Christmas shopping

Yesterday I was out shopping for Christmas, specifically for my nephew. He's 2 years old. I thought I'll buy him some cloth - I guess it's more a gift for the parents than for him -. Connie and I went to Regent Street to get some cloth from Petit Bateau and Gap Kids. We bought some cute stuff :). But on the way we stopped by Hamleys. Man, that shop is just insane. There are so many people! We ended up in the Lego section and we came out with a nice Lego Mindstorm NXT kit. But no this is not for my nephew but for a much older kid...me :) It's actually really cool. I already started to build a robot, well a car but one that can go around and avoid obstacles. It's probably not the most original choice but I thought it would be a good one to start with. I'll post some picts when I'm done.

Skype conference

Last Monday I went to this month Mobile Monday conference. After Google, it was this time hosted by Skype. The theme was mobile social networking. It's a topic that interests me at the moment. A few of the speakers drew comparisons between the web and the mobile world. A few claims were maid that online communities should really suit the mobile world but that it is mainly due to the data charges that it doesn't really take off. There was a guy from 3Uk talking about SeeMe TV, an online video sharing service. The difference there is that once you publish a video you get paid every time somebody watches your clip. That also means that it will cost you money (10p) to watch a video. Probably not my type of community but I can see why people can be interested. There also was a demo by the people from Pitch, an ad-funded mobile networking service. Looks quite interested but again not so much my type of thing. And the last and most interesting demo was from SoonR (I'll talk about it in my next entry so watch this space).
It was an interesting evening, not to mention a good opportunity to meet up with the boys - and girl - from my previous company.

Travel to Asia - follow up

Well, things haven't changed much since my last post. I'm still waiting on a final confirmation from my company that I can take the 4 weeks I need off and then I'll buy my tickets. I've already started to buy the necessary equipment though. Still need to get a large bag pack and some good walking shoes and I'll be good to go. Feeling quite exited

Java 6 is out!

It's not going to make the world a better place but developing software in Java myself it's a welcome news!

http://java.sun.com/javase/6/features.jsp

Dzień dobry

Last weekend Connie and I went to Poland; Warsaw and Krakow to be more specific. To be honest, Poland has never been at the top of my travel list but we were invited by Connie's flatmate (Agnieszka) to her birthday party so we just took the opportunity and went. We flew Saturday morning to Warsaw. We spent the afternoon going round the old town. I found it to be an interesting place given that it was almost entirely destroyed during WWII. It is not a pretty city as such but I found it has some charm. And besides, we were accompanied by Mariusz, a very good friend of Agnieszka. He knows a lot about the city's history.
Later that day, it was time to celebrate Agnieszka's birthday. We went to a bar in the city center and after a few shot of the national drink - Vodka that is - we spent the evening dancing. I usually don't go out like this very often but once in a while it feels good...except the next morning. I had a very good time :)
Next day we went to the spa to relax. It was a really cool place. We tried sonas of different temperatures, steamed or not. One very strange thing was the ice room, you know the place where they usually stock dead meet. Well, the same but with still living meat :).
After this relaxing day, we took the train to Krakow. It feels somewhat a more modern city than Warsaw. The weather wasn't so great but I still enjoyed going around the city center.
At the end of the afternoon we started to make our way towards the airport to catch our flight back to London. We had a very good time there and met some nice people. I wouldn't mind going back there again.