It’s Getting Warm In London

Getting a little warm in London right now.

Why Is It So Warm Today?

So I opened an account with Flickr for no real reason other than to see what it did. As a celebration of the London heat I took a photo of our office water cooler. There really wasn’t anything else to point the camera at – which is slightly sad, don’t you think?

Unrelated to water coolers but my entry from this day last year – listed under the On This Day Link below – is interesting to me as I’ve been trying to remember what I felt before we started battle in Iraq. I am often grateful that I wrote something here and, yet again, I have been surprised by what I do get round to writing about.

Administrative Apologies

Spam from one of my mailing addresess. wasn’t me, honestly.

Well it would appear that some malicious spammer is using a mailing address @musak.org to mail people. I know I’m not the only one affected at the moment but there’s very little I can do about it.

The Madness Of Business Travel

image from my hotel window with a view of the stage in the car park next door you can not see the loud musicIt’s taken hours and hours to get to Sardinia. I’m here for a two hour meeting tomorrow morning before I take the plane home. I am in a reasonably nice hotel but right now I really wish it had a pool as it’s so hot. There’s also some kind of concert that is taking place just outside my hotel window – you can see the stage on this picture. They are rehearsing right now and the walls are shaking. I am hoping that it doesn’t go on into the night.

UPDATE: 21 JULY – By the time I got back from the excellent meal with the customer and some other interesting folks the music had stopped.

My Data

I have a lot to say about PIMs and have decided to start to vent here. Oh dear.

At some point – I do not remember exactly when – I needed to start to organise my life. I was, no doubt, a typical teenager and needed to keep addresses and ‘phone numbers for friends in a book. Then I needed a diary to oragnise my life (in fact, I am fairly certain my first diary was about 1984). So, I started to keep an appointment diary. The addresses and telephone numbers were in the back. Of course, back in the dark ages, I didn’t need to keep track of email addresses and mobile numbers. Each Christmas as a new diary was purchased for the forthcoming year the addresses/phone numbers were cleaned up and entered into a new book. Life was easier.

When I went to University then my diary started to become more of a necessity as I needed a way to organise. Sometime after I started work it morphed into a Filofax which helped oragnise a little more but wighted considerably more. But still the pages with the telephone numbers kept getting cleaned up each year. When I lived in a flat I started to need to keep more names and numbers (you know, the people who you have to pay bills to, the man who fixed the leak in the roof etc.).

In 1997 (I have the exact date somewhere) I bought a one of the original generations of Palm Pilot (specifically the Palm Pilot Professional as it had more memory than the personal version) and life – at least when it came to diaries and personal data – changed forever. Seven years on I can conclude that the addition of a digital diary (or personal information manager as they are known) has both made life easier and more frustrating in equal measures. Now, with the addition of mobile telephony to the device, I yearn for a simpler way.

I will be writing more later and when I have done I hope that somebody who develops these devices will come across my words and think about ways to come good on the promise of making the management of our personal data banks easier.

The Day F1 Came To London

More pictures from the Formula One event in Regent Street, London

and the crowds arrived at piccadilly cicrusthe big screen on piccadilly

One thing is certain: the crowds arrived. There were thousands of people lining Lower Regent Street, Piccadilly Circus and Regent Street. People were on the roof, balcony or hanging our of a window. People were climbing lamp posts and traffic lights. People perched on almost any structure that didn’t move and on top of many that were plainly unsafe. We waited until almost seven o’clock until the great roar of the F1 race cars was to be heard. Mansell, Button, Montoya, Coulthard and Brundle – to name but a few. The noise, the smell: it was fantastic F1. To be honest I eventually moved to the big screen on Piccadilly as they passed so quickly that you missed a great deal and I wasn’t at the front of a crowd. The atmosphere was pretty good humoured – apart from some lunatics climbing on top of a newspaper sellers wagon – and everybody seemed to enjoy it. After an hour it was, more-or-less, finished but the crowds seemed to hang around central London for a good while. Perhaps, one day, a race really will take place in London.

See also: Formula One Comes To Regent Street
BBC Sport: What price a London GP?
This is London:Eddie supports London Grand Prix

Formula One Comes To Regent Street

London-based fans of Formula 1 racing are in for a treat today as the Regent Street F1 parade takes to the streets at 6pm.

regent street prepares for the f1 paradehsbc as an f1 sponsor gets in on the regent street f1 eventmore preparations for f1 on regent street london

eddie jordan being interview on regent street
eddie jordan being interview on regent street

There is a real sense of excitement in the air around central London today. My office is at Piccadilly Circus and today is the day that Formula 1 comes to town! F1 cars will be parading (as there really is no racing) around the area (basically Regent Street and Lower Regent Street) from 6pm tonight. As I went to buy my lunch there were already people taking up their positions. The roads are being closed, the barriers put in place and the inevitable advertising signs going up. Jensen Button and David Coulthard are among the current F1 drivers taking part. Nigel Mansell is driving for Jordan and I saw team boss, Eddie Jordan, being interviewed (left) on Lower Regent Street while out walking. I just need to decide what time I am leaving to get a view.