If you are using a Mac and haven’t heard of Quicksilver then you are missing out in life, especially if you are a person who spends most of their time on the keyboard. Even when I’m not on a Mac, I still miss Quicksilver and the functionality it offers. I’m writing about it because just today I wondered “can it do this?” and funnily enough it could. It does help that I have enough plugins to sink a ship installed in it, however unlike other projects it doesn’t slow down when it gets all of these plugins installed on it, or not to any point that I can notice anyway!

For those of you who have heard of Spotlight, Mac OS X’s search utility, might have heard that it can launch applications as well as finding and indexing the contents of the hard drive. Quicksilver takes that one step further and provides not just the objects but allows you to bind useful actions to those objects, but you aren’t restricted to just one action. For example I launch Quicksilver and type “next song” (its found what I’m looking for by ‘next’) and next to this a whole heap of options appear, with the first preference (configurable of course) being ‘Run’ to execute this object. Its actually a Quicksilver plugin for controlling iTunes that I’ve installed.

Quicksilver for me ends up being the main program from which I launch applications. I’m a developer so that means that I end up typing on the keyboard more often than I end up clicking. Not only this but because Quicksilver uses a search metaphor, it is often quicker to find applications or files via typing than it is to move to the mouse and start pointing around. Remembering back to my GUI theory with KLM where pointing and clicking is far slower than plain typing (the benefit of Quicksilver is that I never move my hands from the keyboard). Again for a new user or one who types slowly, Quicksilver isn’t going to be as useful a tool, however for most users who can type at a reasonable pace, and especially for those who can touch type, Quicksilver is brilliant.

For more information about Quicksilver, check out Blacktree at http://www.blacktree.com

The Sofitel was perhaps one of my least favourite locations offering slightly less comfortable facilities than the Chaophya Park Hotel that I stayed in immediately after it for half the price. Being the hotel it is, it offers everything at a price, and this is what is missing in the rating of the hotel. Being a four (or was it five) star hotel, it offers all of the things that those sorts of people seem to want (over expensive facilities, people to wait on you far too much, rather token services) but it doesn’t offer some of the more reasonable style features like decent affordable internet. To be honest the internet wasn’t that flash and costed far too much money. Comparably less than what I’ve paid in Australia, but compared to the price in Thailand its a bit much. The place is also getting on a bit age wise, and it shows in places. The hotel needs a full refurbishment in some places to make it look neater and more modern. Perhaps I have my own idea of standards but the Hotel Sofitel Centara Grand in Bangkok just doesn’t offer me enough to go back there. It is nice enough to stay in but for that price, there are better places.

About a month ago I went on a trip overseas, I progressed from Toowoomba to Taiwan for a few days and then to Thailand. Each have their own features.

Toowoomba
Toowoomba, Australia’s largest inland regional city has about about 150,000 people (the size of the new Toowoomba Regional Council, Toowoomba City has ~100,000). Remember this number, its two orders of magnitude less than the next two cities. Toowoomba’s main street is almost empty most of the time, and there is only one shopping centre that has a regular population of people who are there to socialise (the other shopping centre’s have people but for the most part they walk in and walk out). Toowoomba is small by the standards of where I’m going but conversely it is also big enough to have most features that you would need. The city has a reasonable living cost for Australia, is small enough that getting around the place is easy and it has a University, lots of good quality schools, a great theatre (which draws international acts as well as major national acts; additionally it provides a valuable resource for the local community) and movie theatre/cinema. All in all its a nice place to live but the place isn’t going anywhere, especially in a tech perspective: the jobs just aren’t there.

Taiwan (Taipei)
After a short trip through Brisbane (~1 million people) to Brisbane International Airport I’m on my way to Taipei via Bangkok. Taiwan, the “Republic of China”, is an interesting albeit ‘neon’ affair. There are lots of people, and they are everywhere. Taipei has about 10 million people, a few orders of magnitude larger than larger than Toowoomba, and the traffic shows it. I saw one round-a-bout with what must have been at least 10 (if not more) lights located in and around it. The traffic is a maze of things being constructed and changed all around, the place scares me in some respects (there is something about driving into traffic that really scares me). I spent some time wandering around the main station of Taipei (technically lost, my guide was Joomla!’s shortest development working group member Aini) which is larger than it seems with multiple shopping centres attached. The place is big and busy with a big tower like all good large cities with a restaurant at the top (and more than likely an expensive one at that).

Thailand (Bangkok)
So after a short trip to Taipei (surprisingly its got as much duty free shopping as Brisbane domestic airport) I flew to Thailand and Bangkok. Bangkok’s new Suvarnabhumi airport (a few years old now, its still shiny) is massive, and as you drive away I felt like I was in the US in a small way: massive amounts of highways going up and down and generally all over the place, up to 12 lanes or more in places. Bangkok is about the same population as Taipei and has massive traffic jams as well. I think my favourite was being on the wrong side of the hotel I was staying at for half an hour. If I could have been able to walk it I would have done it in about 10 minutes. Bangkok is a place where you can really get bang for your buck with a lot of things priced very cheaply if you get away from the large shopping centres. The side of the road markets or the larger night markets offer a great price if you have a bit of time to bargain (or even if you don’t but you can usually get it cheaper if you do!). I don’t mind Thailand as a place but my memory is driving back on one of the elevated highways and seeing the red sky due all of the smog. Another is going to the Honda R&D in Thailand…next to rice fields. So there are some interesting juxtapositions in this country that make it interesting to look at and see.

The Nasa Vegas Hotel in Bangkok is a budget hotel that I stayed in a few years back. To be honest I found the rooms to be quite good. It certainly shows its age, but the hotel is a pleasant place to stay. Whilst it wasn’t built when I was there (late 2005) and its still not done yet (late 2007) the new train that will go all the way out to the airport will have a station near this hotel which will make it even easier to utilise. At the time the one down side was the lack of internet facilities though this might have changed.