Random thoughts

Very busy lately here at Data+Graphite, so some random thoughts to keep us all company while the snow starts to fall on Chicago. Right now it is rainy, wet snow, so no good there. We need the monster flakes like in the 70s. On we go.

How Stuff Works

A huge thanks to the crew at HowStuffWorks.com for one of the best forms of internet usage in recent years. Funny, informative, and just good. Even the kids love to listen, which I must say beats Junie B. Jones. They are out of Atlanta, and I’m working on two projects in Atlanta right now. Maybe fate will route me past their offices one day.

Plone

Ah, the CMS I wish I had married years ago. Installed it again today and tooled around the Zope framework, and it is grand. I can just feel it. Trouble is I’ve spent all my learning curve time on eZ Publish, and SharePoint, and I don’t know if I have the energy to slog through Zope and Plone. Love the idea though, and I’ll be watching as they continue to push for better releases.

Google Wave and Google Voice

I now have access to both. Voice is great but a bit chaotic as it rings numerous phones, including a direct number for Skype. The drawback of working in places where I can’t get a cell signal I guess. And what is going on with their translation? It seems that the folks in the southern U.S. have been forgotten, because messages from that part of the world come through in text looking like MadLibs.

Parallels

Still can’t say enough about how useful Parallels is, particularly now that I’ve upgraded and the tools work for Microsoft as well as all the Linux distributions. FINALLY a solution to the wacky screen resolutions with Linux on laptops, albeit in a strange way.

The Mighty Battle

Working on a short list right now for a multi-tenant application and it has come down to EPiServer, eZ Publish, Kentico, and Plone. All good contenders, so we’ll see who wins. For those of you in the assessment world, I’ve taken to recording videos to show functionality for the most important use cases. Seems to be the way to go because it is a far better vehicle than text for showing how things really work (take that, huge grids on cmsmatrix.org!). OK. Back to the coffee and the work.