• Try out the features
  • "new mail" is achieved via "Compose" in the top left of the screen.
  • "Address book" is available via "Contacts" in the top right of the screen.

• read gmail-is-too-creepy and decide if you really want to use gmail. [doesn't scare me much.]

• Download the gmail notifier
• Move your contacts in from hotmail/yahoo or Outlook
• Move your emails in from hotmail/yahoo or outlook
• Vote on the features you wish you had

Hungry for more utilities? Look at:

• Getting more out of Gmail...
• Mark Lyon's Gmail Links

Mac OSX user?

"gCount is a menu bar and/or Dock item that displays the unread status of the inbox ..."

Geeks (like you and me) often act as 'Family Computer Technicians', called upon to solve the technical issues encountered by our relatives and family friends.

Some excellent articles by Scott Hanselman have fired me up about raising the standard of this help, and improving the security of the PC's we're responsible for.

I want to start a bandwagon. And I want you, my excellent readers, to jump on board.

One day each month (let's say the 3rd day of the month) we will remind each other to achieve certain simple things on our home pc's, and the home pc's of our Mum's, our Dad's, our Uncle's, Aunts, in-laws, grandparents -- any home PC's we come in contact with.

The Goals to be acheived are:

1. Regular Backups
2. Anti Virus software: Installed and Up To Date
3. Internet Firewall enabled
4. Spam Protection
5. Spyware Protection
6. Windows Update Service

If all of that is achieved I think the world will be happier place.

For the first month I want to focus on our own computers. So on the 3rd of September, I'll be trying to focus attention toward backing up home computers.

More to follow -- but let me leave you with this question: when did you last backup your home PC?

Mark Pilgrim wrote a good blog entry about how most programmers are either Morons or Assholes. According to Mark's definitions I've met amny more morons than assholes. And I quite like the morons.

The blog 'Minding the planet' is worth a read, if you've got time.

And here's a good description of RSS if you need to explain it to luddite friends. (Written by Dan Bricklin, inventor of the spreadsheet).

I've just performed some much needed maintenance of this site.

The RSS feed is a lot smaller now, and the site itself is lighter. There's a search form on the right of the page, too, so that gus will stop complaining that he can't find what he's looking for. I've put a very short blog roll over on the right, too. I might expand this into a full blog roll page later on. But it's cool for now.

Should I use a GUID for my child's middlename?

A slogan you *should* not use on your splash screen:
"ABANDON ALL HOPE YE WHO ENTER HERE"

After a lot of convincing, I decide to turn on option strict. Next thing a gigantic german woman in a leather apron with a whip appeared behind me and began to shout...

no, i'll stop that idea now.

Conversation overheard via a cubicle wall: "Hey, is HippyWithABeerGut.com taken, yet?" (I love the 'yet')

If life is a spectator sport, where's my hotdog?

Recurrent thoughts concerning the RayChen v MSDN non-debate (I should article-ize this)
"People who like to bet the farm are more interested in betting than farming".

Quick Recommendations

A nice idea at Adtmag:
The Lunch Break Series.
"Portable, Convenient and on Demand: Download an anthology of technology-specific articles in ONE manageable PDF document."

Goals are Important. My new goal is to be listed on the Massless link page

Thank you!

I've now got a G-Mail account, thanks to Joseph Scott. What a champion!

What I *meant* to write about was IronPython and Relax NG. Maybe later.

I demonstrated Lutz Roeder's Reflector to a colleague yesterday.

The response was classic and very true.

His eyes shifted side-to-side in alarm.

If you haven't tinkered with it yet, then please tinker.

If you don't know what Lutz Roeder's Reflector is -- well. It 'decompiles' any .net 'exe' or 'dll' into perfectly legible C#, or VB.net or Intermediate Language or even Delphi.net. All in a handy 0.3 Meg download. Wow.

Executives and CEOs lose hours every day formatting their documents.

And this sick trend is only growing worse.

Average Number of Executive Hours wasted messing with formatting per week

Year		Average # Wasted Hours per week
1997		(0.5)
1998		(1.0)
1999		(1.3)
2000		(5.9)
2001		(6.5)
2002		(6.8)
2003		(8.1)
2004		(14.3)

Documentosis Affects Everyone

All too often, office-johnnies and cubicle-janes are called upon by CEOs to rescue sick documents.

Moribund documents whose basic formatting has been tortured, corrupted and pillaged for the loathsome pleasure of a fiddling CEO.

Alignment, margins, layout, spelling, formatting: no property is safe from the tweakings of these control-freak apex-predators.

And just as vampirism predominates at night, so Documentosis builds to a climax in the hours that precede a board meeting.

But there is hope...

The new Executive Edition of Microsoft Word aims to address this disease.

MS Word Executive Edition provides the power your CEO needs for writing:

• Mission Statements
• Corporate Mottos
• Memoranda

Without the gimmickry of:

• Headers and footers
• Print preview
• Margins
• 'bold', 'italic' and 'underlining'
• Numbered lists
• Spell check
• Thesaurus
• Tables

Once a CEO has completed her Executive Document, it can be emailed to a specialist trained to use the regular features of Word without causing Documentosis. The document specialist can then perform improve spelling, applying company templates and down-play egotistical statements.

Installing Executive Edition

Licensing restrictions mean that MS Word Executive Edition is only available for CEO's and top-level decision makers.

To install Executive Edition, execute this script:

   del "WinWord.exe"
   rename "Notepad.exe" "WinWord.exe"

(You'll have to work out the correct folder names for yourself)

Best of luck, office-johnnies and cubicle-janes!

From CNET, news.com:

How eight pixels cost Microsoft millions

Thanks to Tejas Patel

Over-use of the company email by certain employees has led to the need for yet another Outlook rule.

I've got thirty-seven and a half rules like this now.

Number of Baby Quails hatched at Leon's place, per day

Date		# Quails
20 August		(0)
19 August		(2)
18 August		(0)
17 August		(0)
16 August		(0)
15 August		(0)
14 August		(0)
<=13 August		(0)

Those tiny yellow fur-bundles look very frail. Hopefully they'll survive the harshness of the Brisbane Winter.

And it looks like Farmer Jeb's egg monitoring website has had a bit of an overhaul. Collected data now include egg weights which should help appease the appetite of even the most demanding egg analysts.

Google have had a big week with a reduced IPO price and then a good market rally after go-live. I wonder how the secretGeek IPO will go? I expect the forthcoming improvements to the logo will whack a few billion onto the estimated value.

Pasting a regular expression into MSN Messenger can have unexpected though amusing results:

[Regex courtesy of regexlib.com]