Shawn’s Thoughts

I had an old(er) Thinkpad T42p gathering dust, and I’ve wanted to kick Ubuntu a bit, so I chose to install the 8.04 disto on this laptop. I couldn’t believe how smooth the install went. By default, it wasn’t completely optimized, and it was certainly functional. It was cake to add my networked printer just by handing the installer the printer’s IP address.

I even found a site that lists some of the Thinkpad-specific optimizations available. So far, everything is running great. The power management doesn’t look quite as aggressive as under Windows, and I’ll live with that.

Firefox 3.0 came as part of this install, so getting online was smooth. I’ve installed a few extensions, including ScribeFire, and I can’t really tell that I’m not on my Windows box anymore. I’m using Scribefire to create and post this entry now.

I’ve got to show this to some of my friends working on Windows - this will blow their minds (in a good way)…

Technorati Tags: ubuntu, thinkpad

“Would you like to see what I do when I go to work?” After I finished peeing all over myself, I raced out to the car. Dad was taking me to LTV (aerospace company in Dallas, TX). I knew he did something with these things called computers, and I had no idea what that meant. I received the full treatment - guest badge and all. I got to sit at Dad’s desk, call Mom (just like he did), and even write all over the walls (two of the walls in his office were dry-erase boards). I got to write all over this cool green-and-white striped paper, and draw funny boxes and triangles using these really cool green stencils that had “IBM” on them.

Then the moment that sealed my professional fate. I got to go into the computer room. Just like the gal in the picture, I got to sit at a teletype terminal, and play a game on the computer. I got to load a tape onto a tape drive, and see where the disk drives were. I was in heaven. The soft hum of the A/C system, the whir of the disk drives, the zzzt-zzzt of the tape drives, the smell of the room - I can remember it all like it was yesterday. The icing on the cake - I got to take a stack of cards from the card punch home with me. Years later, when I found a box of unused cards from an old card punch when I started working at IBM, no one could figure out why I was so excited, and I had a hard time telling them, since I had instantly been transformed back into an over-stimulated 7-yr old geek.

Thanks for making that day special, Dad. I hope the mainframes in Heaven are even more fun. Happy Father’s Day, fellow dads.

Funny thing happened after my little rant  last week.  I checked my email when I got home last Friday evening, and lo and behold was a message telling me my site has been approved by the Woopra folks.  The setup was pretty straight-foward since I’m using Wordpress as my engine, although a little hacking was required to add a php tag that Woopra looks for to my template.  A 10-minute investment and I was off and running.

Overall, I like Woopra’s client.  I’m still learning what they track, and how they track things, and they do provide a ton of information to sift through.  So far, it looks like Woopra is totally focused on measuring traffic to/from the web site, and doesn’t focus at all on my feeds.  I’m still looking for a solution that would show me my overall impact – how many folks are reading posts, how many are coming to the site, how many are coming via search, etc.  My search continues, and I appreciate the Woopra folks responding so quickly to my whiney rant.

Some interesting stats I’m seeing:

• 69% of my viewers are using IE7.  Only 17% are using Firefox.
• 54% are using Windows Server 2003, and 21% are using XP.  This one surprised me.
• One of my most popular posts continues to be one of my interviewing tips posts.

Woopra, in my opinion, is running a close second behind Twitter in the, “How Not to Scale” contest. I was “allowed” into the beta, and submitted my URL for “approval” two months ago. My URL is still sitting in “waiting for approval” limbo.

Today, the folks at Woopra posted a nice article on how much better they are than Google Analytics. Here’s my review. Google Analytics wins hands-down, because they at least let you use their tools. So does Feedburner. So does MeasureMap.

Woopra - you need to do a far better job at setting expectations - it’s easy to see frustrations rising all over your message board. Hiding behind the, “Gee we never thought we’d be so wildly successful” crap is getting old.

Technorati Tags: woopra, analytics, feedburner, measuremap

I love Firefox. Works great on the Stinkpad. Works great on the Crapple. Firefox is usually the first application I install after I fire up a machine for the first time, or re-pave one of the existing machines. I find myself using the same set of extensions over and over again, and I wanted to share them for posterity’s sake.. These are my favorite Firefox extensions:

• better gmail. better gmail 2, actually. I’m not a big gmail user (i’m still one of those hotmail wackos. when i do use gmail, i really like the added functionality, especially letting gmail grab the mailto: links.
• better greader. gotta keep plugged in. i hopped over to the Newsgator family for a while, but trying to use different applications on Windows, OSX, and my phone was driving me nuts. Better GReader adds some nice touches to GReader, especially the Preview functionality.
• fireftp. my favorite ftp client. makes updating my site simple - everything can be done inside firefox now.
• greasemonkey. lots of handy scripts available at http://userscripts.org
• firebug. the most powerful developer addin I’ve found. i love this addin - it lets me learn how someone put a site together, modify my own css and see the changes instantly. i can’t say enough good about this addin.
• foxmarks. keeps your bookmarks synced across multiple machines. i’ve found it is also the easiest way to send a link from my mac to my winbox, and vice versa
• del.icio.us bookmarks. for those sites I want to share, i use this addon.
• scribefire. The only free blogging client i’ve found for my mac. it’s a pretty solid blogging client. i still prefer Windows Live Writer, but I haven’t whined to Becky enough to convince her to create a Mac version for me.
• pdf download. for those who spend time wondering if anal retentive is hyphenated. let’s you choose on a file-by-file basis what to do - open, save, etc.

And there’s a couple Mac-specific addins I want to mention:

• System Proxy. Firefox had braindead proxy management. This addin reads proxy settings from the OS, which Firefox should do anyway. Great when I hop back and forth between the office and home. I let MarcoPolo figure out where I am, and this addin makes sure Firefox keeps up with the changes.
• User Agent Switcher. Unfortunately, there are those in the world, most of which work on the same campus I do, who think it is okay to only support IE7. Until they come crawling into the 21st century on their taped knuckles, I user this addin to switch the user agent string. I wish I didn’t need it, and I’m glad this addin makes the chore a lot easier.

Google has spent a lot of money building up their suite of site and feed analysis tools.  Over the past couple years, they’ve bought some of the leading players in the analysis field – Analytics, MeasureMap, and FeedBurner.  Right now, I think these applications are feeding off the brains of each other.  Each of these apps provide really interesting information about my site, and my blog, and the data coming from each seems to contradict the other two.  Either somebody pulled a fast one over Google’s eyes by putting a nice UI in front of a rnd(); function, or I’m missing something.

Don’t get me wrong – I like all these tools, and each is focused on unique areas.  Analytics focuses on the web site; MeasureMap focuses on the blog; FeedBurner focuses on the RSS and Atom feeds.  Google Analytics gives me great information on what’s drawing people to my blog – what search terms are most popular, etc.  MeaureMap focuses more on a day-by-day analysis of my blog – which posts people read when then visit the site.  Then there’s my favorite, FeedBurner.  In addition to all the wonderful outbound tools and services it offers for my RSS and ATOM feeds, FeedBurner gives me information on which stories get clicks, which stories are being resyndicated, and the number of people who click to view a particular item on my site. 

All well and good in isolation, and it’s when I start comparing what I think should be the same number across the three services do things get a bit wonky.  Number of visitors is pretty funny – there’s probably a 2x range in values.  So as long as I’m using the services to provide guidance, and not for any kind of statistically relevant auditing, these tools are doing great.

On another note, I can smell a WordPress plug-in coming.  It will be similar to the wonderful AllInOne SEO Pack, except focused on statistics.  I want to provide my Google credentials, and have the plugin go inject the right javascript across my themes to make sure the data is being fed to all three services.  Better yet, I want Google to combine these services into an all-up analysis package.

Leave the best reason you want a Live Mesh account in the comments. If I like it, I’ll let you know by email. I only have two, so hurry…

Technorati Tags: LiveMesh

Update: all gone… Share on…

Congrads to the Expression team for shipping v2 of the Suite. I’m installing the whole suite now - it’s looking good so far. There are trial versions available for tire kickers too. A new 200GB hard drive, VS 2008, and Expression v2 on my laptop - guess what I’ll be doing this weekend. Wee-hah!

Technorati Tags: microsoftexpression, expression, webtools

Well now… Someone’s blogging when they should be drinking. Seriously Joel - get over yourself. How many bug tracking systems do we really need?

Two entertaining rants for the price of one. I would have expected Joel to remember the business model that he used to work inside - Darwin wins at Microsoft. There’s several examples of multiple groups working on and releasing what seems to be duplicated technologies. We have the luxury of being able to have different groups, working independently, focusing their efforts on delivering some cool technologies that overlap in some areas. Messenger and Communicator is a great example. What’s really interesting is the hook line - Joel’s not pissed because Microsoft is funding similar projects. Joel’s pissed because he can’t seem to compete for the talent to work on these projects.

I’m not sure folks like Heather see themselves as shady, or willing to make “unethical exploding offers” as Joel alleges (got any proof?). And really, if the college kids are so smart (although they’re apparently better as frisbee than at coding), why would they allow themselves to be duped into accepting these “untenable salaries”. If they really are so poor at Python, why would Joel want them working at his company anyway? The lure of working on yet another bug tracking system just not shiny enough these days, Joel?

I’m proud of the work we’re doing, and the place where we’re doing them. It thrills me to see that we can still attract the best and brightest to work here. Joel - get over yourself. Go invent something unique. See you at the hiring fairs…

Hey online retailers,

How often to you check the flow of your payment system from your users’ perspective? I just tried to purchase a license for some software I’ve tried and liked. I liked it enough that I wanted to give someone money for the software. Unfortunately, their payment system decided it didn’t want to accept either credit card - both of which are in good standing. I refuse to use PayPal. At this point, I’m about ready to uninstall the software.

Are you losing customers because you’re making it too difficult for them to give you their money?