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One of the most common questions that people these days ask me regarding their home PC’s is how to have it startup and go straight to the desktop.  This used to be the only option, and when Microsoft did us the favour (!) of allowing us to have multiple accounts, very few people embraced this enhancement. Read the whole article - How-To: Vista Autologon

My desktop PC that I use for software development has been taking longer and longer to boot recently.  It got to the stage that I could start it, go downstairs to make a coffee, come back upstairs with the coffee, and drink it before I could do anything useful with Windows.  (OK, so I *know* that there’s an argument that trying to do anything useful with Windows is an exercise in futility, but that’s not the point of this post….!)

The moment that I’d been dreading over recent months finally came, when I couldn’t stand this startup rubbish any longer.  It was time to reinstall my operating system!!!

Read the whole article - I Finally Bit The Bullet…

I read a great article today from Joel Spolsky (the author of Joel on Software) talking about the challenges facing students who learn only Java.

You can read the article yourself at http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/ThePerilsofJavaSchools.html

This made me think about how my own studies had prepared me for programming in the real world, to which I can only conclude that I was left so hopelessly un-prepared as to be frightening!

Read the whole article - Programming Today

Regular readers will have noticed that new posts have been a little thin on the ground lately!  This isn’t anything to do with having nothing to write about, rather it’s due to my new role (same company) which keeps me away from home Monday to Friday, and so away from my PC.  I’ve considered buying a laptop to enable me to be completely portable, but since I like to travel light, I felt that this wasn’t a realistic option.

Now, when I’m away from home, I have my business laptop which is certainly powerful enough to cope with my needs, but lacks the licenses to run my software.  So, I’m on a quest to move to a fully Open Source solution (see my earlier post “What is Open Source?” for background on this), with all critical data being stored online.  This is what I’m planning so far:

• Use Google Documents for larger documents, as needed.
• Use Google Notebook (with the great Firefox plugin available for it) for notes and thoughts that I need to share between systems.
• Use KompoZer for my HTML editing.  This is a full-featured, Open Source, WYSIWYG HTML editor that gives most of what Dreamweaver provides, but for free!
• I already use Notepad++ for editting text files, which is also Open Source.
• For images, I’m not sure whether GIMP or Google Picasa are sufficient, although I suspect I’ll leave most serious work for when I get back home to my trusty Photoshop….!  Both of these packages are Open Source, but GIMP is far more powerful than Picasa.  That said, for what I’m likely to need whilst away from home, I suspect Picasa will suffice, and seems to be less complicated to use.

That leaves me just lacking audio input.  Whilst I already have Audacity for editing my audio files, I don’t have a good quality USB microphone that I’d be happy to carry around.  At home, I use a USB audio interface and a studio quality microphone, but this is not a portable solution!  I suspect I’ll end up recording the audio whilst at home, and doing the editing during the week whilst away.

For video, I was fortunate enough to grab a copy of Camtasia Studio whilst a free offer was running last year, so am well provided for in this area.  I’m reluctant to go to full video, as I suspect pictures of me would scare you all off!

So watch this space!  Let’s see how my portable life progresses and whether I can make the most of my “hotel time” whilst away from home!

I came across an interesting new site today called Streamocracy.  In general, it seems to be a technology focused website aimed specifically at video sharing.

However, what caught my eye was their Newswire section.  It seems that what they’re doing here is aggregating RSS feeds from other technology-related sites across the Web and archiving recent content on their servers.  It’s essentially the same idea as what we see with Slashdot, only in this case, the posts are re-published “as-is”, rather than having a comment written by an editor (which is how Slashdot work).

I would encourage you to check them out - particularly the Newswire section (http://www.streamocracy.com/newswire/index.php) and to leave a comment here to share with us all what you think of their service!

Enjoy!