Pete's Eats

Red Roaster Coffee Shop, originally uploaded by Pete Barr-Watson.

I love Red Roaster, a little coffee shop in Kemptown in Brighton. I popped in on Saturday and they have this new art display – printed on old hessian coffee sacks. In looking up at the artwork I missed hooking up with Bryan Reiger who according to his Twitter feed was actually there at the same time… (/waves at Bryan)

Starbucks have just opened across the road from Red Roaster though, sadly. I hope folks support the small company here.

Red Roaster make great coffee from their own beans, roasted in-house.

Mix 08 in Las Vegas earlier on this year was one of the single best events I’ve had the opportunity to attend. The quality of the sessions, keynotes and peripheral events was very high and yet there’s always a slight disappointment that this kind of event happens in a place where most UK/European designers and developers can’t get to easily. So, I’m hoping that the UK ReMix08 event that’s just been properly announced with the launch of the website can bring some of that magic here…

The agenda isn’t fully completed yet, but I know that there will be some folks in the designer community who’ll be extremely happy about some of the people that are lined up. I promise to update this post (or make new ones as appropriate) once I’m told I can reveal who they are.

It’s going to be at the Brighton Centre on September 18th & 19th and tickets will be £349 (inc VAT). If you get in early though, you could snag one for £239 (inc VAT) saving yourself £110 in the process.

Disclosure: I work for Microsoft on the Silverlight bizdev team in Redmond (which in a company of some 80,000 people means I’m probably as far removed from this event as most of you are, but still…)

, originally uploaded by Pete Barr-Watson.

An old one for ‘locals’ I know, but still a goodie…

Right out of the box there seems to be a but of an issue with syncing on Vista for some users with the new HTC Diamond so I thought I’d drop a note on how to fix it here.

Symptom: You plug the device in, it installs a driver but is unrecognized within the Windows Mobile Device Center completely.

Fix:

1. Unplug the device from the computer
2. Hit ‘Start’ and go to the settings
3. Select the ‘Connections’ tab
4. Tap ‘USB to PC and uncheck ‘Enable advanced network functionality’
5. Tap ‘OK’
6. Re-connect the phone via USB

Vista should now recognize the device properly and fire up WMDC to allow you to set your preferences etc.

Hope this helps.

Pink and read, originally uploaded by Miss Aniela.

One of the more infamous members of the Brighton Flickr group, Ms Aniela, has been invited to come and speak at the Microsoft Pro Photo Summit in Redmond (July 9-10).

It’s not often that my two world’s collide like this. Can’t wait… (gratz on the invite too Nat!)

The irrational fear of people photographing things in public is becoming downright stupid. If you work somewhere that has this kind of policy in place, please highlight how stupid it is to the person responsible and try to help get rid of this crazy Soviet-era attitude that we have about oppressing things like this due to movie-theatre plots rather than actual reality.

Great article on the Guardian site yesterday about this by Bruce Schneier, “Are photographers really a threat?”

Also, if you photograph in public it might be worth downloading, printing and carrying this ‘UK Photographer’s Rights Guide‘ as a little bit of protection from the photonazis.