Author: Mark Whitfield

Welcome to my site! After graduating in Computing in 1990, I accepted a position as a programmer at a Runcorn based software house specialising in electronic banking software, namely sp/ARCHITECT-BANK on Tandem Computers (now HPE NonStop). This was before the internet became more prevalent and so the notion of enabling desktop access to company accounts for inter-account transfers and book keeping was still quite a cutting edge idea (and smartphones only ever hinted at in Space 1999). The company was called The Software Partnership (which was taken over by Deluxe Data in 1994). I spent 5 years in Runcorn developing code for SP/ARCHITECT for various banks like TSB, Bank of Scotland, Rabobank and Girofon (Denmark) to name but a few. I then moved onto a software house in Salford Quays for further bank facing projects. After a further 23 years in the IT industry and now a Senior IT Project Manager (both Agile and Waterfall delivery), I thought I would echo out my Career Profile in this corner of the internet for quick and easy access.

Just seen this… great Sequel… tense and exhilirating… #topgun

If you liked Top Gun… you will like Top Gun Maverick… its Top Gun meets Mission Impossible meets Star Wars A New Hope… very impressive low to the ground flying sequences… more tense and exhilirating than the original… good stuff… you will feel the GEEEE… will watch again… maybe top gun up on the original first… speed just got a whole lot faster…

MediaCityUK Photographic Time-lapse Movie – 2007 thru 2010

MediaCity UK Photographic Time-lapse Video – 2007 thru 2010

During my time working in Salford Quays as an IT Project Manager, I took a good number of photos and movies of the MediaCity build (literally from the ground up). The pictures were taken from 2007 when the dockland was flat and unused, through to 2010. MediaCity UK is now home to the BBC (BBC North), ITV in the North West and the University of Salford.

The 200 or so pictures in this movie represent an abridged timeline of the build selected from a few thousand photos starting from 2007.

Music soundtrack accompanying movie timeline is by John Barry and from the film –

Somewhere in Time (1980 – https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0081534/) –

Soundtrack link : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=paU0yFZ-l3E

My MediaCityUK photo gallery and website : https://mark-whitfield.com/gallery/mediacityuk/

What is Microsoft Power Platform and what are Power Apps?

Microsoft Power Platform is a line of business intelligence, app development, and app connectivity software applications. Microsoft developed the Power Fx low-code programming language for expressing logic across the Power Platform. It also provides integrations with GitHub and Teams.

Products:

The Power Platform family of products includes:

1) Power BI, a software for visualizing data with different kinds of charts. It competes with tools like Tableau

2) Power Apps, graphical software for writing low-code custom business applications

3) Power Automate, formerly Microsoft Flow, a toolkit similar to IFTTT for implementing business workflow products

4) Power Automate Desktop, a Robotic process automation software for automating graphical user interfaces (acquired in May 2020)

5) Power Virtual Agents, software for writing chatbots