Category: Note to Self

Back and ready to rock

~ rbonini

So I’m back from holiday (Florida – no ride queues and was great).

And I’m raring to go .

To start the year off, WHS4Smugmug development will resume ( after a year of being busy and feeling guilty). There’s a great series of posts on Add-In development on the tentacleBlog:

And I’ll be using them to bootstrap development and hopefully get moving.

One area I’m worries about is the file/folder structure that it’ll pull the photos from and send them to Smugmug.

So I’ll crowdsource this problem. Please leave a comment on how you organise your photo folder. Thanks.

This’ll help me with the 8000 photos I took in Florida.

A Word of Caution

~ rbonini

Since the quake in California,  old Vimeo and Youtube videos that people have favourite have been showing up in FriendFeed. Current thinking has it that the data must have been destroyed and recreated from backups.

Some of them are, NSFW, shall we say (I’m putting it very, very delicately). There is even one particular user that has a lot of these videos showing up in his stream (and I’m not linking to them – I’m keeping this blog respectable).

So given the current employers habit of Googling prospective hires, it might be safer to be careful what we add to our online personas.

Just saying.

Its Been a While – WHS Add in

~ rbonini

I’ve been off ill. Pretty badly in fact, which is why  haven’t posted. or done much programming.

I’m adding the finishing touches to the service – mainly making sure it won’t crash itself or the Server and that it actually does what I intend it to do.

So I’m gradually turning my attention to the scheduled task that will upload files. This is a nightmare mainly because of the large number of possible scenarios. These mainly have to do with updated files. It depends what has changed – the image itself (i.e. after a trip through Photoshop or Elements) or the metadata (keywords, tags, etc).

I’m also getting to grips with the settings and console tabs in terms of what will go where. I tend to try to nail down the user interface first in my software projects so that I know what user interface logic needs to be implemented. No use writing lines of code that, although doing something quite logical and correct, turn out not to be needed.

I’ve yet to forget about this little project- just wish Omar Shashine would release his code for his Send to Smugmug App. Don’t forget to check his site for the latest version.

Vista Desktop Manager

~ rbonini

Seriously, you have to ask yourself why Microsoft didn’t think of this:

[via Scott Hanselman]

I think its a testament to the legions of Windows developers the world over who wont take Redmond lack of design inspiration for an answer (compared to an unnamed Computer Company).

Get it here. I am so downloading it.

It also shows how much Microsoft left out of Vista (presumably under pressure to RTM it before it was ready).

Earth to WinFS. Where are you????????? 

Dell Laptop

~ rbonini ~ 3 Comments

Here’s what I got:

Inspiron 6400 Intel® Pentium® Dual-Core T2080 Processor (1.73GHz,533MHz,1MB L2 cache)

Wide Sreen 15.4″ WXGA (1280×800) TFT Display

Memory Dual-Channel 1024MB (2×512) 533MHz DDR2 SDRAM

Hard Drive 120GB Serial ATA (5400 RPM)

Fixed Internal 8X DVD+/-RW Drive including software, for Vista only

Battery Primary 9 cell 85W/HR LI-ION

Integrated Intel Media Accelerator 950

Dell Wireless 1390 802.11b/g 54Mbps Mini-PCI Wireless Card, for Dual Core Processors

English – Vista Business

English Microsoft Works 8.0 (Word Processor, Database) with Recovery CD

Not entirely sure about the memory. Last time I played with Vista it took 800Mb sitting idle – no programs running.  But hey, operating an a shoestring budget is never pretty. And I can always use Ready Boost if I need to.

Performance isn’t really an issue. I’ve got all the power I need.

And why on earth do OEM’s insist on putting Works on every damned machine they build. I’ve got  Works installed on the Compaq I got 2 years ago and have never ONCE used it.

And I figured that I might as well get Vista since the service Pack is out soon. And I never really got playing around with the beta beyond admiring the eyecandy.

Delivery date says on or before the 26th. We’ll see.

Choosing a Laptop

~ rbonini ~ 1 Comment

Its back to university in a few weeks and I’m needing a new laptop. Currently I have my eye on a Dell Inspiron 6400:

Processor: Intel® Centrino® Mobile Technology: up to Intel® CoreTM 2 Duo Processor T7400 (2.16 GHz, 4 MB L2 cache, 667 MHz FSB & Intel®  Pro/Wireless 3945 (802.11a/b/g) network connection

Operating System:

Genuine Windows Vista®  Ultimate

Genuine Windows Vista®  Business

Genuine Windows Vista®  Home Premium

Genuine Windows Vista®  Home Basic

Chipset: Intel® 945GM chipset (with Intel®  GMA 950TM  integrated graphics)

Display: Choice of 15.4-inch Wide screen displays in WXGA resolution, WXGA TrueLifeTM resolution

Video Graphics: Intel®  Graphics Media Accelerator 950TM  integrated graphics with up to 224MB shared system memory

Wireless Connectivity Solutions: Integrated Dual-Band (802.11 a/b) antenna. Integrated DellTM  Wireless 1390 (802.11b/g) or Intel®  Pro/Wireless 3945 (802.11a/b/g) network connections. The Dell Wireless 350TM  integrated Bluetooth 2.0 wireless solution is available as optional upgrade at time of purchase only

Battery Life: Be productive for up to 5 hours without re-charging your batteries

Design: Artic Silver and Alpine White design incorporating a 5-1 card reader and front-access multimedia buttons

Memory: Up to 2GB of 533 DDR 2 SDRAM provides for excellent overall system performance

Optical drives: Your choice of CD-RW/DVD Combo drive or 8x DVD+/-RW 2(supports double layer technology)

Software: Microsoft®  WorksTM  including Works word processor, spreadsheet, database, calendar and My Projects organiser

Weight: Starting from 2.8 kg (6.18 lbs) with CD-RW/DVD Combo drive and 6-Cell Battery and integrated graphics

QuickSnap Colour Display (LCD) Back: Choose from four different stylish colours to personalise your notebook

Express card slot: Please note that this system has a ExpressCard slot and support the ExpressCard format only. This system does not have a PCMCIA card slot.

The only thing they forgot is the battery time. Since I’ll be using this to take notes, among other things, battery time is very important.

Any other suggestions?

Thinking about Facebook

~ rbonini ~ 2 Comments

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Above is Shel Isreal’s Friendwheel of his Facebook Contacts . In the interests of disclosure, I’m not on it. In fact I’m not even on Facebook. And I’m exploring why in this post.

The above picture shows a true social network, pardon the term for a minute. Most people who know Shel know others in his contact list as well.

There are a few hundred contacts here, and it is a reasonable number of people to know and be in contact with. See the difference between being like Scoble who has 5000 people who happen to read his blog and having a shortlist of  “real” people that you know personally and do business with?

If you sit down and consider this for a moment, you’ll see the logic of that statement. We all have  lists of contacts, in Outlook, Messenger, in our Mobile Phones or perhaps written in a phonebook. They are there because we know these people personally and communicate with them often.

Now I would not have the email address and phone number of my readers ( assuming I have regulars who read my blog) on my mobile in Messenger or in Outlook ( actually Google Mail, now).

Why should it be any different on FaceBook???? Why do people add contacts that they’ve never met in person?

 (And Scoble, by the very nature of his work, needs to keep a pulse on the Valley – thus his large contact list. I was just using him as an example)

Now I DO concede the point that this is exactly what happens in business – people exchange cards on a whim in the hope of acquiring business or services from someone else.

Which leads us to the next question? What do you characterize Facebook as? Is Shel’s Facebook Contacts made up mostly of froends, ore mostly of people in the same line of work ( I guess its the latter)? In other words, is Facebook a social of a business contact site?

I ask since Facebook was originally a students only site.

So why am I not on Facebook? Simple. I don’t need to be.

PS. I addition to the above, where does Facebook add value? If its business-oriented how does it do this? If its Socially-oriented, how?

On Blogging

~ rbonini

Hugh Macleod, in his imitable way, has a list about why we now blog less:

Here is Reason one:

1. We got busy. For many of us, blogging created opportunities for us in the offline world, just like the early blog evangelists predicted. And as we found out the hard way, it’s actually quite hard to do stuff and blog about it at the same time. As my father, a very smart and observant man once quipped, “A lot of these bloggers seem to have a lot of time on their hands”. That may have been true in 2002, back when the recession was still on. It’s certainly less true with a lot of people I know.

Check the other reasons out.

[via Shel Isreal]

Subtle Hints

~ rbonini

BBC blogger Bill Thompson has just blasted electronic voting machines due to the inability of manufacturers to put adequate security on them. He titled his post “The Ghost in the Voting Machine”.

IF you remember correctly this is a paraphrasing of an expression used by Dr. Lanning in iRobot. He said that the Ghost in The Machine was/were random fragments of code that would allow machines to develop consciousness. Now how’s that thought: A voting machine with a conscience, or is that a contradiction in terms?

Subtle hint, or what?