August 27, 2007

Using Safari’s Built-In Spell Checker

Neet trick I found here: Using Safari’s Built-In Spell Checker

Whenever you want a field to be checked for spelling or have Safari check the spelling as you type, simply go to Edit > Spelling and then choose the option you would like.

August 25, 2007

New Logo for Creative Thought

Creative Thought has a new Logo:

Thumbnail image for cti_logo.png

In addition we’ve moved to a brand new (and larger) office. Our new address is:

Creative Thought, Inc.
One Wilshire Building, 28th Floor
624 South Grand Avenue
Los Angeles, CA 90017
p (213) 929-1700 f (213) 947-1467

August 24, 2007

Custom Error Page

One of the drawbacks of using Google Analytics is the loss of error page reporting – I’ve faked it by creating a custom error page in Apache with this configuration:


ErrorDocument 404 /error.html

My error page document is in fact a slightly customized archive template with some custom additions to the urchinTracker() code for Analytics. I found a simple and good example here: Advanced Google Analytics 404 Error Page

Blog Migration Pain

I didn’t think about it and imported the entries from my old Wordpress blog without evaluating how the import tool works. This resulted in truncating the basenames in Movable Type and altering the original format from Wordpress. End result all of the URLs on my Blog changed… obviously not something I wanted.


After some pain I managed to correct the URL structure and added a rewrite rule to Apache to strip out the old /archive/ directory entry. I still have some tweaks to adjust the structure of the site – but it’s getting there.

Now I just need to decide if I want spaces in the entry titles to be “-” or “_”.

Where’s the Mac?

Don MacAskill wrote an interesting entry a few days ago titled Where’s the Mac? to quote from his blog:

So I found it interesting that at Apple’s big Mac event yesterday, Apple blew it with the Mac again. Steve fielded some questions about Mac adoption in the workplace, and another about price. But he skirts completely around the issue at hand: Apple has a huge, gaping hole in their desktop lineup. They have an iMac, a Mac mini, and a Mac Pro. But where’s the Mac?

At SmugMug, we’d put a Mac on every employee’s desk tomorrow. So what exactly is a Mac? That’s easy – it’s a Mac Pro with one dual-core Desktop class Intel CPU in it. Two (or four!) Server class dual-core CPUs (Xeons) are overkill both for performance and for budgets. I know – we’ve got some at our office, and I’m writing this on my Mac Pro at home.

I couldn’t agree with Don more but he does miss one important point… where’s the MacBook Pro for the road warrior. One of the largest hurdles for me to get over (and ultimately resulted with purchasing a MacBook instead) is the lack of a lightweight small form factor MacBook Pro to replace my IBM X60 with. I might be going out on a limb here but I’m certain that there are a ton of people like me out there that are getting on and off of airplanes that don’t care about a 15″ or 17″ monitor and just want the lightest box with the longest battery available. This segways into my next gripe… when are we going to get a docking station? I’d even settle for a port replicator if it was available.

Categories vs. Tags

With Wordpress I ultimately decided to remove categories completely from the entries (I never really liked the way it worked) now that this blog is back on Movable Type I’ve decided to start using categories again – only now with a current blogging platform software I also have the option to assign Tags. Only problem is I cannot figure out which I want to use and how. Suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Switching…

Spring cleaning has come early for me this year and has given an overwhelming urge to finish a number of things that have been put on the back burner for some time now – most of which involve making changes to how things are done on a daily basis…

To start with I’ve taken the plunge and switched to a Mac. Before anyone starts in with the Windows vs. Linux vs. Mac nonsense my decision ultimately was based in something very simple. By switching I have forced myself to abandon the tools that I have been used to using so that I can use and enforce new habits with new tools. This is incredibly important for my Companies (Creative Thought, InetOps, and Phyber) and our internal staff. Productivity, communication and collaboration are incredibly important to us and while there are excellent tools and applications available for Windows (arguably some of the best) they all come with a price – vendor lock in. Simply put for our operations it is far more efficient for us to use Linux based workstations for our engineers and have common web based systems for the organizations as a whole to use. By unplugging my Windows desktop and only using Linux and by switching from a Windows based laptop to a Mac I have forced myself to break my habits which will help me re-enforce this behavior with the rest of the staff. We will still have Windows desktops and laptops in the companies and I still like Microsoft – this is just the best course for us to take.

Switching to Google Apps. Don’t get me wrong I love Outlook + Exchange. I’ve been installing and supporting Exchange since version 5.0 (before the Internet connector was standard). We will continue to run it for Creative Thought for features like the Blackberry Enterprise Server and Delegation for email mailboxes/contacts. For InetOps, Phyber and my personal email Google Apps is easy, works and is zero hassle. Plus the docs/spreadsheets are pretty cool.

Switching to Movabletype. This blog was originally powered by Movable Type. At some point a couple of years ago I switched to Wordpress because the feature set was just so much better (development was current, plugins were available, etc…). I’ve always missed some things about Movable Type like a templating system I can understand and more importantly static files on the file system. PHP + Mysql is fast, but nothing is as fast as static html. I still have a lot of customization and tweaking to do to this site but this should be the last time I migrate and change the URL structures (of course I am not promising anything).

Switching phone systems. Haven’t quite figured this one out yet. I’ve been a fan of Asterisk since the 1.0 release, about a year ago we moved onto sipXpbx which I really like as well. Why are we moving again? BLF and SLA. Basically I want to be able to mimic key system functionality and have a phone line appear on two different phones. When one person picks up one phone it would show in use, if a second picks up they are in conference. Right now we transfer between extensions which is workable but annoying. At some point in the future one of the open source IP PBXs will support this functionality and then we will look at moving back.

Switching cell phone carriers. Currently on Cingular – looking at T-Mobile and Nextel for business phones.

And this is only a partial list of the major items.

August 23, 2007

Using Ecto with MovableType 4

I’ve been scratching my head for a couple of days now trying to figure out how to integrate Ecto with MovableType 4. Admittedly I wasn’t trying to hard to figure this problem out with everything else going on recently. A quick Google search turned up this link: Using Nokia’s LifeBlog With Movable Type 4 which pointed out that my web interface password is different from the web services password needed by Ecto. The idea is to find a tool that will make blogging an easier thing – I hope Ecto is it.

August 15, 2007

Email Overload

In the process of configuring my new Macbook the system auto-prompts for you to create a trial .Mac account – which of course includes a nice shiny new email address. Don’t get me wrong I have nothing against an @mac.com email account it just made me pause and think about the number of email addresses I have / have had.

  1. School
  2. Personal Domain
  3. Hotmail
  4. MSN
  5. Yahoo
  6. Excite
  7. Yahoo x2
  8. Gmail

This doesn’t factor in the Companies I have worked for, the Companies I own, our current customers or the various aliases active across each domain. Looking in my domain registration account the other day I have over 100 domains registered currently.

When I look at tools like Plaxo that only associate three (3) email addresses with a contact I just laugh.