Monthly Archive for November, 2006

Vista…Continued

Published
by
Brian
on November 26, 2006
in Tech
. 2 Comments

Just to be fair, I’m going to keep putting out updates on Vista. After writing the former post (here), I decided that it would be a good idea for me to look for positive points in Vista from an end-user point of view, rather than a developer view. To that end, I’m trying to get all of the things that keep me in XP over to Vista. My goal would be to work only in Vista for a while, adjust to any changes and make notes on what actually has changed visibly. So, to that end:

There is a good listing of all 17 versions of Vista (including the EU and Korea versions and accounting for 32 and 64 bit versions) at Paul Thurott’s site here. It even has a good matrix for what features will come with what version. As for my move:

  • I successfully copied over my iTunes libraries, including playlists and configuration. I hate having to restart my library since I keep a lot of time-specific playlists such as Recently Added (last 30 days). I was able to copy everything over easily. Point of Note: Vista now keeps everything under a folder called Users and only has a single place to put Application Data. To copy everything over, I had to move “my music\itunes files” to “users\my music” on the new system. I also had to move “documents and settings\brian\application data\apple computer\itunes” to “\Users\Brian\AppData\Roaming\Apple Computer\iTunes”. Itunes works well, however I still experience the stutter over airtunes problem that I had earlier at random intervals. Also, it seems to have some problems burning cds. Hopefully a reboot fixed that. I’ll try again later.
  • I successfully copied over my uTorrent settings using the same method described above for the user settings.
  • I successfully copied over my Firefox settings using the same method described above.
  • RSSBandit still doesn’t work under Vista. For now, I have no RSS reader. They put out a beta recently and are replacing the controls that are keeping it from working in Vista. No release date for the update.
  • AVG Free (free virus scanner) is temperemental. It failed to install once. It installed right later. After installing it runs and updates but it constantly gives me strange errors and claims it is out of date, even though it updated.
  • Office 2007 runs well as expected.
  • My Creative Audigy is running on beta drivers. No release date for new drivers.
  • My printer is working on sheer luck. It is an HP. There are no drivers but it seems to install with the old drivers.
  • Nero burning rom still doesn’t work.  Maybe it will later.
  • CDBurnerXP doesn’t work.  Although, that’s expected since it has XP built into the name.
  • I hate the sidebar.  I turned it off.  I’m not one for widgets like konfabulator and sidebar.  Maybe you’ll like it.

So that’s where I’m at.  I’m going to try and live in Vista again.  Last time, I had to go back to XP due to the issues with iTunes and RSSBandit.  Looks like I’m halfway there.  We’ll see.

Windows Vista Woes

Published
by
Brian
on November 25, 2006
in Tech
. 0 Comments

I’ve been running Windows Vista at the house for a few months via various Beta and Release Candidate versions. I’m got to tell you that my current opinion isn’t high. For full disclosure, I’ll tell you that I’m a huge fan of Mac OS X. I sold my powerbook because I couldn’t run Visual Studio on it but I’ve never forgotten the feeling of that operating system. Don’t get me wrong, I love Windows XP. It took a while but it’s the most stable and well-supported OS Microsoft has ever put out. It just doesn’t have that BMW feeling that Mac OS X has. It feels more like a Toyota. Solid but utilitarian. Maybe even…boring. Meanwhile, OS X puts out a new version every year.  Every version packs features that are not only obvious (64-bit) or useful (spotlight desktop search) but just plain revolutionary (time machine).  So, I’ve been waiting for Vista for a long time. I have been eager to see the OS X killer from Microsoft. They may not innovate but they can copy and improve pretty well and I had high hopes. Unfortunately, I’ve pretty much given up.

At the end of the day, Vista is designed for developers. I’ll repeat that in a different way. There is nothing in this OS release for home users except annoyance. I know all the dirty details about Avalon and Indigo. I know the graphical interface was rewritten. I know the ReadyBoost system lets you use a USB key to speed up system performance. I know the entire driver model was rewritten for security. I just don’t know how to convey any of that to my friends and family.  I know people that don’t own USB keys,do you think they’re going to get ReadyBoost? I know a lot of people that play on the internet and take digital pictures…do you think they’re going to understand the significance of Indigo?  To an end-user, there is nothing significantly different on the surface of Vista. At least nothing that is good.
How about the pretty graphics? They’ll like those…except they still won’t be able to find anything since the start menu was designed for engineers and then had a translucent UI slapped on top. There are a million things on the start menu and they all blur together since every one of them says “Windows” in front of it…like I forgot and thought I was running Linux? Why don’t you rename them then? I decided to rename them like Jeff Atwood did but wait, the new security model just made me click FOUR dialogs to okay a single rename function. There’s around FIFTEEN to change. That’s SIXTY clicks…ouch. Well, maybe I’ll just turn the computer off…good thing there isn’t an off button that either hibernates the computer or sprouts a menu with about ten confusing options…oh wait..I guess there is.  I don’t even have a witty saying for the fact that the OS is still missing tons of drivers so half of the hardware doesn’t work. Don’t even try to load the 64-bit version or I”m pretty sure your computer just melts and your printer mails itself to the trash can.

Sigh…I know lots of counterpoints. I know that the new infrastructure is supposed to be a boon to software developers, who will in turn write killer apps for Vista. I will ignore the fact for now that we’re struggling to keep up out here.  The .Net 3.0 framework just came out and most people I know weren’t even aware it was released.  I asked a not stupid or uninformed friend to name the 3 pillars of 3.0 (avalon or wpf, indigo or wcf and infocard).  He stared at me like I was from lying to him and then started looking very concerned about being out of date and out of touch.  I just wanted to discuss infocard with someone.  Anyway, add to that the fact that no business I know is planning on upgrading to Vista anytime soon.  It’s expensive and no one has any idea what it’ll do to their apps.  XP is stable and well-supported.  I’m just saying, let’s assume that we’ll all be somewhere in the neighborhood of not completely stupid about 3.0 in the next year.  In that case, I hope Microsoft has a killer app coming for Vista because I am not sure it’s coming from the community any time soon.  I’m not talking about a website that lets you login via infocard…I’m talking iLife.  That’s what makes people want to upgrade.
Anyway, I know that Vista will fill out with drivers in the next six months to a year (it happened when XP launched as well). I know that people will buy computers and get the new OS for free and won’t care that the cost of the new OS is outrageous and the licensing is arcane. I know that they won’t understand until too late the much greater restrictions in Vista that Digital Rights Management (DRM) and Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) are putting on them and their usage of music, video, HD content and media in general.  I know all of these things. I even know a few good things like the new DVD maker are hidden in there.

At the end of the day, I’m just so disappointed. It took five years for this confused mess of an operating system to come out. It dropped about 5000 features along the way. I thought by now the OS would have a better vision of what “Vista” was and how it was going to win fans in the new world. I guess that OS X Leapard banner that read “Vista 2.0″ was right. Unfortunately, I just stand here disappointed and think about the time in the future when I’ll buy a MacBook that I can dual-boot with Windows XP.
Here are some reference links:

What Color is Analytical?

Published
by
Brian
on November 25, 2006
in Personal and Tech
. 1 Comment

I was called analytical earlier today. Arguably, you can also rephrase that as “anal-retentive”. I’m not offended or shocked by the remark. I’ve been meaning to write a post on organization. Since a lot of information flows through my inbox or is stored on my hard drive, I tend to try to organize things. Since I’ve been doing more intensive project management, the problem of organization has only been exacerbated. The mention of analytical thought today made me think of my organization system and I thought I’d share it. This mostly refers to work, although I use a few of these items and techniques at home as well. Where to start? How about…

Figure out your learning style. I learn lots of things lots of ways. However, I’ve learned in life that I’m extremely visual. I like to meet people at least once in business dealings to put a name with a face. If I see a few bullet points, I’m a lot more likely to read than if I see the same information in a solid block of text. In general, I learn things far faster if there is a visual element.

If I am designing things at work, I live and die by the whiteboard.

Whiteboard

If I write up a process or component, it WILL have a Visio diagram in it somewhere.

Visio

I use a ton of color because I see more in 1 second with a colorful diagram than you could tell me in 60 seconds if the picture is set up right (more on color in a minute). I tell you all of this to explain both how I absorb information and how some of my systems evolved. Also, I love to make lists. Analytical…I know. So onto…
Staying on Track
I organize email differently at work than at home. At work, I use a system of colors and priorities that works with my calendar. If you’ve used Microsoft Outlook 2003, it has flags of about seven different colors in it. I set up different colors for company work (red), client work (blue) and personal business (green). I also used the same colors on the calendar, even though the calendar didn’t sync up with the flags. The flags also had no date attached to them. There was also a section called “Tasks” that was pretty much useless. Each section lived in a seperate world and didn’t talk. An imperfect system but one I managed.

Fast forward to Outlook 2007. I’m not sure that anyone is as stoked as me about such a simple thing. The colors are now the same between the calendar and the flags and the flags are synced with the tasks. All of this is integrated into a To-Do bar on the side of the screen. Flags can be easily set up and they automatically become tasks. You can also set timeframes. So, at the end of the day, I can set up color coded calendar appointments (with date and time information), a few tasks that are due today, tomorrow or this week, flag an email as client work and set it to be reviewed “today” and all of them pop up in a single, easy to manage place. The end result looks like this:

ToDo
Look excessive? It may be for some people but it keeps me sane. I usually only use three colors. Client work is first, company work second. Personal business can usually be put off till I get home (buy tickets, get birthday present). I can easily look at my todo bar and pick out client work and see exactly how much I need to get done today. I can easily look at my calendar in day, week or month mode and see what the situation is with work, life, etc.
You’ll also notice I said life. I book most of my life in Outlook, including personal appointments. I had a problem in the past of overbooking myself and it is something that I decided to work on. I now schedule my personal life in the same calendar as work so that I have a single version of what’s up with my week. I mark anything not work related as private and make sure that I check my calendar before I commit to something. It may sound dorky but I have a much better chance now of not bailing on you because I forgot something than I did a year ago.

On to home. I use gmail. That means everything I have ever received is archived. If you send me a forward (send this to 10 of your friends…) or it’s spam, it gets deleted automatically, NOT archived. I track everything with a number of labels including accounts if it has a user name and password in it, pictures if the email has pictures in it, birthday if it has someones birthday in it and address if it has an address in it. It helps to be able to click address later and find that friends address that i know I asked for last year but I’ve long since forgotten. Worst case scenario, I can usually just search the email and find stuff. I use basic search parameters such as from:brian address. Nothing fancy.

Speaking of search, I use Microsoft Windows Desktop Search to search my computer and email.

WDS

Outlook 2007 uses this. Outlook 2003 search was terrible. Google search on the web is where it’s at, but for my files, Windows Desktop Search seems to organize things much better. It has clearer categories (email, calendar, documents) and a preview pane for looking at the item in questions. I have it index all of my email and all of my folders that contain documents and data. No source code, program files or any other junk folders. It works like a charm.
I also have a rule to keep everything in my inbox until I have time to sit down and devote an hour or so to cleanup. Then, I usually answer and archive everything and get to zero items in the inbox. I do this with work too. Even if I have 10 things on my todo list, I’d like it to all be organized and out of my inbox. The inbox acts only as a general purpose clearinghouse for things I haven’t gotten to yet.

I’ll leave you with a few tips for how I manage data on my computers.

  • If possible, I keep my operating system on C:\ and my data on a separate physical disk (D:\ for DATA, complicated, right?)
  • I never use My Documents. I can’t remap it to another location on the drive and I don’t keep data on C:\.
  • I create a bunch of folders on D:\ (videos, pics, docs) What they hold is pretty much self explanatory
  • One folder is music. I remap my itunes music library to here and let it control and name everything. This is my one stop shop for all my music.
  • I organize pictures by date and subject, year - month - day so they appear in order. For instance 20050421 Birthday, 20061031 Halloween
  • I keep a directory called download. Like an inbox, this is where everything goes. All default downloads (firefox, bit torrent) are put here and I throw any documents or things I run across in here. Whenever I clean up, it either gets put in a folder to keep (pics, docs, videos, etc.) or it is deleted from here.
  • I keep a directory called public. This is shared and anytime I need to get data from one computer to another, I always know that it has a shared directory called public where everything will be.

That’s it. Most of this has evolved over the last 2-4 years of my life and I’m sure I have more strange idiosyncracies that I can come up. However, this is the majority of the system for how I manage a life that is completely saturated with appointments to keep, email to respond to, music to listen to, pictures to share and just a lot of data floating around. I don’t know much about it but from what I’ve seen, some of my practices are close to the GTD system (Getting Things Done) which is a big life and data management system that is picking up steam with individuals that have a lot of life to manage.

Overall, just make sure that you solve whatever problems you have. No system is any good if it’s too difficult to manage for you or it doesn’t solve your problems. I know where my music is, when to meet my friends and what emails I need to respond to. That’s what matters.

Happy Thanksgiving

Published
by
Brian
on November 23, 2006
in Personal
. 0 Comments

For your thanksgiving entertainment.
Happy Thanksgiving

Vulcan Run, In Detail

Published
by
Brian
on November 7, 2006
in Personal
. 0 Comments

So, the Vulcan run…where to start? How about at the end? My partner and I have been running 9:30 or 9:45 miles when we run 5 at a time, 4 a week. A few times we ran 6 and managed around 10:00 miles. Before the race (10K = 6.2 miles) we took two days off to rest and ran 5 miles the days before that. There are two times in the race, gun time and chip time. Gun time is the time from when the gun goes off until you cross the line. Chip time is the time from when you cross the starting line until when you cross the finish line. Chip time is kept up with by a computer chip on your shoe. If you want to be a contender, you have to be near the front of the race and fight all the other very serious runner-types since only the gun time counts as official. Motivated as we were to win, we stayed in the sun around the block (it was around 32 that morning) until they called out 7 minutes until the gun. At that point, there were about 1000 people between us and the starting line. After the gun we shuffled down the chute like cattle for a while, crossed the starting line and then finally started running. My chip time was about 3 minutes after my gun time. The results?

On race day we ran 9:49 miles (chip time). That’s fantastic. We averaged about 11 minutes each mile on the uphill and about 9 minutes a mile on the downhill. We met our goal on a course we had not run before and were very pleased with the results. Now, the bad news. We placed about 100 out of 120 people in our group (males 25 - 29) and about 1150 out of about 1581 people. That means we beat at least 400+ other people including women, children, dogs, people that were asleep, people that were not racing at all, etc. Of course, many of those people are in training for marathons and ran 5:00 - 6:00 miles. We on the other hand are in training for goofing off and staying out late on the weekends (see previous post, Hotel Cafe Tour) and thus were quite happy with our position in life.

Notable moments:

  • Married couple in front of us, both wearing headphones and keeping pace, screaming at each other. It would have been funny if it hadn’t been so annoying…oh who am I kidding…it was hilarious. Miles of uphill climb that sounds about like this…(after passing the 1 mile mark and being told their time)
    • Him: “HEH, I THINK WE DID AN 11:00 MILE”
    • Her: “I THOUGHT WE WERE GOING FASTER THAN THAT”
    • Him “YEAH, I THOUGHT WE WERE GOING FASTER THAN THAT”
    • Her: “WE’RE ON PACE FOR AROUND 11:00″
    • Him:”YEAH, I DEFINITELY THOUGHT WE WERE GOING FASTER THAN THAT”
    • Her: “SHE SAID WE’RE PACING AROUND 11:00″
  • The exact moment that you level out after mile 3.5 or so…awesome feeling, it’s all downhill from here
  • Making everyone laugh. We were straight up comic relief between miles 3 and 5 for everyone around us. At one point, the count from Sesame street even made an appearance while we were counting parks (ONE…highland park…AH AH AH AH AH…)
  • Old man that cursed at us as we passed him around mile 5 - “SANDBAGGERS!” (said with the same feeling that you would display upon finding someone has stolen your parking spot and is now laughing at you…and pointing…) Apparently this means that we started out slow and is a very bad curse in runner jargon.
  • Of course, the finish line. Lots of cameras, lots of people. You straight up feel like a rockstar for about 10 seconds.
  • After running 6 miles and sprinting the last .2 with all your strength and will, you develop a certain physical and mental inertia. It’s almost easier to keep going than to stop. Coming to a full stop immediately after walking over the finish line feels a lot like being punched in the gut, throat and calves…in that order.

So, my overall impressions were very good. The race was not as difficult as I expected. The uphill parts were steady and unrelenting but not brutal. There was a ton of community participation. I loved having people on every corner cheering you on and showing you where to go. I knew it was going to be something to do as a goal, but I actually had a really good time running the race. I’ll definitely do it again soon if I get a chance.

Hotel Cafe Tour

Published
by
Brian
on November 7, 2006
in Personal
. 1 Comment

I went to a show on Friday night at Workplay that I thought I’d mention. The Hotel Cafe tour was in town. It’s a tour of about 25 musicians, of which about 6 play each night. The ones that play rotate. It’s basically a singer/songwriter tour consisting of a lot of the guys and gals that I listen to regularly. The Birmingham show included Josh Radin, Rachel Yamagata and a guy name Joe Purdy. Joe Purdy got a song on Lost a season back and has been slowly making his name. It was his inclusion that actually got me to the show, via a friend’s recommendation.

Anyway, the show was a great format. Each artist played a few songs, then it would switch to a new artist. At any given point, a few of the other artists from backstage would wander on stage and pick up an instrument, sing, etc. Also, turns out just about every one of them can plan every instrument, including piano, guitar, bass, slide guitar, shaky thing (ah, tambourine…) as well as sing. Very chaotic but a lot of fun and very relaxed. Highly recommended if they come your way.

Josh Radin was great, same as when he came for City Stages. He really looks a lot more at home in a smaller club than on a huge outdoor stage. Rachel Yamagata is alway the great blues rock mistress. Her set started with an acapella number that was sort of disturbing and had me transfixed from the first note. Joe Purdy, what to say? All of his stuff on the internet is acoustic. It’s good stuff. Very soft. So of course, at the show he didn’t play the Lost song or in fact even a single acoustic song. In fact, he ROCKED OUT. It was loud, raucus stuff and it was great. Suprising but a good show. The only person I didn’t really enjoy was Jim Bianca. His music is good and his showmanship is way up there. Unfortunately, there’s just not many times that I need overproduced seduction music. However, his first song “Painkiller” was a real showstopper played on the piano alone. Maybe I just don’t get it yet.  The LA Weekly compares him to Elvis Costello and Tom Waits, both people that I consider to not suck a lot.  Oh well.

The last guy was named Sanders Bohlke.  I bought his cd too. I can’t really get into it. Unfortunately, it seems like he might be a live show kinda guy. His voice was almost gospel and he played most of his stuff alone on the piano, guitar or steel guitar. It was really powerful stuff, especially his closing song, called “Bring Your Weary Soul To The Altar”. Played alone and on the steel guitar with that voice behind it, it was STRONG. So anyway, I’m going to give his cd a few more spins and see what I think. Honestly, I haven’t given it a fair chance due to the cd I picked up from my big find of the night…

Brian Wright. This guy plays lead guitar and sings backup in Joe Purdy’s band. It turns out that Joe Purdy also plays guitar and sings backup for Brian.  They stuck together and any time the artist changed, the two of them would just switch places. Very awesome. In addition to his own stuff, he played a wicked lead guitar to Joe’s music.  I keep looking for artists to compare Brian Wright to and the closest I can come is small pieces of Crosby, Stills and Nash (harmony) meets Allman Bros (southern feel) meets Johnny Cash (very simple yet good hooks). Anyway, Brian’s site is down currently but his myspace page is here and his cd can be bought here. You can listen to all the songs on cdbaby (I recommend “Mary” and any of the first 3 tracks, plus “Falls County” for a good primer). On his myspace page check out “downtown…” and “falls county”. About the song Falls County, he told a story about his dad before he started the song that went something like “My dad got desperate around christmas one year and made a mistake. He tried to rob a bank. It would have been a great christmas if he had gotten away with it…unfortunately he didn’t so instead it was all f*cked up.” He went into Falls County and it’s a heck of a downer.  It actually had a lot of upbeat and heart in it live.  The recording is almost as good.  Anyway, that story better be true because if I feel that bad for you and feel that song that much and it’s not…no fair…

Anyway, great show. Support Hotel Cafe and check out Brian Wright and the Waco Tragedies.  Later.

Vulcan: Immediately After

Published
by
Brian
on November 4, 2006
in Personal
. 0 Comments

I just finished the Vulcan. It was a lot of fun and I feel fantastic. I highly recommend it to anyone to try at least once. I’ll post more later when I have time. For now, I leave you with this dramatic photo of running paraphernalia. Later.

Tools of the Trade

Del.icio.us

Published
by
Brian
on November 2, 2006
in Personal and Tech
. 0 Comments

If you haven’t tried del.icio.us, I recommend it. It’s a social bookmarking site. What that means is that instead of bookmarking things in your browser on your local computer, you tag the link and submit it to a site. I have an account and it keeps track of all the links I post to it. It also allows rss feeds of those links and sharing of them with other people. My account is here. You can also get an RSS feed of anyone’s page. Mine is here. You can also tag content with words that tell you what it is about. For instance, I subscribe to a few of my friends feeds with words like “bouldering” and I can see any new links they post having to do with the local bouldering scene. You can even just subscribe to lists of popular links and see what the internet is buzzing about right this second.

Now, how does it work? Honestly, it’s way too much trouble to submit stuff and tag it. That’s why I haven’t been keeping up with it. However, I got a new extension for Firefox the other day that makes it super easy to use. By the way, if you’re not using Firefox, why not? It’s an internet browser that is just as easy to use as Internet Explorer. It also has tabs and lets you install extensions that make the browser better. I have an extension that brings me the daily weather, one that removes annoying ads from web pages automatically, one that check my gmail accounts and lets me know when I have new mail and the newest, one for del.icio.us. The new extension lets me right click any page that I’m on and “Post this Page” to del.icio.us. It will automatically find other people that have posted that page and use the same words that they are using to tag theirs to tag mine. It takes all the work out of it and now I have a list of links that I can search, share and won’t lose when I upgrade or switch computers.

The long and short of it, Firefox already makes my life better and with the new integration of delicious that I found, it looks like delicious will soon be on my list of must-use online sites.

Vulcan 10K

Published
by
Brian
on November 2, 2006
in Personal
. 0 Comments

I’m not sure how many people are aware of this but I have been training for a 10K called the Vulcan Run. That’s about 6.2 miles. It’s not a marathon but it seemed like a good goal when I started running a few months ago. My training partner and I have gradually worked up to 6 miles over the last 2 months. We run at 6:00 AM 4 times a week and our training has gradually increased. It’s been something along the lines of:

  • 2 weeks - 1 mile
  • 2 weeks - 2 miles
  • 1 week - 3 miles
  • 1 week - 4 miles
  • 2 weeks - 5 miles
  • 1 week - staggered 6 mile runs with shorter runs, breaks, etc.

We took the last 2 days off and we are running the 10K on Saturday. I’m excited. I got a cool bag of stuff…in fact, I may not even run the race now that I already got the schwag :) No, really, I got a packet containing roughtly:

  • 1 t-shirt (XL since they didn’t have large, I’m going to try and trade it out.)
  • 1 snickers marathon energy bar
  • 1 number (bib? not sure on my terminology) and 4 clothes pins - I’m #886!
  • assorted ads for other runs, running club membership forms, etc.
  • 1 scoring chip - these things are awesome! it comes with a zip tie to attach to your shoe and they can track your time, pace, etc.
  • 2 pages of stern instructions about how to use the chip, attach the chip, care for the chip, inform my relatives what dungeon I’ll be in if I lose the chip, etc.
  • Tons of assorted “Welcome to the Birmingham area / zoo / etc.” paper
  • Offer for scientific experimentation on twins? Maybe they pay well…?
  • Ad for camera / photo place of race photos. Maybe they’ll take a picture of me crawling across the line weeping…that’s one for the books.
  • Compass Bank coozie. Because when I think running and Compass Bank…I think cold beverages.
  • “Running Journal” with headline of “Benefits of Eating Fish Outweigh Risk” and pictures of very unhealthy people running very far.

That’s it. My first running packet. I can’t wait. If you’re not familiar with Birmingham I can explain the course to you. Imagine going straight up into the sky for about 2 miles then, come down slowly for 3 miles, then go back uphill slowly to where you started. Along the way, your main objectives are dodging hobos and not being hit by very busy people running red lights at 80. Extra points if you can produce proof that you mugged someone. On the plus side, Birmingham is safer than at least 5 other cities in the US according to this recently published study. Good times.

Anyway, the results will be posted here after the race. Look near the bottom.

Halloween Pics

Published
by
Brian
on November 2, 2006
in Personal
. 1 Comment

Halloween was a blast and the pics are up at the photo gallery.