The most efficient way to begin your Projects page is by keeping a journal. All you need is Notepad, a spreadsheet or a Moleskin notebook. Before you go home at the end of the day, jot down the projects you worked on, any obstacles you encountered, any success you achieved, any recognition you received, or anything else that stands out:

• Lucky Lu’s Tattoo Shop: worked from creative comp — no spec sheet. Again. Found codebase from 1998, not helpful. Considering transition to HTML 5. She wants a tattoo gun that people can use.
• Sea Hag iPhone App: can’t figure out the film strip mode to view images. Reconstructed the database. Again. Lost my mind.
• John’s Rebate Coupons: sent first draft to John. Expecting feedback Monday. I bet he’ll want QR codes, he thinks he’s cool.

This seems like such a simple thing, but with the right dataset to work from, you’ll be able to whip out a projects page that contains not only your functional keywords but also gives a human-usable description of your abilities.

Don’t forget to note somewhere which technologies you used. Additionally, even on the days you don’t remember to write things down, you’ll have something there at least to jog your memory:

• Lucky Lu’s Tattoo Shop http://www.luckylus.com Developed and implemented a fully interactive entertainment site , working only from creative comps; delivered product on time and with few change requests. Client was pleased with the results and did not miss her old site at all. Used HTML 5, CSS, C#, and edited videos.
• Sea Hag iPhone App: Used film strips, integrated menus, WCF, and GL. Overcame lack of client organization throughout database to secure and promote functional leads. Certified iPhone Developer.
• John’s Rebate Coupons: supplied content management system and supporting database to deliver QR code-based coupons into the hands of over a thousand subscribers. Client has since requested repeat business and has signed a contract for three years of support, maintenance, and coupon design. Used Constant Contact, Excel, C# and PhotoShop.

It’s five minutes of your time for a life’s worth of accomplishments. When you get to the entries that say, “Those idiots, WTF,” and you know it’s time to start looking for a different job, you’ll be well prepared to update that resume quickly and efficiently.

In 1976, when these people were 18, there wasn’t any “internet.” Arpanet didn’t even come around until 1982 — the youngest of this group was already out of college. By 1991, when CERN released the World Wide Web — that’s WWW, for you old fogies — this group was in their early thirties. The internet hadn’t even gone mainstream yet. Most of them didn’t get email until 1996, when they were already over 35. They communicate with phone calls, hallway conversations and fax machines. Oh, and happy hour.

In the meantime, the Echo Boomers were born, the largest generation since the Baby Boomers from the post-war era. These Gen Yers don’t know a time without the internet, without cell phones or with privacy. They use instant messaging wherever they’re at on whichever platform they like. They send chapters of books out on their phones with no vowels. They know you got their digital message. They know it was sent just fine. They figure you’ll get to it when you have time. They’re not going to poke you. They won’t remind you — it’s right there, in your inbox. They expect a response. They have other things to do. Like, work. In 2015, 80% of the population will expect you to respond to your email. Just do it. They don’t have any privacy, remember? They need to cover their asses. You’re not pushing this off on them because you think it takes too long or it’s confusing. Learn faster, make an effort. In fact, they don’t even want to use email. It’s too slow. People get too much of it. That’s probably why you’re so far behind, anyway. How many messages are in your inbox? Do you even know where your inbox is?

You can’t fight it. You shouldn’t try. Digital communications are efficient, effective, time-savers that reduce frustration, fatigue burn-out. They allow their users to use their days to their best productivity. This generation completes the tasks for which all the information has been gathered. You want your projects done, then you answer their emails. First come, first served. You’re on notice.

Eventually you’ll be ignored. 80% of the population will learn to ignore you because you can’t respond in a timely or effective fashion. 80% of the population will forget that they requested something from you, because they use their digital communications as a task list. If your email is older than two weeks, don’t even bother answering it, it’s too late. If it’s older than a week, your project is delayed because of it. Longer than 2 days, and your workers already started on something else. You move to the back of the line.

You’ll be pushed out. 80% of the population works as digital team players, communicating information quickly and accurately and without mistakes. Your boss will be a 22-year-old kid because the kid can finish three PowerPoints, six Visios, four vendor price quotes, and seven office orders all in the same day. Because he has copy-paste fu. He just ctrl-v’d and ctrl-p’d the info from another email.

I used to be an advocate of “everyone to his method:” some people prefer phones, some hallway conversations, and yes, some daft and blind old farts and most government offices still use fax machines. I’m not anymore. I’ve seen the benefits. I’ve watched middle-aged men go down fighting an invisible foe of a text message or call log. I’ve been called in to help them retract emails, pix, inappropriate phone calls and sexual harassment jokes, and it’s impossible. I’ve witnessed the descriptivism abound throughout the language, to accomodate for this invisible force. And I love it.

Accountability, FTW.

White papers are not supposed to be marketing tools. Yes, they can help sell. Yes, they’re an important part of an array of documentation. Yes, they are easy ways to get keyword saturation. They are not intended to replace direct mail, brochures, billboards, or sales presentations.

White papers are intended to be an expert’s thesis concerning the topic of the white paper. That being said, here are some people who should never ever request a white paper, unless their department is your business model:

• Marketing director
• Sales director
• Accounting or Finance
• Communications
• Public relations
• News desks

If your business is jump drives, your marketing director should never request a white paper. Your lead engineer can request a white paper. In fact, your lead engineer should write the white paper, as he builds jump drives and it is assumed that if he builds them, he knows them pretty well.

A technical writer might coordinate with an engineer for a white paper on jump drives. This is acceptable. Heck, you can have your advertising copywriter collaborate on a white paper if it’s understood that nothing is to be written that isn’t directly related to the words coming out of the engineer’s mouth. If your lead salesman gets involved, it’s time to reassess the project.

White papers’ audiences are people who have a want or need to learn more about that subject. Will the CEO or Purchasing department be choosing your jump drives? No. You ask your IT people to choose your jump drives. Because IT people are supposed to be familiar with jump drives. Florists are supposed to be familiar with roses. Adidas is supposed to be familiar with shoes. Adidas engineers and designers should read white papers on New Balance’s shoes to make sure they’re not missing an important technology or a way to boost productivity or methods for reducing costs. Sales people should help create brochures and billboards. They can use a white paper’s contents on the brochures and billboards, sure, but white papers are not advertising materials.

sudo update-alternatives --config editor

This command will present you with a menu of all the possible options.

FATAL: Error inserting vboxnetflt (/lib/modules/2.6.32-22-generic/updates/dkms/vboxnetflt.ko): Invalid module format

Here’s the workaround until there is a proper set of updates:

sudo modprobe vboxdrv
sudo insmod /lib/modules/$(uname -r)/updates/dkms/vboxnetflt.ko
sudo insmod /lib/modules/$(uname -r)/updates/dkms/vboxnetadp.ko

In the past several months I’ve been going through a lot of consolidation. Five physical servers in my house have become one physical server with Xen virtual machines. Obviously this included a move to Linux (Centos 5.4 to be precise).

As I’ve become more comfortable managing the Centos server it became apparent that I spend the same amount of time managing that and its five virtual machines as I spend managing the one remaining FreeBSD machine.  Now, some of that can be blamed on some decisions I made with FreeBSD, staying away from the binary updates and packages and instead using source and ports.

So, with a slight twinge of regret, I’ve been preparing to rebuild that server sometime late this week or early next and putting Linux on it.  The move will mean I’ll be fresh out of FreeBSD, the mainstay for me for so many years.

It’s funny the things you’ll become sentimental for.

Also added is a settings page which allows you to delete older counts.

As a heads up: I upgraded several times without issues in my testing environment, but when I upgraded this site I received a bad copy of one of the files.  Deleting and reinstalling the plugin through the WordPress site fixed the issue for me, so I’m hoping it was just a bad file transfer.  If anyone else has issues please let me know.

*Update* So one of the mirrors wound up with a bad file.  0.6.1 was tagged to get it to refresh.  This seems to have worked.

*Update* 0.6.2 was released to fix an oversight where the select query wasn’t working for people with non-standard table prefixes.

Coming in the 0.6 release will be a settings page that will allow you to delete counts older than a time that you specify.  I’m also hoping to come up with a CPU-friendly way to specify an automated daily clean-up of all counts older than a given period.

Comments from the blog post have made it abundantly clear that activating the plugin and the widget separately was a poor idea.  They will be combined in this release.

The query that adds the counts will be re-examined, specifically the indexes that exist on our table and how they interact with the stock tables and their indexing during the query that sums up counts.

The plugin will be tested in WordPress 2.9.2, and listed as such in the directory.

This will also be a major clean-up release.  After eight months of not working on the project it is clear that there’s a dearth of comments in the source.  That will be corrected.

So in closing, thanks to everyone for your patience.

Canon sent her what is a standard corporate response by most compnaies when they see the word “Linux” in a support email.

Dear XXXXX XXXXX:
Thank you for contacting Canon product support.  We value you as a Canon
customer and appreciate the opportunity to assist you.

While considering the desire to provide the best possible support for
Canon's products, Canon must make decisions. Currently, Canon is unable
to provide drivers for Linux.

With this in mind, we currently do not have drivers available for your
operating system.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

Please let us know if we can be of any further assistance with your LIDE
700F.

Thank you for choosing Canon.

Sincerely,

Olaf
Technical Support Representative

So Canon (CAJ on the NYSE, valued at $39.50 a share when this article was written), like so many other companies, is completely missing the boat either from being lazily ignorant or willfully avoiding Linux.  So, here’s a quick note to Canon and any other hardware manufacturer trying to claim making a Linux driver is too hard:

Don’t do it yourself.  Let someone else do it.  The fine folks at the Linux Driver Project will do it for you.  They have developers who are standing by, ready to do the work for you.  For free.  They’ll even sign an NDA with you.  Your only responsibilities are to provide the type of device, the device’s specs, the NDA if needed, and to provide the person who will develop your driver with a demo unit of your hardware.  That’s it.  Once complete your driver will be included in the Linux kernel source tree.

There is no requirement that you support your Linux users.  The Linux community is very industrious.  If you give us a push in the right direction we can ferret out the rest and get to the destination.

Canon: Help us help you.  There’s no reason your LiDE 700F scanner doesn’t work in Linux.  The cost to your company would be negligible at worst.  So, let’s get on it and help my friend out.  Unless you prefer all of us Linux users buy HP.

The answer I found is relatively simple.  PortableApps.com will let you install a good number of applications onto a thumb drive, each modified so that it keeps all of its information on the thumb drive, leaving no traces on the host computer.  Sounds great, and it is.  Works like a champ.  I run Chrome, Pidgin, Skype, Notepad++, and other applications from it.

Of course this introduces another potential issue.  What happens if I lose my USB flash drive?  Now it’s in the wild with all of my information, keys, passwords, etc on it.  Obviously we need to encrypt that drive.  For me, however, the IronKey and similar products were price prohibitive.  I don’t need that data secure forever, I just need enough of a lead time after losing the drive to be able to change my passwords.

Enter TrueCrypt.  TrueCrypt is an open source product that allows you to run it directly from your USB flash drive as well, and has a native client for Windows, Linux, and OSX.  Using TrueCrypt you can create AES256 encrypted volumes and mount them using the host machine.  This means that your data is highly encrypted on the drive and any would-be hacker is going to need to figure out your password.  As long as you use a good password, this should take a long, long time.

So, the quick and dirty how-to for those who can’t figure it out for themselves:

1. Grab TrueCrypt for your OS and install it.
2. Install TrueCrypt to your flash drive as well.
3. Create a volume on your flash drive.
4. Mount the volume.
5. Install PortableApps.
6. Install any apps you want from the PortableApps web site.
7. Unmount the volume.
8. Take your stuff with you.

Once you’re on site at the customer location:

1. Insert your thumb drive.
2. Run TrueCrypt.
3. Mount your volume.
4. Run PortableApps all day.
5. Unmount your volume.
6. Eject the flash drive.

The performance is quite acceptable, and the security more than adequate.  And all in all it’s a fantastic way to take your stuff with you.