Almost 2 years ago I posted a little about my favorite software titles. Tonight I thought it would be interesting to take a look at my current favorites and see how the list has changed.
Microsoft OneNote is still on the list, albeit the new 2010 version. This is still where I organize everything and take notes daily.
Adobe Photoshop Lightroom also stayed on the list, new on version 3. My favorite V3 features are the much improved noise reduction and lens correction profiles.
Trillian gets used just about every hour of every day. I’m currently using Trillian 5 Beta on the desktop and now enjoy their iPhone too. Version 5 is promised to bring chat history syncronized across devices, I can’t wait for that. This version also handles Twitter and Facebook much better than the prior, so it is slowly becoming my preferered desktop twitter/facebook viewer and publisher.
Calibre is new to this list. In 2008 I didn’t have a Kindle so I had no need for an eBook librarian. While this tool could really use some commercial UI polish, nothing else like it exists. I purchase alot of tech eBooks and download a few docs, and they all get stored in Calibre. From there I can easily push them to the Kindle which is better than either paying Amazon for wireless document delivery or using Windows Explorer for the task. I need to do a whole post on Calibre at some point, it’s a very versatile tool that any eBook Reader owner should know about.
LastPass has supplanted the TrueCrypt/KeePass combination for storing passwords. LastPass is FAR more convenient, with its functionality is anchored in its online service. Using LastPass I have access to passwords from any one of my computers. One by one I’m letting it generate strong passwords for me, ones I couldn’t remember if I tried. And I dont’ need to – their browser plugins handle auto-logging me in, among other great conveniences like form filling.
TrueCrypt gets used indirectly every day. My automated backup sets get copied to a TrueCrypt encrypted drive every morning.
So there you have it. Most have stayed on the list with even better versions than before, and there are a couple newcomers that have become indispensible to me.
Yesterday after work we went out to the fairgrounds to partake in the 2010 Illinois State Fair. Unlike the past 2 weeks, the weather was great and made for a very pleasant evening of walking around.
David got to see and touch many animals, as well as enjoy a Corn Dog and some Lemon Shake-Up. With the small crowds and great weather we were able to make our rounds to everything we usually do, with the exception of Conservation World which closes early. If this great weather continues we may just head back out there sometime this week.
On short notice, we decided to take a day trip to St. Louis today. When we first woke up this morning the weather didn’t look favorable, at 7am St. Louis was showing 94%+ humidity, so we figured we would just find something indoors. But on the way there the sky was overcast, the temperature wasn’t too bad, and the humidity had dropped – so to the zoo we went!
David had a really good time, he really wanted to see the Lions more than anything. He also really enjoyed all of the fish in the tanks he got to gaze into.
The cats are always a hit too.
It was alot of fun watching David get so excited – his last visit was exactly 1 year ago when he couldn’t express himself so well. Today he was sure to hop up for every exhibit, until he just got too tired near the end of the afternoon. We knew he was tired when he told his “No, I don’t want to see more elephants…”
And for the first time we can remember, we actually got to see the penguins outside. These went over very well
I’ve been a MotionBox Premium user for almost 2 years now, and this evening I received an email saying they sold themselves to Snapfish. Lucky for us, we get to use Snapfish free for a year! If only you could hear my voice, there’s plenty of sarcasm in it.
Offering Snapfish for a year is a joke. Why? Because it in no way compares to what I’ve come to expect from MotionBox. I quickly created a Snapfish account to try it out, but found:
No HD playback
No video embedding in other sites like this blog.
500 MB video file limit
10-minute video limit
Anyone have any suggestions for a replacement? My wishlist (all things I had with MotionBox) is:
Unlimited number of videos and storage
No video size limit
No video length limit
HD playback
SD quality fallback for those viewers not on a fast connection
Embeddable videos
Automatic transcoding between formats – including iPhone compatible.
Privacy and sharing features (easy to view by intended recipients)
R.I.P. MotionBox, I think you’ve left plenty of disappointed customers behind.
Ever since upgrading to iOS 4 on my iPhone 3G and then on the new iPhone 4 I have been seeing problems connecting to my local Exchange server when I was on wifi. Even with previous versions of the OS, the iPhone never seemed to do Push reliably on when on the same wifi network as the Exchange server. The problems with iOS 4, however, seem more severe. Even force-checking the email on wifi would result in the phone just sitting there “connecting..” but never actually working.
Tonight I decided to take some time to look into it – and I think I have it fixed. Maybe this will help some others with the same problems (and judging by various forums, there are plenty of you out there).
The issue boiled down to a combination of iOS 4 being unable to resolve DNS names ending in .local and my local DNS configuration. The mail server hostname I the phone was accessing wasn’t .local since it’s publicly accessible, but it did have a CNAME DNS record on my internal DNS server that aliased to the .local name of the server. On a hunch I removed the CNAME and just made an A record point to the local ip address of the server, rebooted the phone, and voila! My local Exchange mail works as it should!
To to summarize – don’t have any .local names involved in the lookup of your mail server. Change your DNS config if you can, and reboot the phone.
Today’s weather was fantastic so we decided to make the most of it by heading to the ballpark!
We took david to a game last year, but he was just a little too young to begin enjoying it. Today, however, he had a BLAST. He was cheering the players on and happily watched 6+ innings before it was time for us to leave. To top it off he got to meet Speedy
