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Our family loves games. We have lots of board games and enjoy playing them, card games, strategy games and computer games. Recently we have combined the electronic with the board strategy games with playing Settlers of Catan and Carcasonne online. They are not actually named the same thing as the online website which is free has not licensed the real game. But in absence of an alternative, this is a great way to find other players, and in our case occasionally play with family who are over seas.

Technology is amazing. We can utilise the tech tools available to us these days in remarkable ways.

I am currently sitting in a train listening to music on my Zen while writing this blog post on my tablet PC using a digital pen.

I have just finished reviewing notes for a client workshop I am heading into the city to. First I opened my email & opened some excel files to review some settings & details we are going to be discussing. Second I copied the meeting agenda to One Note so I will be able to make notes as we go in the workshop. Third I printed my quote for the work to be done from a PDF attached to an email to OneNote so I can easily refer to it in the meeting. Finally I opened Windows Live Writer to compose this blog post. It will get published as soon as I get back online.

Yahoo has recently released new uploader software that allows you to organise upload pictures to your Flickr account right from the desktop. You can easily add titles, tags, set privacy options or arrange your pictures in Flickr sets while staying offline. It even allows you to add more jobs to the queue while processing another bath of photographs. Pretty impressive!

Following Scott Hanselman's, Steve Richards and Bill Gates lead, I have decided to share my office and workspace setup.

This isn't meant to be a gloat about the technology I use rather an explanation of the tools that I use in my job. Plumbers and electricians have cool vans full of all their gear and they probably spend more on that than I have on this.

My office is around 4 metres square, though one corner is chamfered off. In order to maximise the space available and still create enough room for my staff to work I have a real mixture of furniture. My desk is a curved reception desk I picked up second hand from the gym when they remodelled. It has nice deep drawers on both sides and the 90 degree curving space is an excellent fit for the 4 monitors I work on - 2 x 22" and 2 x 19" wide screens. It also holds current files and data, pens, blank cds, odds and ends and all the cables to connect my mobile phone, camera, video camera and creative zen. On top at each end I store things that I don't need to look at but need to access. In the middle I have a photo frame of my 4 kids and a Lego Bionicle I was given when leaving a client.

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