Sunday, 31 May 2009

The daily thought (28)

The price predictor in Bing rocks!

Saturday, 30 May 2009

The daily thought (27)

to bing or not to bing

Friday, 29 May 2009

The daily thought (26)

TGIF – oldie but goody, and I still think that every week!

The daily thought (25)

Early in the morning, the sun was up and the sky was very blue.

Thursday, 28 May 2009

The daily thought (24)

2 days till the weekend – clearly defined goals.  Let’s rock!

Wednesday, 27 May 2009

The daily thought (23)

ZuneHD anyone?

Tuesday, 26 May 2009

The daily thought (22)

Back to work for a four day week. Every week should be like this.  More time with the family – more energy to work. FTW!

Monday, 25 May 2009

The daily thought(21)

Bank holidays rock!

Sunday, 24 May 2009

The daily thought (20)

Lazy Sunday reading papers. Roast later :)

Saturday, 23 May 2009

The daily thought (19)

Gardening – I need a lawn that thrives in boggy conditions…

Friday, 22 May 2009

The daily thought (18)

It’s the freakin’ weekend gonna have me some fun!

Thursday, 21 May 2009

The daily thought (17)

Who knows when things will improve?  You don’t, you just have to focus on making it through the day, and don’t let the important things drop.

On improving the daily slog through better technology….

Now, Apple has apparently been doing some work around a water-cooled laptop. This is hopefully going somewhere interesting.ocz

I don’t really see the need or have the capacity to install another large box in my office – so I suspect that most new purchases for me and many other people will be laptops.  Problem is, as my main workhorse at the moment is a Dell XPS M1710. Loaded with 4GB of RAM, it’s almost sufficient for my needs.  It’s relatively fast, and has enough RAM to run a VPC if I have to. Mostly, I use the new ‘boot from VHD’ functionality in Windows 7 to choose which OS to run, and have a number of images sitting on VHD.  This allows me to work on any number of OS’s at native performance, while keeping all my docs etc on a separate partition.

The 2 things I would improve in this machine is:

  1. An SSD (native PCI-express type like OCZ makes for PCs) which I assume will eventually be available on Expresscard for some ridiculous amount.
  2. And a decent cooling solution.

The machine runs hot – way too hot.  Having it on the whole day means I don’t need to have central heating in my office.  Having two of these in an office turns it into a boiler room.  And the noise is just terrible.

So, if Apple (or anyone) actually makes a decent water-cooled laptop that runs cool and silent, I’ll be first in line.

And those Expresscard SSDs – I’ll take 2 !

Wednesday, 20 May 2009

The daily thought (16)

It’s amazing how things can become really messy, really quickly.

Tuesday, 19 May 2009

The daily thought (15)

It never rains…

Monday, 18 May 2009

The daily thought(14)

Let’s rock!

The daily thought (13)

I’ll say it again – unlimited subscription music ROCKS! nothing like a collection of around 5 million tracks…  Discovering old favourites is amazing!

Sunday, 17 May 2009

The daily thought (12)

What good reason is there not to believe the Singularity3DsinJacketFLAT will happen? You don’t really need to believe, you just need to realise it’s inevitable.

Saturday, 16 May 2009

The daily thought(11)

Once you have a baby, sleeping in or even just lounging in bed on the weekend becomes a thing of the past…

Friday, 15 May 2009

The daily thought(10)

For some reason – I constantly think there’s something (else) I should be doing.

Thursday, 14 May 2009

The daily thought (9)

Before living the dream, you have to dream the life – completely!

Wednesday, 13 May 2009

Killer feature for any mobile device (Zune take note)

So, it turns out the rumours from the twitter account were fake – there may not be any new Zune coming in June. However, we won’t know till we know.

Sadder is the news from WSJ that the motion camera for XBOX won’t be shipping for at least another year.  This is unfortunate and makes me wonder what’s in the pipeline, as rumour has it that the device was pretty much fully functional when MS bought the technology.

But back the original topic. There is a new Zune coming, we just don’t know exactly when yet. @Volvoshine has been talking about new features, and one in particular that has other manufacturers stumped.  Question is, could it be instant on?

The most annoying thing  about any mobile device, but especially music players, is the fact that there’s a boot time. This really sucks. It sucks enough that I go back to good old FM quite often. Nice thing about FM, you press the button, you have music, INSTANTLY. If someone can pull that off with a device I’d buy three – or more.

Being able to get music without the annoying 15 sec delay would really be awesome.

But – unfortunately I don’t own a device company, so cannot build one myself and have to wait for someone else to realise this would kick ass…

The daily thought(8)

I never realised how much my quality of life could be improved through fitting a new kitchen and bathroom! You want to live somewhere else while it happens though…

Tuesday, 12 May 2009

Zune HD Updates…

So – at long last we’ll find out whether the Microsoft Entertainment & Devices Division team really has what it takes to compete. Hopefully Mr Allard has been up to something mind-blowing – and has a plan that won’t cost billions in fixes…

But, the market has become crowded – they need a phone that works – and something really special to take on the iPod Touch that has become quite an excellent gaming platform.

Of course, there are a number of things happening, and the gaming platform may be the first one we see with E3 coming up. Note that they’ll most likely release the new Wii competitor tech first – but who knows…  E3 may be very exciting.

Strange place to launch a music player /phone thingy though…

The daily thought (7)

Distraction – it happens in the blink of an eye…

Monday, 11 May 2009

The daily thought (6)

Weekends – great for relaxing, and clearing the mind.  Make sure to get as many chores as possible done during the week. This gives you a sense of accomplishment and frees up your weekend for fun pursuits! Focus on clearing your time for the coming weekend.

Sunday, 10 May 2009

The daily thought (5)

Getting more family time requires less TV, less Web, and less work.  Strangely – this will also allow you to start a business with all the time you now have.

Saturday, 9 May 2009

The daily thought (4)

The web (like work) fills up all available time….

Friday, 8 May 2009

The daily thought (3)

What would happen if I stopped tracking news on the web? Go cold turkey? No more twitter, blogs, facebook or engadget?

Thursday, 7 May 2009

The daily thought (2)

Current workloads and economic policies are not family friendly. We need a way to spend more time with the family.  A 2.5 day work week at most :)

Wednesday, 6 May 2009

The daily thought…

How much wisdom can be conveyed in a single twitter post (tweet)?