Category Archives: Tech

At An Event Apart

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Attending “An Event Apart” on web design. A little out of my element here as most attendees are web designers. Just listened to Jeffery Zeldman on Responsive Web Design and Content First. This can REALLY be seen in our intranet. While we don’t have to worry about normal ads, we still have to be aware of extraneous links. Later on day 2 and 3 there will be sessions on mobile development, albeit about web sites on mobile devices. Still, there is overlap between designing web sites and web applications.

Too bad the web team from work couldn’t make it, they would have gotten more out of this event than what they stayed behind for.

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Only 4 days till Lotusphere 2010

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So I’m getting antsy to get down to Orlando.  As much to start the geekfest of Lotusphere as to also get in some warm weather.  It looks like the freeze in Florida is about over and the temps will be in the 70 to 75 degree range during the conference.  This will be my first year staying at the Dolphin.  I’m not sure what to expect being closer to the action, although I’ve been at the Boardwalk Villas the last 7 years, so I wasn’t THAT far away.  It should be nice to just drop down for breakfast in the morning.  I’ll miss the free internet though.  I don’t think that the wireless will make it all the way up to a room, so I’ll have to hit one of the wi-fi spots downstairs for updating the iPod Touch apps and such.  Staying at the Boardwalk Villas as a DVC member allowed me free internet access.  Very nice.

So I bought a Belkin surge protector, the same one that Rockey Oliver reviewed in his blog .  Allows me to forego the charger for my phone and iPod, as well as providing 3 protected outlets for laptops and battery charger.  I also bought two 6-outlet powerstrips to share the all too scarce outlets in the session rooms.  It’s always a hunt for the floor outlets and they now police the sessions to yank anyone’s charger out of the wall outlets.

My session planning is done (well, as much as it can be ahead of time).  I can access my schedule from a mobile device, or without connectivity, I’ve downloaded and imported the .ics calendar file into my work Notes calendar.  I’ll have both my personal BlackBerry and my bank BlackBerry with me.  I only have data on my bank BB.  And my personal BB has all my personal email access.  In addition, I loaded my schedule on my iPod Touch.  Of course, since it’s a personal device, there could be no synching with bank system.  And since iTunes will only sync with Outlook, I had to *gasp* use Outlook to import the .ics file and then synch to the Touch.  The Touch DOES present the schedule the nicest of all the devices.  The only problem is I can’t change the schedule now unless I go through the whole process again, and my personal laptop has Notes 8.5.1 running on Ubuntu.  So I’ll really have to use the browser in one of the devices to access the Lotusphere Online schedule if I want to have the current schedule and make changes to it real time.

So . . . power access – CHECK.  Confusing scheduling options – CHECK.  ScottEVest jacket  to carry all this stuff – CHECK. Owner’s Locker scheduled for delivery – CHECK.  Too many receptions and such to attend – YEP.  I’m gonna need a vacation from this conference for sure.

RIP meePod

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My iPod finally quit working.  I mean, tried restoring, then putting just a couple songs on.  I could see them, but it wouldn’t play them.  Then the next time I turned it on, it said it needed to be reformatted.  It’s been getting flaky, sometimes needing a good tap to get the disk going again.  It was a nice 60GB Photo iPod, about 4 years old I guess.  SO . . .

I bought a refurbished iPod Touch 32GB First Generation from the Apple store.  Paid for the extended warranty and overnight shipping (only $16).  Should be waiting for me when I get home today.  Unfortunately, most of the songs I had on the old iPod are on a computer that went belly up.  So I have to pull the disk from the old computer and put it in the working computer and then import all those songs over without messing up any songs that are already on the working computer.  I don’t want any duplicates.  I’m not sure how to go about it.  Maybe I’ll just work slowly. Re-rip the CDs that I know I’m missing and then move over some that I know I no longer have on CD.  Looks like it’s time to search the internet.  I KNOW I’m not the first one that’s run into this situation.