Archive for December, 2004

Important questions to ponder each day

Wednesday, December 22nd, 2004

Saw this at Recruiting.com, and it made me think. A useful exercise for each day to see if the day was ‘worth’ anything, and if you’re headed in the right direction. Also some good questions about your job too, lower down.

Excerpt follows:

The following is from Curt Rosengren’s blog.

Three questions to ask before bed

I came across a great post today on Water Reflection offering three questions that Tony Robbins suggests asking before you go to bed each day.

What have I learned today?

What have I enjoyed today?

What have I improved or contributed today?

Simple. Powerful. And a potential source of amazing amounts of insights and focus.

Curt Rosengren
Passion Catalyst

I think in my recruiting efforts I am going to start asking the candidates I recruit these three questions:

1. Have you learned anything today or in the last week at work

2. What have you enjoyed at work in the last few days

3. What have you improved or contributed to at work in the last little while

I might also add to this:

4. Do you feel that people depend on you at work

I bet this will make my job a whole lot easier and make the candidates realize maybe there is something to being recruited for the right job at the right time.

Thanks Curt.

WordPress Online Documentation

Wednesday, December 22nd, 2004

The ‘official’ documentation for WordPress

WordPress Codex

Crazy But Able – Wordpress RSS bandwidth fixes

Tuesday, December 21st, 2004

Two bugs in WordPress’ handling of RSS feeds that caused it to send the feed even if it shouldn’t.

Wordpress RSS bandwidth fixes

PC Review – White Balance – Page 1

Monday, December 20th, 2004

Brief but useful overview of White Balance and digital cameras. Shows some examples of what can happen when the white balance isn’t set correctly.

This is one reason I like shooting in RAW format. The white balance isn’t set until I process the images on my computer, so I can set the white balance then. Obviously it would be best to manually set the white balance everytime I change locations, but in real life for the average person, this isn’t practical.

Also, based on a number of reports, Auto is very good outdoors, but doesn’t work very well indoors. So, if you remember, it’s a good idea to manually calibrate the white balance indoors if you aren’t shooting in RAW format.

PC Review – White Balance – Page 1

WordPress Fast Frontend

Friday, December 17th, 2004

Someone fed up with the sluggishness of WordPress and the messy code. If you’re also unhappy, worth a check.

It will obviously take some time to go through the code and test it to ensure it works well enough for you. I’m not willing to invest that amount of time right now, but still want to be aware of it later.

WordPress Fast Frontend

Ottawa’s MP3 fee quashed

Friday, December 17th, 2004

If you’re thinking of buying a portable MP3 player, you may want to wait a month or so. It appears the $25 levy has been legally challenged, so you could see a price drop.

The Globe and Mail: Ottawa’s MP3 fee quashed

Stopping Wordpress comment spam in 5 minutes

Wednesday, December 15th, 2004

Another easy method of stopping, or at least really slowing down spammers.

The 5 min Wordpress anti comment spam hack.

Free Programming and Computer Science Books

Thursday, December 9th, 2004

Link to a site that has downloadable textbooks. Glancing through the list, and following a few of the links, they appear to be genuinely free and not pirated books.

Free Programming and Computer Science Books

Inkjet Printer Heads

Thursday, December 9th, 2004

For those of you with inkjet printers that keep clogging, here is an article discussing some basic maintenance you can undertake to help the situation.

Inkjet Printer Heads (Feedback)

MuggleNet.com – The Ultimate Harry Potter Site

Tuesday, December 7th, 2004

MuggleNet.com – The Ultimate Harry Potter Site

Copying CDs and DVDs

Tuesday, December 7th, 2004

Want to make backups of your DVDs or CDs, but not sure how to do it? Here’s some software that will help.

I rarely take original CD’s into the car, although thus far, I haven’t had one that was copy protected, so I’ve been able to copy it.

I haven’t made copies of any of my DVDs yet, but the more I read about longevity, the more I think it’s a good idea. Perhaps when/if I buy a dual-layer burner and the media is available and inexpensive, it will be time to consider backing up my DVDs to.

Note: I don’t have any connections to this company, and I haven’t tested it. They have a 21 day trial, so give it a try first.

SlySoft Inc. Multimedia Solutions | dvd copy, burning dvd, dvd ripper, dvd copying software

Open Source Password Safe

Monday, December 6th, 2004

I was using Password Corral, which is also very good, but I’ve switched to this for 1 reason. It is easy to put KeePass onto a USB drive and take it with you. Tom’s Hardware has kindly provided a guide to doing this with KeePass.

KeePass – The Open-Source Password Safe

PureJPEG – Filter Unnecessary JPEG Data

Sunday, December 5th, 2004

If you’re posting jpgs to a website, this utility could help reduce the size of the files without impacting their visual quality.

Basically, it strips out any non-image related items from the jpg like EXIF, comments etc. DO NOT do this to your original images from your camera as you will likely want to keep the EXIF info.

Try it on a few images and see if it helps. In my case, it would only save 31 bytes/image since the program I use for generating my images already strips out most of the information

PureJPEG – Filter Unnecessary JPEG Data

Contour Design – IPod case and other devices

Sunday, December 5th, 2004

They make many items, focusing on excellent design.

The IPod case looks very good, although I don’t have any personal experience with it.

I’m also interested in the Shuttle Pro. This is used for video editing, and could speed up the task of trimming and scanning through video. I’ll have to find one in a store so I can test it out and see if it’s worth the price.

Contour Design

Free file renamer

Sunday, December 5th, 2004

I was looking for a file renamer as I had a number of files that I wanted to intelligently rename. Did some searching, and found this renamer.

It’s UI isn’t the greatest, so it took a little bit of effort to figure out, but the price is right, and it did what it promised.

Rename mp3 files. 1-4a-rename. Freeware file renamer for Windows 95/98/2000/XP