Productivity tools can be viable alternatives to work
Ever since some smart chap, or chappess, came up with the idea of a check list and impressed the boss the world has been beset with a search for bigger, better tools to replace what was essentially a very good idea.
Taken to the it's illogical conclusion this search can lead even the most sensible people to a point where the productivity tools themselves are a very viable alternative to work.
Gantt charts, mind maps, flow charts, to do lists, issues registers and all manners of witchcraft will not be of much use if you're woefully disorganised. Conversely if you're a maniacally organised.....
Tags: Another bite of the Apple: Postscripts for the electronic age
Out in the real world where sales people send physical letters it's common practice to use a postscript, or P.S. at the foot of a letter or proposal. It increases engagement with the item, and gives you a little extra punt at the end of your message.
Truth be known you'll probably find that a percentage of people read the postscript first as it stands out at the bottom of the page. This is by design with companies deliberately folding material into the envelope so the order of viewing is letterhead, footer and finally the body of the text.
It works either way around; If you see it first it distracts you from all the fine print in the body, or if you do read it last it'll to seal the deal with a cherry on the bottom. Either way, it's a powerful addition to the letter when used with care.
Next time you get one of those annoying Readers Digest sweepstakes mailers because your cousin signed you up, don't through it out.
Open it up slowly and think about what you see first, they spend a great deal more energy and money on designing their mail outs than most other companies and have been known to abuse the awesome descructive power of a P.S. more than once per mailout.
So, how to get the same little kick in the tail for your emailed sales pitch?
The nature of email is that you see the header and then scroll down a bit, maybe...
Telecom New Zealand DNS fail
This tickled my fancy, so just had to write a up a few words about it.
Telecom is the largest telco in New Zealand, and it appears they can't run a robust DNS setup for their own domain. Their ISP, Xtra, had some problems last year with their DNS, which caused problems for many of it's customers, but this time around it's their own corporate domain, telecom.co.nz that has fallen into the cyber bit-bucket....
Underscores vs Hyphens and an apology
If you read my blog via an RSS reader you probably noticed at few odd goings on earlier today. I changed a few things on the site and all of the posts going back to last year appeared as new again, even if you'd read them.
Sorry 'bout that, but there was a method to my madness, or at least a method to my fiddling.
Although it's not entirely obvious, one of the main reasons I started running this site was to mess around with search engine optimisation and try out the theories of various experts who also run a blog but with a great deal more focus that me.
To that end, I've re-written the code that generates my rss feed, and included some in line formatting to make it easier to read. Now when you read the blog from a feed reader it should look a bit more like the website, give or take. Well, more give than take.
While some of the changes were purely cosmetic, I also changed the URLs for all my blog posts.
The new URLs is the bit that caused them to pop up as new posts in at least feedburner and Google reader. The change to the URLs was to remove the....
Javascript compression with Apache 2 and Debian Etch
If you're trying to wring every last drop of performance out of a website you're probably wanting to compress all your content before it hits the wire. While I was messing about with another project I noticed that the javascript from this blog wasn't getting compressed.
If you just want the solution to the issue, skip to the bottom of this post, but for those interested in the finer detail, read on.
This site uses Apache 2 on Etch, and after a bit of Googling I didn't really find a direct mention of this issue, so I though I'd slap it on here for other folks afflicted with un-compressed javascript.
First step is to enable mod_deflate in the first place...
Why is it so hard to think up a good password?
I've been working in IT for a wee while now, a shade over 20 years even, and in all this time there is one consistent thread of frustration that nibbles away at my very sanity. Trivial Passwords.
I'm sure this isn't just be going nuts here, there must be thousands of network administrators and web masters going quietly bonkers all over the planet right at this very moment.
We slave away with intimate pride of our collective nerdiness, building robust and secure IT systems for all to behold. Fussing and fettling over minute details to...
Google Location, the best of results, the worst of results
Google announced on their official blog a couple of days ago that location was the new black. Enhancing search results by allowing the surfer to rank results 'nearby', or pick another location by name.
This is just a continuation of the direction on-line technologies have been moving with social media leading the charge. Services like foursquare giving people their constant location fix. Twitter has even gone local allowing you to share your location in 140 character chunks.
Up until now the only real down side of this location hungry trend has been the exact same thing touted as the benefit of telling the world where you are. Namely that the world knows where you are. Privacy concerns are rife...
Taking joy from simple news: IE6 and Youtube
Anyone who has anything even remotely to do with web development will be smiling at the news today that Youtube is going to discontinue support for IE6.
Not only that, we've got a date. 13th of March, 2010.
While this isn't really the end, it will certainly put that little bit more pressure on the roughly 15-20% of internet users who still cling to the 9 year old version of Internet Explorer for various reasons I fail to fully comprehend.
You can read more about...
The Carpenters Hammer
This is a story for everyone who has a need of tools no matter what their craft or trade. The Carpenters Hammer, a painters brushes, the janitors broom.
A few years ago, about eighteen in fact, we lived in a 2 bedroom flat in Christchurch city. It was in a block of four on a section which probably should have only held one house, but that's a whole other issue.
In the back flat lived a retired gentleman, who's name quite escapes me now. He had worked most of his adult live as a cleaner for PDL, an electrical manufacturer here in New Zealand.
One day I remember walking down the driveway to the garages which were squished in a row behind the flats, he was out sweeping the driveway in front of his unit with what is probably the largest broom I'd ever seen.
One of those large janitorial scale ones that requires metal braces from the handle to the head to stop it breaking off on it's own and sweeping whole counties.
I said good morning, or afternoon, whichever pleasantry was appropriate, and found myself in conversation about his broom. Not the most engrossing topic....
Saturday's Sunset
I don't know about where you live, but here the sun sets pretty much every day. Granted it sometimes does so behind a veil of grey or in the total absence of cloud it just disappears without the slightest hint of pomp and ceremony.
We are blessed, however, here in Canterbury with a reasonable number of stunning sunsets, along with the one at the beginning of the day. What's the name of that one? Sunlift? Sunclimb? Not sure. I'm not really a morning person, but I'm sure you know what I'm on about.
I'm a sucker for a good sunset as much as the next bloke, although in truth it's the cloudscape I'm after when I venture off into...
