bookmark_borderOn yer bike!

At the start of Cycle Glasgow 2011, originally uploaded by Gordon.

http://www.justgiving.com/gordonmclean

Last year I agreed to take part in the Glasgow to Edinburgh cycle (mostly because my mate was nagging me to do it). I didn’t own a bike but it sounded fun.

Then, early this year as you all know, my Mum had a stroke. She’s been through a life changing experience and is battling through the other side. It has changed her life, my Dad’s life (himself a heart attack survivor) and made me realise that you only get one shot at this thing called life.

Your donation will help further the research in these areas, lessen the risk for us all, and better support the survivors, people like my Mum and Dad.

I’m 60% of the way towards my target, you can help! http://www.justgiving.com/gordonmclean

The cycle takes place on the 11th September and, because I’m a big geek, I’ve setup a separate Twitter account which tracks my ‘training’ and will update throughout the cycle in September.

bookmark_borderQuick wins

At work I have a laptop running Windows 7 and every lunchtime, as I lunch away from my desk, I lock the machine.

Except what I should do is pause iTunes, set my IM status to Away, and then lock it but I forget to do all that most days and just bash Windows+L.

However, I’ve found two small, free, applications that will now allow me to do all that with one mouse gesture, specifically it will pause iTunes, set my IM status to Away/Idle, mute the laptop speakers and turn off the screen.

Hot Corners handles the mouse gesture (and allows you set to other actions), and MonitorES handles the media player, IM and screen actions.

Simple and effective.

I do like it when things just work.

And yes, I know the Hot Corners idea is a direct lift from OSX but they wouldn’t buy me a MacBook… 🙁