Category — Productivity

I got this tip from my co-worker  who is the company guinea pig for our Vista deployment.  Ever feel like you don’t have as much real estate with Vista?  It’s partly because the window borders (a/k/a chrome) are obnoxiously think by default when you’re running the Aero interface. Try this tip.  Open the Personalization Screen by right-clicking the desktop and choosing “Personalize”:

Click on Window Colors and Appearance: 

On this window, you can tweak colors and transparency (he says he hates the transparency and turns it off, I don’t mind it), but we’re going deeper.  Click on the “Open classic appearance properties for more color options” link:

We’re still heading deeper, click “Advanced…”

We’ve arrived!  Under the item drop down, select “Border Padding” and set the size down from 4 to 1.  I also shrank my title bar and menus down from 19 to 17.  Keep in mind, you’re not changing the font size, so don’t think you’re going to be squinting. Were just putting some of the chrome on a diet.

Ok yourself out of the dialog box hell and you’re done.  Windows feel a bit more trim under this setting and I definitely feel like I’ve got more usable screen real estate.  Give it a shot and tell me what you think

As I mentioned last week, I upgraded my Samsung Blackjack to Windows Mobile 6.  I wasn’t one of those people itching for this upgrade.  I was pretty happy with the phone as-is(was?) Casually browsing different forums you’d see various people lambasting AT&T for delaying the release of the Windows Mobile 6 upgrade for the Samsung i607, better know as the Blackjack. Nonetheless, a co-worker mentioned it was available and I jumped in feet first.

So far the coolest feature is the key shortcuts in email. I don’t know how I stumbled across them, but if you are looking at the main list of your emails or messages, hold down the zero key.  Up will pop up a list of key shortcuts for acting on your emails:

0 - List Shortcuts
1 - Reply All
2 - Reply
3 - Mark Read/Unread
4 - Flag
5 - Move
6 - Forward
7 - Delete
8 - Download Message
9 - Send/Receive

I mainly triage email on my phone. Generally, I’ll read the email, and if I only need it for future reference, I’ll file it away in a folder.  Now, I hold down “5″ and the folder list comes up, I pick the folder and I’m done. Doesn’t save a ton, I could hit menu, 4, but it is one less keystroke.

In addition to getting my corporate e-mail over the Exchange ActiveSync connection, I get email from two IMAP accounts I have (one for this domain, one for my photography business) . Since I’ve yet to figure out how to get it to check those mailboxes on the same schedule as ActiveSync, I check them manually (it took two nights in a row of getting a new email notices at 3am before I knew I had to stop that in order to stay married.) Pressing and holding “9″ kicks off the send receive and I’m in fresh mail business.

I have no idea if this shortcut list was there in prior version.  I’ve been using some version of Windows Mobile for Smartphone for about four years now and don’t remember it.  Nonetheless, it does make life a little easier.

While the Holidays were nice, it is nice to try and settle back into a routine, or at least have the prospect of doing so. I know the time for reflecting on the past year is supposed to take place in December, but I’ve been pretty much offline since before Christmas, so I’m a bit late.

Last Year’s Resolutions

Looking back to my list from last year, I hit 50% of my goals.  I ran in not one, but two marathons, and finished one of them.  I also managed to post a whole lot more here in one year than I did in the whole time I had my blog on MSDN. I hit somewhere over 200 posts last year (I’m too lazy to count), but still don’t really have a direction for the blog, which still suits me fine for the time being. (I looked the other day and they finally shut me out of my MSDN site.  Up until about July I still had edit access. )

Where did I miss?  I only read maybe two works of fiction last year - Angels and Demons as I mentioned in my post, and The Hobbit.  So much else  took my attention that I’m not sad I didn’t meet this goal. 

I also didn’t update my MCSD.  This goal was probably a result of my Koolaid hangover from working at Microsoft so long.  While I did do quite a bit of actual software development (my primary reason for leaving), I also opened my eyes to the world outside of Microsoft.  While I’m still focused on ASP.NET development, I’ve dabbled a bit in PHP, mainly in helping to maintain WMSE.org.

What About This Year

Toward the end of last year, I read a great post by Christine Kane on a better way to set goals for the New Year.  I don’t know where along the way I added her to my Google Reader feedlist, but she doesn’t write that often and when she does it’s usually insightful, so she’s stayed through a lot of the purging that I do when I find myself dedicating to much time to reading RSS feeds.

Christine points out that typical New Year’s resolutions have  a DO-HAVE-BE model, “I will DO this thing. So I can HAVE this thing and I can BE this thing.” She turns it on its head and says to start at BE.  Pick one word to guide you through the year and let your actions come from that.

So I’m choosing the word “healthy.”  If I got to pick two words, the second would probably be “balance” but that would be partly in support of the first.  While I ran a ton last year, and got in pretty good shape from it, I think it was at the expense of a lot of other healthy routines I had.  Plus, since the marathon, I’ve been running a lot less (”a lot less” meaning zero.)  Hopefully I can strike a balance and improve my health this year, both mental and physical.

Photography

One thing I thought was my list last year but isn’t, was to make some money with my camera.  I did manage to do that.  In September I got the first five star rating from the Popular Photography editors on their PopPhoto Flash blog and my image made it into a web exclusive article. Sadly, that didn’t net me any money, but it did give me some confidence to become a professional photographer, at least part-time.

While I haven’t sold any of my stock photography yet, I did do several portrait sessions and sold some prints.  Below are some shots from that:

I’m going to keep at the photography, too.  Try as I might, I can’t bend “healthy” into that endeavor, but do have one straight-up New Year’s resolution.  I’m going to take at least one picture everyday for the whole year and post it up for critique.  Not an original by far, but one that sounds challenging.  I haven’t figured out where I’m going to host the project, maybe Flickr, maybe here.  I’ve got my shot for yesterday, and will get my shot for today. 

Once I have a home for the project, I’ll put up a link here.

Thanks for sticking with me on this huge post.  It grew bigger than I planned.  Thanks also for stopping by my site.  Feedburner still tells me I’ve got dozens of subscribers, and the logs say I still get a fair amount of traffic on the site itself.

I hope you all stick around to see what this year brings.

I don’t get this.  Apple seems to be constantly updating iTunes, which I understand they must do for various reasons including updates to fix FairPlay exploits - but why do I have to download the whole freakin’ thing each time.  I got the update this morning about iTunes 7.5, when I clicked yes, it kicked off a 61MB download.  Seriously, WTF? Every update I’ve seen has been north of 50MB. Has Apple never heard of modular code?  Complain about Microsoft all you want and how there is an endless stream of security patches. At least I don’t have to download a whole new version of the software every time.

Oh yeah, that’s right.  Apple does no wrong.

Over on Writer Zone, they make it official - Windows Live Write is out of Beta and is now Windows Live Writer 2008 (even after making fun of themselves, Microsoft continues with the lame product names.)

Dumb name aside, if you have a blog and are running Windows, this tool make it dead simple to post.  There is also a pretty good plugin community out there - I use the Flickr plugin a lot as well as a code formating plugin (which I don’t seem to be using as much these days.)

So I find out the other day from my co-worker that iRobot has a new home robot - the IKEA name sounding Looj (all that’s missing in an umlaut).  This thing is designed to run in your gutter and clean all the leaves out. Given we have a pretty big problem on the front side of our house, this thing looked perfect!  We have a Roomba already and the build quality is really good, so I’m assuming the Looj will be a good product too.

So what’s the problem?  No sooner did I order one do I get a notice they are backordered!  Worse off there is no ETA on when they will be in stock. If you are going to tell me you’re out of something, have the common courtesy to tell me when you might have more.  Even if its not a hard date say something like, "We expect them to be in stock on 10/25, but that date is subject to change."

What I really want to know if if I’m going to have to clean my gutters like an animal this fall, or if my robot servant will be doing my bidding before winter comes around.

I’ll probably be in the market for some new external storage soon.  After adopting the photo workflow from The DAM Book (I can’t recommend this book enough if you are the least bit serious about photography, it’s the best workflow I’ve seen so far) coupled with the fact I’m shooting exclusively in RAW the second hard drive in my laptop is almost full of photos.  Today is see that a terabyte of data can be had for about $400.  Incredible.  I’ve always thought that was a lot, but according to Web Worker Daily, Microsoft Research says that is enough storage to archive audio of every conversation you have in your life.  Crazy.

I remember not too long ago when 1TB broke the $1000 mark.  I guess I missed it break the $500 mark.  I don’t know if I need quite that much storage for a photo archive, but I may pick up a second drive to have as an offsite backup (and put the free safe deposit box we get to good use). Since photos carry quite a bit of personal value for me, and as my photography business expands - there is some serious monetary value in those images now as well.  Time to get a serious backup plan in place.

So after almost three years, I got myself a new phone - my brand spankin’ new Samsung Blackjack arrived last night (I just looked, I got the old phone in October of 2004).  So far, I can’t get the Bluetooth to pair with my Acura TL’s Hands Free Link.  According to Acura, it may not be compatible, but I’m not buying it.  My old Audiovox 5600 wasn’t on that list either and it worked like a champ.

[No, I didn't rush out to get the iPhone. No matter how sexy, I couldn't justify the cost.  The Blackjack cost me less than $100 and does all I'd use the iPhone for to boot.]

I’d pretty much been wanting one for a while, but Microsoft bought me exactly one phone in the six and a half years I was there (even though they required me to carry one) and I left right when they were looking like they were going to buy me another.  Forced foot the bill for myself, I was a little hesitant.  I was also on a rate plan I didn’t need anymore - I don’t talk on the phone as much as  I used to.  Switching rate plans required a new two-year agreement, so I figured if I was going to have to sign a new agreement, I might as well get a new phone out of the deal.

So far, I like the form factor.  I forgot the specialized data cable at home, so setting the thing up all the way will have to wait. I do have it doing POP3 email for my photography address just fine. I also ordered a memory card for the thing so I can puts some apps on it (like Live Search, Google Maps, and after reading Omar Shahine’s take on doing GTD with it - Smarter Tasks).  With the Audiovox, installing apps really required a memory card otherwise you’d kill the performance of the phone.  I’m sure WM5 and Samsung have address some of that, but better safe then sorry.  Given I paid $70 for the 1G mini-SD for the 5600, the $24 for the micro SD card seems like a steal.

Got a can’t live without app for a Windows Smartphone?  Let me know.

When we moved to our new place a few years back, we inheirted the existing fridge.  It’s old, the ice maker doesn’t work, but the front of it is acrylic (or plastic or something).  The best part - magnets don’t stick to it. Not that I’m against showing off the kids latest creations,  it just is one less source of visual clutter in the kitchen.

I’m still catching up on my newsfeeds from vacation time (Google Reader still says I have 100+ left), but came across a post on Unclutterer that extols the same notion: Unclutterer: Try giving your refrigerator a facelift. I like their suggestion on finding a new place for the kids artwork. We’re contemplating a minor face lift to the kitchen (some paint and probably new cabinet hardware) and might work in the frame idea in.

Dell announced you can order their computers (sort of) crapware free by selecting “no software preinstalled.”  You still get AV software and crapware from Google, but they seem to be getting it.  Now only if HP would follow suit (though I think I’ve finally got everything off mine.)