I have just had a look on Facebook at the last four schools that I attended (1981, 1982, 1986 and 1988) and there wasn’t one name that I even recognised never mind knew. Not that it took long to search – two of the schools only had one page of contacts and the other two had three pages.

If anything was needed to remind me that my generation was so NOT the Internet generation that must be it!

First up an advance warning – I am really after your participation through this post!

I have never really got into digg. In the past I have had days when I have visited it a lot, and then months when I don’t bother at all. I initially perceived it as a ‘cult’ type activity, and I still pretty much feel the same. I admire tremendously what they have achieved, but I feel that the ‘desire to be dugg’ has overtaken the desire to post good content, and I find the commenters tend more towards the smart arse, put you down type of comments than the constructive, insightful or helpful. In short, it comes over as a club that people are desperate to be members of, but that aren’t that respectful to new members.

For those of you that missed them the first time round and can’t be bothered to go through the Vaults, or for those of you that are interested in patterns, here are all the interviews in one post.

Daniel Greg

1. As this blog covers a lot of Mac related products what was your first Apple product that you bought?

DEVONtechnologies, LLC releases updates for all editions of its smart document manager DEVONthink as well as for its intelligent Internet search agent DEVONagent and its personal notebook application DEVONnote. The updates solve incompatibilities with Mac OS X 10.5 ‘Leopard’ and bring additional functionality.

I previewed BitClamp a short while ago, but let me just remind you that it has been developed by regular reader Daniel Greg and the site (CrimsonSkySoftware) was designed and developed by regular reader Tom Hancocks, so it is an application that is close to my heart – well that may be stretching it a little. It is a very cool application and I like Danny and Tom a lot! Oh yes, I wrote the copy for the web site as well and have been doing some beta testing of version 1.1.

This is about as close as we get to winter here in Almerimar, the snow on the mountains way to the right of us. The impact is pretty significanty though, as when the wind blows in off the mountains it can pretty cold – at least sweater time!!!!

This the first proper picture that I have taken with the 135-400mm lens that I have really benefited from. The mountains are a long way away, and to get this close with so much clarity is pretty impressive.

It has been a while I know, but here are a couple of photographs to prove that I still take them from time to time!

These photographs were taken on the same day, at the same time, from our balcony. The first shows the view to our right, over the golf course and up towards the mountains. The scomd shows the view to our left, over the marina and towards the sea.

About the best thing that I have done so far regards buying a Tripod is not to buy one. I would have got it so wrong!! I had totally underestimated the weight of the new lenses, the effect that a strong wind can have on a tripod, and the height that is required when you are 6ft 4″.

To continue the confession – I always sort of had tripods down as a posers device, and while I still have a huge issue with the whole ‘image’ of setting up to take a proper photograph, the need to prepare thoroughly has won and I now need to get my mind around a ‘proper’ tripod.

I managed to take a grand total of 5 pictures in Dubai, and 3 of those were out of the office window! I was only able to take the T7 ‘point and shoot’ so I wasn’t treally going with taking photographs a priority but I have to say that I have never been so uninspired to take photographs in my life.

It is hard to explain but Dubai basically did nothing for me as a city. It was too ‘in your face’, manufactured, false, lacking in culture or class and as such I just couldn’t find any motivation at all to take any pictures.

The Miglia Blog has now gone live.

Miglia asked me some time ago if I would be prepared to work with them on developing, launching and maintaining their new blog. We discussed the various options and ways in which it could work, and it became obvious that with my background and their current position there was more I could offer than ‘just’ blogging.

As such in addition to working with them on the design and the launch of the new blog I am going to:

Plain Truth is the third Jodi Picoult book I have read in a row, and it by far the best. No because it is a great story, or a brilliant novel, but because it is set against the backdrop of an Amish society. It reminded me of the Amish I came across in Toronto when I used to visit regularly on business so it was good to get a better understanding of their ways and beliefs.

‘Regular’ readers of the blog will know a couple of things – I am a sucker for getting addicted to new applications and ways of doing things, and the concept of ‘tagging’ has been discussed many times already.

I was going to hold off on writing about Leap until it was out of Beta and I had made my mind up if it was a keeper or not, but as the subject of tagging is cropping up more and more, and my own workload is shifting significantly to the point that I really wont have time to get ’sidetracked’ by my addictions so much in the future I thought I would write about it now as although I actually like Leap I am not sure that I will have time or the patience to use it long term.