Windows Battery Notifier

I've created a free and tiny system tray app that solves a problem that's been bugging me for a while with my Windows 7 laptop. Whenever the battery was low, regardless of the power settings I would never be warned, and it would instead suspend or hibernate suddenly. From some brief research on the net it seems I'm not alone with this problem and the general consensus is that it's a Microsoft bug in Windows.

As a result 'Battery Notifier' will repeatedly show a balloon popup notification from the system tray when your laptop is on battery power and it reaches 20% or below.

Download Battery Notifier Here
Note - please extract all files from the zip before running setup.exe.

A New Challenge

Today was day number 1 at my new role working in the SCRUM team of developers with Fitness First at their head office in Poole. I'll be working on their .NET based membership management software and associated websites and tools.

A previously unknown fact to me, Fitness First are the UK's largest gym company with over 400 gyms across the world, with more than1.2 million members. Working in such a large scale environment will offer me the chance to really get stuck in with crucial issues of performance, response time and scalability.

It'll also be a chance to practice more of what I've previously enjoyed, working within a SCRUM team using agile practices to achieve our goals and delivering value to the business.

Here's to the challenge ahead, and hopefully, the end of my blogging hiatus!

Maldives - Dive Sites in Google Maps / Earth

I finally got round to creating a google map of the dive sites I went to during our Honeymoon 3 years ago in the amazing Maldives.

Check it out:


View Maldives Honeymoon - Dive Sites in a larger map

Pretty cool. If anyone wants any advice or info on diving in the Maldives, leave a comment :)

iPhone 4 Infinity FaceTime

My friend and colleague Dave Hope just had a FaceTime video chat with our new iPhone 4's, and during the call we did the geeky thing of pointing the camera of one iPhone at the screen of another, causing a cool infinity effect! See screenshot below:

Pointless? - Yes.
iPhone 4 FaceTime first? Possibly!