racoma.com.phJ. Angelo Racoma on technology, economics, writing, problogging, and getting things done

Betcha didn’t know of this nifty feature before! I’ve been a fan of Google apps for a long time, but this quite slipped past me. I used to be a fan of PDAs too, but having to carry around separate devices (mobile phone, digicam, PDA) became too cumbersome. And having to upgrade every so often became expensive. Smartphone? I ditched it in favor of a simple, no-frills phone.

So what’s a good solution? SMS!

You can get yourself SMS notifications to your Google Calendar events. Here’s a tutorial on GoogleTutor.

Dang! Why didn’t I think of that before?

The last year has come and gone, and if you’re still in that holiday mood, I can sympathize with you. I hardly got any rest during the holidays because of all the traveling to and fro, and the events/parties here and there. It’s the second week of January and I feel like I still have a hangover. And I didn’t even drink that much!

I think a good waker-upper would be a good spring cleaning—and for those of us whose work (and personal lives) revolves around the computer and getting online, that means starting fresh. Here are some things I’ll be doing to clean up that pile of mess on my desk, so to speak.

1. Restart the computer. I’m a sucker for hibernate and sleep whether for laptops or desktops. Both my PowerBook and Windows laptops have been up since late November (only sleeping or hibernating in between use), and my ongoing work is still cluttered across the machines’ respective screens. I wonder which is more productive—not having to reopen each and every document you need to work on every power cycle, or having too much stuff open it becomes information overload.
2. Clean up my email inbox. Gmail says I have 19,000 unread items on my inbox. Of course many of these are spam mail I just ignored over the course of two years since I got a Gmail account (too lazy to hit the “Report Spam” button!). I could probably just leave them in Inbox view and keep using my “For Reply” and “To Do” labels for those messages for urgent action. After all, that’s what Gmail’s threaded interface and almost-unlimited capacity are supposed to be about, right? On the other hand, it might be more sensible to send these all to Archive so I won’t have to feel overwhelmed everytime I look at a very full inbox view.
3. Work on those draft blog entries. My blog drafts area consists of unfinished blog posts, duplicate entries (WordPress saves renamed drafts as new entries altogether) and posts I finished but had second thoughts about publishing (due to various reasons). These are most likely to be outdated a few weeks or even days after being saved to drafts, so it’s time to purge the draft folder and start fresh.
4. Backup important files and delete unnecessary ones. It’s time to save those digital photos and iTunes libraries onto CD or some online-backup facility. You never know when things can screw up and you end up with a dead hard drive—arguably, the data is more valuable than the hardware itself. As for deleting unnecessary ones, files and documents tend to build up in the course of time, and these can fill up your hard drive pretty quickly. I usually fall victim to my own disorganized-ness, which usually leads to shortages in space and even virtual memory.
5. Run maintenance software on my computers. I recommend doing a virus-scan and spyware-scan, and all those other performance-enhancing clean-ups like clearing of caches, defragmenting (if that’s still applicable) and the like. I recommend Mac Janitor for OS X, which lets you manually start maintenance tasks that your Mac is supposed to do daily, weekly, and monthly.
6. Actually go clean up that pile of mess on my desk. Being online most of the time doesn’t mean my physical surroundings don’t affect my productivity. I have a ton of books, tools, wires and gadgetry on my desk that I can probably do without. The still-to-be-used stuff should go to the drawers (which need cleaning up themselves). And those for disposal go straight to the trash or recycling bin.

Of course, this mostly applies to me, and I’d appreciate a little help if you have something to pitch in.

Image source

According to my NetStat widget, my PowerBook has been online for 28 days, 6 hours and 13 minutes. And since that time, the notebook had been running without a hitch–perhaps save for some mishaps that caused Firefox to freeze up and require a restart (sometimes happens to such a memory hog like Firefox).

Meanwhile, my Windows-powered Compaq Presario has likewise been running for approximately that same duration. And I occasionally experience losing my wireless connection, and I sometimes get “virtual memory low” messages.

Of course, I don’t really have my laptops running powered on all the time. With the Mac, I close the lid and keep it in a _sleep_ state. With the PC, I use _hibernate_. This way, I get to save on power and extend my computers’ lifetimes, without having to lose the state I’ve been in. Yes, sometimes I get back to a cluttered desktop, but hey, at least I don’t lose track.

Why do I hate Windows?

I don’t hate Windows _per se_. I know XP is a solid operating system (as solid as Swiss cheese!). But with OS X I seem to be able to do my work more efficiently. I feel more productive on the Mac than on the PC. This is simply because I don’t have to deal with the minor annoyances that usually come with running Windows, like:

* Antivirus programs popping up notifying me of updates.
* Antivirus programs suddenly running full tests in the background while I’m doing some _important_ processor-intensive stuff (like copy CDs into my iTunes library!).
* Lag times due to the system accessing virtual memory.
* It takes an eternity to go into _hibernate_ mode. It takes an even longer time to wake up from _hibernate_state.
* It also takes forever to go to and wake up from _standby_ mode.
* Some other stuff I can hardly remember but does happen.

Something tells me all my issues with Windows lie with the memory management. And to think my old PowerBook is still running on a G3 and has about 50% less system RAM than my Presario.

Sigh.

OSX86?

That’s why I wanted to install OS X 86 on my Presario–somewhere along the way, I felt it too tedious to have to backup all my important files (lotsa MP3s), resize the partition and install X 86. Oh, wait, I think I’ve already done that, up to the point of resizing the partition using PartitionMagic and activating the second partition for booting. Only my OS X 86 installer did not push through with the installation. Lucky me!

I’ll try again next time.

Meanwhile, I think it’s time to do a restart on my PowerBook. It does help to run the system from a fresh start once in a while. And it’s mostly to clear the desktop of all the clutter so I can move on with whatever work I’m doing (I’m too lazy to individually close everything!).

Problogging–and the non-income generating kind of blogging, for that matter–is like writing a book or painting, or sculpting. You need to get yourself in that state where you feel most creative. You need to be in the zone. You need to get into the flow. Get your head in the game.

It’s either you’re not that well-versed in wireless technology or you’re a really generous person. But since your router says “default” as its access point name, I reckon it’s the former!

I’m at our new apartment right now, since we’re transferring some of our stuff (hey, it’s only three houses down after all, so a gradual move would do). I was actually surveying the scene again for active WiFi hotspots and this time I brought the PowerBook, and this time I found a signal. It was a bit weak, though, and it only reached the room facing the back of the lot. Hey, at least I’m connected. And it’s at the right place, since this is where I intend to set up my new home office, anyway.

I got tired of holding the laptop in my arm with the Cardbus (the one that pretends to be an Airport Extreme card because it has a Broadcom chipset ) facing the window, so I thought of using the USB WiFi adaptor instead. The advantage? It’s obvious–I could extend the “antenna” by connecting the adaptor via a USB extender. So if you see a USB dongle dangling off the second-floor window, that’s probably mine.

Repeater

I can theoretically set up the desktop here to connect to the live access point and run the second (PCI) WiFi adaptor as an access point. I’ll then set up Windows NAT sharing so I can share the ‘Net across the computers via WiFi–sort of like a repeater.

Of course, if Bayantel beats me to it, then even better! I’ll be sending in my application forms tomorrow, and hopefully I’ll get connected within a few days. I’m thinking of signing up for the lowest plan for now–PhP 899 per month for the 384 Kbps plan. I’ll only have to add PhP 300 to bundle in the telephone connection.

We’ll be completing the move in a few days. So I won’t have to worry about connectivity for the time being. I’m looking forward to getting better work and living space. Watch out–my productivity meter will be shooting through the roof in the next few weeks. Maybe I’ll get that million-dollar idea by then!

By the way, if you’re wondering about the legal and ethical implications of WiFi leeching (and even leaving unprotected WiFi hotspots out in the open), I have a post about this dating from last year.

In the end, those who own and operate the access points should be
responsible for securing their systems. There are various means
of doing this, such as limiting access to specific MAC addresses, use of WEP, WPA, or even a simple http firewall.

After all, perhaps one of the better wardriving tools is Windows XP’s Wireless Zero Config! So anyone with WinXP SP2 can be a perpetrator, or at least his/her computer has the propensity to.

Isn’t an ounce of prevention better than a pound of cure?