I was lucky enough to go to the ITM's annual conference gala dinner last week. It was, as you'd expect of the ITM, a fantastically well arranged affair, and of course sported the much anticipated... Strictly ITM dance competition.

There's a bit of a pre-event video here and here, but the main stuff is here:

Caroline & Julian
Fay & Dan
Jason & Lena
Kerrie & Jonathon
Richard & Camille
Paul & Hannah

Well done to all of them... didn't they do well? ;-)

I had a bit of a geeky afternoon at work yesterday - I got a load of stuff moved from one computer to another. For the first time (for me) though, I used a VMWare Virtual Machine to do all of the transferring.

I've been using VMs for a while now on a knock-about desktop machine I have at werk (running Linux). I use the VMs so that I can try stuff out on the different operating systems and versions we have at work. I also run a few 'proof of concept' web tools for people internally too.

Moving this stuff from one machine to the next was incredibly easy. All I did was to create an empty VM on the target machine (with the same name as the one I wanted to move), and then copied the VM data files over the top of it. Easy!

I know, I know... the promise of VMs taking over the world is because of exactly this. However, I never really knew how incredibly cool VMs can be. I'll have to try dynamic starting/stopping next, and see how that goes ;-)

The other day I was sitting on the tube on my way to werk (as you do) when I noticed a mobile phone on the seat opposite me. I checked with a bloke nearby, but sure enough, it was just sat there, lost to it's owner. So I pocketed it.

On leaving the tube station at my destination, I started calling the 'last numbers dialled' to see if I could find someone who knew the owner. Sure enough, a very nice lady told me she'd contact him and call me back. She told me he'd call a bit later on.

Sure enough, a very relieved chap called me up, and we arranged for him to come to my work to pick up his phone. When he arrived, he was so incredibly grateful, I thought I might never get my hand back from him shaking it. Bless him, he also bought me a bottle of red wine.

I have to say, it took about 30 minutes of my time, earned me a bottle of wine, made some chap very happy and makes me feel really good. All this reminds me that a little bit of consideration for one's fellow man makes us all feel much better.