Gareth Howell

Dropbox
Keeping files in sync across multiple platforms is always a challenge. As stated previously, I have two Macs (a MacMini and a Powerbook) and several PCs; including my Thinkpad.

My main sync tool is Chronosync, running on MacMini01. This synchronizes My Documents on the T60 and "Documents" on MacMini01 and Guff-PB on an hourly schedule when the two laptops are connected to the home network. This works fine but is over the top for the many files and folders I wish to synchronize across the various XP based machines.

I have been using Microsoft Office Groove with a file sharing workspace to do some of this, but have now started using Dropbox instead. Dropbox comprises Windows and Mac clients, plus a web service and appears as a folder on each machine that is connected to an account. Any files dragged into the Dropbox folder is synchronized to the other machines also connected to the same account.

The one drawback for me is that the Windows client defaults to putting "My Dropbox" in "My Documents", in which case it will sync all over the place with Chronosync (see here for this). I quickly found a tip on the Dropbox website that showed how to move "My Dropbox": in my case to be a folder on the Desktop.

Evernote
Keeping a common set of notes in sync across the many platforms I use has also been an issue. Where the client is installed, I use my Notes journal. I have now installed Evernote on my Thinkpad and Powerbook to do the same job. I will also do the same on the laptop I use to control my amateur radio station.

FileMagnet
Lastly is FileMagnet, which is a Mac only and iPod Touch application to put files on the iPod Touch and allow them to be opened and read.

There are several devices on which I read RSS feeds: Mac (2 off), Thinkpad and now my iPod Touch. It's always been an issue keeping the feed lists in sync between the various devices and the unread marks.

For ages I used Shrook on the Mac because it did just that for Mac OS X. Unfortunately I didn't work on the Thinkpad.

I recently re-examined my choice of reader and ended up going back to where I started with RSS readers years ago (or at least when RSS came into use). I went back to using Newsgator.

There are clients for XP (FeedDaemon) and Mac (NetNewsWire) and now NetNewsWire runs on the iPod Touch as well. All this and a Web interface and a service that keeps all clients in sync. Magic!

Last week I went away with my old Scout Troop to North Wales, staying at Hertfordshire Scouts' Coetmor Mill bunk house. We had a great week rock climbing, kyaking, hill walking and wild country camping, as well as a day off visiting Dinorwig Power Station and Llechwedd Slate Caverns.

In the early part of the "week" (we went on the Thursday) the weather was so hot we were reconsidering where to wild camp as the site we had chosen had no shelter. Geoff and I have camped at this site by a reservoir up the Conwy Valley before. It's a beautiful location and ideally situated for walks in the Carneddau range, but it is very open.

The weather started to change on the Sunday (before our two-day hike and wild camp) so we decided to stick with the original plan.

After a walk-in in hot weather followed by a (probably illegal) swim in the reservoir, we set up the tents and settled down to an evening meal. As we were finishing, it started to rain. Never mind we thought, it was just past 9PM so about time to go to bed anyway as it would be dark by 21:45.

At about 11:30 PM the wind got up, the rain got heavier and the thunder and lightning arrived. Boy did it rain! I left a billy outside and it was full by the morning, so we had at least 3 inches overnight. We had to spread leaders around the Scouts' tents to re-assure them and provide added weight to stop them blowing away. Nick went over to our patrol about 3AM.

Next morning all was sweetness and light again. We had a good walk in the morning and broke camp in the afternoon. We were back at the Mill by 5 (even though the mini-bus ran out of fuel)

No joke!
Admittedly, it's because my mid-80's parents are coming to stay for a few days: but really!!!

Every so often, I seek for the single contacts store nirvana. Still looking...

I need to keep my Notes contacts (on PC and Mac) in sync with my Gmail, Nokia, LinkedIn and Mac Address books.

The closest I have got is to use Plaxo for all but Notes. I then use Nokia's Communications Suite to keep my Nokia and Notes in sync. It's flaky to say the least.

It's a pity Plaxo (still) doesn't support Notes; despite various rumours to the contrary.

I have a Nokia 6300 which I maintain in sync with my Notes personal directory using the Nokia Communications Suite. Despite that fact that the Nokia software thinks I am using a Notes 7 client, it all worked OK with 8.0.1. Not anymore.

Upgrading to the Notes 8.5 public beta 1 has broken the Nokia sync software. I upgraded to the latest version of the Suite, but it fails every time I try to do a two-way sync. I can do a one-way sync in either direction, but not two-way.
Correction
I managed to recover the situation by deleting the synchronisation profile and creating a new one. I also had the choice of a Notes 8 client this time.
Now, if only I could sync Notes with Plaxo...

I've held off installing the public beta 1 of the Notes 8.5 client until now. No particular reason other than sheer indolence on my part.
Anyway, I finally forced myself to do it for one specific feature: the ability to stop this crazy auto-population of "recent contacts" in my personal directory.

This so-called "great" feature in the 8 client may be a boon for some, but for those who regularly work in a consultancy environment it is a pain. Let me explain by using an example:

We recently did a large infrastructure upgrade for a Notes client: it was in two stages, upgrading their existing infrastructure to Notes 7 (from 5) and then consolidating a large number of domains into one new domain. (The choice of going to 7 rather than 8 was dictated by their Japanese parent company).

During this project, I and others had accounts on their internal Notes environment and used these accounts for all project related communications. The client ID was segregated into a separate "location", but of course used the same personal directory. Over time, the "recent contacts" became populated with the internal Notes addresses of the people with whom I communicated.

Even though I stopped using this account four months ago, when we finished our main involvement, the internal addresses still appear in the type-ahead when I try to send email to people in the client company: even though of course I need to use the SMTP address now.

There appeared to be nothing I could do about it. I created a new view to display all the recent contacts and then deleted them all. Next day, they're all right back in there.

Notes 8.5 has an option to stop the auto-population of the recent contacts: and it was the first thing I enabled. I then deleted all the recent contacts records (you can do that in 8.5 as well without requiring a special view). So far, they haven't reappeared and all the irrelevant addresses have disappeared from the address type-ahead.

We do very well for birds in our current garden; unlike the poor showing at our previous house. We have daily visits from starling, blackbird, wood pigeon, collared dove, goldfinch, greenfinch, robin and both tree and house sparrow. Earlier in the year we also had blue tit, song thrush and chaffinch and yesterday we even had black headed gulls in the garden. Oh, and I mustn't forget the pair of Mallard that took a liking to us for a few days!

To attract this lot we have several feeders with a variety of seeds, nuts, maize, fat balls; plus kitchen scraps and stale bread.

A few weeks ago we were overrun with baby starlings (I counted 25 at one point); eating everything in sight. We had to resort to putting the fatballs in a cage to preserve something for the smaller birds as the starlings strutted their stuff and bullied everything else out of the way. Now we seem to have a host of house sparrows. They move too quickly to count but they empty the feeders in just over a day.

We bulk purchased seed etc, but we are really getting through it right now. A big sack of mixed feeder seed (mainly sunflower) costs about £16 and lasts about six months, so it's not too expenses; and the payback in terms of entertainment makes it all worth while

Andrew Woodward of 21Apps gave a very good, if brief, introduction to the above topic at last Thursday's SharePoint User Group UK (SUGUK) meeting. I went along just for the evening, though many had also been playing golf during the day. Must do that next time!

Andrew used his session to talk about using Scrum as the project management methodology. Scrum is an iterative, incremental process for developing any product or managing any work (see ControlChaos's website for more details).

I tried to comment on Andrew's blog entry, but couldn't get through the security! So I'll acknowledge Andrew's efforts here. Thanks Andrew.

There was a time when I used to drive pretty much on the limit (often over as well). Then a while back, just as the prices started to sky-rocket, I heard an item on the radio about reducing consumption by slowing down.
I knew from previous experience that driving slower didn't have a sever impact on journey time, so I decided to give it a try.

The previous experience came from the time when I was contracting in Lytham St Annes for a couple of years at the start of the nineties. I drove up on Monday morning and back on Friday evening.
To get to Lytham for a normal start, I left home about 4:30 AM. At that time of the morning the roads were pretty deserted up to the Irwel viaduct on the M6 and I could drive at pretty much whatever speed I chose for much of the way. (No speed cameras in those days)

After a few weeks I noticed that my arrival time hardly varied, irrespective of how fast I had been driving, so I decided to run some experiments (got to do something to relieve the boredom). By deliberately driving at a chosen pace I was able to show that the difference in journey time varied by only 10 minutes (on a four hour journey) whether I drove at 60 MPH or 80 MPH. Analysis showed that average speed was largely determined by the occasional period of slow driving (e.g. around the M6/M61 junction) and not by the top speed.

Back to the issue of petrol consumption. In the nineties I didn't really monitor consumption, so I don't know what the effect was; but since I got my current car (SEAT Leon 1.6) in 2006 I have kept a pretty good log of petrol purchases, so I know that my running average up to mid April was 37 MPG. It was at this point that I implemented my own save petrol programme.

• keep the revs below 3000 RPM in all gears and drive as smoothly as possible.

The change has been that I am now averaging 43 MPG: an increase of 16%. Since the beginning of the year, petrol has gone from 97.9 to 119.9 pence per gallon: an increase of 22%. Thus I have offset 73% of the petrol increase.

So, back to the question.
The reason I ask is that when I started my experiment, I was pretty much the slowest car on the road. In my car 3000 RPM in 5th is 64 MPH: i.e. just enough to overtake the lorries. At that speed I rarely overtook another car and never a van! I have noticed over the past week or so that this situation has changed. For example, yesterday we drove along the A14 to Desborough and overtook a lot of cars. Now admittedly it was a Sunday, but even so..