Is this the demise of Facebook?

Facebook is many things to many people. When it first hit our shores, to me it was one of the coolest things out -mainly because I lost track with a fair number of people that I wanted to get in touch with. No doubt like many others I found looking at other people's photos fairly addictive and lost countless hours seeing what others were up to.

More recently however I've not made the time for Facebook -much to the annoyance of certain friends who still live on the website. To me Facebook has become boring and stagnant, because now I've caught up with most people I lost touch with -and I don't have enough time to play all the games-, what's left?

For quite some time now Stacey has voiced concern over the fact that Facebook encourages people to live in the past -which I agree with. It's not a bad thing catching up with friends you've lost track of but after that what value is there really in Facebook?

Her point really hit home the other day when a particularly unpleasant person from school joined, I suspect they have been a member of Facebook for quite some time but nobody bothered looking them up. I know some people consider Facebook as a competition of "who knows the most people" but to me I've only really ever added friends, admittedly there are one or two loose "friend" connections in my list of friends but I'd happily enjoy a pint with any of them. So when this particular person added me I decided not to accept, since then I've been bombarded with repeat requests and messages asking me to add them.

It sounds silly but I find it a little hypocritical adding someone to my "friend" list who I have no affiliation with or desire to get to know. My reasoning is not that unjustified as I and a few other people I know have met up with the person in question since leaving school in the hope they've changed and sadly everyone agrees that they've not changed in the slightest. So why would I want to appease their conscious?

Why the demise of Facebook? Well for me I don't see any point in re-visiting the site other than once a month or so to check my messages etc so have they reached their visitor ceiling? I'm sure there are other untapped markets globally for them but once you've caught up with people and sent them a few messages, what other use is Facebook?

Google gets the lurve bug

We've started to use Google Docs to manage the workload of our remote workers -which I have to say works pretty well, logging on today I was really impressed to see that Google Docs had gone all out to pimp out their interface.

I think it's really nice so for those of you who don't use Google Docs click the image to see the results :)

It's little things like the heart instead of the star...

Ok, back to managing peoples time :P

Is Google taking the P? How should I know, it's all gibberish to me...

I recently signed up for a new Google account for client related stuff and ever since have found that the entire user interface has changed into another language -I would guess Greek or Polish but I don't really have a clue. I don't know why it started like this as I sure as damn-it chose English but it makes me laugh every-time I see it.

I've even tried changing all my settings to English but Google just doesn't want me to read what it's saying -luckily I'm familiar enough with the interface that I can navigate around it without needing to know what it's saying ;)

Some Google fun

Thanks to Chris Anderson for this one -shame I missed it the day he posted it due to mega issues but worth sharing:

1. Goto Google (www.google.com incase you're that uneducated :P)
2. Type into the search "find Chuck Norris"
3. Click the "I'm feeling lucky button"
4. Enjoy

Well it made me smile at least

*Goes off to find a good CN movie*

Britain's gone nuts

I don't know when Britain decided this but it seems that every time I read the papers at the moment I read yet another absurd idea from up high but this one had me laughing so I thought I'd share:

The Justice Ministry is calling for the removal of the word "prostitute" - which has been around for almost 200 years - from criminal statutes. Ministry officials argue the word carries too much social stigma and are pushing to replace it with the phrase "persons who sell sex persistently." Try saying that with a mouthful.

Gerald Ratner: The Rise... And Fall... And Rise Again -yet another autobiography

I don't know whether it's just I've had my head in the sand for the past few years or whether there really is an influx of autobiographies hitting the book stores, either way after finding time to read Duncan Bannatyne's book I thought I'd try another -"Gerald Ratner: The Rise... And Fall... And Rise Again" which I only bought out of curiosity but have found to be most interesting.

I don't know why many people read these sorts of books, I guess there are some looking for that "golden ticket to the riches" but I like to find out where someone's come from and what sort of attitudes businessmen have to life. One thing is for sure is that most of them want to write books¹ ;)

I realise the book is his take on the events that passed (my mother is still insistent that he MUST have said the jewellery was crap as otherwise the press wouldn't have pursued him as ferociously) but either way what I found most interesting are the values that he learnt along the way.

One can only feel sorry for what he has been through -regardless of whether he was seen to be "flash with his cash" when he had it or not (to be fair who wouldn't be if they could be), to see that he's managed to recover from it is a real achievement.

Until recently, when asked the "If you could meet one person who's alive" type question I would probably have said Peter Jones as he always came across as an entrepreneur with a little gusto and flare about him but recently -perhaps just due to the producer's discretion I've gone off that idea and would much rather share a beer with Gerald Ratner. I wish him and geraldonline.com all the success in the future.

The book is an easy read and can easily be picked up and put down as needed so if you've not had a chance to read it, pick up a copy of "Gerald Ratner: The Rise... And Fall... And Rise Again" your local book store (or Amazon if you live in the sticks!).

¹ For those of you interested, I have already got my book underway, it's going to be an epic -and exciting- tale of woe about my raise to fame (and hopefully without fall...). I think I'm going to name it "Coming from nowhere to go somewhere". I wish I could say you can pre-order it somewhere but you can't -if you want a copy email me and I'll add you to the list (you'll probably be the first...)

Amy Winehouse - the Birmingham gig

Ever since Amy Winehouse hit the UK music scene Stacey, her father and I have been wanting to see her live because there's no doubt she'll be entertaining so when the opportunity to go see her just down the road from here came up there was no turning it down!

If you're like me and don't have enough time to follow the latest celebrity gossip headlines you'll not know that her husband has been jailed, I'm not entirely sure why still but I think it's got something to do with her beating someone up and then him trying to pay them off to drop the court case. Anyhow I digress.

I spent the entire week looking forward to the gig as we don't get to see many gigs (the last was a superb gig by Jack Johnson in the NEC) though despite my celebrity news ignorance even I knew the gig would be controversial as the first time I saw her on Jools Holland's show she was wasted out of her mind swaying on the stage and the second time she was just as wasted at Glastonbury but I wasn't expecting what we got.

After turning up 40minutes or so late for her performance she was clearly in pain. She started rushing through her set, from past sets I've seen her perform she tends to introduce her band before starting but that didn't happen and even her songs seemed to be rushed. Within two songs I had a feeling was wrong.

After 4 or 5 songs she stormed off stage without any explanation and we were left wondering whether that was it or not -a few people got up and left but after a while she came back on stage and started again but she was in tears though most of it. I can't say her words were overly legible and at times it sounded like a bag of cats.

It was one of those historic gigs that was awkward to be at but I'm glad I was even if it was just to see what everyone was going to talk about the next day. I really hope she sorts herself out (or as much as possible!) but I really disagree with her management who IMNSHO were out of order getting her up on stage.

If you ever get the chance to go see Amy Winehouse I really would because the band alone is worth seeing and her two dancers come backup singers are great. If you want to see photos of her gig you can check out my photo album of the gig here.

Amazon -unbelievable customer service

Stacey bought me a Canon IXUS 950 IS for my birthday which needless to say I was more than chuffed to receive, it's a fantastic camera with enough bells and whistles to make it more than just a happy snappy camera but not too many to make it cumbersome to transport so you can ensure you have it to hand when that un-missable shot is coming.

Problem was, on the weekend it developed a fault -Canon's dreaded E24 error. It's predecessor lasted about 4 years before a rainstorm when it decided to start (understandably) complaining for a while but the IXUS 950 IS hasn't had any (recent)¹ abuse so I called Amazon fearing the worst but hoping they would replace it as this would appear to be a software related fault.

¹ About a week after I got the camera I did drop it but that was mid July.

I first of all emailed them using their online panel as it was out of it's 30 day no-quibble return period but didn't get a response. A little inpatient I decided to call them yesterday and I spoke to a very helpful representative named "Donncha" who assured me that despite my mishap with dropping it there should be no issues in returning it no offence Donncha but I've heard that one before so I didn't hold my breath. He told me a courier would come and collect the camera tomorrow (today) and a replacement would be with me in 3-4 days.

A little later I received -what I assumed was- a collection email saying Royal Mail would be around at some point, I wasn't expecting what happened next. At approximately 10am our usual Royal Mail parcel guy arrived to collect the camera, then, about 5minutes later, another parcel delivery man arrives and drops off the replacement!

I have to take my hat off to you Amazon in this instance, that's superb customer service!

Quote of the day

"Charge less and just do it quicker" -or- "Charge less, just spend less time on it"

That's what I got from someone that (infrequently) passes me work when I quoted him on some development yesterday. It sums some clients up though, they think you can do the work required -and- get the results by doing less and as for working faster -you can forget that, do they not think we go as fast as possible so we can move onto the next project sooner?

Made me smile so I thought I'd share :)

Our beer making weekend

My mum gave me a slightly odd Christmas present this year -a beer making weekend. I like many 20 something relished the opportunity to spend a weekend trying out a multitude of different beers, learning what goes into making one and more importantly how I can concoct my own sweet ale. Why then did I start this post saying it was somewhat of an odd present? Well mainly due to my training and much to Stacey's delight I'm virtually tea-total which means my beer-drinking experience thus far in life has been vastly limited to the odd drop of Kronenberg Blanc or Corona (my two current favorite beverage choices) and I can in no way call myself a beer connoisseur (or indeed want to call myself a beer connoisseur). Always wanting to try new things however I went to the beer making weekend with a clear and open mind.

We arrived at Nether Stowey Brewery after a fairly straight forward journey (god bless in-car sat nav systems -they really do take the pain out of navigating) a touch later than planned which meant the other attendees of the beer making weekend had already had the chance to get acquainted with our teacher for the weekend "Ian". I don't know too much about Ian other than he enjoys beer, works -as and when he likes (or so it would appear)- as a very successful employment lawyer and that he likes good beer (I know I've already mentioned that but he really did like his beer...).

The weekend started with a short lesson in beer making, some of the different techniques/flavours produced and a little background behind beer, for instance, did you know that beer was drunk as the primary drink until fairly recently as water was not safe to drink? Or that pale ale was produced by running water through the already used mulch? It was then given to the children as a much weaker beer? Or how about: Most beer and wine is not vegetarian as they use "finings" to remove the impurities (cloudyness) which are made from Fish Liver...

Followed was a discussion on both which drinks we tended to drink at home and what sort of beer we were all looking to produce. There were 5 of us in our group, obviously we were all going to have different opinions of what we wanted from "our" beer. Before we made our final decision we had the part that I think everyone was looking forward to the most -the beer tasting.

The idea behind the tasting was not to get drunk or simply down a load of different beers, we were taught how to taste (and so appreciate) each beer's qualities. It's amazing how different beers that you would assume were similar taste. The names of different beers was also intriguing. My favourite was the acclaimed "Titanic". Having won numerous awards I thought it was going to be a delightful drink, but lets just say the drink went down as well as the boat...

Ian and his most hospitable wife Lynne also run a B&B (The Old Cider House) so your accommodation over the weekend is in very pleasant surroundings -and the food to an excellent standard, we quickly relaxed. It turns out that Ian not only runs beer making weekends, he also produces a selection of fine ales for the local pubs -some of which go down a storm, others not...

The Saturday was primarily spent mulching the various ingredients in a giant vat before leaving it to simmer for a few hours -during which we were left to our own devices -Sam, Pat and I resorted to wandering the streets and playing Pooh sticks of all things in the village's stream.

We then spent most of Sunday naming our new creation, I really dislike trying to name things, naming my company "The Site Doctor" was hard enough but something that came over time, we had a matter of hours to name the beer and create the label. We went round in circles trying to think of something witty yet meaningful, comical yet serious. In the end we settled on "That" with the slogan "Making Life Taste Bitter" -I can't say it was my first choice but the majority ruled.

It was a good 6 weeks before Nether Stowey Brewery finally sent us the products of our weekend of hard work. Carefully packaged in a large cardboard box were 12 bottles of fine ale. I for one (as I'm sure is true with the rest of the group) was not sure what to expect from them so decided to store them away for a special occasion. When I did finally crack one open, I was pleasantly surprised, I can't say it's something I would choose to buy in a pub but it was certainly more drinkable than I was expecting! I've still got a few bottles remaining so if you are -or were- the recipient of one of my bottles, you were either very much liked by me -or disliked, depending on your outlook ;) Needless to say the "Gaunt Brewery" will remain little more than a dream for now...

If you're interested in learning how to make beer, why not try out Nether Stowey's beer making weekend for yourself? I would think it'd make a good stag do. Check out www.4ale.co.uk for more information.

Getting rich –is it as hard as it was?

Stacey and I were enjoying our last meal in Croatia last night when the subject of where we "go" next came up. I've never hidden the fact that I want to be wealthy, in fact I would imagine many who know me would go as far as it's what drives me. This is true in a sense however you will notice I used the word "wealthy" rather than "rich" or "loaded".

What many people seem to do is confuse what I mean when I say I want to get wealthy (or sometimes rich), I don't mean I want to have stacks of cash sitting in the bank or a huge number of shares under my belt, what I in fact mean is I want to enjoy myself, ok I need cash to do that but it's more important that I -and those around me- are happy.

Anyhow, I digress. As I was saying, Stacey and I were talking about how we were going to get our incomes to a level that would support the somewhat luxurious lifestyle we have imagined for ourselves when she said "The people with stacks of money have inherited it". This -in many cases- is true, people such as Paris Hilton for example haven't "done" anything to get the money, it has been -or will be- inherited.

That got me thinking, does that run true in today's society? Of course there are people who have inherited serious sums of cash but there are also a large number of self-made -and young- millionaires cropping up all over the place. A few that sprung to mind almost immediately are Bill Gates, Larry Page and Sergy Brin (the Google Guys), Richard Branson¹, Sir Alan Sugar, The Bechams, Duncan Bannatyne, Peter Jones² and more recently the plethora of web 2.0 start-ups that are getting sold off for millions.

¹ Ok, I know many say that he was given a pretty good start by his father but you still have to have something to make it work

² IIRC Peter Jones (from BBC's "Dragon Den"/ITV's "Tycoon") was also bankrupt a few years ago

So it got me wondering -disregarding those who were able to make a serious amount of money through "lucky breaks"³ in technology and successful "celebrities"- has the birth of the Internet made making large amounts money a whole lot more reachable?

³ Personally, I think it takes more than just being in the right place at the right time (which undoubtedly helps), I think you also need to be able to spot the opportunity and have what it takes to grasp that opportunity.

From stunning sun to severe storms in less than 12 hours

Well, we're back from Croatia (I'll post all about that later I'm sure) but I was just wondering if anyone else has seen this weather icon before? While we were over in Croatia, it would have been a bright sun and a number around 40C so it's somewhat of a shock...

Nice graphic though!

Setting trends - high value IP addresses

In a somewhat random chat with Chris Anderson today I decided that I wanted to obtain the IP address 80.08.13.55 (IP6) or even better 53.180.0.8 (both timeout atm). It got me wondering whether you can you purchase a specific IP like that and whether that could be the new trend...

Chris wants felt 7.107.73.45 was more appropriate for our American comrades but I think that’s a little boring...

For those of you who didn't make it to school, type it into your calculator without the periods and see what you get (note my primary school calculator example -I'm returning it to it's roots)...

See it yet?

No? Turn it the other way up:

How about now?

Tim vs. a Swan

Those of you who have me on MSN Messenger (and use a client that displays my little sub messages) may have noticed today’s caption reads “Tim vs. a Swan : Tim 1 - Swan 0”. A few of you have asked what it is all about so I thought I’d just post it here (shame on those of you who didn't!).

For those of you who are new to my life I’m rather into my canoeing* and what with the forthcoming Cheshire Ring Race drawing closer I’ve been getting out on the water as much as possible. My new routine is now gym one night, canoe the next and last night was a canoe night. Stacey’s also training atm so she came out for a run with me.

I’ve thrown this all into a little map (see below - thanks Google Earth!) so you can better understand what I’m talking about. I usually dock near a swans nest and although around this time of the year they get a little arsey (they’re brudy or have chicks so that’s ok) we have a fairly amicable relationship –I don’t like them, they don’t like me. Last night was something different, when I got onto the water I could only see one of the two swans, the male (who is the nasty one) was no-where to be seen so we carried on (he usually potters off up a side route etc).

No sooner than I had passed under the bridge but I saw the male at the end of the straight and he started flapping to take off. Now, I don’t know if you’ve even seen a swan taking off but they’re big gits and it takes them a while so I figured he would just fly over the top of me.

I kept thinking that until he was about 20ft away from me when he angled right for me and it was clear he was after me haha. Knowing that they can cause serious damage (though we’re still debating the “Can a swan break a man’s leg” rumour) I decide to get over to the bank and wait it out there –in the tiger (my very unstable racing kayak) I wouldn’t have stood a chance in the middle of the canal.

It was a close call to be fair, he was about 5ft in front of my boat by the time I got over to the side at which point he stopped flapping and swam past hissing at me something chronic. The funniest bit of it was that Stacey had taken my paddles off me and was poised over the stingers and spikey things ready to beat him if he came close –I just wanted them back in case I needed to use them!

I’ve had swans come for me before but never fly down 0.2miles to “get” me, that was quite something else! I’m still chuckling about the thought of “You know what, I don’t think he’s planning on flying over me…”.

*Some would say this is an understatement

Threshers do it again -another 40% discount voucher! This time for Easter

As you're probably aware, at Christmas the Threshers Group put out a 40% discount voucher for the Threshers Group, well it would appear they’ve decided to do it again so I thought I should share it again, as before, the Threshers Group 40% Easter discount voucher can has a couple of T&Cs including no Champagne, Sparkling or Fortified Wine, other than that, it doesn’t appear to have the same £500 limit as before so drink up guys and girls!

Download the 40% Easter discount voucher for the Threshers Group

The voucher is valid until 1st April 2007

Remember: If you're looking for some naughty fun this Easter, check out the Miss Mays Adult Store for all sorts of adult toys and games

When customer service goes mad

I rate good/great customer service very highly when it comes to retaining clients and obtaining new clients so it always make me laugh at how some companies value their customer service and more to the point wonder how they’re still in business!

The other day I had a couple of conversations with Fasthosts that I simply had to share. A little background though –we’ve been with Fasthosts for a couple of years now, I think we originally signed up in 1999 through 4as1 and I know we were one of their first customers. Since then we’ve registered around 300 domains with their sister company UKReg without a problem.

More recently however I’ve been feeling less easy about their service. Firstly they started charging for things left right and centre –ok, they’ve got a business to run, next they started to overload the servers (ok it’s a shared server, I can live with that), to combat the overloaded servers they started moving domains –I’m guessing higher demand sites onto their own boxes. That was ok, except they gave you no advanced warning and seeing as a fair few of the sites in question would reference MS Access databases elsewhere would cause us no-end of update fun.

Then their support went down hill to the extent that we often had to wait for ages until the phone was answered (listening to “you are 17th in the queue”). At this point we had just opened an account with Rackspace so had the view to slowly move the domains over. That was until I got an email saying they would now be charging for a number of services that were historically free which cut into our margins –making them negative. That annoyed me somewhat so moving the sites away from Fasthosts was moved up my priority list.

When we first signed up with Fasthosts they were the dogs, cheap hosting with all the bells and whistles –we had a Windows account which meant –unlike others at the time we had free use of ASP and all sorts but now all they seem interested in is the Yankee dollar rather than customer retention.

The other day was the straw that broke the camels back in regards my tolerance of Fasthosts. I had two fairly simple questions and it wasn’t easy to get a straight response to either. The first related to a domain I was adding for a client, they don’t use it but have access to a personal control panel which allows them to manage their emails etc. The control panel although a little outdated does the job. The catch however is recently you need to pay for use of Fasthosts’ control panel or you can build your own through the API. I didn’t need half the stuff included in the “Standard Bundle” and only wanted Fasthosts’ personal control panel so thought it would be best to ask which package I needed:

Massively long delay before a response finally comes

Great! They’ve removed the control panels I highlighed (and only those ones!) but they were just the ones in the next month! In fairness, after a few more emails I did get the past invoices refunded as well as a fair few future ones taken off the account but it makes me very concerned as to who else is still paying this charge... I would never have questioned it as they did send a mailshot out saying they would now be charging for them etc. Most odd

Conversation 2 – SQL Server Express

As I’ve already mentioned, we’ve been with Fasthosts for around 8 years now (that’s at least £7k in the basic fees in case you’re interested) and for most of that we’ve had use of a shared SQL Server. When we signed up it was SQL Server 7 and although we’ve requested it nicely we’ve never been upgraded and so it resides on a very outdated machine to which we cannot connect using the new SQL Management studio.

This shared SQL Server costs us £35pm and as we’ve only got 3 active clients using it, bringing in a total of £300pa I felt that is a slight waste of money so my plan was to use SQL Server Express in place (they’re relatively low traffic sites and MS Access was out of the question as they made use of various stored procedures).

As you now have to pay extra for an ASP.Net account I thought I’d ask support to find out what the situation was...

I felt that was direct and straight to the point, not asking anything too complicated to which one may expect a yes/no answer? Right?...

Ok, I know sometimes I’m a little slow but “appropriate authentication method” that had me seriously confused, the only thing I could think was he was referring to Management Studio. Not only that I know for a fact that we’re on SQL Server 7…

Ok, so perhaps my question wasn't clear enough, I thought that's what I asked, I thought (clearly incorrectly) that SQL Server Express was now released as a standard update through Microsoft updates -so they've disabled that. Perhaps I should have been a little clear in pointing out the fact that I HAVE a shared SQL Server account with them and that it was unsatisfactory but hey I thought they'd check what services we already had with them.

Ok, so as this point you can tell I was slowly quickly loosing grip but this next one just finishes me off...

Feel like you’re on a roundabout? I gave up and spent the weekend fast-forwarding my server transfer schedule.

Ok, looking at those few emails perhaps it is a bit extreme to close down our account with them but this is a monthly occurrence, I would say all in all this set of emails took around 2 hours of my day which to me is time I could be billing a client so I think it’s justified.

As it happens they did me a favour, by forcing my hand (or annoying me to the extent I did something about it) we're now finally on Rackspace and our sites are a lot more speedy :) Happy Days!

Why didn’t you pick up the phone?

** WARNING ** this post is most definitely a rant
A couple of weeks ago Stacey and I were hit with some really nasty flu like bug (not man flu :P), I don’t think I’ve ever had flu before so I’m not sure if it was flu but this was nasty, I was (among other things) hallucinating the duvet wanted me to join a cult but that’s a whole other story!

I like talking to people and running my own business I tend to have my phone on me wherever I go, very infrequently do I not answer within a couple of rings. A couple of days before I was hit with this bug, I said I would get back to one of the guys that passes us a little work every now and again about a potential client he had.

Being ill however (and I mean bed-ridden) I didn’t manage it so he gave my mobile a call –great, only it was in the other room and I really couldn’t be bothered to get up and get it so I left it. A couple of minutes later I get an SMS through (which turned out to be from my answer phone) just before the house phone started ringing. As it was within arms length I answered to a very grumpy git bitching on about how I was ignoring him and why didn’t I answer my mobile –was it because I didn’t have caller id on that line etc.

As it turns out, we do have caller id on all phones and I did know it was him and it wasn’t that I was avoiding him, it was merely that I was too ill to answer. FWIW I never ignore people when they call, if it’s you and you’re after something and I don’t want to talk to you I’ll just tell you so, I don’t have the time to arse around playing games so grow up!

WowWee FlyTech DragonFly -awesome!

I was planning on writing about this new gizmo that a friend of mine from the states Doug Setzer has got his hands on but then he asked me to and I didn’t really feel like it after that ;)

Just kidding, Doug’s bought a WowWee FlyTech DragonFly and I have to say it looks great fun. He’s written a review about the WowWee FlyTech DragonFly at www.mydragonfly.info which is worth checking out. As usual he’s pimped the site out with Google AdSense so before you start clicking on his adverts make sure you have a click on mine!!

Now I’ve got to plan a trip over to the states so I can have a play with his WowWee FlyTech DragonFly...