Archive for July, 2008

Garmin Nuvi 300

Tuesday, July 29th, 2008




I’ve been playing around with the Garmin Nuvi 300 trying to get Morocco maps on it. There is a guy who’s made the maps freely available here. I got the Nuvi 300 from Amazon (at the moment it seems they don’t have it in stock) - partly for the bargain price and partly because i knew the Morocco map only works on Garmin.

The Nuvi 300 seems to be really good and I’m very happy with it so far - I used it to find out where we were in Epping Forest while mountain biking the other day, and it works from within my office. Its very fast finding satellites (using its internal aerial) and is very light and compact compared to the TomTom’s I have used in the past. Interface-wise, its harder to get to advanced functionality (more…)

Nokia Flagship Stores & BEAM.TV

Friday, July 25th, 2008


Its been a while since the first store went live (5 December to be exact), but I’ve just found a video of the Nokia Flagship stores in action on YouTube. I was involved in the development of the software that plays the synchronised video and interacts with phones that are picked up.

BEAM.TV has had a number of press releases on this, the most notable being this one; others are viewable via a google search.

18-23 June, Seville and Andalucia-Atlantic Coast

Sunday, July 6th, 2008

I’ve finally managed to compile some of my photos from the trip I did to Spain with Lydia and her Mum. We started in Seville the first day, then hired a car from the second day onwards (driving in the ancient city with a large car is not recommended!). The weather was very hot (40 degrees Celcius) so it was nice to be air conditioned some of the time (we followed the local example of taking afternoon siestas). We then headed down to the Atlantic coast stopping at Cadiz, (more…)

Cans Festival

Sunday, July 6th, 2008

A while ago I walked home via the Cans Festival - a Banksy-organised exhibit of street art in a tunnel near Waterloo Station. There’s some very impressive art on display, and I snapped a few photos. I imagine a lot of it has changed since the first day - one piece used to say, “Hey Banksy - why don’t you return my emails?” and now says, “Hey Boris…” in reference to the new Mayor London. See photos here.

A Taste of Portugal

Sunday, July 6th, 2008

The other day I met up with my friend Rudy in the Stockwell/Vauxhall area where we checked out one of the local Portuguese restauruants (Vauxhall has a large Portugueuse community). We opted for Bar Estrela which seemed to be quite popular. The whole place was buzzing - people sitting at tables outside the restaurant and people spilling out of the door of the bar where there was a football match playing on the TV (not English!). If it weren’t for the double decker buses and the black cabs, we could have imagined we buried somewhere in Europe. The menu was in Portuguese with English translations. In the end we opted for paella with chicken and seafood which was excellent. The seafood was very fresh and tasty and went well with a bottle of the “local” Sagres. Highly recommended.