As is the custom, I thought I'd write down a few of my own personal resolutions (computer/IT related, of course) to serve as both inspiration and information:
Use less electricity - not just for the green reason, but also for the bottom line in the electricity bill, which does me no favours either. I'm going to try and switch things off when I'm not using them, and I'm going to get out of the habit of leaving phone and laptop chargers on when I don't need them.
Dispose of old equipment - after the recent consolidation, plus efforts earlier last year, I have a considerable amount of equipment just lying around. It all works, which means I need to find good homes for it all, either by selling it on eBay, or by donating it to someone who could use it.
There's a wonderful little article at the Globe and Mail (Why online should be off limits in the bedroom) about how laptops should be kept out of the bed. The article talks about some more personal reasons why not using your laptop in the bedroom is a good idea, but frankly I think there are some more sensible reasons.
First up, I think it's rude. Reading is a comparatively silent activity, and generally non-intrusive, but using a laptop is far from silent, and there's always the temptation to download a movie or watch a video short. Your partner may want to sleep and using a notebook is probably not going to help.
The happiest of holidays to all my readers. Like many, I'm sure, I got many wonderful things yesterday, including the Complete Far Side, the collection of Far Side cartoons which is so exquisitely packaged it has to be seen to be believed, and more importantly touched. You feel a certain sort of reverence reading the book that I haven't felt since examining a book of log tables from the turn of the century.
However, I've found a far more fascinating source of amusement in the form of a DVD I bought my wife. The IT Crowd, a sitcom about the IT department in a company is fantastic. We've seen it before of course - it was broadcast earlier this year - but it's not the content of the episodes that is so great. It's the DVD menus and subtitles.
It's been quiet at the virtual office this week - nearly everybody has taken vacation for not only next week, but also this, often because they haven't taken enough vacation days earlier in the year. I have to admit that it's been great. No meetings, no interruptions, and no distractions from my team mates asking me questions. In short, all of the distractions have gone and I've been able to commit myself to some complex tasks that required a cool and level head.
This is a bit of an extreme method for eliminating distractions, and obviously not something I have control over. During my normal day, I try not to hang around too much on IM services, or Skype, and I don't answer the phone unless I recognize the number. There are plenty of other potential distractions - working from home means that people still come to the door. At least the cats have finally learnt that during the day I'm busy and shouldn't be bugged. Too much.
Today I've been clearing up the office, finishing up some of the final touches in terms of removing power supplies and things I don't need (to save those precious watts and lower the electricity bill while helping the environment) and clearing out some old equipment I haven't used in weeks or months.
The list of removed items looks like a list of the last few generations of technology:
A VCR - it hasn't actually been used as a VCR for years, I've been using it as an input switching device between the digital TV box, DVD player and XBox on one of the TVs in the office.
A Minidisc player - I loved minidisc, and I still do love the concept, but I moved all of my audio to MP3s and AAC months, perhaps now years ago. I will miss the tiny discs, but not the space they or the player occupied.
OS X Server has been my preferred server platform for the last few years. It provides all of the functionality I need: unified directory, DNS, DHCP, email service, database server, file serving (over NFS, AFP and SMB), web server and a few others I'm sure I've forgotten. There's also a very cool administration toolset.
Although the article goes on to include an admission by the police that probably nothing could be done even if the banks reported the issues, the approach seems to lack the care of attention you would expect from companies that deal with billions of pounds of customer money. I'd rather the issue was reported and the police decided to ignore it, than have the banks decide the reporting is unimportant.
Through a combination of the seasons and the generally low price of machinery at the moment, fast and capable computers can be purchased for comparatively little money at the moment. Here in the UK, for example, are numerous examples of desktop machines that come in, with monitors, at less than 400 UK pounds (about $800).
At the rate that prices on these are falling, I fully expect to see free machines falling out of the box with my morning cereal. It is worth remembering though that while the equipment is comparatively cheap to purchase, the running costs can be the same, and often higher, than the last PC you bought. With energy prices rising, lowering your running costs can make a big difference to the real cost of your machine, because those running costs might turn out to be higher than the capital cost of the hardware.
As I mentioned just shortly before its release, Christmas is coming up and many kids (and their parents) will be hoping for Gears of War in their stockings.
Before it was released there was a huge amount of hype about the game, its visuals and gameplay. Having now been playing it for a couple of weeks, I thought it worth passing on some of my experiences so you can decide whether GoW is worth playing.
First, the good stuff:
Visuals are gorgeous. There's no denying that the work done to produce the superb visuals in the game is all worth it. (Although see my counter comments below)