Where did I go?

My thanks to all who noticed my “return” – I was quiet for a while for a good reason. We (my wife and I plus two other couples) took a motorhome holiday to the head of the Great Australian Bight to see some whales and their calves. This was followed by a leisurely trip along the west coast of South Australia, fishing and drinking good wine (eat your heart out James; and Steve – the fishing was good, albeit different to your preferred angling). The trip was not only computer-disconnected, but for the most part was out of mobile phone range too, which made it even more relaxing. Pics are on Flickr if you’re interested – not much of a telephoto lens on the digital, so the whales are a l-o-o-o-n-g way off!

Not long after was a week in New Zealand for work, so by that time Bloglines was choking up with a couple thousand posts, all  of them interesting (I’m still over 600), and I’ve tried to comment on a few – which is how people have noticed I’m still alive.

As for those asking about my “innovation” job – I’ve been relieved of some of the baggage of my former position, but I still have some responsibilities on the ERP implementation we’re doing – but I get a couple of days a week at the new stuff. That’s what the trip to NZ was about – making contact with some smart folk there, and looking at a few ideas they’ve put together. A couple of colleagues with similar interests have joined me in an informal “innovation” network inside the organisation, and I’m trying to get a blog/wiki started up internally (I’m in the install/configure stage – takes me back to the time I set up a Linux box!). So far I’ve decided to stay with free stuff – looked at Silk, but it doesn’t seem to have support, and am currently installing Drupal – may check out the community edition of Socialtext as well. Any suggestions welcomed!

The other point to this post is as a follow-up to the previous one about microformats – I’m using hAtom this time, courtesy of  the creator I found at Ajax Pages. I’ve alos found someone else very taken with microformats (as well as Cote) – Stephanie at Climb to the Stars – note: her blog is bilingual (French/English) so pick your post carefully!

So – let’s see how this goes …