Staying with a friend of a friend – airbnb

As part of our honeymoon we decided to try the airbnb accommodation service to find at least one of our lodgings for a leg of the trip, in this instance Paris.

After a quick look at tripadvisor and the costs for barely average hotels in Paris we decided we had nowt to lose giving airbnb a shot as we knew we could easily find an expensive hotel if needs required.

With only an iphone and 30 minutes flaky hotel wifi in Geneva I had searched for a bunch of potential apartments and contacted three about staying. 1 got back to me within an hour or so and the others turned me down – so why advertise an apartment that you aren’t trying to rent (excuse was that friends were over).

The apartment that said ‘yes’ was hosted by Boris who was quick, informative and helpful later down the line on the phone! Once he accepted our request I decided getting the app would be helpful to exchange messages.

The app was good except that to see messages you need to be logged in and this is not easy I can tell you when you are traveling multiple countries without accept to 3G and wifi.

Everything went very well and we had access to wifi – the only thing I really ask for in a hotel and that is very rare.

The airbnb experience was good, I would recommend it and we decided staying in a stranger’s apartment felt like staying at the apartment of a friend of a friend.

Digging Design Professionalism

I am a fan of Andy Rutledge, both from his enjoying his blog and from the stellar work his agency does – including the excellent small CMS Unify that I heart.

He has recently released ‘Design Professionalism’ available online or as an e-book.

Read the foreword if you must and then go and get it.

Online, he is both a Platonist and a provocateur, a professor and a street fighter.
Jeffrey Zeldman

The briefest of moments

Today I uncovered a set of photos that were quite dated. It made me wonder just how long these brief moments linger. Will the many daft/silly/humiliating photos of us cross our paths in the future?

Who else will see them? and if these are physical prints just imagine how long these new-fangled photos will stick around. A year, a generation or more? Will your family hand your hard-drive like a trinket?

It blows my mind.

Building a summer house

Tonight I started work on a new direction for the design of this site. Expect some strange occurrences for the next few days as I like to code on the live site.

The purpose of education

This weekend we (Louise was a trooper and came to see what the fuss was about) went to Sheffield on a Saturday for the first Purpos/ed face-to-face event.

The event was kick started by Andy Stewart and Doug Belshaw, two folk that I have a lot of time for.

The format was to meet folk for 4hrs and have an open discussion on the purpose of education. Between the few anchoring talks there were a number of  3min lightening talks picked at random that were all very diverse and a welcome change to traditional long sessions.

Bringing Louise along was the best thing I could have done as it was refreshing to hear the voice of a non-educational type (she works for a Mental health charity), who is still greatly affected by education – many of her client base have missed parts or all of school. It is easy to forget who the ‘people’ are and so next time I strongly urge everybody to bring along a friend or family member.

The event also got me thinking about the education my family has undertaken and the paths we took and now follow today. Four different brothers with four unique tales of success, indifference, compromise, dreams and mistakes – yet all very happy! I hope to ask them about what they feel the purpose of education is and maybe bring then along next time.

I am also more convinced that by informal education I can safely chuck lots of non-academic subjects into the pot.

It was also nice to meet new faces and catch up with great folk like Brian Kelly and Steve Boneham.

Oh and the printed book of a collection of 500 words was an amazing surprise… who do I give it to next?

Agile in Government

if Her Majesty’s Government can spend millions on propaganda — for a scheme the public want — then surely, a few quid in Research and Development can equally be written off? Lessons, after all will have been learnt.

In defence of Agile

Bristol to Whitby

Bike at the side of the road

Last week we had a few days planned up North in Whitby and I didn’t need more than a seconds thought to take the bike.

It was a great ride up with a highlight of crossing the Humber Bridge and enjoying the trip over the Moors (A169).

My GPS device, igotu worked a treat and now I can add ride data to my holiday collection with memories, photos and….trip data haha – very happy.

Oh and Whitby was worth visiting for a few days least I forget the reason for my trip and the food, particularly the sausages at Bothams was a welcome distraction from the pub.

 

A46, A164 (dull), A15, A169
273 miles one way
943 ft elevation (max)