The new laptop has arrived!

My new Dell Latitude D830 was just delivered to my desk. I already
have it booting up and will probably spend the next few hours
configuring it and getting use to all the differences from my Dell
Inspiron 4150.

First impressions:

  • It seems a little thicker than the D820
  • Wide screen is nice, and definitely “brighter” than what I have been using
  • Dell is still loading some amount of gunk that will need to be removed

More to follow, once I have more than 2 minutes with it.

Google Reader

Every now and again you find (or get a recommendation for) a software
package that you discard becuase it does what some other software you
already have installed does. In this case, I was using TrillianPro
with the GoodNews RSS feed reading plugin… and I had passed on a
couple of recommendations to use Google Reader instead for all my RSS
feed reading needs.

Well, I decided last night to take Google Reader for a test drive.
It took me only a couple minutes to get signed up, and copy in the 15
or so feeds that I had been reading with some amount of regularity
recently. And in just 8 hours I have already found it to be *way*
better at managing and allowing me to read my feeds than
Trillian/GoodNews ever could have.

Key Features for me:
* common interface to read all my feeds (and one repository for
them) on all the various systems that I may use in a single day.
* quick – allows me to login and check on new news articles in
only a matter of secs on any PC in the office or at home.
* their reading pane is awesome…. allowing you to read the
article right there, and as you scroll it marks them as read (no more
opening a bunch of tabs/windows for every story you want to read).
* star an article for easy retrieval/review later…. double
points awarded becuase you can see these stars on any machine you
access google reader from.

Get yourself an account out at http://reader.google.com/

Wiki: Day Two

One bump in the road, and it doesn’t appear there is an easy fix.
The Help:* files aren’t loaded by default with the default wiki.
Online I found three variations of solutions:
* Do an “export” of the pages (but need a formatted file of all the
page names)
* Edit/Copy the source of the important pages, and paste into
matching pages of my wiki
* Link to another wiki’s instance of the pages

This seems like a glaring omission of the wiki setup, and while I
understand that including a default set of help files has two major
issues:
1) what language(s) to include
2) it goes against the core ideas of wiki (that of evolution of
page data/content)

It does, however, cause some issues when have users that want to know
more about the basics of wiki editing and would just like some
overview documents to help them be more efficient. I also understand
there is a certain level of structure that may be of a
“wiki-specific” nature… however, it would be nice to have some
basic English Help files… or a repository where-by it is easy to
get s “starting point” for these files.

If you are using a wiki and have found a better way to gather
together these Help pages… I would appreciate hearing about it.

Synergy in Use

In the article on Synergy, I discussed how you could use it to control multiple computers using one keyboard and mouse. Here is a couple pictures of my setup, that uses Synergy and a KVM to access a total of 8 machines using one keyboard and mouse.
DeskFront

DeskBack

Wiki: Day One

Today the journey begins. Aaron and I have embarked on the journey
to test out MediaWiki for collaboration on a couple of GUI
projects… and see how it goes.

Wikis have been frowned upon in the past (here at work). However,
this is a tool that both of us have toyed with or used in a minor
capacity elsewhere before. Today, we want to jump into the deep end
and really try to use a Wiki to save us time/effort.

Background Details:
Aaron is a remote worker, and I am in the office…

So we are going to use this to save on long distance calls or long IM
sessions or even lengthy email proposals. All of those technologies
work pretty well if you only go back and forth occasionally(or a few
times. GUI work (which we are doing) tends to require a tighter
iterative loop and can have substantially different
opinions/directions…. So the idea is to use the Wiki to keep the
project architecture/design more fluid over time.

I will try to expand on the trials and tribulations, as well as, the
victories and success of this work style.

New Laptop Ordered

Yippee!!!

Today I placed an order for equipment that includes a new laptop for
me!! I am pretty excited but at the same time slightly disappointed.

I am glad to finally see an end for my existing Dell Inspiron 4150.
Just sad that I could not come up with a compelling enough
reason/justification for me to move to an Intel-based Apple MacBook.

With still 50% of my responsibilities in the IT functions, and a need
to have quick access to Windows tools and routinely troubleshooting
Windows issues with users…. I just could not justify the switching
costs.

Virtual machine software (Parallels, or other) is great for many
things…. But the speed is still an issue, and BaseCamp is a great
product but means waiting for a reboot each time I need to switch.

So I have decided to resign myself to the Latitude D830…. And will
continue to use a leftover G4 laptop for Mac OSX (Safari/etc)
testing.

Software licensing/costs was the other big issue…. Everything I use
today is available on both PC/Mac… But I already have purchased
copies on the PC (and of course the licenses are for only the PC
version of the software)…. So that added to the switching costs.