New laptop

Hmmm . . . we're off to Mallorca for a few days in an hour or so's time. And my wife has bought a rather nice new Sony Vaio laptop - the third or fourth we've had over the last few years. And, this morning she asked me to 'load the software' - what ever that means.

The consequence is that I haven't yet packed - it will only take a few minutes and I'll only forget a couple of important things - but I have spent several hours 'loading the software'.

The trouble is that I haven't loaded anything very interesting so far - I've been unstitiching or updating the default installation. All manner of things that we don't want, free this, trial that offer of the other. Yet, Windows & Office - both pre-installed took an hour of installation including three re-boots to get up to date. This computer was delivered to the store on October 3rd so it isn't exactly old - no more that 6-8 weeks from manufacture is my guess. So why four or five months of updates?

I've created two DVD's of System Restore files - that took an hour just to burn the DVDs; taken out Norton Security Suite, added ZoneAlarm Pro (just because it's OK and I know it well); added my favourite Directory Opus 'DOpus' file explorer; added Microsoft's AntiSpyWare beta - why wasn't that pre-installed (it found one 'severe' warnign in the pre-installed software; replaced the free trial of MS Office with a licensed copy; added a basic instal of FireFox.

I've added sharing to the network - re-set the the network name to get it talking to the rest of our computers here. And right now I'm using DOpus to sync all my wife's My Documents folder over.

Six hours on and the system will just about be minimally set to take with us, when I get back then I can start putting some real software on there and taking off the rest of the demos to create some space.

Bob

Peter Drucker

I see that Peter Drucker died yesterday, a week before his 96th birthday. I only ever met him once - I attended a seminar he led part of, in Brussels I believe, in the late 80s. He sat on the table at the front of the room and talked to his audience for three or four hours. No notes, no lectern, maybe a few slides - I forget. He was enormously engaging. I can still remember that he talked about the fourth wave of development being information led (though not much else).

That aside, he was directly and indirectly possibly the greatest single influence on the style of management I experienced for the most part of my career. He wasn't the first, nor the only management theorist - but he was arguably the most widely read and the most followed.

I acknowlege the passing of a man that I learned much from and admired greatly.

Collapsible Code

I've just upgraded to Zend Studio 5 and have found that it has one of those little improvements that make you go 'of course!' and slap your palm on your forehead. The editor window has little collapse and expand icons by the line numbers



Click to collapse and the code blocks are reduced to single lines



Wonderful - no more hunting through lines and lines of code to find just the function that you want. Collapse each one and search the header lines. What a time saver - and how obvious. I'm sure that his showed up somewhere else first - just happens that Zend Studio is my PHP editor of choice. Well done Zend for an upgrade program that adds useful features - useful for me that is as my value isn't necessarily yours.

Bob

Yak shaving

I've known about Yak shaving for years. I just didn't know what it was called until I read Seth Godin's blog a few weeks ago. (See this post too for the original source.)

This blog is Yak shaving - the task is to promote a new business 'GreyHead.net'. But before I can launch it I need to launch the web-site, nothing complicated; except that I want it to run on some CMS software that just needs a final polish; so I open up my Zend Studio and see that there's a new version; so I'll download that, and see what new features it has; oh, there's something really neat, I should tell folk about that; why, that's a good reason to start up the blog that I need to promote the business anyhow; now, as I've started I can't just have one post - what else is on my mind to share . . . and so it goes.

More about GreyHead.net later.

Bob

[Yak image courtesy of Jennifer M. Leonard, (and Neville Hobson) found through a quick search in Google Images. Used totally without permission; hope you don't mind, Jennifer.]

LibraryThing

I have a friend who always looks inside the bathroom cabinet when she visits someeone else's house. “Remarkable what you can discover!” she says. Personally I cannot resist browsing a bookshelf, in my younger days I could read titles across a room - now I have to go and peer, but it bothers me not at all to do so.

The virtual equivalent of the home bookshelf is LibraryThing Tim Spalding's creation. LibraryThing allows, nay encourages you to upload your library and share and compare it with other members. You can even browse by cover - almost the same as scanning the spines.



LibraryThing is another instance of the live beta, software that is stable enough for use but still in development. Every few days another little feature is added and shown in Tim's blog.

It isn't yet good enough to replace a good library program - I use Book Collector for my 'real' records. But it is the best and simplest on-line library program I've found, and Tim might just add all those missing features given enough time and encouragement.

Now, where can I find the 6,000 extra books I need to have the biggest library on LibraryThing?

Bob

PS LibraryThing is free for the first 200 books, unlimited entries for $10 (year) or $25 (life).

The Workbook Goddess

A week or so back I finished my first teleclass series as a participant. I'm not good on teleclasses, or on auditory learning in general. My attention wanders too easily and I find myself thinking irrelevant (though fascinating) thoughts. Until that is, the teacher asks a question and I hurriedly have to guess what we've been talking about behind my daydream. I didn't wander too much on this teleclass - and I stayed signed up and present until the end (also a small miracle - if I don't get what I want I'll walk).

The subject? Creating work-books.

What's a work-book? - well a book for working on in or through. A structured lesson, or series of lessons that helps you learn something new, concepts, practical skills, whatever.

Why write a work-book? Lots of reasons, but in this case because a friend though it might be interesting and I had a few 'writing' projects around that were going nowhere slowly.

How was the course? Excellent. I wasn't too sure what to expect and set my expectations low (you don't get disappointed that way). It wasn't just about writing, Heidi Costas the leader took us through structure, motivation, marketing, just about every aspect that needs to be thought and worked through to create a successful product. and she encouraged us to write, write, write . . .

And so I wrote, wrote, wrote . . . as long as the class lasted that is. Now I justneed the impetus to finish off the last couple of chapters and get the whole thing edited and proof-checked. Maybe in a week-or-two. If not I fear the Workbook Goddess may be sending (very gentle) lightning bolts my way.

Bob

PS Information about the Workshop tele-seminar from my affiliate link.