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224 – UUNET party at Center Parcs Belgium January 2001
Ten years after UUNET teams from around Europe gathered for a conference at Center Parcs in Beligum, the infamous 224 videos have now been posted online.
What started as a few people planning a few beers at their cabin after the dinner turned in to around 100 people crammed in to a tiny room, with plenty of funny video captured. The 2nd night was bigger and much messier.
Thursday night
Friday night
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Snowplanet videos from 2001-2002
A collection of videos taken at Snowplanet in The Netherlands between 2001-2002.
The usual suspects on our nearly weekly trips there included Francois, Nick, Ben and Richo.
Old Time Lapse Video
This video was produced from a series of webcam photos taken during Keith’s house party in Amsterdam, March 2002.
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Using Blackberry features to maintain your sanity and create a better work life balance
In my previous blog post I talked about how I deal with lots of email on my PC, now I am would like to share some thoughts on how I manage mobile email.
I recently read an article called “Don’t Let the BlackBerry Impact Work/Life Balance” which discusses the benefits and issues with always on email. The article rang true with a lot of my experience of using a Blackberry over the last 5 years. I will share my tips on how it is possible to configure your Blackberry to improve the work/life balance.
I’ve found that by some simple tuning of the messages you receive and how you’re notified of them makes a big difference. A combination of features on the phone along with some of my custom settings and filter rules. I strongly suggest that you read the above article as the “practical tips” (aka your mobile email behaviour) are very important to consider along with all the configuring you can do on the device itself.
All this will hopefully reduce the time you’re spending looking at the Blackberry for unimportant messages or events.
Profiles
By default there are various levels of profiles, the names vary by model or software version but are usually something like Normal, Loud, Medium, Silent, Vibrate Only, Loud and Phone Calls Only. I’ve found that these are too basic and need a bit of tuning, here is what I recommend. The names don’t matter – the important thing is that you change the behaviour of what you’re notified of and how. You can customise the predefined profiles or create a new profile that suits your use, for example you might want a profile called “weekend” or “meeting”.
Redefine normal - My aim here is to use this profile to make the Blackberry as much like a phone, and only a phone, as possible. Only the ability to read email and view calendar, not to be notified when an email message arrives.
Use Silent/Quiet as your “I’m in a meeting” profile – This is pretty much the same as Normal except that you’re going to make the phone quiet too.
Create an evening/weekend profile – This may be just the same as your “Normal” profile, but you may want to be even more restrictive. For example, removing the calendar notifications.
Managing large amounts of email with Entourage and Apple Mail
I deal with a lot of email at work, somewhere between 150 and 300 per day. Managing this amount of email can be quite a challenge. Over the past years I’ve become a lot better at dealing with it, and I’d like to share some of the tricks I use to do so.
When I think back now I see how this all may seem a bit obvious, but bad habits formed early sometimes take a while to move away from. This is by no means an ideal system, and it is constantly evolving – new software features change or I find new ways to build filters. I hope what I have learnt might be useful to you, and if you have any other tips it would be great if you could leave a comment.
How did this begin (starting bad habits)
When I started my current job in 2006 I was immediately subscribed to many from discussion group email aliases that a large community of technical staff used to communicate. This was initially a great way to learn information and keep up to date, but quite quickly I became overwhelmed by the sheer amount of email to read. At first I decided to use a folder per alias filing system. With 20 or so folders I would save messages once read (or at least scanned through a few emails in a conversation). Looking back I can’t believe I wasted so much of my time battling with this process. It was extremely time consuming to read and file everything, but was also not ideal when searching for content (at the time I was using Windows XP with Outlook, and google desktop search wasn’t that flash yet).
Another small side effect of saving all this email was the the storage required. I was battling with a storage limit on the Exchange server, 700Mb at the time. To get around this I created local folders in a PST file, and moved messages to the folders there instead. At least I’d reduced one email per month telling me my mailbox was over the size limit.
The first break through (forcing a change)
In late 2007 there was a growing number of my colleagues starting to use Apple Macs at work. I’d been a Mac user at home for a while, but it was seeing my team mates having fewer IT issues combined with a sense of them being able to effectively cope with email, that convinced me to buy an Apple Macbook to use for home and work. This self imposed change was a catalyst for changing the way I dealt with email.
Taxi baby ride – UUNET off-site in Spa, Belgium June 2001
This video clip was taken during a UUNET off-site meeting held in Spa, Belgium in June 2001.
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A week in San Francisco described by 5 links
Gaelle and I spent last week in San Francisco. We had a great time exploring the city and packed so much in to the 6 days we were there. Here are a few links that should give a feel for some of what we got up to beyond the usual pier 39 type tourist traps and cable car rides.
| boudinbakery.com | |
| This bakery was across the road from the hotel we spent a couple of days in at Fisherman’s Wharf area. The bakery is famous for sourdough, and they make it in all shapes and sizes. They put on a nice demonstration of creating their sourdough creatures, you can see it through a big display window by the main street entrance. They have a cafe and restaurant also, great breakfasts, sandwiches, pizzas, soups. |  |
| blazingsaddles.com | |
| A great way to see San Francisco, if you don’t mind peddling up the occasional hill. We did a ride over the bridge to Sausalito and then a return back across the bridge, via the golden gate park (and the Beach Chalet for lunch), then through the city back to the fisherman’s wharf. 37kms in total. Blazing muscles everywhere, but well worth it. |  |
| rogue.com | |
| We stumbled upon this pub in North Beach on our first evening wandering around SF. They had 40+ beers on tap, quite a few of which are from their own brewery. We made our way back to this pub another day also, for a very well deserved post walking thirst quencher. |  |
| 1512barbershop.com | |
| My first straight shave at this traditional barber shop in downtown SF. |  |
| vrbo.com by homeaway.com | |
| Two links, but really the same service. We decided to find an apartment in SF to give us some flexibility and home comforts that you don’t get when staying at a hotel. VRBO, “vacation rental by owners”, was a great resource for finding an apartment. The owner we found was so helpful, not only with arranging the apartment, but with general advice and logistics for staying in San Francisco. The apartment we found was in a great neighbourhood (Nob Hill) and it was very well equipped and decorated. I’d recommend them every time. |  |
