.
2. My preferred method is to use Adobe’s InDesign and it’s built-in export to PDF
3. For a free method create it in wordpad (it’s a free cutdown version of word included with every Windows PC) and print to it using a PDF printer driver such as the one from PrimoPDF. Once installed you treat it like any printer except it outputs to a physical file on your computer.
4. Finally, another way is to use an online convertor such as the one at FreePDFConvert.

There are pro’s and cons to each of the above methods with the first two having the major con of cost, whereas the later two have issues of security or restriction in what you can convert or create in the first place.

Why you’d want to create a PDF is an entire new set of reasons that I’ll leave to your imaginations.

I’ve long been a fan of solarwinds and love using their free tools.

I just wish I could afford to play with some of their paid for tools as they look ultra cool and ultra geeky. That suits me just fine.

The latest free tool to their stable is the “Network Config Generator“.

It looks like it could be a really useful tool to anyone who has a dislike of configuring network devices. There appears to be little restriction on what type of network devices that can be configured by it from firewalls to routers to switches so long as they have a CLI style access.

You can create your own configurations or you can utilise a template. The tool comes with a few templates already built in and more accessible via Thwack (solarwinds forum / resource site) and they are likely wanting to rely on the massed ranks of network engineers to supply more – and I’m certain that will happen.

I haven’t had a chance to play with it yet myself as it requires a live connection to a device and I don’t have any to hand.

Anyway, check it out if you need it and let me know how you get on.

On facebook, the majority of my friends are non-technical folks so in a recent status update I asked them what they most want to know about IT and I said I’ll try my best to answer them.

An old friend was second to the plate as I chose to ignore my son’s initial attempt at inciting my disdain. She asked:

If I want to get a full-time IT person for the company…what technical questions should I ask to make sure he knows his stuff

Well my first answer is don’t restrict yourself to just a him! I’ve worked with some excellent female techs down the years and wish there were many more in the industry, but enough of the aside … Read the rest of this entry »