Off to France!

Well I just got the word today! My leave for next week has been approved, so from 16th to 23rd of Jan, I probably won't be posting anything, as I shall be hitting the slopes of Tignes, staying at Chalet hotel L’Aiguille Percee.

Looking forward to it, I think I'll give boarding another try (after a day about 3-4 years ago).. See if I can not do a somersault (well at least not by accident). And if that happens there's always the nice warm fire in the Chalet, and some fine scotch. :-)

Anyways, that it from me tonight so keep having fun and I'll see you on the flip side!
B

Web link grabbed from ifyouski.com

PS: Just remembered an odd thought I'd had today:
It occurred to me, to patent something is a misnomer, given that the definition of Patently is:

obviously: unmistakably (`plain' is often used informally for `plainly'); "the answer is obviously wrong"; "she was in bed and evidently in great pain"; "he was manifestly too important to leave off the guest list"; "it is all patently nonsense"; "she has apparently been living here for some time"; "I thought he owned the property, but apparently not"; "You are plainly wrong"; "he is plain stubborn"
Taken from Googles definition (which probably grabbed it from some other page)

So those people on Slashdot were right, patenting something is just a way of getting paid for something that is obvious.
or as matt pointed out
Perhaps that's what makes it patentable, that in hindsight so many people see it as obvious...

Robin Hobb's books

I've just finished reading Fools Fate by Robin Hobb.

And I've gotta say I really liked it, there's something about her Farseer trilogy books, it's not the story/plot that is the most interesting, it's the character development.

Most books that I read (and I read a lot) there is character development, but what drives the book is a specific story the author is trying to tell, solving a religious/political/conspiracy theory in the case of Dan Brown's books or the rollocking and thrilling stories of George R. R. Martin (who actually has quite a lot of emotional development and upheaval).

With Robin Hobb it's different, the actions in the book are more about taking the characters on an emotional journey to explore the highs and lows, so much so that I felt taken on that journey as well. There were times that I wanted to hit the main character (but I found that it resonated with me), at other times I was lefting happy, alive and ready to face whatever the world brought my way...

Basically I'm trying to say, go read her books! Her writing style is amazing and for taking you on an emotional journey I've read none better. :-)

And that's all I've got to say on that, other than read my previous post because it's important to me.

B

Creativity

Well I'd like to now unveil a new project that I've been toying around with for quite a while, and have now actually started: Meow and Polly came about because a few good friends.

Robski!

Dan the Man!

who decided that if I was going to be travelling around the world I needed to have a couple of friends to bring with me, and that I was to take photos of them Every place I go...

And that's exactly what I have done (well near enough), so the next question was, how to show the friends back home? I initially was just going to post them all up to a web page with some comments on where i'd been at the time... After a while of not doing that (around about the same time I stopped posting pretty much anything up here), I started toying around with the idea of actually making it more of a story, where I could try out a bit of creativity... It's been a challenge, instead of being a stream of conscience I've had to first figure out what kind of personality I would give both Meow & Polly, and try and write in that style... Hopefully it'll get easier over time (along with the posts will actually be in their own words, rather than with me inside, if you know what I mean)...

Anyways, it's now up and the first parts are ready to be read (only just), I'll be updating them at least once a week, to begin with up to 3 times a week as I build the foundation of their characters. The aim is that there'll be a new post (story installment) on Thursday nights (London time), with some background stuff (under articles) posted up during the week. Oh and please send me feedback on how you think I'm going with their story (it's challenging but fun!).

Till next time, take care!
B

Aussies and alcohol

While I was doing a bit of research for another project that I'm working on at the moment (I'll hopefully post up the links within the day, for the first editions), I came across this little gem: A Canadian's perspective on Drinking in Australia

"A "slab" is the term used for 24 cans of beer that have been packaged together for sale in the liquor store. A slab, or fractions of slabs, can also be used for relating to distances between towns in the Outback."

Now to go hit the turps.
B

The end is nigh!

I found out just recently that in the bible it states 'Man will not know the date' (paraphrased, and in the context of the end of the world), which makes all those end of the world types really silly..

Or maybe they're actually the smartest? By predicting the end on a certain date they're actually making sure that the world doesn't end... I think that's an excellent idea, and I'm proposing we all pick a date, if we cover every date we're safe (at least from supernatural oblivion).

So I predict that the world will end on March 17th 2009.

Your turn
B

Congrats to Andrea and Mark!

Well some exciting news to report, my two housemates Andrea and Mark are now engaged! Congratulations both of you! :-)

Under the christmas tree

Showing off the engagment ring

Now I consider it my civic duty to come up with some recommendations for the stag night/weekend.. Amongst my favourite so far is:


A fantastic use of duct tape!

Till next time,
B

Slightly different direction

As many of you have no doubt realised, I have stopped posting about places that I travelled to... Even though I did not complete the list of places I've been too... My apologies for that

Why did I stop?
Initially it was that I wanted to actually put up photo's with the places that I've been too (and was having serious issues on getting them up), but after a while it reached that kind of stage where you've left something undone for so long it's got it's own special kind of pressure, and so I kept not doing it..

Motivation...
After a while of not posting anything I decided that no, I still wanted to post things, but I wanted to post things I enjoyed and that I wanted to tell people about rather than ones that I didn't... Besides writing about my travels when I didn't want to, well it won't convey the sense of joy and story of places I've been... It'd be more:


I went to a place, the sky was grey, I liked the buildings.


too cold, too abstract, especially as a lot of the places I enjoyed up in Scotland and in Netherland were because of the people/atmosphere and the experiences had while there! Fantastic!!!

Where to now?
Well now I've decided not to worry about posting where I've been exactly and instead to talk about what I'm interested in, whatever that is at the time, there are a few stories from my travels:

• Absailing down the tallest building in Rotterdam
  
• The morags of Inverness
  
• Curious sheep of Pitlochry
  
• Mad managers of Outer Hebrides hostels..
  

that I'd like to still share, but I'm not going to stress about it, I'll share them when I'm ready and not before. Of course you're still welcome to bug me about it, it might help get them up a bit quicker (at the least it'd let me know that you'd be interested in reading about them) :-)

So in the meantime take care of yourselves, enjoy reading whatever you wish, and I also recommend checking out http://www.gadgetopia.com/2004/12/31/TheLongTail.html an interesting site that will bring you random posts from all sorts of blogs around the world. Just keep pressing next until you find something you like. (found it on Gadgetopia)

Cheers,
B

Happy 2005!

Well it's now 1st January here in London, and after a fun and interesting night down at the Shepherds Bush Walkabout I'm slowly recovering (I think it's going to be time for some Bacon & Eggs soon!)

Though I've got say, I'm in a lot better shape than Little Matt who I had the joyful task of looking after at the end of the night (he was having trouble standing, walking, drinking water...) actually it was all good, especially as we got to have a few interesting chats with strangers on the tube home. Usually revolving around matt asking any female sitting near us if they'd given me their phone numbers...
Strangely enough, none of them had or did, in fact most ran away at that time...

But anyways, this is just a short post to say Happy New Years! Hope you've had a grand one wherever you are, whatever you were doing!

Lots a hugs
B

DEC - Tsunami Earthquake

One of my good friends Matt has posted an excellent summary on the bad part of knowing people from around the world, I've been 'lucky' in that I don't directly know anyone affected by the tsunami.

This post really has no substance, there's a few things I could say about the political rumblings going about the lack of warning to Sri Lanka and India, but to be honest it's not worth the breath. My condolences to those who have lost, and my desire that those still searching find those they care about alive and well.

If you're in the UK go to the DEC - Tsunami Earthquake site to donate (or direct to whichever charity works best for you).

Peace,
B

Updated some Photos/Movies

On the website: OneRoundPebble.com

I've changed some of the photo folder names so that they're now in the order that I actually visited the places (I may change them again in the near future as I look into how I've organised them), as a consequence some of the photo's that I've linked to on this blog, may not actually work..

So until I get around to fixing them, bad luck :-P (not really, but just so you know it is on my list, right after learning Portuguese)

Now some people have had difficulty viewing my photo's so I thought I'd try and put down a couple of easy steps on how to view them (the image to the left shows my expanded photo's): Go to OneRoundPebble.com (wait for list on the left to finish opening) Click on the Biscuit link (this will expand everything under Biscuit) Click on the little Next to Photos (this will expand the list of photos) Click on any of the locations you'd like to see photos of (and then wait for them to appear on the right)

And that my friends is how you view my photo's, for some spectacular scenery I recommend the Rockies for me making a fool of myself check out New Orleans or Newfoundland :-)

Oh and I've now uploaded some movies as well (though I haven't yet linked to them on OneRoundPebble.com to grab them they are:

• The Chase a 9MB file showing Matt up to some antics in Scotland.. Very amusing.
  
• Vancouver fireworks with music Footage of some of the spectacular fireworks from Vancouver, with a bit of a sound track I added (couldn't remember what the actual soundtrack was..
  

Cheers,
B

Old coding thing (from C days)

So if you're not a geek (and for those geeks reading, yes I actually know some non-geeks) I'd recommend skipping this post and going onto my Merry Xmas and some thoughts post.

Was reading a post from The Old New Thing on BOOL vs. VARIANT_BOOL vs. BOOLEAN vs. bool which is an interesting post about the origins of the different boolean standards (and if you've ever had to write code to talk to a dll written in another language you'll understand why I found this interesting). But this reminded me an old C technique which was commonly used to handle menu's (I'm talking text based/command prompt age here, none of this funky mouse stuff)

How C handled booleans
If you've read the link above you'll now know that the original BOOL was defined as an int with two possible values (0 = False, 1 = True).

Now C to see if something was False simply does (x == 0) and True does either (x != 0) or (x > 0) // I can't remember which one it is Which meant that if you wanted to be creative in your functions what you would do is return instead of a boolean you'd return an int, allowing:

if(int x=ShowMenu())
{
princ('You picked menu /n', x);
}
princ('Goodbye');

Ok that's probably not making much sense, but the point is that if you return 0 it meant fail an if check, any other number (or positive number) would be 'true' and so...

Why old menu's used to have 0 as the Exit Menu option
You now should have a good idea where I'm heading here, but to continue... Dos, BBS, Unix (generally text based applications), would usually have a menu that kinda looked like:

1. PINE
2. FTP
3. TELNET
4. MOO
-
0. EXIT

So you'd simply press the appropriate key matching the menu option you wanted (sorry for boring the crap out of coders here, but some people are not used to these old menu's they've only ever used Gui's). Anyways it was a fairly common standard that if the menu used numbers as their accepted characters 0 would be the exit code. Allowing:

while(x)
{
if(x=ShowMenu())
{
switch(x)
1: Pine(); break;
2: Ftp(); break;
3: Telnet(); break;
4: Moo(); break;
}
}

Basically you never had to explicitly code to handle the Exit case, as it was inherently handled by the if() and while().

It's still around!
This particular 'standard' has followed us today by people who call API functions (that return 0 if it fails, and maybe a href if it succeeds) like so:

if setRegValue("HKEY_USER", "Software\Microsoft\Excel", pstrFieldName, pstrValue) then
msgbox "Successfully updated value"
end if

For backwards compatibility you can still compare int's to a Boolean in most languages (even if the language no longer uses int as it's boolean underlying type)

Here endeth the lesson.

Merry Xmas and some thoughts

Well there I was reading my favourite web comic on Xmas eve (as in tonight) and this strip was the latest one: Questionable Content: Another Kind of Ninja

Why have I travelled? (the long version)
Now this particular episode (you'll need to read the strip to get this next paragraph or so methinks), it reminded me of why I went and got married, and no doubt many of you are still thinking I was insane to do so. But it all comes down to what Marten says in this episode, it's about being willing to make stupid (and sometimes serious) mistakes that take your life in different directions, I would of rathered to of moved to Lismore, gone and got married than stayed and constantly wondered "What would of happened?"

Now for quite a long while after that particularly large decision came crashing down in a heap I was unwilling to actually take any risks (I can see some of you already agreeing with me here), I was only choosing the conservative path, staying with the norm.. But at the same time I was telling myself (almost mantra like) "I don't regret trying" "I don't regret trying" "I don't regret trying" and it's true for me (just as with Marten), that was closure enough for me... Though I didn't mind hearing what some of my friends said about my ex (more because of their friendship and desire to protect me, than because of the specific things they said).

But then over time I healed I started to consider taking risks and get out there and see the world (always been a dream of mine), but still I wasn't willing to lose what I gained (a house, a job etc...) But then a combination of things occurred, I went on a 'personal development course' that a good friend recommended* and came to realise only I was holding myself back, and started to try small things, take small risks, and guess what? I survived, the world did not come crashing down!

Then at the start of this year I read a small quote "The future is that time, when you'll wish you had of done, what you aren't doing right now." and it gave me pause (not the cat kind, more thinking music time) and so I asked myself "What will I regret not doing in a years time" and the answer was easy, it was that old dream of mine, to travel the world. So within 3 months I had:

• figured out where I wanted to start
  
• bought the tickets (one of the scariest steps)
  
• quit my job (exhilirating to do when you've got no plans to get another job!)
  
• organised my sister to rent my house from me (took nearly 3 goes to get that sorted)

and by mid-June I was on my way, taking one of my biggest risks (even though plenty of people do) and just going with it.

A mere nine months later I'm in London, having just started a new job (only a 3 month contract though), and looking forward to finding out where I shall go next. Still telling myself that if I'm afraid of doing something, that's ok. But not to regret not trying it. (of course there's still plenty of times I regret not doing stuff, but I'm getting there)

Summing it up
Well that kinda went on longer than I originally intended, and probably reads as totally self absorbed. But I've been asked on a miriad of occasions "Why did you move to Lismore?" "Why did you get married at 21!?" "Why have you travelled?" and so that was another attempt to try and explain why I've gone and done those bizarre things, and why I'm here now.

Merry Christmas!
So now, because it's nearly 11pm on Christmas eve, here in England, I hope everyone has a pile of presents at the foot of their bed, under their tree or in their stockings and that you have a fantastic Christmas! :-D

Merry Christmas & a Happy New Year!
B

Now go out and smile, people will wonder what you've been up to.

* The personal development course was a Landmark course.

Annoying scammers (who I'd like to string up)

Some of you may of noticed a while ago that a very strange post appeared on my blog, and then disappeared (this would of been around about the 27th November), for those that don't know what appeared on my blog was:

"CHINA METALLURGICAL IMPORT AND EXPORT COMPANY Dear Sir/Madam, We are an import and export company searching for representatives in Canada, America and Europe who can help us establish a medium of getting to our custumers from Canada, America and Europe, as well as making payments through you to us.
If you are interested in transacting business with us,contact us through.
Email: cmiaeccc@netscape.net
CHINA METALLURGICAL IMPORT AND EXPORT COMPANY(CMIEC).
COMPANY ADDRESS: 338, YINGZE AVENUE, YINGZE,TAIYUAN, SHANXI, CHINA.
TEL: 0085230140977
FAX:0085230140977
Subject to your satisfaction you will be given the opportunity to negotiate your mode of which we will pay you for your services as our representative in Canada/America and Europe.
Thanks In advance
Managing Director,
Mr.Roy Xand."

Now basically as far as I could tell some a-hole briefly took control of my blog to post this scam (it's a variation of the now famous Nigerian 4-1-9 Scam) to try and basically get you to give them your bank details so that they can steal your money (and not give you anything!).

Anyways, I thought I'd let everyone know that this is what happened, as soon as I'd noticed I did 3 things:
1) changed my password (in case that was how they got in)
2) removed the post
3) reported the incident to the blogger support

oh and emailed a couple of insulting letters to the supplied email above (not happy Jan!), so there ya go. Now you know what happened there, and also (if you didn't before) watch out for those kind of scams!

Take care,
B

Been a while..

Ok, it's been a while since I've posted anything, and some of you may be wondering if I'm still alive and kicking it.. Well here's a post to let you know what I've been up to:

Work-ish
Well as some of you know I've been looking for work here in London, and been having some hassles tying it all down, but it looks like it's all finally sorted (I won't say definitely until I've got the contract in my hand!) But in the meantime I've been doing a small-ish data-migration job for Redgum, nothing really interesting to non-geeks (hell most geeks find data migration boring!) so I won't go into the details, other than to say what started off as a simple couple of days of work, turned into 2 weeks of occasional frustration.

Social Circles
Well I've been slowly getting out there and meeting different people and getting up a bit of a social circle.. Even if most of them are met during the course of imbibing alcoholic substances (Matt seems to think I'm a bad influence!) but it's good fun having a few people to catch up with over the weekends (and occasionally during the week as well).


Also included in that is that I finally caught up with the two English guys I met on the tour through the Rockies of Canada, being jamie (the one on the left) and Nick.. Not really the most flattering of photo's (I think it makes them look like a white wannabe rapper and a swedish 80s porn star)

So hopefully going to catch up with these 2 and a few others for New Years Eve.. Should be a bit of fun.. Even if it isn't one of my traditional bbq's.. :-)

Reading news and blogs
The other thing I've been really getting into, is actually reading the news and keeping track of whats happening around the world (it's actually surprising of how easy it is to lose touch as you travel around!), one of the blogs that Matt put me onto is a nice one called: Neopoleon and there was one recent post where he was reviewing a new handheld pc "HP iPaq 6315 - The honest review" and he had an interesting use of this relatively-new technology...

The other place I've used one, but where I didn't receive any questions at all, was a clothing store in Las Vegas. Aydika and I were shoe shopping, and we found a fabulous little pair of casuals that she wanted. I was down and ready to get them, but she encouraged me to go online with "that phone thing" (that's what she calls the iPaq) and check out online prices for the shoes. I was hesitant, as I'm sort of an impulse buyer, but I figured in the end that she was making sense. So, I went online and found the shoes at nearly 40% off what the clothing store was asking for them. I walked the iPaq right up to the manager, showed her the lower price, and asked if she'd match it. She did.

Well, I thought it was interesting.. Anyways, soon (I keep saying that don't I?) I shall post some more of what I've been up to, including a bit of this quite fun weekend. Hope everyone is well, happy and looking forward to a fun xmas! Go out there and be Merry!

B

Remember the Secret Policeman's Ball?

Well last night, myself and little Matt were out and about in London town, and found out that there was a special viewing of Remember the Secret Policeman's Ball - 25th Anniversary
A fundraiser for Amnesty International

Which can be viewed on the 9th December (here in the uk): BBC - BBC Four Documentaries - Remember the Secret Policeman's Ball?

Probably the main thing that grabbed my attention was that Rowan Atkinson would be appearing on stage to answer questions after the movie... Quite interesting hearing him debate the fine line between racial (and degrading) jokes, versus being free to criticize and question ideas and ideals.. Particular when this got onto the distinction between race versus religion, where Rowan has expressed concern that religion (which to him falls in the idea/ideal category), is becoming a taboo subject for comedians...

Myself I would of liked to know his (and the other panel members) thoughts on "The majority of industries in the world are governed by certain ethical, moral & legal constraints. Whereby study (and sometimes discussion) of particular areas is not to be allowed. Why is it that comedy should be free from those constraints and not other industries?"

Though I did like it when he put it as: A joke either works or it doesn't. If the audience laughs you can continue down that line, if they didn't laugh.. well there's your line. (obviously para-phrased)

But anyways, good movie, would love to see Rowan back on stage at some point... A fun night out.

Cheers,
B

Slashdot | User-centric GUI Design Explained to All

Ok, Slashdot is a very good site and recently had an article about the debate of User interface design.

Now this is something I have a few thoughts on, and while some of it will no doubt be expressed slightly incorrectly due to the amount of alcohol currently in my system (just refer to my last post for proof of said).. Ok enough with the caveats here it is.

Game designers like ID Software or Blizzard have all learnt a valuable lesson, called immersion (and these companies are by far not the only ones), whereby the user (or in this example the gamer), totally forgets the outside world and loses himself in the game.

From Kushner, David. Masters of Doom. New York: Random House, 2003.
Because [Carmack] was a craftsman engineer, 3-D was the obvious step for him. Three-dimensional graphics were the holy grail for many programmers as well...The idea was to make the player feel as if he were inside the game. Though Carmack was not aware of it, he was joining a pursuit that had begun thousands of years before. The dream of a realistic immersive, interactive experience had consumed humankind for millennia. Some believed it to be a primal desire. Dating from 15,000 BCE, cave paintings in Lascaux, in the south of France, were considered to be among the first "immersive environments," with images that would give the inhabitant the feeling of entering another world. (80)

Now there was a lesson to be learnt from ID, as if memory serves (can't seem to find a weblink about it) Doom actually was on more pc's than Microsoft Windows, now this was a lesson (and this is my own threory not supported by any other information) that Microsoft wasn't going to fail. Now aside from changing it's marketing strategies, what else has the infamous Microsoft done?

Well to me part of it is applying the usuability of Doom (and all good games) to every microsoft application. That usability is not about making it fun to use, it is quite simply (and if I remember correctly this a quote from John Cormack, if not I'll claim ownership): "Make it so the user no longer things 'how do I shoot that monster' instead the user will just shoot it".

Put another way, if you as the user has to think for too long about "Ok, I want to change this text to Bold" before being able to get it, the user interface needs to be reworked. Now obviously there will be some training required (particularly as most business applications are significantly more complex than the average game in terms of what the user wants to do at any point in time [or are they?]), but to me the user interface of any application should follow some fairly straight forward rules (and I'm probably paraphrasing a microsoft guideline here):

• intuitive interface: namely that if I am using the application for the first time (dependent on knowing the skill ie: if I'm a doctor using a medical application), I can easily come to grasp with how to make my way around and do simple things.
  
• don't restrict the expert user: Basically this means that as a user, when I use an application for a while I would like to be able to find quicker ways to do what I do frequently and maybe do some more advanced stuff (ie: in excel rather than just creating a bar graph, maybe I'd like to use data from 3 different worksheets put through a mean algorithm)
  

Now both of those points are difficult to implement, but I think the second is more so unless you have a cohesive plan... For example:
ID Games: You start with a basic setup of your character (set keys and so forth), can start shooting straight away... Eventually you find you prefer to have certain commands tied to certain keys (you use the menu to adjust), then you find you'd like other modifications (keys or otherwise), and so you can use the console (activated by '`') to gain access to a lot more features (usually undocumented).

Microsoft: There is the primary window with the toolbar allowing you to do what you need/wish to do... Eventually when you hit slight issues (formatting in Word for example) you want greater control, and so you discover the extensive menu options (with keyboard shortcuts as well!), so you find you can do complex stuff with a couple of key-clicks! (Yay for you!), and ultimate of ultimate, if there's really something specific you find yourself needing to do, you can create an add-in, using a programming language (VBScript) to customise how you use the microsoft application...

Ok, I think you get the idea there, both successful companies where they support the progression of the user from Beginner through to (and in some cases beyond) Expert.

Beginner to Expert
A lot of very worthy applications out there only support one type of user on that spectrum, either limiting the application that only simple tasks can be done (or that more complex tasks take too much interaction for an advanced user), or that you have to spend 5 days reading the help file just to find out how to save a file. Both types of users are important!

Immersive/Intuitive Interface
If the user (particularly after using the application for a while) has to frequently search for how to do something (either by looking up the help file, or by searching through menu options), there is something wrong, I'm sure that out there are some heuristic research telling us what the limit is, but you get the point, I shouldn't have to think "How do I bold this text?" I should justBold this text.

B

Hugs Are Good for Your Heart

Ok, the article itself doesn't actually give you much info:
Hugs Are Good for Your Heart

But I gotta say hugs are good, they're my favourite way of greeting friends and family, though with some it just ain't what they want/appreciate... But for me it's the best, you get to feel all warm and fuzzy inside, along with wanted and liked by those around you. And bonus by getting this feeling you give the other person the same in return, simply by returning the hug!

And it can just be a friendly hug (though the other type are good too, for a different reason), but there's something different about having a friend you feel comfortable enough to hug as opposed to just talk.. Though it's difficult to say how to cross that boundary..

So my advice today, go and hug someone close to you, they'll probably appreciate it. :-D

Here's a big virtual hug for you too.
*HUG*

One of the coolest comics of all time

Ok for those that know me from back in Aus, you'll probably recall that I read a lot of comics (well not really that much in recent years), but anyways a good friend Dan put me onto this cool comic:

Questionable Content which is absolutely hilarious!

For example one of the earlier strips featuring the underwear ninja that is one seriously funny concept, love it!

Oh and for anyone who likes comics check out:

• Dilbert (needs no explanation)
  
• Pearls Before Swine BLT's are great!
  
• Get Fuzzy (I think Rat and Bucky should join forces!)
  
• Penny Arcade (which has so much more than just a comic, frequently very topical)
  

oh and if you use rss feeds, checkout: Tapestry it has a whole heap of webcomics in rss form (as most of them don't seem to provide rss feeds) Thanks to Fish for sending that link through to me.

Keep having fun!
B

The Inslaw Affair | Gadgetopia

Ok, huge fan of this news site (use their rss feed, to read their stuff though).

Usually very geeky news items, about new technology and gadgets (hence the name I'd say), but this one reads like a proposal for a new Dan Brown or Michael Creaton book:

The Inslaw Affair | Gadgetopia

Have a read, it's cool. Bit sad for the company Inslaw (as they're still bankrupt), but interesting for the rest of us!

Cheers,
B

My photo's are up..

For those that are interested, I think all my photos are now up on the web... To look at them check out:
oneroundpebble.com

Basically on the left hand side is a tab for Biscuit, just have a look under there... at the moment the photo's don't have any info, but I plan to 'slowly' update most of them (that and re-arrange the order of the folders so that it's in the order I visited them)... That and go through them to find the best ones to post on here, while telling you about the remainder of my trip...

See? I'm getting there, slowly... :-)

Oh yeah, and looks like I've lined up a job! Yay! Money! :-) I should know for sure on Monday (the offer is there from the company, just waiting for the agent to finish negotiating how much for)

Till next time, enjoy yourselves!
B