Author: J

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Going mobile

Oh the horror! I am losing my home office. Well, maybe not horror, but as the wife and I are expecting baby #3 it is time for me to get out of the office, and let the oldest kid have it. I spent a lot of time and energy redoing that room after we bought the house, and I managed to make it into a really nice little work space with a big elevation table, back light, 27″ monitor and a fairly decent chair. I currently use a desktop computer that I bought back in the Vista days. I have upgraded it with an SSD and some RAM, so it is still a decent machine for my use.

Outside of the work space, I managed to get some bookshelves that hold my book collection as well as the books I used for my Master’s degree along with my CD collection. I know, CDs are a thing of the past, but call me a sentimental sucker.

Anyway, I am in the process of packing away all my things, so the big questions arises, what do I do for work space now. Well, I need to go all mobile. That in itself is not anything new, but for the first time in 12 years, I don’t have my own work space at home. So I need to bring the work space with me. Therefore, I have started shopping around for a PC replacement since my trusted desktop machine is about to be retired. So far, I looking at a Lenovo IdeaPad and a Surface Pro, since both are compact machines that carry enough punch to run fairly demanding applications. I don’t need a big powerhouse of a notebook, since my time away from the computer is ever increasing, but I still need to be able to the basics in a smooth manner.

So, the game is afoot, as Mr. Holmes would say, and it is time for my credit card to pay the ultimate price.

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Outlook.com: Send from address

CaptureOne of my favorite features in Outlook.com is the ability to add a POP3 mail address to send from. I use my domain mail a lot, and even though I could use custom domains to manage my mail, I have decided to keep my original Outlook.com address.

You can now send through your domain provider’s servers, meaning you get the annoying “Sent on behalf of” in the email header. So, I set up my domain mail as my default mail address, and it turns out that Outlook.com will always use this, even though you use Outlook.com on your Windows Phone. When I open the mail app, which is associated with my Outlook.com address, it will actually send from me@mydomain.me, which is a really nice detail.

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Goodbye Google reader, Hello Digg reader

It was a pleasant surprise when Digg sent me an email this morning, annoying the Digg reader Beta. Google reader has a often used product in my services portfolio, but due to the lack of support, the experience has been getting worse and worse over the years. As for the DIgg reader, it is still a beta version, and some basic functionality is still missing. However, I am more than willing to live with that for now. I think Digg has been really cool about building their reader service so quickly, and since I even like the design way better than Google reader, I will support this endeavor.

There will also be an iPhone app, which I have no use for, but the iPad app will definitely be of interest to me. I just hope we will soon see a Windows Phone app, and if we don’t there’s always Flipboard.

As for Google, well, as far as I am concerned, it is one less Google service that I use. Come to think of it, I only use Google search now. If only I could find a good alternative…

Update: I just noticed that Digg reader brought all my starred items over from Google reader. Nice touch.

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Travelling again

Oh the boredom.
As my current project is getting ready to go on vacation, I am putting in one last trip to Poland to start another sprint. We have reached sprint 8 and we can start to see the end. Of course we still have a lot of work in front of us before we release to production, but the main chunks of code are close to being done.
Having travelled a fair the last couple of years, I try to remember why I thought this would be so cool to do back in college. In all honesty, it doesn’t get easier to leave the family, even though it is a very short trip with only one overnight stay. Could it be that I am getting old, fat and comfortable?

Regardless, I have a,song and dance show tomorrow with the development team, which should be fairly straight forward. Famous last words I guess.
I will try to find time to blog about my experience with outsourcing development.

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Damn economics

This is a really interesting article, unfortunately in Danish.

http://politiken.dk/debat/debatindlaeg/ECE1991784/oekonomerne-styrer-vores-tankegang/

Funny thing is that economic theory is all about faith and beliefs. Pretty much like religion.