The two things I do every time I upgrade Ubuntu
Every time I upgrade Ubuntu it sets these two things back to the defaults. Here are the "quickest ways" I've found to put everything back to normal. One note, before upgrading, know where you saved your wallpaper image, that'll get blasted away as well.
1. Layout, more specifically the "Gnome Classic" layout. Ubuntu 11.10 ships with the Unity desktop, and GNOME 3 in its repositories, aping the looking of the ‘old’ GNOME desktop is easy. All that’s requires is installing a few extra packages and performing a tweak here and there.
1. Paste the following line into Terminal:
sudo apt-get install gnome-shell
2. Next, log into the ‘GNOME Classic (No Effects)’ session from the Ubuntu login screen.
2. Buttons to the Right: How to move the Minimize, Maximize & Close Buttons to the Right in Ubuntu 11.10 (Oneiric Ocelot)
This is the simplest way i've found to move the buttons
1. To get started, press Ctrl – Alt – T on your keyboard to open Terminal. When it opens, copy and paste the commands below to move it...
2. Paste the following line into Terminal:
gconftool-2 --set "/apps/metacity/general/button_layout" --type string ":minimize,maximize,close"
Enjoy Ubuntu.
Demo Energy
There was an article on Demo Energy written by Steve Noel that was passed around here at work today. I figured it was worth a response.
His recommendation to breaking the monotony of repetitive demos is to take the start, middle and end of the demo and change them up to break the chain and drive up energy.
The key is having different entry points. Think of your demo as a story and those of us that remember English class remember stories have three parts. A beginning, a middle, and an end. You can start your demo in any of these parts.
This is a solid recommendation but stops short. Change up the start, middle and end. That’s it?
How about having a new story every demo? What if we take everything we’re given to us by sales and everything we learn on the demo introduction and for that matter every nook and cranny we learn during the demo and turn it into a customized story that maps perfectly to what the prospect needs?
That’s energy.
As SE's we are authors, not storytellers nor are we reciters of scripts.
In the end, I like his thinking and just subscribed to his blog for future reading.
Breaking the Habit
In what seems to be a series of posts on training smarter I can't but notice another nuance. I've got to train more, no matter what. This means change. The time at which i train, where i train, it's all changing due to volume.
I'm trying to go as long as i can before I have to resort to the treadmill in the basement. This leaves running in the dark as the only way to get a run in. Due to where i live, the roads, lack of street lights, it's forced me to find a new route. This seem obvious but for someone that has run essentially the same route for 12 years, this is big, and as a result, exhilarating.
Last Sunday I had to go long, I didn't have a route planned and it was dark so I had to stick to roads in town that had street lights. I had a head lamp but country roads with cars going 55 was out of the question. So I improvised, making up the route as I went along. There was one point where I realized how cool it was, reminiscent of all the runs I've done while out of town on business. Getting to know the streets I've lived around for years make for a very fulfilling run.
And so there it is, no longer can i be a creature of habit. It's a great concept but a delicate one. Too many rules to follow. The freedom that comes with winging it seems to be working and knowing there is nothing hindering a workout is key.
In conclusion, habitual behavior has it's place, equipment storage, diet, gear, but route; no more.
Runners Low
I've been working on this without giving it a title or labeling it as a concept that has shape, the runners low.
Awful runs, until this year, drove me crazy. This year i've been embracing them. Pushing through them has been an incredibly rewarding experience. Figuring out dynamically why the run is bad and pushing through it will pay back big time when it's needed on race day; it has to.
A bad race is surely in the future, or at least a long stretch of bad. It's all about managing it and knowing how to battle it back.
Thoughts inspired by a promotional video on Geoff Rose, "Slogging to the Top".
Practicing Nutrition
I just read a post about the longest training day before an IM and it got me thinking. A guy mentioned "practicing nutrition". I think about this a lot. I have done a LOT of long efforts, many marathons and 100+ mile bike rides and both of the require, for me, different nutrition requirements.
An example would be solid food while biking. I'm pretty sure i can eat anything and bike, not fast but at a decent pace for about 20 minutes then up it as needed. For running, totally different story. The constant sloshing around of the stomach that running triggers is not one that agrees with my. For years I've had a 5 hour rule, where no food before a run. This rendered my stomach silent at the expense of being hungry.
Now put the two together, if the order were reversed I'd be golden, eat a ton after the run to get energy for the bike. So in training of the next year I have to pay special attention to this. My current thinking on the matter before testing it is to eat something substantial at the 90 mile mark to give myself an hour plus to digest it before the run then use gels during the run.
I can't wait to test. The longest days of training sound very exciting but I can't imagine the feeling of guilt i will experience when running for over an hour after spending 6 hours on the bike. Mental toughness will be epic. Bring it the fuck on!
ScreenShareRoulette
Idea of the day.
It's ChatRoulette but no webcams, screen sharing only. It connects the two most important things that make anything popular on the web, those that want to share with those that want to watch/read/etc.
Now go create it. Because i'll never use ChatRoulette, the concept freaks me out, but watching someone navigate their desktop, meh, it just seems safer.
To extend the idea, others can tag your surfing experience for the price of entry. You surf others build your tag cloud, said tag cloud could be used to find, via a sweeet algorithm, those that are into the same sort of things. Sure this could all be done with bookmarking services but the fun with this is the data is crowd-sourced.
Lastly, if ChatRoulette already has this as an option, it has to be screen sharing only, or no go. Drop me a line if they do.
This one’s for Bob Balaban
In one of my favorite posts of 2009 Bob goes to town on the use of on-premise v. on-premises when talking about the "yeah cloud". Not only is it entertaining but it's also something IT folks should know cold.
Fast-froward two years and not only am I careful when using the term but I also instruct those I work with to also know the difference. So it was with surprise to find that Microsoft is using the term on their BPOS front page...
Microsoft Business Productivity Online Standard Suite is a set of messaging and collaboration tools, delivered as a subscription service, that gives your business rich capabilities without the need to deploy and maintain software and hardware on-premise. These online services are designed to help meet your needs for robust security, all-day every-day reliability, and user productivity.
Typo? Or is Microsoft mainstreaming the grammatically incorrect term?
"The sometimes-used term “on-premise software” is grammatically incorrect because the word premises is already singular rather than plural." - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On-premises_software
QR Code Vendor Bingo at #LS11 almost Sold Out
I'm happy to announce that http://www.vendorbingo.com will take it's maiden voyage at Lotusphere 2011. The response from vendors last week was so good the thinking went from will this happen to, when to cap it. So far 10 vendors have signed on, the cap will be 15, it's first come first serve. The fee, $125, to say "Win an iPad" at your booth. Not a bad deal.
The following vendors will be displaying the "Win an iPad" QR Codes at their booth...
Plantronics
Axceler
Panagenda
Integra4Notes
Meridian
Ytria
Maysoft
GroupWare AG
Sherpa Software
JPG Consulting, Inc. / NotesConnectors
If you're interested in partaking in this buzzworthy campaign contact me at vendorbingo@collaborancy.com the deadline is Thursday at 5pm est.
And yes, Andy, it's a loaded iPad.
What if Lotusphere used QR Codes for Vendor Bingo?
We all know the game. You get the vendor bingo card in your reg pack with vendor logos on it, you visit the booth's in the product showcase and get them stamped. You return the completed card which enters you into the drawing for an amazing prize.
What if it were updated for 2011? Vendors get a QR Code printed on a card the size of a post card and attendees scan them with their phone's qr code reader. The code takes them to a web page that asks for name and email address the transports them to their mobile bingo card. As they collect the codes at each booth visit the page updates. When they get bingo; visit all participating vendor booths, they are automatically entered into the drawing.
The staff; those managing the vendor bingo campaign, can pick the random winner. The winner's name can be posted through the service. The best part, the attendees have a permanent record of their vendor visits along with their contact information on.their.phones! They can make notes and view the info later after the event.
This is... vendorbingo.com
I am currently looking for interested vendors in taking part in what I believe could generate some buzz in the product showcase floor at Lotusphere and work to drive traffic to the booth.
This idea was way too late to pitch the Lotusphere staff but there is no reason why a handful of vendors can't get together and experiment with an interactive concept that is just now going mainstream. The prize will be a top of the line iPad. The cost to vendors is only $125. I am running this as a break even event. If we don't get enough to cover the cost of the iPad, no one pays.
If you'd like to take it for a test spin, check out the Lotusphere Demo.
If you're intrested in being a part of this please contact me at vendorbingo@collaborancy.com or booth 337 
Please help me spread the word to all vendors that are looking to increase booth traffic! vendorbingo.com
The Lazy way of working with XML Namespaces in PhP
Please understand the title of this message, this is a total hack but a good one, one that takes the complex notion of working with XML namespaces and makes it easy. There is a big chance that this will not work for ever application but it may help some in overcoming parsing complex XML.
The concept is quite simple, remove that which is causing the problem by using a string replace. Lets take the parsing of the Twitter Geo location. Make sure when applying this that you've checked to see that replaced value is unique.
Problem Area:
<twitter:geo>
<georss:point>40.3815 -79.8598</georss:point>
</twitter:geo>
Fix: Apply a string replace to the entire XML response, good by troublesome colons.
$response = str_replace("twitter:geo", "twittergeo", $response);
$response = str_replace("twitter:", "", $response);
$response = str_replace("georss:point", "georsspoint", $response);
I encourage you to read on and understand how to do this properly, but if examples are your thing here are a few.
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