Inveterate dabbler in business, travel, gadgets & life

In and out of the gutter.

Cleaning guttersWhilst walking to the bank, to pay in my Premium Bond winnings :-), I came across Andy & Dave cleaning gutters on the Cambridge Apartments building using an innovative  heavy duty vacuum cleaner, long pipe and a camera.

Pretty neat idea, especially in these health and safety times we live in, where any work on a ladder is frowned upon.

Interesting business promotion tool using word of mouth method to spread the idea – “If you ask for 10 postcards and deliver them to your neighbours. If 2 bookings are made then your gutters are cleaned for free.” Not sure how this idea works if I direct people to their, rather annoying, website!

Apparently it cost between £30 and £40 for an average house and you can call 0800 5677800 to get in touch with them.

Camera MountThe idea is pretty new as you can see from the jury rig of the camera to the pipe, so they need the business! I suggested that the guy with the pipe should be using video goggles. to make it less tiring.

It all bought back memories of my early days working with Pete Lorenz of Olympus Industrial on optical remote inspection 🙂 Except then they were wanting to look into vast chemical tanks and nuclear reactors.

Deserted or Desert?

Clear Roads in Dubai2Apparently George Bush is visiting Dubai, so at 4pm on Sunday (A normal working day in Islamic countries) a National Holiday was declared for today, Monday. Aren’t dictatorships so wonderful . You just do as you please 🙂
With the result today here was no traffic congestion, in fact no cars at all!

So I guess Bush will really get a flavour of this bustling place.

Thanks to Nick for the  iPhone picture of Dubai this morning.

Dubai visitHowever in the desert things were different according to this article in The Associated Press:-

“The motorcade of U.S. President George W. Bush makes its way down the desert road to a dinner hosted by the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi Sheik Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, at the Royal Stables at Al Asayl Racing and Equestrian Club, Sunday, Jan. 13, 2008, near the town of Sowaihan, United Arab Emirates.

(AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)”

Leaping Lineouts..

Philip kindly invited Sally, Doug, Adrian and myself to the pre-match lunch at CRUFC. Todays match was towards the EDF National Trophy , Cambridge played Rotherham (Top of National League 1). A very exciting game with Cambridge only losing by one point 🙁

It was the first outing for my Olympus SP-560UZ with its new 2GB memory card. I ended up taking well over 60 pictures, most at its maximum X16 optical zoom – with no tripod. My match favourite was this throw in:-

Throw In

Number 15Although number 15 (Charlie Spon-Smith) didn’t seem to be striking a stereotypical rugby pose…

I uploaded all the pictures to my new favourite upload site, Picasa (well 1GB space for free!) although the cool flash player seems to have disappeared. So you will have to click on the CRUFC picture below to see all the match shots.

CRUFC

[piflasa]http://picasaweb.google.com/data/feed/base/user/geofones/albumid/5032635320706411089?kind=photo&alt=rss&hl=en_GB|400[/piflasa]
A great day out the place was packed – over 200 for lunch yet again. So many thanks Philip!

Addendum: From Rotherhams site – I found 4 of their players it was their first outing, 5 of the  players had played in more than 12 of their 18 games this year, remainder had played in 4 to 7 games.