I will not be twittering or blogging much…or at all, tomorrow. My Adminblast session ends at 10am local time and I will immediately be getting on the bike for my trip home. I have to be at Stranraer at 10pmBST to catch the ferry to Belfast. This will be a painful slog!
Yesterday morning, I left birmingham and headed to London in (relatively) dry weather. Pulled up outside Tim Clark’s house after 2 hours and took a break for 30 minutes. Tim rolls out in his stunning Kawasaki Ninja and we planned our 2 hour, 100mile journey to Folkstone. Just as we did that, it started to rain… bad.
For those two hours, we were completely and totally soaked beyond belief, with water leaking through my weatherproof gear in random places. Arrived at the channel tunnel looking horrifically soaked, where we met the very dry Gab and Tim Davis (with Carl Tyler), then Warren and Kitty Elsmore.
30 minutes in a (dry!) tunnel and we emerged in Calais, where Tim looked out the window and said “its not raining!!”. Tim (aka “its not raining” aka “Tim the liar” aka “Tim the wet”) was correct for about 4 minutes. The rain gods followed across the English tunnel and shat rain on us for another hour before easing off. Another 130 miles though France to Antwerp and we were in heavy traffic, about 3 miles from the hotel. Tim filtered one way, I filtered the other. I have satnav, Tim does not. I found hotel. Tim found hotel 40 minutes later. Although we both had great fun, it was a lovely feeling parking the bike and knowing I was not getting on it for 36 hours. On to the bar and we both retired after a couple of beers. Onwards to the event and the voyage home.
Today was an early start, with an exam followed by a customer meeting. After that, straight to Dublin port for the 2pm ferry to Holyhead in Wales.
Off the ferry at 4pm and planned the fastest route to Birmingham. Following the image above, it is a straight motorway dash almost all the way. Common sense route right? One couldn’t ignore the route and head through the Welsh hills right?? I couldn’t resist. The roads were dry and although visibility was poor the motorway route is as dull as f&@k. The plan above was ditched and instead I headed south east through stunning scenery and road heaven. It added an hour to the trip, and was worth every second. From my little jaunt through Wales today, I know I will be back here on 2 wheels again. Off to London tomorrow, then on to Antwerp.
Considering the mileage on the cards for the week ahead, I decided to leave my Macbook Pro at home and travel light (read: anorexic). So, my iPad and my bluetooth keyboard, combined with my blackberry will be my productivity tools for the week. This is a first, and to me it is a full test of my “do I really need one” approach to the iPad. I like the iPad, but considering the trade we work in, it just doesn’t cut it for me usually. We are not Apple’s target market for the device so I don’t expect the iPad to ever do what I need. Sod’s law will prove me right of course with some issue arising that will require the lappy as soon as I hit Antwerp. Starting to think that a Macbook air and a Macbook Pro would be the best combination. Let’s see how I feel by Friday.
An easy start this evening, with a decision to drive to Dublin before tomorrow, so I can meet with customers before I head for the ferry. The fun begins tomorrow….
Bad ideas look good from a distance.
This week will be tough. Lots on tomorrow, followed by starting my journey to BLUG tomorrow evening. Going to head to Dublin tomorrow night so I can take a meeting Tuesday morning before the ferry. I hope to tweet pictures and log the journey as I travel it. Keep an eye on the map to see how it is going. While I am doing it, my conscience will constantly remind me that I could have booked a 50quid ticket.
Either way, looking forward to BLUG.
Google’s Latitude platform was a relatively early entrant into the current wave of location-aware apps–but until this point, it’s steered clear of the “check-in” language that trendy start-ups like Foursquare have popularized. No more: Latitude’s iPhone app, in an update announced today, finally allows users to check into specific places and share their location with their friends.
Strange that I don’t like the check-in feature on any location product. I like Google Latitude because I don’t have to remember to check in. It follows me.
Yesterday, a grumpy man had a nice delivery.
My other MBP is 2 1/2 years old, and even though it is still plenty fast, I wanted the extra memory and a Solid State Drive to run multiple heavy VMs.
Although very expensive, I don’t guilt over this particular purchase. Like many readers here, my laptop is the tool of my trade. Used for many many hours per day, 365 or so days per year. I want to enjoy using it, and I get plenty of mileage out of it. We constantly push them hard, running many applications or virtual machines. They get scratched, dropped, mistreated more then most and still are totally relied upon. This time, considering the cost and the fact it is my first laptop with a non-removable battery, I went with applecare for the three years. I have no experience of applecare, so here is hoping that if I do need to use it, it is a good move.
Setup was easy to the point of disappointing.
It is now completely configured and setup as per my last backup on my other Macbook Pro. Only hiccups were related to bluetooth devices and re-registering MSOffice license. It is identical to the machine I was using the day before. Just faster. A lot faster.
The SSD makes a serious difference. Cold start (from the beep to login page) is 18 seconds. After you login, it is fully loaded in 3 seconds. Here is a quick video of Lotus Notes loading after a cold start (by far the heaviest product on my machine), followed by firefox and mail.app.
Compare it to my last Mac below:
“Wiping” a device in Lotus Traveler is very dependant on the device itself. For the record, here are your current options (8.5.2.1).
