What makes you happy ?

On the desktop I set the view options to be by size. So I have the main HD (80gb), then a usb stick (512mb) then the other 2 drives of 160gb and 120gb. I assume the FAT32 formatting of the stick is screwing it up because it has lots of free space.

Bought Candybar for the Mac last night. Now I have much nicer icons. I used custom folder colours a lot on XP so I could quickly navigate so it’s a feature I wanted. There’s probably a way to have done it for free but it’s 7 quid so it’s hardly expensive.

Okay, the question.
Some software when it has the condition that you can only use it on 1 machine. It may offer a ‘family’ licence of up to ‘x’ machines. This isn’t talking about volume licensing, just about those programs you find, you like and you buy. Now let’s say you bought a program which you could use on only 1 computer – and then some time later you buy a second computer.
Do you even bother to check any license?
Would you just copy the serial into the new machine?
Would you hunt down the license, check their site and send them an enquiry?
Would you just buy another copy?
Does the cost matter?
If there is a determining factor, what is it?

This isn’t being posted out of guilt or indeed innocence. I usually don’t check. So with some programs I’ll be fine and some I probably won’t – though on the PC I think only FeedDemon was purchased and you could use that across your machines. My thoughts are that I have bought the program for me to use and if I have 2 machines then I need that program to be in 2 locations. They are not being given to anyone else, the serial is not being posted anywhere. The obvious thought is also that I can.
Taking Candybar as an example, I have no idea if I can use that in another machine. I’ve searched Panic’s site but can’t see a EULA. If I couldn’t, would you?

Menalto gallery. That’s the piece of software that hasn’t been anywhere near any usability testing whatsoever. It’s amazingly obtuse. There has to be an alternative – someone must have created something that can work and can do so intuitively.
It’s astoundingly bad.

Need a gallery? Avoid Menalto.

I am after suggestions for helpdesk software to help me do my work at wordpress.com
I don’t want to dismiss or have a go at the program I’m using right now because it’s been part of the learning curve and it has enabled support to scale – a year ago when I started there were less than 200,000 users and Thunderbird did the job for me. Now we will hit a million blogs inside a month – we passed a million users already. At some point Support will need to be more than just me and in that respect the less software gets in the way the better it is.
Right now, the program I’m using needs another screen for a tag to be created, the ticket screen to be hard-refreshed, the ticket needs to be saved to make the tag ’stick’ and then I can reply. Lot of clicks. I have my doubts on the search and the items below in what I don’t want are there.

So, what do I want it to do….. here’s my desired workflow:

• When I open the ticket I can – from the one screen –
  create / assign / remove tag(s)
  assign / change an owner
  send the ticket to another category
  reply and send.

I need

1. replies, and all replies to replies, to stay together.
2. user history
3. a really good search by any element
4. mass actions

What don’t I need:

1. Knowledgebase building
2. Any billing integration
3. Contacts / articles / downloads
4. Any extra stuff for large support teams

Does it have to be Web 2.0, ajaxy, open-source and any other ‘cool’ factor? No.
Does price/license matter? Not yet but they do not equal good necessarily.
Am I after something built to a spec? No.
The deciding factor? It just has to work. But it has to work very well – I can be picky.
Support is very very simple – people want answers, you supply them. That’s it. So the software should let me do that quickly and effectively.

I’ve probably missed something from the above so if I remember I’ll add it.

Mike Schroepfer, vice president for engineering for Mozilla ……. Firefox 3.0 will also have a small, embedded database ……. “The advantage of the database is that we can search your cache,” Schroepfer said. Yahoo News

How comforting.

I needed to put a red rectangle around part of a screenshot earlier. That’s all I needed to do. It’s really really basic. Can I? No. GIMP and Inkscape. With neither can I do that ever-so-basic task. That is no reflection on them but on my sheer incompetence at working them. I don’t pretend to have any skills there. By contrast though I had no problems ever with Paint Shop Pro on Windows. Anyway, off I am again to try and find something.
I downloaded OmniGraffle and this is good. Damn good. Within minutes and without needed to near the M let alone R it I’m away making diagrams, doing the Yes/No paths, using colours to try and indicate steps. Gorgeous program. And this means that when I do get to the RTM bit their is less chance of an F there and more chance it’ll make sense. I went trawling the FAQ to find something I could start with but that hits 2 problems:

• It would be using images rather than text. That increases load time and when people want answers they don’t want load time. I know I don’t.
• I’d be making the task fit the tool and that’s the wrong way around. There are some formatting changes I would make there but throwing a lot of yes/no into it wouldn’t help. Colour might though.

So it’s a really nice program but I can’t see a long-term use for it. That said it probably could have uses and playing brings some level of skill in using it so it’s going on my list on “What to buy when I can”.
And that still leaves me unable to draw nice rectangles so that remains the task to complete.

Filezilla: right-click, rename, click away. Takes a second.

Transmit: Click. Yawn. Click. Takes a-g-e-s to get that gap right and if it’s missed other stuff happens. Their site says they respond in a few business days. Is there a quicker way? Can this program be made to move as fast as Filezilla?
(And that double-click to rename is NOT intuitive)

Oh – and while I’m here:
Dear Transmit,
When I say upload the folder wp-includes, I mean all of it. The whole lot. 100%. Not just a few files if you can be bothered.

My Filezilla has 79 sites in the Site Manager. I have no idea how Cyberduck will look with that many but I aim to find out. And I hit the same problem I had when I was looking at alternatives for Filezilla – there is no easy way to export/import settings. Is there a standard I’ve missed? Is there a magical tool which will transform my xml file for me?
Maybe this is why people stick with their ftp program – it’s such a PITA to change. It sure as hell is with mine. Is there an ftp program which has importers? If there was then you’d be more likely to try it surely. But what is the market for ftp clients? Not worth an importer it seems…

Create a new folder. Fill that folder with all the shortcuts I want. Let Launchy index that folder only. Job done.

Upper outer arm is a great place for a tattoo. It’s not being stretched and flexed like other parts of my arm so it’s not at all irritating. It’s got a fine scabbing but nothing major. And simply because of that I’m closer to the LITHA method than before. Not bad.

The mini. So what have I used it for? So far, lots of exploring with Firefox, Camino, Opera and Safari. It’s odd looking at the styling of pages and seeing the differences. It more marked to me than FF/IE/Op on Windows. Maybe that’s the native styling, maybe it’s me looking more. The other thing is that here on the screen I’m typing now if I click maximise then FF commandeers every pixel of a 17″ monitor. Yet on the 15″ mini it doesn’t. I read something somewhere that Windows users tend to max their programs whereas Mac users do not. I have no idea on that but maybe this is partly why? (I used to max programs because it was too ‘busy’ on a smaller screen not to for me. I hated the navigation but not 100% windows looked worse. Now I’ve got more screen the monitor on the right has nothing maxed and usually 6 apps going on – they overlap nicely. And my productivity went up and my stress went down with the second monitor.) So that max thing is strange.

Smultron is nice. Cyderduck is okay (haven’t tried fugu yet) There’s something else I installed which appeared okay too.
Music. The ext HD is NTFS and I won’t/can’t FAT32 it. So the mini can read but not write. So…. if I drop the music onto that HD and plug it in it’ll play just fine (Audion 3 / MacAmp Lite) but new music – that which you tend to play the most, I’ll need to switch the drive back to this machine, copy the music, flip it back. Hassle. And unnecessary I suppose. But it’s a plan.
Installing WP onto it is a priority though.

UltraEdit. One app. Does S/FTP, FTP editing and basic SSH (and that is all I need). One app, 3 functions. Currently I use 3 programs for those tasks. It’s $40. Is there anything better (Windows flavoured :) )

SSX On Tour. I am a Legend. Yep – I’m a legend in a videogame too !

Reloading a page of ~400kb in Opera badly affects DVD playback.
Doing the same in Firefox does not.
Opening tabs in Opera has a worse effect than opening the same in FF
And opening GMail screws the film hugely. Amazing effect. k-k-k-k-k-k-kkkk–i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i—l-l-l-l-l–l—-llllllllllllll——-s the page.