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ResNet 2008: Final Days

Published on June 26, 2008 in Travel, Web 2.0, Internet, Food, Technology and Beer. 0 Comments

I last left off with resting from my seven mile walk around Fredericton. Following that, we headed back downtown for dinner because we were on our own that night. Sean and I met up with Dustin from Stanford who said he was meeting a bunch of people at Brewbakers. Since we hadn’t eaten there yet and since the bill would be expensed, we joined them. I ordered a wonderful Maple Curry Chicken Penne dish that was very flavorful, yet not too filling. It was a little on the pricey side, but the quality was worth it. I tried Picaroons Irish Red there. It was the best Irish Red Ale I’ve had. Following that, we ended up at the Rogue again (which will end up being a theme for the conference). While there, I tried St. Ambroise Oatmeal Stout, Gritstone Ale, and more of the Picaroons Best Bitter. I also decided to try Poutine. It was different. I wasn’t all that into the soggy gravy fries, but the cheese curds were good.

The next day I skipped the first session to try to catch up on sleep. The late nights coupled with a bed that made prison cots look enticing were getting to me. The thing about New Brunswick is that it’s in the Atlantic timezone, which is an hour later than Eastern Time, but Fredericton is north of the Eastern timezone. This made for long days (sunrise around 5:30 and sunset around 10), which also aided in the sleep deprivation (the curtains in the room were not very helpful). The good news about skipping was that I didn’t miss anything I was interested in (which was decided before I decided to sleep in) and I got to sleep an extra hour. The last session I attended was about Facebook. I was going to go to another session on hiring/training/managing students, but I figured I’ve gone to enough of those. So I tried something different. It was worth it. I learned a bit about what students think of Facebook versus “real world” communication (it seems that real world communication is still more important).

Following the session, there was a Program Committee BoF, which I attended and volunteered to help out next year. I like where ResNet is going and want to do whatever I can to help it continue and sustain itself. Following that I had lunch and an Information Resources Committee meeting, during which we discussed where things are going with the ResNet websites and communication tools. Following that, I went to the vendor fair, got some information and picked up some documentation from the doc fair. After that was a break and then the closing reception and raffles and then we headed downtown for our lobster dinner and kitchen party, which was followed by more time at the Rogue (I tried Picaroons Dooryard Ale and Pump House Fire Chief Red Ale, which was good, though I thought it tasted more like a Brown Ale, and Innis and Gunn, an oak aged English Pale Ale) and a long walk up the hill to pack, sleep, and head home the next day.

The trip home was smooth (had a Creemore Springs Premium Lager in Toronto), except that my checked suitcase was left in Canada because the plane was too heavy. Next time I fly to Canada, it will be out of Boston because I don’t want to deal with the crappity 18 seat plane and the possibility of my bag not coming with me. I just got word that my bag has arrived in RI and should be delivered to me sometime after 2:00.

I have pictures of it on my gallery or at Flickr.

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ResNet 2008: Last 2-3 Days

Published on June 23, 2008 in Open Source, Travel, Internet, Software, Music, Technology and Beer. 0 Comments

I’m not good with titles, but that really sums up what this is about. I wrote about Friday already, now here’s Saturday through today (at least so far).

Saturday was the PDS sessions. I learned about my DISC profile, which was a very worthwhile session. It actually gave me some insight into what kind of person I am and what kind of manager I am. It should help me quite a bit at work, once I go through and read the information more closely of course. The second session wasn’t quite what I thought it would be and I wish I had signed up for the session on dealing with difficult people (since my job is 90% dealing with difficult people). It was about balancing your life, which is something I think I do pretty well already. While I might check my work email quite a bit at home when I’m not on vacation, it never gets in the way of enjoying my time away from the office. So that session wasn’t really worth my time. I was thinking it was more about balancing everything at work, which is something I could use some help with. Maybe next year they’ll have something like that (I should suggest it).

Saturday night began the conference. There was an opening reception with a lot of appetizers that were all really good. There were some desserts and some really good juices, a lemonade made with some kind of mint and an iced tea with something in it that I just couldn’t figure out. There was also a large spider, which I can’t include a pic of because I used my phone to take it and I can’t send picture messages from it up here. During the reception, they had arranged for an Irish dance school to give us a little show. The kids were young, but they could dance. It was like a little Michael Flatley dancing with his people. It was fun, but I forgot my camera and my phone camera just couldn’t cut it.

Following the reception, I went downtown with a bunch of people to a bar called Dolan’s Pub. They had a live band called Barnacle and some pretty good local beer from Pump House in Moncton, NB. The band played all covers, but it was a great mix of everything, including Rolling Stones, Tom Petty, Great Big Sea (a Canadian band from Newfoundland), Sublime, Steve Miller, and a bunch of American 80’s music. People were dancing. Now there was a bachelorette party there and they wanted the bachelorette to do some crazy things. I won’t go into details, but let’s just say there was some undergarment removal and a table dance involved… at our table. I didn’t get back until 1:30 or so.

The next day was the keynote. Stephen Downes gave the speech. It was a great speech. The guy looks just like David Crosby crossed with Arlo Guthrie. He was a riot… at least for the first half. He had this neat comment system on his website that he showed us. It would display comments for 10 seconds and then move to the next one. We had some fun with it, but some people were a little mean. The best comment was “Did you play in a band with Stephen Stills and Graham Nash?” The second portion of his speech was about Web 2.0. I have already been to 2 or 3 sessions on that alone and this just wasn’t necessary for a bunch of people who are likely intimately familiar with it. The first portion was about new ways of using the web and what young people expect of the web and internet services nowadays.

There were also 2 presentation sessions. I attended one which was ultimately about a re-org of the department, but really hit on some good points on how to make the department great, including losing the various groups within a department and getting it to work more as a single entity than as a bunch of smaller groups. The second one I attended was about making the Helpdesk better, but again was more about a Helpdesk re-org than what I thought it would entail, as the description mentioned a discussion of hiring and training and those were only minor points.

That was followed by the Geek Olympics. I ended up on a team again this year and our team won (I did it last year and we came in second by just a hair)! We had people from Stony Brook University on Long Island, Cal State in Chico, and NC State on our team.

This morning was the presentation I was working on with Sean Ward of Bowling Green State University in Ohio. It was called “The Pros and Cons of Computer Requirements (or lack thereof)”. It started out as a panel of 4 and ended up just being the 2 of us. We went through our presentation in about half an hour or so, but there was a lot of discussion, which we hoped would happen. It ended up being a pretty good presentation if you ask me. I then went to a presentation about ConPortal, an open source web-based scheduling and time clock system originally created at Pomona College, but added to by Bucknell University. It’s something I hope to implement, perhaps this year, though maybe next after I start requiring training (unless I require training towards the end of Winter Break).

The rest of today was left to do whatever. I went for a walk with Sean and other guy from BGSU downtown, over a cool foot bridge that goes over the St. John river (it used to be a railroad bridge), and to a liquor store to buy some beer. I didn’t find Péché Mortel as I had hoped, but they did have the whole Picaroons lineup. I bought a bottle of each of the six beers they had from Picaroons and will be taking them back home with me. The walk totaled about 7 miles, including 1.6 miles carrying the beer (I’m not going to try to put that in kilometers, even though that’s the official measurement here in Canada).

Now is time for rest and relaxation. As we’re on our own for dinner, I’ll be headed back downtown, but my feet hurt and I need a break.

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Twittering

Published on June 3, 2008 in Fun Stuff and Internet. 0 Comments

So I decided to jump on the Twitter bandwagon. I’m RunawayJimPVD (because RunawayJim was already taken).

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Wikis, Blogs, and Forums Oh My!

Published on June 2, 2008 in Open Source, Internet, Software and Technology. 3 Comments

We’ve been working on a new project at work to bring more engagement from our users. To do this, we’re jumping on the buzzword bandwagon and incorporating some Web 2.0 technologies into our department’s web presence. Being one of the youngest and least resistant to change, I’ve been taking the lead on this. I figured I’d post some of my experiences with some of the various tools I’ve been using. Everything is still a work in progress, but once it’s complete, I’ll post some final thoughts.

The biggest part of the new stuff is the wiki. If you don’t know what a wiki is, it’s basically a dynamic website editable by anyone (who has an account). We’re using this to write up all sorts of documentation and make it easy for others to post documentation that they have. We’re looking to build a huge knowledgebase of all the information people from various departments have. We’re not currently limiting it to IT-related stuff because people have other questions (and we get calls about pretty much anything from the people on campus). I started playing with MediaWiki, probably the most popular wiki software available, used by Wikipedia. It was easy to install and get started, but configuring user accounts and doing any maintenance and configuration required playing around with MySQL commands rather than incorporating it all into a nice web-based GUI. I gave up on that and tried TWiki. This just didn’t work well at all and I was never able to get it up and running. So I gave up and looked into PHPWiki. This was just ugly and not robust enough for my needs. I finally decided to give a tool suggested to me by the Frymaster, Deki Wiki from MindTouch. This was a very user-friendly, easy to configure and maintain wiki. It’s all PHP/MySQL based, and open source. It looks nice, it doesn’t use some crazy wiki markup like MediaWiki (imagine that, actual HTML to write for the web), and we have people using it already. If you’re just setting up a wiki and don’t know what to use, give DekiWiki a try.

The blogging software was a no-brainer. I’m using Wordpress here and it’s so simple, I just set it up for work. I’m using the latest version with the latest version of K2 (though I edited the CSS to give it the look I want, along with a very awesome header/title image). Not much else to report about that because I didn’t even have to think. I’m probably going to turn this into the front page for our department site. We’ll have news about new technology on campus, new services, security/virus alerts, and weekly random tech tips based on the calls we get.

Finally, the forum… I first played around with PunBB and while it’s nice, there’s not as much along the lines of support for it on the web and it doesn’t do everything I wanted it to (like integrate with Active Directory/LDAP) without add-ons (I like extensible software for my own purposes, but for something like this, native ability trumps extensions and plug-ins). So I setup PhpBB3. I found a nice theme (I can’t recall what I’m using) and played with the title and colors and it looks great. I haven’t played with the AD integration, but it has that ability. It has a lot more options, such as polling and better user controls. It’s a bit big and intimidating at first, but once you get used to where everything is, it’s easy. PunBB had a simpler administrative control panel, but you couldn’t do as much. We’ll likely use this as a tech support forum where people ask questions and others can help answer or we can or we can point them in the right direction. And it’ll all be archived for others to search.

So that’s about it for now. This should all come together towards the end of the summer. I’m hoping I get to completely replace our current website with the new stuff I’m playing with. The fun part will be migrating stuff from my test environment to the production server.

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User Error

Published on May 29, 2008 in Fun Stuff and Technology. 0 Comments

George posted this on his site, but I felt it deserved another mention. It’s too funny to pass up. This is how I feel at work about 78% of the time…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ob3Q1Xbnx_A

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Pidgin Forked

Published on April 30, 2008 in Open Source, Software and Technology. 5 Comments

My favorite IM client for Windows and Linux, Pidgin, has been forked. Reading through Slashdot, I came across an article stating this. I found it quite odd that Pidgin would fork. Anyway, I actually took issue with the “feature” that caused the fork.

Upon upgrading to version 2.4.0, I found that the text input box was set at 1 line, and I could not resize it. Apparently, this is a new feature. The input box is supposed to grow automatically as you enter more text. Personally, I would find that extremely distracting. However, instead of giving in to the actual users of Pidgin, the developer, Sean Egan, simply argued why this feature is important and the good it will bring. He and only a couple others went on to explain that IM is meant for small messages, yet people who write code use it to send code back and forth quickly rather than use email (which is something I have used it for). In what could have been an easy fix with version 2.4.1 and a user-selectable option to allow resizing of the text input, the developers allowed it to be forked to FunPidgin (as of this writing, that site is also not working, so here’s a link to the project page), which is simply what my idea for 2.4.1 should be - Pidgin 2.4.0 with a re-sizable text input area.

It seems that this fork was completely unnecessary and the developers (aside from the one who forked off) are being stubborn and arrogant in telling people how they should and should not be using IM. I find it quite annoying, actually, that the developers chose to go down this path rather than simply giving in and making it an option. But the beauty of open source software is that you can easily fork off when the developers pull this kind of crap.

Anyway, here’s a link to the actual discussion (which was posted to their bug tracking system) and to the Google cache of that in case it’s still Slashdotted.

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Different, but better, type of review of Ubuntu Linux

Published on April 28, 2008 in Linux, Open Source, Software and Technology. 0 Comments

I came across this “review” of Ubuntu Linux 8.04 Hardy Heron this morning. The reviewer doesn’t go and review it as a Linux user. Instead, he sits his girlfriend in front of it and has her perform a series of twelve tasks. He didn’t tweak the install at all. He only created an account for her. He added no software. This is simply a base install. Basically, he wanted to rate the usability of the new version. The article made for a great read.

Now, the comments are split about 50-50 with half saying that this was a great read and a great experiment in the usability of the “most usable” Linux distribution. The other half weren’t so kind. They went on saying that if she wasn’t used to Windows, she’d be able to use it just fine or that if she wants a usable *nix, she should use MacOS X. It’s the stuff you hear over and over from the zealots. It’s stuff that just doesn’t need to be said. The fact remains, however, that the vast majority of people who would care have used a computer before (very few people in the civilized world have not) and the vast majority of those came from Windows. It’s a good test, if you ask me. His conclusion is that it’s not ready for mainstream desktop use. I agree with him, though I’ll take it a step farther and say that it’ll never be ready for mainstream desktop use. That’s not a bad thing. I like Linux for what it is and what it does, but because there are so many different distributions and so many different window managers and desktop environments, without a lot of tweaking, it’s just not for the average computer user. Sure, distributions like Ubuntu do most of the tweaking for you, but you get only the tweaks they deem necessary. Without a nice budget like Microsoft of Apple have, it’s not an easy task. The best suggestion the author makes is having an initial window open up (much like in Windows and I think MacOS X) that asks you what you want to do. It’d be a nice welcome screen that lists various tasks and helps new users find what they want.

I originally found the article on Slashdot.

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Spin Cookie

Published on April 1, 2008 in Wii, Fun Stuff and Gaming. 0 Comments

A friend of mine (and former student employee) has started a blog called Spin Cookie. He’ll be mostly writing about video games, both old and new. I am specifically interested in his Wii game reviews. It looks to be a good site. He spun the game reviews off his former blog, Boxed Lunch Comics.

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5 Months-ish with the MacBook Pro

Published on March 28, 2008 in Hardware, Software, Apple and Technology. 23 Comments

It’s been just about 5 months now that I’ve been using the MacBook Pro as my work computer. It’s not my primary computer at home, but when I don’t feel like being tied to my desk or I am away from home, it is my computer. I am quite familiar with it, though not an Apple expert, by any means.

I have gotten used to everything as best I can and there are still a few things that annoy me - some related to Apple, some not. I’ll start with the stuff that’s related to Apple.

First, I should preface this with the fact that I use an external keyboard at work. It’s easier on the hands and I have the full number pad. I don’t like the command+c and command+v key combinations for copy/paste. It’s a much more cramped position than CTRL+C and CTRL+V in Windows, though I am glad there is a key combo for that, I use it all the time. The other issue I have is with deleting files. Everything goes to the trash can automatically, which is nice because I can recover stuff from network and removable drives without having it automatically delete and gone forever. However, I can’t delete a file using the “forward” delete key. I have to use the “backspace” delete key. That’s just weird and confusing.

This one is something I’ve complained about many times before and the comments left were “Expose rocks, it’s so much better than Alt-Tab”. Wrong… well, at least in my case. I Alt-Tab quite a bit. I use it to get between programs and windows. I still am not 100% used to Command-Tabbing to the program and then Command-Tilda-ing to the window. That’s not intuitive and not easy. Expose is cool and all, but I have to grab the mouse, drag it to the hot corner, and then drag it to the window I want, and if I’m not on the correct virtual desktop (yes I use Spaces), then I still need to Command-Tab. Perhaps I should stop using Spaces? I don’t think so.

The last thing that annoys me is the lack of a “Start Menu” (I know the Start Menu is something that Windows haters love to hate). The thing I like about the Start Menu is easy access to all my applications without having to open Finder, choose Applications and then go to the one I want. With the Start Menu, it’s all in a nice easy menu. Personally, I think Applications should be a sub-menu of the Apple menu. I like the Dock, it’s nice and easy to access all my more frequently used applications. I generally use Spotlight to find the applications I don’t use as frequently, but sometimes I like to look through the whole list of them. For some reason, I remember this being part of MacOS at some point (might have been pre-OS X).

Print Screen… Why the heck is there no Print Screen button on the keyboard? Instead, there are some crazy key combinations that do, admittedly, perform some nice functions (taking a snapshot of an active window or the menu bar or something like that, or taking a snippet of a window, or doing the whole damn screen). But when I want to quickly take a screenshot, I have to remember what those keys are (and I don’t, so I have Apple’s OS X keyboard shortcut page bookmarked).

Now onto the non-Apple stuff…

Entourage… The new version (2008) is better than the previous. It looks better and fits in better. That’s all fine and well, but it’s still not Outlook. I know it was never meant to be Outlook, but I don’t understand why. So if someone from Microsoft or who knows someone (or knows someone who knows someone who knows someone) at Microsoft, find out for me. It’s really annoying and really pointless. Just face the facts… not everyone is or has the option of using Windows, yet they are in an Exchange shop (like me). I do like everything else in the new Office 2008, but Entourage still annoys me. The biggest issue I have with it is that it will not sync my distribution lists on Exchange with Entourage, but it did grab all my other contacts from Exchange. I had to sit and re-build all the distribution lists I had because of that. The next version of Office for MacOS should have Outlook, not Entourage (which is really some crazy combination of Outlook and Outlook Express). Still somewhat on the topic of Entourage is My Day. I was originally under the impression that it was part of Entourage, yet it runs as it’s own application. That surprised me the first time I ran it. I do use it and refer to it often, but it should be part of Entourage, like the “To-Do” panel in Outlook 2007.

Firefox… I’m still on Firefox 2, mainly because I am not willing to play with beta software. I know Firefox 3 should fix some of my issues, but I doubt it’ll fix all of them. My biggest issue is the looks. It looks like a Windows app. That’s going to be fixed. That’s good. I don’t know why it wasn’t originally themed to look like an OS X app to begin with. I hate that it doesn’t use the Apple widgets. That should also be fixed. My next biggest issue is that I use Firefox in it’s own virtual Desktop to avoid clutter. When I Command-Tab to it or click on it’s Dock icon, it brings me to Firefox, but doesn’t give the window focus. That’s stupid and really annoying. Every other app I use works normally with that. I have gotten used to having to click on an app before I can click a link or something, but when I click on an app’s icon or Command-Tab to it, it should have focus, that’s why I did that to begin with. Finally, the Home and End keys do not work in web forms in Firefox (like the one I’m using to write this). Instead, I have to hit Command-Left or Right Arrow, and even that doesn’t work all the time depending on the page.

So those are all my issues so far… now here’s what I like. The keyboards (external and laptop) are really nice, though I wish the external one had extra plastic as I find myself leaning and accidentally pressing the Control key. They have nice feedback and have a great feel to them. I have finally gotten used to the ambient light sensor and I love it. The battery life is awesome. The wireless easily (more easily than Windows) connects to the enterprise Wi-Fi connection at work. Fast user switching is nice and slick (I like the box rotating and wish that’s how Spaces worked).

However, I still stand by my notion that this is neither better nor worse than Windows. They are both simply different tools to perform the same tasks. If I knew nothing about computers, maybe the Apple would be more intuitive, but I know plenty of people who switched from Windows and had a very hard time figuring out the Apple way (one with an iMac even said that she needed an external optical drive, not realizing it was a slot fed drive on the side of the thing).

Someday, I’ll switch my primary home PC to Ubuntu Linux and I’ll write a review on that. That will be a big project, though, and I am not sure when I’ll have the time for it (I need first backup Susan’s data onto my computer, reformat hers for XP Pro, then backup my computer to hers, and do the switch… hers needs to be done first so that she’s not without a computer).

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Super Smash Bros. Brawl

Published on March 17, 2008 in Wii, Review and Gaming. 2 Comments

Over the weekend, I picked up Super Smash Bros. Brawl for my Nintendo Wii. I have to say that this game has some serious potential. It’s not as easy to pick up and play like fighting games I’ve been used to in the past (like Mortal Kombat or Street Fighter), but it’s a fun game. The cool thing about this is it’s the first Wii game I have that I can play over the internet.

The game has a few modes. You can play single player tournament style, a single player adventure game (which I have yet to try), multi player with up to 4 players, or Wi-Fi. Wi-Fi let’s you play over the internet. You get a friend code and can connect to play with your friends or you can play over the internet with other people. Since I only know 2 others with the game, I played a couple matches over the internet with random people. Let me say that I suck. I need to spend some time playing with all the characters and learning their various strengths and weaknesses.

The controls are nothing special and don’t really use any of what makes the Wii special, but that doesn’t make it a bad game. I have been playing using the remote and nunchuk. I wish the game used more of the “Wii controls”, like shaking the remote or nunchuk to do something, but you just press buttons, using the control stick on the nunchuck to move your character. It’s not a 3D game, so you only move side to side and can jump up and down, which makes sense. It might be easier to play using the Game Cube controller or the Classic Controller for the Wii. I’ll continue to play and get used to the controls, but man, my hands hurt after playing for a while.

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