I’m not sure what the marketing advantage of having visitors blinded is, but there must be one…

Anyway, on Friday I was treated – along with the rest of the staff at Frog - to a sneak peek of Frog 3.0, the next-generation software we’ll be showing off at BETT.  While I am, for obvious reasons, as biased as a very biased thing, I have to say I’m honestly impressed.  It’s shiny.

Having been in charge of an implementation of the open-source VLE Moodle in a past life, I thought I knew what a learning platform was.  Turns out I was wrong – the new Frog does things I never even thought possible.

I can’t say too much about it until it’s officially unveiled, but if you’re heading to BETT be sure to find the big blue stand with Bob the Frog on it and have a play – I guarantee you’ll be impressed.  I was, and I’m notoriously fussy.

Okay, it was company MD Gareth (no relation) Davies in a daft hat handing out the results of the Secret Santa we’ve been running.

I’m pleased to say that I came away from it with an absolutely awesome toy crossbow – which is powerful enough to send a dart flying half-way across the office.  I don’t know who was buying for me, but they know me scarily well.  The only problem was keeping Lee away from it for the safety of people around him.

Sadly, I was too distracted by the crossbow to see the recipient of my gift’s reaction, so I’ll just have to hope that they were suitably pleased.

Case in point – on Tuesday, I travelled to London to attend a training course on Adobe Connect – which, from Halifax, is a fair old train ride. The sales director at Frog, Paul Scott, was gracious enough to meet me in the Big Smoke and take me out for a drink and a meal while he had a meeting with a sales trainer he’s hoping to hire. Nice – especially as I didn’t have to put my hand in my pocket the entire evening – but it meant that I didn’t get to the hotel until around 2300, which is a long day when you start at 0630.

The next day involved interminable underground journeys and the course itself – free sandwiches, naturally – plus the train back. Which didn’t get in until 2100, meaning I didn’t get home until 2130 – at which point I had to write my articles for the next day. I’m not complaining, you understand – well, no: I am complaining, but I’d rather be busy than the alternative. I just hope that this 0830-1700 job doesn’t have too many 0630-2300 days included.

In other news, I’ve bagged myself a sweet new ‘phone, which has pretty much replaced my palmtop and MP3 player. More about that when I get a chance to do a proper update – probably this weekend.

Everyone seems really nice, and there’s certainly plenty to keep me busy. Between a full audit of software and hardware, the installation and configuration of an internal WSUS server, and sundry other tasks it looks like I’ll be kept out of trouble for the foreseeable future.

It’s a shame that the commute is as long – and expensive – as it is, though. That said, I’ve got Plucker to keep me company on the train. Speaking of which, I’ve managed to shoehorn RSS feeds onto it, too – when I get a chance I’ll write a longer post detailing how.

Now, if you’ll excuse me – my bit-tech articles are complete, and my bed is calling.

It’s a bit scary, but I’m looking forward to it all.

Now I’ve got to prepare my notice for my current job – I have a strange feeling that they’re not going to be particularly happy.