I just wanted to warn people that if you got any vouchers for Christmas to be very careful about checking the date when they expire. I was shocked to find that vouchers I was given for my birthday expired less than four months later with no chance of a refund. Lost money and not just lost but they have the money for providing nothing!

Perhaps it is my fault for not reading the small print. I don't get narked by many things but this has really gotten to me and the service was appalling. So much so that I have set a website to try and warn others (and make me feel a bit better). You never know, it may do something!

I have no problem with vouchers expiring, companies have to do this, prices of the experiences they sell will go up etc. however having a voucher that expired in less than four months with no other option is ludicrous in my opinion!

Update: The website worked!  A very irate company got in touch and offered me a refund!  i have now removed the link to the site that was in this post.

Did you know that buy default majordomo will give a list of all the addresses on your mailing list to anyone?

• Only shows lists you are subscribed to with the 'lists' command
• Does not allow anyone to use the 'who' command to get addresses
• Doesn't allow anyone to use the 'which' command to get addresses

I may not be a Microsoft fan however I do realise that they (or their money) can go into producing something that is truely new and unique.  Search for Notre Dame on flickr and you will find thousands (190 thousand in fact) of pictures of the cathedral.  Photosynth has really taken that to the next level and allowed a true 3D map to be built from these 2D pictures.

For me, this is straight out of Star Trek.  Saying that, Ironically this is almost impossible without the sort of basic tagging that is only now starting to be done with photos.  I am looking forward to seeing where this technology takes us.

See the TED Talks video on Photosynth for a much better example and demo. 

Another fantastic trip to Le Mans for the 24 hour race... and you have guessed it, on skates!  For those that don't know the "24 Roller " emulates the 24 hour car race pretty well.  Each team has up to 10 members (and three pit crew) and your team has to do as many laps as possible in 24 hours, they even do the Le Mans start where all the skates are lined up on one side of the track with skaters on the other.

This year was hard work, both from the organising from (with the new job) and the actual event.  In a complete change from last years heatwave it decided to rain this year.  It could have been a lot worse though as it wasn't driving rain with setting up the campsite and taking tents down done in the dry which makes a HUGE difference.

On Sunday 17th June 2007 I skated from London to Brighton, yes roller skated, the full 54 miles!!  It hurt! but I did it and managed to raise £1000 for the Portsmouth hospitals NHS trust :-)

Back in 2006 some very fit skaters skated from London to Brighton as part of the BHF bike ride.  I liked the idea of it and have done marathons before (26 miles) but they tend to be flat, smooth and nothing like this.  I really wasn't sure about this so sponsorship seemed the best way to make up my mind.  I don't do sponsorship very often (I am not a fan of people that ask for sponsorship to do something they are going to do anyway) but set myself a stab in the dark target of £1000 for the Portsmouth hospitals NHS trust who looked after my grandfather wonderfully during his last days.

I’m always looking for the next big thing however my father always tells me that you don’t want to be the first to do something, you want to be the second. It’s true too, I can’t think of many original conceptors that are still doing their ideas. Those that have made a go from it have mostly been through selling the patent however in this modern Internet world it’s very difficult (although not impossible) to patent an idea.

Take Google, not the google you seee now but the original startup google. They didn’t invent the idea of crawling Internet websites, Digital had done that years earlier with Alta Vista. Google was however the site/company to launch the concept to the masses!

So… if I want to be the next Google, what exists out there today that I could improve on?