27
Jul 07
First, stop sucking
Here’s a great Google Tech Talk by Merlin Mann. The best bit of advice he gives is to “First, stop sucking”. You have to stop whatever bad habits you’re doing (like ignoring the 500 emails in your inbox) before you can get better at it. The whole talk is below, it’s definitely worth a look.
19
Jul 07
Phonetic Alphabet Cheat Sheet
Below is a quick cheat sheet I made up to help out when I was on the phone with people. Inevitably you have to either read off an account number or spell out some weird URL and run into a conversation like this:
Tech Support: Please read off your account number
Me: k, 005V345
Tech: Thank you, I have that as 005B345
Me: No, that’s V as in Victor not B as in Bravo
Now I keep this next to the phone so I don’t have to think of a word that clearly begins with V.
Phonetic Alphabet Cheat Sheet: Download (PDF)
(originally from this 
10
Mar 07
Companies and open source
The company I work for makes is submit for review all FOSS/Open source software we use. As far as I know they don’t actually donate any money to them, its just a software license review.
How does your company handle this? Do you donate money or time if you use putty or Firefox? Do you think they should?
01
Feb 07
Rant: LiveJournal doesn’t lend to your credibility
Mark Cuban predicted the death of BitTorrent and and the creator, Bram Cohen, responded yesterday on his LiveJournal blog. LiveJournal?!?!?! Oh come on, using a service full of 13 year old girls having their hearts broken by boys that didn’t know they had crushes on them doesn’t exactly lend the the credibility to BitTorrent.
BitTorrent is an awesome protocol and works really well. It has made moving large files like video podcasts around the internet much less painful.
What I don’t understand is why its so hard for Bram to use his own domain and install some blogging software so his posts come from a more credible source than LiveJournal.
[tags]rants, bittorrent, livejournal, mark cuban, bram cohen, technology[/tags]
16
Jan 07
Wordpress Roundup
- Wordpress 2.0.7 Released – a few bug and security fixes
- How to Tag and Categorize Your Content – you should only have a handful of categories, but lots of tags
- Wordpress Post-install Checklist – Step-by-step things you must do after a new installation (I don’t agree with turning off the visual editor but that’s mostly your own opinion)
[tags]wordpress[/tags]
22
Dec 06
Speed up your Podcasts
I listen to quite a few podcasts, probably a good five hours worth a week. Here’s how I save time doing that:
1. Open Windows Media Player
2. Enable the Speed Up Enhancement in Windows Media Player
3. Play your file
4. Crank it up
I can listen to all my podcasts at 1.4 or 1.5 except Security Now with Steve Gibson and Leo Leporte, Steve talks a mile a minute and they really shove a lot of good content into their podcast.
[tags]lifehacks, security now, podcasts, speed up, windows media player, media player[/tags]
15
Dec 06
Folding @ Home
Remember SETI@Home? Are you still running that?
Folding@Home studies how proteins fold and more importantly, why they fold improperly and cause cancer. Don’t you think this is a better use of your computer?
It uses your spare CPU so you’ll see your CPU at 100% all the time but it yields to all other applications so you will never notice that its running. Think of it as using your whole computer all the time instead of just sucking power while running the Flying Windows screensaver.
You can find the windows installer on the Folding@Home installer, If you’d like you can join our team using the team number 50606.
[tags]folding, home, folding@home, cancer, research[/tags]