Cozumel - Scooter Travels 1

After arriving on the Island and catching up with the wedding party the previous evening, we decided to spend our first full day exploring the island. We thought that renting a scooter would be the best way to explore the island and set off to do just that. Unfortunately, the literature left on the living room table in our condo strongly recommended that we avoid renting a scooter at all costs. In fact, it was the most important recommendation mentioned by the literature. Being an avid motorcyclist I was not about to be thwarted and called the condo staff for directions to the nearest rental. I was surprised, again, when the staff took offense to me asking about a scooter rental. Needless to say, they didn’t help me in the endeavor at all. I later learned from the security crew that there was a scooter rental just up the street and was able to acquire one for 24 hours at $35.

The reason the condo staff was so hesitant about encouraging its vacationers to rent a scooter is because the medical facilities on the island are not the best for tending to people who might get seriously injured. If you have never ridden a scooter/motorcycle then I would strongly recommend you do not attempt this either. Especially if you head into the city. The drivers there really are nuts! We saw families riding on scooters throughout the city with babies dangling on the steering column or barely being held by their parents. I have to admit, though, that it really makes one think about how pampered and cushioned America really is. I found myself admiring the raw and uncensored life in Cozumel. All-in-all, I am glad that we rented the scooter though. It was one of many trip highlights as we spent the entire day enjoying the sun and sea breeze on two wheels.

The following map roughly depicts the route we took around the island:

The following are pictures of the trip starting with a panoramic view of our condo. I should mention that at the very southern tip of the island is a lighthouse that you can drive on a dirt road to see. Along the way is a marshy area where you can walk out on a plank to view a family of crocodiles. The last pictures are of us traveling along the beach and finally stopping a bar called “Coconuts” where they have photo albums of…well…coconuts. I suggest stopping in for a visit if you are ever on the island. The atmosphere and drinks are quite good. Thanks, Grahame, for the recommendation.

Tags: Cozumel

Telecommuting

Most companies are resistant to employees telecommuting — working from home or some remote location that is not within corporate walls. However, life within corporate walls is not anything to get excited about. Usually you are given a cubicle office with a desktop or laptop and a few office supplies like staplers, pencils, pens, a white board, etc. Unfortunately, cubicles can be loud, non-private, small, and uninspiring. Yet, companies love cubicles because they are cheap and take up minimal space. From an economical standpoint, it makes perfect sense for a company to have a sea of employee filled cubicles.

For me, as a software developer, being in a cubicle is a mistake. Well, unless you practice some form of Agile development that is. I feel that when you are working deep in the code, the last thing you want is random people walking by and interrupting your work. It does not help that there is no door to close to prevent hearing conversations of fellow co-workers a few cubicles down. I have seen some people using earplugs or putting “do not disturb” signs on the outside of their cubicle walls but that only gets you so far.

I believe that if you can demonstrate talent, reliability, trust, performance, and quality a corporation should let you work from home or any location you desire. As long as the employee knows how to work from home properly, then why not? It is cheaper for the company and less stressful for the employee.

Think of telecommuting as a form of freelancing. It should not be a taboo. If you can not cut it then, yeah, a cubicle life it is for you. Otherwise, it is time to start being more economical. The money you save on gas can be better spent during happy hour on Fridays with friends and fellow co-workers!

Cozumel - Arrival

Kate and I arrived mid-afternoon in Cozumel, Mexico to relax and attend Brett and Ann’s Wedding. The following are pictures of the surrounding area from our condo balcony as well as some interior shots of the condo:

The condo we ended up staying in was on the third floor in building three overlooking the pool and beach beyond. The condo is part of the Residencias Reef Condos which are about a 20 minute drive from the airport via taxi (south of town on the West coast).

These are the first of many pictures I will be posting throughout the week as I process the various photos and videos I took while enjoying the location and company of friends on this trip.

Tags: Cozumel

JkDefrag

Introduction

JkDefrag is a free, feature rich defragmentation application that is a better alternative to Disk Defragmenter (the default Windows application). The following demonstrates some of JkDefrags capabilities.

Getting Started

Check out the JkDefrag or JkDefrag GUI (if you want a graphical version) web site for usage information and file downloads.

Usage

I use JkDefrag to defragment my computer on a weekly basis. This is done by scheduling a Windows Task and executing a Windows Batch Script (download and unzip to tweak and use) which yields the following:

The resulting log file looks a bit like this:

Conclusion

The ability to capture a more verbose log file as well as make use of flexible command line options makes this a great tool to have around. I use this tool for all my hard drive partitions as well as my external disk drives.

Thanks, Stephen, for the tip.

PDF Creator

Introduction

I have been using PDF Creator which is free software for Windows that installs a PDF file printer. For me, it serves as a quick and dirty solution versus more complex and feature rich solutions like Apache Forrest, Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA), or simply using Adobe’s software which, of course, is the most obvious choice since they are the creators of the PDF format.

For the purposes of this post, I want to show off the command line features of PDF Creator since this what I find most useful. I’ll be using an Open Office text document for illustration. For those savvy Open Office users, yes, I know that Open Office Writer allows for PDF exports but this feature is not available via the command line in Open Office.

Getting Started

To begin, download PDF Creator and install it on your system. The install will, unfortunately, put PDF Creator in your “Program Files” folder. You will have no choice in this matter.

Finding PDF Creator

Once you have PDF Creator installed you can find easily find it via your Start Menu in Program Files as shown here:

You can also find the printer shortcut in your start menu here:

Setting up PDF Creator

If you click on the PDF Creator shortcut shown above (not the printer shortcut but the one in Program Files) you will get the following window:

From this window, click on the Printer–>Options menu to configure PDF Creator. There are a few options I want to point out, however. The first is the document settings where you might want to automatically assign your name to generated PDF files as shown here:

Next, click on the save settings and adjust the way in which you want PDF files to be named when created. In my case, I ended up using the document title with a datestamp suffix as shown here:

The last setting I want to talk about is the auto-save settings. This is the most important setting for command line use as it prevents PDF Creator dialogs showing up during PDF file generation. You can also control how the file is named and what the default directory should be when auto-saving. In my case, I use my “unfiled” directory as shown here:

Lastly, click the “Save” button to save your settings.

Using the PDF Creator Command Line

With your settings adjusted, all you need is a file to convert to PDF. In my case, I created an example.odt (download and unzip) with Open Office.

The command line used to generate a PDF version of the original document is shown here:

"C:\Program Files\PDFCreator\PDFCreator.exe" /NoStart /PF"F:\unfiled\example.odt"

You will need to modify the command line for your own environment, of course.

I do want to point out a couple of the options used in the command line shown above. The first is the “NoStart” option which prevents the PDF Creator window from popping up during execution. Although, the first time you execute the command line you will be presented with the following dialog:

Just put a check mark for “Don’t ask me again” to prevent future occurrences of this dialog.

The last option to talk about is the “PF” option which tells PDF Creator where your source file is for PDF conversion. Make sure to not use a space between the option and the path to your source file. You might also consider using quotes in case you have a file path with spaces.

The resulting PDF document produced from the command line above can be downloaded here.

Notes

From here you can do what you like. In my case, I am easily able to automate the generation of Open Office documents into PDF files via ANT, Java, etc. Like I said, quick and dirty but effective!

Business Cards

Inevitably, when you start a new job, you end up with a box of business cards printed for you. These cards are decorated with the standard set of information: company logo, your name, company location, company phone, etc. Initially, I liked using these cards. It meant I had one form of a professional breadcrumb to leave behind when necessary.

Over time, however, I began to scratch out the phone number and e-mail address on my business cards and scribble in my personal phone number and/or e-mail address instead. I did this not out of disrespect for the company but because my experiences and personal/professional network are my own while companies can come and go.

These days I no longer use the standard box of business cards provided for me, I create my own, pointing to my digital self:

If you already have a web presence, this might be something to consider. Besides, it is the individuals that make up a company. I would rather learn more about them than be presented with the traditional corporate facade, wouldn’t you?

ANT Import Task

Introduction

One way to write re-usable/extensible ANT scripts, is to make use of the the import task. This task allows you to easily override targets of the same name and build upon more foundational scripts, like layers:

(each top layer inherits from the layer below it)

The following illuminates this task a bit more and assumes you are familiar with ANT scripting.

Getting Started

You might want to download and play with these example scripts.

Targets & Outputs

If you look at the one.xml script, you will see that the following targets are called in this order:

1. init
2. compile
3. one
4. assemble
5. finalize

The output from the one.xml script yields the following:

With the two.xml script, you will see that it has the same targets as the one.xml script called in the same order (minus the one target) as shown here:

1. init
2. compile
3. assemble
4. finalize

The output from the two.xml script yields the following:

Analysis

The significance of the two.xml output, shown above, is where the “init” and “compile” targets depend on targets originally defined in the one.xml script:

Note that each dependency is qualified with a “one.” prefix. For example: “one.init” and “one.compile”. You need to do this otherwise ANT will think you are referring to targets of the same name as defined in two.xml.

The “one” prefix come from the name of the project as shown here:

Conclusion

None of what has been discussed here is ground breaking but sometimes it is helpful to remember how useful the import task really is. I also believe that in some cases it is not used more when it should be. If you build a well written foundational script (lowest level to be imported) then you should be able to build upon that script with more complicated scripts.

Nero Disk Image Automation

Introduction

Being a fan of Nero CD/DVD/HD-DVD/Blu-Ray burning software, I thought I would share some automation tips for creating ISO disk images. Not that these tips are anything outstanding but they might serve as a useful bootstrap for you.

Getting Started

Start by downloading the Nero SDK (zip file) and crack open the NeroCMDUser.pdf file found in the NeroCMD/Doc directory of the SDK download. Chapter #5 is where you’ll be spending most of your time learning about the multitude of command line options.

Usage

Here is an example of a Windows command line that works really well when creating ISO images:

"D:\Nero 7\core\NeroCmd.exe" --write --drivename "Image Recorder"
--output_image "F:\unfiled\aeonscope.iso" --real --iso "Aeonscope Code" --create_iso_fs
--relax_joliet --verify --media_type "media_cdrom" --recursive --publisher "Aeonscope"
--data_preparer "Aeonscope" "D:\aeonscope\src\*"

This will yield the following output in your command window:

Tips

There are a few things I want to point out from the command line used above:

• Make sure to enclose your paths in quotes to deal with cases where spaces are in your paths.
• The –drivename option is what tells Nero to burn your data to an ISO image. You can always replace this with the location of your actual CD/DVD burner if you need to. If you do, make sure to remove the additional ISO options.
• It is important that you always use the –real option regardless of whether you are burning ISO or actual disks. Otherwise, the operation is just a simulation.
• At the moment, I only use the “media_cdrom” and “media_dvd_rom” media type options to create CD and DVD disk respectively, but there is a whole slew of options that might also work for you:
  
• The –recursive option is good to have turned on if the source path(s) you provide Nero have sub-directories, etc.
• The last part of the command line is reserved for source file/directory information: "D:\aeonscope\src\*". Notice the star (*) at the end of the path, you need this when pointing to directory paths, otherwise Nero will think you are pointing to a file instead. In my example, I only show one source path being used but you can append multiple source paths at the end of your command line should you need to pull data from multiple locations when creating your disk image.

Modest Mouse: We Were Dead Before The Ship Even Sank

© Modest Mouse: We Were Dead Before The Ship Even Sank

Track List

1. March Into The Sea
2. Dashboard
3. Fire It Up
4. Florida
5. Parting Of The Sensory
6. Missed The Boat
7. We’ve Got Everything
8. Fly Trapped In A Jar
9. Education
10. Little Motel
11. Steam Engenius
12. Spitting Venom
13. People As Places As People
14. Invisible

Genre

Rock/Alternative

Description

We Were Dead Before The Ship Even Sank is roughly the sixth studio album by Modest Mouse and a fantastic one that that! They really started to gain mass popularity with their last album: Good News For People Who Love Bad News. Another album that should be added to your collection. Anyway, their latest album is fantastic with well devised lyrics, multiple instrumentation, and several layers of melodic changes per song.

I love every song on this album except “We’ve Got Everything” which has some slightly annoying background singing. Other than that, I haven’t been able to put the album down for the last couple of weeks.

“Dashboard” Music Video

Check out the currently popular “Dashboard” video to get a taste of the new album (it is amusing to watch):

“Missed The Boat” Music Video

This is a stop motion video put together by a Max Tyrie and a couple of friends: