Lichtman Consulting

We’re in the process of setting up and moving into our new offices. We should be fully moved in by early next week.

We have a customer who has a radio show, which we’ve been recording and posting up to her website for a while. We were using a Windows box with an ancient version of Replay Radio to do the recording daily, and then every few days we used an audio program to compress the files down in size, and then ftp’ed them up, after which we had to manually go into the database to add them into a list. As you can imagine, a bit time consuming.

I finally got around to automating the process using Linux.

Here’s how it works:

1. Create a shell script that records the show using mplayer
2. Create a shell script to stop the recording
3. Create yet another shell script to upload the file using ftp
4. Create a php script to check the remote upload folder, and add new files into the database
5. Create a shell script to run the remote batch checker using curl
6. Set everything up in cron

Took me a bit of time to get it all right, but that’s going to save a whole bunch of time later on.

I’ll give details in another post if anyone is interested.

I usually stay clear of anything to do with politics on this blog. The following applies primarily to people living or working in Ontario, Canada. It will have negative ramifications for the IT services industry in Ontario. In addition, it will effect our customers outside of Ontario, to whom the existing provincial sales tax does not apply.

In July next year (2010), the Ontario Provincial Sales Tax (PST) and the Canadian GST Goods and Services Tax will be merged into a single tax. The marginal rate remains the same (PST = 8%, GST = 5%, New HST = 13%). However, the current PST tax applies only to “goods” sold, rather than to services. The new combined tax will apply to both goods and services. The result is that work done for somebody (i.e. a service) will effectively go up in price by 8% instantaneously.

The IT services industry in Ontario is currently suffering from the overall rough economic status in the province. My company – thankfully – has been somewhat cushioned from the worst of it, due to our focus on marketing through channels. However – even in good times – there is intense pressure from offshore vendors who have the ability to leverage cheaper salaries to provide equivalent service at a lower price. A compulsory 8% increase in our pricing to our customers (and it will be more, since vendor’s pricing will also adjust accordingly) is going to provide a further incentive for companies to send their IT requirements offshore. This is the absolute last thing needed by our industry right now.

I’m not certain what the best way to react to this is – my MPP and I already see eye to eye on this, but he’s in the opposition. I think that signing petitions and the like is also an utter waste of time. There are a number of by-elections coming up, and I think that anybody effected by this tax grab needs to be vocally supporting one of the opposition parties on this (I don’t want to make this a partisan appeal of any sort).

The IT industry is doing its darndest to create decent-paying jobs in a rough economy, and its about time that our voice counted for something.

QR Tag

The odd looking image here isn’t a Rorschach blot.

Its actually a QR code, something that is old news in Japan, but never quite managed to take off in North America.

In this particular case, assuming you had a QR code reader (in Japan apparently most cell phones do), the image encodes a link back to this website.

If you want one of your own, you can go here to get one: http://www.qrtag.net.

Now I just need to figure out how to get my phone to read them…