December 23, 2006
Ho ho ho
It must be Christmas. Re-installing Windows XP on a sickly family machine that's just had a new CPU fan fitted and the GFX card fan cleaned out. It's a fresh install of Windows XP SP2, since despite running malware cleansers and virus checkers, the machine is still mostly broken (soundcard won't work, USB wifi dongle won't work, frequent "critical error" dialog boxes popping up -- all of these issues confirmed as software not hardware thanks to an Ubuntu live CD). The budget wouldn't stretch to Mac Mini presents, sadly, and iTunes doesn't work on Ubuntu ... jumping from Office to OpenOffice will be tricky enough. Meanwhile:
Downloading Security Update for Windows XP (update 1 of 64)
Good job we have plenty of wine in the house.
December 21, 2006
December 19, 2006
5 things you don't know about me
I've been tagged by Gianugo, so why not:
- I can actually cook (but I rarely do)
- I sang in the school choir
- I don't own a car, I cycle everywhere. But I'm not as good on my bike as I think.
- I can't count
Over to Arjé, Paul, Torsten, Gabriele, David. I predict at least two of those won't notice ;-)
December 18, 2006
December 16, 2006
December 14, 2006
One more thing
Oh, and for those that don't already: twitter. This particular twit is here.Techcrunch UK
All I can say is, damn, and damn. Techcrunch UK really seemed to be making a difference; it was just what the UK start-up scene needed. You only need to look at the archive to see the great job that Mike and Sam were doing.
Update: Glyn weighs in with a well-written summary of some of the reasons why this was bad in TechCrunch UK Gets Crunched.
December 13, 2006
links for 2006-12-13
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Why doesn't Google let us download this via computer, and then send to the phone? I don't want to pay each time I install it ...
Qoop
Without wanting to give too much away, I'd just like to express my unbounded delight and satisfaction with Qoop. Such simple ideas, so simple to use, and simply awesome results. As I unwrapped my parcels this morning I've been laughing out loud. And of course it wouldn't have been possible without flickr.
I can't wait for Christmas. I promise photos early in the New Year.
Tuesday
It's Tuesday, so that must mean I'm in London, for the inaugural UK Atlassian User Group. At time of writing there were already 91 people signed up, so I look forward to seeing what people are doing with Confluence and JIRA. It will also be a good opportunity to gauge reception of the new Atlassian products.
Sourcesense have done some pretty cool things with Confluence and JIRA in the past, such as automated defect tracking (pushing issues into JIRA from a validation service) and automated quality assurance documentation for large Italian telecoms companies. One of the Sourcesense investors even uses JIRA for company-wide project management and business planning.
Update: ok, the event seems to have been a huge success. A great turnout, and the talks were all quite interesting. Some of the upcoming features in Confluence and JIRA look like real life-savers, and it will be interesting to try out Crowd (single sign-on) and Bamboo (continuous integration) to see just how good they are. In principle, they could be killer apps, but a lot will depend on the implementations.
In particular I'd like to see Crowd handle Shibboleth gracefully - I'm really not sure the world needs another "from scratch" SSO solution. The Atlassian guys suggested checking the Crowd FAQ for information on that, but I don't see any information there so far.
The networking after the talks was a good opportunity to catch up with people, and I heard about some pretty innovative uses of Atlassian products. For the second time in two weeks I bumped into Lloyd Davis, too, and I was quite impressed by the work Headshift and Lloyd did for BP. Nice to see social technologies being applied proactively in large corporations.
December 8, 2006
Cold Boston
When I said to people earlier in the week "it would be awesome if I got snowed in and had to stay here another week" I was joking. Mostly.
Going to a camera store this morning was a bad idea. Listen carefully and you'll hear my bank manager crying. Walking 3 miles to the camera store when it's -5 outside was, perhaps, plain stupid.
Still, I have the AC cranked up to toasty warm, a large mug of tea in front of me, and an apple and cinnamon muffin to help me recover. When I've defrosted I think I'll take a cab to the Apple Store.
Some of my photos are already on flickr in the Boston set.
December 3, 2006
Boston
I made it to Boston, and I'm now safely ensconced in the Sheraton, my home for the next 6 days. I spent today doing something of a hike around Boston (in the order of 5 miles, according to the rough approximation I did on Google Maps Pedometer). On my previous visits here I never had the opportunity to stray out of Cambridge and the immediate vicinity of MIT. I have to say, so far I'm impressed - there's lots of small, interesting shops and a great selection of restaurants. The theatre district looked lively too.
The flight was mostly uneventful, apart from the hideous check in queues (1hr30 of standing in line - shame on you, American Airlines). I also need to offer profuse apologies to the poor woman I was sitting next to on the plane. I made the mistake of watching Crank during the flight, and it wasn't just entertaining, it was laugh-out-loud funny. I can only imagine how annoying it was sitting next to some guy randomly chuckling every five minutes whilst clutching a PSP.
The jetlag is doing wicked evil things to me now (or maybe it's a stomach full of excellent steak and excellent beer), so I think it's time to succumb.
December 1, 2006
The social network
"We apologise for the slow running of this train this morning, this is due to following another train into London"
There are some causes for which you can be entirely forgiving of our decrepit rail service. Trains on the line is not one of them.
Despite the best efforts of the gods (start with a late taxi and a ticket machine refusing credit cards; add a hint of delayed trains and a missing buffet car, a garnish of choosy cash points and a side salad of emergency shopping to replace essential travel items such as phone chargers), I made it to three of the week's social networking events today.
Event one was the Scoble Pub Crawl, which saw somewhere between twenty and thirty like-minded individuals drinking for queen and country. Well done all, a thoroughly good effort. Throw in a tour of Saville Row and some sturdy Guinness, and you can't go far wrong.
Event two was a shady affair. Who are "The Internet Group"? And why do they meet in dungeons near Embankment? I can't say more for fear of being arrested by the secret secret police.
Event three was of course the Firefox party, which had a cracking turn out despite the dubious weather. A great bunch of people, I even snuck off with a set of Firefox transfers, which will shortly be adorning anything that stands still long enough to be stamped by one.
Definitely a worthwhile afternoon and evening, and a pleasure to put faces to so many names that have been on my radar.
I'm now collapsing in a hotel somewhere near Heathrow, with an industrial-sized bucket of tea. Tomorrow morning I head over to Boston for XML 2006, where I'll be delivering "Hands-on Apache Cocoon" to somewhere between 10 and 15 people, followed by immersing myself in all things XML for a few days. Should be great!