Ahh... the gentle screams and thumping of children playing. This is what we've got whilst we're hanging around in LAX for about 5 hours awaiting the final flight home. It's not that bad - I think there are a few people here who are needing to dispense with a couple of hours between flights and the 5 or 6 kids who have made new friends, found a cheap, enjoyable game which doesn't require any outside implements or tools to play - "tag". Actually, the only thing they need is "home", which in this case is a pilon next to the checkin counter.

In this case, I'm quite impressed with children's ability to turn any situation into an enjoyable one given the right influence. It would have been easy to get bored with waiting in an aiport terminal, but these kids have all joined forces to play a game which looks like they're enjoying a great deal. After all, to those of us with an inner child still wanting to get out every now and then, what better way is there to spend the interval between two flights where you sit still for any number of hours, than running around laughing and dodging the carry-on luggage of fellow mopey passengers?

Hmmm... do you think I'd get some strange looks if I produced a tennis ball out of my backpack and started up a game of "brandy" with a random fellow passenger?

"As a way to at least help people find new blogs is now here. We have now launched the first implementation of www.dominoblogs.com. This is a first-run, quick and dirty design ripped from the openntf domBulletin database. Over the next few weeks we will look at improving both the interface, and providing more functionality to make this really useful - RSS feeds to the directory listings, auto-generating OPML files (based on content, region, etc), and other ways to view the list (category, name). Other suggestions of how to make this site really useful are welcome from all."
laurette rynne

There's not much more I can say other than head on over to www.dominoblogs.com and enter your details. This is a temporary implementation and there are a bunch of ideas to display the data in rss feeds etc, but here's a chance to populate the database so we can have something useful up and running straight away.

The format is likely to change to something other than the domBulletin template but it certainly made it easy to get something up there quickly (after all, we've been on holidays!)

I guess I came to America on this trip with some high hopes - I just bought a new gadget (the atom) which I had expected would allow me to keep in touch almost anywhere, our super-duper light and portable laptop (the asus), and our new mp3 players (the creative zen neeon). Whilst almost everything worked beautifully as expected, I was a little disappointed with the wifi access as I travelled around.

(I know that has nothing to do with the mp3 player but it's so shiny and new that I had to mention it or all the other new gadgets would pick on it at recess during gadget-school)

I don't know if it's because I wasn't properly prepared in the skills of locating and connecting to wifi spots, but I'm pretty sure that it wasn't the case - I had two wifi seeking devices and neither were getting me connected to the big wide world out there so I could stay in touch.

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sorry for the delay.... I'll try to add a few more entries and get the travel ones out of the way so I can get back into some of the techy ones....

Well... here's the answer to the previous post. A resounding Yes! And from all accounts from our friends in New York - man did it snow! Over two feet of snow got dumped overnight in the big city (CNN report).

It seems that whilst we were looking skyward for the great big snowdump so we could run outside and frolic around, a giant blizzard was building up behind the scenes. In the end 2000 flights were cancelled out of JFK and people were delayed for around 48 hours before things got back on track.

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We're halfway into the cold section of our trip (1 week warm, 2 weeks cold, 1 week warm), and so far.. it's hardly dipped below 10 degrees celcius.

We're off to New York for a week, and if we're lucky, it might snow on our last day there...

We're taking the train from Washington to New York City today. It's a little gloomy outside but I quite enjoy a good train ride - the scenery always seems a little more interesting when it's going past the window at 50 miles and hour and you're not the one who has to worry about driving or traffic. I think it's also that the train tracks still go through all the little towns (and through the middle of the big ones) whereas these days you bypass everything in sight when you drive.

You get a new perspective on a lot of places when you go through them at ground level - some things look exactly the same as back home, whereas others are remarkably different. On top of that, it still freaks me out a little bit to see images that I grew up with which I had subconsciously placed in the "make believe zone" inside my head. For example, barns - we have sheds back home... you get little sheds, and big sheds... but barns ... man, they look just like they do in all the movies... I guess I shouldn't be surprised - I mean, it's not like they just made them up, but going through the countryside and seeing a red barn here and there is still a little freaky.

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I've been sitting on this one for a while as I needed to go through our photos...

a quick chance to play spot the difference between the disney dolphin and what I thought a dolphin was.

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ok - GURUpalooza in general:
concept - great
application - maybe not so great

I was reading lekkimworld the other day and saw that he felt something similar to my experiences at GURUpalooza at Lotusphere. I think the concept is pretty good and unfortunately anything other than what it was would require more planning and co-ordination by some people who I'm sure were pretty busy during the week of Lotusphere. But then again for some people this is their best chance to collaborate in person with their peers - in both work-mode and party-mode - and that should be considered.

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Right from the outset let me say that we didn't get a chance to do much research on this and so I'm quite willing to accept that I've got ripped off due to DTS (Dumb Tourist Syndrome).

We just hooked up our mobile to the network over here so we'd have a US number - and, I'm still a little shell-shocked by what I was told. I kind of thought it was funny so here we go:

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Ok... I know I've posted a few things on Lotusphere 2006 and I still have to do some session write-ups but I thought I'd put up a quick summary of how things went from my perspective:

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The last official day of Lotusphere 2006 was officially Australia Day and there were still a bunch of people around the hotels. One of the IBM guys from Australia - Brent Lello - organised a session to close out the week in celebration of Australia Day. There were a number of Australians there and some "honorary Australians" including some of the IBMers who were no doubt looking to chill out after a tough week of hosting an event.

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"A document alerting the Government to possible kickbacks in AWB's Iraq contracts was sent to the Department of Foreign Affairs from Baghdad well over two years ago, according to new evidence submitted to the Cole inquiry into the oil-for-food scandal."

Smoking gun? Downer's department was told about kickbacks two years ago

""I did not know, my ministers did not know and on the information that I have been provided and the advice I have received from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade I do not believe that the department knew that AWB was involved in the payment of bribes," Mr Howard told the Nine Network."

We didn't know of kickbacks: PM - Business - Business - smh.com.au

ummm... ok... yeah right... you know I don't know what's worse - if he *did* know and is now completely dismissing it by some sleight of hand and wordsmithing (as seems the usual case), or if he *didn't* know that this was happening right under his nose!

By the way, I know that there are reasons why he may not have been made "officially aware" of the dealings going on, but as more and more information comes to hand about the dodgy stuff going on, our PM must be sitting in a dark room with the curtains drawn surrounded by midgets telling him how big, strong and powerful he is... a role he's been practising on other superpower leaders over the last few years!

"Lotus is not dead yet"
Ok - this was something that was said in a number of different places throughout Lotusphere. Now, I know the underlying message is one of strength and commitment to the brand and future, however, adding the "yet" to the end of the sentence just confirms the fears at the heart of the message - that one day, Lotus will be dead. Surely the message needs to be more aligned with Mark Twain-like "reports of my demise are greatly exaggerated" - get away from the negative campaign - respond to it and move on - don't make it the centrepiece of your campaign.

In truth, the real issue with the message isn't that it repeats the "Notes is dead" mantra of the opposition, but the use of "yet" at the end of it - adding a "yet" also adds an implication that it's something that is likely to happen at some point in the future - near or distant - and in the world of competing software products that just means that it's always relevant no matter how far in the future IBM commits to the product. Drop the "yet", respond with a simple "Notes is not dead" and let's all get interested in the good stuff.

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