Ok, sometimes there’s a downside to being a nerd.

Yah, I can hear the gasps in the audience now.  But it does happen.

My most recent nerdburn moment came a few minutes ago, when I finally got around to updating to the latest version of Thunderbird, bar none the best email client available, from the people who bring you Firefox, the best web browser on the planet (suck it up ChromeBoys, Firefox still rocks, and will continue to  blow Chrome out of the water until they get their extension framework worked out.  Not to mention using WebKit as the base rendering engine.  Webkit?  I mean, what were they thinking?)

Ummm…  where was I? Read the rest of this entry »

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What do you get when you unleash Open source types on hardware design?  Sometimes, you get beautiful, quirky, devices.  Sometimes you get “design by committee” monstrosities that would have been better off never leaving the drawing board.

The WarMouse, also called the OpenOffice Mouse (which seems to be how they’re branding it), falls into the monstrosity category.

No, this isn’t some joke mock up.  At least, as far as I can tell it isn’t a joke.  If it is, then even Wired got fooled.

Can you imagine trying to work with that thing?  How many times a day do you think you’d hit the wrong button?  And that joystick on the side – exactly how many hours of practice would it take to become proficient with that?

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This might seem a little odd, but I have a habit of reading the code of web pages.  It might seem less odd when you realize I still do a bit of WebDev now and then, and it can be a useful way of figuring out the tricks people use to accomplish different things.

Sometimes, I come across a page with interesting ‘comments.’  For those who might not know, most languages have a function where you can enter snippets of information that won’t be executed – they’re basically cheat sheet notes for the coder, or also used to help other people who might need to work on the code later on.  You’ll find all kinds of gems in code comments.  I’ve seen code with Haikus inserted, bits of poetry, rants against ex wives…  I even know a website where the author maintains his personal Blog within the comments of the website.  It’s un-viewable to anyone who doesn’t read the code of the site.  However, that site is a well known, widely used forum for web developers, so there’s probably a lot of people who read it. Read the rest of this entry »

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It’s funny.  On the surface, most people would think I’m a phone nut.  I’m on it a lot, and I tend to have phones right near the edge of the envelope, technology-wise.

Right now, I have both an iPhone (personal) and a BlackBerry (business – paid for by my company).  I have them set up to manage email and my appointment calendar.  I even have RDP and VNC installed on my iPhone, so I can remote manage several computers from anywhere I can get a cel signal.

I have big data packages for both, and they get used.

And I  hate both of them with a rare passion. Read the rest of this entry »

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Halloween has always been one of my favourite days of the year.  As a kid, I can distinctly remember trick or treating.  The costumes, the gleeful chaos of going door to door with my sister’s, and seeing all the children running up and down the street on a sugar buzz that would extend late into the night (around 9 p.m. or so).  I can remember getting home and sitting down in front of the TV with my sisters, and sorting out the loot, trading back and forth for our individual favourites, while my dad casually plucked out the mini bags of roasted nuts for himself “Because you kids don’t like them anyway.”

As a teenager, it became a time for late night horror film sleepovers.  Later, it was costume parties, and then as a young adult, all night costumed dance-a-thons at the “in” club of the moment. Read the rest of this entry »

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They say a picture is worth a thousand words.  so today’s post is going to be just a bit over that (if you include the actual words).

I present this year’s pumpkins:

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I’m a bit under the gun here.  I was actually working, and kinda lost track of time.  Now I’m staring down 40 minutes to make my personally imposed “deadline.”  Let’s see if I can come up with a couple of hundred words.

I think I’ll stick with the tech theme of the past couple of days, as it’s what’s on my mind.

In a couple of unrelated events, Open Source Software has apparently made some giant leaps forward in U.S. Government circles, with two significant announcements within days of each other. Read the rest of this entry »

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Following up on yesterday’s post…

For those of you contemplating upgrading to Win7, or making any major OS upgrade (be it Mac, Linux, Unix, Solaris, whatev…), here’s some advice i posted on a forum, I thought I’d repost it here, on the off chance somebody reads it. Read the rest of this entry »

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I wouldn’t exactly call it writer’s block.  Obviously, I can still crank out a few lines.

But I just don’t really have much to talk about tonight.

I suppose I’ll talk about Windows 7.

I haven’t actually installed it on a system yet.  But, oddly, I’m really looking forward to it.  I played around with the beta version in the spring.  I installed it as a virtual machine on my laptop using VMWare, and I have to say, what I saw, impressed me.  It had a really nice, clean interface, was really easy to manage and set up.  And VMWare allowed me to compare load against XP Pro (I had a very comparable XP VM already set up), and it was pretty much on par, in terms of processor and memory load.

What I didn’t get a chance to do was really work with the Aero interface. But since Win7 was released the other day, a couple of co-workers have installed it, and I have one thing to say about Win 7 Aero:

Slick! Read the rest of this entry »

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No, really.

I woke up with a head cold to beat all.  Tried to get some work done from home this morning but then just crawled back into bed.  I probably shouldn’t have tried to get some work done because I suspect I fat fingered some imaging in a vain attempt to be productive, and probably just ended up costing time for some other people in the long run.

Eh, the world will keep on turning.

That’s about all I have the brainpower to comment on today.

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