Lottery tickets offer us the dream of escaping to a different life. Often I find myself wondering what it would be like if I didn’t have to work full time. I always imagine spending more time on my open source software projects, getting in better shape and doing some freelance consulting to pay the time.

About ten years ago I got to see my parents make the transition from working full-time to retirement. It wasn’t an easy switch for them. There was some sadness, a lack of motivation and a lonliness as they lost the human contact the workplace gave them each day.

For the past two months I’ve gotten to experience what it’s like not to work every day. I was laid off from my previous job with severance. While I money wasn’t tight, there wasn’t enough to jet set off to Europe or go on any big vacations other than the ones I already had planned for the summer. I was stressed out most of the time until I found myself a new job. After I accepted the job offer, I gave myself a big window until I had to start so that I could relax and enjoy my time off.

This was the longest stretch of time I had booked off; it has been 14 years since I’ve had that much time to myself all at once. When I was working, I imagined all the web projects I could do if I didn’t have to go to work. The reality of the experience was quite different. Once you have the freedom to do anything you want with your day, sitting in front of the computer is the last thing you want to do.

For the first few weeks I found myself irritated by 3pm every day. I quickly realized that it was the lack of structure; if I got myself out of the house the feeling went away. So time was spent walking around the city, going to the library and reading in coffee shops. The beautiful weather really helped. Why stay inside on a sunny day if you don’t have to? Part of it was a desire to be around real people, instead of the virtual people I usually associate with if I’m stuck on a computer.

There was a definite priority shift. With the freedom to do anything I wanted with my day, it made so much more sense to focus on those long term, important but not urgent goals. Organizing things around the house. Getting a new family doctor. Renewing my passport. Getting new contacts. Removing clutter from my house and my life. I had to laugh one day when I found an old to-do list from 2006. There was stuff on that list that was important to my life and my well being that I was finally getting around to.

I found it amazing how much clearer it was to process my task list and choose the most important tasks for the day. Because I felt no urgency in any of my tasks, I was able to make much better decisions about what was important vs what wasn’t even worth doing.

I’m about to enter the workforce again, and I hope I can take some of the clairity I currently feel with me.

I’m one of those cogs who uses Apple mp3 players simply because I feel they do really good job. I tried to fight iTunes for the longest time, but I eventually gave into it because, like Microsoft Outlook, it’s the default music program that everyone uses and every 3rd party application supports.

I’ve been using a couple of 3rd party application to enhance my iTunes experience. I use last.fm to keep track of what songs I’m listening to so that I can display them on my Facebook/FriendFeed profiles. It also does a good job of suggesting new music to me based on my listening habits. What last.fm can’t do is generate random playlists based on the music I already have in my library.

I had been using software from the Filter for generating random playlists. Unfortunately, since I updated their software I can’t find the “create playlist” feature anymore. That made me pretty excited about the announcement today that iTunes 8 will support generating random playlists using a new feature called “iTunes Genius”.

The Power of Random

I’ve been an iTunes_iPod user for four years. In the past month I picked up an iPod Shuffle because I usually leave my 60 GB iPod at the office, and I wanted something more portable and more suitable to an active livestyle. I’ve been really impressed with the batterly life and the portability of my iPod Shuffle.

What I’ve enjoyed the most is the “Zen of Shuffle”. Since the shuffle only selects and plays random lists of music, I’m having more and more occassions of “wow, I love that song! I haven’t heard it in so long!!” instead of listening to the same 10 albums I’ve been listening to for the past month.

The Gotcha

Of course, the big gotcha with Apple’s new iTunes Genius feature is that you have to sign up for an iTunes Music Store account. At first glance, you might think this means you have to give away your credit card information, but click the None button to make that all go away.

Keep reading if you don’t see the “None” button.

How To Unlock the iTunes Music Store

A lot of people don’t bother turning on the iTunes Music Store because it requires a credit card. Actually, there’s a couple of ways of bypassing the credit card requirement. The most common method is:

1. Find a free iTunes “redeem” code somewhere on the web
2. Open iTunes and go to the iTunes music store
3. Click on the “Redeem” link (on the right side, near the top)
4. You’ll be prompted to create an iTunes music store account, but with the “None” option unlocked so you don’t require a credit card.

I got my free redeem code by following this link. Another option is to pick up a cheap iTunes gift card at a local electronics store.

If that code doesn’t work, then try this search to find a new one:

http://www.google.com/search?q=itunes+free+redeem+code

Starting Genius

The first time you try to use Genius, it’s going to take a while. Especially if, say, you try to use it with a 100 GB music library on the day the Apple iTunes music store opens up for the first time. I’m guessing it’ll take around an hour to scan your library, so you don’t want to try it for the first time while sipping a latte at the local coffee shop.

It took an hour for my library to scan so that I could start using Genius.

Using Genius

Play a song and click on the atom icon at the bottom right hand corner to start using Genius. Unlike TheFilter, you can only use one song to “seed” a random playlist. Playlists can be saved, but they aren’t saved automatically. The playlists are named with the name of the song you used to start the playlist.

Genius playlists are limited to 25, 50 or 100 songs in length. They can be refreshed to get new tracks.

The good news is that you can create even larger smart playlists based off of multiple genius playlists. This could be a great way to build a large constrained random playlists for your iPod Shuffle.

Unfortunately the playlists are stored in your iTunes metadata file, so there is no easy way to access them from your Xbox 360. Sounds like a good idea for a new freeware app. :)

I’ve been browing through my local photographers looking for family portrait photographers and wedding photographers. As someone who is very familiar with the web, I’m always struck at how poorly some people do their web portfolioes.

How Do They Find You?

Like anything, the most important thing about a photography site is how it ranks on google for location + keyword searches.

• http://www.google.ca/search?q=ottawa+photography
• http://www.google.ca/search?q=ottawa+wedding+photography
• http://www.google.ca/search?q=ottawa+portrait+photography

I’m sure that ottawaportraitphotographers.com does quite well when it comes to new clients finding them via Google.

The Good

I chose my wedding photographer because he uses a blog to display his pictures. The pictures are big enough that I can see the quality, there isn’t anything hiding the images, and enough pictures load all at once that I can get a good indication that I want to see more without having to click on each individual photo. Blogs also have the added feature where I actually can tell that the photos are recent work. With some sites only the hairstyles give any indication of when the photo was taken.

There were a few Ottawa wedding photographers who use this approach of having both a blog and a flash-based gallery, and I have to say I was impressed with all of them.

• Mike Dickson - Ottawa Wedding Photographer blog (flash site)
• Byron Brydges - Ottawa Wedding Photographer blog (flash site)
• Andrew Geddes - Ottawa Wedding Photographer blog (flash site)

The blogs are photo galleries all on their own. None of them mix personal blog posts in with the photos.

The Bad

One of my biggest pet-peeves with photo gallery sites is having to click on each individual photograph to load it. It isn’t so bad if I can middle-click on them to open them in a new tab to look at later, but with some flash- or javascript-based sites it takes forever! I have to click on each individual picture, wait for it to load, look at it, then click again… it ends up taking 20 times as long to view the entire gallery vs a blog-based sites.

If you use a flash-based site for displaying your photos, it has to be FAST. Use something like SimpleViewer instead of coding it yourself.

Another pet-peeve is when the pictures aren’t big enough to see the photo in detail. Thumbnails are great for overall navigation, but it’s very hard to tell photo quality when the picture takes up less than one fifth of my screen.

The Ugly

One of the worst things I’ve seen is watermarks embedded in the image. We all understand that you don’t want other people to steal your livelyhood, but much like how digital rights management shouldn’t prevent people from watching a DVD, the embedded watermark in a photo shouldn’t prevent your potential customer from seeing how good your pictures are. I can’t appreciate a photo when the writing on top of them is too distracting.

Of course, it’s even worse to have blurry photos in your portfolio. Thank you, but if I wanted an out-of-focus shot I could do it myself.

I hope if there are any amateur or semi-pro photographers in the audience they can learn a few things about what customers are looking for.

Google Chrome has been public for all of about 30 minutes now. I am very impressed with how fast it downloads and installs, with almost no need for user prompts (except to close your web browser so it can import bookmarks/passwords). It’s fast as fast can be.

I can’t get over how fast it is. If you type “about:memory” into the address/search bar you’ll see a memory comparison between Chrome and any other web browsers you’re currently running. It uses so much less memory than Firefox.

Lifehacker has a good round-up of what’s “new” in Chrome, as well as ways to tweak Firefox to get the same features. But I can’t switch to Chrome because of my dependency on multiple profiles and my Firefox extensions.

Profiles?

Multiple profiles let me log into Gmail with different user accounts at the same time, and keep my browsing history and bookmarks separate from my girlfriend who shares the computer with me.

Heck, I keep my blogging related bookmarks separated from my Joe Public bookmarks for my day-to-day email, Facebook, and job related stuff so I can be more productive.

Plugins?

• I can’t log into my accounts without Password Hasher. Not only do I not use the same password for every account, I don’t even KNOW my password for most accounts.
• I don’t want to surf the web without Ad-block.
• I’ve written so many custom Greasemonkey scripts that are unavailable on Chrome.
• I don’t want to even think about doing any kind of web stuff without Firebug at my beck and call.
• I’m missing my Delicious tag button for bookmarking.

RSS?

There doesn’t seem to be any RSS auto-discovery in Chrome. I hate how painful it is to subscribe to feeds in Google Reader using Internet Explorer, it looks like it’ll be even worse in Chrome.

Chrome looks very cool, but I think anyone who has been reading Lifehacker for the past few years is going to find they’re missing too much of what is “essential” to them. It’s really too bad, because I’d love to run some Greasemonkey scripts inside of Chrome with it’s better memory debugging. I’m hoping that one of the big brained Googlers figures out a way to transparently run Greasemonkey userscripts so we don’t have the same Firefox vs Opera vs Internet Explorer vs Safari development sinkhole.

On the other hand, Chrome might be the best thing ever for people who use Internet Explorer and aren’t co-dependent on all of Firefox’s wonderful extensions.

Much like how doctor’s get bombarded with medical questions, being the alpha geek in any family or group of friends means you’ll get asked questions about computers. There’s only one way to stay sane: get everyone you know to run the same software.

Outlook vs Gmail

Case in point, I’ve had to support Microsoft Outlook for over a decade now even though the last time I used it was in 1997. Even though I switched from Outlook to Thunderbird, and then Gmail I’ve had this albatross of questions hanging around my neck. If I could convince everyone I know to switch to gmail I wouldn’t have to worry about problems like:

• Poor performance because emails are never deleted
• Poor junk mail filtering
• Confusion because anti-virus programs are picking up virii in the Deleted Mail folder

For me the main advantages to using gmail instead of a desktop based client are:

• Access email from any computer
• No “downloading email” wait time
• NO VIRUSES! Everything is virus scanned any nothing is downloaded on to your computer without your express interaction
• The best junk mail filtering available
• Incredibly fast search that works so much better than manually organizing emails
• You can keep your old email address and still use gmail as your mail program
• Offline support with Google Gears
• Automatically signs into other Google services like Blogger and Reader

There are many instructions on switching from Outlook to Gmail using special software like Gmail Loader (or gExodus), by temporarily setting up a mail server to importing into Gmail using IMAP, or using POP. With that last method, you can transparently use gmail while keeping your old email address.

Internet Explorer vs Mozilla Firefox

I love Firefox because of all the ways I can extend it with Greasemonkey and because of ad-block plus. Internet Explorer isn’t as bad as it used to be, but you’ll still run into strange headaches like how much more difficult it is to subscribe to an RSS feed using Google Reader in Internet Explorer than in Firefox.

Filesharing

I was a long time Azeurus bittorrent user, but I’ve found it hard to explaining to anyone else how to use the program, not to mention how poorly it performs. uTorrent is so much simplier to use, and it is so much easier to explain to other people how to use it. These are the uTorrent settings I use to work well with Rogers Canada.

uTorrent seems to work better than Azureus or the original Bit Torrent client, and I really like how it defaults to selecting individual files in a torrent to download. It also seems to have much less virii than the older quality P2P applications like Limewire and Soulseek.

There are quite a few legitimate uses of bittorrent. A lot of excellent free software is distributed using bittorrent, and as older movies, books and music comes into the public domain it is being hosted on bittorrent networks. People are sharing their public domain podcasts and video casts using bittorrent as well.

Norton Antivirus vs Anything Else

The other big problem I run into as the computer tech person is “my computer is slow”. The culprit is an easy find: Norton Antivirus. Norton Antivirus is a virus because it is more detrimental to your computer performance than actually having a virus. Nobody likes Norton Antivirus.

We’ve been trying out AVG Free as an alternative, but ran into issues with how user unfriendly it is (finding virii in the Recycling Bin, finding virii in the Outlook Deleted Trash and the difficulty in deleting the virii). Leave a comment if you have any suggestions of which antivirus to use for casual home users who aren’t tech saavy.

I keep hearing about NOD32, Kapersky, or Clamwin.

Here’s a stupidly easy tip for web browsing that can be a real time saver. It works in Firefox or Internet Explorer (and maybe even Safari). The trick is to bookmark all of the websites you commonly visit as one group so that you can open them all at once when it comes time for your daily maintenance.

For me, the list is:

• Local weather
• Gmail
• Remember the Milk
• Remember the Milk weekly planner
• My internet usage quota from my ISP
• Facebook
• Google Reader

Step 1: Open your favorite sites in tabs

Keep using Ctrl-T or middle-click to open sites in a new tab until you have a list of all the sites you normally visit at the start of a day.

Step 2: Bookmark the open tabs as a group.

This is where the magic happens. Instead of individually saving the bookmarks, you save them as a group/folder so that you can open them all at once.

In Firefox, use Bookmarks >> Bookmark All Tabs (Ctrl-Shift-D)

Hot Tip: Save to group under Bookmarks Toolbar so that they’ll be accessible from your Firefox toolbar.

In Internet Explorer, use Favorites >> Add Tab Group to Favorites

Step 3: Organize your bookmarks

If you want to remove a link from your group (because Facebook is a timesink) then you can use the organize feature of your web browser to add or delete bookmarks, or to reorder them.

In Firefox, use Bookmarks >> Organize Boomarks (Ctrl-Shift-B)

In Internet Explorer, use Favorites >> Organize Favorites

Step 4: Opening the group all at once

In Firefox, you can navigate to your bookmarks using the toolbar or the Bookmarks drop-down menu (depending on where you saved them in step 2) and choose Open All in Tabs.

In Internet Explorer, it’s a bit more complicated.

• Click on the Star (for favorites)
• Click on the arrow beside the tab group you just created

After that’s all done, you’ve probably saved yourself a few minutes a day of having to switch between sites you check out very often. Because they all start loading at the same time, it’s pretty quick to jump between them and grab the information you need.

In my efforts to actually get off my ass and get things done, the Remember the Milk (RTM) to-do list software has been a life saver. Two weeks ago I decided to try out a bunch of 3rd party extensions to RTM like Jott.

Jott is a speech to text service. You call up a phone number, say something, and what you say will be emailed back to you (along with the voice message), send to a contact, or send to another service like Twitter or Remember the Milk.

My first experience testing the RTM integration blew my mind. I could call the number and say “job interview tomorrow at 9am” and it would show up in my Remember the Milk todo list as “job interview” with the due date set as tomorrow at 9am.

!!!

But all good things must come to an end, and after less than a week of trying out the free service (that admittedly, had been around for over a year before I tried it) Jott switched to a pay service. You can still record 15 second voice mails for free, but to get the Remember the Milk intergration will cost $4 a month (well, $3 a month if you were using the service while it was in beta).

Is it worth $40 to $50 a year worth it to be able to Jott my to-do list to Remember the Milk?

Judging by the way my girlfriend rolls her eyes every time I try to Jott something, the answer is no. When you add to the fact that I’m likely paying airtime fees when I Jott from my cellphone [1], then we’re talking around $150 a year for a service that isn’t even my main to-do list application.

It might be my cellphones fault, but often Jott would have trouble understanding me. Having to prefix my messages with “me” or “remember the milk” gets old fast when I have to say “remember the milk” five times before I can start recording. Why can we set up a speed dial hotkey for services so we can hit a number instead of saying a name?

One of my non-tech friends summed it up well when I tried to explain Jott to him over breakfast: “isn’t that something you can just do with an app running on your cellphone?” Yeah, or with a pen and a piece of paper.

Does anyone read books anymore? When I was growing up I was a voracious reader, often devouring more than one book a week. A few years ago I was in a second hand book store that used to specialize in science fiction/fantasy and the owner was lamenting to me about how he’s lost his customer base — they’d all rather be playing World of Warcraft than reading Forgotten Realms.

I can see the effects of this at my local drug store where they’ve moved the books and magazine section from a place of prominence to a rack in the back of the store. The local library used to have shelves upon shelves of paperbacks but now they have at most two shelves for each genre. Even the video stores have slashed their back catalog of movies, have expanded their video game sections and are focusing on reselling “previously viewed/played” movies/games.

The video game market has already become the largest media entertainment market in media sound bites. Predictions say that by 2011 the video game industry will be worth twice the music industry. But part of the reason video games are soaring so high is the way that the numbers are calculated. The movie industry is still much bigger than the video game industry if you combine movie tickets with DVD sales, not to mention all the merchandising off-shoots.

But does this mean dire times for the book industry? Trends show that the gaming industry is increasing 9% per annum while the book industry increases 3% per annum. I find the drug stores and supermarkets are the place to watch for what is happening in the mainstream. They were the last places to abandon VHS and widely adopt DVD. Yet I already see a huge sign on the local drug store advertising the Xbox 360 and Nintendo Wii.

There are no great solutions for accessing the Internet while travelling. Bringing a laptop has the convience that it is much easier to find free wi-fi than it is to find a computer with Internet access, but then you have the pain of bringing a laptop with you.

One solution is to use a USB key (USB thumb drive) to store your commonly used applications. So long as you have access to a computer with Internet you’ll be able to access the net with the applications, passwords and settings you’re comfortable with even if it’s at a pay-by-the-minute café, the business center at your hotel, or dial-up at a relative’s house. You don’t have to worry about your login information getting stolen because you aren’t leaving anything behind — everything is stored on your USB key.

You may even want to do this for any personal computer in a corporate environment. Lay offs could be around the corner, and you’ll be secure in the knowledge that your work PC won’t have any personal traces left behind after you’ve left the company because there was nothing personal on it in the first place.

This guide will show you how to:

• Build an Encrypted PortableApps Drive
• Download Portable Apps on to Your Encrypted USB Drive
• Installing Firefox on your Encryped USB Drive
• Installing a Live USB Linux Distro
• Portable iTunes on Your iPod
• Portable Remote Desktop Using LogMeIn

Photo by endlessstudio

How To Build an Encrypted PortableApps Drive

The one problem with storing everything on a USB key is what happens if you lose it? You save yourself any worries by setting up an encrypted partition on the USB key so that you have to type a master password before you can access any of the files.

Step 1: Format your USB key, or at least remove the crud that has collected on it.

Step 2: Download CryptableApps. Here is a direct link: http://www.interiority.org/geekstuff/images/cryptableApps.zip

Step 3: Unzip the file and follow the instructions in Readme.html to the letter.

You may want to override the version of TrueCrypt that comes with CryptableApps (4.3a) with the latest version: http://www.truecrypt.org/downloads.php (6.0a at time of writing).

Follow the cut-and-pasted instructions from CryptableApps. My edits are in italics.

Unzip the contents of cryptableApps.zip to the root of your USB drive.  This installs the CryptableApps application as well as the TrueCrypt software.

(Optional) Overwrite the version of TrueCrypt that comes with CryptableApps to a newer version.

The first step is to set up your TrueCrypt volume  These instructions walk you through creating a reasonably secure volume; however TrueCrypt allows you to chose many options that will increase the security of your drive at a cost of performance.  For more information on the many options available to you, visit http://www.truecrypt.org/docs/.

• To do this start TrueCrypt from the TrueCrypt folder on your USB drive.  For example, click Start.. Run and type F:\TrueCrypt\TrueCrypt.exe.
• (Choose “Create a file container” if using TrueCrypt 6.0a)
• Choose “Create a standard TrueCrypt volume” and click next
• Click the ”Select File” button and create a new file in your USB drive.  The location on the drive is not important, but it is probably better to tuck it away in a folder rather than leave it in the root, so that it is less visible.  For example, “F:\Source\store.dat”
• Click Save, then Click Next
• For an Encryption Algorithm, I recommend Twofish, which is reasonably fast and secure.  However, any algorithm will be fine.  Any Hash Algorithm is also fine, you can just accept the default and hit Next.
• Select the size for the Volume (the Free Space on the drive is shown).  I recommend that you leave enough space to carry around some files on the unencrypted space on the drive- the correct amount here depends on too many variables for me to make a recommendation.
• Type a password.  Read the recommendations on the screen for passwords on the screen.  If you want to add an extra layer of security, you can choose to add a keyfile.  If you don’t know what a keyfile is, then skip this for now.  TrueCrypt will allow you to change the password and the keyfile for your encrypted store at any time.  Hit Next
• You may get warnings about password security. Read them :)
• Click the “Format” button to format the partition.  When TrueCrypt tells you that it has created the volume, click OK, then Exit.
• Make sure to ues a size smaller than the total drive so that you can still use it as an unencrypted file store.

Now you’ve got TrueCrypt configured, so it’s time to configure CryptableApps.  You can do this by just clicking running cryptableApps.exe from the root of your USB drive (Start.. Run.. F:\cryptableApps.exe).  A warning pops up that you need to answer a few questions.

• The first question is what drive letter you’d like to mount.  Choose a letter that is not in use on any of the systems you regularly use (the default is X).
• If you chose to create a keyfile, enter the path to the keyfile.  If you did not, leave this choice blank.
• Enter the path to the encrypted Volume File from the root of the USB drive.  If you chose to follow the example above, choose “Source\store.dat”.  Do not include the drive letter.
• Choose if you’d like TrueCrypt to cache the password and keyfile for the volume in memory.  This adds a bit of convenience at the cost of some security.
• CryptableApps may ask you if you wish to delete some unneeded TrueCrypt files.  If you choose yes, CryptableApps will delete the PDF documentation file and the “TrueCrypt Setup.exe” file- neither of which are needed to run TrueCrypt in traveler mode.  This will save (minimal) space on your USB key.

At this point, CryptableApps will mount the drive letter for you.   You can now download PortableApps from http://portableapps.com/ and install it on your new drive, or restore your files you moved to your desktop.

Once configuration is complete, you can specify applications to automatically run from the encrypted drive when it is mounted if you like.   To do this, create a file called “autoRun.LST” on the root of the encrypted drive (Start.. Run.. “notepad x:\autoRun.lst”)

• Type a line for each application that should run from this drive when it is inserted.  Be sure to include quotes around any path that includes spaces.  You can also specify parameters to pass to the application.
  • For example, to automatically start Miranda,  \PortableApps\MirandaPortable\MirandaPortable.exe
  • If you want to start an application minimized, you can add a “-” in front of the path.  For example:
    -”\PortableApps\putty\putty.exe” -load sshProxyTunnel

Now when you insert your USB drive, you should be prompted if you would like to Run TrueCrypt in Traveler mode.  When you want to remove your drive, you can go to “My Computer” and right click on the “TrueCrypt Traveler Disk” and choose “Exit all apps from Crypt and Dismount”.  This will attempt to close all applications running from the PortableApps drive and dismount the encrypted store.  Once that is done, you can safely remove the drive.

Download Portable Apps on to Your Encrypted Drive

You can download Portable Apps from http://portableapps.com/download. Choose the apps individually or grab them as a bundle.

I installed my apps a la carte. I recommend installing the following Portable Apps on your USB key:

• Firefox
• Filezilla Client
• PuTTY
• Sumatra PDF
• Abiword
• GIMP (for photo editing, unfortunately Paint.NET isn’t legally available as a portable app)
• 7-Zip
• Notepad++
• PortableApps Backup (to save your portable drive)
• If you’re looking for mind mapping software, there’s XMIND or the mind42.com website.

For more portable software see Wikipedia.

Installing Firefox on your Encryped USB Drive

Close Firefox before launching Firefox Portable. You can start a local version of Firefox on the PC after loading Firefox Portable.

Make sure you read the tips on the official Firefox Portable page for performance before you start. There’s some good advice there about copying over your profiles, and disabling sessions store / caching and history to improve speed. You may want to do all your tweaking on your local hard drive and then copy it to your USB drive when you’re done because it will be much faster than writing to the USB drive every time you install an extension.

You may want to change the default download directory to go to your USB drive.

Firefox Portable and Profiles

Firefox Portable doesn’t support the profile manager. If you want to use multiple profiles (I do so that I can have multiple gmail logins open at the same time) you can copy Firefox Portable multiple times for different profiles.

Copying Profiles

The easiest way to get up and running with Firefox portable is to copy over your existing profile(s). DO NOT COPY OVER A FIREFOX 2 PROFILE TO FIREFOX 3 PORTABLE. It’s a pain in the butt. You’re better off setting it up from scratch.

Make sure to follow the performance tips for Firefox Portable after copying over the profile.

Must Have Extensions

• Password Hasher (Firefox 3 version here)

Make sure you go to Tools >> Add-ons >> Password Hasher >> Options and that your options match between both computers.

• Adblock
• Firebug
• Greasemonkey
• The various Lifehacker Better * Extensions (latest versions)

If you’re planning on using features like Google Gears for WordPress Turbo then you can test them with a Google Gears sample app.

Installing a Live USB Linux Distro

I haven’t tried this myself yet, but you should be able to put a Linux distro on the USB key as well for access to Unix if you boot from a USB Device.

Unfortunately there doesn’t seem to be a good/free way of using virtualization to run Linux inside of Windows off of a USB drive without administrator access. For more information check out MokaFive (needs admin), MojoPac (pay, needs admin), or VMWare ThinApp (pay). Qemu Manager might be an option.

Portable iTunes on Your iPod

If your portable device is an iPod, you’ll want to install YamiPod directly onto the device so that you can edit the songs on your iPod on computers that don’t have iTunes installed.

Portable Remote Desktop Using LogMeIn

If you have a computer at home that is always on, you can use LogMeIn.com to access your computer at any time.

1. Visit LogMeIn and install the software on your home PC.
2. Open your Firefox Portable, visit LogMeIn and install the necessary plugins.

Some alternatives to LogMeIn are UltraVNC, Remote Desktop Control, SkyFex, TeamViewer, or MyIVO.

Lifehacker has a great guide on how to setup a remote VNC (virtual network connection) to your home computer using Hamachi.

But What If You Lose It?

Even if you lose the portable drive, your information is safe because no one can access it without the master password to your TrueCrypt volume. If you use the LogMeIn software to VNC back to your home machine then your network traffic should be safe even if you on an unsecured network.

Make sure to put a plain text file in the root directory of your USB key with contact/reward information if you do lose it so that the person who finds it can return it to you.

Now that you have your USB key drive setup you’re reading to travel with the knowledge that you’ll be able to access the Internet with all your usual applications and settings with no fear of leaving personal information behind.

Photo by andrewandsarah

This is my weekly collection of the best stuff I saw on the Internet. You can follow this list of links as I post them on Friend Feed or on Twitter. Or you can get the weekly update by subscribing to Internet Duct Tape using RSS or using email.

• [BLOGGING] Tacky, bigcontrarian.com
  • Rant against the blogging about blogging industry
• [CODE] The fallacy of choice, linuxhaters.blogspot.com
  • Why open source software sucks — too many choices
• [EMAIL] On Peanut Shells and Email Archiving, 43folders.com, via:lifehacker.com
  • Never organize what you can simply discard; and if you can’t discard it, throw it onto one big pile.
• [EXERCISE] one hundred push ups, hundredpushups.com, via:lifehacker.com
  • Train to do 100 pushups in 6 weeks
• [FRIENDFEED] FriendFeed’s Top 250 Most Followed Users, user21.com, via:deepjiveinterests.com
  • I’m on there as #132
• [FRIENDFEED] Frienderati, frienderati.alltop.com
  • Neat, I’m one of the Frienderati on alltop.com
• [ITUNES] TuneUp Automatically Updates and Fixes Your iTunes Metadata, lifehacker.com, via:lifehacker.com
  • Fixes metadata in 50 iTunes songs per month, $20 for unlimited usage or $12 annually
• [JOBHUNT] How to Hack a Technical Job Interview, lifehacker.com, via:lifehacker.com
  • Using NPL and psychology to do well in job interviews.
• [LIBRARY] 7 Ways Your Public Library Can Help You During A Bad Economy, consumerist.com, via:lifehacker.com
  • Reasons to develop a library habit
• [RUBY] 7/11 & 7/25 ShoesFests with Why The Lucky Stiff, ihack.us
  • Shoes hack fest for creating tiny GUI apps with the Ruby toolkit
• [SEARCH] facesaerch - find people with this one-click face search, facesaerch.com
  • Interesting UI for a search engine — looks like iTunes coverflow
• [STARTUPS] Tips, mmakai.com
  • Collection of tips for starting a new company
• [STARTUPS] Y Combinator: Startup Ideas We’d Like to Fund, ycombinator.com
  • Some interesting ideas that could become companies
• [TECH] Bug Shooting, bugshooting.com, via:lifehacker.com
  • Screenshot tool for bug reports
• [WORDPRESS] Moving from WordPress.com to WordPress, blog-well.com, via:wank.wordpress.com
  • Linked of things to know when leaving WordPress.com
• [XBOX360] Turn Your Xbox 360 into a Streaming Netflix Player, lifehacker.com, via:lifehacker.com
  • Stream Netflix to your computer and then to your Xbox 360 if you have Windows Vista

This Week at Internet Duct Tape

Internet Duct Tape is my blog where I talk about software, technology, blogging and other geeky subjects.

• Social Media — What is it Good For?
  I took a three month break from blogging and social media sites so that I could focus 100% on a critical project at work. Strangely enough I didn’t miss the flow of information; I was still able to find interesting links for coffee break time by browing Hackers News. Here’s a break down of my experience from leaving for so long and rejoining it.
• Building a Better Job Search Site
  Job hunting is a massive industry, but unfortunately it’s one that that always leaves job hunters feeling unsatisfied. Monster and Dice are painful to use. The hierarchy trees of job categories are often incorrect and confusing to someone who is looking for a job.I’d love to see something different.
• How the Xbox 360 Can Reinvented Itself
  The entertainment industry is shifting. Video games dominate all forms of media as an estimated 46 billion dollar industry. Your local video chain likely carries as many video games as it does DVDs. Blueray has beaten HD-DVD as the new media for watching movies at home, but it has the potential to be squashed by digital downloads. Not watching movies on your computer, but rather watching them on a box that is already hooked up to your entertainment system: your gaming console.Here’s what I’d like to see changed about the Xbox 360
• Weekend Reader - programming, drm, api, google, copyright
  This is my weekly collection of the best stuff I saw on the Internet. You can follow this list of links as I post them on Friend Feed or on Twitter. Or you can get the weekly update by subscribing to Internet Duct Tape using RSS or using email.[CODE] Neal Stephenson on programming, lambda-the-ultimate.org

  What programming [...]

I took a three month break from blogging and social media sites so that I could focus 100% on a critical project at work. Strangely enough I didn’t miss the flow of information; I was still able to find interesting links for coffee break time by browing Hackers News. Here’s a break down of my experience from leaving for so long and rejoining it.

Blog

Blog traffic went down -26% (vs -12% for the previous period).

Feed subscriptions up 9% (vs 12% for the previous period).

My blog email address is inundated with press releases and the very occassional question about an old post or tool.

My blog comments are a horrible nightmare of spam that I still have yet to wade through. WordPress has an annoying bug that when you click “Mark As Spam” it always returns you to the start. There’s been 20 pages of comments. It’s likely that most are spam.

It makes me wonder how much time a day I was spending on blog maintenance. The time sink in blogging isn’t writing posts; it’s all the related activities.

News

Surprisingly, I didn’t miss out on much by not having my lips attached to the news firehouse. Some crazy PM is trying to put me in jail with a new Canadian copyright bill that someone needs to question him about how it benefits his constituents. The iPhone is finally available in Canada, and the data plan is almost-but-not-quite liveable. Facebook has a redesign in the works. Xbox has some cool ideas for release next fall.

I’m sure there were plenty of things happening that I could have gotten worked up about, but nothing happened that directly affects my life that I would have found out about on the Internet.

LinkedIn

I’ve had a strict policy of only using LinkedIn for people I’ve actually worked/went to university with, and it’s been a good tool for contacting ex-coworkers years later about new job opportunities. Spam free.

Facebook

I try to keep Facebook to “real life people only”, and that works well for me. I only use it for group emails, and for photo sharing. Spam free once you get rid of those people who invite you to use applications.

Google Reader

I’m oversubscribed still. When you check your RSS feeds once a month, it becomes much more about the people who consistently keep you thinking or providing good information. Of course, information is only useful if it has impact on your life.

We, the information overloaded, collect new information but I wonder how much of it is retained and has lasting impacting on our lives?

Twitter

I didn’t feel any pain of Twitter downtime because I didn’t log into it. I need to cull my friendslist to make it more useful. But I found Kathy Sierra on twitter and if that’s the real thing then it’s a good sign for twitter having the potential for making me think vs phasing it completely out of my life because of the constant self-promotion.

I still like twitter for chatting with other bloggers that I respect.

Friend Feed

Still not sure if I like rooms or not. The Friend Feed hacking community is kicking even harder lately with a ton of new greasemonkey scripts thanks to Hao Chen. It looks like Lou Cypher is getting involved in Friend Feed as well which means even more cool little hacks.

Nothing new has been happening with ffapps or friendfeedwatch though.

Delicious

It might be time for me to abandon delicious for something new to use for bookmarking. The future does not look peachy for delicious with Josh leaving Yahoo. Maybe it’s time to look at Google Reader shares as an alternative.

Last.FM

I’m still using it, still finding great music because of it. I do like The Filter for making lastfm-esque playlists of my own music collection.

Real Life

I’ve been enjoying the summer and having more time for family, friends and non-Internet hobbies like reading, movies, and games. I really appreciate the knowledge I’ve built up with the programming I’ve done. I plan to continue that in that direction: releasing useful free software and delving into creating my own web apps. I want to spend less time participating and more time creating.

Job hunting is a massive industry, but unfortunately it’s one that that always leaves job hunters feeling unsatisfied. Monster and Dice are painful to use. The hierarchy trees of job categories are often incorrect and confusing to someone who is looking for a job. There are a few places that are doing something different:

LinkedIn - resume and networking tools to keep in contact with ex-coworkers. The best way to find a job is often through people who know you. You get a job, they often get a referral bonus — win/win.

Peter’s New Jobs - regional tech job searches in Ottawa and Toronto, worth the yearly subscription even if you have a job because it’s a great way to stay current with the job market and how companies are doing.

Standout Jobs - Montreal startup that is focused on humanizing the job search process and giving companies a chance to sell themselves.

Working With Rails - job listings based on people working with a common technology.

Site-based Job Boards - job listings for readers of blogs like 37signals, Joel on Software, and Tech Crunch.

There are a few things I’d like to see in a job search site.

LinkedIn Integration

LinkedIn has taken over as the business contacts networking tool and it has a robust resume feature, yet we’re still forced to manually enter our resume into most job sites.

No Job Categories

Job sites like Dice and Monster all suffer from bad usability with elements like the job category navigation that takes several minutes to fill out. It’s so much simpler to have saved search agents for keywords in resumes and job postings.

Google Maps

I’d really like to see all of the job locations on a Google Map centered around my home address with different colours based on how the fresh the listing is. Job decision is often based on locality and I’ve yet to see a job search site that lets me easily list.

Stock History

For publicly trade companies there is no reason not to integrate a stock ticker widget so that job applicants can quickly see how a company is performing.