Mesh

I’ve been trying out Microsoft’s Live Mesh application.   So far, it’s treated me pretty nice.  It has taken a long time to upload all the files I’ve put in it, but that’s to be expected of any syncing program.  It’s a little more flexible than Syncplicity (my one major gripe about Syncpilicity is that you have to share sync the parent folder if you want to share sync any subfolders – e.g., you have to share sync the entire Desktop and what’s on it, if you want to share any folder on the desktop).  I haven’t reached my 5Gb limit yet, but I hear that once you do, it syncs peer-to-peer, instead of just cutting you off.  What would you need a limit for?  Mesh gives you a “Live Desktop,” enabling you to log in from any computer and get those files you’ve synced up.  The feature I look forward to the most is the mobile client.  Hopefully, it’ll work as the desktop clients do, but we’ll see.  I’m not sure how it’s going to sync 5Gb worth of files onto my Cingular 8125 that has about 40Mb of space.  Can you say, SD card, anyone?

*Note: Syncplicity is offering up a public beta with no limit.  They plan on offering a free (but limited) and paid versions soon.  Mesh is also offing a public beta, if you are in the US.

I’ve also been playing around with Office 2007.  The most surprisingly useful apps are Groove and OneNote.  Groove gives you the tools to collaborate without having to worry about servers or network configurations.  Groove allows you to invite whoever you want via email and you can share calendars, files, whiteboards, and more, with the ability to chat and have discussion threads.  OneNote is a program that Microsoft needs to be giving away.  It is a sweet note taking tool.  I know that sounds lame, but it integrates into Outlook (and, I’m sure, other Office programs – though I haven’t used it with the others).  It takes clips from emails, pictures, audio, and video files and groups into Notebooks.  MS says it’s good for meetings and jotting down ideas.  I think it’s good for syncing with my Windows Mobile Smartphone.  OneNote will install a OneNote Mobile client, which has far more capabilities than the built-in Notes program.  I’m always picking up little pieces of information – either at my desk or away.  Instead of carrying around sticky notes – or even a PocketMod (which I love) – I can just type my note into OneNote Mobile and it’ll sync with my desktop when I hook the phone up to the computer.  Brilliant!!!

For those of you that can’t afford Office 2007 or can’t get your hands on it *ahem* another way, try Evernote as a replacement for OneNote.  Evernote is free, and I’ve heard they’ve made great improvements.

I’ve been listening to Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s The Disappeared.  It’s a futuristic Sci-Fi tale about humans and aliens co-existing, but not fully understand the cultures and having to run from them.  It’s actually pretty good, considering Audible is giving it away for free.  I did just find Brandford Marsalis Quartet’s Contemporary Jazz.  I’ve ripped it into iTunes, but havne’t started it yet.  It is copyrighted 2000, but good music is timeless.  We’ll see if this album is timeless or not.  The shortest song is 6:01.  Not that I’m complaining.  According to Wikipedia, it won a Grammy.

Hopefully, Show 10 of Random Inspirations will be up soon.  C’mon Dave, where are the show notes?  Speaking of Dave, go check out Traveler Blues – a wonderful dive into the world of good music – even if you don’t like good music.

Armstrong out.

EDIT:  Check the comments – one of Syncplicity’s founders hit me up to correct me.  Changes have been made to the blog.  I’m putting Syncplicity through some more paces.  Mesh has semi-let me down lately.  More coming later.

Firefox 3

The new browser is out, and with about 7 million downloads and 3 or so hours left to set a new world record, Fx3 has managed to eat more memory than Fx2 ever did.  With Fx2, I capped out at ~70mb, even with multiple tabs left open overnight.  Fx3, in mere minutes gets up to 100mb and surpassed the 200mb mark.  I did notice that a huge jump happens when watching video.  YouTube may just bring Fx3 to its knees.  I have no idea what the guys over at Mozilla did to make it where video takes up so much more memory, but they did it wrong.

The pros are that it gives back the memory fairly quickly.  After getting away from YouTube and CommandN, and logging into WP, I’m back down to 53mb, which is acceptable to me.

There is a big push for IPTV going on with companies like CommandN, TWiT, Revision3 and others, but Mozilla may be trying to put a stop to it singlehandedly.  Hopefully they’ll get this resolved.  Fx3 still works when using 100k+, but no other programs do.

UPDATE: Just installed Fx3 on my laptop and it’s exactly the same.  Jumped to around 90mb when watching a video off a Yahoo! site and 6 tabs and then back down to mid-60mbs when I went down to only one tab.  The problem here is that Fx3 may not be able to run well on older machines that have less than a 1Gb of RAM unless they fix this.  What happened to using less memory?!?!

iTunes 7.6

Is is just me or has iTunes really really sucked lately?

Literally every time I closed it, I got the “iTunes has stopped working, send error report” message. EVERY TIME!!! I always try to keep up to date with software. So 7.6 was no winner. Other than the annoying closing thing, sometimes, it wouldn’t close at all. I have it set to minimize to tray, and if it was down there, rarely did it want to come back. Hello, Task Manager. Plus, I open up iTunes and some of my songs are missing. Songs I KNOW I should have and songs that are on my iPod. Now I’ve got to get my iPod and restore the songs back in the Library – the place that’s supposed to keep all of my songs for me! It got so bad, that I installed WinAmp! That didn’t last long, but iTunes pissed me off enough to start looking for alternatives.

Why am I writing this? Because I just got notified that there is now iTunes 7.6.1 out. If this doesn’t fix my problems, WinAmp may be coming back.

More Software…

I love software that makes my life easier.  It just makes you feel good.  One thing I don’t like is scrolling through all those layers of the XP Start Menu for my commonly used programs.  Another thing I don’t like is a desktop full of shortcuts (it’s just clutter).  That’s one reason I looooove Launchy.  It’s probably the one of the most useful apps I’ve used.  Launchy allows me to hit Alt-Space and a cool, skinnable window pops up and lets me type in the command I want.  By default it includes all your programs and links in your web browser’s favorites.  You can customize it to do special folders, documents, even your mp3s.  It’s like having a shortcut to anything in one hidden place.  Plus, Launchy was just upgraded to version 2, adding a nice new interface and new features.  Search Google directly from Launchy, do simple calculations, check the weather, index all your files (like pictures, docs and music) and run custom .bat and .lnk files.  Totally customizable.

Unfortunately, I think Vista has it in for Launchy (in an indirect way).  Vista’s  start menu allows you to search through your programs directly from it, rather than going through all the levels of folders in XP.  While the Vista menu doesn’t allow you to customize much, it is a quick launch for all your apps and some links.  And why press Alt-Space when you can hit the Windows key?  Plus I found some software for XP that emulates Vista’s Start menu: ViStart [via Lifehacker].  It adds the cool transparency of Vista without taking up too many resources.  It’s fairly customizable – you have access to all the images used in the menu and the XML file that controls the menu links.

These programs weren’t really meant to compete with each other, but spill into each others functionality.  So far,my assessment is that if you just need a simple program launcher, either one will work great.  Both give you a different look with some transparency options/eye-candy.  If you want a more complete and flexible solution, go with Launchy. 

Sell-Out Pt. Duex

Well, first off, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all of you. As this will be my last post of 2007, I figured I had better throw that in there. Speaking of 2007, seems I’m just going to get this under the wire as its 10:45pm here in CST. Okay – onto part duex.

The second piece of Open Source Software (oss) I uninstalled was Pidgin. I was really really bummed about this one. All of my chat contacts in one place?!?! How can you get better than that? Let me answer that with, “Quite a bit, but not the point.” The thing I loved about Pidgin was that I was able to have gTalk, MSN, and Yahoo! contacts all in one window and carry on multiple conversations in just one other window (by means of tabbed conversations). It really was a thing of beauty. However, it’s downfall was in its email alerts. I use Google Domain Apps for my work email and I need to know when I get one (I’m a pretty important fellow). Unfortunately, Pidgin’s handling of this was lacking. Very lacking. I tried using Google’s Notifier, but found it only works with @gmail.com domains, not @myworkdomain.com email.

This left me only one alternative: use MSN for MSN and Yahoo! contacts (as they now are friends) and use gTalk for my work emails. I hate running two clients, but they work well, and MS’s version 8 of Messenger is semi-sweet. Unfortunately, I’ve taken 2 steps back out of the OSS world.

I’m constantly looking for new software that’s sweet and free (b/c I’m poor) which usually leads me to the Open Source world. I honestly believe that the next killer app is going to come from the OSS world (as it usually does, but usually bought out so quickly that it’s not known in the mainstream as Open Source). With that, I’d like to leave you with a link that offers a well-organized list of free, open source software: http://www.osliving.com/. I’m happy and (semi) proud to say that I have or currently used/use one or more products from each category.

On a much more personal note, about this time 5 years ago, my friends and I were in OKC for New Year’s and Dave was busy busting out the best rendition of “Independent Women” I’ve ever heard and my then-date/now-wife and EJ’s then-girlfriend/now-wife were being crowned Queens of Rap for their version of “Ice Ice Baby.” 5 years ago tomorrow (Jan 1) was my first kiss with Jen. 4 years ago tomorrow, I was marrying her.

Oh, and for proof of Dave’s mad skillz:

L-R: Dave busting out the mad raps, Edge in the background providing the phat beats, and me holding it down on our debut single “Hottie with a Cigarette”

Sell-Out, Pt. 1

Well, I finally decide what I want this blog to be about and it takes me forever to actually write something. Dave was just getting way too far ahead of me with the posts. Well, enough is enough Dave! So here we go:

I’m a big believer in open-source software (I’d like to say I’m a “huge proponent” but since I don’t support any open-source projects, either financially or otherwise, I can’t really say I’m one). I use and spread open-source software (oss, from now on) as much as I can. There are several reasons I love and use oss:

• 34% b/c it offers features I want, need or love
• 22% b/c it’s free
• 18% b/c it’s community driven, meaning I can have some say in what features go into it
• 17% b/c it’s free, it means I’m sticking it to all those big software companies
• 9% b/c I can

Herein lies the problem: I can’t completely rip myself away from the paid software. And lately, I’ve been going back to M$ software. (Jennifer Love Hewitt scream from “I Know What You Did Last Summer” here).

I had lunch today with some friends and one of the friends’ coworkers and the topic of computers came up, naturally (it’s not really an organized group, but our friends are calling us the ‘Nerd Herd’). The coworker mentioned he uses Linux on his main computer at home. It got me thinking about what it would take for me to drop Windows and go full-fledged open-source. Currently, I don’t think it’s possible. My network at home is completely wireless. I know that Linux has gotten better with wireless drivers, but I’m not ready to take the chance that it’s covered mine. Also, I’ve installed, specifically, two programs that would be considered a regression into the oss world.

I recently bought a PocketPC from AT&T to use as a cell phone. Since it syncs (and syncs well) with Windows, I recently dumped Mozilla’s Thunderbird (which is a GREAT email client) for Microsoft Outlook. It keeps my contacts in order, my calender up-to-date, and emails organized. Ever since I bought my first smartphone a few years back, I’ve been searching for a way to keep my computer and cell phone synced. I finally had to resort back to Outlook. I had been using Thunderbird/Gmail for email, GCal for my calendar, and nothing for contacts (Thunderbird occasionally). Unfortunately, none of those synced with my smartphone or PocketPC. I did without for a while, but since I got the new phone, I wanted to get all my stuff in one place.

Apparently I just am rambling on and on, so I’m breaking this into two parts.

A Road Forks and I’ll Take Both

Okay – I think I’ve finally figured out what this thing is going to be; and they are two completely different things.

One, I think I’m going to use this as an outlet for my tech writings.  Very few people that I’m in contact with regularly can/will/are able to hold conversations with me about technology topics (hardware, software, gadgets, etc).  Either they know more about it than I do or I know more about it than they do.  I’ve found that I get all glazed over when someone is talking about something I know very little about, and I’m sure that others get glazed when I start talking to them and they have no idea.  Sine I’m not really in the “industry,” I kind of keep up on things that interest me, rather than a certain field.  But in doing so, I don’t get too deep into any one field.  So this is going to be a place where I can rant all of my tech-speak out into the world (much like my friend Dave does with intellectual stuff like documentaries and jazz).

Two, I’m teaching a class at a private school that our church owns about Christian manhood (I’m not sure how I got into it, I guess no one else had time).  So, I’m also going to use this space to gather my thoughts for that class.  This is a brand new class that the school is doing, so there is no curriculum.  No guidelines.  So it was suggested that I read Wild at Heart and use it as a basis for the class.  I’m not far into it, but I believe that it’s going to help me, not only in the class, but in my life and my marriage.

A fork in the road and I take both paths.

4 days and counting…

Living so close to the University (4.2 miles actually) sometimes affects your objectivity.  It’s easy to get caught up in the grandiose imagery of an illustrious season.  Especially when all you hear are reports from you’re side.

Want more?  I’ve got a new address for Poke U.

http://pokeu.wordpress.com

Little easier to remember, isn’t it?

10 days and counting…

With only 10 more days before Gundy and Co. open their season against the #13 team in the Nation, the Cowboys are getting ready for a big challenge.  Gundy, a couple assistants and some players have sent mixed messages to the media lately about how practices and their 2 scrimmages have gone.  Most comments seem to negative – the kids were sluggish, too many mental errors, the defense was soft, etc.  However, positive things do get sandwiched in between the sound bytes, which makes me think that OSU is play coy.  Practices and scrimmages have been closed to fans and the media.  Tulsa writers are starting to call Mike “paranoid.”  I’m not sure I would call it paranoid, per se, but I don’t necessarily think it’s a bad move.  The offense won’t be surprising too many people this year.  The no huddle attack is in it’s third year at OState and, with a 7-6 team that featured an impressive win over Alabama in the Independence Bowl (a game in which both teams played well), Georgia shouldn’t be too surprised.  Probably the only thing that could get them is how backup QB Zac Robinson is used – either as a slot, RB or QB giving Bobby Reid the option to be slot, RB or WR.  D’Juan Woods graduated, Artrell Woods (no relation) injured, a second receiver could also surprise Georgia, but they will have to surprise OSU fans too, with Adarius Bowman being the only receiver with extensive game time.

I think what Gundy is hiding is the defense.  OSU’s defense over the last few years has been marginal at best.  They’ve shown flashes of what-could-be, but most of the time, they play on their heels and are reacting rather than making stuff happen.  OSU’s D ranked somewhere around 96 last year, while the offense was at least in the 20’s (actually ranked No. 7 as the overall team offense according to ESPN.com.  Supposedly Gundy has been, at least mostly, happy with the defense this fall.  He has come down on them, but said he thought they were ahead of where they were last year at this time.  Without revealing too much and me completely reading between the lines here, I think new D-coordinator Tim Beckman has stepped it up and turned the defense into something that can keep up with OState’s high-powered offense.  I also think Rob Glass, the strength and conditioning coach, has gotten his feet wet and got players to beef up.  Case-in-point: Donovan Woods.  The QB-turned-Safety-turned-Linebacker looks to have easily added 15-20 pounds of pure muscle.  DWoods was always a pretty big guy, especially for a QB, but seeing him in spring practice lining up as on outside LB, he looked like an LB!  I always think the face shield makes players look tougher, but he was downright scary looking.  His arms are HUGE!

By listening to the media with what the Cowboys are saying, you may think we aren’t ready for Georgia, let alone Florida Atlantic (Sept 8), but I think one has to read between the lines a little bit to get more of the truth.  Next up: Offense.

Awww

My little politico is growing up (technically speaking).