Koozie Notes

Perl Journal - Nov Issue Online

The Perl Journal (TPJ) released their November issue today, so I downloaded their PDF and printed out a hard copy. If you enjoy slinging Perl code, I would highly recommend a subscription.

I do wish TPJ would offer a slick paper magazine instead of having to download a PDF. I would be willing to dish out a few more bucks for the paper option.

-Chris

Family Computer

I spent most of my weekend eating excellent food and watching lots of football.  I'm still a bit upset with the Aggies, but I'll get over it.

I did get a chance to work on a family member's computer that kept displaying the Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) whenever I inserted a DVD into the DVD drive.  This particular computer came with preloaded anti-virus software, but it had not been updated.  Removing the AV software seemed to fixed the BSOD problem and I recommended installing AVG Anti-virus software because it's priced at $0.00.  Radio talk show host Kim Komando also recommends AVG.

I also downloaded and installed a copy of autoruns to prevent a few unused programs from auto-starting.

-Chris

17 Most Common Business Mistakes

(via Scoble) Entrepreneur.com posted an article title, "What Not to Do."

[John Osher] came up with an informal list of "16 Mistakes Start-Ups Make"—since expanded to 17—that has been used in a Harvard Business School case study, has been cited in many publications, and has become a part of what he teaches budding entrepreneurs in his frequent university lectures.

On page 3 near the bottom, you can find 5 tips for success.  I liked #2, hire the best people available at the time.

-Chris

I Solemnly Swear I am Up to No Good

This evening my family watched the third Harry Potter film on DVD.  What a treat.

Circuit City marked down the DVD from $19.99 to $14.99, so I picked up a copy during my lunch break.  I've been waiting a long time for November 23 to get here and now I wait again for the fourth installment to hit the theaters.

-Chris

Lost Windows Install Key?

Mark Gibbs writes about another cool tool called Magic Jelly Bean Keyfinder for locating install key codes on Windows .

[Magic Jelly Bean Keyfinder] works with Windows 95, 98, ME, NT4, 2000, XP and Server 2003. Keyfinder also supports changing the key in an installed Windows 95, 98, ME or XP system.  Magical Jelly Bean Keyfinder also is supposed to be able to display the CD keys for Office 97 and Office XP

This looks like another tool I need to store on my thumb drive before the holidays.  I just have that feeling  I will be working on someone's broken computer over Thanksgiving.

-Chris

Starbucks Feels the Heat

According to this article in MobilePipeline, it appears that Starbucks is starting to feel threatened by other coffee shops that offer free Wi-Fi to their patrons.

I'm not sure that will happen any time soon, but John Yunker of Byte Level Research thinks it is inevitable. In his monthly wireless newsletter, John bluntly concluded: "The only question is when, not if, Starbucks will offer Wi-Fi for free." To which I can only add a hearty "amen, brother."

I love how the market can force people to reconsider their business practices without having to get the government involved.

-Chris

The Incredibles

Today I took the family to the movies to catch a matinee of "The Incredibles" by Pixar.  Like others have repeated, it was a great show and I think I enjoyed it more than my two year old.  This film looks like a good candidate for a DVD purchase.

-Chris

Four Million Emails a Day

(via Slashdot) Story on News.com.au reports that Bill Gates in the most spammed person in the world.

"Bill Gates (is number one) because he is Bill Gates. Bill literally receives four million pieces of email per day, most of it spam," Mr Balmer told a conference.

Think about that-- four million messages a day.    That's 166 thousand per hour or just under 50 emails per second.  Wow.  That is just astonishing.  I'd really be interested to hear what kind of equipment Microsoft maintains to handle that load.

-Chris

Cross Platform Programming Editors

radiantmatrix asks the following loaded question on perlmonks, "I'm still left with a question: What's a good editor, with a consistent interface, that works across all those platforms?"  If you are fan of text editors, please read the entire thread.  I've posted some of the links below.

1. Vim for Perl developers
   "First of all, this document is for people who are already using Vim for their programming tasks. Those people who feel that there is something missing in Vim should definitely read this document. People who recently stopped using Vim due to the reason that something was not there should also read this document."
   
2. Komodo 3.0 Review
   "ActiveState Komodo is the award-winning, professional integrated development environment (IDE) for dynamic languages, providing a powerful workspace for editing, debugging and testing your programs. Komodo offers advanced support for Perl, PHP, Python, Tcl and XSLT, and runs on Linux, Solaris and Windows."
3. SciTE
   "SciTE is a SCIntilla based Text Editor. Originally built to demonstrate Scintilla, it has grown to be a generally useful editor with facilities for building and running programs. It is best used for jobs with simple configurations - I use it for building test and demonstration programs as well as SciTE and Scintilla, themselves."
4. jEdit
   " jEdit is a mature and well-designed programmer's text editor that has been in development for over 5 years.

-Chris

SXSW Interactive Festival

I've been pretty busy lately but I did get around to registering for SXSW Interactive Festival which will be held in Austin, Texas from Saturday, March 12 through Tuesday, March 15 2005.

This will be my first year to attend even though I've been living in Austin since 2000.  For some strange reason, I find it harder to attend an event when it's hosted in my hometown .  Go figure.

-Chris