Wednesday, July 20, 2005

Day 3 from Provo: Half-Day A quick update as our morning sessions end.  Today is a half-day, as the rest of the day is scheduled for an activity.  We are taking a train called the Heber Creeper.  I have no idea where this is, or what is in store.  The good part is that the train has a full bar on board.  We eventually arrvive at a place called "Cowboy Village."  Just think: a bunch of system administrator geeks doing cowboy activities.  Could be mildly entertaining to watch.  I have a camera, so there will be some photographic evidence.  I am at the midpoint of this week, and I have enjoyed my time here thus far.  Some very interesting topics, but I am looking forward to a couple of presentations tomorrow.  That said, I certainly do miss the comforts of home, and I cannot wait to get back on Saturday afternoon.  2:31:03 PM    comment []  trackback []

End of a Long Day I missed an evening "Birds of a Feather" (BoF) Session tonight on iPrint.  For some reason, I totally forgot about it until it was going on.  I will see if someone can fill me in on it tomorrow.  Instead, I had a late dinner and enjoyed one of the six expensive beers I purchased from the county liquor store here in Provo.  A lot of interesting content today, most of which I cannot discuss publicly.  Nonetheless, today was a day full of good information.  Off to bed so that I can get a workout in tomorrow before the morning session. 1:03:22 AM    comment []  trackback []

Taking Notes Thanks to all for the comments and suggestions for an electronic notetaker. I looked at the two mapping suggestions from Axel and Evil ZEN Scientist. MindManager seems to be an interesting product, and it looks to be quite feature-rich as well. Freemind looks interesting too, and for a Java application it is quite zippy. Freemind complained when installing about not finding Java, which was quite odd given that I have Java 1.5 installed on my Windows XP laptop--Java(TM) 2 Runtime Environment, Standard Edition (build 1.5.0_02-b09). My major issue is with both of these applications is that when I take notes I tend to be quite linear, so my note-taking tends to be similar. All through college my notes were essentially bulleted outlines, and the notes I take in meetings at work are much the same. Both of these applications are not geared to the way I work, but I think if I did more brainstorming-type of work they would be invaluable. Thus, my desire is probably more for an outliner application. I have to admit that in the few dealings I have had with Radio's outliner, I liked it. It can expand and collapse parts, which is great if you have an incredibly long outline. Dave Winer is supposed to be releasing his OPML outliner in short order, and I must admit that I would love to get my grubby little hands on it. I sent an email today, but I must admit that I do not expect a response soon. If by chance Dave reads this entry, I like what I have seen so far on your outliner. In the meantime I did find a small open-source outliner that does most of what I need. It is called Tkoutline, and it works much in the same fashion as the Radio outliner. It can expand and collapse items, and it can export to OPML and other formats. The one problem I have is that there is no easy way to undo an action. Radio has this feature, and I am pretty sure that the new OPML editor will have the same since it is based on Radio. Nonetheless, it will work in the meantime. 12:56:47 AM    comment []  trackback []