Quality In Life – Living Smarter…


Useful Portable Apps for Your USB Drive.
February 22, 2009, 1:50 pm
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Not only are USB drives now commonplace, but with increasing frequency, applications no longer require installation and can run from those USB drives.

USB drive / USB Key

USB drive / USB Key

I got the idea for this post from Cam who observed that KeePass (mentioned previously) was portable.  I thought I’d share some portable apps with you that have been really useful.

If you are new to the subject of portable apps, a good place to start learning about them is “portableapps.com“, Wikipedia also has some lists of portable applications to get you started.  There are a number of reasons you might want to use portable apps including;

  • You are borrowing someone else’s computer and don’t want to install software
  • You are not allowed to install software at work
  • You don’t want software to clog up Windows’ registry and slow down your computer
  • There is a set of familiar tools you want to use when moving from computer to computer.
  • Portable applications that can run from your USB drive, don’t make changes to your computer’s registry startup files or hard disk. (unless you ask them to)
  • Portable apps won’t set themselves up to load when you turn your computer on.
  • Sharing your most useful applications is as easy as copying some files

I’ve placed these in order of utility.

Texter – A powerful text replacement utility; we’ve looked at Texter previously

KeePass – Useful for securely storing your passwords We’ve also looked at KeePass previously

Firefox Portable – Run the popular open source browser from your USB key

Notepad++ – Thanks to Darryl for recommending this powerful editor which supports regular expressions and syntax highlighting.

7-zip – A lightweight archiving and compression utility

Open Office – An open source office suite similar to MS Office, which maintains a high level of compatibility with popular office products.

VLC Media player – Is described as a highly portable multimedia player for various audio and video formats; it can play almost anything.

RocketDock – This one is just for fun, but its portable, and makes your applications easily accessible.

Xampp – More for died in the wool geeks, it is a portable collection of Apache web server, the PHP scripting language and the MYSQL database.  All open source and freely available, this is the easiest way to run a web server with web applications and data from your USB key. (ever think of your USB key as a web server?)  Now you can run any PHP/Mysql web app from a computer without installing a thing. (some assembly required)

Note: Many of these applications come in non-portable versions, so pay attention to which version you get. (I recommend starting with Portable Applications).

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Protect your Passwords with KeePass
February 8, 2009, 11:19 pm
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Remember all your passwords easily by storing them securely in a password safe.

When it comes to password security, we continue to hear about the importance of choosing passwords;

  • that are too complex to be guessed
  • that are unique from every other  password we use
  • that aren’t real words or dates or names

And it works great to keep our accounts safe…  until WE forget our own password.  Then we wish we’d re-used a password, or picked something we could guess.  God help us if the account locks itself after 3 wrong tries.  I am at the point in my Internet experience where I can’t keep track of all the places I have accounts (never mind my passwords).  So I needed a tool to help me, because apparently large amounts of fair-trade coffee isn’t enough to jog my memory

I needed a place I could keep all my passwords.  I needed a password safe.  It had to hold; passwords, URLs, usernames, comments, the ability to organize those passwords in a hierarchy that would make sense, and it needed to be secure lest it fell into the wrong hands.  For several years I have used PasswordSafe which promises Simple & Secure Password Management.  It worked great, but I had one problem using it.  I could rarely remember which subfolder in the hierarchy contained my entry… I needed search.  Enter Keepass.  Keepass offers all the above features including “search” if you type in some text it will match every entry in the encrypted Keepass database that matches this.

way better than a post-it note!

way better than a post-it note!

I have been absolutely Loving Keepass, and as long as I’m disciplined to put my passwords in there, they are available to me when I need them.  The Keepass website makes this introduction; “KeePass, the free, open source, light-weight and easy-to-use password manager.”

Keepass logo

So there was one more problem I needed to address and it was the question of how do I synchronize keepass databases across the multiple computers that I use in a week.  I don’t have a magical 5 minutes every time I’m done using a computer to make sure my database is copied correctly.  So the fear would be that an old copy overwrites a new copy, or that a password is in one location and not the other location where I need it. (What computer was I sitting at when I signed up for that account?).

Dropbox logo

To synchronize files, I turned to Dropbox. The promise of Dropbox is that you can “synchronize files online across computers” .  On the downside Dropbox requires you to install some software on your computer which runs at startup (or else there is little point of automatic synchronization).  It probably uses more memory than it needs, but hopefully someone on the Dropbox team will be working at reducing that memory footprint further.  Essentially you share a folder with yourself via the Dropbox website.  Your application checks every so often to see if the file has been updated, and if so, you get the most recent copy.  For myself there is no synchronizing via this method at work in order to respect policies around automated Internet traffic and not installing unsanctioned software.  So I have ALMOST solved my problem right?  The rest of the solution is provided by Keepass itself which has a handy importing feature.  You can import from another keepass database into a specified folder, and then the passwords themselves have a unique identifier to help make sure that you are truly synching the same password.

I hope this is helpful, let me know how you make out.
What password strategies work for you?
Greg.

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Texter a great text replacement tool (that’s free)
February 4, 2009, 10:47 pm
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OK my lifehacking friends, head on over to Lifehacker.com and pick yourself up a copy of Texter their free text replacement tool.  Think about the way you use your computer and the way that you end up repeating yourself as you type.  

Texter replaces text snippets to save you time.

Texter replaces text snippets to save you time.

Unlike software-specific text replacement features, Texter runs in the Windows system tray and works in any application you’re typing in. Texter can also set return-to markers for your cursor and insert clipboard contents into your replacement text, in addition to more advanced keyboard macros. Did we mention it’s free?

By way of example, while in a support capacity, I had to explain (in great detail) how customers could take a screenshot and send it to us, so with texter, I defined a “hotstring”  called “screenshot.”  that results in the detailed instructions being filled in.  So now, instead of trying to remember all the steps for creating a screenshot, texter remembers for me.  AND for the quality nuts in the audience, if I realize my instructions are unclear, I can improve them and consequently EVERY time I use it in the future, they get the improved instructions.  So there is a consistency benefit, a memory benefit, a typing less while communicating more benefit and a quality benefit.

In another capacity we had customers calling to ask for intranet services, and we needed to ask them a number of questions. (pcname, user’s network login, deadline, manager’s approval etc.)  So for each of these requests we would send back an email asking all of these questions.  You guessed it, texter to the rescue, saving us most of the effort in each of those emails.   10 minutes of careful wording was replaced with “cmsrequest.”  Brilliant!

Let me add that texter works almost everywhere.  I’ve seen it work in dos based applications, in browsers, on webpages, in office applications and more.  But you are wondering, how much time does that save?  Well from my experience, while working in a capacity where very little work was repeated, in a little over a year texter estimates that it saved me 2 days of typing.  Thanks Texter!

So don’t delay, head on over to Lifehacker.com and pick yourself up a copy of Texter their free text replacement tool.

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Some energy efficiency is spending dollars to save pennies.
January 25, 2009, 1:34 am
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Our local electricity provider has been running “power smart” adds where strangers suddenly appear in your home or office cheering when you turn out the light as you leave the room, or as you turn off the powerbar to your computer.  The message is that you should be encouraged for such conservation.  I have in the past mindlessly accepted the idea behind these ads as valid, since I have for my adult life turned out the lights I’m not using, but recently I’m coming to question some of what I’m hearing.

Sometimes you might leave a light on for a feeling of security, or if you were to turn off the powerbar, your appliances might lose track of the date or time.  So there are valid reasons for leaving these on when you are not using them.

In TV-Land, all the switches and powerbars are easy to reach (although ugly lying on the desk etc).  In my life I don’t have VERY convenient powerbars, and am more likely to have to reach behind your appliances to find the power bars to turn them on and off (shock hazzard from loose plugs you can’t see clearly is so remote I won’t address that at all).  So the activity isn’t as free as it appears in the ads.  It costs me something.  Convenience (when the remote controls can’t make the appliance wake up), time (running around the house turning things off as I leave).  There is a cost to me.  The concept of power leaches or vampires, that suck a tiny amount of energy constantly has been a popular topic in the press in 2008.

Additionally there have been a number of ads about replacing my old inefficient refrigerator with a new energy smart refrigerator.  I’ve realized that I need to do some research on my own.  What is the cost and what is the benefit to me to the utility and to the environment.

Now I am the kind of guy who turns the VCR or TV off when I’m not actively using them. The lights all go out at night (with the exception of the 0.3Watt LED night lights in the halls).  I turn off lights I’m not using, but I installed the lights so they could be used.  They work for me, not the other way around.   So with a heart that wants to conserve and show my thankfulness through not wasting what I’ve been given, I wanted to know where we were wasting energy.  I purchased a $17 (blue planet?) meter from my local hardware store that can show the Amps, Watts and Volts being used by an appliance in real-time.  Additionally it can log the electricity usage, showing you the total Kilo Watt Hours (KWH) consumed by the appliance over a period of many days.  After you enter the cost of electricity ($0.072 / KWH here) into the meter, it can tell you the dollar cost of your appliance for the time it has been plugged in.  I started making discoveries:

computer / adsl modem / router / UPS / printer : $0.25 / day

Old inefficient refrigerator from the last decade: $0.40 / day

TV / VCR / video game / stereo: $0.10 / day

Laptop computer: $0.05 / day

Microwave:  $0.02 / day

So this causes me to think carefully about what I’m hearing and being told.  I’m being told to switch off the power bar for my TV etc, when the use of the devices is only $0.30 / day.  So conceivably I might save 1 or 2 cents there.  Hardly worth the time is it?  Could I pay you a penny to stop doing what you are doing and spend 10 seconds coming over here and flipping this switch?  If you were paid $20/hour, that is 5.5 cents per 10 seconds.  Now its true, if you have nothing else to do it wouldn’t hurt for you to spend your spare time doing this, but the benefit seems really really minute compared to the cost?  Why is your utility spending $100,000s on this advertising?

My understanding of the issue is that it comes down to capacity.  If they need to build another power plant that is exceedingly expensive, but if they can continue to sell power from the existing power plants, that is a much more reasonable proposition for them.  The issue is nothing if we are talking about you saving $0.01 of electricity for flipping off the power bar.  The issue is really only significant thanks to the power of multiplication.  If you can convince 5,000,000 people to save that much electricity, you just saved $50,000 of electricity per day.  So the impact to your utility is huge, but the savings for you as an individual user of electricity is essentially nothing.

Now how about that refrigerator.  $0.40 per day to keep my food from spoiling seems like a good deal to me.  I don’t have to go down into a cellar, I don’t have to drop my food down a well, or deal with bricks of ice, or food poisoning.  I think it is a bargain.  Through my study of the new energy efficient fridges on the market it appears that the new fridges would use half the electricity per day.  Over the course of a year that would save me $73 in electricity.  However a new fridge costs around $800 (depending on what you buy).  So it would take me 10 years for the fridge’s energy savings to pay for the fridge.  I don’t know about you, but with the quality of manufactured goods dropping, I’m not sure I would expect my new fridge to last me 10 years.  This old fridge on the other hand, continues to work and looks after the food just fine.  So the marketting says “buy a new energy smart fridge”.  To do that, somebody needs to manufacture the fridge with all its glass and plastic and metal and compressors and chemicals and foam.  Then they need to ship it across the country or around the world, advertise it, house it in a store, get it here, and dump my old fridge in a landfill or recycling depot (landfill that sells metal).  It seems to me that the most environmentally responsible thing I can do is to make my existing appliances last as long as I can. 

So suffice it to say that the meter has probably paid for itself in debunking “new appliance savings” and in giving me some peace of mind about the little power leaches plugged in at my house.

 I am happy to say that we enjoy the light provided by the current generation of Compact Flourescent light bulbs (CFL)s  Instead of 100W we use 50W of light over our sink.  Instead of 160W we use 44W in our bathroom. The list goes on of the places we have installed these.  The hallway light behind me, the lamp in the corner.  They aren’t the best light for all situations, but we know that the 33W we are using right now beats the 150W we would have had otherwise.  To my mind this is a very smart energy saving, because apart from purchasing the bulbs initially, there is no incremental cost to turning on a CFL over a standard incandescent light.  It just saves me money and saves us all power without inconveniencing me or introducing an additional cost.

We need to take a very strong stand against “GreenWash” in all its forms.  Keep your brain engaged as you are urged to do this or to do that to save the planet.  Among the genuinely good information there is certainly hype that is designed to pad someone elses wallet at the expense of your own.

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JAJAH – The Difference – The Benefits
July 10, 2006, 8:33 pm
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Jajah lets you make phone calls for free…

  • There is no download and no software
  • You don’t need a headset
  • You don’t need a broadband connection
  • You are using your existing phone (landline or mobile) and so is the person you are calling
  • You are not stuck to your computer
  • You can call your friends for free – no matter if they are online or not

JAJAH is all about simplicity! Enter the phone number you want to call at www.jajah.com, press call: Your phone will ring – your friend’s phone will ring – start talking! It’s what you’re used to, it’s simple, it’s free and it just works!

I think that is a simple and convincing explanation. I’ll add an explanation that if you want to call anyone who is not “registered”, you pay them $0.025 per minute (much like Skype) When you sign up they give you $3.75 credit. They don’t want your credit card or any other payment until you use up your credit and want to make a call that costs. If you call someone else who is registered, there is no charge.

Clearly this could be the same method Skype is using (with more limitations) give free calls to build up a clientelle, then introduce nominal fees.

What I like about this approach is the freedom from software. There is nothing to go wrong on your PC, just use your browser, use your phone, you are done.

Every now and then there is poor quality, just hang up and try again. The quality is normally equal to that of a conventional phone line (nobody knows the difference)

I’ve suspected that Skype,Jajah and others are able to purchase Voip services from somewhere and I’m determined to find out how this works, so I can buy at wholesale and not retail. I see that voip-info.org has lots of information, that asteriks is a free pbx, that trixbox is a linux distribution to run your own PBX, that most ADSL internet providers offer “naked DSL” (no phone service, only ADSL), that les.net is highly recommended and acanac.ca seems to have an echo on the line for everyone I talk to.

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