51: Macs, PCs, and the Perfect Technician
2009-03-29
Download MP3 For Geekons Episode 51
Pop-Up: Taksbar Shuffle
- This week we're reviewing Taskbar Shuffle, which was recommended by @arthur2sheds
- Taskbar shuffle is a lightweight utility that runs in the background and allows you to reorder your windows task bar.
- Simply click and drag items in your task bar to change the order they appear in.
- I love to have all of my "always on" applications to the far left, and my frequently opened and closed applications on the right.
- Now, if I need to close outlook for any reason during the day, I can open it, and drag it back to the left of my other taskbar items.
- I haven't had the chance to use it much myself, since gnome has this built in, but it looks like yet another utility that will be default on all of my windows installs from here on out.
- It weighs in at about 1MB of RAM, so you shouldn't even notice it on most modern PC's.
- 5 out of 5 stars, free, useful, and lightweight.
Geek-Tweak: How to share photos online
- There are many ways to share photos online with family and friends.
- Quite possibly the easiest yet worst way is to simply email photos.
- Here's a few reasons I say this is the worst way:
- it takes up space in your sent items and the recipient's inbox
- if you send to multiple people, there must be multiple copies sent, which can slow down your mail server and takes up more space on servers in general.
- some people won't know what to do with the photo if they aren't tech savvy
- large emails are more likely to be blocked or sent to junk mail folders
- you are forcing everyone to use the same resolution of photo, which can cause it to be displayed poorly on their computer
- If I'm not supposed to email photos, how do I share them with my friends?
- twitpic http://www.twitpic.com
- Small photos
- sent to twitter
- available to the general public
- Flickr http://www.flickr.com
- Large files
- public use
- friends/family only use
- order prints
- Picasa Web Albums http://picasaweb.google.com
- Large files
- public use
- friends/family only use
- order prints
- twitpic http://www.twitpic.com
- If I use these services, what's the benefit?
- You email only a small link to your friends that can share multiple large photos.
- Most will show small bandwidth-friendly photos, then allow friends and family to view larger copies if they want to.
- Flickr and Picasa also make it easy for non-tech-savvy people to know what to do with the photo. (Download, order prints, share, etc.)
- The photos is uploaded once, but multiple people can download it if they want to, saving bandwidth and online storage space.
- Upgraded/paid-for accounts can save your high res originals, which serve as a great backup.
- Flickr, Picasa Web Albums, and many other online photo sharing sites allow you to protect certain photos, requiring your friends and family to log in before viewing them.
View-Source: All you need is love
- My wife just had her baby shower and one of the activities was to design a page of a scrapbook and include scripture for my son, Joel, to read.
- I've decided to review one of those pages each week on the podcast.
- My page was first, with Romans 12:2, which we discussed last week.
- My wife chose Matthew 22:37-38, which we'll go over today.
- The scene (in a Modern Geekon's Version) looks something like this:
- A Mac, who doesn't believe in the resurrection of broken hardware, asked the Perfect Technician: "If a Firewire port dies before an editing project is finished, and you move your drive to another port, which then dies before finishing the project, and you move the drive to yet another port, and this continues until the seventh port dies and the hard drive dies... which port would you use to continue editing after repairs?"
- The Perfect Technician just shakes his head and says "You don't get it, the ports and the drives would be repaired, but everything will be reset far better than factory settings for the glory of my Father. No offense, but your editing project isn't even going to be on the table after the hardware resurrection."
- The PC's snickered at the Mac's failure and huddled together to come up with a better question to trap the Perfect Technician.
- The PC spokesperson, a network security analyst, said "What is the most important rule in computing". (Obviously this question was designed to turn either the users, who could care less about security and efficiency, or the sysadmins, who could care less about usability, against the Perfect Technician.)
- The Perfect Technician answered the PCs, telling them "The most important rule in anything is to love the Lord your God with all of your hardware, software, and use of technology. I'll go ahead and fill you in on the second, very similar, important rule in computing since it is just like that one... love your neighbor as yourself. All of the user manuals and IT administration guides hang on those two principles."
- The things that are the most obvious to me from this passage are:
- 1. We love to question God and try to trick him into answering the way we want him to answer. We oftentimes want Him to conform to us, which is silly. He is perfect, and His plan is perfect.
- 2. We need to be more loving. Everything we read in the bible, God's perfect infallible word, hinges on the fact that we are to love God with everything we've got, and that we are to love our neighbor the same way we love ourselves.
- One of my favorite musicians, Jimmy Needham, has a song called "Come Around" that describes our need for love when sharing the gospel, which appears to be validated by this text.
- If we don't share God's love, then we aren't obedient to this scripture and there is a good chance we are missing "the whole point".
- I think it would be interesting to go through what the prophets wrote and the commandments God has given us to see how each passage hinges on the fact that we are to love God and love our neighbors.
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