Ok, I’m hooked on Twitter. I realize that in the fast paced Web 2.0 world Twitter might be old news by now, but a lot of people who read my blog probably still haven’t heard about it.

My phone now beeps regularly with SMS’s telling me what my friends and colleagues are up to, or i can use this Adobe Apollo app, and I feel compelled now to share with the rest of the world even more day to day information about my activities. I’m not sure why anyone cares, but i get a kick out of it.

Don’t know what Twitter is? Go have a look, sign up and add me as a friend! Meanwhile I’ve also added the last 3 twitter posts on to the right hand side of my blog so you can see the last few things i’ve been up to.

It’s a nice problem to have, but i’m finding it hard to choose which video camera to buy since my old one is near retirement. Trouble is, i can’t believe the retail experience when trying to decide which model to buy. Can you believe that in more than one store i’ve been allowed to hold the camera on the basis that i could decide which one i liked. What the?

How on earth can you choose a high resolution video camera just by looking at it?

Is it a simple matter that if the camera looks good then so will the video? I’m after a consumer grade HD model (Sony has a couple of models and Canon has one) and I’m yet to find a store that will either hook it up to a HD screen and / or show me a sample video so i can see the qualify. I’ve read quite a few online reviews and see mention of things like “noise” and “artifacts” which i think could be a big deal and want to see for myself.

If you know of a good store that can help me out, please let me know… meanwhile my quest continues.

I just checked into my hotel, opened up my laptop to get an IM message from FlexDaddy Andrew Spaulding bragging that he’s online via WiFi while sitting in his seat somewhere above Australia on his way to MAX Asia.

We needed to discuss a demo that i’m presenting soon so took the opportunity and we both linked straight into my Acrobat Connect room, shared my screen and away we went. We even fired up the webcams because we could. I didn’t really believe he was flying

Sadly i hear that Boeing are not continuing this service past the end of the year. Two steps forward one step back but i guess someone has to pay the bills and it just wasn’t turning a profit.

Just added myself to Technorati, the blog tool / tracker. I had to claim my own blog! View my Technorati Profile

I’ve updated the Eclipse server definitions that i had made available previously. Eclipse users who have updated to Web Tools Platform (WTP) 1.5 on Eclipse 3.2 can now continue to work with JBoss 3.2.5. This is also great news for Adobe LiveCycle users running the “turnkey” option as JBoss 3.2.5 is what’s used under the hood. Get the new Eclipse JBoss 3.2.5 Definition Files here

Spent some time onthe weekend installing Windows Vista RC1 onto my new Dell 9150. This time round the installation process was quite painless, compared to beta 2 which didn’t get past the boot screen. I went from first boot with the DVD in the drive to desktop in just under 25 minutes.

So at first glance what is new?  Well, the rolling grassy hills are gone in favour of a rocky mountain scene, some news sounds and some interesting effects.. but has muched else changed? I’m sure it has but the main thing, performance, isn’t there yet.

I tried running World of Warcraft but without luck – it runs, but the sounds all play at the wrong speed and it was jittery. I tried playing audio through Media Center while watching photos transition every 2 seconds but the audio became distorted through the fades.  Since both these “real world” things work nicely in Win XP I wont be switching over to Vista full time just yet, but its nice to see things are improving.

On the Adobe front, I got as far as installing Reader 7.08 which behaves as expected, and loaded up a few sites in IE7 with Flash Player 9. Good to know some things “just work”.

It’s been well overdue for some time now, but i finally got around to throwing away my old PHP code that i built the original site in and using the almost ubiquitous WordPress.

There are still a few “fixups” to do over the next few days but the bulk of the content has been moved across.

If you are interested in using WordPress, let me share the fact that the installation took less than 5 minutes, another 2-3 minutes was spent choosing a default theme. There rest of the time was taken tweaking the styles and migrating the data, but thats the fun bit!

Thanks to Andrew & Nick for the encouragement and gentle nudge

Hmm.. so first the airlines want to stop all laptops on planes, and now thanks to Sony (yes Sony made the bad batch of batteries for Dell) i’m allowed to take my laptop on the plane, but not use it in case the battery catches on fire!

Spent the day browsing the gadgets stores of Singapore before returning to my hotel room to catch up on email (almost there!). Singapore has the coolest shopping malls, my favourite being Sim Lim Square, a 6 storey complex packed with cameras, computers, software, cables, cases, power supplies.. you name it, if its slightly techy then its in this place.

So what did i buy? Nothing special; A 4 port USB2 hub, 1Gb MMC card and a headphone cable that allows a set of normal headphones to plug into my Nokia N70 (farewell iPod Shuffle).

Have you been meaning to play with Adobe Flex but just needed a little bit of incentive? How about an XBox 360 or LG Plasma screen?

Adobe Australia is running a Flex 2 Developer Derby in conjunction with Builder AU.