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Since I have my work and regular documents properly synced across all my machines it was time to sync the rest of my work flows. I run all my email through various Google App accounts and I check them on my main computers using Thunderbird. For web browsing I use Firefox exclusively unless I’m forced to use something else.

I have a basic set of add-ons  that I use, such as Minimize to Tray, Faviconize Tab, All-in-One Gestures, Delicious, and Copy Link Text. I had installed these separately but various settings like my bookmarks toolbar and icon arrangement get changed. The way to fix this was to move my Thunderbird and Firefox profiles to the Dropbox so they stay in sync.

It’s quite simple:

1. Create two folders in your Dropbox for both profiles. I just called mine “Firefox” and “Thunderbird”.
2. Locate your current default profiles and copy their contents to the respective ones you just made.
3. Mozilla.org says to find them like this:
   • Firefox:
     • On Windows Vista/XP/2000 the path is usually %APPDATA%\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\xxxxxxxx.default\
     • On Linux the path is usually ~/.mozilla/firefox/xxxxxxxx.default/
     • On Mac OS X the path is usually ~/Library/Application Support/Firefox/Profiles/xxxxxxxx.default/
     • More details here
   • Thunderbird:
     • On Windows Vista/XP/2000 the path is usually %APPDATA%\Thunderbird\Profiles\xxxxxxxx.default\ or just browse to C:\Documents and Settings\[User Name]\Application Data\Thunderbird\Profiles\ on Windows XP/2000 or C:\users\[User Name]\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird\Profiles\ on Windows Vista, and the rest should be obvious.
     • On Windows 95/98/Me the path is usually C:\WINDOWS\Application Data\Mozilla\Thunderbird\Profiles\xxxxxxxx.default\
     • On Linux the path is usually ~/.thunderbird/xxxxxxxx.default/
     • On Mac OS X the path is usually ~/Library/Thunderbird/Profiles/xxxxxxxx.default/
     • More details here
4. Once you’ve copied the contents of your default folders over you need to delete them.
5. Now run the profile manager for each program by running each one with the -p flag enabled. It’s easiest to type “firefox.exe -p” and “thunderbird.exe -p” from the run command in the Start menu.
6. You now need to create new profiles for each
   

   Create a new profile

   

   Select the new destination folders in your Dropbox

7. Once you’ve create a new profile you can delete the old default one from the list. The new one will become the default option.
   

   The new folders with your profiles

8. That’s it! You’ve now moved your Firefox/Thunderbird profiles to your Dropbox. On subsequent computers simply create a new  profile and point it at your Dropbox profile folders, you shouldn’t copy the old profiles over. Make sure you delete the default profile and then start up Firefox/Thunderbird and your settings will be the same (once Dropbox syncs).

The only problem I’ve had is that some existing plugins needed to be reinstalled after the first copy, however, before you reinstall anything that claims to be incompatible you should simply try searching for updates and restarting Firefox/Thunderbird.

Leave a comment if you’ve managed to do this or something similar with success.

—-Update—-

Ok, so for the record the above “does work”. However, I quickly realized that all my email takes up a crapload of space in the Dropbox and Thunderbird doesn’t necessarily change for me that often, so I undid my profile changes.

Also, for the sake of speed, and proper caching, you should definitely move your Firefox cache by typing “about:config” in the address bar. Find (or create by right-click > New > String) the entry “browser.cache.disk.parent_directory”. Set it to the absolute location of when you want the cache to be. I set mine to “C:\Documents and Settings\Eric\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\eric\cache” which is pretty much where it used to be, but you can put it anywhere. Then go back and delete your old cache out of the Dropbox for good measure.

Hope that help!

Open-Mesh.com is slowly but surely improving. Just recently I noticed their homepage changed slogans. It went from something like “WiFi for the developing world” to “WiFi Where You Need It”. I like the latter, myself.

New firmware updates have also happened and beta 1.21 has been released. There was a glitch upgrading to the c953 firmware because of the technique used to upgrade. This required a lot of people to manually reset their routers if they were using the test firmware. They fixed the problem by using the “normal” way to upgrade and version c955 went off without a hitch.

According to Antonio Anselmi, author of the ROBIN mesh network software which powers Open-Mesh, says that the latest kernel is about a week away. Yay!

A picture of the schedule is here:

I went to

• Financing an Idea
• What Problem Does The Semantic Web Solve?
• Angel Fund, U of A, Robert
• Evolution of Nexopia
• Why Twitter Will Rule The World
• Emerging Mobile Platforms

I also led a session on Edmonton Wireless & WiFi Mesh Networks with Mack Male.

One of the most interesting conversations I had was with a fellow named Clark Murray. Clark and three other guys have created a great product called dub5 which stands for the 5 W’s in everyone’s life, the Who What Where When and Why. Essentially dub5 is a new take on scheduling and calendar management. Their major advantage over competitors like Outlook and Google Calendar is their text message integration. Personally I love this and I hope to be using it as soon as it’s ready.

Since all the video I took of my sessions ended up being like 300mb a piece and 20 minutes long I haven’t finished uploading them to Google Video yet. However, check out the quick demo I had the dub5 guys give me.

I’m reading up on Joomla! It’s a seriously kick-ass open-source application. I’m a bit miffed that I haven’t taken a closer look at it until now.

The reason I’m reading up on Joomla is because I accepted the IT Director’s position for the Alberta School of Business Students Association (BSA). It’s not a “real” IT Director’s position where I implement new grandiose technologies and run a huge department or anything. This is basically a service position for the students where I help maintain their website, publish updates, work with the Students Union to do our BSA elections, and help students get personalized business cards if they want. The great thing is I can do this while I’m in Germany.

Rob, one of my best friends and my employer for the summer, and I are going to try and rework his old site Equine Edmonton, I’m going to suggest we use Joomla! to streamline any problems we’ll run into.

Does anyone see a problem with doing contract web design and then implementing prefabbed infrastructure like WordPress of Joomla!?

Travelling Forever has an old post about keeping everything on a USB key instead of a computer. I think this is interesting, but outdated. I wouldn’t want to rely solely on my USB key when I know I’m screwed if I lose it. I prefer to rest easy on the fact that I can do the majority of my work with simply an internet connection.

For the last few months I’ve basically not needed a personal computer. This began when I moved all my email accounts to the IMAP format. More specifically my personal email at my own domain is hosted by GMail so I just have to log in from wherever. The best part about this is I can use my main computer if I wish and still use Thunderbird, but if I want I can jump on a computer at school or even use my cell phone to check my email. I was originally going to set up my own IMAP server and try to fiddle around with everything myself but I figure it’s simpler to just let Google do it for me. It’s free and reliable and I don’t have to play tech support for myself. Read Google’s Email Switch Guide.

Along with Google I use their calendar system. It’s a great program that I can access anywhere there is an internet connection. I use it to schedule almost anything I do, and using a service called GooSync I can sync all my calendars with my phone. I haven’t found a better calendar system that lets me easily share my events with other people. I’ll admit the GooSync site looks a little unprofessional but it’s straight forward and any reviews I read called it legit. It hasn’t failed me yet

A major problem I had in the past was having my bookmarks around when I wanted them. I tried out Foxmarks for a little while but I didn’t like the whole syncing idea. Now I use del.icio.us and it works amazingly. If I’m going to be on one computer for an extensive period of time I’ll install the add-on in Firefox, but otherwise I can just log in and search my own bookmarks. del.icio.us is also a great alternative to your regular search engine. See my del.icio.us bookmarks here.

As far as homepages go I used to make my own little link filled page that I’d write in HTML. Now I use Netvibes exclusively. It aggregates all the RSS feeds that I want and keeps track of what I’ve read and it doesn’t force me to leave the page. Netvibes has got literally hundreds of custom written widgets that you can plug into your homepage and all you have to do is log in. Comparable to Netvibes you have iGoogle, Pageflakes, and MyYahoo. I’ve introduced several friends to Netvibes and they have mostly converted away from iGoogle. Netvibes also lets me keep a little list of handy links that I use often, such as banking and school websites. It also has nifty plugins for Facebook and GMail which will update themselves automatically.

Another huge obstacle you’ll face with leaving your laptop behind is how to access your files! You could leave it running at all times and set up some sort of server or VNC to your machine whenever you need something. This is pretty technical and it doesn’t leave much redundancy of your data. What I’ve been doing for the last several months is keeping a copy of any relevant documents on a USB key. I used to have a nifty Swiss Army knife that my dad gave me for high school graduation several years ago. This had a small 128mb dongle inside, but unfortunately I left it in a school computer one day Now I have an awesome SanDisk Cruzer micro 4GB stick on my key chain. Unfortunately it comes with this pesky U3 Launchpad software, you can get a removal tool though.

For the record I’m not a big fan of syncing anything. I’d much rather have a static copy available remotely at any time, but for the sake of redundancy I have been syncing my personal files.

The best way I’ve found so far to sync important folders is to use Microsoft’s own SyncToy v2.0 Beta. I use this in for two reasons, 1. to keep a copy of my important data with me at all times and 2. to keep a backup of my important data. Every time I use my laptop and I’ve made changes to either work or school documents I plug in my USB key and run the SyncToy shortcut I pasted in there. I simply hit Run All and in a few seconds SyncToy has made a carbon copy of any files that have changed. I try my best not to change both locations are the same time but if that happens SyncToy politely asks you what you want to do. You can create as many folder pairs as you want. Tom’s Guide has a rough introduction to different syncing programs.

I’m finding it’s really nice to not worry about lugging around a laptop or when I’m next going to be able to come home to check my email. It’s really freeing to know I can go to almost any computer out there and work just as I would normally at home. I even did my cafe’s payroll on a computer I’d never used before simply because it was convenient for me to do so. The only limitation you’ll face is whether the computers you’re using have the software you need, like the Office or Adobe suites.

My friend Mack suggested that this I’m some sort of “internet nomad” because of this. Does anyone else have similar experience distancing themselves from their computers?

Until recently my router only went a few feet past my building. It doesn’t help that I’m in an old cinder block building and the router was at the back. When I was still working for Nexopia I had schemed with a few of the engineers there about bouncing free wifi down Whyte Avenue using different repeaters. We came up with some grand schemes but nothing materialized mostly due to the time and cost restraints we all had.

Traditional wifi networks require the customization of each router, known as a node or repeater. I bought a Linksys WRT54GS router with plans for re-flashing the device with my own firmware. However after a lot of research I realized I didn’t have the technical expertise to do that. I could teach myself but it would take me a long time to become familiar enough with Linux to properly implement the router.

A while went by and I just kept offering free wifi to my customers in the cafe. Then along came Edmonton’s NextGen focus group on municipal wifi. Before I attended I once again opened up my research for free wireless networks and I stumbled across a company named Meraki and the idea of an open-mesh wifi network. I decided to order one of the Meraki Outdoor Pro repeaters.

I went to the municipal wifi focus group and we talked mostly about where to recommend the city implements free wifi. I was a bit turned off by the idea of leaving it up to the city’s IT department to make recommendations on how to implement this sort of system. If it’s anything like the U of A, it will be ancient, expensive, and unreasonably secure. I let everyone know I had already been considering this and I would be going ahead with my own experiment. This was met with a lot of encouragement because it’s exactly what the city needs to see in order to get something done. Perfect.

The idea behind a mesh network is that one plugs in a gateway node to a hard line to the internet. This node starts broadcasting a wifi signal. Any additional nodes that are given power within range pick up this signal and start repeating it. This is all automatic without any setup. You can only repeat a signal so far before the quality degrades, so every once in a while you’ll need to add another hard line. With enough nodes you can blanket whatever size area you want.

Meraki is a great concept… but with faults. They create neat looking wireless repeaters that have all the firmware pre-installed out of the box. Unpacking and plugging in my router was as simple as that, unpacking it and plugging it in. Then I logged on to their management page and put in my order number and it automatically connected to my device.

Meraki has one of the slickest dashboards I’ve seen for anything hardware related. It lets you map where your nodes and are track who is using it. As well you can introduce payment structures for people accessing your wifi if you’re greedy enough to do it.

Where Meraki fails is in letting their customers customize the product. Initially you were able to hack the devices however you want until Meraki decided to remotely update each device’s firmware and change their EULA. Read more here: http://www.virishi.net/from-happy-hacking-screw-you-story-meraki

Unfortunately I don’t have a lot of creative control with the splash page for my router. The splash page is going to be how I justify deploying these nodes. If a few ads on a welcome screen can cover the cost of the hardware I’ll keep adding them. So far I’m going to sit on this one for a month and see what the usage is like.

Meraki pros:

• Simple to use
• Great tracking and management software
• Payment options
• Super easy to expand

Meraki cons:

• Expensive!
• Very little plash page customization
• Extremely vague on payment terms and what sort of cut they get
• Evil ad bar for regular versions
• Evil EULA that doesn’t let you modify their hardware

Since Tuesday afternoon there have been 42 unique users of the network, and only about 5 have been inside my cafe. The Meraki repeater is supposedly good for around 700ft., and I can get a connection well down the street in several coffee shops. Right now it’s suction cupped to one of my windows.

In the future I’ll be looking more into Open-Mesh.com, the open source wifi mesh project that is much cheaper and fully customizable.

Since the last post we have had to create a continuation of our project websites as well as contribute to a group collaboration wiki. The website was easy enough to do, however we were still instructed to use FrontPage (discontinued in 2006). This time we needed to insert some Access databases into our websites and make them editable. To do this our instructors provided us with a nifty little template that does all the work for you, but you had to attend the labs to get it. I did not. So I did it the more realistic way, manually… and by manually I ran a database wizard in FrontPage, not terribly tricky.

A couple other stupid and unrealistic things we were required to do included adding a scrolling marquee and password protecting a page by making the password the name of the page. First of all a scrolling marquee is something no self-respecting web designer would ever implement and I seriously doubt any company would ask you do use it. Secondly, security through obscurity is probably the worst thing you could do. You might as well not bother to link the page.

For our wiki project the entire course of approximately 450 students needed to contribute significant work to a class wiki about MIS. There were 64 topics on various technology issues and about 15-20 students assigned to each topic.

Now, before I get started, this is an interesting idea but it was the worst executed project I’ve ever participated in. One of my profs, Ofer Arazi has spent a great deal of time researching and working with online social collaboration like wikis. He’s a great prof and he has done a good job teaching the class. Unfortunately this assignment was not properly thought through by the entire department, it was not any one persons fault.

I was assigned to edit Application Architecture, Peer-to-Peer Networking, and Software Application Generation Tools. Joy.

Our assignment was to contribute meaningful, useful entries that required “effort”. There was a short list describing what “effort” was and it includes everything from original content to reformatting for readability.

When I started my work the pages I was assigned to were pretty well fleshed out, albeit blatantly plagiarized. So I decided to contribute my “effort” through deleting irrelevant and useless content as well as reformatting the articles and properly referencing sources. The hitch with all the types of contributions is that if you’re moderately competent you can argue 100% at the end of the day if you’ve done even a little bit of work.

There were two major flaws with this project:
1. The wiki couldn’t handle everyone at once.
2. It’s peer marked, each student is responsible for grading two articles (40 different students).

1. Poorly designed wiki

The following bit of dialogue between myself and the course coordinator further reinforces my feelings of being robbed of precious tuition dollars. I posted this in our open discussion board accessible by students and faculty.

Me:

I’ve noticed the server hosting the wiki is excrutiationly slow. So slow that my session likes to time out when viewing pages.

Also, having to compete against 15 other students to edit one page is extremely unfair. I’ve found that by the time I’m done editing a section my lock has expired and someone else is editing it, now I basically have to sit here and hit edit and hope I get to it before the next person, AND then I have to try to incorporate the last student’s changes.

What are the odds of looking at the speed issue before this thing is due?

Response:

Eric,

It sounds to me like you left this assignment until the very last minute. This is fine, as it is your choice when you want to do it. However, thsi assignment has been available to work on for 3 months now. It is not our fault you left thje assignment to the last minute. the onus is on you to make sure you can get your contributions in on time. The entire purpose of giving you the assignment so early was to make sure everyone had a fair chance to get on and edit the page. Of course the server is going to be extremely slow and busy the night it is due. We gave all students every possible tool to complete this assignment.

N.J.

Course Manager

Me:

Actually I’d say the onus is on the department to properly design and execute relevant and working assignments. So far it’s failed pretty miserably. When I complete an assignment should not matter. Next year I suggest a warning be given to all students that the current server architecture in place can’t handle everyone at once. In fact it looks like it’s more of a software issue and not the server (poorly designed wiki) because ulearn was speedy.

By the way, you were not available during your office hours as we arranged to meet so I had to go talk to Ofer.

I look forward to the grading.

Thanks,
Eric

Response:

Eric,

AS you probably know, when many people try to work on something at the same time, the speed becomes very slow. We could take a lot of time and money top design a wiki that can handle mor epeople at the same time, but the problem will still remain. Only one person can ever edit a document or wiki page at any given time, no matter how fast the wiki is. Even if we had a state of the art, superfast wiki, it would still lock out everyone but one person for editing. So, very close to the due date, everyone will still have the same problem. This is why we gave everyone 3 months to work on this assignment, so that trying to find time to edit the wiki page woudl not be a problem. many students took advantage of this and began their work early. Unfortunately, those students who left it unitl the last minute will experience the issue of being locked out. I hope you understand the real reason as to why there were problems with the wiki. Hopefully this clearly explains all of the issues, and any amibiguities.

Cheers,

N.J.

Me:

N.J.,

MediaWiki (which powers Wikipedia) is both free and scalable. It also allows multiple users to edit and has built in edit conflict resolution management.

Here’s a few links to reference for next year:
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Edit_conflict

Eric

After this he stopped responding completely. This was over a week ago and I’ll consider that conversation closed. I later had my professor tell me in class that I would make a very good consultant because I “always had suggestions for improving things”. Obviously he’d been reading.

I’ll admit I was a bit curt with our course manager but realistically someone needs to hold the school responsible for their ineptitude.

2. Peer marked assignment

Rumour has it that last year there were so many complaints about the peer marked wiki projects that the course managers had to give everyone 100% on the assignment. I could technically give everyone a 0 and they couldn’t do anything about it. My mark isn’t dependent of how I grade someone else. A few of us challenged our prof and verified that we could put in the bare minimum effort for this grading without penalties. For the record I did mine properly. I did give out a fair share of failing grades for blatant plagiarism without quotes or citations to back it up. Technically those students should fail the course… technically.

Yesterday I received a pleasant email from the course coordinator:

Hi Eric,
your URL’s to your webpages you submitted do not work. We have   tried every one and even multiple alterations, and still did not   get them to work. Did you check to make sure the URL’s you   submitted work? It looks as though we can not access your  webpages,  and we need to in order to actually grade your  assignment.

N.J.

Me:

Hi N.J.,

I just opened part 4B from my assignment page and clicked on every
single link and they all worked fine for me. I also went directly to
the site at http://students.bus.ualberta.ca/warnke/ from two different
computers and it worked fine, both in IE and Firefox.

I’m not sure what is wrong.

Eric

Response:

Hi eric,

Your link you gave me in this email works, but the uRL’s in your  submission do not. We will grade you rassignment based on this  working URL, but there will be a penal;ty for a submission that  does not work.

N.J.

Me:

Hi N.J.,

This can’t be correct. My friend (who is also in this course) is
standing beside me right now as we download and click on each link and
they all work.

I would like to come to your office and go over the submission before
you deduct any marks.

Please let me know when is best to drop by.

Please attach the document you saved from uLearn so I may see for myself.

Regards,
Eric

Response:

Hi eric,

It turns out that there was another student whom had a very similar name, but did not put his full name, so we thought it was you. I have found your submitted file, and graded you thusly. You will receive no penalty for URL’s not working. Sorry for this confusion. I have attatched the excel file as you requested for you to look at.

Thank you,
N.J.

I don’t know what you’re thinking but it definitely felt like I was the first Eric to pop into his mind when something went wrong. The funny thing is each assignment also had a unique student ID attached to it, 3 times actually. Also, the only other Eric’s in the course had last names of Leong and Mah, nowhere near Warnke.

All in all I can’t say I’m terribly impressed with this course. I wrote on both my student evaluations that I felt this was a complete waste of time and that I intend to write a formal complaint to our assistant-dean.

By the way, any spelling or grammatical errors by N.J. are complete his, I didn’t edit any of his stuff except to change his full name to his initials for his peace of mind.

Any comments on what you’ve read would be appreciated. If I’m completely out to lunch or if you think I’m demanding way too much from my university I’d be glad to hear your thoughts.

I’m off to the Project Hope benefit dinner tonight, I  hope it’s good

Microsoft Canada has set up a site they’ve named The Ultimate Steal. Essentially you can buy Office 2007 Ultimate edition for $64 Canadian. It’s totally legit too because the TOC are from Microsoft.com.

I ordered a copy and they EMAIL you the product code

The cool thing is there isn’t any restrictions on the license, I can use it commercially all I want. I’ll be buying a few copies through some of my friend’s emails for the cafe.

The only catch is you need a university/college registered email.

Wow, that was the simplest update I’ve done for a piece of software online before. Just copy a few files and go to the upgrade page, super simple.

I really like the new WordPress layout. It’s smart looking and a big improvement over the outdated layout they previously employed.

My favourite part is the write page: it’s a lot easier on the eyes and the options are grouped in a much my organized manner. All the common tasks are on the right while most of the extra junk you’ll never use is pushed below the post.

What really looks awesome is the new built in gallery part. You can upload multiple files at once and it will catalogue them in the nice gallery for you. Matt Wullenberg, WordPress’s founder, has a great example of a fully functioning gallery.

My biggest gripe with WordPress to date has been the speed and the stats. Right now my installation is pretty sluggish, and I don’t think it’s DreamHost. I’ve read a few comments and it’s one of the top ideas in the Most Popular Ideas section of WordPress Ideas. On that note I think it’s awesome how WordPress includes the highest rated ideas in their upcoming releases. Most community sites might do well to implement something along these lines

So far I haven’t been able to get my stats to work with WordPress, but that’s ok because I’m using Google Analytics as well and I think it’s a bit more accurate anyway.

Screencast of WordPress 2.5

You can grab the latest WordPress release here: http://wordpress.org/download/

Nexopia…

…haha, made you look