Butch's blog

We are home after a short vacation.
There was no network connection, even via my mobile, where we were staying. I was only able to post a picture or two and sent tweets when there was an available cellular signal. I did not bring a laptop everywhere we went--too much walking--so that was the best I could do.
Today is the last day off. I am hoping to have time to transcribe some of the notes I made in my paper journal.

Untraceable -
A group of cybercops finds themselves grappling with a megalomaniacal, murderous psychopath who uses the Internet to show off his grisly handiwork, rigging his site so that his remaining captives' fate depends on how many viewers it attracts. Led by FBI Agent Jennifer Marsh (Diane Lane) and working against the clock, can the team apprehend the technologically brilliant killer? Colin Hanks and Mary Beth Hurt also star in this tense thriller. [Netflix Movies]

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I remember seeing the trailers for this movie right before it was released. I was not exactly surprised that someone was going to do this, somewhere between a police procedural and I would assume what was supposed to be a horror flick.
It wasn't a bad movie, and they seemed to actually get about half of the technology bits right. I did feel like they were pandering a bit early on when Agent Marsh spews not exactly meaningless technobabble and her boss doesn't understand her. I mean seriously. Would the guy heading up cybercrimes not have an IT background at this point?
It seemed a little too predictable. I won't spoil it for anyone. But you can pick which one of the supporting characters gets taken by the psycho about 5 minutes after the character is introduced. And you also can predict how the character is taken.
I have recently started to think about movies as "it's not how it really [would have] happened; it's more how people will remember it later when they talk about it." This movie fits that description. It seems more like an Internet myth made into a movie than realistic.
For a story with a serious technical bent, Cory Doctorow's Little Brother was better. This isn't an "apples to apples" comparison: movie versus book. Doctorow was able to take a lot more time presenting what he was doing, and even explain how some of the tech worked. Untraceable just plowed right through it. As Agent Marsh says at one point: "It's a website." That's pretty much all anyone needs to know. The rest of the tech just falls in with the same black magic that the rest of the Internet runs on. It's not really needed to understand the movie's story or plot. Most people just want a toaster.
Little Brother manages to almost make the network a character in the story.
And no, I'm not planning on doing a lot of movie reviews. I just felt like talking about this one.

Happy birthday, to you
Happy birthday, to you
Happy birthday, dear Jacob
Happy birthday, to you

Tools
Recently I have been trying to use a a couple of new tools to help keep things organzied in my life. Every now and then, I try to go out and see what is out there to help try to help keep my on task and maybe even scavange some hours for myself.
Honestly, it never works, but I try anyway.
Via work, I have Microsoft Outlook, but I don't really like Outlook, and I have tasks and projects that have nothing to do with work. I also like to have more control over things, like possibly hosting my own internal server.
One of the tools that I have been using for quite some time is TimeTTracker MX from R&F Consulting. I first started using this tool about a year into owning my first PDF, an iPAQ handheld. I decided that I needed a tool that would help me keep track of how long I was spending on different tasks and projects at work. The main driver was this was the IT trouble ticket system we were using. A previous job had timers for when one was working on calls. The job at the time did not. I missed it. But I had a PDA, so I went looking for a tool that worked as a stopwatch that let me tag timers by project or activity. TimeTTracker (the version at the time) did most of what I wanted. Subsequent revisions have done more and more. When I bought my VX-6700 phone, this was one of the first things I bought for it.
The only challenge with TimeTTracker is that timers have to be started and stopped. While this isn't a problem on its own, there is one tool in the modern office environment that makes it difficult for your modern knowledge worker: e-mail.
I pretty much keep Outlook open on my work laptop all day long. Even when I am working on something, I have to help keep my eye open for calls from help from the distributed groups I work with. There are hundreds of little things that I'm asked to do or look at that really don't take a lot of time to do, but if I'm working on project A and someone needs me to look at task B and answer a quick question about project C and an IM on thing D, my own timer puts all that into project A. And I'm not going to start and stop the B, C and D timers unless the activity really does take me away from project A. Yes, I know, multitasking is a myth.
One day, in one of the summary e-mails from Technology Review, there was an article that seemed to suggest that there was software out there to help capture time spent on 100's of little things. The tool is called Smart Desktop, currently still in beta. I signed up and quickly got an invite. The tool really does track opening and working on Outlook e-mail and MS office documents. The timeline tracking tool is really useful for trying to figure out what it was I was doing an hour ago, or two hours ago or so.
I just sent the support group for Smart Desktop a quick e-mail just saying Hi. I was just curious how the beta was going. And I was curious if they were doing anything to support their community. They use Drupal for their website, so I used what I know about Drupal. I'm only user 295. One needs a login to download the beta, so I wonder if that means they haven't really gotten a lot of interest in their beta. I do like the tool and may write more about it later.
Another tool I started using, again in beta, is Evernote.
I first saw Evernote when I was first started using OneNote. I had looked for something that worked on more or even all the platforms I use everyday. I like to be able to choose that I'm going to use Linux or even Solaris. I also want to be able to use these tools on my home machine, my work desktop, my linux workstation, my Solaris workstation, Natalie's and the boys' machines. (Last count I was running about 10 machines at home.)
Evernote was something that did things like OneNote, but it had a web component, as well as a desktop component, at least on Windows. I think they were talking about the future of the product and it was pay for. I wasn't looking for something pay for at that point, so I moved on.
I got back to Evernote recently, just while their beta/preview was getting near wrapped up. And I am trying to use it. It does really nice screenshots. It let's me capture data using the camera on my phone. And it lets me categorize things into different notebooks. There is also an e-mail address that Evernote hosts that lets me send things right to my notebook, even when I am just on my phone. More on this later.
I'm kind of running out of steam, so I might just stop here before I get into the next set of tools, including Jott and OSAF Chander.