My mobile is fubar, so if you need me, e-mail me. Bloody Windows phones...

As my holiday comes to an end I was stricken with a thought. Recently, we decided to reorganise the office to make better use of space. We moved management and support into the [overly sized] Wii room, put the Wii in the little office and tried to move developers, architects and BAs around the main room. And we ran into distribution problems - how do we group people so they're near who they're working with?

My brainwave tonight is we're looking at this in entirely the wrong way. Why tie people to a desk as such? The architects and BAs have laptops, and terminal services means the desktops can be accessed from any other PC. Hence, why not have a series of hot-desks (horrible as the term may be), and let people move as the day dictates?

Of course you'd need somewhere to stash your gear, possibly another room in some people's case. But it would solve the grouping problem, and would allow repositioning based on preferences of the day (heat, noise, proximity to people).

Of course, we'd need to get our evil WiFi stable first. Joys of a shared office, 802.11 networks for Africa.

Another of my recent toys has appeared by way of work - a Dell M1330 laptop. My boss is very good about appropriating what is required, and even humoured me by way of fulfilling my request for a laptop. I prefer them for work - easy to cart into meetings and ensure work gets done, and to take home when required and avoid polluting one's home system. But, of course, you always suffer in terms of power and especially disk IO. So after my initial attempt at acquiring a MacBook failed, I went browsing to find something small, powerful and cheap. And unusually, got most of what I wanted.

The M1330 is Dell's trendy 13“ media portable. I use the word trendy without any intention of it being taken seriously - this is no Apple box, and one could charitably describe it as ugly. Rather than stick with the cheap, professional and practical lines they're known for they've tried to make it cool. So we've got plastic contrasted with a horrid metal veneer, and rounded off with the most unattractive keyboard ever found outside of a ZX Spectrum. The 'cheap' doesn't end there either - it comes with a remote (a credit-card style remote gone horribly, horribly wrong) and they missed a bay door on the SD card slot, instead opting for a cheap filler card. And the worst part is, for minimal savings, they've made it look much tackier than it ever should.

And that's because the hardware makes up for a lot of bad aesthetics. If you skip the horrid glossy screen, there's not much else to complain about. Core 2 Duo (only 2.0Ghz, but it was ordered in November), 3Gb of RAM, slot-loading drive (which are godsends on laptops) and a nVidia 8400 mobility card (because friends don't let friends use on-board video). It would have been nice to have a DVI port rather than the dodgy VGA and HDMI ports they've thrown in, but otherwise it's really rather smashing. And only 13” at that.

And there's one cheap thing that is very nice - at slightly over £700 it's cheaper than a MacBook. Yes, you're not going to win geek chic awards with it, and you have to put up with the monstrous creature that is Vista, but otherwise it's reasonably fast, portable and plays WoW for those quiet moments. You could do a lot worse in a PC laptop, especially for the price.

Of course, you could buy yourself a MBP, but that's something for a future post.

Oh, and apologies for the horrid pun in the title. I feel horrid about it, really.

Having spent all too many hours enjoying Air New Zealand's hospitality - in the loosest sense of the word - I remain perplexed as to the design of their entertainment system. Things have moved on a lot since I last did a long-haul trip in 2005 - while we were chuffed then to have multiple movies broadcast to your seat, we now have personal on-demand systems in each seat. There's just one problem - they're somewhat rubbish.

So rubbish in fact that Air New Zealand warn customers: Please do not press the buttons too fast, or your screen will freeze and you will be unable to use it for 15 minutes while it reset. Robust, that. And the temptation is definitely there - there's a notable pause as you press each button, and sometimes it misses them all together. It doesn't help either that when you try to select a movie you have three fifths of the screen occupied by a large blurb teaching your grandmother to suck eggs, and therefore have a minimal section of the screen in which to page through said content. Streaming is also somewhat slow - the movies are compressed enough that MPEG artefacts are very clear, and you attempt to fast forward at your own risk.

The most vexing thing about all of this is that these problems have been solved: either you have smart terminals style devices talking to a central server (there's a hell of a lot of embedded hardware that can decode MPEG very cheaply) or you use dumb terminals with a multi-user server driving everything. How you end with with terminals that offer shocking performance and a 15 minute reboot time is beyond me.

It's a telling reflection on the state of software engineering that not only is this kind of half-arsed solution produced these days, but that it's both accepted and lauded by the customers and users. We wouldn't accept this from an engineer of any other form - why here?

Over the past few months I've acquired a number of new toys, the most popular of which is proving to be my EOS 400D (or Digital Rebel XTi if you're so inclined). I've oft sworn that a DSLR was more trouble than it's worth - yes, the pictures are nice but it's lots of money and hellish to carry around. Much better to have a compact IXUS or similar and keep it always nearby. Unfortunately, John decided to buy himself one, and hence I was daft enough to have a play. After a few stupid moments of trying to turn live preview on, I tried out his 50mm prime and was instantly sold.

Unfortunately, it turned out I was sold about a month too late. Canon had offered £50 off during December, but kindly returned to the RRP of £400 when I was looking to buy. And so I did my research, and spent many hours wondering whether a Nikon D40/40X would be a nice option, only to discover that they can't drive a 50mm lens (and the Sigma 30mm would wipe out any price advantage they offered). Thus I bit the bullet and wandered over to the Canon refurbished dealer, and bought myself a 400D + 18-55mm lens. And then I went down to Covent Garden and came away with a big grin and a 50mm prime.

To date I remain deeply in love. Yes, it's a bit bulky, but I can haul around a small camera big which serves for sundries as well. The battery lasts forever - I knocked off 600 shots yesterday, about 50 with flash, and the battery meter didn't move. The 50mm prime is fantastic, its only flaw being the zoom factor of the Canon sensor makes it a 80mm lens and hence you need a bit of space to use it. But at 1.8f it's nice and fast and you get a very tight focus (and you are left most embarrassed if you focus on the wrong element). I can even survive the use of compact flash, although I did wince a bit at the price difference when compared to SD. However, the 450D is still AWOL, so I'm certainly glad I didn't decide to wait for such things to be resolved.

In summary, I can't recommend it enough. The only thing likely to separate me from it is an attack by an unwilling subject, which seems to grow ever more likely (especially when they see the output).

Astute observers may notice that this site has been left bereft of content for some months now. The reasons for this are legion, but essentially summed up in that I didn't have anything I wanted to write about. And once I did, I was too lazy to write about it: a fine example for all of those who would worship procrastination. But since I find myself in Christchurch hotel, sipping tea and awaiting the moment when we can sensibly venture unto the airport, it seems a good time to rectify my omissions and offer some form of an update.

Last year, when I last posted, things were going from bad to worse on the job front. My telecoms job had gone from suffering an impatient and somewhat disorganised customer to sitting on my hands awaiting said customer to sort out their internal difficulties and come up with some more exciting things for us to work on. And so I continued, waiting, while new people were hired for product work and we were left to keep our seats warm. Eventually, after some three months of this, I regretfully left. And I anticipated better times - after all, i my interviews I had emphasised why reasons for leaving and my desperation to be kept busy. Thus I was more than a little surprised when my new employer left me in a similar situation - filler tasks while waiting for more work.

This did not go down well, and, as Polly will gladly tell anyone interested, did not make me pleasant to live with. Given this was my third job in two years I felt somewhat trapped, and given their constant assurances I felt it necessary to offer them a chance to fulfil them. Nevertheless, my probation came to an end without any work materialising and I once again resigned, this time without a positioned lined up.

Normally, the thought of being without a job in the middle of one of the world's more expensive locations would strike far into my somewhat anal heart. It may therefore serve as an illustration of my state of mind that I spent the following week doing anything except thinking about work. I made some good progress in Warcraft, I read a lot and I spent a lot of time fielding calls from agents, who quickly started to cluster like flies to a carcass. And I was justly rewarded for my carelessness when I started job hunting and had a contract signed within two days.

So, after a bit of time wondering in the wilderness I'm once again gainfully employed and a lot happier. This time I'm working for a small company - I've given big companies another chance and received my just desserts, and shall be working to avoid such entanglements again. Now I work in a relaxed and passionate environment with 7 or 8 other developers where the mention of words such as 'synergy' is justly greeted with sniggering. We have a Wii, lots of beer, and the only thing that irks me is that my workplace is out in the depths of Hammersmith. Still, one cannot complain too much, even if I do have to trek into the West End and out again each day.

This all leaves my life a little more stable, Polly a little less stressed and provides no excuse for the lack of posts here. So stay tuned and, if my flight is boring enough, who knows what could appear here?

For various reasons I'm currently not filled with the enthusiasm to write anything here. Nevertheless, something has finally warmed my blood up enough for me to put a little effort in. And that's the Bank of England, and the whining banking industry.

The best thing Labour ever did was giving the Bank of England independence. This should, in theory, allow the BoE to manage the economy, rather than pandering to the vote grabbing tendencies of our political establishment. Nevertheless, as soon as there's a crisis the government starts turning the screws for the BoE to start bailing people out. And this time they've folded.

For those in areas with less tea consumption per capita, a large lender, Northern Rock, recently got itself in the shite. This was it's own fault, and that of the banking industry - they made silly loans to try and make more money, and now no one knows who is credit worthy and so they won't lend to each other. Indeed, the interbank rate is now above the BoE's punitive lending rate, which is not a normal thing, and not particularly good for the markets.

The ECB folded very quickly, pumping money into the market to bring this down. The Federal Reserve dropped rates significantly recently to try and do the same. The BoE, despite political pressure, kept on course with the very sensible objection that if the banks, especially Northern Rock, were bailed then this would serve as encouragement for a repeat. After all, if you take risks you deserve the gains - and the losses, should it go wrong. And at least one of the upper management earned over £1.4 million last year - so there's little call for them to complain that they missed the gains.

However, after Northern Rock applied for (and received) emergency funding, consumers panicked and started withdrawing money. The banking industry blamed the BoE for the 'humiliation of their industry' and politicians accused the BoE of mismanagement. How hypocritical can you get?

So now the BoE is taking the heat, and inprudent consumers and bankers are getting a reprieve at the taxpayer's expense. In a free market economy risk is often rewarded with gain - but without the chance of failure the market will collapse, and the taxpayer will be the one who loses. In a time of widening income inequality, and with financial sector bonuses at obscene levels, how can it possibly be the taxpayer's responsibility to bail out those who (with full knowledge) placed high bets? So much for liberal economics.

Another distraction has been Facebook. Very popular in London, it does draw a rather neat feed of all your friends activities. It also has a nice API that allows you to pull in external content, such as Twitter or Flickr. However, there's no way they're letting you pull content out easily.

A good example is the news feed from your friends¹ - it's a perfect candidate for RSS. But no, you're stuck with visiting their site. And their messaging service is just as bad: while I have a perfectly good IMAP inbox they insist I use the parallel one on their site. It doesn't help that their e-mail notifications of new items are rubbish.

Likewise, you can't replace things - Twitter and Flickr sit alongside their photo and status apps - there's no way to use something more open.

Now they've a critical mass they probably don't really care. It's all very trendy, people are going to use it anyway. And other more reluctant people will get dragged along by the tide. The downside is that once something new comes along people have no choice but to jump - rather than making access to data open and allowing users to pull an environment together they leave users with a simple choice: buy-in, or don't. Great when you're on top but as MySpace have found it won't save you from the competition.

¹ Is anyone else driven mad by people you've never encountered before wanting confirmation as friends? Or is this a cultural thing?

I've been distracted from writing opinionated and ill-informed articles for a little while now. Why?

• The implosion of my last job through a lack of work.
• The discovery and joining of a new place of work.
• World of Warcraft.

Mostly the latter.

Unfortunately my work at JR dried up, thanks to a customer who ran in to some problems with other vendors and sent their plans up a certain creek minus rowing implements. After three months of driving Polly mad (and playing too much WoW) I regretfully found a new job. So I'm now working for Inspired Gaming Group, working on the platform that runs the distributed gaming machines and generally corrupting the nation's youth (or rather pub-goers and old ladies playing electronic Bingo).

WoW has also proved a terrible temptation - I tried the Burning Crusade trial and got hocked by the much improved Draenai and Blood Elf content. I've now got a level 63 blood elf mage who is rather talented in the freezing-things-to-death department. Very different play style from my old paladin - a lot more fragile but much more interesting to play. The major downside is Blizzard haven't bothered with the mid-level content, so levels 20-60 are spent drifting through a ghost world as fast as possible. A shame, really.

I've also had utilities going silly - T-Mobile decided I owed them money I didn't and screwed up everything it was possible to screw up. Wankers. So, if you're in the UK: avoid T-Mobile. The others may be rubbish, but T-Mobile is more clueless, more useless and have a rubbish UTMS network. And the ROM on the MDA Vario II is buggy as hell, and no updates have been forthcoming (which is a shame, as the hardware is rather good).

I also decided to jump to Be and ADSL-2+. It's all good - when it works. Connection was buggered up between them and BT, leaving me with no ADSL for a weekend. Their help-desk is only slightly better than Demon's, but at least they had the good grace to refund me for the unused time. And now it's working it is running at a rather nice 16Mb (about 1Km from the exchange). The major downside is that my WAG200G (which is an excellent modem) won't go above 7Mb on Be's connection, so I'm stuck using the extremely rubbish Alcatel that Be supply.

But life is once again good (well, presumably) so hopefully I can stop neglecting this quite so much...

We all love our stereotypes. Especially about crazy Americans who eat nothing but doughnuts, drive hummers and believe in bombing the rest of the world until it stops whining about the completely appropriate Guantamano.

 Then someone goes and demonstrates there are people who actually believe such things.

 There are mad people everywhere, but some are madder than others...