Loic and I goofing around

It was great to see my old sparring partner Loic LeMeur at the Seesmic HQ last week. This is us goofing around which just goes to prove that professionals can have fun. Note the chinposin thing going on.

Bonus points as I reveal something unusual about my name.

The movie runs about 2 minutes

My desktop

Frequent readers will know I’m a Mac Bigot and only work using a laptop, i.e. I’m your typical road warrior. But given all the stuff I need to see and organize how do I cope with only 15.4 inches of screen real estate? The short answer is that I don’t. But…

Upgrading to the Leopard operating system introduced me to Apple’s Spaces. Via Sig. Check this screenshot below to see what I mean.

I can access applications that I assign to ’spaces’ which I access using a combination of alt-arrow or command-number keys. The alt-arrow combination allows me to scroll between spaces while the command-number combo allows me to directly select a space.

This is not as cumbersome as it sounds and provides me with the equivalent of six times the amount of physical screen real estate. It’s not an ideal solution but it will do until the delivery of a 24 inch Dell screen I have on order. Why the Dell? Recommendation from a number of sources and having seen some in action when I visited the Seesmic offices last week. Why a much larger screen? Despite my best efforts, I genuinely need at least 6 applications open at the same time, including VMWare running Windows XP. Even with spaces, the screen feels incredibly cluttered and that distracts from productivity.

As a side note, the equivalent euro pricing is not bad with an effective exchange rate only 3.5% adrift from the market rate. That beats the crap out of Apple who really do know how to work the exchange rate game.

Irony 2.0

I don’t know about you but it seems to me there’s an odd irony that in the week following the Bear Stearns firesale to JP Morgan Chase for $236 million, a startup that makes widget style applications for Facebook is rumoured to being punted at a valuation of $400 million.

I leave it to the financial geniuses among my readers to figure out the logical separation between those two transactions.

In the meantime, I recommend reading what Jeff Nolan says about IT investments. He’s right. To Jeff: I apologize in advance for riffing the 2.0 moniker for the purpose of a spurious headline. 

PwC are nice people after all

Facts and figures:

• 1.2% of relevant annual profit given to the community
• 5.9 million pounds community contributions for 2006-7
• 37,400 volunteered hours in 2007
• 2007 - student recruitment campaign goes carbon neutral
• 90% of electricity used is from renewable resources
• 89% waste diverted from landfill
• 1.1 million airmiles saved through the use of telepresence facilities

Now before you all think I’ve gone soft in the head, I suggest checking out this story from Francine MacKenna:

What else do PwC and Goldman Sachs have in common other than the vendor who provides their cafeteria services?

PwC is Goldman Sachs external auditor. For now…

Food workers fed up with Goldman Sachs

Two words come to mind: cynical hypocrites

 

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