Author: Andy Ferguson

Backup solutions

Since I started working exclusively on laptops, I’ve been backing everything up to a 500gb external hard drive. This is working well, but I do sometimes miss having an “always on” desktop computer that acts as a repository for everything I’ve ever owned.

I keep toying with either buying or building something to fulfil this purpose, but I’m not sure what is actually required. I could go for some sort of NAS solution but that would take away the joy of actually building something myself, and I think for £260 I’d want something I could occasionally use for tasks other than storage. I was also looking at the Zotak Z-Box, which would be quiet and energy efficient, but which only takes 2.5″ hard drives (and thus would be more expensive per Gb of storage than a desktop solution).

I suppose what I really need is a couple of 1Tb hard drives in some sort of shuttle setup. I’d also (at some point in time) like to experiment with pairing a Zotak Z-Box with a decent sized SSD drive which should result in a low-consumption (fairly) fast PC that would make a good long term successor to the ageing Mac we use as a media centre.

Of course, this is not a good time for me to be thinking about buying computers, and I should probably think about how best to utilise the ones I have to solve this problem.

More adventures in new technology

It’s been a week for exploring new technology. After my iPad adventure, I also got to spend a bit of time with Ubuntu Netbook Edition this week. Now, I’m a big Ubuntu fan, but I have never been particularly interested in running anything but full-fat Ubuntu on my netbook. I still feel like this, but after doing a couple of wireless setups at work I have gone as far as creating a USB version that I can play around with when the mood takes me. On first impressions it seems very fast, and while the interface is slightly alien, it does make sense on a smaller screen, in the same way that the new ambience/radiance themes only make sense on a big screen.

I also spent a couple of hours working on one of the new Macbooks today, testing how mail.app and iCal integrate with exchange. I’ve not explored this side of Mac OS X for a couple of years, and was very surprised as to how far things have come. I think we’re getting to the point where the default calendaring and email software are finally ready for the business desktop, and I feel I could easily do 95% of my job on this Mac.

First thoughts on the iPad

I finally got to spend an hour or so with an iPad on Friday.

I think that the iPad is a great piece of tech, although it is a little overpriced for my tastes. It handles web browsing and email very well, it looks great, and it seems fairly responsive. The on screen keyboard is totally instinctive, and this is coming from someone who is quite picky about keyboards. I found it easy enough to type in a few web addresses, send an email, and scribble a few lines of text. And this makes it perfect for at least half of what I do on the web.

I’m less sure it could replace my netbook as something I could write on though. And If I did get one then it would probably have to end up replacing my netbook because I wouldn’t want to carry two computers around all day. That said, I’m not sure the iPad counts as a computer anyway, despite being quite capable of doing most of what most people use their computers for.

I think my overwhelming feeling about the iPad is that I like it a lot more than I thought I would. But that I probably won’t get one…yet.

My first stab at self-interview

In my last post I mentioned The Setup. This is my attempt to answer the questions.

Who are you and what do you do?

I’m Andy, and I work for IT Services at the University of Birmingham in a Service Desk management/development role. In my spare time I listen to and write about music, dabble in free and open source software (mainly Ubuntu), and am sporadically involved in the Isles of Darkness live action roleplay society.

What hardware are you using?

At work everything is largely generic. I have a Dell desktop that is coming to the end of its life, but that is still more than capable of dealing with most of my emailing and calendaring needs. It is plugged into a 17″ Sony monitor that has been with me for about 4 years now, and which I keep holding on to as it is one of the few desktop monitors I’ve used that doesn’t give me a headache after hours of staring at it (yes, I know a new monitor and more breaks might be a more sensible plan).

Most of my actual work is done on an (again) fairly generic Fujitsu Siemens laptop, which I started using a couple of years ago, and which allows me to type for hours without my wrists hurting. I wouldn’t recommend this laptop above any other, but it does the job.

At home I have pretty much left desktop computers behind. My main workstation is a Sony Vaio VGN-NS10l (dual core, 4Gb ram), which I bought a couple of years ago and deals with anything I throw at it. I’ve also got a 10″ Dell Inspiron Mini, which goes everywhere with me, and is increasingly becoming the computer I do most of my web browsing, email and writing on. My backup machines are a G4 iBook and a EeePC 701, and we’ve also got another Mac and a Wii plugged into the TV downstairs. My wife has several other computers which I’ll not mention here except to say that we have more computers than there are rooms in our house (by quite a lot). And that’s not counting the ones that are propping open doors or otherwise not really being used for anything productive any longer.

And what software?

Work is a mix of Windows XP (desktop) and Ubuntu 10.04 (laptop). In Windows I largely use Outlook for email and calendaring, office communicator for collaboration, and very little else. In Linux I use Firefox for browsing (with Chrome and Epiphany for testing), Evolution for email, Empathy and Dropbox for collaboration, OpenOffice.org for creating documents and spreadsheets, and (generally) Bluefish for coding. Recently I’ve been using GIMP a lot too, and have also been dabbling with a few command-line image conversion tools. I also maintain several instances of Mediawiki, as well as a full LAMP environment for development, and use google calendar to plan and maintain my work-life balance.

At home both of my laptops are running the latest version of Ubuntu, which I’ve used as my primary OS since 2005. I use largely the same software as I use at work, although I’ve recently reverted to using gedit for writing blog posts and other bits of text, and only venturing into OpenOffice when I want to make something available to other people. Home is also where I spend a lot of time playing with WordPress and Virtualbox, and where I use Rhythmbox to listen to music (and Last.fm to catalogue what I’m listening to). I’ve also recently started using Google Reader, and I now don’t know how I coped without it.

My Macs run a very stripped down version of Leopard, and really only get used for iTunes and other media related things now (although I’d still use my iBook as my main portable computer if it weighed a little less). They also run Dropbox (as does every computer I own), and I’ve been syncing all my important files between all my machines for a couple of years now. I still can’t understand why more people don’t do this, and I’ve lost count of the number of times this one piece of software has got me out of a hole.

What would be your dream setup?

I change my mind about my ideal working environment a lot, but what I basically want is a laptop that is thin, light and stylish, and that can perform at the level where I could use it as my only computer (including storing 100gb of music). The nearest thing I’ve come across is the 13″ Macbook Pro, although I’d be happier with something the size and weight of my 10″ Dell Mini with all the power and stylishness of the Macbook Pro. Being able to run OS X and Ubuntu at the same time would also be great.

Of course, having used an iPad for the first time recently, I’d probably have to add that to my wish list, just because it’s a really stylish and functional piece of kit.

I also wonder if having a desktop computer with two large monitors would make me more productive. I have a feeling that most of what I do can be achieved on a single small screen, but it would be nice to have the opportunity to experiment with these things.

Question format borrowed from The Setup under the Attribution-Share Alike license.

Thinking about my ideal computer

I am a big fan of The Setup, which is basically a bunch of people talking about what hardware and software they use to do their job. I sometimes think I should answer these questions a couple of times a year, just to track the changes in the way I work, but mostly I find myself thinking about my dream set up (the last question they ask everyone is about their dream set up).

I change my mind on this a lot, but what I basically want is a laptop that is thin, light and stylish, and that can perform at the level where I could use it as my only computer. The nearest thing I’ve come across is the 13″ Macbook Pro, although I’d be happier with something the size and weight of my 10″ Dell Mini with all the power and stylishness of the Macbook Pro.

I also wonder if having a desktop computer with two large monitors would make me more productive. I have a feeling that most of what I do can be achieved on a single small screen, but it would be nice to have the opportunity to experiment with these things.

Making more time

Over the last few weeks, I’ve found myself running out of quality time to do things. It’s not that I don’t have enough time as such, it’s just that when I get to the point in the day where I’ve done everything I have to do, I find myself with very little energy to do the things I want to do.

This state of events does not surprise me. Every area of my life is at least as busy as I would like it to be, with some areas taking more time than they really deserve. And I actually think the fact that I’m fairly good at work-life balance is contributing towards my general feeling of not having enough time. As work gets busier, I think I subconsciously try and take on more outside of work to maintain the balance and the level of productivity I’m currently at. And while this is great in the short term, I think I hit the point last night where I realised I just didn’t have any energy left to devote to anything (be it work or non-work), and that what I really needed was to spend some time somewhere isolated and uncluttered to recharge my batteries.

I plan on doing very little this weekend, which should help a great deal, although I’m already feeling hot and sticky and it’s not even 9am.

GoogleCL

I really like the idea of GoogleCL, and think it has a lot of potential to make my life easier, seeing as I use a fair few google products (specifically Google Calendar which I use to organise my whole life).

It’s fairly basic at the moment, but I think with a bit of development it could be a powerful tool. I particularly like the ability to add and remove calendar entries from the command line, the ability to query different calendars, and the fact that I could (should I wish) delete every entry on my calendar containing a specific keyword with one command.

For example, google calendar list today title gives me a list of everything I have to do today (times would be great, but I can’t seem to get that to work as yet), and google calendar add "Dinner with Steph tonight at 8pm for 2 hours" will add a two hour appointment to my default calendar. If I had a calendar specifically for dinner appointments (called Food for the sake of this example), I could add the previous command to it by typing google calendar add --cal Food "Dinner with Steph tonight at 8pm for 2 hours" instead.

I think I need to experiment further with this, because it has great potential.

Eurovision madness

So yes, it’s the yearly evening to sit in front of the TV and encounter more dreadful music than I do in the rest of the year put together. I do like the Eurovison song contest though, although not for the reasons I like other music (any other music). It’s cheesy, it’s dreadful, but it also makes me laugh and makes me glad that for the rest of the year I get to listen to music that actually says something to me.

I may also be abusing twitter a lot tonight. Check out #eurovision for live commentary.

Corporate Records

This week, I’ve been exploring Corporate Records, which offers music on a “pay what you want” model that I quite like.

Things I’ve downloaded so far include:

All of these are great in different ways, and are well worth a listen. I’ve also tracked down a few bizarre alternate arrangements of Indelicates songs, and a very strange band called Anal Beard who are amusing if nothing else.

Bulk resizing images with ImageMagick

Another of those posts that are largely for my own benefit.

I’ve been spending a lot of time in various image editing programs recently (largely GIMP, but with a bit of Inkscape on the side). Yesterday it transpired that a folder of 24×24 images needed to be made slightly smaller as a matter of some urgency. I had a feeling ImageMagick would probably do the job (it usually does), but I couldn’t remember how.

It’s actually fairly straightforward. Navigate to the directory containing the images (via the terminal) and then enter the following command:

mogrify -resize 20x20 *.png

Which will resize all PNG files to 20×20 pixels.

This can obviously be altered to cater for different sizes and file types. So yes, ImageMagick saved the day again and I actually managed to leave work on time.