So given these reasons, I’ve migrated back to windows, but had a very hard time giving up the environment. I have been using cygwin for a long time, then started using puttycyg, but I still wasn’t happy, because I wanted a tabbed UI. I went searching around and found a few options, but the one that I decided on was ponderosa. It’s a pretty slick tool that lets you split your console sessions vertically, horizontally etc. Think of it as a window manager for cygwin.

I installed it at home, and it worked great. When I came to work the next day and tried installing it, it couldn’t find the cygwin registry key. I started comparing registry’s and I found that on my home computer the key was installed in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE and on my work machine it was only installed to HKEY_CURRENT_USER. Obviously, as the error indicated, I needed to have this key in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE.

I haven’t had a lot of experience editing the registry, so I was a little nervous but it turned out to be very simple.

1. Export HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Software/Cygnus Solutions to a .reg file on my desktop
2. Open with note pad
3. Replace all instances of HKEY_CURRENT_USER with HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
4. Re-import into registry
5. Restart Ponderosa

Amazingly, it worked. I don’t think I should suggest you edit your registry at work. But just remember. The biggest difference between windows and linux is the ideology that you need to accept faulty software in windows. I think more often you find that Linux users are accustomed to modifying their OS to meet their needs, while windows users are happy to just accept the issue. Well, this is me saying, don’t accept the issue. Hell, if the software doesn’t work, then maybe accept that it’s crappy software, but if that is the case you should write better software or patch the software to fill the gap. If everyone did this, the windows software world would not be such a gong show.

Recently I started getting very frusterated with my lack of care in consumption. I started realizing that I was spending way too much on a bunch of services I didn’t really need. I decided that I wanted a fresh start so I paid off the balance on my credit card and start accounting for my expenses to see where the money was going and how I could stop the bleeding. I realized that my comunnication services were accounting for between $300 - $400 a month. Basically if you break it down I was paying the following:

• Rogers Blackberry Voice and Data - Advertisted : $70 / mnth- Actual : $135-$225 /mnth
• Shaw Cable Bundle - $115 / Month (basic cable, land line phone, internet services)

At this point I had been reading a lot more about agile development practices and attempting to implement them in my web practices. The idea of being agile certainly didn’t really apply to my operating costs. So I started thinking about business operations, how one can operate an infrastructure with agility and minimize the wastefulness of their consumption without impacting their day to day standards. I set a goal for myself. I wanted to replace my solution with a new solution that cost me less in a year then the amount of my highest monthly blackberry phone bill ($225.95)

Looking at this scenario specifically, I realized that the majority of my impact revolved around phone, internet and the combination of these. The cable package is sort of a mute point, because it doesn’t really fluxuate. However my blackberry bill with Rogers was was all over the place. So I devised a plan to rid myself of the mobile phone service. This would reduce my expenses by over 200% in some months. I decided my solution would be to operate my phone services (including land line) using VOIP. Now I’ve had a very little experience with VOIP but my impression is that there are a ton of Internet based communications companies who "specialize" in VOIP. To me these companies look like they were all reseller ISPs or hosting companies who jumped on the communications band wagon as another way to milk a client’s contract with minimal service standards… I used to be in that industry, it doesn’t appeal to me. Lets find an alternative that is popular and proven. Well what about SKYPE?

There’s nothing really all that new about this conception. Skypes been around for a while now, and they just released Skype 4.0 which is a great improvement on their client. The beauty of this decisions is that it’s not so astounding or original. Skype is proven, I’ve seen roughly 10 million people on the network on any given day. So that to me says that it’s proven. I looked at the prices, and at $2.95 CAD a month for unlimited calling in Canada and the US, I would say it also passes requirement 2. It’s cheap. Roughly $17 a month cheaper then my current provider. So now how can I convert this service into something that is transparent to the outside world while maintaining flexibility? The only things really needed in order to fully substitute alandline with this solution are…

1. A phone number routed to the Skype account
2. An answering machine service that is capable of recording missed calls
3. A Skype handset to allow for me to pace while I talk

You would think that hte first option would be completely simple. Oh Skype sells those! Your right, they do. Just not in Canada. FTW! I searched around a little and found this company. DID World Wide was able to sell  activate immediately a local phone number for anywhere I wanted for $65. They let you route it to your skype for free! So do the math so far (12×2.95)+65 = $104.43

Answering machine next. EASY! Pamela - $20 one time licensing fee. Comes with everything you need for any kind of Skype recording / answering / automating. Total: $124.43 The last thing is a handset. I went on craigslist and got the Vtech 7100 for about $80. That puts me @ $204.43 - Success! Agile communications. I can even sign into Skype in multiple places and get the phone calls! Right now I’m signed in from home, work and my girlfriends place! If I don’t want to answer it, it still goes to voice mail on my home computer and then emails me a copy of the message!

Now that I succeeded, the final task is to cancel my services. Shaw was no problem, they are no contract, so they will cancel it anytime. Rogers however request a $500 early cancellation fee. Now if I had to endure that charge I would not have achieved my original goal. So I moved to Nunavit. Yes, that’s right. Nunavit. Where there is no Rogers service. I called them and let them know that I was moving there, and when they realized they had no service to offer me, they cancelled my contract with no cancellation fee.

… And that is the story of how I rided myself from over priced communications services and started a home phone system that costs me roughly $8.33 a month. Try it out for yourself.

Recently in my job at Blast Radius I have been exposed to abstracted control methods. In my interview Loyal asked me if I know what "inversion of control" was. I assumed it was the opposite of version control, and we had a laugh. It so happens that inversion of control is a very interesting concept that fits really well into my favorite javascript Mootools. With this new concept in mind, I decided I would finally write a new plugin for mootools. It’s been a while since I wrote anything that anyone cared to download or comment on, so I thought I’d give this concept a go and see how people respond to it.

The plugin is called sLabFx and here is the Demo.

Basically it’s a set of classes that when called, will reference a configuration file, preload and bind a set of motion effects and events, then fire them in which every timeline sequece you can event. The benefit to this plugin is that you can write highly animated effects without ever having to edit the actual code. You have a simple JSON configuration file that you structure to include all of your fx and chains, which essentially serves as sort of a timeline (like flash) for your application.

So with that said, I am interested to hear what developers think, could this be useful if it were packaged with a javascript timeline application which allows the JSON config to be generated dynamically? All the sudden, we have a flash like javascript app on our hands.

Please leave a comment with your thoughts!

Since then I have picked up more then a few new tricks, and have converted 3 (that I know of) below average windows users into fully functional members of the Linux community.

Now lets get down to the features that make Linux a much more flexible desktop for solving an ever changing number of work related issues, and red tape.

1) Workspace. Better Workspace.

Upon arriving at my new job, I was less then stoked to see that every person in the place had a second LCD monitor except for me. Desktop space can be a real pain in the ass for a UI programmer because of the constant refreshing required to see changes in the browser. Albeit I am a master of the alt tab, and have been known to ninja kick my way through a few builds this way, it’s less then a good way to avoid carpel tunnel. So the answer is simple in this case. Multiple desktops, which as you can see, can be easily integrated into the compiz window manager to make a pretty awesome cubic 3 dimensional desktop experience. From the following video, you’ll be able to see the reason why I no longer care if I have a second monitor. I’m too busy flipping from desktop to desktop:

2) Software. Free Software.

This is a pretty good reason no matter what the situation is, however almost anyone who has worked in a larger company can tell you about the headache that its normally required to interface with the IT department so that you can get a piece of software that will assist you in your task. Well with Linux, the answer is as simple as sudo apt-get install software-package or if you can’t find it, build it. The later being a motto that I have adopted more and more recently.

3) Security and piece of mind

I’ve worked at a few places where management is more then aggressive about banning and prohibiting any sort of IM, or un-work-related surfing activities. This often spawns rumors of packet sniffing, and other things that are less then desirable to me. The answer to this is simply an SSH tunnel. Very simply any Linux machine can be tunneled using the following ssh command:

ssh -D port username@hostname.com

Once this is done, you can then use System -> Preference Network Proxy to point your connection to localhost:port using a SOCKS proxy.

I normally refrain from setting the proxy at this level however because it is fairly global. Instead I set the proxy in each application (mail, im, firefox) independently, allowing for better customization. For Firefox this is particularly important if you are running a localhost development environment. I suggest you use Foxy Proxy to configure patterns for host names that use the proxy and host names that do not. Now that you are tunneling through your favourite remote server, you have the piece of mind knowing that your web traffic is not open to prying eyes.

And there you have it. These are the 3 main reasons why I have decided to exlcusively use Linux/Ubuntu for any work related project. It should be kept in mind that these reasons are much more particular to Linux in a whole then Ubuntu itself, which is simply my perferred flavor of Linux. Also, there are many other great reasons, such as cron jobs, lynx, raggle and plain CLI that make Linux perfect as a work desktop, so I’d be happy to hear why you do you don’t perfer Linux.

I think that you bring up a very interesting point here. Often people will consider second or third hand stories as a form of broken telephone, in which the content cannot be trusted. I’d like to draw reference to a piece of literature called ‘Blink’ by Malcolm Gladwell in which he references to ‘thin-slicing’. Often through word of mouth, context is diluted or changed, but generally in the first X amount of steps, the message will remain the same without the saturation of frustration that can be found in first person. The results highlight the original and (possibly?) make a more dense overall consumer experience to base future engagements with relation to the brand in question. This being said, it could very well be that a second or third hand story can possibly be more directly helpful to a consumer looking to make a decision than a first hand encounter as long as the message maintains a an accurate ‘thin-sliced’ version of the original message.

• tour itinerary management for bands - bands will plot their tours and be able to interact in real time with each stop on the tour
• street team management and groups - fans will be able to subscribe to their favorite touring events and interact with them. event coordinators will be able to effectively manage their street teams.
• ticket purchasing - ticket sales for sponsored tours and demographic reports indicating high sale areas
• media and content sharing - blogs, video, photos and tons of great stuff that can be uploaded in real time directly to the application from any medium (cellphone, blackberry) and associated to the event geographically
• DIY tour suggestion solution - a solution that will suggest specific tour dates for a DIY artist based on the weight that the venue or promoter records hold for their given areas of promotion