Zach Beauvais Online

Well, I and the wife traveled to Limoges in France to Amsterdam over the last two weeks. In France, I had the misfortune of being almost completely without the ability to smell or taste anything thanks to a lingering cold which also incapacitated me on the final Friday of the trip. Our French hosts cooked us a wonderful (looking) local meal complete with regional wines, and every mouthful tasted exactly the same. According to Wendy, this stood me in good stead for Amsterdam, however, since I wasn’t as bothered by all the smoldering plant material hovering in the air.

Amsterdam, as previously mentioned, is a lovely city. It is very accessible and its scale lends itself to walking. It’s easy to find somewhere pleasant to drink coffee or eat from a huge variety of restaurants. It is slightly unhelpful, however, that nearly every place at which you can eat or drink is called a ‘cafe’. This includes bars, coffee houses, sandwitch shops, pubs… literally everything that doesn’t sell cannabis is a cafe. Many ‘cafes’ also sell an astonishing selection of lagers, which I could only imagine drinking on the continent.

The streets meander pleasantly, and it’s not too well-planned; so it’s possible to stumble across a brilliant cafe (of whatever description) nearly anywhere. The streets seem to be used almost like common land, however, by the walkers, cyclists and motorists in town. Cars seem to give way most of the time, and trams could appear just about everywhere, from any direction.

It’s the transition which hits you. From begging your interlocutor to understand you—to even bend a little in your direction—to being understood so effortlessly but still being in an unfamiliar place. This is traveling from France to Amsterdam.

In France, making an effort to speak French is mandatory; yet still everyone looks at you as if you’re asking them to donate a kidney when you ask a question in broken French. I freely admit, the extent of my French used to end not much farther than correcting cold-callers’ pronunciation of my surname. Now, after three days in France, I can say all sorts: but still can’t get a point across or ask for a baguette without goose-gizzard on.

I will, however, never pick up any Dutch by being in Amsterdam. As soon as you say ‘Halo’, in your best-imitation of Dutch pronunciation, the person behind the counter/hovering over your table/behind the glass will immediately ask you how you are doing in English. This is true 100% of the time—unless your accent was bad enough to give them the impression you’re French or Spanish, in which case, they’ll usually answer your question in that supposed language. Of course, I’ve always heard that the Dutch can all speak flawlessly in multiple languages even while being full of cannabis; but I’m still incredibly impressed.

Touching on that last point, I can’t help but feel it’s a horrible, international misconception about the Dutch. The overwhelming impression I have got while passing coffeeshops here, is that the vast majority of the ‘customers’ are anything but Dutch.

Gizmodo is a techblog with loads of interesting products. They have a complete set of Coffee-tagged products, all of which I want to own.

I have no idea why, but I’ve got this thing for coffee gadgets. Every part of the kit appeals to me.

• I love coffee
• They’re gadgets
• They involve an addictive process (like setting up a blogging engine)
• It’s a type of lifehack
• There’s a considerable risk (you might get burned, or it might explode)

So, if you have any coffee gadgets you’d like to tell me about, please let me know!!!

P.S. this is my first post ever using BlogJet… It’ll probably also be my last, since it’s virtually the same as Windows Live Writer, but costs—and isn’t as pretty.

In an effort to share the good stuff in life, I’d like to add a sort of links page here. This is basically a bit about stuff I find interesting, satisfying, cool or otherwise noteworthy. They are not in any order and could include just about any kind of thing. In keeping with my lack of sorting tools and complete dearth of desire to hack WordPress anymore, I will not filter them in any way…

Union Hand-Roasted coffee is basically the best coffee available in the UK. It is roasted in London and available online. They express a passion for coffee which is admirable and shows completely in the product. They also embrace an admirable ethic in the selection and distrobution of their coffees and also focus in an incredibly interesting way on the education of coffee drinkers–without sounding patronising or arcane. In short, they ‘get’ coffee!

So, go and get some yourself. Online store here.

lifehacker is a blog about making life easier, more efficient and less troublesome. In general, the result is actually to give you something interesting to think about and a different way of approaching your day. Based on the idea of software ‘hackers’ making code better, this gives tips, tricks, advice and reviews to make everything better. lifehacker can be found here.

Stormhoek Wines from South Africa have a unique social marketing strategy and a very tasty product indeed. Their Pinotage is the only one I’ve been able to try due to local Tescos only stocking one, but it was delicious. their site’s definitely worth a look, and they have some very interesting content there too.

Well, most personal sites have a bio written in the third person: “So and so was born to be famous…” I suppose this either means that that person happens to be is either famous/rich enough to have someone write for them, or they are just pretending to be rich/famous enough to have someone write for them. I am not rich/famous, and no one will write my bio page, and I don’t want to appear pretentious — it just comes out that way…

I was born in Colorado in 1984. I grew up not far west of Pueblo in a strange community called Pueblo West. It’s a sort of, ‘We’re not actually Pueblo’ community. ‘We can’t pronounce it like real Puebloans can.’ Unfortunately for my parents, I wasn’t meant to live in the desert, so raising me must have been difficult. I spent most of my time pretending to be somewhere green and pleasant, which is why I now reside in England. (That and the English wife, I suppose.) A lot of the fuel for this green, rainy world came from a powerful love of reading which my parents both instilled in me through the simple means of both loving books. By the time I was ten, I was always waiting for my folks to finish their latest books, so I could get on with whichever series it happened to be. (They seemed to think it fair that they — having bought the books — got to read them first). Colorado, for my English reader, is a state roughly the size of the UK and is half mountains and half wasteland.

Zach Beauvais

Curriculum Vitae

Nationality: United States of America (resident without restriction in the United Kingdom)
Born: 1984
Gender: Male

Career Objectives:

To produce positive impact in the most effective and interesting way possible
To take opportunities to apply reasoning through efficient communication to solve problems; and to have the responsibility to make that difference
To help others reach their full potentials while maintaining a good environment in order that the entire network may see positive results

Relevant Employment:

Talis Information Ltd:

April 2008 - Present
Researcher

Talis—Shared Innovation—is exploring and applying semantic web technologies to business, education, and potentially public-sector markets. By researching high-level concepts, and synthesising ideas though blogs and print, as well as at conferences, I am working with Talis to advance its innovations. My position is with the Talis Platform, a Semantic Web enabling medium, and I work through Talis blogs and also edit the magazine Nodalities.

For more information on Talis, or for more information on my perspectives from here, feel free to email me on: zach.beauvais(at)talis.com.

Grandstand Media Ltd

Jan 2007 – Dec 2007
New Media Executive

Grandstand Media, organisers of Horse of the Year Show and the British Open Show Jumping Championships employed me to project-manage their electronic marketing and online presence. I was responsible for furthering Grandstand’s brand on the web—now their primary marketing tool—, for exploring the potential for Social Media involvement and for developing content with the marketing department. My remit included the production of the British Open official programme, press office work, and some graphic and digital design.