IT is a crazy industry. I learnt that during Day 1 at University studying my BSc in Computer Science & Business with E-Commerce. There are so many areas you can specialise in but how on earth are you supposed to know the area of IT you want to get into when you haven’t been exposed to the industry yet or have experience?

That is one of the biggest hurdles I have faced. An Undergraduate BSc and an MSc at Graduate School later, I can honestly say that it wasn’t until a good 3 years ago that I knew exactly what I wanted to do within the IT Industry.

While at University, I was lucky enough to have an internship with a huge worldwide Engineering company. In fact, I was the only one put forward for it by my University. It was during that time that I really started thinking about what direction I wanted to take. I did Software & Hardware IT Support for the entire site; slaved hard drives, replaced broken computer components, fixed software issues, helped with network ports, designed websites… I pretty much did it all. I loved it. However, at the end of the internship, I still had no clue what I *really* wanted to do.

After I graduated, I couldn’t find an IT job at all. Most companies wanted more work experience in IT rather than a fresh graduate. So I went in a completely different direction. I started working on Bids & Tenders for an Oil Company. Even though I loved my job, I was a Computer Geek at heart so I decided to do my Masters. I quit my job, moved cities and went back to school.

By this time I decided that I loved the mixture of IT & Business so I did my Masters in Information Management with the aim of eventually getting into IT Project Management or Consultancy after specialising in Desktop Support. Hard for someone with pretty much no hands on IT experience, but at least it was finally an aim!

Then I graduated…

The job market crumbled.

I applied for pretty much every IT job going even if I was under qualified for it. Money wasn’t important, I just wanted the experience. I did temporary agency work doing Audio Typing or basic Admin work just to get some work experience even though it wasn’t what I wanted to do. When I was applying for jobs, I was told I was either too over qualified education wise for the job or I was too under qualified work experience wise for the job. Now, how is a fresh University graduate supposed to get work experience if they are deemed too educated? It’s a Catch 22 situation which affects near enough everyone, no matter what degree they studied.

Over a year later, I finally got the golden phone call. I got my first proper IT job. It was nothing like I expected it to be. Everything I learnt at University doing my undergraduate and graduate courses was thrown out the window. Everything I had learnt was no longer relevant. It was all about experience, common sense & figuring it out for yourself. The job? Remote Accessing users machines to resolve software issues. I dealt with everything and anything you could think of, from users who didn’t know how to set up an email account to users with nasty viruses from visiting dodgy websites. It was then I finally realised what I loved about IT. Fixing things, problem solving & learning new things every single day.

After nearly 2 years of working at that company, I was headhunted by a huge IT company to work within a new department they were setting up here. Talking to the HR Team & a Technical IT interview later, I realised that this was my dream IT job. It was exactly what I wanted to do and the job was mine! It’s now been 7 months since working for the company & I love it. Once again, everything that I studied at University has never once been used. I was trained up for 2 months on the various systems, the ins & outs of the role then set loose. A lot of what I do is from my own knowledge of IT and fixing things, things I learnt in my old role but a good 60% is new things that I constantly discover & learn about.

Knowledge, Discovery & Constant Learning are key to working in IT. IT is extremely fast paced and as a now Infrastructure Systems Administrator, I have a constant need to keep up to date with all the latest trends in IT. I need to keep learning new skills, increase my knowledge on a variety of different aspects and of course, share the knowledge with my co-workers. That is one of the biggest elements of team work after all.

Was University a waste? Not at all. I doubt that if I hadn’t been as educated as I am, that I’d end up where I am today. I came to realise that even though I may have had less work experience than others in my old job, I was actually paid much more than my co-workers purely based on the fact of my education. Do I think being female in a male dominated field hinders me? No. Sure IT is pretty much male dominated but slowly but surely more women are getting into the industry. Salary differences between the sexes? I got paid much more than 90% of the men in my old job. I don’t think being female has put me at a disadvantage. I think it has actually helped break into the market, opened a lot of doors for me career wise, even if I still get odd looks from men when I tell them what I do for a living.

You need to keep yourself educated within IT & that is why I am hopefully going to eventually do some direct learning courses to get more Microsoft Certifications under my belt. Due to the fact IT is so competitive, it’s a must these days. The good thing about my current job is that we have an online learning portal where we can access pretty much every single IT certification study guide online, do mock tests and learn about different subjects for free. The only thing we’d need to pay for are the actual exams.

So those of you expecting to stop studying, learning & sitting exams when you leave school are sadly mistaken.

It’s a never ending battle! A battle to better yourself and I wouldn’t swap it for anything.

Now that the weather in Scotland has decided to behave and it’s been really sunny, I’ve decided that it’s about time that I got my butt into gear and finally learn how to use my new digital camera that I bought a few months ago. I haven’t really had time to play around with all the settings because I’ve been too caught up with work and other things, but I’m now making the time.

I bought a book called Digital Photography Step By Step which gives you great information about Exposure, Aperture and Shutter Speed. But to be honest, I’m a little like a deer in the headlights at the moment. With my previous camera, a normal compact digital camera, I only had to point & shoot. Sure, I played around with the limited settings, perfected them and looking at my Flickr account, my old trusty Sony did me well!

But it’s time to grow up! If my budget had allowed it, I would have bought a Canon Camera, especially since one of my childhood best friends is a professional photographer and swears by them. Unfortunately, my bank card would have cried and set itself on fire if I did buy one so I bought a camera with great reviews ‘Panasonic Lumix FZ45 14.1MP’ within my budget & I’m happy with it.

Now the hard work begins! I no longer want to use auto settings or point and shoot. I want to be able to play with the Exposure, Aperture and Shutter Speed and take great photos. I love photography. I love taking photos of buildings, animals and nature, finding the time to take them is one thing, finding the time to take photos and learn how on earth to use all the settings is another thing!

I know that Exposure, Aperture and Shutter Speed mean, I get them. What I don’t get it what the numbers *should* be, what are the perfect settings? I’m sure it will take time to get them right but I’m a very stubborn person and get really annoyed if I can’t figure it out fast enough!

That’s where you come in, yes you! To save me from beating myself up, what are your perfect settings for taking photographs? (Auto is a no no!) What kind of photos do you like taking? What camera do you have?

The beauty of social media sites such as twitter, they allow you to follow a whole host of different businesses as well as people. I follow a good amount of Restaurants on twitter, ones where I frequent a lot and others where I’m dying to go to. The people behind the account, make time for you, chat away to you and from those conversations, entice you into going to their Restaurant.

For me, two Restaurants stand out. Piccolino’s in Newcastle’s Quay Side and Restaurant Bar & Grill within Glasgow’s Princes Square. I love both Restaurants & the staff behind the twitter accounts. I’ve boasted about how good Restaurant Bar & Grill is already on my blog & twitter with reviews of food & events there, I can’t get enough of the place. I even got my parents hooked!

While in the Newcastle office for 2 months, I was recommended to go to Piccolino’s. So I did. It didn’t disappoint. I instantly fell in love with their Calamari, Veal Chop & Pistachio Ice Cream. I’ve recommended the Restaurant to everyone and anyone who goes to Newcastle, even my father who lives & works in Paris but goes to the Newcastle Office of the company he works for a lot.

& Now, I’m due to go back to Newcastle for work again for a while. Piccolino’s is where I’ll be heading ASAP. They also know me very very well now as you can see from the twitter conversation below….

& that Ladies & Gentlemen is how Restaurants should use Social Media sites.

Can’t wait for my pistachio ice cream now

Last night I got an email from Starbucks talking about the launch of My Starbucks Rewards and the benefits. Now, every time you pay using your Starbucks Card, you’ll get a star. Every time you collect 15 stars – you will be given a free Tall drink! Not bad.

The app’s loyalty scheme will encourage people to qualify as a ‘gold level member’ to get free drinks. Customers paying with a registered Starbucks Card will get a free drink every 15 visits. After 50 visits they move from Green to Gold Level and get extra benefits such as free espresso shots, soy, syrups and whipped cream. If you already were a Starbucks card holder, you are automatically upgraded to Gold.

Your Starbucks Card works exactly the same, you will still receive vouchers for free drinks during promotional periods and the best new feature? If you have an iPhone, you can now pay for your drinks via the Starbucks App in the UK which is available on iTunes from today. Since the launch of mobile payments in America last January, there have been over 26 million mobile transactions and approx $110 million has been loaded onto Starbucks Cards directly through the mobile app. No more worrying about trying to find your card in your bag or forgetting it at all. It’s about time!

I downloaded the new version of the Starbucks App & played around with it, up until the point where you are barcode scanned. Sadly I am nowhere near a Starbucks at the moment so I can properly try it out, which I am not happy about. Serious caffeine withdrawals!

Looks good & I can’t wait to try it! Triple Venti Caramel Skimmed Caramel Drizzle Caffè Latte anyone?

Those of you who follow me on twitter knew of my ongoing saga of trying to find a new digital camera. Thankfully, 3 weeks later, I decided to bite the bullet and purchase a digital camera that I saw from the very start which impressed me. After buying the camera from Currys, I was approached asking if I’d like to review their website for them, so I thought… why not! I am after all a consumer. I buy from that store, I’m a recent buyer & I’m as good as any person to show my experiences on using the website. I purchased the PANASONIC Lumix DMC-FZ45 Hybrid Super Zoom Digital Camera & it’s love at first snap.

I’ve decided to jazz things up a little & made a video post showing a run through of the website from my eyes showcasing the best digital cameras, the cheap cameras, compact digital cameras to the best compact camera with the joys of listening to my voice. I am pretty exhausted after getting up at 5:30am all week, so sorry if I make you fall asleep, it’s not intentional

So in summary, I loved how detailed the website was in regards to the amount of information that is given per camera. I love how you can narrow your searches down quickly & easily, also viewing other cameras that people have viewed alongside the one you are currently viewing giving you other options within the same price range. I had hoped that the website would have shown more photographs of the actual digital cameras, maybe a 360 degree angle video image so you can see how big the camera is, the buttons etc, but so you have a better idea in your head what you will be receiving.

I loved the fact that the reviews given are very well laid out, they are from confirmed buyers of the camera who give open & honest reviews based on their experiences with the camera and give marks on a variety of different aspects. Another feature which is great is being able to ask a buyer how they find the camera, it’s one thing reading all the specs, but being able to ask someone who bought the camera how they find it & put it to use is an amazing feature.

One thing I didn’t like was that I had problems trying to compare different brands of cameras, I may have been doing something wrong but I couldn’t figure out how to compare a Nikon Camera to the Camera I later ended up buying. Maybe a complete n00b, but every time I clicked the little button and then went to another camera, it reset my selection making it impossible for me. That is a feature that I’d like to see improved (or discussed in more detail on how to use if it exists!).

When doing the screen recording & demoing the check out cart, I would have liked to been told when stock is likely to be back in store, a form or something to ask when it would be next in store, sign up on a waiting list for the product or be notified when it is next in stock which websites like Amazon do.

Overall, my experience as a consumer with Currys was great. My camera was shipped on Next Day Delivery & I haven’t regretted my purchase one bit, well…. maybe the fact I haven’t been able to go out & about with it as much as I’d like due to work and crazy weather conditions!

I’m a geek. I’m not ashamed to admit it. I love Apple. Work Colleagues make fun of me (& another guy David-Allan) as we are total utter Apple Lovers. No, not the Granny Smith variety (I have a thing about the skin on actual Apples, eww!) but the shiny shiny Apple Inc.

During WWDC (that’s The Apple Worldwide Developers Conference for all you n00bs) I live tweeted the entire event having utter geekasm and probably annoyed all of my 1248 followers (sorry about that but get used to it!). iOS5 & OSX Lion was introduced and with iOS5 alone, 200 new features have been introduced. Not released to the public until Fall (that’s Autumn for us Brits), I managed to get my hands on a Developers Beta copy thanks to my friend Jon & upgraded as soon as it was released. It has now been nearly 48 hours since I’ve been using iOS5 & I can honestly say I love it. Sure, it’s a beta copy & there are small bugs within it at the moment but certain features within it make it all worthwhile. Below is a sneak peak of my favourite new features.

1. Notifications
About frikin time Apple. This is one feature that I’ve been dying for & FINALLY it has come true. The entire Notification system has been completely revamped. “You get all kinds of notifications on your iOS device: new email, texts, friend requests, and more. With Notification Center, you can keep track of them all in one convenient location. Just swipe down from the top of any screen to enter Notification Center. Choose which notifications you want to see. New notifications appear briefly at the top of your screen, without interrupting what you’re doing. And the Lock screen displays notifications so you can act on them with just a swipe. Notification Center is the best way to stay on top of your life’s breaking news”. I’ve so far tested it with SMS, iMessage (more on that later!), Emails, Facebook, Twitter & Missed Calls. It works perfectly. One thing I hated in the past is that when you were on a specific application & a notification popup came through, it interrupted you. That is now a thing of a past. If you are mid task & a notification comes through, it pops up in the Notification bar at the top of the screen but doesn’t get in the way or disturb you, at all. Top Marks Apple!

2. iMessage
A brand new messaging feature to take on the likes of BBM. You can send unlimited messages from any iOS5 iPod, iPad or iPhone for free via 3G & Wifi. The feature is built into the existing Messaging app & is color coded when sending messages to differentiate between a normal sms and an iMessage. When you send a normal SMS to those who don’t have iOS5, it is green (the normal sms color), however, when you send an iMessage, it automatically turns blue & tells you at the top of the screen that it is an iMessage. Just like BBM, you can send photos, videos, locations & contacts, see when someone is typing to you and get delivery notifications when sent/read. To iMessage someone, you can either use their phone number or email address (you can add more than 1 in the iMessage settings page, I’ve added 4 email addresses people can iMessage me on). Great feature if you don’t want to give someone your phone number, instead give them an email address they can message you on. Will be interesting to see how the Mobile Phone Carriers deal with this, MMS & SMS’s will be a thing of the past for those on iOS5 which is great for someone who sends a lot of photos & international SMS’s like me.

3. Integrated Twitter
I’m a twitterholic, at over 100,000 tweets you would have probably guessed if you follow me. If you don’t, why the hell not?! Apple has now introduced integrated Twitter. Sign in via Settings & you can tweet directly from Safari, Photos, Camera, YouTube, or Maps. You can even update your contacts automatically & if anyone on your contact list has twitter, their username and profile pictures are added to their contact entry so you can just click on their contact entry to be taken directly to their twitter profile. Awesome! Browsing the web on Safari & want to tweet a link? It’s simple now! As well as automatically sending a photo to twitter simply using the new automatic twitter photo app powered by Photobucket (why them?!!?!?!!?!? Twitpic would have been better!).

4. Camera & Photo Updates
I rarely carry my digital camera around with me these days unless I’m going somewhere specific and know that my iPhone camera just isn’t enough. The new camera updates allow you to open the camera app from the lock screen (double click the home screen twice!), perfect for those moments where you have only a few seconds to take a photo & don’t want to miss it by unlocking, then finding the camera app and waiting for it to load, missing the photographic opportunity. You can now also press the volume-up button to take photos rather than using the home button which is a great new feature, one that should have been there from the start. The new editing features within the photo app allow you to crop, rotate, enhance and remove red-eyes without needing a 3rd party app (I only wish they added a resize feature!). You can organize & create albums within the device now which was one feature I was missing on iOS4.3 & fed up of a massive camera roll archive. However, when it comes to photo editing on my iPhone, nothing will take me away from Camera+, the BEST app around if you ask me!

5. iCloud
Simply put as a hard drive floating around in the sky. It is a great way to access data on all your Apple devices. iCloud stores your content so it’s always readily available from your iPad, iPhone, iPod touch, Mac or PC.“It gives you instant access to your music, apps, latest photos, and more. It keeps your email, contacts and calendars up to date across all your devices. No syncing required. No management required. In fact, no anything required. iCloud does it all for you”. You are automatically given 5GB of free iCloud storage, but because of the way iCloud stores your content, purchased music, apps, and books, as well as your photo stream, don’t count against your free storage. Only mail, documents, camera roll, account information, settings, and other app data are what the 5GB is used against. iCloud is another great feature, especially when syncing photos & documents between my iPhone & Macbook Pro. Instead of plugging in my iPhone or using a 3rd Party app to sync via wifi, I will be able to automatically access them on either device. I haven’t had a chance to test this feature because it isn’t fully activated yet so I’ll probably go into detail about iCloud when July comes.

6. Reminders
I have the memory of a gold fish at times, so normally use Notes or a 3rd Party To-Do list to remind me to actually do stuff, then forget about the fact that I have a To-Do list to remind myself To-Do stuff! Reminders will help me out a lot! I normally use 3rd party apps to remind me of certain blog ideas I have, to remember to email someone later on or things to buy at the supermarket for my culinary adventures. Reminders will alert you on screen to do things and also works with iCal, Outlook, and iCloud, so changes you make update automatically on all your devices and calendars. No more gold fish brain for me!

7. App Store Purchases
I buy apps, I delete apps, I buy more apps, then delete them again. It’s a never ending cycle that I’ve fallen for. Twitter and Photography apps seem to be the ones that get me every time! I use them for a while, then get bored, I hate clutter so end up deleting them then forgetting all about them! The new look App Store Purchases feature allows you to see exactly what you have downloaded & installed on your phone right now as well as all apps previously downloaded but not currently on your device. Because of this feature, I found a few apps I lost when I restored my iPhone a few months ago and lost everything & will come in handy for people who get into the same never ending cycle like me!

So there you have it. My review of my favourite features of iOS5 which I have been testing since installing it. There aren’t many bugs on it & very stable for a beta iOS version. I can’t wait for it to be fully released to the public in the Fall (Autumn again for us Brits!). Have you installed iOS5? What are your views on it? Lemme know!

Now for some screenshots…. sorry for the ugly watermarks!

My real life alter ego is dealing with fixing computers on a daily basis ranging from teaching someone how to use a particular piece of software to removing the nastiest of viruses around the internet. So many people are affected by one of the biggest viruses to spread at present & it’s a killer removing it if you don’t really know what to do. Today alone I helped fix 5 of these & it’s hard to explain to clients how exactly they get them because frankly we don’t even know how it is spreading. Everyday thousands of new viruses are unleashed & even the most sophisticated anti-virus program cannot keep up with them all. The good thing though? We can fix them & get your computer back in working order.

The virus I’m talking about? The Security Tool Virus. This is a virus which poses as an anti-spyware/virus application. Pop-ups are unleashed all over your desktop which “detects and reports” a variety of infections you have on your system, this then dramatically slows down your computer, over loads your CPU, makes it crash & then asks for money to install the full version of the application in order to fully help you remove the infections ($50 seems like the in-figure at present!).

However, it’s a scam that so many people have fallen for & when they do click to pay (silly people!) it can unleash more viruses all over your system in a bid to steal your passwords, online banking details & other personal data.

So how do you fix it?

It’s a long ass process but worth it! Prepare to spend a few hours to completely fix the issue but in the end it will also help remove other crap & help speed up your computer.

1. Get your computer into Safe Mode with Networking by pressing the F8 key as soon as you turn on your PC, then selecting this mode from the Advanced Boot Menu & pressing enter.

2. Download the following programs; Malware Bytes, rKill, Stinger, Super Anti-Spyware & CCleaner. The installation & use of these programs is pretty self explanatory. They can all be run in safe mode unlike some applications. I would run rKill first as it forces all processes to be killed, then run Malware Bytes & Super Anti-Spyware simultaneously, then Stinger which blasts viruses away and lastly CCleaner which removes temp files amongst other things.

3. After running all the scans & removing the infections, reboot your computer back into normal mode (for n00bs, that’s your normal desktop, without pressing F8 on the keyboard). It should of got rid of the nasty infection & to be safe, run a virus scan like Microsoft Security Essentials. I’m very Anti-Norton & McAfee as you can get a similar anti virus software for free rather than an expensive piece of software which attacks your RAM & slows your computer down.

If however, it still doesn’t get rid of the entire infection (highly unlikely unless ultra severe) you can manually remove it by ending some processes & going into the registry keys. I wouldn’t recommend this if you don’t know what you’re doing as you can cause more harm than good.

How to remove the infection manually:

1. End all processes which have random numbers like 845623.exe as these ARE suspicious.

2. Remove the following registry entries by going to Start > Run > Regedit

* HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall  \Security Tool
* HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Security Tool

3. Remove the following folders & content within Regedit:

* %UserProfile%\Application Data\{random numbers}
* %UserProfile%\Desktop\Security Tool.lnk
* %UserProfile%\Start Menu\Programs\Security Tool.lnk

And there you have it! Everything should now be clear & you should notice a signficant difference in the overall performance of your computer. The above applications I recommended can be used for other viruses & infections you have not just The Security Tool Virus. If you have the virus (or any other), let me know how you got on with the steps & if you are having any problems, please do not hesitate in getting in touch with me.

I wanted a way to be able to showcase my latest Recipes & Techie Tip posts on the sidebar of my blog for easy reference for my visitors (yes, you guys!) seperating them from the Recent Posts and Archives. So I found a way of using the coding for Recent Posts and adapting it to showcase a specified category ultimately highlighting a set amount of posts, in my case, 5.

The coding for this is as follows:

Within this code, the “query_posts code” tells WordPress to find the latest set amount of posts within the specified categories, I chose 5 & then runs the code in a loop to display them.

I have then added CSS to stylize the displayed posts using little arrows so it looks nicer than just plain text. The CSS code is within my style.css file and called for within the php code with DIV & LI tags.

This is a handy piece of coding for you to use if you want to showcase posts from several categories like I have. So try it out & let me know what you think!

Note: If you are using widget sidebars, you will need to install the Exec-PHP plugin, then add the code to a text widget, otherwise this will not work. The Exec-PHP let’s you add PHP coding within posts, pages and widgetized sidebars.

Remember years & years ago, cassette tape mix-tapes were the greatest things ever? I used to get given them by friends to share our favourite songs or by a guy with little messages within the sleeve of the tape. I miss those days! But, now Suck UK has come up with the greatest idea EVER & I’m totally going to buy some of them to give to friends! You can now create your own mix-tape via USB

Create your own unique mix tape
1. ADD YOUR OWN SOUNDS TO THE USB STICK.
2. PLACE THE STICK INSIDE THE TAPE STYLE GIFT PACK.
3. WRITE YOUR OWN MESSAGE AND PLAYLIST.
4. GIVE IT TO SOMEONE YOU LOVE.

It comes with 128MB of memory & works just like a normal USB Flash Drive where you plug it into your PC or Mac and upload your chosen MP3′s (or other files, could be nice to add photos too!). You then write your own title, messages and play list all over the retro gift pack. Costing £12, you can buy it from Suck UK and there are 6 different designs to collect!

I so want one!

A new feature here on my blog, I’ll be doing quick techie tips every so often & I’m kicking off with this quick & simple tip on how to intregrate facebook chat with iChat so you do not need to keep any browser windows open (and accidently close the browser mid-conversation!). This only works for those with Apple Mac’s, sorry Windows & PC users

P.S: Excuse my crappy voice, I was really tired by the time I recorded the screen cast.