mike the mountain

I’ve got my office running on Google Apps, using Google to manage our domain, e-mail, etc. I’m working more and more on using Google Docs and GCal for some of our office work, but that’s just for me to test for now. GMail seems to be doing a fine job for us so far, but I always like to see how we can improve it.

Unfortunately for everyone else, it looks like most of these are for Firefox only (which I run on my laptop, but almost everyone else is restricted to IE… trust me, not my choice). Even so, I don’t know how many of these will be usable in our domain-hosted environment. Meh, still worth looking at…

I am currently devouring a fantastic novel by Mr. Cory Doctorow, “… a blogger, journalist, and science-fiction author who serves as the co-editor of the blog Boing Boing.” The story itself is wonderfully unique, gloriously dissectable, and positively glowing with the love Cory has for his home town (and my former stomping grounds) Toronto.

A large part of the narrative involves wireless networking technology, a topic for which I have a passing interest, though no actual skill or knowledge to speak of.

But it gives me a nice segue (I wish I had a nice Segway) into this article from Lifehacker on a few fun things I can do next time I get around to tweaking my network…

I haven’t really thought of doing a podcast of my own, too many other little projects on the side right now. But it’s always good to keep up to date on the current copyright playground, if for no other reason than to feel smarter than 95% of our media and politicians!

I’d love to meet anyone that has used even half of the crap Microsoft has stuffed into their latest bloated monstrosity. Between OpenOffice and Google Docs & Spreadsheets, I haven’t had to open anything in MS Office in weeks!

Years worth of photos. Thousands of mp3s. Gigabytes of e-mail, some actually worth keeping.

I am terrified of what it would mean if Susie (my Apple iBook) were to ever go down hard and take it all with her. I’ve got a firewire drive I’m backing things up to, “when I remember” (ie: not often enough). I’ve been researching hooking up a cheap file server to my router, hopefully if I can get that done in the near future one of these apps will help keep me a bit more secure.

Won’t be long before we look back at the idea of storing files and applications on our own individual computers the way we look at having to get up off the couch to change the channel. Ubiquitous, ultra-high-speed, wireless connectivity combined with cheap, convenient dumb terminals of every shape and size, running everything off of web-based services and online data storage.

Could be sweet, if someone finally manages to light a fire under our buttheaded telco monopolies and get them to actually offer decent service instead of the global embaressment that is our current lot! Is it too much to ask for a pricing structure that is at least as fair as those in 3rd world dictatorships!?

Bah, I’d be happy if just ONE of our major carriers offered an unlimited data plan…

I really really really want a GPS.

I want one of those watch-style ones for running, to track pace and heart rate and all that other good stuff.

I also one of those hand-held map units, for geocaching and hiking and roadtrips and all that other good stuff.

Garmin seems to be the best known brand, but I’m sure there are others out there worth considering. Ah well, maybe I’ll have to do a little research around Christmas time!

Always fun to hear it straight from the horse’s mouth…

This ugly mug o mine needs all the help it can get!

Finally did it.

Susie (my 4 year old white G3 800mhz Apple iBook) was practically flatlining. Crashes, dropped wifi signals, major system lags… couldn’t even play videos without tons of choppy playback and dropped audio. Never mind the hard drive has been at 99.9% capacity (at least) for the past year (dang indie music blogs!).

I came very close to buying a whole brand spankin’ new macbook, but I just couldn’t justify the finances. And I knew that Susie still had life in her. So I maxed out the RAM a few months back (a whopping 640 megs!). Helped a little. I stripped everything I could off of her, keeping pretty much nothing but my music, photos, and e-mail (still had less than a gig of free space on the hard drive). Done everything I could think of to optimize the software. Still couldn’t even watch a clip on YouTube without it chopping out.

Time for more drastic measures.

I knew what I had to do. First things first: back everything up. Grabbed my backup drive, copied over all the files I wanted to keep. I already had .mac backing up a lot of my system settings and passwords, but just to be sure I wrote down all my essentials. A while ago I grabbed a copy of OS X 10.4, ie: Tiger. I put it in, my plan was to first do a “Archive and Install”, which preserves my current installation while making sure my Tiger install goes smoothly. No such luck unfortunately, some kind of error on my hard drive prevented me from doing anything but a complete erase/format. So with a prayer to the geek gods and a root beer sacrifice, I wiped Susie out and put a Tiger in her tank! (hard drive, whatever.)

So far so good, she’s running like a dream! I’m being very picky about what goes in here. Quicksilver and Firefox so far. I’m going to try and stay open source as much as possible. OpenOffice.org (or maybe NeoOffice), GIMP, and the granddaddy of them all: Linux.

And with all the love for Ubuntu these days (like the article below for example), and my own brief but very positive experience, I know exactly what I want to do to add another “personality” to my little white weapon!