Google yourself

Have you ever googled yourself? According to one of my friends on facebook (I know, I know, they're only really friends if you've actually met), I was a google evangelist back before google was cool. Again, I know, google was always cool.

At the moment, you're probably like... what?! Get on with the story! So I will. Anyway, even from day 1 of my google addiction I was googling myself. And then I forgot about it.

I can sense your disappointment - but wait, there's more! But, one of my brothers-in-law is a mad keen php developer and has been a bit of a sleeper hit. It wasn't until I googled him (to find out what projects he had actually worked on) that I found out just how well known he was. Essentially, the first 50 returns (that's 5 pages) were about him. Whoa...

Yep, so now you're wondering how I've fared... 1 entry... page 6 4 (yay! I've gone up two pages!). ummm.

Do yourself a favour - google yourself. You might not like what you find, but hey, at least you get a healthy sense of perspective... :)

Help me get up another couple of pages... you know you want to. Link to this blog... it's cool. Nah, didn't think that would work...

Software I use: Productivity

There comes a time in one's life when one wants to do the same amount of work in less time. These are the tools I use to reduce the work I have to do in keeping my life going.

Productivity tools:

• Office applications: Microsoft Office (http://office.microsoft.com/). Really, at the moment there's no true replacement, and that's for a lot of reasons. The main issue, of course, is market dominance. If I want to change to my preferred suite (eg. StarOffice - based on OpenOffice (http://www.openoffice.org)), then I need to convince everyone who uses my machine to swap as well. After all, I'm not going to pay for a licence I'm not going to use, now am I?
• Calendar: Google Calendar (http://calendar.google.com) Google calendars are the only calendars that I need. Accessible from anywhere, easy to use - I've never seen a better design for quick and easy data entry, and there are plugins for pretty much every web-based tech you can find. I use Joomla! (http://www.joomla.org) and there are so many plugins for Google Calendar - it's crazy! My church website (http://www.christlife.org.au) uses Google Maps... the only problem is that I haven't told anyone yet, so it's a bit out of date.
• Syncronisation: SyncBack SE (http://www.2brightsparks.com/downloads.html) has to be one of the easiest I've used - and efficient. Check it out.

I think that's about it... If you've got a suggestion for another type of productivity app (an area I haven't talked about) then comment it here. If you think you've got a better piece of software, let me know too!

Software I use (Internet)

I keep getting asked by people (friends, acquantainces, complete strangers etc) what software I use... what I think works and is good. Well, here's a little list of the software I use for various tasks.

Slight change: I've decided to do this bit in parts. That whay I can easily distinguish between the different types of software.

Note: I occaisionally use software that I don't think is necessarily the best, and I'll offer alternatives for them.

First, the Internet:

• Web Browser: FireFox 3. Duh! No choice really... Open Source, free, cool, great. Get it from: http://www.getfirefox.com
• Email: Thunderbird 2. Same reasons as above. http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/thunderbird/ I actually like MS Outlook for it's completeness (tasks, mail, calendar etc) but it's not free.
  
• FTP: FileZilla (http://filezilla-project.org/) Like the ones above. Cool. Free. Secure.
• More? Let me know.

If you have a different opinion about what should be here, let me know!

Wow - it HAS been a long time

Somebody just recently asked me if I'd posted on my blog recently... and as you can see from the dates, my answer was no.
So why do people start up blogs and then not keep going? It's a bit reminiscent of those personal web pages on 'free' hosting sites which were set up once, maybe tended for a short while and then just forgotten - left to be sucked up by the sands of time (and the creditors when the hosting company collapsed).
I can't really answer for anyone else, but for me I have to admit that it's partly because I don't feel any real emotional attachment to my blog space. It's google's, not mine. The URL tries to make it feel personal, heck - google really does try to give you some sense of web 'backyard' to work within (and major kudos to them - privacy issues set aside), but it's just not the same as having a site which you've built up from the ground.
Those people who have known me for some time, know that I began working with HTML back in it's infancy (at least in Australia), way back in the early to mid 90's. I can't really remember when I first started, but it was early. I remember the joy of being able to use the img tag for the first time (note: not xHTML compliant - no / in those days!). I remember animated gifs and the free for all that web enthusiasts had for setting them as background images, regardless of how tacky it made the site, or how hard to read. I remember feeling like a legend, because my good old Netscape managed to get my page up and going and looking kind of like I'd intended in under 10 seconds (remember 9600 baud?). I remember using notepad and Netscape Composer to set it all up. Those were the days where I had some sense of personal belonging - where I knew that all that was there was because I could.
These days you select a template, give it a title and away you go...
It seems to me that the most used blogs (and this is from pro's as well) are ones where some personalisation has occured, they're not just plain vanilla anymore.

Maybe that's what I've got to do. That and get some darn visitors!!! Come on, leave a comment just so I know that there's someone out there...