dcinput

I am in Dublin for the next couple of days to see among other people my cousin who is a very talented dentist. It’s the dentist chair for me much of tomorrow…ouch.

The situation at London airports for passengers isn’t getting any better. Huge long queues, customs officials on their little powertrips, it’s acually really unpleasant. Where there’s fear, there money to be made and I note that Ryanair who have recently started charging £7 for each bag checked in (no matter how light it is) are cashing in. I’m pretty sure they are more than aware that even people traveling light can’t bring toiletries in their hand luguage anymore and so they’ve found a way to cash in. They might do cheapo flights but I sure don’t like the way they operate.

So much so that I thought I’d chance it to see how thorough the xray machine people were being. I’d rather hand them over some of my toileteries than be riped off by the airline. Needless to say, I am no longer the owner of shaving cream, moisturiser, deodorant, tooth paste (ha) and most annoyingly my Dax hairwax.

Thankfully there was a Boots inside the terminal and I was able to buy a whole new collection of bathroom stuff. Incidentally judging by the lack of products on the shelves they seem to be doing handsomely out of the situation too.

While waiting around in the terminal I also took a few steps towards the cult which is Mac and bought myself an iPod Nano. Tax free the 8GB version comes in at £140 which isn’t too bad. As I’ve got my laptop with me I was able to load up some podcasts onto it before the flight. My vacation from the world of podcasts is officially over and I am so happy!

The last Morning Coffee Notes was excellent. Good to hear all those guys again. Watched some great Rocketbooms and Ze Franks (on laptop) and was reminded of the absolute awesomeness of NYUB - best music show on the web by far. Now that I’m plugged back in, the world is interesting again!

All work and no play makes Mark a dull boy.

Eek powerbook hardrive is making some weird noises. Which reminds me…my last backup…errm…gulp.

Finally we have a nice cable 4MBit/s connection to the interweb. It’s been 3-4 weeks I’ve been without it and one of the main reasons I haven’t been posting much lately. I’ve had quite a lot of time to think about what it is I do on this blog and what it is I want to do in the future.

I’ve also ventured back into the world of podcasting somewhat. You see I unplugged my earbuds around 3 months ago, when my ipod died for the 5th time and the warranty was out, and really enjoyed the extra time I had in my day to do old school things like reading. I am contemplating buying an ipod nano in order to plub back into the audio web, though what I’d really like to do is be able to watch Rocketboom and Ze Frank when I’m on the move but the video ipods are way expensive and there’s always some roumour they’re going to release a better one 5 minutes after I buy one.

One of the things I’ve found really hard about moving house these last few weeks is all the things you have to switch over. It just doesn’t seem possible to make a smooth transition due to all the contracts you have to cancel, new ones you have to start, addresses you have to change etc… I’ve been without internet at home for nearly 3 weeks! Telewest should be installing a nice cable 4Mb pipe into my new flat on the 26^th, which should mean more regular posts.

The new Fulfilment service offered by Amazon looks very interesting indeed. Amazon let you outsource Storage with S3, Processing with EC2 and now distribution of material goods. Starting a business just got easier. Pretty soon we’ll all be living on a beach running our own business. All it takes is a bit of business logic and a phone. Hey maybe there’s an Amazon Skype in the pipeline…

Today I am helping my good friend Duncan McCann take his first steps into the wonderful world of blogging. Check out his new blog. We are sitting in the Abbey in Kentish town. Great pub with excellent food, belgian beers and nice music and most importantly free Wifi. Duncan’s Flickr stream.

All this week I am at a Redhat training course for Redhat Certified Engineer (RHCE). It’s pretty hardcore. Most of the people on the course have been doing Unix/Soloaris/Linux for over 10 years. So much information to cram into this little head. Managed to find some free wireless on the north river front near Bank.

The City of London where the course is, seems such a different place than the edges of Soho that I am used to. It’s a bustling hive of financial activity. The atmosphere smells of money, everybody needs to get somewhere fast. Maybe this is a financial equivalent of Silicon Valley?

I am now a Flickr Pro! I started using the Flickr uploader for OSX and it makes uploading photos to Flickr so painless that I know I am going to need more space. Can’t believe I didn’t try it sooner. At times you might find some of my photos strange, but I just take pictures of things I find interesting.

New Flickr set: Secret Garden Party 2006.

Another new Flickr set: Bunratty Castle.

By the way my camera is the rubbish one on my Motorolla V3 Razor. You can actually get some pretty OK photos with it if you know what your doing. I kind of like the chalenge sometimes. I guess these are the black and white photos of the future.

I don’t currently have internet connection at home, and I won’t until I move into the new place. It’s driving me mad. How is it that I am this reliant on the web?

I’ve had a really nice time here in the west coast of Ireland. Now in Shannon airport using the free WIFI which am very impressed with. Why don’t all airports have free wireless?

Oh no my plane is boarding!!

New Flickr set from my trip to Madrid.

I’ve made it back to London in one piece but having to get up at 4am to catch a plane at 645am certainly wasn’t easy, especially since I only get to bed at 2am.