Welcome
Welcome to my blog, which I hope you'll find to be an interesting mixture of real-world experience, ideas, comments and observations.
Tom Gaskell
I've worked in industry as a consultant, manager and quality trouble-shooter for most of my career.
After spending 14 years in a multi-national consulting organisation and 10 years working in telecomms design and manufacturing start-ups, I set up the Cambridge (UK)-based quality, manufacturing and business consultancy Primilis (http://www.primilis.com) in 2006.
Category Archives: Technology
How to get 5.1 audio on Sky HD – updated
UPDATED – SEE BELOW! I have just installed a Sky HD system for a colleague and hit a really annoying problem. The Sky HD box puts out stereo digital audio onto its HDMI connector, and provides 5.1 (surround sound) digital … Continue reading
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Wireless technology recruitment in Cambridge
It’s great to see a real home-grown high-tech success story in the UK. Cambridge Broadband Networks, a company I know well, is just such a success. They’ve recently celebrated their tenth anniversary and are growing very quickly at the moment, … Continue reading
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The hard disk is dead!
Hard disks are surprisingly reliable. If you think about the technology – the head floats on a cushion of air thinner than a speck of dust, or even a fingerprint – it’s remarkable they work at all. And they keep … Continue reading
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Leave my equipment alone!
I could get very fed up with big corporations messing up my equipment. It happens with my computers, and it happens with my Sky box. Every few weeks things start happening that shouldn’t, or things stop happening that should. Here’s … Continue reading
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Wireless device chargers
About 4 years ago a Cambridge start-up called SplashPower was developing universal wireless chargers for mobile phones, MP3 players, PDAs and the like. To charge your device you simply laid it on a flat charging pad that looked a bit … Continue reading
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Made by monkeys
This is a really good website brought to us by the Electronics Weekly team – http://www.electronicsweekly.com/blogs/engineering-design-problems/ It’s a combination of some weird and wacky product ideas with other products that have a perfectly sound concept but have been implemented really … Continue reading
There’s a new OS in town
So Google are launching a new computer Operating System – http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8139711.stm Great news! Competition in this area has got to be a good thing. Not only does it give us more choice but it keeps the current incumbents, Windows and … Continue reading
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Mouse tricks
I find that the mouse, not the keyboard, is my main interface with computers these days. I seem to type less and click more! I’m a big fan of Logitech mice – the ones with extra buttons that you can … Continue reading
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Why is PC software so bad?
I was praising the virtues of Vista 64 recently. I knew a lot of people who had been to hell and back with Vista when it first emerged, but my experience was the opposite – it was stable, it was … Continue reading
Technological progress in reverse
I guess we are all familiar with the demise of Concorde and the apparent reversal of the normal forward progress of technology – we used to be able to fly to New York supersonically, but no longer. Air travel has … Continue reading
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