Files and Records

Category: Random Wednesday

  • Truly random Wednesday

    It’s been an unusual day.  For a while my colleague and I have been cross-covering the other chunk of the UHI that’s here on Shetland.  Today that arrangement comes to an end and next week we’re back to “normal”.  Or at least what passes for normal up here on the rock, anyway.

    So today I’ve had to…

    • Work out where my second monitor has gone.  I’m sure anyone who writes code appreciates the second screen – live project on one side, code on the other. Or the documentation over there while you’re writing over here.  It’s like going back to 2002 today.  Just the 1 screen!  At least in 2002 I could jack up the resolution and move things around, these modern LCDs don’t let you do that.
    • Replace no printer cartridges.  Yes, not replacing a printer cartridge is a diary event.  I swear they’re either selling them on eBay or snorting the toner.  Education’s an interesting game, it seems that to win you must be the one presenting the students with the biggest pile of paper.  Even the IT courses have massive stacks of printouts – why not just give the students access to the PDFs?  Then if they want to print it out, they can, and if they want to work entirely paperless, they can do that as well.
    • Answer several queries that could’ve been solved with 30 seconds’ work on Google or asking one of their colleagues.  I love the way the IT department is expected to know the ins and outs of every single piece of software.  How do I do a pivot table in Excel? is the favourite at the moment.  Why they’re flavour of the month, I don’t know.  What I do know is that I’ve never needed one and that you start on the Microsoft Office site looking for instructions.  Or you ask the lecturer who teaches people how to use Office apps every day of the week!
    • Drink coffee.  And that reminds me.  Must take my mug with me when I bail out to collect the kids.
    • Fix someone’s monitor.  By plugging it back in where they’d kicked the power strip under their desk.

    It’s an interesting experience, covering a different institution for a while.  There’s an awful lot that’s “same shite, different building” but then there’s some problems I wouldn’t have had the opportunity to solve if I hadn’t been here, and that’s always good.  And I hadn’t really thought I was making much progress, advancing the cause of IT where I normally work.  I now see just how far I’ve come.

  • Joining up the Web

    The internet is, without doubt, brilliant at many things.  It’s great for wasting time, it’s superb for finding out about stuff you never knew you needed to know about.  Anyone spending more than 5 minutes on Lifehacker will suddenly realise that half the morning’s gone and they now have half a dozen new projects to try.

    One thing it’s also good at is keeping everything separate.  You can exist on Facebook, Google+, Twitter, Tumblr and dozens of other places as different entities.  But what if you don’t want to?

    Posterous Spaces Logo

    I may have mentioned Posterous before.  Posterous takes the pain out of blogging, making it as simple as sending an email.  You email your Posterous account and it then posts your blog where you want it posted – Facebook, Twitter, WordPress, self-hosted Drupal sites, Tumblr, wherever.  Once you’ve created your Posterous account (yes, I know, another account to keep track of), you associate it with the services you want to use, tell it what to do and when to do it.  Then sit back and enjoy the automation.

    At time of writing, you can connect Posterous up to all of the following:

    And that’s enough joining up the web.

    But not for long! (Sorry, channelling Bob Hale today).

    Posterous is great for blogging, but what about a bit more flexibility?  In that case, you need If This, Then That.

    If This, Then That

    If…  I send a tweet tagged with this, then send me an email.

    If… I upload a picture to Instagram, do that with it.

    If… and so on.

    At time of writing, there are 47 channels on ifttt.  That’s 47 Ifs you can start with, triggering actions that will cascade your information around the web.  Again, you have to sign in and remember another username and password, again you have to associated your other accounts and grant ifttt permission to do things on your behalf.  But here’s where it becomes more interesting.  Posterous is a channel on ifttt.  If I send a blog post to Posterous, do…  Where Posterous will autopost to any and all of the services it connects to, ifttt adds a level of logic to that.

    Then there’s the recipes.  A wise old programmer once told me “When you’re starting a project, search the internet and see if it’s been done before.  If it has, ask if you can use their code.”  Recipes on ifttt are like that.  People have written the common – and not-so-common – connections.  And if you get stuck, just email the developers.  They’re a friendly team.

    So that’s it.  The internet all joined up.

    Or so we thought!  (Sorry, Bob again).

    Dropbox Automator

    Dropbox Automator is relatively new on the scene.  For those who don’t know, Dropbox is an online file storage facility you can access from your desktop or smartphone.  Give it a folder to work with and it will synchronise that folder across your connected devices.

    You can allow DbA access to your entire Dropbox contents or restrict it to a specific folder.  This shows you some of the actions you can do when DbA detects a new document…

    So when you upload a document you can convert it to PDF and send it to your Kindle.  You can upload a stack of photos to Dropbox, DbA will resize them, send them to Google+ and Facebook having written some copyright stuff on them or applied an effect.  It’ll then zip up all those photos and save it to another folder, allowing you to delete the originals if it hasn’t already.  Powerful stuff, no?

    Now this is where it gets very, very clever indeed…    Dropbox is also a channel available on ifttt.  This recipe http://ifttt.com/recipes/19327 will take those photos uploaded to Dropbox, resized and saved into your “Public” folder by DbA and create a wordpress blog post from it.  If you email Posterous a zip file of photos, it will create a gallery for you and auto-post it around all your connected services.  Between these 3 services I doubt there’s much you can’t automate – short of writing the blog post or taking the photo (and even then I guess you could use a camera that automatically uploaded photos to Dropbox, say, on your smartphone…).

    The only notable omission from these services is Google+.  Once that’s in there, we’ll be happy bunnies.

    And for the new accounts and passwords?  LastPass.

    Now.  How do you automate your online life?  And I don’t think I said helicopter once!

  • Timekeeping as a Parent

    My friend, DJ and generally fun guy, Sandy, set me this challenge when I sent a request for inspiration out on Twitter this morning.  Simple.  Write about timekeeping as a parent.

    “Your timing, like your nappy, stinks.”

    Now.  As any parent knows if you’ve got kids in nappies, the last thing you do before loading them into the car and leaving the house is you check said nappy for Code Brown.  If you’ve got half an hour to make a 10 minute journey, the nappy will be clear.  If you’ve got 5 minutes to make that journey, you’re looking at a Code Brown that necessitates a complete change of clothes, possibly with the use of decontamination suits.  Whilst this is happening, other kids who hadn’t realised the frantic rushing around and loading into the car meant you were going anywhere will suddenly remember that they have (a) forgotten to go to the loo themselves, (b) forgotten one or more vital toys that they have now forgotten the location of and expect you to find, (c) neglected something vital – shoes are a good one, as are coats, or (d) all of the above.

    Put simply, the speed you are able to leave the house is inversely proportional to the degree of urgency with which you need to leave the house.  Or, always give yourself at least an hour more than you think you’ll need.  You’re going to need it.

    Can you sign this?

    “This” usually being the permissions slip for the event they’ll be going on that day.  I guarantee “this” will have been in their bag for at least a week, probably longer.

    Can I have…?

    You’ve just sat down.  Maybe you’ve opened a book, maybe you’ve got a cup of tea and you’re about to watch something on TV.  Until that point the kids have quietly occupied themselves in another room.  The second – the second – you’re doing something purely for yourself, it starts.  Can I have a drink.  Can I have something to eat.  Can I go on your computer. Can we have a bath. More cans than the only bit of Orpheus in the Underworld everyone can hum.  So you capitulate. You get a bath running, switch on the computer, let them loose on the fruit bowl. But you can’t settle down, oh no.  No, they can’t actually use the computer so you’ve got to get them to the Lego website and remind them what they did last time.  The orange they’ve picked is one of those where the peel comes off in tiny, tiny bits and is bitter as hell. They turn the tap on to get a drink and flood the place.  I swear PVRs were invented by a parent, pausing TV while you deal with this is definitely genius.

    Time is an illusion, lunchtime doubly so.

    There are things you do every day. Go to school, for an example.  Every day of the week, bar weekends and holidays, the kids have to be out of the house for 0845 to catch the bus. Every. Day.  And yet every day this comes as a surprise.  “What? Now?” the cry goes up.  “Yes, shoes on, coats on, lunch in bags, out. Go! Go! Go!” “Awwwwwwwwwwwwwww!!!!!!” as they have to leave the TV.  Bedtimes are equally a surprise. It’s the same time as it was yesterday, Bucko, now get to bed.

    Over-reliance on TV.

    Our morning TV is very much governed by TV. The kids have their breakfast, practice whatever musical instruments we can make them practice where appropriate, then off to the Sony Babysitter(tm) until it’s time to leave the house.  You get used to this routine. You know, for instance, that during the break after the second Peppa Pig on Channel 5 it’s time to put shoes on. Then after Bananas in Pyjamas it’s time to leave the house. You start to rely on these things.  Then they change the running order. Granted, it doesn’t happen often during the year, but it’s enough to throw the house into a mad panic.  The confusion at having to leave the house before B1 has said anything stupid or inane to B2 is palpable. Furrowed brows and “are you sure it’s time to go?” all round.  Being in Scotland, the worst time for this is the summer holidays – several weeks out of synch with the rest of the UK.

    So there you go. A very random Wednesday for you. Thanks, Sandy. I’ll return to this theme another day…