Good cheer and prosperity for all in the new year. I'm not big on New Year's resolutions, so you can expect a whole lot of the same in the year-to-come.
Among my clean-up tasks for my vacation was a fresh & full backup image of my hard drive to my network drive. I upgraded to the latest version of Acronis True Image (http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/trueimage/), so once the full backup is in place, I can update it incrementally. Unfortunately, the full backup has taken more than a day over my 100 Mbps ethernet connection. Ugh. Definitely need to update that connection to Gigabit speed.
I'm planning on sending out a message tomorrow, but in case I flake here's a pre-Christmas shout-out to everyone. Hope you get half of what you want tomorrow and get the other half on sale later.
Discovered a good chunk of my vacation time at work will not carry over to next year, so after this week I'm ditching work until the new year.
Don't have anything vacation-y to do, so I'm planning to do some jobs around the house, like seal up drafty spots, rearrange the leisure room, move our remaining junk to storage, etc. Also need to organize my data. Need to re-order the network drive, sort and clean out my old local files, burn backups to optical discs, etc., etc. Should be relaxing.
Congress and the President gave themselves a big pat on the back for passing a bill that should deliver in twelve years the kind of energy efficiency that I enjoy today.
Seriously, this bill requires an industry-wide standard of 35 mpg for automobiles and light bulbs that are 70% more efficient -- in twelve years. My wife and I enjoy better fuel efficiency than that now, and we carpool. Even if we don't upgrade to a more efficient vehicle in 12 years, we'll still be above the average. As for the bulbs, I already swapped most of our light bulbs for CFLs, and I'll probably swap them for LED bulbs sometime before 2020.
I appreciate the gesture, but I think our goal for the future should be a little loftier than achieving what is readily possible today.
My wife Tanya had a great idea for a white elephant Christmas present for work. It's a calendar with faces of her co-workers 'shopped into classic works of art. Great idea. Of course, having a great idea and making it real are two different things. That's where I came in.
Using The GIMP (http://www.gimp.org/) on my trusty Tablet PC, I set about defacing (literally) eleven classic works of art, and turning her company's president into Santa Claus. Then we had them printed on a calendar at Kinko's (which they did in the wrong order the first time). Turned out to be a big hit. Here's a sampling.
Read (and commented) on Lifehacker (http://lifehacker.com/software/firefox-3/try-out-firefox-3-risk+free-with-a-portable-version-332900.php) that the beta version of Firefox 3 (http://portableapps.com/apps/internet/firefox_portable/test) was available in a portable version from PortableApps (http://portableapps.com/). Even though I knew my must-have extensions (http://sumocat.blogspot.com/2006/03/make-firefox-pen-friendly.html) were unlikely to be ready for it, I decided to load it on my SD card and give it a try.
Can't give it a thorough test run without my pen-enabling extensions, but to my surprise, it looks like Malorkus won't have to update GeckoTIP (http://geckotip.mozdev.org/) because the floating TIP was floating and working just fine.
Actually, GeckoTIP offers more than just floating TIP support, so that part would be worth updating, but right now, it seems Firebox 3 is coded properly so that text fields are recognized by the TIP. At least on XP. Maybe someone running Vista can confirm this.
Speculation on a possible tablet from Apple is constantly circulating. However, I had not seen a truly compelling reason for them to make one... until Dell announced their foray into the tablet space (http://www.gottabemobile.com/DellOfficiallyLaunchesXTTabletPC.aspx).
Dell's first offering sports a capacitive touchscreen, like Apple's iPhone. Only problem is they don't have the software to back it up. The hardware can register multiple points of contact but they don't have the software ready to take advantage of it. Apple, however, does have the software to use multi-touch and it's not just on the iPhone; it's on the Mac.
The touchpad on the Macbook recognizes multiple points of contact. Two fingers sliding over the pad is recognized as page scrolling. Zooming in and out on Google Maps can be done with pinch gestures (http://jkontherun.blogs.com/jkontherun/2007/04/touch_in_contex.html), same as on the iPhone.
Does this mean Mac OS X is as multi-touch capable as the iPhone? No, but some functionality is there, and it would not be tough to port over (or simply activate?) the rest. Regardless, Macs support multi-touch.
So, with Dell rolling out multi-touch capable hardware without software support, it seems an ideal time for Apple to give them a sucker punch with a tablet of their own with multi-touch software.
It is with great sorrow that I pen this entry which I had hoped would not be written: Marc Orchant has passed away. Oliver Starr has set up a collection for his family. The link (http://owstarr.com/marc-orchant-updates-and-information/) is on his update page. Marc gave a lot to the community, so he deserves a little back from each of us.
In one of his last messages to the world, he said good-bye to a social network, but noted proudly that he still had all his friends. Well, there's no doubting that after this week. The show of support is a testament to his impact on the community. Farewell Marc.
Belated shout-outs to the three-year olds: Life on the Wicked Stage (http://wickedstageact2.typepad.com/life_on_the_wicked_stage_/2007/12/three-years-of.html) and The Student Tablet PC (http://studenttabletpc.com/2007/12/heres_to_three_great_years_happy_birthday_blog.html). Of all the Tablet PC related blogs out there, these two stand out in my mind because they focus less on the tech and more on the application.
Student, obviously, focuses on how students can benefit from Tablet PCs (and is maintained by students who use Tablet PCs). I'm not a student, but they post tips that are broadly useful and I like the perspective of different usage scenarios.
Since Warner shifted his Tablet PC centrality over to GottaBeMobile, Stage has seen fewer TPC related posts, but Mr. Crocker makes a point of sharing how his Tablet PC helps him at Wayside Theatre. Again, I'm not a theater director, but reading about his usage gives me ideas.
Congrats again to Stage & Student for hitting three years. Hope you keep going for three more at least.
James Kendrick (http://jkontherun.blogs.com/jkontherun/2007/12/the-digital-not.html) posted a wonderful write-up today comparing his current digital note-taking system to his old pre- tablet system. Much of it reiterates the well-established advantages of digital notes, but it's stuff that needs to be restated and James did it in a way that is very relatable.
In particular, I appreciate his reminder that the Tablet PC pen can perform the duties of a basket full of pens, markers, and highlighters. I use a variety of these tools at work and, I gotta tell you, swapping colors, cursors and styles with a tap of my tablet pen is so much easier.
An edge he left out was the ability to cleanly erase mistakes. I am so spoiled by this that I must slow down when writing on paper to avoid filling it with scratch-outs. This paragraph alone had five scratch-outs, but you wouldn't have known it.
As my recent hard drive woes (http://sumocat.blogspot.com/2007/11/halloween-hard-drive-failure.html) illustrated, data loss is a very real possibility with digital notes. However, I also showed that good backup practices make it possible to spring back with minimal data loss. In terms of absolute loss, I'm out three pages. Everything else was restored or recreated, and I'm working on a backup routine that's even stronger.
Granted, digital note-taking is not a bulletproof system and I did resort to paper when my tablet was down, but using paper as a backup to my digital system is so preferable to using paper as my primary.
Received our first snowfall of the season. As you can see, it was just a dusting this morning. Photos are on Picasa (http://picasaweb.google.com/sumocat666/2007FirstSnow).
So why did it take me an hour to get to work when it normally takes 10-15 minutes? People here don't know how to drive in snow.
The traffic backup to get on the toll road was atrocious, and Tanya and I both work near it. No way to avoid it even though we don't take it to get to work.
Okay, I knew there would be disagreement over my attempt to send some "best medicine" (http://sumocat.blogspot.com/2007/12/holy-s-dont-quit-facebook.html) Marc Orchant's way and I'm glad someone verbalized it (although I have to admit that I frequently disagree with Rob, despite my respect for his opinions). But then I read Loren Heiny's latest entry on Incremental Blogger (http://journals.tuxreports.com/lch/archives/004546.html) and felt the slap of irony.
Do I have to point out the pattern I perceive? Must I describe the irony despite the inappropriate humor it entails? No, I don't. But at the same time, this is where I present my perspective. Not sharing what I perceive defeats the point of the blog, and I'm not sorry to say my perspective is non-standard.
However, I will exercise restraint on this one and not connect the dots, not because it is in poor taste (and the way I connected the dots, it really is), but rather because it would make light of a tough situation for the sake of making light of it, as opposed to being a personalized expression of support.
Or maybe I'm just pissed that the universe is throwing another inappropriate punchline at me and expecting me to jump on it. Either way, I'm not describing the pattern this time, though I can't do anything about perceiving it.
