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Screenshot of my desktop

I thought i’d take a screenshot of my desktop and show it to you guys, i always love looking at other people’s desktops..

I like to keep a clean and uncluttered desktop, but at the same time i could never just have 3 or 4 icons, i’m far too lazy to have them all neatly sorted in to folders, so i keep about 20 icons on my desktop permanently, these are the programs i regularly use and stuff that’s handy to have at hand.

As you can see, it’s BeerChief branded, what do you expect I also run XP, which cuts out all the animation and flash crap you get with Vista, and it also leaves my processor and memory free for the STUFF THAT MATTERS!!

Anyone with Vista who has all these widgets and crap cluttering up their sidebar and complains about speed issues deserves to be slapped around the head

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Back from Microsoft

Today, i had the pleasure of visiting Microsoft in Dublin for a bit of MS brainwashing

It was a good day out, and pretty interesting, as we got a talk from 3 MS employees on different areas/products.

We also got a brief tour around one of the buildings and free sandwhiches/drinks provided by MS, so that was nice of them.

Unfortunately, no pictures. They’re tight on security/photography so THAT’S why there were no pictures or video on the net when i went searching for them

Here’s a shot of one of their buildings though *shhhh* don’t tell anyone

I did get a name badge for the day, but had to give it back The only souvenir i got was this free can of Fanta

Anyway, we got a sneak preview of some cool emerging technologies like photosynth, silverlight, popfly and surface. I’d heard of all of these bar photosynth, which looks pretty cool i have to admit, although i don’t think it’s anywhere near completion and will be another few years away.

Photosynth takes hundreds of images and mashes them up to create a 3d modelling system which you can rotate/revolve 360 degrees and look at from all angles. Here’s a video preview;

A lot of this stuff is WOW technology i.e. it looks impressive and works well in theory, but in reality, it just won’t work or won’t become mainstream.

MS surface a perfect example. I’m telling you now it will fall flat on it’s face. That’s my own opinion, obviously MS don’t share that view What happens if you spill a glass of sticky beer on the table.. can it be cleaned easily, is it 100% waterproof, does it have a backup powersource in the event of power failure (don’t forget it has the ability to take credit card details etc..), does it auto clear cache / history? will it run all versions of bluetooth, will it be backwards compatable, where’s the training for staff going to come from, where’s the support gonna be at, how does it store data for hundreds of clients, does it have a harddrive or does it use remote servers, if so what sort of connection speeds does it need etc…

It’s just too much at present. We have problems at ATM machines and touchscreen ticket machines… how the hell are customers and employees gonna get the hang of all of this fancy finger touch stuff.

I still know plenty of people who can’t work a mobile phone or a standard TV remote control. I’m not talking ‘old’ here either, in their 40’s.

Anyway, i had a good day as did the rest of the group, well worth the trip up Some other things of note were that they have a 24/7 gym on site, but employees have to PAY €100 to join (a bit mean imo). Employee’s also only get a discount on software - i’d have thought they’d give free software out to employees. Average age is 35 with a 60:40 male:female workforce.

backup plans are great

For all of those tools who questioned my sanity when i bought my €600 n95 -

With my trip to Microsoft less than 12 hours away, i had intended charging my Casio Exilim ex-s600. I say ‘intended’ because it’s sitting here beside me not charging and powerless

The battery has somehow died. I’ve even gone so far as to take the damn camera apart to check for visible signs of damage or condensation etc.. but once i hook it up to my laptop via usb cable, it’s fully functional.

It’s definitely a battery fault. Now i had thought to myself in the past, ’should i get a back up battery’ mainly because it would save me carrying a charger around on holidays or whatever. The casio’s battery life is superb, and has never let me down or left me short thus far. Well, tonight, it died after about 18 months.

I’m not impressed. But in a way, it highlights my lack of weaknesses. In reserve, i have an n95.

5 mega pixels, MPEG 4 video, armed with a 2gig micro sd. Only slightly inferior to the casio on paper. I’ve spoken about the n95 serving as a quality multi-purpose ‘backup’ and it’s day like these which it steps in.

Backup plans and systems are essential in technology. Had this been a wedding or a holiday or something, and had i not got my n95, i’d be seriously annoyed with my camera, myself and probably other people (nobody likes to blame themselves for their own shortcomings).

But i’ve rescued myself this time, and immediately ordered a new battery. Had i been a normal person, i’d probably have no decent camera with me tomorrow. Now i could always steal one from a family member, but that’s besides the point The point is you have to have systems in place when things go wrong. A ‘Plan B’ at least.

The future’s bright, the future’s BeerChief

This time last year, BeerChief was conceived and in it’s early days, i was still thinking what i could do with it. I broke the news on Feb 2nd 2007 that i’d bought the name BeerChief.com

At that stage, i was still a teenager (hmm… i wonder if that would qualify me as a teenage dot com millionaire if i become a millionaire later on from that idea ).

Fast forward a year and BeerChief is still in development. It’s been a lot of work, even though it may seem like we’ve done nothing on it. I’ve got literally dozens of printed documents regarding BeerChief and loads of ideas and plans… some we’ve ditched, others we’ve sticked with… the spine of the idea is still there though and that’s pretty impressive.

Despite lack of finances, a year in the wilderness, ups and downs, both of us still remain confident in BeerChief and are still very much determined to deliver that ‘world class’ social networking site i talked about in the past.

At the minute, i’ve just put together a full list of specs and VERY shortly (as in the next week), we’ll be listing a build project on some of the big freelance sites, with a fairly large budget

When all is said and done, between the two of us, we’ll probably have over $4k tied up in BeerChief, which is a hell of a lot for two young guns who could use that cash for living and drinking and doing what young people normally do with their cash

There’s zero risk in this, certainly that’s the view we take, that’s the confidence we have in it. But the danger is always there that in order to simply keep the site up, we’ll be out of our depth financially… in which case it’s either seek investment & dilute our share, look for grants, take out loans and cross fingers we can repay them.

None of those options are particularly attractive as it de-rails us from the job in hand and immediately turns it in to a profit organization - which puts pressure on us to plaster ads all over the place.

So with that in mind, we’ll deliberately stunt growth in the short term by keeping it invite-only. It will help us fine tune the site and listen to user needs/wants, whilst keeping it all under control to some degree. We’ll then be in a better position to negotiate with advertisers/banks/investors etc..

Even the almighty Bebo ran in to this problem… well not Bebo itself, but Birch’s (the owners) previous attempt at a ‘bebo’. It grew too fast, too quickly and forced him in to selling up. He used the cash to kick start bebo and the rest is history

The Laptop Arrived

My girlfriend’s laptop arrived today.

Not bad, considering i only ordered it 48 hours ago

This is Ireland - that’s not supposed to happen. I’m supposed to order it, it will ship out the same day, then it will take 2 days to arrive in Dublin, it will then sit in the back of a van for a few days, then arrive about a week later That’s usually what ‘express’ deliver means in Ireland, especially if you live outside of Dublin.

Anyway, here’s the pics;

Specs wise, the Aspire 4920, kicks my Ferrari’s ass. 2 Gig Ram, 120 gig HD, 1.5ghz dual core intel CPU…

It also has surprisingly good sound and some handy external buttons for volume control and general multimedia stuff. Something my Ferrari lacks.

It’s a 14.1 inch, so as you can see, slightly smaller and lighter than my 15.4″ Ferrari.

One thing i don’t like however is Vista. I swear, having played with it for about 2/3 hours, i was glad to get back to XP. It seems completely and utterly pointless…

All it is, is a fat XP with loads of extra junk in the form of flashy interfaces and blurring/glowing windows. Completely unnecessary and a huge waste of resources. If this was my laptop, i’d actually downgrade to XP at the minute, purely because i believe it’s faster and easier to use. No junk or nonsense.

Apart from that though, this is one nice little laptop, with plenty of power power under the hood. A bargain at €650. I could almost buy 3 of them for the price my Ferrari cost almost 3 years ago