In a world of persistent change it's great to be able to put down roots or at least feel that there are certain things that you can depend upon. Yesterday saw the latest, and if word on the street rings true, possibly the final release from proven pioneers of blues based rock, AC/DC. From all my years of listening to rock music, probably pushing 30 now (I was an early starter) AC/DC are one of those bands that have continually hit the nail on the head each time. While my rock musical tastes have diversified and expanded to allow space for more modern takes on the genre I've never forgotten those roots.

I remember as a 9 year old boy pleading with my mum to let me buy the new AC/DC album, 'Highway to Hell', whilst we weren't a religious family my dear mum had her reservations about the impact that a record with so many connotations in it's title and a man on the front with devil horns might have on an impressionable young boy. However, rationality and possibly some tears and snotters won through and I was soon the proud owner of said vinyl which is still one of my prized pieces in a collection that's pushing 500 plus, that's just the vinyl by the way, my cd collection is possibly double that.

Thankfully today there will be no emotional blackmail needed as I take myself off to the shops to purchase the rock legends latest release 'Black Ice' and there will be just as much excitement as I take it home to listen to it as there was nearly 30 years ago. I know exactly what I'm going to get, there will be no surpises, AC/DC have never really pushed the boundaries but what they do, they do so well and it's that dependable and persistent quality that makes them the best. For those of you reading this that think they can sniff the obvious analogy here, no such luck, I'd never be so crass, besides Mimtech continually push the boundaries of what we can do!

Dear all, as many of you will be aware we were subject to some technical problems last week with our websites and primarily our nameservers. While these issues have plateaued over the weekend as the DNS propogated outwards we have continuing problems with our mail servers. We are recieving mail but not being able to send it. The helpdesk is functioning as normal but without outgoing email alerts. We are doing everything we can to resolve the issues, please bear with us.

Regards,
John

Last week was a belter, I don't think I stopped for a second. We had a deadline for a proposal to hit by wednesday pm, a large project currently underway entered user acceptance testing (UAT) and on top of all that I was moving house at the weekend. By 9:30 last night I'd just managed to get my son's new room sorted out so that he could go to bed, my girlfriend and I then had to sort our room out and find some food somewhere in the myriad boxes of all shapes and sizes that seemed to inhabit every bit of floor space of the house. Exhausted, but in a good way!

This week Simon, Doug and I are off to Cologne for the RedDot partners conference and a meeting with the OpenText / RedDot technical team, we return on Friday and I fly out to Ireland for the weekend. Sheesht!

It never stops :o)

After 3 days of intensive training at the centrally and most salubriously located offices of Sitecore at London Bridge I am now a certified and advanced Sitecore developer.  No small feat I tell you, there was an exam and everything. 

So how does Sitecore size up against other major players in the same space? 

This is a powerful solution that presents an intuitive front end to the user via Sitecore desktop, a browser based emulator of the windows desktop environment that facilitates access to a host of great functionality based on user permissions. Here you’ll find the content editor, an authoring interface that is a joy to work with and allows content to be easily created through predefined templates. The media library allows easy management of all your digital assets. A powerful preview function allows the user to see how their content will look in context and a workflow designer enables the design and implementation of simple and / or complex workflows. 

This has everything that a great CMS should have coupled with an ease of use where it matters most, the authoring environment.

Under the hood it's all C# .NET, the industry standard platform. Great for application development.

All in all I was very impressed! This looks to be a feature rich, easy to use and stable looking solution.

I'm in the London offices of Sitecore for the next three day taking the SCD Level 1 (Site Construction) and SCD Level 2 (API) training courses.

Looking forward to getting my hands dirty!

I'll report back regarding what I find under the bonnet of Sitecore when I'm back up north at the weekend.