Btw, changed the blog name.

Work has been work – not really much to report on that front.

Acute Networks made a big leap forward this week with the release of the new products and website. I’m really stoked about that.
The site looks absolutely amazing if I do say so myself. It really does add credibility to the business, which is a good thing because I want it to become another income stream on the side. At this point in time it’s generating a little bit of income, but only enough to keep itself running – main reason for that being that I don’t have the time to market it at all.
That being said, I would like to hire someone on a commission basis to do door-to-door sales. Would suit someone working or studying part-time. Shoot me an e-mail if you or someone you know is interested.
Another thing that’s new with Acute is that I’ve just finished negotiating a deal to acquire another small hosting business. More info to come on this one in good time.

It was my birthday yesterday (please, don’t rush into sending me gifts). I feel old now that my age isn’t prefixed with “teen”. This is normal, right? I mean, it’s half-way to 40.
I guess you don’t ever get younger, so you’ve gotta deal with it, yeah?

Great Wall X240

So I was on my way home from work today when I noticed that a great, big, ugly monstrosity of fail pulled out behind me. What was this monstrosity? It was one of the hideous creations that you see to your right.
At first glance, you may think “oh, it’s just a Toyota Prado” but you’d be wrong. This abortion is a Great Wall X240.

“Hey man, why you bagging out that car? It’s newer than yours!” I hear you say, and you’d be correct, it’s is a lot newer than my car. Infact, these only just came out. My issue is not the age of the car, nor the colour, rather the quality.

If you haven’t heard of Great Wall Motors before, feel free to have a read through the Wiki. For those too lazy to read, here’s the cliffs:

• Made in China
• Barely anything is original design – mainly sourced parts from other manufacturers
• Practically held together with blu-tac.

Now that you know the background, answer me this: who in their right mind would buy a Great Wall car?
Sure, the V240 Ute may start at $17,990, but would you buy a car that looks like a Panda with Down Syndrome?

I’m sorry to dedicate a whole post to an asian piece of shit, but after Sam told me his mate ordered a V240, I had to rant.

Maybe I’ll make it worth your time tomorrow. What’s a hot topic at the moment? Politics? Child Safety? Abortion? Oh hang on, I just covered abortion in this post. Shit happens, much like Great Wall Motors.

Image via Wikipedia

Even been shoved into the public spotlight without knowing it? Yeah, that was me today.

I spoke to a journo from the Sydney Morning Herald about a week ago. He found me though MacTalk after asking about businesses using iPads as business tools.
I responded to him thinking that he was just grabbing some information to put into and article and that would be that, but it seems that was not the case. He grabbed my phone number from me and rang me at the beginning of last week to have a chat, little did I know that he would quote me in this article that was published today.
We had a chat about how the company that I work for had ordered iPads to use as mobile quoting devices, and how it saves time and money by streamlining processes and more.

Fast forward to today, and as I’m pulling into my driveway, I get a phone call from the General Manager. He started off by joking about how I was now the appointed media contact, and how I was going to put him out of a job, etc, etc. All the while, I’m sitting there going “huh?”. I asked him what he was going on about, and when he told me it all came back to me. I don’t know how, but in the space of a week, I had somehow forgot that I had spoken to the journo.
Anyway, I came inside the house and jumped on the computer, sure enough I had an email from the journo telling me that the article was published today, to which he provided a link.

The power of the internet is amazing.

To have a read of the article, see  the Sydney Morning Herald.

Image via CrunchBase

I seem to be doing well at this blogging thing this time around – I was working on adding a photo gallery in the downtime at work today, and I think I managed to get one implemented. Now it’s just a case of adding some photos, which I shall get around to at some point tonight I think.

A good friend of mine, Nic, approached me a couple of days ago about helping him out with a project that he’s had on-and-off for a little while now. Basically, he’s had a hand in a technology news & discussion website known as iWinUx since the beginning, and after it disappearing from the internet for a few months, he’s resurrected it in the hope of it hanging around on a more long-term basis.
I’ve agreed to help him get the thing up and running again, and may possibly stay on with it as a hobby once it’s good to go.
He originally offered me a small part as a writer for the news section of the website, but me being me,  preferred a more hands-on role, so I agreed to be taken on as a Website Developer to help iron out the kinks in the website design and forum skin.
So far, so good. It seems the Invision Power Board 3 skin that they chose is a port of the old skin; originally used on the older incarnation of the site, but updated to work with the newer software.
I’ll keep the blog updated on the progress of the site.

Also, for what it’s worth, I have added a plugin to the blog today that posts to my Facebook page when I post a new blog article. So, if you’re one of my Facebook friends, you now have the fantastic privilege of being alerted to new content here once a day. Whether you read it or not is another thing, but hey – I’m allowed to try, no?

Anyway, I’m starting to get fed up with the fantastic service of Three, and thus have decided that as soon as I possibly can, I will be moving away from them.
At this stage, it’s looking like Vodafone have the best deal. Now I do realise that they’re owned by the same company as Three, but from what I’m told, their call centers are based in Australia, rather than India (much unlike Three). And they’re about $20 cheaper for the same thing as what Three offers. I guess it must be expensive to have a call center in a prestigious place such as India, right?

At the same time though, I’ll be looking to upgrade my phone.
Currently, I’m using a 16GB iPhone 3GS that I’ve had since Three originally started offering them. Naturally, as most iPhone owners would, I’m looking to upgrade to the iPhone 4. Of course, the iPhone 4 has been plagued by criticisms that the reception is sub-standard to other phone. This would put most people off the purchase. However, in the last couple of days, Apple has come to the table offering free “bumper” cases to correct this issue. Now, I’m not so sure I want a ugly plastic case to wrap around my beautiful, stylish phone – that would be like dressing a supermodel in rags found on a homeless person.
This being the case, I started looking around at other phones, and have heard lots of good things about the latest Blackberrys; namely the Storm 2. The only thing is, I haven’t actually been able to have a play with one just yet, so the only thing stopping me would be the interface ease of use (or lack of maybe?). It would be pretty hard for one to go from an iPhone, where everything is just so simple to use, to a Blackberry, where everything is a little harder to do. I mean, I am aware that the Blackberry is never going to have such a great interface compared to the iPhone, but you want it to be as close as possible to it, right?

If you have a Blackberry, feel free to post a comment with your mini-review of it.