Workers Without Cubicles blogs

Vancouver Apple Store is Open for Business

Mike — Fri, 30 May 2008 14:48:52 -0400

The Vancouver Apple store in the Pacific Centre Mall opened for business this past weekend. I was in Toronto, attending the MESH conference (thanks to commandN) and couldn't make the opening day, but I was there Sunday morning.

Interesting thing about Vancouver: it's a very sleepy town. They get started pretty late in the morning here, at least compared to Toronto and Ottawa. So when I showed up at 11 AM on Sunday morning I was a little disappointed to see how few people were in the store. All the better for me though, because I got to browse without having to push my way through a crowd.

Drooled over a MacBook Air, even though it's completely impractical for my needs. Besides, I already have a completely serviceable MacBook Pro. I also eyed the new version of X-Plane for the Mac, but decided I was probably better off with one less thing on the credit card this month.

We went for lunch, and when we returned at 1 PM the store was packed full of people. I'm sure the other retailers on the upper level of the Pacific Centre love the new store - there normally isn't a lot of foot traffic up there, but the Apple store (and the nearby H & M) really draws a crowd.

It's nice to see so many people interested in Apple today. I say that not because I'm an Apple fan, but because Windows has been synonymous with computers for so long, that it's great to see people realizing that there are alternatives out there. Whether it's Mac, Linux or something else, the greater the diversity of the computer world, the more innovation, interoperability and open standards we'll see, and that's a good thing.

Personally, I'm happy that the store is there because it's about 3 blocks from where I live, and I need to get a battery replaced under warranty soon. The downside is that there are all kinds of shiny new toys to purchase, all within walking distance!

Anxiety will help you be more productive. No, really. (it's a software app)

Mike — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 15:01:51 -0500

Take a look at Anxiety, a nifty little to-do tracker for OS X. It uses the new Calendar Store in Leopard so that it keeps your to-dos in sync with iCal and Mail (and therefore also any devices you may sync with iSync). Best of all, it's free!

Pass the Flickr sauce please, and I'll have a side of Facebook...

Mike — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 00:07:19 -0500

This is great - Jim Benson goes to a restaurant in Beijing and finds a rather unusual item on the menu. Apparently web 2.0 culture has permeated everything and everywhere ... including the menus at chinese restaurants. That's some good branding!

Apple Store in Pacific Centre Mall, Vancouver BC

Mike — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 19:10:34 -0500

I was browsing Craigslist today and came across this post. It indicates that Apple is hiring staff for their new Apple Store in the Pacific Centre mall, downtown Vancouver. Woohoo! It's about time (assuming it's not a fake post) I live only 3 blocks away, which is both a good and a bad thing (mostly bad for my wallet).

Update: I confirmed it on the Apple Jobs site. Choose Mac Genius and then work your way through to Vancouver BC and you'll see the Pacific Centre posting.

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Google Maps now does terrain and traffic

Mike — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 20:36:08 -0500

Google Maps just got a big update and now offers traffic and terrain views. Hybrid view is gone - the Satellite view now shows roads & names by default.

Traffic view displays green, yellow or red segmented overlays on top of roads, indicating traffic volume. Not surprisingly, it looks like traffic updates are only available for US cities - according to Google, traffic outside my downtown Vancouver, BC apartment is non-existant.

The Perks of Freelancing in the Big City: Transportation

Mike — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 18:12:23 -0500

One of the things that struck Natasha and I after moving to Vancouver is how little we actually drive these days. Living downtown, we can walk or take public transportation to most of our destinations. We only drive on weekends, and even then, only occasionally. Our car insurance payments have actually decreased from what we used to pay in Kamloops, and we only fill up the car once a month or so. Even better, walking is healthy and good for the environment.

If those aren't good reasons to think about public transportation and walking, then consider what Simon at the Green Blog posted today regarding the space required to transport a group of people by car, bus and bicycle. Apparently these are old photos, but I somehow missed them. Photo credit: Press Office, City of Münster, Germany.

Review: Apple Bluetooth wireless keyboard - works great with Macs and Nokia N800s

Mike — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 16:55:51 -0500

We picked up an Apple Bluetooth wireless keyboard on the weekend and I wanted to share my first impressions with you.

For starters, it's not a full-size keyboard. It lacks separate page up/page down keys, along with a numeric keypad. It is also very thin - I would estimate that it is no more than 4mm thick for the most part, except for the cylindrical portion at the back which holds the batteries and bluetooth antenna. The battery compartment also serves to elevate the keyboard to a comfortable angle for typing (at least for me).

How does it feel? Pretty good actually. The keys themselves are full-size and normally spaced. I find that the design mutes keyboard noise quite nicely - while you definitely get audible feedback when you're typing, your neighbour isn't going to hear you too.

The keyboard was super-easy to pair up with my laptop over bluetooth. The right-side of the battery compartment is an power / bluetooth discovery button. All it took to pair up with my laptop was a single press of this button and then following the normal procedure in the "Setup up a Bluetooth Device" area in the Bluetooth System Preferences panel. OS X prompted me to type a 6 digit code on my keyboard, after which it paired with the Mac.

Working with the Nokia N800

I also had no problems pairing the keyboard with my Nokia N800 internet tablet device. Actually, the Apple keyboard + N800 makes an almost unbeatable portable blogging system. I was happy to discover that the Nokia can be driven entirely from the keyboard, with almost no need to resort to the touch screen. I wish I had a setup like this back when I was an on-call system administrator 8 years ago!

N800 tip: Make sure you select a Hardware Keyboard type of pc105 in the control panel. Otherwise the keymappings will be all wrong (it defaults to a Nokia bluetooth keyboard of some sort).

Downsides to the keyboard? Well I can't think of anything major right now. I've been told that I can expect excellent battery life so we'll see how that goes. I suppose some people might dislike the feel of the keys, and the lack of a separate numeric keypad might be a show-stoppers for others. But for me, this is a perfect little keyboard that I'm looking forward to using on a daily basis.

Need a cheap phone system for your business? Try voice over IP!

Mike — Thu, 22 Nov 2007 14:10:27 -0500

We got tired of paying Telus (our local phone company) a lot of money for what seemed to be little service. I started looking at alternatives and decided to give a voice over IP solution a whirl. By now most people are familiar with VoIP: phone service over the internet. Basically, a VoIP provider acts a gateway between the regular phone system and the internet. You're probably familiar with services like Vonage - you sign up for a monthly plan and they send you a little box which connects to the internet and your regular house phones. Their plans were certainly cheaper than the regular telephone company's plans, but I found Vonage's sound quality to be spotty - no doubt because I live in Canada and the calls were being routed down into the US (where Vonage is located) and back up here.

I've found a better way to manage my phone system, and that's to do it myself. Using a free package called TrixBox, I have been able to run my own phone system using a spare computer. It handles everything from phone greetings to voicemail, can ring both my cell and my house phones simultaneously when a call comes in, and gives me excellent call tracking reports. I can see exactly how long I've spent on the phone and compare it to previous months. And best of all, it's dirt cheap. You still need a VoIP service provider, but since you are handling all the "extras" (voicemail, caller waiting, etc) via Trixbox, the phone plans are cheap. I pay $2.50 per month for my phone line, plus 1.1 cents / minute usage. That means for a typical month, my phone bill is about $12 CDN.

I'm going to put together a small how-to document, but in the meantime be sure to check out the following links:

TrixBox - I use this software to run my phone systems
voipinfo - A great resource for all things VoIP - lists service providers by country/region.

Not Getting Things Done: How a little procrastination goes a long way

Mike — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 13:13:21 -0500

A friend of mine asked me if I could take a look at his Drupal installation - apparently whenever he enabled a particular module his entire site would crash. "Sure, no problem. I'll take a look this weekend and we'll get it sorted out for you" was my response. But something came up that weekend and I put it off. I figured that it wouldn't take me long to figure out, so I could do it Monday. Of course, when Monday came around, something else took precedence and I put my friend's problem on the backburner.

That was three weeks ago. Each time I pushed the task back it seemed to grow in size. Suddenly it wasn't a small favour I was doing my friend, it was some giant task that was bordering on a project ... at least, that's how I viewed it.

Last night I found myself with a free evening, so I sent him a quick note saying I would take a look and that it would probably take me a day or so to figure out. I logged in, and within 5 minutes I found and fixed the problem. So simple! My friend was ecstatic that I had solved the problem which had plagued him for weeks... while I felt more than a little guilty for dragging things out as long as I had.

One of the golden rules in the Getting Things Done system is to do a small task immediately, rather than postponing it. It's a good rule to live by and I guess I needed a reminder.

OS X Leopard automatically detects compromised wireless networks and reacts

Mike — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 11:32:10 -0500

I use a MacBook Pro as my primary workstation, and it's usually connected to the internet via an ethernet cable, although we do have wireless in our house for those "work from the couch" days.

Last night, I needed to borrow the ethernet cable from the MacBook Pro - so I switched the Mac over to the wireless network. No big deal, right? Only, I was running VMware Fusion on the Mac at the time, with bridged networking enabled. Now, bridged networking simply makes any virtual computer inside VMware appear to be an entirely separate computer on the LAN. It's recommended that it is used with Ethernet only. That's because it needs to do some network trickery in order to make it look like the virtual computer is separate from the real one.

After switching to wireless I walked away to get a drink, and when I returned, OS X was displaying a dialog box that read something to the effect of "It appears as though your wireless network may have been compromised. OS X will disable wireless for approximately one minute" - and sure enough, I was offline.

I didn't think to grab a screenshot at the time, but it looks as though OS X didn't like what VMware was trying to do to make itself visible on the wireless network. It misinterpreted it as an attack on the wifi and shut the wireless down. Unexpected, and quite cool!

I'm going to try and replicate it this afternoon to see if I can't get a screenshot or two.