Community: March 2008 Archives

I missed the Late Late interview with Patrick and John Collison. The interview can be watched on Youtube.

I first met Patrick 3 years ago when he entered our robocode competition here at Tipperary Institute. I then met him last August at open coffee and it was clear that they were doing something pretty elegant with smalltalk and addressing an issue affecting Ebay power sellers.

The Late Late interview failed to capture the commitment drive and vision that the guy have. You don't wake up one morning and become a millionaire, you have to have the vision and the energy to make it happen.

Part 1

Part 2

A colleague of mine is the proud owner of a Toyota Prius. I am very impressed with the car. It is very roomy, the total width of the back seats is wider than that of a Ford CMax 5 seater MPV. The passenger experience is a joy, very quiet, very comfortable. Under new motor tax legislation it only costs 100 Euros to tax. Motorway MPG is somewhere between 47 and 49 MPG according to some car websites. The car brings together both technology and environmental considerations. When driving you can see on the display where the power is coming from, in slow traffic the car runs on battery and with out any effort switches to petrol when the speed picks up. When running on petrol you can see the battery being charged. Boot capacity is good too, considering the batteries etc that the car requires.

I can see myself in the future driving one of these or something similar.

A good friend of mine has started subscribing to my blog, so I better write some new content. My articles have been pretty sporadic lately due to robocode and schoolbots. The prizes and trophies have arrived so it is just a matter of organising the conference centre, 250 name badges and 40 teams. Roll on Thursday !