There is IT everywhere, whether we like it or not, computers are serving us no matter where, in your car, your kitchen, in school, at work, at sea. Cork harbour runs a state of the art Vessel Traffic System (VTS), a network of computers spreading across the harbour with sensors such as radar, AIS, CCTV keeps monitoring 365/7/24 the traffic. The sole fact a cargo enters Cork harbour limits trigger a pile of actions ranging from crane, docks, pilot and launch, taxi drivers, invoicing, and much much more.

Cork harbour is a well oiled mechanic I always wanted to observe

Forenoon watch

Yesterday was one of those sunny days like you get them in ireland, this time of the year, coming out of nowhere, without prior warning and conveniently arranged between a solid gale and nice portion of sticky mist... We got sun... Yes we did!

Well for me, it was a perfect day that started in Rochespoint lighthouse with two of my colleagues Marine IT Technologists from the NMCI Marine I.T. Course. A field trip, to assess the possibility of bringing some form of internet connection into the lighthouse for one of our school project articulated around

We have relocated our Mobile Marine I.T. Training to the NMCI for the spring, the course are running well, with 8 to 9 stundents on each session, enthusiast, seafarers, professionnals, are all bringing their own experience and taking away nuggets of knowledge. Bult in a dynamic way the course is half way between a workshop with an ongoing 13 weeks project and a formal class with theory and practice exercises. Last night, we've pulled apart a Garmin GPS to look inside, thanks to CHMarine. Next week we will be looking inside a hard disk. It's different each time, and thanks

Monday next, February 6th, is our first get together as a class, the mini lab is almost ready, 5 laptops, couple of PCs a bunch of GPS, couple of AIS too, a few spares, hard drives solid state, routers, hubs, firewalls, name it, it fits in 6 flight crates, not to mention software, Polar Navy, some Transas software, Chandler CH Marine is also helping to source some hardware, I am truly amazed with the wave of enthusiasm the course is generating, people willing to drive miles (from Dublin to Cork) to attend is just incredible... I am very busy with

Last night was pitch dark in Cork, the harbour waters were almost
spooky, black waters and no light. The moon is on a waxing crescent right now, and we merely had a ten percent moonlight last night. It reminded me of that year I was based with my regiment in French Guyana and during exercises we would sail at full speed in the dark with nothing but stars to guide us. Now technology have improved... In the comfort of my study at home, I was listening to harbour operations on my scanner and decided I would test my new AIS

In Decembre 2010, our Wicklow based Marine surveillance station has reached 99.8% avaialbility (2154 hours online / 2158 total hours).

Fix I.T. Marine IT Surveillance Project, aims to provide a better picture of marine traffic in/around Ireland. This station was launched on April 2006 in Cork (call sign OCEAN Alpha), was then rebuilt on Linux using a recycled receiver, an IBM T30 running CentOS Linux with AIS Dispatcher. The station was relocated in July 2011 to Wicklow at the entrance to the Irish Sea. This AIS Station is entirely built with recycled IT spare parts. If you are interested

Fix-I.T.is teaming up with the National Maritime College of Ireland to deliver a Marine Data Communication & Networking course. The first course will start in 2012 on January 16th. It is a great opportunity for students, professionals and leisure sailors to learn about marine computer systems.

 Maritime computer systems are available at sea to achieve multiple tasks such as navigation, communication, monitoring, weather forecast analysis, however they are also present on land to give a clear picture of the maritime traffic, (Fix-I.T. lighthouse Station 804) or also modeling and simulating new port infrastructures.

It's been a few weeks now since I am working with Nicolae Cismaru in Fanurio. Trying to contribute to what I am tempted to call a master piece of programing for the sole trader and SMB community. See, Fanurio works on Mac, Linux and Windows, this way it does not matter if you have made the strategical decision to go one or another route when you've started your business. Fanurio is a great time tracking software. This year it helped us increasing our revenue, not leaving any time un-invoiced behind after a project was closed

It's been a year now, since I delivered this training in the middle of Atlantic, Marine I.T. is not just about networking a computer with another to transmit marine data information. It's also about linking together the boat, the satellite and the crew. It's about
troubleshooting in hostile environment. It's about information and processing. Stephen has been at sea for over a year now, his training has served him well, a day after another Stephen has used his Marine I.T. skills almost as much as he has been using his sailing skills. There is not yet any formal course geared

I first met Dr Raymond Lovett at the begining of my practice, a few years ago. Ray was looking for a marine solution for Belladonna an impressive 37 ft catamaran designed by Jeantot. As one would do he first went looking to the local chandlery. CH Marine have always been refering cases involving marine computerised system. After receiving training from Maxsea in Biarritz in 2007, I started building a professionel  interest for navigation software, yet the list of available software was very short. Maxsea was slow taking off in Ireland, it's aimed at Microsft systems only. Ray wanted a Mac system

Who said IT does not have to be complicated? On Saturday, while all enjoyed the sun at Statistical Solutions I endeavoured to tidy up the patch panel. One after another, contractors have worked on this patch boards, the isdn phone lines, the PABX, firewall, wifi access point, server, and the result was waow... I am the only one who never worked on the panel and I take pride into my work. I probably never left a messy cabinet behind. The reason is simple, troubleshooting a dishevled cabinet will take longer than pining down the cause of a problem in a

Proposed Definition: A naval specialist in Computer Software, Hardware and Communications with understanding of hostile marine environment, ship operation and navigation. Electronic service engineers and professional installers are not necessarily Marine I.T. Technologist but a Technologist can also be Electronic service engineers, professional installers in some cases. A Technologist as a consulting cap professionnal instalers and service engineers sometime don't have. Consultants offer independent, impartial, fresh viewpoint free of personal interest, pre-conceptions or existing traditions and loyalties (Source: IMCA).

Today we are starting another email migration with Google, it will be the fifth migration in just a bit over two month almost. I am getting more and more relaxed about it, Google framework is really well done. I remember from all my years working in ISOCOR that a proper mail migration is a well structured todo list you'll want to stick with no matter what.

Hopefuly in a few weeks we will be Authorised Google Partners, a few customers ranging from 2 to 30 employees have shown interest in migrating to the Professionnal Version of Gmail. In the end,

I have been working for a few month with a new Linux distribution, it's called Mint. Not only it has a nice cool name, the OS seems really stable, It is merely burning vapors of processor and memory. I have installed it on old IBM Thinkpads, it ticks like a swiss clock... I have Mint 10 (Julia) LXDE installed on my Netbook a small ACER Aspire One with a small 8 gig SSD and it is working way better than the Microsoft OS. I have tried it on Lenovo laptop with moderated success. I can't wait to try Katya (V11)

The shift from company-management computing to outsourcing is accelerating. The decision when, how, and where to outsource is likely to be one of the few information-management issues that will be coming up for review at board meetings.

The most common view of outsourcing appears to be that the concerns generated by giving up control override any sense of relief at not having the day-to-day operational responsibilities. Fix-I.T. Certified Management Consultant (IMCA) Arnaud Disant will be assisting Statistical Solutions in Cork migrating from Microsoft Exchange to Google Enterprise Mail...

Just made it into SensL, well an hour ago, new year, good resolutions! Today I am on Rent-A-Tech assignment,

this means I am going to be working for the same customer for almost eight hours block! On the menu, we have a full system check, backup rotation, and I bet a good bit of users support as we are all back to work (with good resolutions) for the first time this year, computer included... 2011, ready or not, here we come!

Thurday, 28 Jan 2010 14:00

New football website in France: http://www.footpicardie.fr powered by FIX-I.T. & Joomla

14 days, 22 hours and 34 minutes, the time it took skipper Stephen Hyde and his crew to take A Lady, an Oyster 56 yacht, from Gran Canaries to St Lucia brought them in 19th out of 210 yachts. The I.T. on board of the ship was supplied in the springtime and the crew was trained both on land and at sea by Fix-I.T. During the time of the race, Fix-I.T. was supplying daily weather reports as well as statistics and information related to the other participants.

It has been an interesting year since Stephen Hyde the owner of

Tuesday, 08 Dec 2009 14:00

14 days, 22 hours and 34 minutes, the time it took skipper Stephen Hyde and his crew to take A Lady, an Oyster 56 yacht, from Gran Canaries to St Lucia brought them in 22th out of 210 yachts. The I.T. on board of the ship was supplied in the springtime and the crew was trained both on land and at sea by Fix-I.T. During the time of the race, Fix-I.T. was supplying daily weather reports as well as statistics and information related to the other participants.

It has been an interesting year since

Sunday, 02 Aug 2009 10:10

A Lady, OYSTER 56, Owner: Stephen Hyde, Ponta Delgada (Azores)

Azores, North Atlantic, 10:00 hours, I left Ireland yesterday, after a short trip from Lisbon today, I have arrived to Ponta Delgada on the largest of the Azores island. I will rejoin my client Stephen Hyde aboard A Lady his 56 feet Oyster (hull number 23). Together, we have planned to test the computer system aboard and to run some troubleshooting drills for the rest of the week. By then we will be landing in Portugal... The crew is composed of 4 persons.

Monday, 03