Still Relaxing March 30, 2006
Vacation is a good thing, and I’m still relaxing in the UK. No substantive posts to come until next week, I’ve decided, but here’s what’s coming up when I get back to the States next week:
- the ITIL series will continue. Problem Management is next, and then one of the biggies - Change Management;
- I’ve just read Six Disciplines for Excellence by Gary Harst (Amazon) and I’ve got a review of that that I need to type up;
- I’ve also had the chance to catch-up on the last few Manager Tools podcasts (yeah, I know, that’s not really vacation listening, is it?!), and I’ve got some notes that I may well pull together into a MindMap and publish, like I did recently.
- and a couple of other ideas that I’ve got bubbling around that may well turn into something sensible here.
Good chance you’ll get to see some family photos in the next day or two as well - sorry about that 
One of the reasons I’m here in the UK is that Saturday is a party for my stepfather’s 60th birthday, and his and my mother’s 25th Wedding Anniversary. Warning: Gary + Alcohol + Digital Camera + Internet Connection Ahead!
Gentle reader, I thank you for your time and attention, and I’ll see you next week!
Brief Hiatus March 27, 2006
links for 2006-03-23 March 22, 2006
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Combined view of the three services listed in the description. I’m liking this a lot right now as a quick overview of what’s going on on the web.
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Interesting read. Follow the link on the first page to the duct-tape gallery.
The “Family” Category
I got an email asking me why I was posting the sort of stuff I was, under “Family”, as well as some of the other categories - i.e. shouldn’t “Family” actually be about my family?
Well, that’s one way, sure, and I can see why folks would think that. I’m using it a little differently though - stuff I tag “family” is stuff that I think my family might like to read. That’s all, plain and simple. So, it’s unlikely any of my Blackberry or ITIL stuff will end up under that tag, but random observations about life, or my travels, etc., probably will do.
Packing List
Showing that yes, I really do reach for MindManager as my primary thinking and layout tool, below is an image of the map I threw together today as a packing list. I’m not taking everything on it, but I wanted something that would act as a basis for future trips as well.
I used MindManager because I wanted to do two things - be able to quickly filter down to a list of things that, if I am taking them, need to be charged the night before, and also determine whether I want to pack them in my carry-on, for use either in-flight or as soon as I land, or in my checked luggage (I try not to check, but sometimes, it just can’t be helped. And if stuff is going in the hold anyway, then I want to be carrying as little as possible!).
One of the benefits of using a MindMap to do this, rather than a simple linear paper list, is that it’s self-selecting for some items - if I’m not taking the iPod, for instance, then I don’t need any of the other items that are mapped out from that item; on the other hand, if I’m taking the iPod, then yes, I probably need to take the sync cable, and the power-brick that goes with it, but do I need the international power adapter?
I did another version of the MindMap that includes model and serial numbers for all the equipment that I might possibly take, as well. I’ve never needed a list like that, and I hope that I never do, but it’s nice to have it “just in case”.
If you want the map file itself, you can download it here.
I’m off to England tomorrow, where I gather the weather for the next two weeks is going to be about forty degrees colder than where I am right now…
links for 2006-03-22 March 21, 2006
links for 2006-03-21 March 20, 2006
Daily Link Postings, Revisited
Mike Sansone, over at Converstations has written a piece “Finding Value w/ Daily Links”, and was kind enough to include myself as one of the folks whose daily link postings he found value in. Well, first – “thanks!”. But I thought I’d expand on the “why” behind the daily link postings (or the not-so-daily link postings as they tend to be).
Mike’s opening observation is:
When I first began blogging, I thought daily links were a lazy way to publish a post. It almost stopped me from subscribing to some feeds. When I show these posts to others, their initial reaction is similar.
I know exactly what you mean. If I’m subscribing to a feed, and all it turns out to be is a series of link postings, it’s unlikely to stay in my feed list for long. There are plenty of places I’ll get information like that already – digg, Newsvine, Slashdot, etc.
Mike closes his piece with this:
By sharing what you’re reading - sharing your knowledge - your customers become smarter, and you’re all on the same page.
That’s a fair part of why I do the link posts, when I do them – there are some folks reading my site that I specifically want to see what I’m working through, web wise. But there’s more to it than that.
Back in January, I wrote “On Daily Link Postings” and addressed the reasons I was doing the daily link posting thing then. This was in response to Bren, of Slacker Manager, stopping the publishing of his daily links. I’ve thought about it a little more since then, and thought I’d expand on the nature of the daily link post, as it relates to me.
- To show the blog is “alive” – if I get caught up in my “day” job, I may not get around to writing a “real” post on the blog for a few days. I don’t want to re-blog, and post snippets of news or whatever that are going to be seen in a multitude of other places, so a post with a few links that I came across that day “keeps the blog ticking over”.
- That said, it may be that the reason I’m busy is I’m researching something or other – and that typically leads to a number of pages and links on the same or similar topics. That may be useful to others, but will also serve as a reference point for me.
- As a part of my daily GTD process, I look at the blog during my morning review, making sure it’s up and seeing if there’s any comments that I should respond to. Daily link posts only publish if I marked items through to del.icio.us the day before, so it’s the top of the page if there is one – sometimes, I may mark a number of items during the day, and not actually get to look at them as closely as I might want to. The link post the next day reminds me of that fact – and indeed, I use a del.icio.us tag of “@ToCheck” specifically for things like this.
- As I noted in my January post, having the daily links come in to my RSS aggregator, and then be indexed by my desktop tool, provides me quick access AND a backup of these links, should del.icio.us be down.
I want to be a creator of content, rather than a republisher, and it’s my aim to keep the daily link posts in the minority on this site; at one point, when I was setting them up, I was tempted to have them post to a category that I then didn’t have displayed on the front-page of the website. But that ties us back to Mike’s final observation, that sharing your reading (much as I do with my 2006 Reading page is a good thing, and lets folks know “where you’re at “.
(edited: fixed a couple of the links)
links for 2006-03-18 March 17, 2006
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In the “just because” files!
Sunset - Testing Flickr Blog Posting
“Just playing” - there’s a “Blog this” option in Flickr that I haven’t used. I want to see how it works out.
Edit: I quite like how this has turned out. Chances are I’d normally edit out the title link and “originally uploaded…” part for my own photos, but this works out reasonably well. I like it when things “just work”.
Ah, Irony…
- I use Yahoo’s web-hosting service, and they provide Wordpress as part of that.
- I use Yahoo’s Publishing Network to put ads at the bottom of the RSS feed - I actually do that as a roundabout way of seeing the volume of “reads” of the feed, versus of the site itself. Trust me, the “income” from it is inconsequential.
- Yahoo automatically updated my copy of Wordpress to version 2.0.1.
- And in the process, removed the code that puts their ads at the bottom of the RSS feed…
Oh well.
Actually, I probably wouldn’t have noticed until the end of the month when I looked at the stats, except I noticed yesterday that I couldn’t upload images with the built-in Wordpress editor. Looking into that, I noticed that the automatic upgrade had gone through, and that led me to look at various other things.
So now I need to figure out what part of Wordpress changed in 2.0.1 that affects the image upload. Any suggestions from readers gratefully accepted!
links for 2006-03-16 March 15, 2006
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Sound advice.
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Good explanation of what Bittorrent is and how it works.
Continental’s Website
Roughly this time next week, I’ll be making final preparations to head out to England for two weeks (I leave next Thursday). I’m flying on Continental, and it’s been a couple of years since I flew with them, so I decided that I wanted to check a few things out beforehand. I remember their website as being… well, a little “less than friendly” the last time I used it. I was pleasantly surprised this time around. It’s still a little “busy” at first glance, but if you “step back” for a second and take it all in, it makes a certain sense. I wanted to know:
- What sort, and how large, the seats were. I’m in BusinessFirst, which I’m lucky enough to have had enough points/miles in hand to afford, but hey, everyone wants to know if they’re going to be comfortable or not, right?
- Whether the seat had laptop power or not;
- What the inflight entertainment is going to be;
- What the current carry-on baggage allowance/limits were;
- Whether there was an airline lounge (OK, I know there is), and whether or not my ticket class got me entry to it.
So, away we go:
- Head on over to www.continental.com;
- Hover the mouse over “Travel Center”, and then over “In Flight”. Click on “BusinessFirst” as my starting point, and right there, with one click, I’ve confirmed that I can use the Presidents Clubs.
- Click on “Presidents Club”, and then on “Locations”, and I get a list of everywhere they are. I don’t know which terminal I’ll be flying in to at Houston, but I now know where I’ll be spending my two and a half hour layover.
- Two “backspaces”, and I’m back at the BusinesFirst page. This time, I’ll click on the Boeing 777 link, and it opens up with a section headed “Boeing 777 BusinesFirst Cabin”, and a picture of the seat I’ll be in. The seat’s six and a half feet. That’s good. I’ve been flying British Airways to the UK, and their seats top out at six feet. I’m six foot three, so I’m sure you can do the math! Right here on this page, it’s also confirmed that the seats have Empower laptop sockets. This is good. Four clicks, and I’ve already answered three of my five objectives.
- There’s a link here to “entertainment options”, so off we go. I hit that, and then “Feature Films” on the next page, and I’m looking at the option to download a PDF of the movie guide. (Looks like my options are “Derailed”, “Jarhead”, “Walk the Line” and “Aeon Flux”. I suspect I’ll be OK!).
- Right. Baggage allowances. Hover over Travel Center, hover over Policies, click “Baggage Information”. Click “Carry-On Baggage”, and there we go. Weight limit right now is 40lb. I don’t want to be schlepping that much weight around the aircraft and terminal, but it’s good to know.
SIDEBAR:
“Laptop computers must be removed from their cases and placed on the baggage belt at the security checkpoint”. Isn’t it about time this insane requirement was rescinded? It isn’t done in the UK, or a whole host of other countries. If security screeners can’t “distinguish” the laptop from the “other stuff” in the bag, how about hiring ones that CAN? It’s not that hard, guys. And no, it’s not because a laptop could have something hidden in it. Have you considered all the “stuff” that isn’t pulled out of the bag? The power supply, external drives, iPod’s, radios, GPS devices, radios, cellphone equipment – the list goes on and on.
Anyway, back on topic. Eight clicks of the mouse, one PDF download, and about five minutes of my time, and I’ve answered all the questions I had about this flight, in more detail than I expected. If the overall service of the flight is as well put together as the website, I’m going to be a pretty happy traveller indeed in a week.
links for 2006-03-15 March 14, 2006
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Even if you’re not using them as a torrent source, TPB is always fun to go to to read their replies to various legal approaches.
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Commentary on printing your own boarding passes, and some of the risks that gives rise to.
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“It’s a cruel time to be a digital couch potato. Just as homebrew PVRs slide into everybody’s reach, their future usefulness is shrouded in uncertainty.”
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I don’t think any of these would survive their first Monday Morning…
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“In a three to none decision the court said that Citrin violated the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act by installing a secure delete program.”
iPod - Add-on Software March 10, 2006
Having had the iPod for a little while now, I’ve accumulated a few “extra” pieces of software for it, to “enhance the experience”… This post is for the inevitable day that I have to rebuild my PC, and I need to recall what it was that I had installed for the iPod! That said, if you haven’t come across these, and you’re reading this, maybe it’ll be of use to you.
1. iTunes. “Goes without saying?”. Not so much, when you see the next piece of software. I could do without it, but it’s not actually that bad a piece of software.
My iPod is set to sync and connect to my home PC. But I work with a laptop, and that’s what goes with me when I travel. It’s not beyond the bounds of possibility that I might want to add or remove music or (especially) podcasts on the road. Can’t use multiple copies of iTunes - and my laptop is setup to sync to a Shuffle, anyway, but that’s a whole other story - so Anapod takes care of it. Some other benefits:
- copying audio files off the iPod and onto a PC. Notice I said audio files and not music? I understand why the iPod is setup the way it is, to prevent (well, /attempt/ to prevent!) music being copied back and forth between iPods and other PC’s. Fair enough. But guess what? Not everything on there is (a) copyrighted, or (b) even music. I might want to take a podcast, or other “plain audio” recording, off the iPod, on the road. Anapod fixes that.
- streaming music. I use this in the office - the laptop docking station is connected to a good set of headphones, and all the “usual stuff” - IM alerts, email alerts, Skype calls, video playback, whatever - goes out through that. I don’t want to swap between the iPod headphones and the laptop headphones. Using speakers where I work isn’t an option, so - Anapod. Streams music straight off the iPod and into Windows Media Player, WinAmp, whatever.
Anapod does a bunch of other stuff, and the full version only costs $30. I’m sure I’ll play with the photo sync, the SQL database, etc., in due course, but the above two features were “must haves” for me.
I’ve got a video iPod, so naturally I want to watch some of the AVI’s that I’ve accumulated on it, especially when I’m travelling. This is pretty much “fire and forget” - set the bitrate and so forth that you need the first time, and it stays remembered. Have it convert one file, or throw a bunch into the queue and leave it alone to get on with it. Takes roughly 30 minutes for a one-hour AVI on my machine at home, so typically, I have this work on a batch of files overnight. The output directory - which can be separate from the input directory - is remembered as part of the overall settings, and I use a dedicated directory for the outputs, so I just have to run a quick “import” on it with iTunes in the morning, let the sync process run, and the job’s done.
Videora will also do conversions for Tivo, XBox360, and PSP’s, if that’s of any use to anyone reading this.
Used for changing the “Show” tag on files that have been converted with Videora. The iTunes interface doesn’t allow for the changing of this tag - I haven’t explored yet whether or not Anapod can take care of it. In the meantime, this takes care of everything for me. You need .NET Framework 2.0 installed for this.
Got it, but not using it; this is a consistently good DVD-ripper. Very, very slow, it must be said. DVD ripping isn’t something I need to do at the moment, but if it was, this would be the tool that I’d turn to first.
Credit for the pointer to Anapod and Abstract Void goes to Ant, who has clearly spent a lot of time getting his iPod the way he likes it!
The above tools, plus a set of A/V connection cables and a spare sync cable tucked away at the bottom of my laptop bag, makes for a very nice little box. I was late to the party on this - as I always travel with a laptop, I’ve just gone with having the music or the video stored on there. The convenience factor of a device in this form factor is definately not something to be sniffed at, however.
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