Back in October I was lucky enough to go and see England v South Africa in the rugby world cup final. It was a superb weekend. My boss Richard managed to get tickets. Along with his brother James, other work colleague, Ritchie, we took the Eurostar to Calais and Richard drove to Paris. He had found a cheap hotel about a 45 minute walk from the stadium.

We arrived Friday afternoon. Ritchie and went and bought a rugby ball and tested our skills in a local park. We certainly weren't going to be selected to play in the final! In the evening we did some re-con and walked to the Stade De France. It took awhile, but it was interesting to see parts of Paris you wouldn't normally see. We watched the 3rd place play off between France and Argentina in the fan zone setup outside the ground.

Saturday we had a quick breakfast and made our way into Paris to the world cup village setup just by the Eiffel Tower. After taking in the atmosphere and watching New Zealanders trying to sell their tickets we walked to Garde De Nord to meet Richard and his friends before taking the train to the stadium.

The atmosphere was electric and the fans from both sides mingled together and shared a joke and some banter. It was all very good humoured. It was a good game, but England never really looked like winning. We did think England had scored a try, but it was rightly ruled out. South Africa deserved to win.

Sunday was the sad drive back to England. We had a late train so ended up in the duty free and an Australian bar watching the final Grand Prix of the season. An exciting weekend ended once I got home just before midnight.

Some photos of the weekend are here. Mostly taken with my phone so not great, but certainly gives an idea of the weekend.

Tags: France, Paris, World Cup Final

I was driving to Stevenage yesterday and I saw a deer in a field. Damn, I thought, I don't have my camera with me. Two hours later on my return the whole herd was there. I raced home, got my camera. They had moved by the time I was back, but I was lucky enough to get some shots. I walked quietly over the hill and got a bit closer. They are very skittish so you can't get too close. I was lucky to get what I did.

I heard this the other day. You always miss 100% of the shots you don't take. That is so true. Always take your camera with you. You never know what you might see when you are out and about.

You can see the rest of what I got here.

Tags: Wildlife, deer, Countryside

This has been playing on my mind for awhile. The iPhone has been released in the UK and the Mac Macs have bought it. How is Apple going to compete going forward? I have to admit, I don't know how the American phone market works, but here in the UK, it seems based on price. I have never heard anyone say, I am saving up for my new phone. The contract they have will come up for renewal, they will look at the phones that are free and pick the best free one.

In the past, I have seen phones that I like, but by the time my contract was up, they were no longer available. I picked the best free one I could get at the time of contract renewal. The Nokia N95 would seem to me, to be the best phone around. It is free on all networks. These are some of the deals I could find.

Three has it for £35/month with 300 free minutes and 150 free video minutes.

o2 has it for £30/month with 400 free minutes.

Vodafone has the latest 8gb, N95 model for free on some tariffs and £100 on a £35/month tariff with 500 free minutes.

So, how is Apple going to compete with this? They aren't going to give away free phones, this would just kill iPod sales. Can Apple prove that if you buy an iPhone they will come up with such great ideas in software updates that you can keep this phone for years? You would basically be getting a new phone and features every few months.

I have a brave idea and I wonder if Apple would consider it. They already have a business model in this space that others weren't brave enough to try. The iPod Touch is £199, the Nano is £99. What if all iPod Touches were iPhones, but the functionality was turned off? When you were ready for your new phone, you could sync it with iTunes and pay to have your iPod Touch be an iPhone.

As prices come down, the iPod Touch might come down to £150, or even less. Could it come with Nano functions and you pay to turn on the wireless functions and then the phone? Of course this would give the hackers a real target: Unlock the phone feature without paying Apple anything.

I wonder how many people have iPod Touches and now wish they had the phone, but aren't going to pay twice. With this model, Apple don't have to give away free phones, they encourage you to buy cheap iPod's and the phone is there when you want it.
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Tags: phone, mobile

I upgrade my Mac to Leopard yesterday and I couldn't logon on to my Windows 2003 server that was running SFM. I could log on to the server running Extremez-ip. I had a feeling it was due to the way Leopard was sending the password, and indeed it was.

I went to Computer Management, right clicked on Shared Folders, and chose, Configure Service for Macintosh.

Set the Enable authentication box to, Apple Encrypted or Microsoft and it will work fine.

Tags: Leopard, 10.5