Cut Off

Readers of this blog are knowledgeable community. Remember, I was looking at the sky one day and noticed skywriting but could not make out the intent? I was surprised to see quick and well informed response. How about this one - looking up in Melbourne City, we're seeing lots of stars

From Spring in Melbourne

and Cut-Offs. I get the stars, but what are the Cut-Offs?

What purpose do they serve, pray tell....

Posted by Anandasim at 07:15 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)

WEC getting you down?

There's some doom and gloom about the world's economic crisis. It isn't all bad. There're big fish with cash reserves waiting to pounce on the little ones (yes, I know, mixed metaphor...) . Or little piranhas waiting for a chance at a big un with no reserves.

People are predicting that major brands will collapse - the automotive industry is hoping to or getting bailed out depending on which country you're in. There will be a thinning of well known camera brands says Thom - of course, he's not using the brand that's gonna thin out.

If you're steering the ship though (yes I know, what is it, with these metaphors), it's crucial to make the decision whether to soldier on with a grand project or to discard it as non core business. You can over worry about it and make the wrong decision, or you could flip a coin.

We live in interesting times.

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Posted by Anandasim at 06:50 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

That pesky Windows autorun dialog for removable media

I have long detested the Windows autorun dialog which opens up when you insert removable media into the machine. The autorun feature has been heavily leveraged by all and sundry. The infamous Sony rootkit fiasco used that, respectables like Adobe love to give you some starter PhotoAlbum as a rider to some download you want and from then on, autorun offers to do additional things to every USB flash you insert. Whiz! Autorun for CDs is also famous for interfering with early attempts at CD / DVD burning and device useage contention in virtual machines.

The breaking point came for me when my precious USB stick got infected by virus/malware, promising to spread to my own Windows machines. Since that time, I have switched off all autorun on all drives on the computers I use. Which isn't a big problem for me, I prefer to explicitly run Herr Ghisler's Total Commander to see what's what.

The other day, I spotted DeskDrive from one of my RSS feeds. It's a little app, it only does It's still early days in my use but this little app is really giving me a wow! experience. It dynamically puts drive icons on your Windows desktop (and removes them when they are disconnected). That's all it does.

I remember a colleague who wanted to dominate the corporate LAN. He would create drive icon shortcuts to all the LAN drives for staff machines. I asked him what would happen to those notebooks or even desktops where staff routinely forget whether they are logged on or not. If they were not logged on or attached, those drive icons would be irrelevant and confuse the very people they were supposed to help. He gave me one of those withering stares. And for the next few years, Helpdesk had to patiently explain that even though the drive icon was there, the drive might not be there, if LAN connection had been terminated, if they were not logged in or if they were plainly at home.

Part of the charm of Deskdrive is the developer. He's hit what many of us in the software industry hit often - adding a feature or resolving a bug creates new ones..... But there's "moment of truth" from him and that's always precious in this world where the author of the program is insulated from the end users by other corporate divisions. To the extent that Microsoft had a WYSYP campaign

Oh, one disclaimer - some corporates and relationships really want you to have your autorun untampered with, and working. In which case, you didn't hear this from me.

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Posted by Anandasim at 01:19 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)

Microsoft reaches for the Cloud

I don't think Charles as particularly referring to Microsoft when he referred to Computing in the Cloud. With Bill Gates now sitting in the back benches with Jerry Seinfeld, I guess time for Ray Ozzie to justify his Chief Architect title. Will Ballmer reprise his "Developers, Developers, Developers" cheerlead? See Microsoft's Power to Developers on November 6th

Posted by Anandasim at 01:18 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Continuing the Computer History theme

One of my RSS feeds gave me this Steve Jobs 1991 NEXT gem - presenting at a wyteboard, distinctive black jumper and jeans but a lot younger. Strong emphatic speaker and delivery. No Keynote or Powerpoint aid. A good one to show and tell at my next Powerpoint class. BTW, the competitors and machines he talks about? They're history.

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Posted by Anandasim at 03:42 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

The Monash Computer Musuem

I don't normally drop by Monash University, Caulfield Campus. Today, I did and happened to chance by the Monash Museum of Computing History. It's open 9-5, weekdays, no one around, just students passing by the glass cases on the way to their assignments and classes. I didn't know it was there or that my friend, Stephen Dart, had donated his Vax to the display (how on earth would Stephen keep a Vax at home?)

Having a look at the exhibits brings back lots of memories of my undergraduate days and the early part of my working career. You'll find classics like the Apple ][ and the IBM PC, revel at the really little CRT of the Osborne (I think the LCD displays of these new point and shoot digicams have even more resolution and are bigger). The Lisa is there, the DEC line printer that produced those FOOBAR printouts of my 20 line FORTRAN programs.

Of course, there is the venerable Ferranti Sirius, part of an IBM 370. You gotta have a look - it's free.

Posted by Anandasim at 07:39 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

Looking into an LCD

LCD monitors have become quite a screen revolution since forum members discussed them ages ago. Most self respecting office environments are keen to recover some writing space on the desk by ditching the deep 17" CRTs in favour of the shallower frontage 19" LCDs. With them, come also green power savings and the ability, for us nerds to run two screens. I once tried to explain the productivity increase in driving two screens - she could run Remote Desktop Connection to a work machine on one and check her local Outlook email in the other. It was quite a moment for her, she was very sweet but conservative in her tastes - not sure if she did take up the idea.

We're at the stage now, where people are buying the second round (or later) of LCD screens. The well informed consumer is now more able to define desirable characteristics of these screens and the screens themselves have got better.

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Posted by Anandasim at 11:33 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

CDOs for the rest of us

Frankly, I'm not one of those economically literate folks, regardless of how much I listen to my accountant friends or listen to the ABC interviews about the state of the world economy. I thought CDO stood for Microsoft's Collaboration Data Object - how was I to know it stands for Collateralized Debt Obligations. People say IT terms are opaque and terminology a mouthful. What do you call these CDOs?

Fortunately, Paddy has got a wyteboard video presentation to inform.

Posted by Anandasim at 07:08 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

State Library of NSW now on Flickr

The State Library of New South Wales are now using Flickr and more specifically the Flickr Commons which deals with photographs that have 'no known copyright restrictions'. With the announcement on the Flick Blog who could be better to announce it other than our Aussie at Flickr George Oates. This puts the State Library of New South Wales as the 2nd Australian site of only 10 participants in the Flickr Commons thus far along with the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney and to sit along side the likes of the Smithsonian and US Library of Congress is great to see and here's hoping many more Australian archives start using Flickr to make available such a treasure trove of Australian history available to all.

Update: A slideshow is now available after the jump.

Continue reading "State Library of NSW now on Flickr"

Posted by Stephen at 02:23 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Working with Computers

When people ask what I do, I tell them, simply, that "I work with computers". I guess that covers a lot of people nowadays. But if you think on it, you'll realise that different people work differently with computers. A fair portion sit at the corporate workstation and spend time keying in. They key into prefab screens, without any freedom to create something that they would call a work of art. Some people write or create works of art with computers. And although the computer is an extension of their arm, they work harder than the machine, typing, clicking, drawing.

We all want a screen with a big button. You know, the one you can click in a split second and then the machine does what a machines should do - work hard to produce an outcome. Whilst we can lean back, think deep thoughts, envision even more social and career delights.

Truth is, the screen with the big button eludes us mostly. Whether or not we're wearing our fingers to the bone or frazzing our brains out mentally flipping between two physical screens and three virtual ones, we're actually slaving to the machine.

Food for thought as we go into the weekend?

Posted by Anandasim at 10:04 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)