Alvin's Educational Technology Blog

Here is another Vista shortcut.  If you use the new Sidebar, you can bring your Gadgets to the front at any time by pressing the Windows Key and the space bar at the same time.  Once you bring the Sidebar to the top you can use Windows-G to toggle through each Gadget you have loaded.

I use the Sidebar on my left monitor.  My right monitor is my main monitor with the Start button in the bottom left corner.  I keep my email on the left monitor along with the Sidebar.  The Sidebar can be on the right or left of the screen.  I keep it on the right side of the left monitor.  That puts it in the center of my view.

The Sidebar is turned on by default in Vista.  I left it on with a clock, my pictures, CPU meter, calendar and news feed.  Usually my email is over top of it.  I don’t use the Gadgets that much, but quickly bringing them to the front of the screen is handy.  It is the quickest way to get a calendar on the screen.

TSPY=0.10

Until Vista, I was never a fan of the Quick Launch toolbar.  The small set of icons just to the right of the Start button seemed redundant.  Since I’m a keyboard-shortcut fan, the extra “click-only” icons were just in the way.  With Vista it is a different story. 

Now those icons are numbered by the new Windows OS.  The icon closest to the Start button is number one.  The next icon is number two.  To “click” the first icon, press the Windows key and the number one. 

On my computer, Windows-1 opens IE, Windows-2 opens Firefox, Windows-3 opens Word… you get the idea.  Since the Quick Launch bar is configurable, I can control which icon is in each position.  If I want Word to be in that first spot, I can click and drag the Word icon from number three over to number one.

If you look back at tip number one, you will see IE took three key strokes in XP:

Windows Key
Down Arrow
Enter

With the Quick Launch bar, it takes 33% fewer key strokes.

TSPY=1.23

I was helping someone today and we needed a file that was stored on a CD.  The first unlabeled disk didn’t have the file.  Neither did the second.  Fortunately the third disk (also unlabeled) had the file.

Here’s a tip.  As soon as a disk comes out of the burner, label it.  This may be the only time you are certain of the contents of the disk.  Use a Sharpie.  It won’t scratch the disk.

Over the years I have collected an assortment of power adapters.  Very few adapters are labeled with the name of the device they power.  Unless the device is used continuously, it is only a matter of time before the adapter is separated from the electronic gadget.  At one time I had a grocery sack full of assorted adapters with no hint to what each powered.  Any time I needed an adapter I sifted through looking for an adapter with the right connector and voltage.

Now I use a silver Sharpie (works great on black) and label all my new adapters as soon as I open my new gadget.  In clear letters I print the name of the gadget on the adapter.  Now I know what goes with what all the time.

TSPY=1.01

I have several computers that have no monitors.  These are machines that do basic tasks for my network: firewall, backups, video streaming, etc.  I use a free program called VNC to remotely connect to those machines.

With VNC, I can actually connect to the remote computer and use it as if I were sitting right at the remote keyboard and mouse.  Everything looks and works exactly the same.

I also have several other computers that do have monitors.  Those machines also run VNC.  It saves me from running around the house checking things on each computer.  I can do everything from one computer.

I don’t think my wife likes it when she says, “come and look at this” and I press three keys and remotely connect to her computer.  It does save wear and tear on the carpet.

If you have kids, this is also a great way to monitor what they do online.  Over the years I have found that kids that know they are being watched tend to stay out of trouble on their own.

TSPY=3.14

I bought my first CD in 1983.  Since then I have purchased hundreds of CDs.  Even though CDs are suppose to be “permanent” recordings, I have had a few that were destroyed in accidents.  For this reason, I digitize all my music and store the originals in a safe (cool and dry) location.  My car plays digitized music (MP3 and WMA).  I also listen to music on a portable player and on my computer connected to a surround sound system.

I have a database for all my music.  It makes it easy to find anything I own.  I have a separate database for my DVD collection.  I take the DVD out of the original case and store the disks in a disk notebook.  The original cases go into my attack storage.  All the disks fit in a thick folder right under the TV.  I numbered the slots in the folder and use the slots as identifiers in the database.  If you want to watch Back To The Future, it is in slot 93.  I keep these databases online accessible via the house Intranet.  I can find one of my songs or movies in a few seconds.

All of my pictures are in digital format.  All my documents are also digitized.  My calendar is web-based.  My contact directory (addresses and phone numbers) of colleagues, friends and family is computer based.

Every time I burn data to a disk (CD or DVD) I have a program that records all the file names on the disk and saves them to a database. In the future, if I need a file from an archive disk, I can search the database and find the number of the disk holding that file.

I decided to digitize everything years ago.  Having all this information in digital format makes it easy to store, locate and copy.

Here is an interesting thought from Charlie Stross.

“10 Tb is an interesting number. That’s a megabit for every second in a year — there are roughly 10 million seconds per year. That’s enough to store a live DivX video stream — compressed a lot relative to a DVD, but the same overall resolution — of everything I look at for a year, including time I spend sleeping, or in the bathroom. Realistically, with multiplexing, it puts three or four video channels and a sound channel and other telemetry — a heart monitor, say, a running GPS/Galileo location signal, everything I type and every mouse event I send — onto that chip, while I’m awake … Add optical character recognition on the fly for any text you look at, speech-to-text for anything you say, and it’s all indexed and searchable. ‘What was the title of the book I looked at and wanted to remember last Thursday at 3pm?’ Think of it as Google for real life.”

All of this will work because the data will be in digital format.