Tags:
Software
So
yesterday a colleague of mine and I set out to build a couple of servers
- one for him, one for one of my clients. Pretty basic boxes with
Gigabyte motherboards, AMD processors, gobs of RAM and hard drive space.
We're using Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala) as the host and VirtualBox
to run virtual servers.
So we get the machines built and start
installing Ubuntu with RAID1. It's not a straightforward install
but I've done it before and found some good resources. We're both
partitioning our drives and marking one bootable. Or rather, I am.
The text-based alternate installer just won't let Rob flip the bootable
flag on his. Mine works fine, his just won't go. We try 3 other
versions of Ubuntu, all with the same results.
OK, let's recap - similar (I know, not
EXACTLY the same but really close) hardware, same software, two completely
different results. Some web searches find one complaint with the
same problem but no solutions. Great. This is why we have grey
hair.
Ultimately he ended up installing the
LILO bootloader while I stuck with the more standard GRUB. Both of
our machines are working now and we'll probably never know why he had the
hiccup. Meanwhile, I have another machine that just won't take the
latest VirtualBox upgrade. The one that should fix the bug that's
plaguing one of my networks. Sigh...
Tags:
Software
Virtualization
is all the rage these days, with good reason. Virtualization lets
you run multiple computers on one piece of hardware. Larger companies
are using it to host multiple servers on fewer physical boxes, saving in
administration problems, electricity, and heat generated to name just a
few benefits. Come to think of it, smaller companies are doing the
same. I know because I'm one. I also really like virtualization
for ease of backup and fast disaster recovery - more on that later.
Several months ago I started virtualizing
my own infrastructure. First, I built a hefty machine with a Gigabyte
UltraDurable series motherboard, quad core AMD Phenom processor, 8 GB of
RAM, and mirrored 1 TB hard drives. I am using 64-bit Ubuntu
Desktop 9.04 as my host operating
system. I chose Ubuntu because of a few reasons: it's free, light
weight, and (fairly) stable. (I've also played around with VMware's
ESX3i which is also free and very
nice, but is very picky about what hardware it runs on. Hypervisors
are a bit out of the scope of this article anyway.)
Once I decided on an operating system
(and NOT the hypervisor route) I had to choose my virtualization platform.
The two biggest right now are Sun
VirtualBox and VMware.
I initially went with VirtualBox becasue it is free, open source,
and my buddy Shane at Southeastern
Technical Consulting had gone
that way. Nothing is really simple in Linux but eventually things
were working OK under VirtualBox. I now have 4 virtual machines running
there: my primary Domino server running on Windows Server 2003, a client's
backup Domino server, my Asterisk phone system, and a test Domino server
running the managed beta 8.5.1 and Lotus Notes Traveler (for push e-mail
to my iPhone.) Eventually I'd like to get my Untangle firewall running
on there, too.
I haven't been completely happy with
VirtualBox though and have been looking into VMware
Server again. In fact, the
possible final nail in the VirtualBox coffin was recently when I tried
to set it up for a client using the same setup I have for myself. Windows
guest machines freeze up when shutting down, requiring a reboot of the
host. That's a big no-no when it comes to virtualization. I
do NOT want to have to take down ALL of my machines just because one is
misbehaving. I've seen other people with this issue but no solutions.
Also, USB support, important for external drive backups, is kind
of flaky. Bridged networking was flaky and difficult to get working
right. Finally, remote access consists of either native remote support
to the individual machines or VNC to the Ubuntu host, which is a bit sloppy.
With VirtualBox there is no remote access to the management console.
VMware
Server, though, has a slick new
web-based interface for version 2. There is no client anywhere but
it is accessible from any machine. Installation was not difficult
and everything from networking to USB support worked out of the box. The
management console has many more features than the VirtualBox client and
there seems to be more mainstream support for VMware. The machines
I have set up under VMware are fast and easy to access, either on the host
itself or comfortably from my chair at my desktop.
I'm not really sure why VirtualBox seems
to have more grass-roots love - I'm having a much better experience with
VMware. I even have a Mac OS X virtual machine running to do iPhone
development. More on VMware and other virtualization topics later.
I'm going to cover backup and disaster recovery next.
Tags:
Software
I
just read through yet another round of Lotus Notes-bashing. OK, yes,
I've been a diehard fan since the mid-90's, but for good reason. Most
of the people I see complaining don't seem to really understand the product
(yes, it can be complicated) or the fact that they're complaining about
an old version. Or, possibly most important, that they're complaining
about some crappy application that someone wrote. Um, just because
you have to use a poorly written app is NOT the fault of Notes - it's the
fault of the person who wrote the app. Notes is just the platform
it was written on. If you come across a bad iPhone app, do you blame
the app or the iPhone?
But the thing that really gets me is
when people call the interface old, outdated, and clunky. Um, some
of the big UI innovations that people love now have been part of Lotus
Notes since the early 90's. Tabbed browsing - would you use a browser
without it? Gmail's now very popular "labels." Yeah,
that kills me - Lotus Notes has ALWAYS had "categories." In
fact, way back in version 3 that was how we organized our email. Yep,
you could put messages in multiple categories, just like Google now. And
finally, the killer - the Lotus Notes "chicklets" or big square
icons on the workspace. Ah, have you looked at the iPhone interface
lately?? If that's not a Notes copy, I don't know what is...
Lotus Notes - I wouldn't run a business
without it.
Tags:
Software
Backups
are important, as I wrote
about a few months ago. But
there's a new kid on my backup block - CrashPlan.
CrashPlan comes in three different flavors - free (one of my favorite
things), Plus, and Pro. Several things make CrashPlan unique. As
I mentioned the last time I wrote, it's important to have both onsite and
offsite backups. This is true for everyone, both home and business.
I always like having multiple backups because I never really trust
just one (and that's not just me - all of my techie buddies agree.) You
want a good local backup for speed - nothing is faster than hooking up
an external drive and copying back a file you deleted by accident. But
you also need something stored offsite in case of fire, theft, nuclear
explosion, etc. The problem with offsite, though, is that it can
be very slow to restore via Internet, or to have to go somewhere to get
a drive. The other problems are that it's a pain to have to keep
swapping out drives and you also don't want to have to manage 2 backup
packages/schedules - one for local and one for remote. Finally, although
I've loved Carbonite for a few years now, I'm really not that happy with
its performance and restores are a bear.
Enter CrashPlan, which solves all these
issues. First, most home users will be fine with the free version.
Business users will need to use CrashPlan+ at a very reasonable $60/computer
for the software. CrashPlanPro is for enterprise users who need to
back up lots of workstations (my business clients know not to store anything
locally though - everything belongs on the server, right?) CrashPlan
is as easy to install and select the files to back up as anything else.
Actually easier than my old favorite which makes you jump through
some hoops to get going. Then the difference breaks out - you can
choose multiple destinations, including other local computers, external
hard drives, network folders, or remote computers. You can even back
up to your Mom's computer if she'll let you. All the different destinations
are eventually synchronized. If you have a lot of data it's better
to do a local backup first, then bring that backup to the remote location
and seed the remote backup, otherwise it can take days to get the first
pass done. Backups are compressed, so they take up less room than
the original data. So far I've seen backups around 67% of the original
size but that's heavily dependent on the type of data you're backing up.
After the first backup backups are all
incremental at the block level. That means if you change a line in
a massive Word document all that needs to be backed up is that one line,
not the whole thing. Don't worry - CrashPlan knows what to do. The
important thing to note here is that future backups are small and fast
since CrashPlan is just backing up the changes.
CrashPlan takes care of versioning and
deleted files, too. It can do unlimited versioning, meaning you can
go back to whatever date/version you want. If you noticed that something
happened to an Excel spreadsheet today, restore yesterday's version. Oops,
still has the problem, go back to last week or last month - it's all there
and it's all easy and fast to restore, either from your local destination
or a remote one. The free version backs up every 24 hours or manually
while the Plus version has continuous protection. They both can back up
open files using Microsoft VSS.
Wait a second though - what about security?
Who wants to let their important data out in the wild? Actually,
your data is encrypted before it even leaves your computer - don't lose
your password or you'll never get it back. The destination computer
keeps a database of your files and your Mom can't open them without your
password. The free version has 128-bit encryption (good) while the
Plus version uses 448-bit.
So what's not to love? For my
clients, I'm now offering a remote backup location. The huge benefit
is if someone ever needs a big restoration, I'll have easy access to the
data on my server (with the password of course) which I can then bring
back on an external drive. I can also seed the backup here rather
than waiting days for the first backup to go via Internet. Oh, and
CrashPlan is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux. You just can't
go wrong.
Tags:
Software
I
have always been odd when it comes to e-mail. Specifically, my Inbox
has almost always been empty or nearly so. Since the dawn of e-mail,
I've treated messages in my Inbox as to-do items, and I don't like to have
a lot of outstanding to do's. I can't understand how people can work
with gigantic inboxes, with thousands of messages, including many unread
messages (how do you know if you've missed something important?) From
a technical point of view. if you have 20,000 messages in your Inbox (you
know who you are) it's going to take longer to open it and do anything
with it. It's going to take longer to index the view, search it,
etc. In Lotus Notes, if I have to refresh or fixup your mail file
it's going to take a lot longer to open then next time.
From a productivity point of view, how
can you keep track of what you have read and what you still have to operate
on? For many years I tried to keep my Inbox as empty as possible.
If I got a message that I needed to deal with it stayed in my Inbox
until I responded or turned it into a real to do, or did whatever I needed
to do with it, after which the email either got deleted or filed into the
proper folder. I would usually end up with 10-20 messages just sitting
there, but sometimes I would get it down to empty.
Since last year, though, my Inbox is
almost always empty, thanks to David Allen's Getting
Things Done principles.
I'm not going to dive into all that here, and all the benefits you
can get, but in a nutshell, I now have four additional folders in my e-mail:
-@Action
-@Read-Review
-@Someday-Maybe
-@Waiting For
They're named that way so they sort
up at the top of my e-mail. It's pretty obvious what happens to my
incoming e-mail now. If I deal with it right away, no problem - it
gets filed in the correct client folder or wherever it belongs. If
I'm not going to deal with it immediately, it goes into one of the above
4 folders, usually into -@Action. All four are perused occasionally,
with -@Action getting the bulk of the attention. Sometimes when I
respond to someone I'll Send and File it into -@Waiting For so I remember
that I'm expecting a response to something important.
One of my favorite aspects of this method
(and really, I can't stress enough that I'm just scratching the surface
of Getting Things Done) is that I don't have to constantly see old
things in my Inbox that I am eventually going to need to deal with. Especially
when I'm away from my office and checking my e-mail via mobile phone, I
just don't need to see the old stuff. That alone has cut down on
a lot of work stress and has increased my productivity.
So next time you open your Inbox, ask
yourself, is what you're seeing there really what you want to see there?
Tags:
Hardware software
Over
this past week I adjusted 3 or 4 fairly new wide-screen monitors to their
proper resolution. I don't know how people don't see this, but all
of the screen resolutions were set incorrectly, so everything was fat and
short (much like how many people end up watching their fancy new wide-screen
TVs because they don't know how to set them up properly.) It's very
important to get the aspect ratio right. Further, LCD screens have
a native resolution where they're most happy. With these huge newer
screens, that resolution is often 1680x1050. If you can't seem to
set the correct resolution you may need to upgrade your graphics card driver.
But trust me, you'll be much happier when you have it set properly.
Tags:
Internet Software
I
think everyone has now heard of the Conficker virus that is out there.
How could you miss it, it's made a lot of main-stream media. Call
me crazy, but I suspect this is the next Y2K scare. The media needs
to be able to scare people into listening/reading/watching them, so they've
made a big deal of things. I suspect that come tomorrow... nothing
is going to happen. If I'm wrong though, this post may be the first
thing to go... :)
Tags:
Software
This
issue came up on the Frambors e-mail list lately when someone lost a bunch
of old data. People usually don't back up until it's too late, of
course, so now is the time to make sure you have a good backup. Copying
to CDs or Zips (remember those?) just isn't adequate. One, the hardware
can die, and two, the media can die. Those old CDs and DVDs aren't
going to be readable forever. They're also a pain to deal with. Finally,
what happens if your house or business burns down?
Off-site backup is the way to go and
there are some very simple ways to securely do it. My favorite is
Carbonite
for $55/year - unlimited, online backup. Install it and forget about
it - it doesn't get any easier (no, I don't have a stake in the company,
I just like them.) Your data is automagically, securely stored on
Carbonite's servers, ready to be reinstalled if necessary, simply by dragging
and dropping back onto your computer (or ordering a CD if you've had a
major blowup.)
The other option is using an external
hard drive, but that doesn't save you from a burning building. To
be really secure, get at least 2 hard drives. Keep one on your computer
and throw the other one in your car if you don't have any place else to
bring it. Swap them out every week. At least it's out of the
house/office and away from the computer which you are trying to protect.
There are a lot of backup programs out there but I like Acronis True
Image Workstation. Easy to use, and allows you to "mount"
a backup as an image - great for reinstalling a computer or recovering
a file.
Whatever you do, though - put a backup
plan in place NOW, not after you have a drive crash.
Tags:
Software
There
is a big conspiracy theory sweeping the Internet today about a Norton file
called pifts.exe that apparently is trying to access a server at Symantec.
Symantec has apparently quenched any debate about it in their forums,
which seems to have fanned the fires. Now, I've never been a big
fan of Symantec anyway - I much prefer AVG. I spend a lot of my time
uninstalling Norton, installing AVG, and cleaning up the mess that Norton
left behind. But if you are unfortunate enough to still be using
Norton, this big pifts.exe scare is probably nothing to really be worried
about. It looks like it probably is a routine part of Norton that
DOES "phone home" but doesn't look any more malicious than any
other Norton product.
Tags:
Software General
This
is going to be an ongoing topic, but hi, my name is Bill and I've been
perpetually unorganized. I just read David Allen's Getting
Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity,
though, and things are getting much better (wish I had found it back in
2001 when he wrote it though.) A few little tweaks (and some big
ones) and I've gotten a lot of things much more under control. I've
definitely taken the ideas to heart and am well on my way to becoming a
GTD evangelist. Hey, it may not be for everyone, but I've already
been doing a lot of things he suggests.
It's not all that intuitive (at least
not to me) though - sometimes you just have to try things to see how they'll
work. For example, I've always tried to keep my e-mail Inbox empty
(I can think of only 1 other client who does the same!) Usually there
are a handful of things in there that I need to deal with - no big deal,
right? Well, according to David Allen, IN should always be empty.
So lately anything that I'm not dealing with immediately gets moved
to my "-@Action" folder instead. Surprisingly, this goes
a long way toward reducing my e-mail stress and keeping things organized.
I still review -@Action frequently, but especially when I'm out and
checking e-mail via cell phone, it's really nice to see an empty Inbox.
This is just one subtle, minor tweak that goes a long way.
I'm updating my Good
Management System to incorporate
the GTD philosophies of managing Projects and Next Actions, too. The
GMS is the Lotus Notes system I use to track all of my contacts, calendar,
billing, invoices, etc. And now Next Actions. If you're interested
and you use Lotus Notes it's available for free on OpenNTF,
but there's an old version up there now. I'll release the latest
version with the GTD stuff in the next couple of weeks. Meanwhile,
I have to go file some stuff!
Tags:
Software
Time
to try Ubuntu
again, at the urging of my friend Shane.
Ubuntu is one of the popular flavors of Linux out there right now,
and aims to be a direct replacement for Windows with a graphical user interface
and lots of software. Oh, and it's all free, open source.
I have an older laptop that definitely
won't run Vista and barely runs XP - perfect hardware for Ubuntu (the other
option being the trash of course.) Ubuntu isn't quite as polished
as Windows, starting with the install, which didn't work for me. I
had to download and use the "alternate" installation with no
GUI. It did finally install though. Lots and lots of tweaks
later I sort of had it doing a lot of what I wanted it to do. It
comes with OpenOffice
already installed and I even loaded
up the latest Lotus
Notes 8.5 beta which now is native
Linux. Finally, I used VirtualBox
to install a virtual instance of Windows XP for any Windows programs I
have to run (more on that next.) I even am running VirtualBox in
"seemless" mode to sort of overlay Windows next to Ubuntu (the
Ubuntu bar is at the top of the screen, XP is at the bottom) but that doesn't
work as seemlessly as it should and it uses up too many resources (I have
only 1 GB of memory in this laptop.)
So what problems did I run into? First,
it's very different from Windows, so there's some frustration there. It's
not as easy to troubleshoot and configure and just is a little rough around
the edges sometimes (my wireless network card was a huge pain to make work
consistently.) I have three major dealbreakers, though. First,
Lotus Notes 8.5 for Linux does not include the Designer or Administrator
clients - that's a big problem. Second, LogMeIn, which I use for
remote access and client troubleshooting, doesn't work well. There
is a Linux client, but it's not nearly as full-featured as the Windows
version and is missing a couple of key things I need. Third, I've
been using Digsby
for instant
messaging lately and love it so
much that I don't want to go back to Pidgin, which is what I would have
to do on Ubuntu (it does come built in though.) OK, so that last
one isn't a huge deal, but it's enough.
I'll probably stick with Ubuntu for
a little while again (this isn't my first try at it) since I don't really
use that laptop very much. I'll probably still carry around my trusty
old, very light, Sony for client visits though. And I'm definitely
not ready to recommend Ubuntu to my clients to replace Windows. Yet.
Tags:
Internet Software
Instant
messaging has come a long way since its beginning. The focus today
is on IM clients. Today, people talk on one or more of several different
systems. The top three being AOL
(or AIM), Yahoo,
and Microsoft
(formerly MSN Messenger, Live Messenger, etc.) Google
Talk is also becoming more popular
as more people use Gmail.
So what do you do if you know people and want to communicate on all
these different systems? I used to run all the different programs
- I had 2 or 3 running in my task bar. What a pain, though. And
what if you have more than one account on each system, say one for business
and one for personal use?
A much better solution is to use a client
that can log into multiple services. There are several good programs
out there but I'm going to discuss only my 2 favorites. For many
years I used Pidgin
to log into 2 or 3 AOL accounts, 1 or 2 Yahoo accounts, an MSN account,
and a couple of private client IM systems (called OpenFire.)
Pidgin is great - lots of extra plug-ins, free, works on both Windows
and Linux, connects to about 16 different services. But the development
was starting to slow down and the application was getting a bit stale.
Enter one of the newer kids on the block,
Digsby.
Digsby is my new favorite. Very slick, current interface. It
connects to all the main IM services and can even check your e-mail (Pidgin
can do that too.) Digsby takes it a step further and can connect
to social networking sites as well (Facebook,
MySpace,
Twitter,
and LinkedIn)
updating you on new content there. Finally, the "killer
app" part for me - the Digsby
Widget, which allows me to embed a version of the Digsby client right here
on my blog. Look over in the right column and say hi if I'm around.
Tags:
Internet Software
Well,
I have officially switched back to Firefox
as my primary web browser. For now. I had been using
Google Chrome since early September
and I really liked a couple of the features, especially the ability to
move tabs out of and into windows, but I really missed the Adblock
Plus add-on I have with Firefox,
and Chrome just wasn't quite stable enough. Chrome also does not
integrate with Google
Bookmarks (how dumb is that?)
It was pretty good for a beta, but I had too many slow-downs with
videos and had a couple too many crashes. It also did not work with
LogMeIn,
a tool I use frequently for remote access to my clients. So for now
it's back to Firefox for the most part.
Tags:
Internet Software Security
Passwords
are important - they protect our e-mail, financial information, our files...
everything. But they're also a huge security hole. The problem
is there are just too many places that need passwords, so most people end
up doing one of two things - either you use the same password everywhere
(which is what most of my clients seem to do) or you write them down. There
are obvious problems with both methods of course. Also, while it
makes my job much easier, you really shouldn't be giving your passwords
to the computer guy.
There are a few fixes to this problem.
First, companies can try to simplify systems instead of complicating
them. I have one large client where I'm forced to keep track of at
least 7 passwords to various systems I need to use there (and then 5 more
Lotus Notes test IDs.) None of the passwords are synchronized with
each other, all have various schemes of complexity required, and some need
to be changed every so often. It's really hard to keep track of all
that so, yes, I wrote them down (gasp) on a sticky. At least I kind
of hid the sticky note.
From the user side of things I have
2 recommendations. One option is to use "password safe"
software where you can record your passwords. I use a database in
Lotus Notes but there are lots of free programs out there that do this.
Of course you need to use a good password to protect your password
safe!
Another option which may be even simpler
is to devise a methodology for creating passwords or passphrases. One
of the easiest, yet still secure, methods is to use the first letter of
each word in a phrase you will remember. How about "This is
my online banking password which I created on 9/22/08"? Or Timobpwico92208?
It's relatively unlikely that anyone will figure out what that means
or where it came from, yet it's still pretty easy to remember. For
more secure passwords you can mix in special characters too. The
best, most secure passwords are a long strings of nonsense characters with
numbers and special characters mixed in but they're not much good to you
if they're so complicated that you forget them or you have to write them
down to remember.
How do you handle YOUR passwords?
Tags:
Internet Software
One
of the great things about Firefox
is the multitude of add-ons
you can download for it. My favorite new add-on is Adblock
Plus. As I've been playing
around with Google Chrome and comparing it to Firefox and Internet Explorer
I found I REALLY miss the Adblock add-on on everything except Firefox.
Adblock does a fantastic job of filtering out all those annoying
banner ads and flashing graphics you run into on various websites and forums,
making your browsing experience much better. Some websites, such
as Howard
Forums (for cell phones) have
really intrusive ads all over the place. Adblock will also filter
out annoying signatures - some people have signatures that are longer than
the posts they make! There's one poster I run into all the time who
has a very large, very annoying flashing graphic in his signature that
is like nails on a chalkboard. Or at least he used to, until Adblock
took care of it for me. If you use Firefox, Adblock
Plus is a must-have.
Tags:
Internet Software
Several
CSS and LotusScript problems later and everything on the blog seems to
be working again. But please let me know if you spot something odd
or broken (thanks, Tom, for spotting that last item.) And now back
to blogging about more interesting things than just my blog. 
Tags:
Software
ARGH!
I've been messing with my blog for the last couple of days and apparently
just broke something to do with the CSS. But it's not as easy as
it sounds to track down because I'm using Blogsphere in Lotus Notes and
it's not your usual cup o' tea. That and my wife just said that dinner
is ready! I ain't saying what I broke, but it's pretty obvious in
one of the top browsers. The question is what did I break and when
did I do it?? Grrr... I'll be back at it later.
Tags:
Software Internet
I've
been a Lotus Notes BlogSphere
fan for a couple of years now, but the project seems to have slowed down
(which is a nice way of saying that it seems to have died out) - no new
updates since March. On the other hand, the latest version of Domino
Blog from IBM appears to be pretty robust. On the other hand, I already
have this all set up and, really, does anyone except me really care? I
don't think so.
Tags:
Software Internet
The
majority of Windows computer users use Microsoft Internet Explorer to browse
the web. Most people should be updated to IE7 by now, but I still
see a lot of IE6 out there unfortunately. Mozilla Firefox is the
next most popular browser but still doesn't make much of a dent since IE
comes included with Windows. Typically people using Firefox are more
tech-savvy. As for me, I've been using Firefox lately simply because
IE7 sort of broke and I never got around to fixing it.
But now there's yet another choice -
Google
Chrome. Well there are other
choices besides that, too, but given that this is GOOGLE I think there's
a better chance that this will rocket up to 3rd place pretty quickly. Choice
is good, but do we REALLY need another browser? Probably not, although
it does have some interesting features, including my favorite - being able
to pull tabs out into a fresh window (or even bring them over to another
already open window.) It's painless to check out, although I'm not
sure that it really is all that necessary at the moment and it does not
have any of the extensions that Firefox has.
Tags:
Software
Software
goes through various phases of testing, believe it or not. It seems
like there are always bugs in everything lately but that's partly because
software is SO complicated now, and testing is so difficult. I http://blog.goodcomputerguy.com/goodblog.nsf/d6plinks/BGRG-6ZRGQB"
title="posted">posted a while back about the open
source software I just released. Unfortunately that's no different
- I'm still finding and fixing bugs. At least I don't get angry e-mails
from people who are mad that they paid for buggy software - it's hard to
complain about something you get for free, although they still do!
Anyway, I'm looking for beta testers
for a new website that I'm developing (that's the testing phase right before
it's released to the general public.) If you're interested in helping
me out or know anyone who you think may be interested, especially people
who are single, actually, please let me know, either by e-mail or just
leave a comment here.
Tags:
Software General
Last
year I started to learn Portuguese (don't worry - this ties into computers.)
Before that my only foreign language experience was highschool French,
which has been less than useful. But it's the new millenium, there's
lots of new technology, and I'm more motivated now. I started by
finding various websites with lessons, some better than others. Some
of the better ones even has short recordings so I could hear what the words
were supposed to sound like (oddly, nothing at all like how they sounded
when I tried them!)
Eventually I moved on to Rosetta
Stone, which is one of the better
known (and very expensive) programs available for learning a foreign language.
You can find Rosetta Stone kiosks in many malls or download a sample
lesson from the website and give it a try. The interesting thing
about Rosetta Stone is that you don't learn to translate. Instead,
it's all done with pictures. So instead of learning that "cachorro"
means "dog" you see a picture of a dog and learn to associate
it with "cachorro." Rosetta Stone has many different types
of lessons and drills so you learn to read, write, listen, and speak.
But it wasn't quite fast enough for
me. I had just a few months to prepare for a trip to Brazil and was
hoping to attain at least enough basic Portuguese to follow a bit of conversation.
So I turned to Pimsleur.
This audio-only course was a very different approach, but it worked
better for me and my immediate goals. I ripped the CDs to MP3 files
and put them on my iPod so I could listen in the car or wherever I happened
to be. With Pimsleur, you listen to 2 native speakers, a man and
a woman, and repeat what they're saying after a teacher explains in English.
The lessons are 30 minutes each and repeate a lot from previous lessons.
They suggest doing no more than 1 lesson per day and moving on when
you get about 80% correct. That meant that some days I'd listen to
the same lesson 3 or 4 times.
The Pimsleur method works, to a degree.
You very quickly learn important phrases with proper pronounciation,
with none of the problems with looking at written words and trying to sound
them out like an American would think they should sound. By the third
lesson I had learned some of the most important phrases - how to order
a beer and ask where the bathroom is. The most interesting part was
when I realized that I had learned to conjugate regular verbs without even
realizing it. This is similar to how kids learn to speak - by hearing
and repeating phrases. Kids don't learn how to conjugate verbs -
they learn it organically. The conversations that I learned were
mostly relevant to what I would be hearing and talking about so they were
much more interesting than going through Rosetta or taking highschool French.
So how did the trip turn out in the
end? Well, thankfully my wife is bilingual and I didn't stray far
from her! But I'm still working on it, and I hope that when we go
back in December I won't again be the only one in the room not laughing
when someone tells a joke. What has worked for you to learn a foreign
language?
Tags:
Technical Software Internet
AOL
paved the way for easy dial-up Internet access years ago, making it easy
for newbies to get online with a minimum of fuss. AOL isn't quite
as useful any more with the prevalence of high-speed Internet access, but
many people are still hanging onto it, often because they don't want to
change e-mail addresses. Well, if you have an alternate means of
connecting to the Internet but are still paying for AOL, several months
ago they quietly started a new, free service. You need to call AOL
(and everyone knows how easy they make THAT) to request the change to free
service, but if you aren't using it for dial-up Internet access you have
nothing to lose but the monthly fee, which you're already paying to the
cable or DSL company.
Tags:
General Software
Argh
- everyone knows I'm a PC fan, not a Mac guy. But have you seen that
PC vs Mac - Vista Security commercial? If you haven't, you can see
it on YouTube here.
It's available on the Apple website, too, but ironically I couldn't
get it to work. It's funny in a sad kind of way, mainly because it's
so true! Unfortunately this is where we're all heading as it is difficult
now to actually buy a new PC without Vista. It's too bad - things
are getting more complicated when they should be getting simpler. Yes,
I'm bitter after yet another afternoon of struggling with another new Vista
computer... Coming soon to a desktop near you!
Tags:
Software
Everyone
has heard me talking about Open Source software - I'm a big fan of it.
But what does it really mean, besides "free software" (which
can also be something else)? The Open
Source Initiative defines open
source software as (don't let me lose you here) "a development method
for software that harnesses the power of distributed peer review and transparency
of process. The promise of open source is better quality, higher reliability,
more flexibility, lower cost, and an end to predatory vendor lock-in."
Whew. In plain English, open source software is released
along with its "source code" so that anyone can look at how it's
written and even make changes and improvements. I like open source
because, besides being free, I often find the software really is higher
quality than the paid stuff. And the support is usually from well-qualified
people posting on online forums, which is vastly superior to trying to
call (and pay for!) tech support from a big company.
What you're reading right now is a great
example of open source software. This blog, as I mentioned a while
back, is written in BlogSphere, an open source blog for Lotus Notes from
OpenNTF.org,
an open source community for Lotus Notes applications. If you have
sent me e-mail sometime in the last year or so it has made it's way through
ASSP,
a fantastic open source server-based anti-spam solution. An interesting
free alternative to the very pricey Microsoft Office is OpenOffice.org.
Finally, if you have called me in the last year you've heard one
of my favorite open source applications, Trixbox,
an unbelievable, yet free and open, phone system. Thankfully all
of the above applications have terrific online communities, because they're
not always the easiest to set up initially, especially ASSP and Trixbox.
As far as free software goes, there
are great free alternatives that aren't necessarily open source. If
you are one of my home clients chances are you're using free anti-virus
and spyware protection software that is better than what a lot of people
pay for. For remote support you're using a mostly open source solution
that allows me to access your computers remotely to help you out.
The open source community is give and
take, too. I recently published a Lotus Notes based contact relationship
management application called (what else?) the Good Management System.
It is available on OpenNTF.org,
free for the taking.
Tags:
Technical Software
Have
you updated to Internet Explorer 7 yet? IE7 is pretty similar to
IE6 although the interface (how it looks) is a bit different and there
is one major improvement. IE7 is an optional update that should have
come through Automatic Update as a download, but it won't automatically
install on your computer. Eventually you're going to have to update
so you might as well go ahead and get it over with now (or let me know
and I can do it at your next Quarterly Checkup if you're on the plan.)
The first thing you may notice is that
the menu bar is much smaller and down at the bottom of the top section.
You probably won't even use it very much. There's also a new
search field up at the top. I have mine set to Google, but there
are several other options. In fact, if you're still using the Google
Toolbar you can now uninstall that and reclaim some screen real estate
since you have easy access to Google built right in.
The biggest change is the new tab interface.
This means you can have multiple IE pages open in the same IE window.
You can also set IE up to work in a couple different ways with the
tabs, such as opening new pages in a new tab or opening in a new window.
Sound confusing? Just try it out - it makes sense after you've
used it a bit and it can make browsing multiple pages much easier.
The other item that may confuse you
at first is bookmarks, or Favorites. Where did they go? They're
actually still right in front of you. See the yellow star over to
the right? That brings up your Favorites. To add a new page
(such as this one) just click the green "+" next to the star,
then click "Add to Favorites..." (you'll see in there that you
can also hit CTRL-D.)
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