Random burblings since 1999
So I’ve updated my bookshelf with a couple of new books, and an old one.
  |
  |
  |
I’ve started The World Is Flat which is utterly fascinating, even if it is slightly outside of the more traditional technical communications area. However anyone with any interest in social media (aka Web 2.0) should give it a look. My personal opinion is that our jobs are going to become increasingly influenced by such things so it’s good to get a bit of perspective on how they are already making an impact.
I should’ve waited before replacing my old PC with another one. If I had I wouldn’t have my current dilemma as I’d be typing this post on an iMac, with a nice wireless keyboard, thin of form, full of factor.
But I’m not so here are my requirements and, dear reader, I’d like your thoughts and suggestions please.
My current keyboard is almost ideal. It has two USB ports on the back which I use for thumb drives (and occasionally to plug in a USB mouse when the batteries need charging on my main mouse), I’d be lost without the multimedia buttons (the silver ones in the photo), although I don’t use the ‘internet’ ones at all. It’s small, well constructed and my only complaint is that it’s quite noisy. The keys are a bit “clicky” which isn’t ideal for me as I work late at night quite often.
I’ve previously tried slimmer, laptop style keyboards which I do like using, but alas the only one I found that had a nice feel to it didn’t have multimedia buttons. I’m very keyboard orientated and I really missed being able to skip tracks without my hands leaving the keyboard (yes I know I can Alt+Tab to iTunes and then use keyboard shortcuts but that’s still 4 or 5 keystrokes as opposed to 1).
Suggestions of a suitable keyboard are welcomed, I’d be very interested in hearing about any experiences with a wireless keyboard too, but it must meet my requirements:
Mouse wise I have been using a Logitech wireless mouse for some time now and the only gripe is the flipping docking station which takes several goes (as in 10-15 sometimes) to get the charging nodes lined up. That aside it’s nothing flash but does the job.
I’m not completely set on a wireless keyboard, but I couldn’t go back to a wired mouse. I use one at work and it’s forever ‘dragged’ when the cable gets caught under a piece of paper or whatnot, most annoying.
So, suggestions for a keyboard that meets my needs? And if it’s a combo of keyboard and mouse, which one??
Right on cue, the star of the show wanders into the living room, damp from the drizzle outside, he rubs himself dry on my trouser leg. And now he’s lying on my foot, dozing off… purring like a contented cat should.
Actually I wasn’t going to talk about him but as he’s made an appearance it’s probably worth well letting all his fans know that he’s still as playful, friendly and inquisitive as ever. If he’s awake then he’s always at your feet, checking what you are doing. So helpful. We do have a bit of an issue in that, during the day, he tends to sleep on my office chair so if I’m at home and on the computer he tends to hover around me, occasionally nibbling my feet, reminding me in that way only a cat can to HURRY UP AND GET OFF MY CHAIR!
Again, right on cue (I’m typing this on the laptop whilst the TV is on in the background), the O2 broadband advert has come on. It’s telling because I’m considering switching to them for both our broadband and my mobile phone.
iPhone thoughts aside, I’m fed up with Orange and desperate to get a better handset, one which syncs with my Outlook calendar (or Google Calendar) and so I’ll be heading back to Windows Mobile land again (HTC Touch Diamond anyone?) or if the new iPhone is worth it I might go down that route.
As for broadband, it’s not that I’m unhappy with Virgin Media it’s just that the O2 deal is better. I’ll need to get a full idea of price as I’ll need to factor in getting a BT line reconnected and how much I save if I’ve already switch my mobile to O2… anyone with any thoughts on this, please chip in. Most of the forum posts I’ve found about O2 are all positive, and having had an O2 SIM card (PAYG) the signal is much better in our house than the one I get with Orange.
And lastly, me. I’m now popping 5 pills a morning and I’m back to the doctor in a fortnight. By then my blood pressure should (better!!) be hovering around normal. If not, well I’ve no idea what is next but we’ll cross that bridge etc etc.
Aside from that, not much else to report. Life, as ever, keeps on keeping on.
Conference season is underway, with DocTrain and AODC recently finishing. As such there is a lot of great and interesting blog posts out there, some are catchup style so if, like me, you didn’t attend you can still get some nuggets of information from them. But the type I prefer are the ones which collate the various ideas and pull them together.
So, with that in mind, if you only read one of the posts linked below, make it the first one.
DocTrain Conference thoughts
Tom chats to Noz Urbina from Mekon and starts to pull together some of the varied threads I’ve covered here into a vision of the future which, in my opinion, makes sense. It’s great to see this kind of thing being discussed and it’s the step beyond where I’d gotten with my thinking. Well worth a read.
Some thoughts on writing better error messages
Real-world tales of woe shed some light.
This lack of coordination between error reporting and error origin often leads to incorrect human reasoning about root causes. One simple help to sysadmins (and other users) would be to report errors in context.
Separating content, structure, format and behaviour
One from a session of AODC which helps properly define how and why we should be separating out the various components of information production.
What we’re aiming for:
* Maintainability — you can change one of the above four components without breaking the others.
* Re-usability — you can re-use the same bit of JavaScript, for example, in other documents.
* Separation of skill sets — different people can work on the component they know best and enjoy most.
* Simplified updating of content — content is likely to be the component you update most often.
Designing for the Social Web: The Usage Lifecycle
Pertinent to anyone working with an application that has any form of social web (web 2.0, community interaction, pick a term) features, or for those of us trying to build an online community around their product
The lifecycle is particularly relevant to web-based software because the product is inextricable from the service. The product is the service. If a person has a question about what your software does, for example, you can literally build that answer into the software itself.
Wiki on a Stick
And finally, a downloadable, zero install, personal Wiki. May be useful if you want an example of how Wikis work. Extra handy for maintaining your own To Do lists or as a way to centralise your notes (or both).
That’s all for now.
Yesterday morning I cashed in a Christmas present and took the air in a hellychopper. It was quite noisy, but very smooth, and I have to admit the little boy in me loved every minute (whilst the adult in me fretted about carbon footprints and so on).
We weren’t in the air very long, a quick zip up and down the River Clyde from Inchinnan down to about Helensburgh and back, but we did pass my hometown on the way.
We didn’t go much above about 1500ft, but kicked it up to about 160mph. It was fun hearing, through the headsets, air traffic control at Glasgow Airport warn us that there was an incoming Boeing… summat or other, approaching and our pilot glibly respond with “sure thing, we’ll keep an eye for it”.
Enough about my day though, what did YOU do?
This is one of those silly things that seem to grab my attention from time to time. I’m a bit smitten with this, but not entirely sure why…
Back in 1998, Paul Middlewick was staring at the tube map during his daily journey home from work when he discovered an elephant hidden in the shape of the tube lines, stations and junctions of the London Underground map.
Since then, the elephant has been joined by many other animals from bats to bottlenose whales. What fun!
Found via It’s Nice That.