stuart test blog

As I previously blogged, Sandy tagged me in a blog meme – so I need to post a screenshot of my desktop. I use my desktop as a temporary folder – dragging stuff there that’s interesting or stuff that I’m working on. I don’t like a messy desktop, so it forces me to keep it clean by filing the good stuff and trashing the rest. I’ve been on holiday for a few weeks so it’s not very messy at the moment as I haven’t been doing much here. Anyway, here it is:

It’s a bit boring, but here’s what makes it up.

• Desktop background – this is the image I received from Plates when I bought my personalised plate recently.
• Shortcuts – just a few shortcuts from apps that I installed while I’ve been on holiday: Microsoft LifeCam , Skype, Picasa, and Sony Vegas Movie Studio.  (must clean up these icons)
• Images – there’s two images on the desktop: one is the London Tube map, the other is a photo of a Super Bok beer that Jo pixted me.
• And a PowerPoint slideshow that Deb got by email from her Ante-natal group giving tips to women about staying safe.

In true Meme fashion, I have to pass this on to 5 others:

• Martha
• Mauricio
• Tom
• Nathan
• Chris

Forgot that I have to update this list too:

• Ronnie – I Set No Corner
• Thess – Thesserie
• Rebecca – Skippy Heart
• Knoizki – A Dialogue With K
• Beng – Kauderwelch
• Tina – My Good Finds
• Rachel – Heart of Rachel
• Alice – Hello, My Name Is Alice
• Julia – Julia’s Books Corner!
• Darla – Nichtszusagen
• Marg – Reading Adventures
• Holly – What Were you Expecting?
• Ames – Thrifty Reader
• Dev – Good Reads
• Rosie – Nobody asked me…
• Gabrielle – Diary of an Adult Runaway
• Jo – Chez le laquet!
• Ms Mac – Ms Mac
• Lezzles – Peregrinations
• Spentrails – Email me
• Mike – MiramarMike (sounds very Bond-like)
• Sandy – eggs benedict and two flat whites
• Stuart – stuart @ amanzi

Yes, I’m still on holiday – and still loving it! I love Europe and have loads to blog about, but first some random points that I read while catching up on NZ blogs…

• I’ve been tagged by Sandy in a blog meme, so have grabbed a screenshot of  my desktop and will post about it shortly.
• Wanda Harland is open! Some of you will know Wanda as Martha’s blog persona, but Wanda Harland is also Martha’s new shop in Petone, where you can buy the Babylicious range of clothes as well as lots of over beautiful and random goodies.
• YouTube now has a localised version of the site available for NZ. You can get to it through www.youtube.co.nz which redirects to nz.youtube.com. Ben Kepes doesn’t get the point of it, but I think it’s pretty cool as you get presented with NZ-based content on the homepage – which is the point of it, I guess.
• Movember is coming up soon (the day after I get back) and I will be entering again this year. Last year I raised $300 so will be looking to at least match that – so stay tuned as the mass-emails will be out soon begging asking kindly for donations. In return for your sponsorship I will attempt to embarrass myself (suggestions welcome) more than I did last year, and I will also add your name to the Wall Of Honour on this blog. MirarmarMike has a good write-up about Movember and why it’s important so I’ll leave you to read his post here.
• Apple is release Leopard (OSX 10.5) on the 26th October and I hear that they will also be announcing some new products. I may get a Mac Mini soon so I can finally get to play with OSX properly. I also want an iPod Touch after playing with one in the Apple Store in Bluewater shopping centre.

I had some more points but my laptop crashed while resuming from sleep (grrr….. Vista….) so I can’t be bothered trying to find all the links again…

UPDATE: Just remembered one of the other points that I lost earlier…

• Google is now implementing IMAP access to their Gmail accounts. It’s not available throughout the system yet, as it’s gradually being rolled out, so I haven’t been able to test it yet. But this is something a lot of people, including me, have been asking for.

I’ve been too busy recently to pay much attention to this blog, and with the impending holiday coming up (see first point) I won’t be doing much blogging this month either. So a bullet point list of stuff…

• The Maxwell family is going on holiday! We’re taking Elliot on her first big trip to see family and friends in London and Amsterdam. Really looking forward to this.
• On the topic of our trip, www.tripit.com is probably the best new site I’ve found recently. It’s one of many online trip planners available, but what makes it different is that you don’t have to manually enter in your itinerary – you just email them your itinerary that the travel agent gives you, and they instantly convert it into a trip planner and email you back your login details! Great idea.
• Cafenet need to get a better password reset form on their website. I needed to get urgent access to my emails but I had forgotten my Cafenet password. You can reset it from the Cafenet site but they just email it to you – obviously no good to me as I need to log in to Cafenet to read my emails. Couldn’t they just text it to me, or ask me a couple of security questions to reset it??
• Microsoft are releasing the source code to their .Net framework libraries. But pay close attention to the wording though – they are not open-sourcing their code as that would imply that you can modify the code or contribute to it. You won’t find any of the Microsoft guys saying that the code is open source, more along the lines of "opening up the source…" or "releasing the source code…" The code is released under the Microsoft Reference License which is effectively a read-only license – no modifying or redistributing. If you’re a Dot Net developer looking for better debugging ability, this is for you. If you’re an open source developer wanting to look at the code for help with your project, beware – you should read this eWeek article first.
• I’ve gone back to Vista, after vowing to avoid it until at least service pack 1. There is just one feature which I’ve decided I can’t live without and that is the hybrid sleep function. For a mobile user, this is essential – it allows you to start up and shut down within seconds by putting the computer into a sort-of "deep sleep". It’s somewhere between the normal sleep and hibernation. All the fans turn off and the computer goes into a ultra low power state so that your battery doesn’t drain. If you’re thinking that the hibernation feature in Windows XP is just as good, then you haven’t tried hibernating with more than 2GB RAM – it’s almost as quick to cold boot than to un-hibernate a computer with a lot of RAM.
• I’m going to miss the Technet Unplugged event in October due to aforementioned holiday. That’s a pity because it looks like a good one.
• The whole "Office 2.0" space is really hotting up at the moment with new announcements every day. Zoho has an online database application to go with the rest of their office suite. Google now was a presentation app for their Google Apps suite, but it’s far too basic to be useful at the moment. SlideRocket shows how to do online presentations much better – but you wouldn’t want your internet connection to go down during a presentation, so not sure how sensible it is (and we all know how flaky internet connections are at conferences.) Now Adobe has a cool looking word processor built on Flash/Flex/Air/Whatever – basically it runs in a browser but the technology they are using means you can take it offline too. (maybe SlideRocket need to look at that too.)
• Is it just me or is Apple starting down a slippery slope towards becoming as ‘hated’ as Microsoft? I didn’t mind the fact that they dropped the price of the iPhone so soon – especially since they offered a $100 gift voucher/peace token to disgruntled customers. But it does bother me that they have turned people’s iPhones into bricks. These are the same early adopters that flock to the MacWorld conferences and evangelise their products for them, for free. And you can’t even say that the iPhone bricks were an unfortunate side-effect of the update – Steve Jobs himself said that Apple was prepared to play a cat and mouse game with hackers who try to make their iPhones more functional. This is all about money and greed and it wouldn’t surprise me if more and more Apple fans start turning against their beloved company.
• On a related note, I’m looking to buy a Nokia N95. This has all the functionality that’s missing from the iPhone, just not the big screen or cool interface. I want the high quality camera, GPS and maps, Exchange sync (Nokia app takes care of this), Java apps, HSDPA modem, and no lock in to any particular carrier. The current model has come down in price recently, but that’s probably due to the 8GB model coming out that also has a larger screen (2.8" as opposed to 2.6") Do I wait for the new, expensive model, or pick up a bargain and settle for less. (I think I’ll wait…)
• I’m planning to read three books while away on holiday that I’ve had for a while now – Getting Things Done by David Allen, The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferris, and The Dip by Seth Godin – probably in that order too.
• I’ve spent the last few evenings getting my accounts in order, and I’m always amazed at just how good Xero is to work with. The improvements they made to reconciling accounts are just incredible, I reckon Xero saves me around 1 to 2 minutes per bank transaction and if you add it all up, Xero becomes far better value for money than any desktop finance application that I’ve tried. It’s important for me to justify it like that  as I still sometimes wonder if I’m paying too much for the service.
• I fell off my bike the other day trying to go too quickly down a flight of stairs near Frank Kitts Park. The huge graze on my leg wasn’t as bad as my damaged pride when the old lady I had just zoomed past came up to me to find out if I was OK…

OK – that’s enough for now…

And for those that just read my blog in their favourite feed reader, you wouldn’t have noticed that I changed the theme of my site from the over-complicated Freshy theme, to the nice, simple, clean theme from Bob. Check it out and let me know what you think.

This is the first step towards getting my blogging back on track and a little more focused on infrastructure technologies. The next step is to actually publish all the technical posts that I’ve been building up. You can expect some quality content on Powershell, Windows Server 2008, and my home project to migrate from Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2007.

Another good result from my mountain bike trip to Rotorua, is that I came back to Wellington motivated to get back in to cycling to work. Just three days in to it, I feel great already – I’ve been waking up earlier, been more productive at work, and just feeling good all round.

It’s amazing what a bit of exercise can do for the body and mind!

As a result of the awesome mountain biking in Rotorua last weekend, I’ve adjusted my front forks to give them an extra bit of travel to 130mm. I also invested in a new front tyre, a Specialized Pro Resolution, as I was finding that the Kenda Karma tyres were a little bit too slippery in the wet.

A camera phone shot of Mt Ruapehu taken while driving up to Rotorua last weekend. Pretty cool…

I’ve been persevering with Vista 64 bit over the last few weeks, but I’m failing to see any benefit in sticking with it. Very few applications are native 64 bit and some applications just do not run at all.

Microsoft is probably the worst culprit – last year they released Exchange 2007 and forced all customers that wanted to use it to upgrade to 64 bit hardware and software. At about the same time as Exchange was released, Office 2007 and Vista were released too.

MS made a big deal about Vista 64 bit – just read the blurb on this page and you’ll think that 64 bit is the only way to go: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/windowsvista/editions/64bit.mspx. But there was no 64 bit version of Office 2007 released. Sure Office 2007 runs fine on 64 bit, but why wasn’t there a 64 bit edition?

And today Microsoft is making a big deal about the new upgrades to the Live suite of products, including a new unified installer that lets you install a bunch of Live applications at once, like the Google Pack. BUT NO 64 BIT SUPPORT! None of the applications will install if you’re stupid enough to be running a 64 bit operating system, you’re just greeted with a lovely error.

So I’m running an operating system which Microsoft says, “… deliver premier performance, reliability, and security,providing you access to the next generation of PC innovations.” but I can’t install the latest updates to Microsoft’s own software. (end of rant)

There have been a lot of gadget related announcements over the last couple of days.

Apple Announcements

Obviously Apple stole the show with their latest lineup of iPods: (images © Apple)

iPod Shuffle

New colours, same form factor and still just 1GB storage.

iPod Nano

New, ‘squashed’ form-factor, allows for a wide screen for watching videos and using the cover-flow feature. Not sure I like the look of this, but it may grow me – especially with the choice of cool colours.

iPod Classic

Similar form-factor to the 5th generation iPods, but thinner and an all-metal casing makes it look very cool. Incredible increase in storage means you can now get up to 160GB! This also gets the new cover-flow feature – this lets you flip through your album art like you were flipping through a stack of CDs.

iPod Touch

This was the big announcement. As expected, the iPhone form-factor comes to the iPod and includes 16GB flash storage, multi-touch screen, Wi-Fi, and internet browsing. Not to mention the beautiful, 3.5 inch widescreen display. Apple have also done what the Zune team couldn’t do, and that’s to allow downloads of tracks directly from the iTunes Store to the iPod Touch over wi-fi. Plus the awesome Safari web browser, gives you a great internet-browsing experience anywhere there’s wi-fi. Unfortunately no Bluetooth though – this is how I access the internet on my PDA, by using my phone’s 3G connection over wi-fi. It’s too cumbersome to use CafeNet on the PDA as you have to log in to the CafeNet website each time you connect.

HP Announcements:

In a more sensible, business-oriented approach, HP announced 5 new iPAQs aimed mainly at business users. (images taken from the press release)

HP iPAQ 100 Series Classic Handheld (Data sheet)

This is a standard looking PDA with a 3.5 inch screen and 240×320 resolution. Has all the goodies though, like wi-fi, Bluetooth 2.0, Windows Mobile 6.0, etc.

HP iPAQ 200 Series Enterprise Handheld (Data sheet)

This is the mother of all PDAs: 4 inch screen, 480×640 resolution! Designed for business use, this has all the features that a serious PDA user would want – apart from, oddly, no fingerprint reader. Runs Windows Mobile 6.0 with all the standard apps you would expect.

HP iPAQ 300 Series Travel Companion (Data sheet)

This is an interesting one as it isn’t actually a PDA but is a 3D navigation system with GPS functionality. It runs Windows CE 5.0 with an HP customised interface and has the most powerful CPU that I’ve heard of in a device this size – a dual-core 600MHz Titan processor. The 4.3 inch, 800×480 resolution screen makes it perfect for viewing maps in landscape mode.

HP iPAQ 600 Series Business Navigator (Data sheet)

This is my favourite of all the gadgets announced – it’s a PDA/phone with a 2.8 inch 240×320 resolution screen mounted above a standard phone keypad, with some additional function keys on either side of the key pad. It has been designed for single hand use and has a Smart Touch wheel and a three-way thumb wheel, but I’m not sure how these work yet. This also has GPS, wi-fi, and Bluetooth 2.0 as well as Quad band GSM/GPRS/EDGE and Tri Band HSDPA. I’m really looking forward to checking these out and I may have to purchase the 610c model which has the additional 3 megapixel camera too.

HP iPAQ 900 Series Business Messenger (Data sheet)

This follows the more conventional, ‘Treo-like’ shape of a 320×240 resolution screen mounted above a full qwerty keyboard. This has similar specs to the 600 series.

Palm Announcement

The Palm announcement was the complete opposite to Apple and HPs announcements in that they announced a non-release of a product. Specifically, they announced that their controversial new product, the Foleo mobile companion, has now been canceled despite the face that it was due to ship shortly. The Foleo, was a device that looked like a small notebook, but ran a customised, stripped-down Linux operating system that operated in tandem with a Palm mobile phone such as a Treo. Many people couldn’t see the point of the device that was useless without an accompanying Palm device.

I think this was a brave decision by Palm, and usually brave decisions work out for the best as you’re more motivated to make them work. Here’s what the device would have looked like:

The usually sensible David Farrar, is suggesting that lawyers and other high-earning couples should not be entitled to as much paid parental leave as those who earn less than them. Targeted support is one of those idealistic things that look good on paper but are usually far from fair when implemented.

How do you target the support – would it be based on just income, or income plus assets? I know of couples that earn a lot less than my wife and I, but are probably better off as they have a small mortgage whereas we haven’t yet been able to buy a house.

I think that extended paid parental leave is a good thing for all families – whether you’re high-flying lawyers or minimum wage families. We should be encouraging parents (mothers and fathers) to spend more time with their babies while not having to worry about losing their jobs or being able to pay mortgage/rent.

(and by the way – Good on you, National and Labour, for supporting the recommendations.)