I have GOT to get me one of these... part 2

SAMSUNG's Digital World - MobileComputing | Q1
Niice..

Goodbye rssbandit, goodbye newsgator, hello Outlook 2007...

Much nicer... much, much nicer to be able to have my RSS feeds in my inbox, where they belong. Newsgator did an outlook plugin which I never tried (used the online version which was free!), and used rssbandit on the desktop which I liked because of it's Outlook-ish interface. But this is much nicer. Except that I bet this is the slowest & most resource-intensive RSS aggregator in the world...

UK boffins test telepathic virtual world - vnunet.com

Just saw this article... now that is cool!

UK boffins test telepathic virtual world - vnunet.com

Movie: Superman Returns

Just got out of the movie... what's it like? Well it's long, the opening sequence of Krypton supernova-ing was cool, the new guy's face is like plastic, and the accents of a couple of the english characters were decididly dodgy! The new suit is cool, but I'm not sure why red has turned maroon... although DC certainly seemed to like it ...

All in all, couldn't not go watch the new superman flick, but I wouldn't rave too much about it. End.

Book: 24 Days by Rebecca Smith & John Emshwiller

The full title is actually 24 Days: How Two Wall Street Journal Reporters Uncovered the Lies that Destroyed Faith in Corporate America
And it's quite an in-depth look at the Enron saga from start to finish, written by two reporters who were intimately familiar with the industry, the history, the company and the individuals... this is a ring-side seat, basically.
Just finished reading this book, and I have to say two things:

1. What insanely massive amounts of money are we talking here? The book says that Enron borrowed about $3bn and 5 days later had cash holdings of about $1bn, but they also mention a little earlier in the book that Enron had first used it's entire credit line with it's banks, to the tune of another $3bn ... that's some serious money... so they went through about $5bn in cash in about 15 days. Woah.
2. For all the noise going on about the fact that a lot of this is because of a loss of investor confidence, (which led to a major cash crunch) which was caused by the fact that they had all these mysterious, non-disclosed & extremely complicated special purpose entities & LLPs and outside partnerships etc etc, I have to say I feel a bit let down.. I was looking forward to getting a proper breakdown of at least a couple of the many LJM, raptor, hawaii 125-0 and so on... something detailed to say OK, this is EXACTLY what happened with LJM, from start to finish. The closest they got was with explaining the Nigerian barge thing, which was pretty tame & small-fryish.
   

The move is over!

And what a move it was... 12 hours straight on saturday, and another 8 hours on sunday, 7 vehicle-loads full back and forth, and loads of back-breaking carrying! But it's done now, now all that remains is to unpack and sort out everything. Great... this better be worth it.. which I think it definitely will be, I'm excited to be in Kingston.. I like this place!

I have GOT to get me one of those...

Apple + Nike
Two great brands, both kinda industry leaders - and look what they've come up with now... a pair of shoes that can talk to your nano (wirelessly, of course), keep track of your workout, sync with a custom designed nike-personal-workout-planner-type website ... and yes, it still plays tunes!

I love the 21st century :-) ... see the real thing here...

Book: The E-myth revisited by Michael Gerber

Just finished reading this great book... something that I would unusually recommend to just about anyone at all. When I originally stumbled across it, I thought it was e as in electronic, and that it would be about the internet economy etc. The e in this case actually stands for entrepreneurial, and it's a book that just made so much sense to me from pretty much the first page onwards. It's funny how I actually had thought of a lot of the stuff in the book, which is probably why I agreed with it so much, but what's also cool is the fact that he takes a very hands-on, prescriptive approach, which is a welcome change from a lot of the inspiration/management/excellence type of stuff out there...
And what's also nice is that there's both some thought-provoking and some pretty much 1,2,3 type stuff in there that could in my opinion be applie quite easily to anyone's life, whether or not you're an entrepreneur. A lot of his goal / ambition / planning strategies could apply to just about anyone... so go out and get this book!

The great gig in the park...

Roger Waters & Nick Mason playing some old stuff, some new stuff & all of the Dark Side of the Moon in Hyde Park on 01 July 2006... need I say more?
Actually, now that I'm here I may as well... it was quite an entertaining day actually... a pretty big gig (Hyde Park Calling) in the middle of Hyde Park, a bunch of bands (some good, some not so good) - blackbud (who?), starsailor, texas, susanne vega, lightning seeds and a few more... and ofcourse the headliner - Woja Wo-ah :-).

Got to hear the first 3 from the above list DURING the live broadcast of the England-Portugal world cup quarter final. Let's just say that positioning the screen in front of the stage wasn't exactly easy on the bands.. some were pretty good natured, with starsailor cheering the team on between songs, while Sharleen Spiteri was less than happy, and made that quite clear... c'mon now, just because it wasn't Scotland playing! So anyway, got to hear the noise a few thousand people can amke when cheering on the team, and got to hear the silence a few thousand people can make when Cristiano Ronaldo doesn't miss the last Portugal penalty.

I must say I was impressed with the number of people who didn't trash the whole place after the game...

And eventually at about a quarter to eight, Waters took centre stage, and played a couple of nice long sets, finishing the evening with some great pyrotechnics (actually they were mostly just flamethrowers, but pretty big ones shooting flames 30 ft vertically into the air), some great tracks, and a generally "good day"feeling at about a quarter past ten. Follow up with pizza & drinks, and a looong tube ride back home...