Waiting for my flattie :)

I've been meaning to try Flat White out for a while now. Just requires a few minute detour from my usual route to the office. Worth the trip though. Damn good coffee and a really nice and friendly atmosphere.

Although the barista in my usual haunt is going to be miffed if she realises I'm switching...

Quite a stunning rainbow a result of a brief gap in the constant rain.

Kinda how I feel, coming out of the last few days of cold hell. Thank the FSM for Lemsip.

Disclosure: I corrected the exposure a tad, but not increased saturation at all.

I love this old shop, around the corner from our office. Looks like the exterior hasn't been touched in about 100 years. In fact, the interior isn't much more modern!

The folks are already queuing outside the London Regent Street store for the 6:02pm launch tomorrow. It's a nasty cold and wintery night - it's not going to be a nice wait for them.

TV crew filming and interviewing the brave (foolish?) souls.

- Taken at 6:41 PM on November 08, 2007 - cameraphone upload by ShoZu

Yay, finally got a new phone. Very cute. Works really well with Shozu to auto upload photos to phlog.

Woody Allen is filming something outside our offices - cool! The guy rocks.

He's on the left of the picture, d'uh :)

The bus was diverted this morning and we were stopped at some traffic lights, when I noticed this freaky tree next to me. It looks the the tree isn't happy being fenced in and is trying to escape...

Yum yum, Me Tree. Me eat fence...

Freaky.

Peter makes an excellent point - one of the most frustrating things, as an employer for a blogging company (and, well, as an employer in general), is getting a CV, preparing for an interview (which of course means 'google') and finding nothing. Nothing? No blog? No personal website? No personal web-based projects? Not even phlog / flickr / del.icio.us / 43things / audioscrobbler? We are a company whose focus is building the next generation of social web applications? Time to start getting interested in this stuff, I think :) Sure, the quality of your coding skills is rather important, but how do I know what you're really capable of and passionate about if all I can see is a CV?

If you know me at all, you'll know I have a love-hate relationship with blogs. I think the name blog is a tad pretentious, but at the same time, we all know that often things need a catchy name in order for the thing to be noticed and accepted (see ajax - another pretentious name for something pretty astounding). Some people that I know dismiss blogs as being teenage ramblings (as opposed to the thirtysomething ramblings that you'll find here :) ), yet I find myself increasingly relying on blogs as my primary source of news, information, research and entertainment on the interweb.

As a simple, current case in point, I'm currently setting up a sexy new Xeon server. I need some information on setting up the raid array - where do I find it? Online documentation? I wish - it totally skips over all information that I need. A book? That would mean a futile trip into town to spend too long searching for a book that I know they'd never stock. A quick googling returns a bunch of blogs that tell me exactly what I need. Written by people in a similar situation to me right now, but spent 5 minutes sharing the information via a blog.

Sure, this is nothing new - we were doing this on dial-up BBSs back in the day. Then usenet, .plan files etc. This just happens to be the next step. The immediacy of being able to put tidbits of info relevant to you (and possibly someone else) on something as easily accessible and searchable as the web is what makes this pretty incredible.

A blog isn't just a textual daily thoughts of a teenager (not that they are not important!), a blog can photos, podcasts (or whatever you feel like calling an mp3 these days :) ), video, text, links - basically anything that is 'you' and you want to a) share, or b) store. Obviously sharing is kinda the point if you're going to the trouble of putting it on the web rather than your harddrive :)

Plus, sharing is what's helping us shake off the traditional media. We don't need no stinking publishers! When I can get updates on my friends, more relevant information, better radio and music, more up-to-date news, have a feedback loop to the people producing this and actually care about the people I'm reading about, who needs them bigboys anymore? Sure, they have their uses (and money for making the big shiny summer blockbusters that we all like), but we need to let them know where they stand. They don't own the patent on producing 'content' (man, I hate it when people use the word 'content' for media!), although I'm sure they wouldn't mind it if they did.

Woah, this post went a tad off-topic. I just wanted to say that I'm really happy as an employer when I find that the people I'm interviewing actually care about this stuff and create their own 'content' and are part of this (I'm tempted to say 'revolution' here, but I'll sound like a freak and Jim will laugh at me) new publishing landscape. It shows me not just that they understand it, but that they 'get it'.

Anyway, today I'm thinking phlog3 (as always), working on cudlz.com (see if you can guess what it'll be from the photos), blog and info site for Colin's studio and playing with a new super secretsquirrel site (more info coming very soon!). So keeping busy here. What's going on with you?

Pretty scary stuff.

I was on my way into London, waiting at Reading station. Thankfully, I missed my train (my tardiness finally pays off) and as I was waiting for the next train, news started to trickle in (thanks, Paul) and word came that all London transport was being shut down. I grabbed my coffee, got a refund and got the hell out of there.

According to M, lumpy the heffalump looks like me... Hmmm... He's very cute and all, but I'm not sure that it's a fair comparison.