I’ll be the first to admit it, I have an over-reliance on technology. There are some things I don’t carry around with me simply because they’ve all been replaced by some gadget or other.

On a recent trip to Juba I had a stop-over in Cairo. The airline had put me up in a nice hotel just outside the airport and I was all booked and checked-in on the flight out to Juba the next morning. The problem was I needed to be up nice and early, with enough time to get some breakfast, check-out and be back at the airport for 7.30am.

When you’re at home this is no problem as I suspect most of us have a dedicated alarm clock on our bedside table. When you’re travelling you obviously don’t pack everything and technology can be fantastic when you need to economise. Devices such as your mobile phone can do many tasks that remove the necessity of carrying extra items in your luggage; an alarm clock being one of them.

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Before the blog starts to whitter on about new tech, new application purchases, features and functionality found and how use of tech has helped or hindered me it’s probably useful to get a baseline written of what tech I currently have and what I use day to day.

First off, desktop computers.

  • At home it’s a 27″ Apple Mac.
  • At work, a Dell Optiplex running Windows 7

The Mac also runs Parallels, which through the use of a Watchguard VPN allows me to connect Outlook to my work mailbox. My own personal mail is collected in Mail on the Mac. At work I’m a Development Director for a software company so most of my time is spent in Visual Studio 2010 and now 2012, Outlook and YouTrack, our bug tracking/ticket software from JetBrains.

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