Matt Bee Blog

Tales of travelling – part 1

Thursday, August 30th, 2007

Photo courtesy of Kneller!

So holiday time has come and gone, and I have been far too lazy to blog in the slightest.

Cornwall was excellent as normal, however the highlights include:

• Much Risk, and not coming last in one game!
• 2 barbeques
• Pubbage
• FInally meeting Del
• Wii
• Boat exploits
• Tintagel, legendary birthplace of King Arthur
• St Michael’s Mount

The best part of the whole holiday (apart from the sentimental “time with friends” rubbish) was surfing. It was excellent, and I even caught one wave, stood up and rode it all of 25m to the beach. I am definitely going to try and do it more often, either by getting down to Brighton and hiring a board and wet suit or seeing if Seaham is a possibility if I go back up North – followed by a full week next year dedicated to surfing. 2 hours is nowhere near long enough!

For the record that alcohol consumed that week include (but is not limited to):

• 1 x 18 pack Fosters
• 7 x red wine (bottle)
• 1 x Sierra Tequila bottle
• 1/4 x Tesco value vodka (aka meths)
• 1 x 18 pack John Smiths Smooth
• 1 x 24 pack John Smiths Bitter
• 10+ pints Tribute Cornish Ale

Please be aware the above list is what I consumed in full! Just me. No help (except a little on the Tequila from Claire Levison!) Good, eh!

Photos are up! Gallery, Flickr and Zooomr

Tarra for now!!

Bubble 2.0??

Thursday, August 2nd, 2007

My friend and colleague sent me a link to this PC Mag article…

Oh dear! What I hope this does not mean is that I will keep working hard at developing my favascript, Flash, PHP ekcetera skills only to find that the job market is saturated with people fallen from grace in respective bust companies or that the purchasers and users of such online things are put off completely.

Personally I think that there will always be failures in any kind of business environment and t’internet is no different, however the current trend of jumping on the latest band wagon is dangerous and will add to “Bubble 2.0″. Creating the next social networking site, or the next video streaming site and investing everything into it is always going to be a big mistake – I just think that there would be less of an impact if the burst does happen if some people sat back and went “Actually they did it well enough and I won’t be able to compete.”

Of course there are the services that should be removed and destroyed – things like mySpace that is a total waste of time, space and effort. Bad code breeding bad designs, thousands of bands you’ve never heard of spamming you, hundreds of friends (I don’t think I have 1,00 friends anyway – nevermind that use myspace!), bored people bombarding you with pointless things (can be applied to facebook as well!) and owned by an evil (alledgedly) corporate giant.

Rant over.