That nice Handelaar fellow has been busy lately, working on a number of projects supporting an Irish version of WriteToThem (né FaxYourMP).

The most recent one is a mapping project, to enable you to place a given address on a map, without paying an absurd amount of money for the dataset.

So, here it is: The Holy Grail of Irish Geocoding. Put in a street address and town in Ireland, and out pops a lat/long pair and a Google Map to go with. With which, we discover that my sister lives in a field.

Thanks to an extended flight delay this morning, I was able to listen to the excellent Radio 4 documentary on the Skye Bridge Tolls, abolished a year ago (how did I miss it?)

However, the coverage was spoiled by the outright and blatant revisionism of Brian Wilson, who claimed to have been always for the tolls. Would this be the same Brian Wilson who campaigned against them (as did the local Labour Party candidate, one Donald Munro) in advance of the 97 election, and was heard in January 98 uttering this statement:

as rapid progress as is possible must be made to reducing and removing tolls.

And who would seem to have been even more strongly against them two years earlier, if Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish (then a Tory minister) is to be believed.

But then, this is nothing new to Labour's ur-partisan attack dog (making John Reid look like a cutesy puppy by comparison), who the morning after the devolution vote was on television putting the boot into the cross party consensus to start Labour's Holyrood election campaign on the very shows designed to allow the non-Tory parties a moment of Isn't it good when we work together for the common good.

Next time TB et al claim we went into Iraq to remove a repressive dictator and therefore we're on the side of the angels, let's all point to this. These are the Craig Murray memos to the FCO, detailing why our 'ally' Uzbekistan is as bad as Saddam's Iraq ever was. Just as in pre-Kuwait Iraq, we're prepared to put up with just about anything as long as they're useful.

http://www.blairwatch.co.uk/node/714

Woo! Free Stuff from Guinness! I am so taking this with me on to Christmas nights out...

It really is worth registering on the website. Mind you, you also need to answer the survey questions in the right way to get into the high value segment...

See the previous freebie they sent for Paddy's Day.

Christmas is coming - so present time again. Time to buy and time to be bought for. Also with a new baby due in the Spring I thought I should update my wish list and put down some ideas for the baby too.

One of the most significant success factors in building a high-performing team is how much the team members trust each other. This is generally much, much harder in virtual teams than face to face ones (although experience with evolt suggests that ongoing realtime communication over IRC bridges the gap quite nicely). This article shows some of the elements that can be used as stepping stones to high trust virtual teams.

http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue43/panteli/

What do you mean by Profit? How much do your projects make? How do you price jobs so that you make enough?