Monthly Archives: September 2005

Five Predictions For The Next Five Years

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Just thought I would put out some predictions.

  1. Let’s start with an easy one. The days of carrying around an iPod, mobile phone, PDA and portable camera will be long over. Super all-in-one devices will become the norm. To achieve this you can bet that there will be major merges and acquisitions between the market leaders of those products. I think Nokia’s days are limited and that it will be gobbled up by a big corporate like Canon or Apple.
  2. America and Israel will pre-emptively strike Iran.
  3. Desktop computers will become collectors items to one day be displayed in a museum. Improvements in creating low powered fast computer processors continue everyday and as a result the light-weight, portable notebook alternatives will take over their clunky counterparts as the entertainment machine of choice.
  4. Hard Disk Drives will be relocated to an inexpensive corporate backup mechanism as solid state memory becomes cheaper and increases in storage capacity.
  5. America will have a female president.

I would love to hear any predictions you might have.

Catching Up With An Old Friend

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File Photo

Last night I caught up with an old friend whom I haven’t seen for over 4 and 1/2 years. I met Ginny back in 1999 at my first job at GBST.

Ginny has been living in the UK for a while now and doesn’t seem to have any plans to head back yet. London polarizes people. You’re either here for a long time or a short time.

It was great catching up with her and talking about old times and all the travel she has done.

iPod Nano

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ipodNano

As I’m sure you have all seen from Apple’s aggressive marketing campaign, they have released a new tiny ipod called the Nano. It’s a sweet machine with a colour screen, 2 or 4Gb memory for 500 to 1000 songs and it has a great battery life.

Well, obviously Apple needs consumers to test their product so I had to go out and pick one up. Of course, I didn’t just pluck the money out of nowhere. I sold my previous hard drive based iPod to pay for this one. So far I’ve been thoroughly impressed with it. It has awesome sound quality and is just so funky and light.

I love how I can now walk the entire way to work without my music skipping. This is due to the songs being stored in flash memory rather than a hard disk drive which has moving parts.

Apparently they are meant to scratch easily so until I purchase a cover for it I have been looking after him really well and have not had any scratches yet.

If you are flush with cash or can manage to sell a kidney then this machine is well worth a look at.

Gym Membership

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Now that I’ve found some stability with my work situation I’ve decided to join a G-Y-M.

I’ve joined Fitness First as there is a branch just across the road from work. This means that I can get in a workout during my hour long lunch break.

Hopefully I can get back some of that tone that I’ve lost since arriving in the UK.

A Little Italy and a Little Britain

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After farewelling our Saturday night sleepover buddy Jodie back to Oxford, Ben and I ventured out for some London sightseeing. I must admit it’s something we don’t do enough of, as we get carried away socialising and travelling elsewhere on weekends, and forgetting about the cool things we can stumble across in London.

Ben and Michelle in Buckingham Palace gardens

The highlight was certainly touring the State Rooms at Buckingham Palace. They’re only opened to visitors during August and September when the Queen makes her annual visit to Scotland. We’d heard good reports from friends who’d visited, and we also found it well worth a visit. Not only is it grand and impressive, it’s all the more interesting knowing current royals still live there. We were amazed to learn that the palace, despite not looking huge from the road, actually has hundreds of rooms – around 400 from memory, some of which are underground. We heard about hidden passages and secret doors that the Queen uses to access the public areas from her private quarters.

The palace grounds are just as impressive, covering 39 acres of prime Central London land.

Earlier that day we had checked out the Little Venice area, where Regent’s Canal and the Grand Union Canal intersect. It’s very cool that in the middle of this big city, right near Paddington, there’s a tranquil little waterway with colourful canal boats.

Little Venice

Our next stop was Westminster Abbey. Ben’s Mum, Wendy, recalls it as one of her London highlights so we thought we’d check it out. Unfortunately the Abbey was closed to visitors, so we just spent time hanging out in St James’s Park.

It was a great way to spend our Sunday afternoon, and we highly recommend a trip inside Buckingham Palace when they next open it up for the commoners!