Entries categorized 'Blog' ↓

Further to my previous post about the problems of occasionally having limited connectivity:

One site that seems to deal with this brilliantly is BBC News, which serves up degraded JPEG images when I'm connected via GPRS. How do they know? Or is this functionality implemented by Vodafone's proxy?

Either way, it's very clever and much appreciated.

When my business laptop connects to the internet, the following events occur:

• Windows checks for updates and automatically begins downloading any important ones.
• Firefox checks for updates for itself and any installed extensions.
• FoxMarks synchronises my bookmarks.
• Google Talk connects, and checks for any new emails.
• AVG checks for anti-virus updates.
• Windows Defender checks for spyware updates.
• Adobe Updater checks for updates to installed Adobe products.
• Daemon Tools checks for updates for itself.

There are probably more, but you get the idea. Generally, this is a wonderful thing, but not when I happen to be sitting in my car in Cornwall, connecting to the internet via a GPRS connection, and simply trying to check my bank balance. The traffic from all of the above automated events makes this simple task take ages. I wish there were some kind of system-wide setting so that I could prohibit such events occurring if connection speed was below a certain level. Any ideas?

Oh dear. It looks like my trusty 80Gb Freecom FHD-2 Pro hard drive has bitten the dust, a day after I finally finished installing a VPC of Windows Server 2008 and SQL Server 2008 upon it (coincidence? I suspect not!). Now when I plug in the USB cable, the drive howls like a scalded kitty. Not good.

Apart from VPCs, I generally use my portable HD for convenience of transferring files between work, laptop and desktop, and for holding a selection of the most useful software installations and MSDN ISOs. There's little on there that isn't also on one of my PCs, save a few eBooks perhaps, so I haven't actually lost too much data, thankfully.

I suppose I should think about buying a replacement. As you might expect, storage space has increased somewhat in the three years since I bought the FHD-2 Pro, it seems that 250Gb is the sweet spot for portable drives. Question is, do I go for the surprising cheap and cute Western Digital MyBook Passport, or pay slightly more for the Freecom ToughDrive..?

I'm reading some of the fascinating case studies on the High Scalability site, and I stumble across this curious bullet point in the page on Amazon's architecture:

"Don't pay for performance. Give good perks and high pay, but keep it flat. Recognize exceptional work in other ways. Merit pay sounds good but is almost impossible to do fairly in large organizations. Use non-monetary awards, like an old shoe. It's a way of saying thank you, somebody cared."

Emphasis mine. What on earth does this mean? Is it some phrase or saying I'm not familiar with? Surely Amazon don't literally hand out old shoes to their best techies...?

Updated - OK, I just Googled and found some citations confirming that, yes indeed, Jeff Bezos did hand out stinky tennis shoes to Amazon's high-achievers:

How bizarre...

Windows Mobile 6.1's incessant "wireless network detected" notifications.

This is the summer of 2008. Half the homes in my village, and every business in Leeds has at least one wireless network, they're no longer the novelty that they once were. Tell that to my Pocket PC, which insists of notifying me every time it spots one, no matter how many times I select "Dismiss" or "Don't Show Me This Again". The resulting effect is akin to walking through town with a toddler who feels the need to cry out every time he/she sees a bus!  Try as I might, I can't find any option to turn off these notifications entirely.

The really annoying thing is that these notifications have a tendency to mask the other, more useful, things that Windows Mobile can notify you about. My Pocket PC and I have just had a touch-screen dialogue that went something like this:

PC: "Hey, look!  A wireless network!"

Me: "I don't care."

PC: "Over there! It's another wireless network!"

Me: "I don't care."

PC: "w00t! It's another wireless network! Oh boy!"

Me: "Shut up about wireless networks already!"

PC: "Oh, by the way, your accountant phoned earlier. And you're missing a meeting. And you forgot to submit your VAT return."

Me: "Gah! Why didn't you tell me this sooner!?"

PC: "Hey, look! A wireless network!  And this one is secured!"

[ sound of phone hitting desk... ]

Today's random bit of weirdness - I just received a letter from an insurance company which quotes my "Age at next birthday" as being "32.5 years".

I look forward to receiving all my Happy Half-Birthday cards... :-)

The installer for Window Live Writer.

I was intending to write a post moaning about something entirely different, but I've spent so long trying to install WLW that it has slipped my mind. Whatever it was can't have been nearly as annoying as the ludicrous piece of software that seems designed to hinder a timely install of WLW in any way it can.

Why is this so hard? WLW is a simple, tiny, Windows application. Why can't we just download an appropriately usable installer that just installs the app and gets out of our face, instead of offering a whole suite of other applications, searching the hard drive for something-or-other, and ultimately failing to do what was originally asked of it?

Gah!

The increase in TV volume during commercial breaks.

Is this just a UK thing or does it happen all over the globe? Ramping up the volume during the ad breaks doesn't make me sit up and take notice of your stupid product, it just sends me diving for the mute button.

Grrr..

You've gotta marvel at a world in which I can keep in touch with what's happening back at Chez Nelson by checking out an RSS feed of my wife's Facebook status:

In response to a blog post that I'd shared in Google Reader, Jez emailed me to ask:

Do you use RTM? It's always been one of those web apps that seem really useful, but I've never made the leap to actually using it in anger. I suppose you need to adopt it in tandem with the five-point GTD philosophy to get real benefit?

My response:

Yes, I do use RTM, and I love it. I've been looking for a decent way of managing my to-do lists effectively for years, and RTM really scratches that itch! I now have the web app permanently open in a Firefox tab, and use "MilkSync" to synchronize with my Pocket PC every half hour.

I'm not sure that you need to adopt a particular task-management philosophy in order to get benefit - RTM is flexible enough to allow you to work the way you want to. I started off pretty basic, with just three lists, one each for personal, business, and current client tasks. But recently (having read that article and re-read the relevant bits of GTD), I have begun using tags and locations and using these to get the benefit of some smart lists. So, I'm currently on the train to work, and I can look at my "@Train" list and see at a glance the stuff tagged with "na" (for "next actions") and a location of @Train - i.e the stuff that I can and should be doing from here!

The RTM website is clean, slick, and easy to use (especially if you make the effort to memorise the keyboard shortcuts), which means there is little friction involved in maintaining your tasks during the day, which of course is vital to making any system work.
One of the other sites that I'm logged into all day long is Gmail, and there's a really good Firefox extension (3.0-compatible) which integrates RTM into Gmail brilliantly - RTM can even automatically create a task when you star a mail.

What else?  Did I mention the API, Blackberry support, Offline access (via Google Gears), iGoogle widget, Google Calendar integration, Atom feeds, Twitter integration, Google Maps integration.....?  The list goes on - if you can think of a neat feature that you'd like to have in a web app circa 2008, chances are that RTM has it.

Give it a go, but don't blame me if you become dependent upon it!

For the record, I have no connections with Remember The Milk other than being a very happy user of their product. And thanks to Colin for originally bringing RTM to my attention.