Core Dump

After many, many years of dragging my feet, I have finally joined the dual-monitor club:

My wife’s company was getting rid of some surplus equipment and I managed to grab the 2nd monitor for just $25 – you can’t say no at that price! So I decided to give this dual-monitor thing a try.

I’ve long been… well let’s say ambivalent about the benefits of having dual monitors – despite the fact that most programmers swear by them (heck, dual monitors are item #1 on the Programmer’s Bill of Rights!).

My reluctance was partly due to the cost – especially back in the CRT days, when monitors (decently-sized ones, anyway) were not inexpensive. The other reason for my reluctance was that I’d tried the dual-monitor thing years ago and found it not very useful – the monitor I tried out was an old 15″ CRT, and the desk I was using at the time didn’t really fit a 2nd monitor very effectively. Also, back then there really wasn’t any such thing as a “dual-head” video card, so you had to add a 2nd video card (probably a slower PCI card, since your main video card was probably using up the sole AGP slot on your motherboard).

However, even when LCD monitors became relatively inexpensive and easy to get I still resisted getting a second monitor. The reason for this was that I just could not see how a second monitor would benefit me, given the type of work I do. Oh, I didn’t deny that it would be useful sometimes – but not necessarily enough to justify the cost/space/hassle/etc.

I just kept figuring that I really only “focus” on one thing at a time, so why bother having a second screen if I’m not going to be focusing on it? Plus, I worried about getting cramps in my neck & shoulders from turning to the side to stare at a second monitor for any length of time.

So I rationalized it to myself for a very long time, until this $25 monitor came along, and I just figured I’d give it a try (at worst I could decide I didn’t like it and give it away to a family member or friend who needs a new monitor).

So now that I’ve got it, how is it working out for me? Well, getting used to a second monitor actually takes some time and effort – when you have worked for so long with just one screen, it’s hard to “give up” a window and move it over to the second screen.

Of course, what stuff ends up on the 2nd screen is a tough choice to make. My “desktop” is now effectively twice as wide as it used to be, which means moving the mouse from the left side of the screen to the right side of the other screen takes a while – and again, I don’t like moving the mouse more than I have to (repetitive stress injuries are to programmers what black lung was to coal miners). So whatever went on the 2nd monitor would have to:

• Only infrequently require mouse input
• Be something I could glance at out of the corner of my eye, without needing to actually turn my head and stare at the 2nd screen for long periods of time
• Not be distracting

Interestingly, not a lot falls into this category for me.

A lot of people using dual monitors will say how they love having their email open on the 2nd screen all the time. But I (mostly) follow the “Getting Things Done” philosophy, and I’m also a programmer so interruptions are anathema  to me, so having email always “in my face” is just not necessary. I check email when I’m ready to check email, and my computer will let me know that mail has arrived and I can then read it at my leisure.

Having IM or Twitter open on the second monitor might also seem like it might be useful, and after trying it out, I did actually decide to move my IM program to the 2nd monitor. It helps keep chats with co-workers “on the side” so I can keep working. And Twitter would probably be a good candidate, except I don’t use Twitter often enough for it to be that important to me. Plus, the Twitter client I use (Spaz) has growl-style notifications that let me know when new Tweets happen for the (relatively) few people I follow, so that’s good enough for me.

Another candidate for a 2nd monitor is for debugging – and that would be a good use for a 2nd monitor, depending on the type of debugging you are doing. But I mostly do .NET WinForms development these days, and debugging that is pretty easy on a single monitor. Perhaps when I have some web development to do, or other kinds of development, the second monitor will really come through for me – but right now, it’s just not helpful for the debugging I do.

However, a very good candidate for the 2nd monitor is for remote desktop/virtual machines. Often I have to remote control people’s computers, and putting that on the 2nd monitor allows me to effectively have their desktop right next to mine – it is very handy. Likewise for virtual machines – I will run the virtual machine on the 2nd monitor and I can keep an eye on it while working normally on my 1st monitor.

So that’s where I stand currently in regards to the dual-monitor club. I’m still a new convert, and I’m still getting my sea-legs, so to speak, as far as figuring out how best to use this 2nd screen I have. But I’m getting there.

I’m going to do 2 little retrospectives this year, but I’m going to start with a personal one first, so if this isn’t your cup of tea, just move on to the 2nd article (which is more about the world at large) and read that instead.

The last 10 years (10 years!?!) have been quite interesting for me, now that I really sit down and think about it. Of course, a lot has happened (which I’ve written about in more detail elsewhere in my blog), so I won’t go into details here – but I will summarize, because summarizing and making “top X” lists is what the New Year is all about!

• I leave college after 4 years and start my own company (though not by myself).
• I got my first apartment in Fitchburg and lived officially “on my own” for the first time (the time I spent at college – even when I lived there over the summer – only half counts).
• Amanda, my long-distance girlfriend from Australia, packs her backs and moves to America to live with me!
• Amanda and I get married! Who-hoo!
• After a lot of prodding, I finally go back and finish the 2 classes I needed to graduate from college!
• Through a very bizzare series of events, I end up with 2 pet rabbits!
• I buy a new car (my beloved Mitsubishi Outlander) and end up getting screwed by a corrupt car dealership.
• I travel back and forth to Australia more than a few times, and see some really neat stuff while I’m there!
• I learn to cook more than just the meat & potato casseroles I used to eat in college.
• I move to New Jersey! (And I get to work from home!)
• I’ve gotten better at acting “grown-up” (though it’s still an act, because I’m still a kid at heart)

And that just about brings us up-to-date with the crazy journey that has been my life thus far. It’s been a wild ride, to be sure – there were ups, and there were definitely downs as well. But lately there seem to be more ups than downs, which is good, because now that I’m in my 30′s I’m getting too old for the drama of youth. But life is good these days, and fate has been relatively good to me lately, so I have no complaints. And of course I’m looking forward to the next 10 years of crazy adventures as well!

I’m sorry if this post has sounded a little sappy, or even self-serving in some ways. However, around this time of year I always like to look back fondly, rather than look back and see all the negatives. I know they happened (I can never forget them), but I’ve moved past them. I prefer to face the new year optimistically – that’s just the way I am.

So, if you’re looking back at your own life, hopefully you’ll look more at the positive things rather than the negative things, and see the possibilities of a brighter future ahead. I know I am!

Happy New Year, everyone! See you in 2010!

Sometimes I have to just stop and be amazed at the things we can do these days – things that would have seemed like futuristic science fiction when I was a kid (or even when I was in college).

For example, just this weekend I was doing some cleaning around the house (cleaning up the bunnies area) and I wanted to have some relaxing, chillout music on while I worked.

For me, the easiest way to accomplish this was to boot up my netbook, hook it into my livingroom stereo (via the same cable I use to hook up my iPod), and just play some streaming music from Shoutcast (the Digitally Imported Chillout Dreams stream, to be exact).

So that is exactly what I did.

Simple, easy, and straightforward – and it doesn’t take a whole bunch of complicated steps to get going, nor does it take very long (just long enough for my netbook to boot up – which is pretty fast – and to load the radio stream).

It is just amazing to me that this little computer can sit there, pulling music literally from thin air. And of course, the fact that streaming Internet radio gives me an almost unlimited library of music to pull from doesn’t hurt, either.

Now, while this was pretty darned cool, it did make me think of something that was… not so cool.

I have a Windows Media Center Extender right there, just to the right of the Wii in the picture. And the whole point of the Media Center Extender is to do exactly this sort of thing. So why wasn’t I using it?

Well, the short answer is because it’s too slow, too hard, and it doesn’t work with the streaming radio stations I like. The Media Center Extender takes a long time to boot up (longer than my netbook), the interface is slow and clunky, the remote control is awful, trying to enter text is an exercise in frustration, and getting streaming radio to work on it is… well let’s just say “not easy” and leave it at that. You need to add special add-ins to the Media Center PC (not the Extender), which of course must be downloaded, installed, set up in advance, etc. In the end, it’s just not worth the effort.

(In it’s defense, I don’t think the Media Center Extender was ever meant to work with streaming radio from the Internet – it was meant to stream music from a local Media Center PC instead… but really, if it can do that, it should be able to do both. But I digress…)

Anyway, despite the failings of the Windows Media Center Extender, listening to streaming music in my home while I clean is pretty darned neat.

The future is pretty awesome. I love living in the future!

So, I’ve been sort of stalking this particular model of netbook for a while now – the Acer Aspire One AOD-150. It had everything I was after:

• 10.1 inch screen
• 1.6 GHz Intel Atom CPU
• Webcam
• A good keyboard (perhaps one of the most important factors when buying a netbook)
• Good battery life (when you get the 6-cell battery)

So when I saw it on sale recently over at Newegg, I swooped in and bought it.

Well, it just arrived yesterday, and I spent some time setting it up – of course, even though it’s brand new, it still needs to spend a few hours downloading updates, and of course I have to pull out all of the stupid “bundleware” that comes with computers these days.

Of course, the hardest part about getting a new computer for me is just choosing a name for it. Long-time readers here will remember me prattling on about my old computers – and of course you’ll see there’s sort of a “theme” to the names I give my computers.

I was at a loss as to what to name my new netbook until I sat down with it and suddenly it came to me: Ryo-Ohki. It just makes sense. The cute little netbook that is surprisingly powerful!

Oh, and I also split the hard drive into 2 partitions and installed Ubuntu Netbook Remix. It is quite possibly the sweetest little UI for a computer I’ve ever seen – like something out of the future. Anyway, it’s really, really nice.

What’s really amazing to me is how everything just works. I’ve used Linux before (back in the day – get off my lawn you young kids, etc.), but it always had a sort of… unfinished look to it. It never quite worked as well as Windows, especially with built-in stuff like, say, those crazy blue “function” (or “fn”) keys on laptops – you know, the ones that let you adjust the volume or the screen brightness.

Well, I can tell you right now that Linux has come a long way since then.

I didn’t have to do anything special to get Ubuntu up and running on this little netbook – and everything just works. The webcam works great, the sound is great, the volume and brightness controls work great, the wireless works out-of-the-box, the battery meeter works perfectly – even the little SD memory card reader on the side, which supposedly has some trouble on some models of the Acer Aspire, works fine – I put in my memory card and it read it right away. It even knew it was from a camera and offered to download pictures from it for me!

In short, these days, Linux really is a viable alternative to Windows, no questions asked.

Anyway – moving along – the little netbook is all set up today, happily purring along in either Linux or Windows. I kept Windows “just in case” I need it for something Windows-specific. After all, it’s got a fairly big hard drive, and I don’t plan on keeping huge amounts of files on the drive itself, so it just makes sense to split the drive and dual-boot. If I have any files, I’ll probably keep them on a USB drive or maybe a SD card I’ll just keep in it all the time (SD cards are cheap enough to make this a viable option).

So in the end, I’m quite happy with this netbook. The keyboard is small, but easy enough for me to type on comfortably (the right-hand shift key is full-sized and in the right spot – a major annoyance for me that I found on some other netbooks), and the touchpad, although small and a bit … touchy? … is actually easy enough to use once you get used to it.

So if you’re looking for a netbook, you could do far, far worse than to pick one of these Acer Aspire One’s up – and the price certainly is right!

It might come as a surprise to some people to hear me say that I am not a slave to technology – after all, I’m a self-described “computer geek.” You’d think, therefore, that I walk around with an iPhone or Blackberry (or both!) strapped to my chest at all times, checking email and looking up information on-line everywhere I go.

However, you couldn’t be farther from the truth.

While it’s true that I am a major computer geek, and I would love to have (say) a nice little netbook for looking up information, sending email, writing blog posts, etc., the fact of the matter is that it’s because I’m a computer geek that I’m not a slave to technology.

Because I’m confident about it, I don’t allow it to control me – I control it.

For example, I know many people with mobile email who are, quite frankly, addicted to it (think: crackberry). They’re always checking email – all the time – no matter where they are. Even if I had a mobile email device (which I don’t), I wouldn’t be checking email all the time. As it is, I don’t check email often, even when I’m at my computer. I’m confident enough with the technology to know that I don’t need to answer every single email at the moment it comes in – that I don’t need to be “on-line” all the time. I control the technology – I use it when I want to, not the other way around.

Another example is when the power goes out – for people who are slaves to technology, to computers, the Internet, email, Twitter, social networking, what have you, the power going out is like having their “fix” cut off – they don’t know what to do. Without email, chat, or whatever, they’re lost. They’re so badly enslaved that they don’t know what to do when they are “freed” from it, for whatever reason.

As for me, even though I spend my entire day at the computer (and often much of the evening, too), writing code, answering emails, being online, writing blog posts like this one and so on – when the power goes out, I just shrug, grab a book from my bookshelf, and go read. Or, if it’s dark, I’ll go for a drive, or a walk, or just plain go to bed.

I control the technology around me – it doesn’t control me.

For many people today, the opposite is true. It’s worth it to sit and really take a look at yourself and see whether you are one of those people – whether you’re a slave to technology. Even in today’s connected world, it’s important to be able to just leave it all behind sometimes, to just “let go.” It’s the difference between being controlled and being in control.