I have been setting up my new laptop this week, which involves replacing all of the windows programs with free or open source utilities and adding bits and pieces that are useful. I think I’m about done, and my list so far looks like this:
Utilities
- AVG Free anti-virus – Anti virus
- CDex – CD Ripper
- OpenOffice – Complete Office suite
- Filezilla – FTP Program
- FreeMind Mindmap program
- NoteTab – Plain text editor
- Sunbird – Mozilla calendar software
Internet
- Free Download Manager – Download Manager for Firefox
- Firefox – Web browser
- Flickr Uploadr – For uploading photos to flickr
- Pretty May – For recording Skype calls
- Skype – Voice over Internet utility
- Telus Roaming Wizard – For dialup connectivity to my ISP from the road.
Media
That’s pretty much it for now. Most of these programs are old friends. I am trying out Pretty May, Switch and Sunbird (which I like alot). Audacity does a fine job of converting files to mp3s so Switch might not be needed, but Switch comes with a bunch of great little utilities that are worth playing around with, including a nice voice recorder.
Victoria BC
I love a space with a brick wall in a space. Tonight at Ferris’ Oyster Bar with a couple of friends for dinner, I kept noticing how that wall lended its presence to the space, as I enjoyed a beautiful and tasty rice bowl of vegetarian potstickers and deep friend tofu. I was noticing all day how details do more than they seem capacble of doing. The stillness permeating the inner harbour as the water stayed flat for a second day in a row, the signs on the busses that say “Sorry…I’m out of service.” Something about that “Sorry…I’m” part that makes the whole downtown core a little more friendly as the post-rush hour busses deadhead back to the bus garage.
We were locked deeply in design conversations today, and we went through six design tools from the Art of Hosting, all of which I taught and we discussed as I harvested them all on this diagram.
The tools that are elucidated here include the following:
Attention to the details of design led us into an incredibly deep conversation about the work we were doing, working at a whole different level. The quality of attention flowing from the presence lingering from good design…
[tags]ferris’ oyster bar, victoria, design[/tags]
In case you are wonder what John Heron, the author of The Complete Facilitator’s Handbook, is now up to, check out his work at the Centre for Spiritual Inquiry in New Zealand. There are some really remarkable resources there.
I bought a new laptop last Friday – and Acer Aspire 5570 – and I’m finally happy with it, but it took a few days. THere was an annoying problem with poor sound and DVD performance, that seemed as if there was a big elephant hoggin memory somewhere. I tried dozens of solutions and finally found this guy, who tried everything I did too, except he solved the problem:
What I did to fix it was to go to the HARDWARE part under the SYSTEM options (Control Painel). Under the IDE Controllers part I had PRIMARY IDE and the INTEL one. What I did was right click and select UNINSTALL on the IDE one… When I rebooted the whole machine was way faster, specially sound playback. Under the IDE Controllers I still get the same icons (Primary IDE and the Intel one) but I’m 100% sure that this was the cause of the fix.
It worked for me as well, and everything just hums now.
[tags] Acer, Aspire, sound problems[/tags]
Victoria, BC
It’s dry here tonight, on the south end of Vancouver Island, and I sat on the balcony of my hotel room looking out over the Inner Harbour, watching a mixed flock of cormorants and common mergansers fish for shiners around the houseboats of Fisherman’s Wharf.
I really like this city. Tonight I took a walk around James Bay, an old Victorian neighbourhood consisting of tree lined streets and houses of every imaginable shape and size and age huddled up against apartment blocks and the hotels along the harbour walkway. It has been raining, a steady rain in an ever brightening sky, but tonight it is just calm and warm and quiet.
Ate lunch today at the Heron Rock Bistro. Unremarkable crab salad sandwich, made all the more so by the fact that I had ordered a wild salmon sandwhich. And a weak shot of espresso. The best espresso in this town is at Cafe Macchiato on Broad Street. That is the definitive shot of espresso around here. Prove me otherwise.