Author: DAT

My goal: device independence

The recent failure of my home computer has gotten me thinking about the way I use technology. I love computers, and would probably have more if I didn’t have a wife that hates clutter and only appreciates technology when it provides benefit that far outweighs the cost with little or no work involved.

I have a few gadgets, but I don’t use any of them effectively. The main reason is that they don’t work together, and I’ve been too lazy to do anything about it.

For example, my main PDA is a Sharp Zaurus SL-5500, which runs Linux and has a good UI and applications, even if you don’t delve down into the Linux underneath. If you choose to get into the Linux aspect of it, you can do some amazing things — I even got apache and PHP running on it recently. But I still carry around my HandSpring Visor, because I can’t easily export the passwords from an application on that device into the password safe I use on the Zaurus. I would write a program myself, but Java support on the Zaurus is outdated, and setting up a C++ development environment on my computer to support the Zaurus seems to be more trouble than it’s worth.

Then there’s the matter of synchronizing between the devices. I’ve got my contact list and calendar on the Zaurus; I’ve got the same information in Outlook on my PC (though I can’t get at it right now); I’ve got a subset of contacts in my webmail program; I’ve got some of my contacts on my mobile phone; and I’ve got a whole different calendar and set of contacts on my work PC. Some of these don’t support synchronization, and I’m sceptical of the ones that do — my experience with synchronizing data has been troublesome, often deleting or duplicating items. And achieving a combined view through synchronization (home PC – PDA – work PC) seems impossible.

To boost my productivity, I need persistent access to a centralized data store. I need to keep my data on a server that is accessible through the internet, and manage it with application(s)

Free Flash Tool

I discovered what looks like a great free tool for developing Flash components and web sites, called OpenLaszlo. Based on my very cursory investigation, applications can be developed using just a text editor, but they create very nice Flash output. An eclipse plugin is also available from IBM.

The OpenLaszlo SDK uses a servlet, which I couldn’t run at my current host, but I discovered EATJ, which offers free basic Tomcat hosting. Laszlo Systems also has a Developer Zone, with forums and free non-commercial hosting at mylaszlo.com.

Links around the world

The internet continues to amaze me.

Tonight I decided to search Technorati, to see if anyone’s talking about my family. I was surprised to see someone in the UK (Jasmine) mention my brother Grant — and it appears Jasmine is a bit of a celebrity there, doing TV and magazine interviews. But this isn’t the first time Grant has been mentioned on far-flung web sites. If you search Google for his name (quoted to further refine the results), you’ll find about 50 sites, from countries around the world, all related to his cubing achievements.

He took an interest in Rubik’s cube and has become quite good at it. I don’t think he’s won any tournaments with the original 3×3 cube, but he had the best times for the 4×4 and 5×5 at a tournament in January, and he set a world record for the Megaminx in 2003 that wasn’t broken until this year. He still holds the American record for that puzzle.

Simply amazing — that a puzzle invented over 20 years ago and relegated to the history books by much of the world still has such an active following, and can get a last name as uncommon as ours published around the world.

datguy.net changes

Well, I decided to make this the default page for datguy.net. All of the links from the old index page should be listed here, but let me know if something is missing.

I’m curious how this will impact my listing on Google. I also submitted my site feed to Google yesterday, and noticed that Technorati learned about this site within the past hour from the link on RhonDave news. I’ll have to check again, but as of this posting, my datguy.net listing was pushed down to the 11th page of results on Google!

Bizarre…

Will the real datguy please stand up?

I was curious where I stood on Google, so I did a search for datguy. I was disappointed to find that I didn’t even make the first page (unlike rhondave, where our sites dominate the first page). I decided to look at some of the others using the name…

On datguy.com, datguy is not one person, but two. They’re involved in the music industry and they’ve got a clever logo, so I guess they deserve several of the top spots.

Some guy on Epinions that wrote one review in 2002 hangs on to another top listing, and there’s a user on the Easy Worship forums.

My first listing in the results is for datguy.net, in the middle of the second page. Google’s copy is even up to date — I updated it recently with links to most of my sites (including this one).

There’s a “bluntsmoka” in Michigan, a Disc Sportster in Manitoba, and an artist in Singapore.

The DarkGalaxy profile is mine, but the DatGuy in the VW Club of South Africa is not me.

I think the one on Experts Exchange is me, but I haven’t been on there in at least a year.

Then there are a Chinese student in Ontario, a dominant male in Texas (I’ll skip the link on this one), a single Irishman, and a “Clan Member” in New Zealand.

It goes on, but I won’t.

Password generator bookmarklet

I read about Nic Wolff’s Password generator bookmarklet before, and I meant to check it out, but kept putting it off. Well, I just tracked down the link so I can start using it, and discovered a link to an improved version. The only thing these don’t accomodate are multiple id’s for the same site. I think this is only a problem on my own sites, where I have one id I use most of the time and another for administration. I either need to use the same password for all id’s on a site, or modify the script to allow the use of an id in the password generation process. I prefer the latter, but that could make things a little ugly (prompt for id, then prompt for master password). Also, it will require that I keep track of the id’s somewhere.