Back on June 19th, I decided to return to my childhood home of the Isle of Wight and take part in a 50km off-road cycle race, and to hopefully raise some money for the British Heart Foundation in the process. It was a great fun day, and I highly recommend the event to any reasonably fit cyclists out...

Isle Of Wight Cycle Ride →

A few day’s ago, conference chair Jim Newkirk tweeted his top 10 reasons why you should attend this year’s Agile Conference being held at the Walt Disney World Dolphin Hotel. I thought they were compelling enough to warrant an entire blog post! So, here goes, in reverse order: 10 - Something...

Jim Newkirk’s Top 10 Reasons To Attend Agile2010 →

[NOTE: I am reposting this as a result of data-loss from a disk failure at my hosting provider] As many people know, I’ve used ClearContext to help me manage my Inbox for a long time now, since version 2 in fact (it is now at version 5). If you haven’t taken a look at the features that are...

Keyboard Shortcuts for ClearContext and Office 2010 →

I went to Kingston on Sunday with my family, with the intention of having a relaxing Sunday lunch at Jamie’s Italian followed by some shopping for various bits and bobs. Well, we did do all of those things, but the lovely relaxing day out in the beautiful spring sunshine was completely ruined when...

Why You Should Get A Secure Tax Disc Holder →

I have wanted to try a pair of Vibram’s FiveFingers shoes for a while now, but have found it very difficult to get hold of them due to their popularity – nowhere had any stock. These shoes are designed to allow you to achieve a “barefoot” feel when you are taking part in activities...

First Thoughts: Vibram FiveFingers →

Time for another reflection on a year passed. I wrote my first yearly review ( Goodbye 2008, Hello 2009 ) last year, so I thought I’d continue the tradition. So, What Happened In 2009? Travel featured again, although not as much as in 2008. This year I made only 8 trips, spending 66 days on the...

The End Of 2009, Bring On 2010 →

My friend Dave is very fit. He works out every day, eats right and has the will power to stay away from bad foods. Late in August, I went to the Agile 2009 conference with Dave. On the first day in Chicago, I decided that I should take advantage of our hotel being right on the River Walk, and suggested...

Three Months Of Exercise And Sensible Eating →

While reasonably security conscious, sometimes we leave things out in our back garden, mostly out of convenience or laziness! Usually there are garden chairs, sometimes garden toys, and very occasionally, our kids' bikes. About 6 weeks ago, my son's bike disappeared from our back garden. We have...

The Mysterious Case Of The Reappearing Bicycle →

I’ve been a huge fan of Babyface since the winter of 1989/1990, although I'm guessing that not many people really know who he is. He wasn’t well known at all in the UK, and I only stumbled across his genius in a round about way. In my teen years, I used to DJ with a couple of friends...

Kenny "Babyface" Edmonds at the indigO2 →

I’ve owned a pair of Bose QC2 Headphones for a long time now, and I’ve blogged about the great Bose customer service before.  A few weeks ago, I noticed that the padding around the left ear-cup had started to come loose.  At first it wasn’t too bad, but with continued use it got progressively...

Fixing My Bose QuietComfort 2 Headphones →

I've been a big fan of the Lego games for a while now – Lego Star Wars , Lego Indiana Jones and Lego Batman .  They are all fairly simple games on the surface, yet can be challenging when you dig into them.  My young son (who is now 9, but started playing the Star Wars game when he was 6 or...

Achieving 100% On Lego Batman On Xbox 360 →

I have been a subscriber to the MLB.TV Premium service for a number of years (I think this year will be my fourth season), and I have been consistently impressed with their service.  As a subscriber, I have access to every single game played throughout both the regular and post seasons, both live...

MLB.TV - Quality Baseball Direct To Your Computer →

On February 24th of 2008, I started a project on Flickr called the 365 Days project .  Well, 366 days later (2008 was a leap year), I completed the challenge I had set myself.  I had taken 366 photos somehow featuring myself and uploaded them for all to see.  And most likely laugh at....

Project Complete: 366 Photos in 366 Days →

Late last year I got a FlickrMail from the people at schmap.com asking for permission to use a photo I took of the Rogers Centre in Toronto as part of their Schmap Toronto Guide.  Of course I readily gave permission, it was fantastic to have been picked! You can see the schmap.com guide by clicking...

My Photo Used By schmap.com →

A long while ago, I posted about the fact that every office has a Kevin, and that ours was called Paul .  Well, Paul has moved on from my team now, but apparently he hasn’t moved on from his inate Kevin-ness.  Here is a transcript from an IM conversation I had with him the other day. Paul says...

Paul Strikes Again.Literally. →

I was in our local grocery store on the 29th of December, and this section stood out as potentially a little premature: What on earth?  I know shops like to get their displays out early for the holidays, but the 29th of December 2008 for Easter 2009?  I think that might be a record....

Happy Easter!? →

Well, 2008 has almost gone.  In just a few short hours I will be welcoming in 2009 with my family and friends.  So now seemed to be a good time to reflect on 2008, and to look forward to 2009.  I am not one for New Year’s Resolutions as such, but there are definitely a few things I’d like...

Goodbye 2008, Hello 2009 →

I love theme parks.  In particular, I am a big fan of the Disney theme parks.  Their attention to detail is amazing, and their approach to customer service is exemplary.  I try to visit regularly to get a fix of Disney park fun. As a cheaper alternative, this past year I decided that I...

The Non-Disney Difference →

I’ve posted before about Sara Bareilles and how much I love her music.  Last night, I had the chance to see her perform live at Scala in London. The evening was opened by a guy called Rod Thomas .  He played solo, and used looped recordings of various instruments to build up songs as he went...

Sara Bareilles, Live @ Scala, 28th September 2008 →

…the taste of it’s cherry chapstick (Thanks Katy Perry - song reference here ).  Sadly though, after a month of use, I have reverted back to my Windows Mobile phone. My wife bought a first generation iPhone and then upgraded to the iPhone 3G when it was released.  This left her first generation...

I Kissed An iPhone And I Liked It… →

I had the pleasure of watching my twins Dylan and Niamh play the steel pans (you might know them as steel drums) in their school's summer concert this evening. They have only been learning for 10 weeks, but they have come on enormously. You can see them playing in the Soapbox video below. (BTW, I misheard...

Oakfield Summer Concert →

Most people know that you should probably shop around for insurance when your renewal is due.  It doesn’t matter what type of insurance – car, house, pet, life – you should always do the due diligence around renewal time to ensure you are getting the best deal for the right kind of cover. ...

Don’t Just Accept Your Insurance Renewal Quote →

I am going on holiday with my family in August, and the last part of our trip will see us in Boston.  Being a big Red Sox fan, I wanted to take my family along to a Red Sox vs Toronto Blue Jays game.  A few weeks ago I searched on Ebay for tickets (since all home games at Fenway Park are sold...

A Frustrating User Experience →

I am wondering if it is only me that was confused by this, so I thought I'd post a picture and ask everyone out there what they think. My satellite TV DVR has been playing up the last few weeks, often marking a programme as "not recorded due to no signal". I went in to the settings of the system, and...

A Confusing User Interface? →

Niamh had a friend stay over last night. At one point during the evening, in between computer games and movies and popcorn, the three of them disappeared upstairs for a while. They were very quiet. The next thing I know they burst into my office growling and hissing and looking like this: I thought it...

They Are Legend →

I have a question for you all. There are two types of people in the world. Those who HAVE lost data, and those that WILL. Which are type of person are you? I am in the HAVE LOST bucket. The few times I have lost data in the past have certainly contributed to my current backup strategy. More recently...

What Is Your Backup Strategy? →

If any of you checked out Sara Bareilles from one of my earlier posts and enjoyed what you heard, you should also take a listen to Colbie Caillat . More great song-writing, great lyrics, and a fabulous voice. Once again, Walmart has a Soundcheck session that you can watch....

Colbie Caillat →

I snapped these two pictures of Ruby the other night while she was snoring away on the sofa. How is that a comfortable position to be sleeping in? It must be, because it is pretty much her default position, even when sleeping on the hardwood floor. I often find her upside down, right up against the front...

How Is This Comfortable? →

It has been a while since I posted about an artist I am enjoying listening to. Frankly, there aren't that many that strike me enough to warrant a blog post! However, after stumbling across some videos of Sara Bareilles playing acoustic sets of her music, I decided that I really wanted to tell the world...

Sara Bareilles →

Is the world going mad? From this article at FoxNews.com , it is reported that: "People who have been injured while walking and texting on their cell phones may be in luck. A London street is experimenting with padded lampposts to protect those not paying attention from banging into them, ITN reports...

Padded Lampposts To Prevent Texting Injuries? →

Last week, through a friends blog, I stumbled across a Flickr group called 365 Days . Since writing a novel for National Novel Writing Month last November, I have been looking for something new and creative to challenge me. I don't feel that I have been spending enough time with my camera of late, so...

A Year Of Self-Portraits →

I bought my son a new Lego set on my recent trip to Seattle; gifts are a mandatory bribe for the whole family when I go away for twelve days! This time I chose a Technic Dune Buggy (item 8296 for those who follow that kind of thing), which is a smaller version of a set I have had since I was about his...

Lego Customer Service →

A couple of weeks ago, Laura and I took a trip to Las Vegas. Neither of us had been there before, so we weren't totally sure what to expect. Turns out, Vegas is a fun city, and I'd definitely like to go back there soon. We left the kids at home early on a Tuesday morning (thanks to my Dad and Martie...

Las Vegas →

I went skiing yesterday with my colleagues Elliot and Arran up at Crystal Mountain here in Washington state. Crystal Mountain is the largest ski area in Washington, and is located about 70 miles south east of Seattle. It has the base at 4,400ft and a summit at 7,012ft. In contrast, for those who know...

Skiing At Crystal Mountain →

I've been a fan of the Moleskine notebook for a while now. Used in days gone past by the likes of Hemingway and Picasso, they are described as "notebooks covered in hard-wearing oilcloth-covered cardboard (Moleskine)". I am not convinced about the hard-wearing bit. I use a large lined notebook. It is...

Moleskine Durability →

Having purged over 1Gb of Temp Files after writing my last blog post about iTunes using lots of disk space , 5 days later I was back up to 1Gb again. This time I noticed that the Temp Files were all timed at either 2 or 3 minutes past the hour, which made me suspect something specific was triggering...

iTunes Bloat - Update →

[4:53am, Shanghai - jet lag can be nasty sometimes] I discovered an issue with iTunes a little while ago while performing a routine clean-up of my hard disks. Essentially, when iTunes tries to save your "iTunes Music Library.xml" file, it appears to create a temporary file first that it renames once...

iTunes Bloat - Check Your Own iTunes Folders →

It is good to know that I have brought up my baby girl with a well-rounded approach to Christmas....

Niamh's Christmas Wish For 2007 →

Well, after 29 days of writing, I submitted a 50,025 word novel to the NaNoWriMo website and their word-count bots verified my masterpiece. Then they let me pick up my "Winner" award. That's right, I get a small graphic that I can post to my blog and send to my mum and dad. Oh, and of course, I get the...

My Novel Is Complete! →

Little things can sometimes make me very very happy. I was just checking out the new options in v4 of ClearContext and stumbled across the "Mark message(s) as read when filing" option. I have been waiting for this simple feature forever! Usually, I would have to select each message in a thread individually...

ClearContext v4 "Mark As Read" Feature →

Having temporarily turned this blog into the Ruby-blog when we bought our puppy, I am now turning it into the Novel-blog. Sorry...! Midnight last night marked the halfway point of the month. 15 days gone, 15 days to go. To be on track I needed to be at 25,000 words by bedtime last night. I am pleased...

Novel Update - Half Way There →

So, I am seven complete days in now, and I should be at 11,667 words. I am at 11,292, which is pretty close. I am finding it a little easier to write than I did on days 1 and 2, and the words are definitely flowing better. There is no guarantee that they are any good, of course, but at least I am getting...

An Update On My Novel →

An update to my favourite Outlook add-in has been released today - check out the ClearContext press release here , and then run (don't walk) to download ClearContext here ....

ClearContext v4 Released Today →

November is National Novel Writing Month . I initially found out about this a couple of years ago, but never felt that I had the time to spend writing 50,000 words in 30 days. This year though, having just returned from a relaxing holiday in the Caribbean and believing I had just enough spare time to...

Writing A Novel In 30 Days →

At the risk of turning this blog into a "Ruby-blog", here are a couple of recent videos! These will be the last for a while, I promise. :-) The first one is from the day she came home with us: Video: Ruby Comes Home The second one was the first time she barked - apparently she thought she could fight...

More Ruby Videos →

Last weekend we took our kids to see the quarter finals of the British Basketball League, where Guildford Heat took on London United. I have been to see the Seattle Supersonics play a few times at the Key Arena, and saw the Boston Celtics a long while back, and have had great fun every time. Somehow...

Watching the Guildford Heat play Basketball →

We are now at the end of the 9th week of construction on the extension to our house. It has been quite a transformation so far, but I am already getting frustrated with the constant dust sheen over everything, as well as having to live in our dining room. A few weeks ago I added some pictures to my photo...

Construction Update →

We're getting a puppy. After years of badgering, I finally gave in. We went to visit the litter this morning, and I managed to take some video of Ruby, soon-to-be our flat-coated retriever puppy. She's about 6 weeks old in this video - ain't she as cute as a button?!? Video: Visiting Ruby We'll be able...

Introducing Ruby →

I was in the kitchen the other day, washing up. I heard a noisy banging on the stairs. This was shortly followed by my daughter appearing, dragging a small wheelie suitcase behind her. "What are you up to, honey?", I asked. "Nothing Daddy, just getting my hair bobbles." Come again? Surely she can't have...

How Many Is Too Many? →

...

i'm Making A Difference. →

I was skim-reading USA Today last night while waiting on dinner at my Paris hotel, and one particular story caught my eye. It led with a headline about Phoenix embarking on a project to widen the Interstate 10 highway from 14 lanes to 24. Yes, 24. That's 12 each way. In the UK, I think the widest motorway...

Twelve Lanes Each Way! →

We are having our house extended to create a larger living space downstairs. The whole back wall of the house is moving 6 feet further out, and we are adding a conservatory on the back. The first phase will involve building the new outer shell. For the time being we are relatively unaffected by it all...

Construction Has Started! →

I got my inbox back to a zero email bounce over the weekend. For some reason I have had a little trouble keeping the count down for the last couple of months, so it feels great to have an empty inbox again. A twelve hour flight from Shanghai definitely has it's productivity plus points...!...

Zero Email Bounce →

I had a momentarily confusing moment last night when I tried to get money out of the HSBC bank next to my hotel in Shanghai. In fact, it happens to me every time I come to Shanghai, usually multiple times! Take a look at the picture below of a Shanghai ATM keypad: Now, without thinking too hard about...

Momentary Confusion in Shanghai →

Casper has passed the blog-tag on to me, so here are five little-known Paul Hammond things. I am an avid musician; I play the drums, bass and some keyboards. I compose too. In my youth I played the drums for hundreds of theatrical productions at local theatres. One such gig ("Chicago") involved playing...

Blog-Tag - Five Things About Me →

For the last 5 or 6 years, we have had an artificial Christmas tree at our house. It is a nice tree, very realistic with wire branches that you can fashion how you want and fake pine needles that don't end up all over the floor. A couple of weeks ago, my wife and I had a long discussion after she announced...

A Festive "I Told You So". →

Check out this video from MSN Video of a great piece of video editing by Lasse Gjertsen from Norway. He has taken loads of very short clips of a drummer and a piano player (literally milliseconds long) and cut them into a full "song". Very very cool!...

Amateur Drummer - A Cool Piece Of Video Editing →

A couple of weeks ago, some friends at work had me sign up for the online Chess site www.chesshere.com . It is an online Chess playing service that allows you to play "at your leisure" as opposed to real time. The concept reminds me of the fridge magnet games you can buy from your local Borders where...

Playing Chess →

My good friend of mine just sent me a link to " Little People - A Tiny Street Art Project " - and I love it! It is a project by an artist called Slinkachu, where he takes little hand-painted people and just leaves them on the street in London to fend for themselves. And "tiny" really does mean tiny!...

Little People - A Tiny Street Art Project →

Well, a few other people I know have done this - so I felt I needed to see what my maps would look like. Since I invested the time reviewing and ticking the checkboxes, I figured I may as well paste the results into a blog entry! Probably not all that interesting to anyone but me. It does tell me that...

Visited Countries and States →

My good gamer-friend Darren just sent me this link to Game System Wars - it is a round up of various sales statistics for the 3 games systems, with the data pulled from Amazon. Right now, Xbox 360 leads the way in all categories (as you would probably expect, since it has been out for longer). It will...

Xbox 360 vs PS3 vs Wii and Zune in stores. →

I am spending a week in Northern California visiting my friend Dr Bert. Boy was it a long journey to get here - an 11 hour flight (stupidly high head winds!) followed by a 4.5 hour drive North up I80 and I5 in the pouring rain. Funny to think that it is the same I5 I drive on from SEA-TAC airport to...

Redding, CA →

My baby sister Kerry gave birth to her first child yesterday. Abbie came into the world at 1:51am BST (there is some confusion right now about when the clocks actually went back, so they are going with that), and both mother and baby are doing fine. Daddy Dave (better known to pretty much everyone as...

Abbie →

Yesterday was the 5th anniversary of me joining Microsoft as a full-time employee. Sure, I clocked up around 15 or 16 months as a contractor prior to taking a permanent position, but yesterday marked 5 years of having a blue pass. Whilst I have worked in the same building for the whole time (in Soho...

Five Years At Microsoft →

My wife managed to hurt herself yesterday in a way that makes me cringe every time I think about it. We are currently visiting friends just outside Clonakilty in Southern Ireland and had planned to spend the weekend camping in Killarney. After a ton of time packing up the cars and getting prepared, we...

Ouch! →

I posted a while back about fantastic customer service from Bose . Well, they've managed to impress me again. My headphones developed an annoying crackle when you moved (presumably a dodgy connection internally) so I packaged them up and sent them back to Bose. Within 4 days, another brand new pair was...

Bose Does It Again! →

The other day, my son was watching a TV show that is set in Boston (The Suite Life for those of you who watch the Disney Channel a lot). The particular episode featured a baseball game between the Red Sox and the Yankees. Half way through the show, out of nowhere my son suddenly says, with a big sigh...

I'm Teaching Him Well... →

When I used to visit Florida years ago, even at the busiest of times there was no option other than queueing for the attractions. Depending on the time of year you visited, you could be lining up for anything up to 2 hours to ride a 90 second ride. Both Disney and Universal have tried to combat this...

Disney's FastPass vs Universal's Express Plus Pass →

We have been in Florida a few days now, and have been enjoying the sunshine; it has peaked at about 94°F each day. You can’t beat that sort of weather! Some fun things that have happened so far: On the flight over (Virgin Atlantic), none of the seat back screens in our row were working. To...

The First Few Days In Florida →

My little girl lost her first tooth the other day. I thought I would just take a picture to capture the moment. Isn’t it cute? While I was taking the picture though, she suddenly did something that I thought was weird. She managed to get her tongue to twist through 90 degrees so it was vertical...

Teeth and Tongues →

For a while now, I have believed that every office has a Kevin. No matter where you work, you find that one person who is a magnet for “amusing anecdotes to tell at the pub”. I call this “having a Kevin” in honour of one of our sales guys when I worked back at Worldmachine . A...

Every office has a "Kevin".Ours is called Paul. →

I will soon be heading off to Walt Disney World in Florida for the first time since 1996. We chose to wait until the kids were really old enough to enjoy the trip, and now at 6 and a bit and just a tiny bit over 44” tall we figure they are ready. Disney’s thresholds for attraction heights...

Almost Holiday Time →

Earlier this morning it was 01:02:03 on 04/05/06. Of course, if you are American you already had the geeky pleasure of this back on the 5th April.

I have been an “on again, off again” runner for a few years now. Whilst I used to play a lots of sports back in school, I used to hate running. This was probably due to a lack of determination to run through the harder moments (hills, stitches etc). However, more recently I have found running...

Exercising Again... →

I spent last week in the French Alps with my family – my sister was getting married so we all travelled over there to be with her and her new husband, and to celebrate the big day. Twelve of us stayed in a chalet together – my parents and their partners, my sister and her family (husband and two kids...

Courchevel 1650 →

There are two great pieces of utility software that I have purchased in the past 12 months – FolderShare and Onfolio. I have blogged about FolderShare before, but I don’t think I have mentioned Onfolio. Onfolio is a tool for collecting and organizing information; it integrates into your browser...

Windows Live Toolbar beta and Onfolio →

After I posted last night, Brad from ClearContext left me a comment to say that version 2 is now out of beta, and released as Release Candidate 1 . One great new feature for this version is that the ClearContext toolbars now work when composing emails if you are using Word as your editor; this wasn’t...

More on ClearContext version 2 →

So I have had my TD-12 for a few weeks now, and I have been playing quite a lot. It is really very weird playing so much again, as I haven’t played in many years. I am finding that I get some pretty bad aches in muscles that are long since overdue a work out! I am still so impressed with the quality...

Fun with my TD-12. →

Recently, my sister visited us, bringing my niece (Georgia, 10) and nephew (Max, 6) with her. At some point during the day, Georgia and my daughter Niamh (who is almost 6) spent a little time playing girlie games on the computer. I didn’t think much of it, other than how nicely they played together...

"Just Google it, Daddy...!" →

I’m not the only one who loves my new V-Drums…

Microsoft has a ton of buildings in the Redmond area of Washington. They are split into a couple of different campus areas. The office I visit when I am here is on a smaller campus that has 5 buildings and a cafeteria, and it is where all of the MSN folks live. Parking is usually tight at the campus...

Parking Woes →

I just took another one of those “fun” quizzes – this one to see whether I am Left or Right Brain dominant. It seems I am pretty equal… What result do you get ? Brain Lateralization Test Results Right Brain (50%) The right hemisphere is the visual, figurative, artistic, and intuitive...

Are You Left or Right Brain Dominant? →

Being a proud Englishman, I thought I would register this blog in the BritBlog directory. Why not sign up yourself? :-)...

BritBlog →

It is that time of year again; time for cold sweaty mornings . I spent last week in Shanghai, working with our new development team over there. It was very sunny, highs of 30 degrees C most days, with high humidity. This morning when I left the house, it was 6 degrees C, and the moisture came mostly...

Autumn is here. →

I have had the pleasure once again of staying the weekend at my good friend Simon's house in West Cork in Ireland. Simon's family is fantastic, the best bunch of folks you could ever want to meet. His kids are great, and there is always something funny that happens when I am there. Euan is 3. He is the...

Abstract Art By A 3 Year Old →

Way back in December 2003, I was travelling a lot more than I have been lately. Frustrated with the cheaper headphones I had been using to listen to my Ipod and movies on planes, I splashed out on a pair of Bose QuietComfort 2 Headphones . These things are fantastic, the noise cancelling is great, and...

Fantastic Customer Service From Bose →

I can quickly add $g(links) to google or $d(links) to dictionary.com using content filters. Nice.

Testing the picture uploading facilities...

I have used MSN Spaces for a while now, and it is pretty cool. I like the photo albums and the lists, and of course the integration with MSN Messenger so people can see when it has been updated. However, I am trying this as an experiment; I wanted to try out a proper grown up blogging tool. :-) Had some...

Testing dasBlog. →