Just for the geeky / nerdy / techie / cone heads among us some wonderful websites allow a simple installation of free website maps. This little bits of fluff show the location of visitors to the website from all over the globe. It's one of those self gratifying things that makes you think "oooh, someone from the Antarctic has just read my blog"

I've narrowed it down to 2 favourites and will be running one or the other over the next few weeks until I decide which one I like the best.

The first is:

You've used your Project Management Tools to create a detailed plan for your project and you believe you've accounted for everything.

What could possibly go wrong? Plenty! The question is, "Where will the project go awry and what can you do to avert disaster?" Assessing and managing risks is the best weapon you have against project catastrophes. By evaluating your plan for potential problems and developing strategies to address them, you'll improve your chances of a successful, if not perfect, project.

Ecuador Geography: Ecuador is bordered to the north by Colombia, to the east and south by Peru, and to the west by the Pacific Ocean. There are three distinct zones in this country:

An old friend emailed me a very interesting little ebook today; it's called Sticky Wisdom.

Brilliant guidelines on business, project management and life management in general.

Randomly surfing around the web this morning I stumbled across an interesting page from an Australian IT Recruitment company. One of their guys had writen a piece on the importance of using quality people on your project from grass roots to upper echelons. It's a good read with a humourous but all too accurate twist:

Just back from a marvellous few days visitting the esteemed Uncle Buck over in Spain.

Drank lots of Sangria while sitting in the shade outside his villa overlooking the Mediteranean.... fantastic!

Sangria is typically a mix of red wine, spirits, Casera/Lemonade and fresh fruits, served over ice. There are numerious variations and every restaurant has it's own recipie. Its great at parties, barbeques and on the beach.

Sangria's appeal is all about taking your favorite red wine, your favorite fruits, and experimenting with them. Sangria is typically created from red wine, fruit juices,casera (sprite,7 up), fruit and spirits. When making your own Sangria, you can use a good quality red wine or a cheaper one.

After our fantastic family vacation @ Uncle Buck's villa in Monte Pego, Spain. We discovered the delights of lunchtime by the pool with a selection of tapas and a jug of chilled Sangria! Now we are back in England, it's a Sunny (yes I know this is a rare thing!) bank holiday, the neighbours are coming over later for a BBQ so it's time to sort a jug of Sangria out for the fridge... briefly in the fridge... swiftly down the gullet ;)

A quick google to find some recipes and we came up with:

Where does the sangria recipe come from?

Why is it that as I get older my fingers - instead of becoming increasingly skilful on the keyboard - are becoming more and more like a bunch of half-thawed extra thick cumberland sausages.

This morning I have typed DRUAPL at least 70% of the time when trying to email somebody about the Druapl... damn it... DRUPAL Content management system... sausage fingers. pah!

Maybe it's time to install Dragon Naturally speaking and stick my hands firmly in my pockets. ;)

Randomly surfing around the web earlier today I found a terrific article on Googlelady (which she in turn had compiled from various sources on webmasterworld.com). Top 50 tips that have just refreshed big dusty corners of my brain that had slipped into disuse.

Enjoy:

1. Google’s Optimization Essentials really does work and deserves the full attention of those who’ve ignored it. It’s really helped me improve my CTR. The AD placement diagram shows the best places to position ads on your site to maximize CTR.

The moneylender, who was old ugly and never married, had taken a fancy to the farmer's beautiful daughter. So he proposed a bargain.  He said he would forgo the farmer's debt if he could marry his daughter.
 
Both the farmer and his daughter were horrified by the proposal.
 
So the cunning money-lender suggested that they let providence decide the matter. He told them that he would put a black pebble and a white pebble into an empty money bag.  Then the girl would have to pick one pebble from the bag.

Setting up Mrs Finkpad's laptop today and trying to install the DLINK wireless network range extender [DWL-G710] I had to open an installation PDF (yes I know... /me hangs my head in shame). Of course she didnt have a PDF view installed so I went searching for a freeware one.

I found SumatraPDF an opensource viewer thats utterly free, and much much quicker than the Adobe PDF Viewer. Dont get me wrong, I've nothing aginst the Adobe viewer, it's just that its grown into this bloated thing over the years. Sumatra, on the other hand is very small, very quick and easy to use... Just perfect for the laptop and, more importantly, for Steph.

Beer tastes nice.

To show the world what a jolly good egg you are, or if you find that PROJEX4I makes your IT life easier and saves you $$ then why not  donate a little towards me, to help me write more stuff?  I would  love you to send me $10 so I can buy myself a cold beer. That beer  gives you lifetime support and access to every new release of PROJEX4I for free. Bargain huh!                               

Buy Me a Beer is a simple Drupal module that allows donations via Paypal and is 100% secure... if it wasnt then PAYPAL would be some serious trouble.

C'mon....

Buy me one. slurp!

Disclaimer : The Buy Me a Beer module is not meant to play down the severe impact too much beer can have for one's brain and body. But then again, I'm probably too drunk to care. Cheers!
 

The long-rumored and much-debated rebranding of IBM's disparate server lines, known under the code-name Mach1, was announced on October 3, just a few weeks before the fall COMMON midrange trade show in Baltimore. The AS/400 is henceforth known as the iSeries 400, not the I/500, as had been widely reported. But there's a lot more to Mach1 than renaming the AS/400. For the next several months, IBM is going to be blitzing the media and its customer base in an attempt to establish a new, unifying brand identity for its server lines, as well as new subbrand identities for the machines that used to be called AS/400s, S/390s, RS/6000s, Netfinities, and NUMA-Qs.

I found this old email tucked away in a dark, damp corner of my old desktop. Covered in cobwebbs, sticky with splashes of Jolt Cola and sticky bits of snickers bars it raised a wry smile whgen I read it. A quick cut/paste later and here it is. I sent this to some of my AS400 team members when on site for a client in London. A big German bank who's name rhymes with... erm... well it doesnt rhyme with anything actually.

Anyway, this was my first visit to the Annual News400 conference back in 2000. I had a fantastic time and was in full geek delight for the entire week:

So, I attended the News/400 International Conference in Vail, Colorado, last week.