Set course for 225 degrees (SW)

To my wonderful readers and any drive-by blog cruisers, you will notice a period of inactivity on White Noise. Darlene and I are about to begin a well-deserved break - well, more well-deserved by her than by me. On the agenda - shopping, walking on the beach, good food, the sound of surf and visiting friends.

Will see you again on the 5th of September at the latest.

Friday funny

The letters G and T are very close to each other on a computer keyboard. Consequently, it may be a good idea to check your outgoing emails closely if you typically end your messages (especially at work) with the phrase "Regards".

Totally stolen from my friend Cameron.

Power Kart

What do you get when you put the engine of a Honda CBR 900RR motorcycle into a go-kart?

1. A Mario Kart in real life.
2. Wicked acceleration.
3. A kart that drifts like a dream.
4. The need to buy a lot of replacement tires.
5. A death wish.
6. All of the above.

Why computer lock-downs aren't so good

Great article on why computer lock-downs in the workplace aren't such a great idea. Highlight:

"The restrictions infantilize workers—they foster resentment, reduce morale, lock people into inefficient routines, and, worst of all, they kill our incentives to work productively. In the information age, most companies' success depends entirely on the creativity and drive of their workers. IT restrictions are corrosive to that creativity—they keep everyone under the thumb of people who have no idea which tools we need to do our jobs but who are charged with deciding anyway."

Because things have more meaning as visuals

If you're not getting your fill of visualizations to help understand the world around you, visit this site and go to the SNOGs tab, where you'll find all sorts of amazing visuals depicting:

Who's responsible for all the space junk in orbit and how much of it is operational; the Walled World; McFood from around the McWorld; the reach of budget airlines; cities with one million people or more.

Storytelling with sand

Watch as this artist tells a story with sand as the drawing medium. She certainly taps into the emotions of this Ukrainian audience.

Endless Aitch

I think it's quite possible (if you exclude those who don't care) to divide the TV watching public into two camps. Those who think David Caruso's acting in CSI Miami is the bomb (great), and those who think it's a bomb (not so much). Either way, this video clip of one-liners he uses at the beginning of the show will either thrill or annoy.

That's so square

If you're a Lego fanatic, then you may have already seen this awesome Lego rolling cookie cutter. It makes 2x2 cookies.

Your home - battery operated

A new deep storage battery technology out of Salt lake City promises to revolutionize home power. If you can produce electricity on your property, via solar, geothermal, wind, and so on, you now have the ability to store whatever you can produce for later use. The battery will cram 20 to 40 kilowatt hours of energy into a package about the size of a refrigerator.

I use about 20kWh of electricity per day. That means if I could produce at least 20kWh of electricity per day from alternative sources, I could go totally off-grid.

New wrestling move

I found some more great tee material.

It was never about the lithium

In case you've been following the emergence of electric vehicles that require batteries, and in case you've heard about countries with lots of lithium getting power hungry and creating their own lithium cartel, and in case you've been told that the world's lithium supplies will be quickly depleted - it's all B.S.

Read more here.

Hasn't anyone learned anything yet?

Yet another country has threatened a (pick a number)-strikes law against alleged file sharers, yadda yadda, not learning

any lesson supplied by other countries who have tried, yadda yadda, can you tell I'm getting tired of all of this?

This time it's the UK.

Idiots.

How a sewing machine works

All this time I had no idea how a sewing machine actually works. That's because the real magic is happening underneath y'all. Now I know the secret of the lock stitch.

I loves the internets.

Best Buy selling motorbikes?

Yes.

You can now buy an electric motorbike at certain BestBuy stores in the US on the west coast. Best Buy has invested $10 million in the Brammo bike named Enertia. It offers a top speed of 55 miles per hour, with a 45 mile range and a three-hour charge time. It costs $12,000 which is a bit pricey.

Bicycle superhighways

Here's something you'll never read about a North American city: "[Name of city] is planning to expand the existing, extensive network of bike lanes to extend farther out into the suburbs. A network of 13 high-class routes - 'bicycle superhighways' - dedicated to bicycle commuters and aimed at encouraging more to cycle to work."

But this is what's happening in Copenhagen. 500,000 people (55% of its citizens) cycle to work or school. The new bike routes will have the following features:

- Smooth, even surfaces kept clear of leaves, ice and snow.
- As direct as possible with no detours.
- Signage and trademark blue bike lanes through larger intersections.
- 'Service stations' with air and tools along the routes.
- Designed to attain a high speed and with sufficient width to overtake other cyclists.
- Safe and quick crossing priority for cyclists when they approach cross streets.
- Green Wave for cyclists through sections with frequent stop lights. (The Green Wave is in place on three main routes into Copenhagen already. Cycle 20 km/h and you hit green lights all the way)

What's so bad about a clothesline?

By 2010 almost 50 million residents of the US will live in communities where clotheslines are banned. What kind of a society do we live in that real estate value is determined by the appearance of clothes drying in the sun? Using a dryer contributes roughly 6% to the average home electric bill. I think drying clothes naturally is the environmentally logical thing to do.

Ontario used to have such a ban, but I read it was lifted in 2008.

Sticks and stones.....

Should we care if an anonymous blogger calls out a model as a skank and a ho'? Should the model even care? Well, apparently one such model cared enough to go to court to force Blogger (Google) to reveal the person behind the offending blog, because apparently there are possible issues of libel here. More on that in a moment. The blogger was outed.

Unfortunately, there are major privacy issues here as well and this sets a dangerous precedent where people who choose to remain anonymous to protect their identity may no longer be afforded that luxury. Or is it a right? Do people have the right to remain anonymous online? As Xeni Jardin at BoingBoing says, "switch the parties around to, say, Iranian political dissidents, or torture witnesses, or fraud whistle blowers -- and you can see how the privacy issues involved (and liability issues for Google) are worth considering."

The model calls it 'cyber-bullying'. The lawyer for the blogger calls it "hyperbole" and suggests that blogs "have evolved as the modern-day soapbox for personal opinions," adding that blogs have "mere venting purposes, affording the less outspoken a protected forum for voicing gripes, levelling invective, and ranting about anything at all."

Anyway, I'm not a legal expert, but as far as a libel suit is concerned, I think it could be argued "If there is third-party communication, but the third-party hearing the defamatory statement does not believe the statement, or does not care, then there is no injury..." I doubt it would be hard to argue the 'does not care' part, the 3rd party in this case being the blog readers.

So the blogger is suing Google for wrongly outing her. I hope she wins the battle.

Zombie cat

This picture made me laugh.

But does it work?

Hey Canadians! Did you know that there is a Commissioner for complaints for telecommunications services in Canada? A site where you can officially register a complaint about service from your phone, wireless or internet provider, assuming you already complained to the provider without satisfaction?

Me neither.

I decided to give it a try. I have an outstanding issue with my mobile provider. So I registered a complaint with this commission and they passed the buck, saying they don't get involved in providers' business practises. Yeah - why am I not surprised?

Ways to make work better - Vol 2

This seems to be evolving into a series of thoughts about the workplace.

I am not the world's foremost expert on leadership. But I know what works after being in the workforce 30+ years. Here is a brief but succinct list of what makes a good boss:

• A true leader's primary responsibility is to provide the resources necessary to enable workers to do their job better.
• Effective leaders lead by example. They deal honestly, react predictably, control their emotions.
  
• A sign that a great leader is in charge is that everyone knows what is expected.
• Leaders 'spread the fame and take the blame'. A leader is humble and tries to elevate everyone.
• Leaders hate the status quo. They ask "What if...?" They embrace challenge and encourage necessary change.
• Leaders help workers entertain new ideas. They are able to suspend judgement while listening to others' ideas, able to accept new ways of doing things that someone else thought of.
• Leaders are fair. They deal with others consistently and justly. They check all the facts and hear everyone out before passing judgement.
• Leaders motivate their people to develop their latent capabilities, learn new skills.
• Leaders transition a group to a new condition or paradigm with minimal opposition and loss and know how to sell something that has never been done before.
  
• People need feedback. A leader lets them know when they're doing well and when they're not. Once a year doesn't cut it.
• A leader has a sense of humour.

Voodoo tape

Watch this video and listen as your brain does a micro short circuit. Then ask yourself - how dey do dat?

It's not magic. The tape's adhesive fills in imperfections in the frosted glass that scatter the light, making it more transparent. But it's still one of those things that makes your brain go "WTF!?"

Bonding with nature

Here's a picture taken just the other day of our 15 month old grand-daughter Olivia while her family were out camping.

I'll show you a wave

Google is busy working on a new product that has the potential to revolutionize the way we communicate. It's called Google Wave and it essentially combines elements of email, instant messaging, online documents and online photo storage in a mashed up way that enhances the power of each type of communication. The beauty of it is that it's all in one web application.

The possibilities suggested so far range from the extremely simple - instant messaging in which the person you are communicating with can see your reply as you type rather than waiting for the send key; to the more complex - dragging a Twitter feed or photo directly into a conversation rather than having to send a link; to the mind boggling - bloggers writing their posts live (within a wave frame) on their website with readers (using wave) making comments as they go. In real time.

But it goes far beyond that. One of the powers of the wave is that any wave can be segmented so that you can reply to parts of any message rather than to the message as a whole and any wave can give birth to private conversations between only select wave participants, or branch off to new waves. This can get confusing of course if you jump into a wave that's been going a while, for which there's the playback feature, where you can see who said or added what and when. I think it's going to take a while before the masses truly understand how powerful this tool can be.

This video gives a long demonstration of the application in a very early developer preview, but the main gist is seen in the first 33 minutes. Supposedly, this is hitting the streets by the end of 2009. If I ever find myself wanting to collaborate about anything, I think this is what I'll be using 6 months from now.

Artsy stain

It's some coffee stain.

So there...

It's a small not a tall.

Do your bookmarks (favourites if you still use IE) still work?

If you scour the web like I do, you probably have a crap-load of bookmarks (or favourites if you still use Internet Explorer). Chances are that you have not gone through every bookmark (or favourites if you still use Internet Explorer) to check their validity, or for duplicates.

CheckPlaces to the rescue. It will find every bookmark (or favourite if you still use Internet Explorer) that's not working and list it for you. A word of advice though - before you indiscriminately delete all the dead links that it finds, be mindful that many of the sites you've saved are still functional, it's just the specific page you've saved that's not. So it wouldn't hurt to try to open the page yourself and update the URL.

It's a concert smörgåsbord

If you like live music (as in concert music) and music artists from the 60s, 70s and 80s, you'll go ga-ga over Wolfgang's Vault. You have to register to listen to anything, but they're not kidding when they say vault. I've listened to entire Floyd concerts, Boston, ELO, the list goes on. This is a treasure trove of concert audio that will keep a concert lover busy for years.

Britney, Avril, Lady Gaga fans..... your journey stops here I'm afraid.

Just when you thought it safe to eat fast food

So here's what I imagine went down at KFC headquarters lately:

KFC staffer 1: Well you know folks, the public is slowly getting on a health kick, so it behoves us to start making some healthy food.
KFC staffer 2: I don't know. If everyone is moving toward healthier food, that leaves this huge vacuum on the unhealthy end of the spectrum.
KFC staffer 3: Exactly! We don't need to get on the health train, what we need to do is cement our position on heart-attack ridge.
KFC staffer 1: What do you propose we do?
KFC staffer 3: Let's make something that flips the bird at the health-conscious. A real doozer.
KFC staffer 2: Like what?
KFC staffer 3: What are we known for?
KFC staffer 1: Chicken.
KFC staffer 3: Exactly. Are we known for bread? No. So I say we make a sandwich out of chicken.
KFC staffer 2: We already do that.
KFC staffer 3: Nah, you don't get it. No bread. Chicken with chicken and cheese and bacon in the middle.
KFC staffer 1: No bread..... ?
KFC staffer 3: Screw the bread!
KFC staffer 1: That's pretty extreme. What do we call it?
KFC staffer 2: The KFC Double Down sandwich. Or as we'll call it internally - the Double-your-chances-at-a-stroke.
KFC staffer 1: I think we're done here. Good work people.

Tell me the time

I love this modern clock called Qlocktwo. The site has an animation of the clock working in real time. There are dots in each corner that light up after each presented time. In other words "It is twenty after two" plus 2 dots means it's really 22 after two.

Only $1600.

How the current college class sees the world

A fascinating look at the mind set and perspective of the college class of 2013. Some samples from the list:

• They have never used a card catalogue to find a book.
• Salsa has always outsold ketchup.
• Tattoos have always been very chic and highly visible.
• Rap music has always been main stream.
• We have always watched wars, coups, and police arrests unfold on television in real time.
• Everyone has always known what the evening news was before the Evening News came on.

Penny for your thoughts..... about email

Yahoo's researchers have an idea. How about if you voluntarily pay one penny for every email you send out, but the penny goes to the charity of your choice? The point? It would help cut down spam emails because spammers can't aford to pay for the millions of emails they send out, plus emails that were paid for (are 'stamped') are allowed through spam filters to their destination.

What do you think readers?

Gimme a beat...

Ahhhh, yet another example of how technology has made it possible for just about anyone with a musical idea (and a voice) to create quality content with little more than loop effects, echo and a simple foot-operated synth.

This clip is a live performance on the streets of Bristol. This is Dub FX.

"Also I could not rhyme words"

If you're really bored and looking for some mindless humour, just go to Translation Party and type in any English phrase or sentence and watch it get translated back and forth from English to Japanese and back until it stabilizes. The end result can be hilarious.

The post's title was translated from "We can't even think of a word that rhymes".

Online radio royalty issue solved... but still not fair

Music web site Pandora has been saved from closure (and likely many others) after the music industry reached a deal over royalty rates. Online radio in the US is governed by the wonderful DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) and has mandated royalties. In 2007, judges decided to raise royalties from 0.08 cents to 0.19 cents per song starting next year. What's the big deal? Online sites streaming music have to be viable and for Pandora, the proportion of revenue spent on royalties would rise from under 30% to around 70%. Result - goodbye profit. Goodbye viability.

A debate followed, which lobbied Congress for more time to work something out. A new deal emerged. Online streaming services earning more than $1.25 million a year will either pay royalties of 0.093 cents per song, rising gradually to 0.14 cents in 2014, or a flat rate of 25% of revenue, whichever is higher. Smaller firms won’t pay per-song revenues and will usually pay a smaller percentage of royalties.

Since Pandora will likely have to pay the per-song royalties, it’s introducing user fees. Users with free accounts will be limited to 40 hours per month. Those who want to exceed this limit will have to pay a 99c fee each month.

Despite the more reasonable deal, the owner of Pandora thinks it unfair that internet radio stations must pay royalties while over-the-air stations don’t.

Once again, my position on this is clear - the music industry could clean up if they would just charge all ISPs a flat rate for unlimited access to all music. This would allow users to trade content to their heart's content and allow unrestricted streaming from anyone with the desire to do so. This would not only reduce the burden and cost of distribution from the record companies, but also allow those serious about their music to spread the word about the artists they enjoy. Because honestly - commercial radio and the music industry themselves dropped this ball ages ago.

Oh by the way - don't bother trying to actually use Pandora. Do to the wonderful DMCA, licensing constraints prevent access to Pandora for anyone located outside of the US.

Freaking DMCA....

Time to back that sucker up

If there's one thing I'm particularly anal about regarding computers - it's backups. So when Darlene's new computer was all done getting set up (all hardware working, all files transferred, all programs installed) the first thing I set out to do was back that sucker up.

I felt in the mood to try out something new for backup software and I do like 'free', so I looked around online and decided to give Clonezilla a try. It's an open source program capable of cloning one hard drive to another or saving an image of a hard drive onto another drive (like an external USB hard drive). This tool is not for the faint of heart however, as it has features needed by IT professionals which would be daunting to the layperson. Luckily, Clonezilla has an online step-by-step image creation (and restore) guide, making the process relatively easy. If you are comfortable with image programs like Symantec Ghost, this new tool isn't much of a stretch.

Clonezilla is downloaded as a bootable ISO image file, ready for burning to CD-ROM using your favourite CD burning software (I use CDBurnerXP). It's based on Linux - translation - it just works. I made use of it this morning and it worked like a charm. So if you're looking for a new drive imaging tool, give Clonezilla a try.

Star gazing with the pros

I don't know why I waited 48 years for my first visit to an observatory, but there you go. With the Rothney Astrophysical Observatory open to the public until August 25th, I figured last night was a good time to go since unlike some people, I didn't have to get up early for work today.

The observatory opened its doors to the public for late night viewing for the first time in its history this week, so I expected big crowds and limited parking. I was wrong about the crowd but right about parking, although the trail leading up to the facility is long and you can park off the trail if you must.

The observatory itself has 3 telescopes under domes. I managed to see two of them, but only one was taking pictures while the other was idle with University staff explained things about what they do there. But the real action was taking place outside, behind the main building, where at least a half dozen telescopes of varying sizes and styles were set up and operated by various knowledgeable people. Each telescope was taking turns focusing on various 'objects of interest' in the sky, including various star clusters, galaxies, nebulae and the planet Jupiter and its moons. There were satellites aplenty and a few remnants of the Perseid meteor shower as well. Aside from having a great view of the night sky, including a good look at the Milky Way, I took the time to learn a bit about the variety of telescope options and was impressed with what I saw and heard.

For the first hour or so that I was there (10pm - 11:30pm), there were around 50 people milling about, so you had to be patient to see everything. But after that the crowd really thinned out to only about 20 or so people, so the pace got much more relaxed. I stayed until 12:30pm even though it's open until 2am. I would have stayed longer, but it got really chilly and I didn't bring a jacket. Plus, I plan on going back with a friend in a few days, so I'll have plenty of opportunity to see more.

All in all, a fantastic experience and I look forward to going again. Here's hoping that the Rothney Astrophysical Observatory does this kind of thing more often.

OCC electric

Here is yet another electric motorcycle, this time it's a joint creation between Siemens and Orange County Choppers called the Smart Chopper. This bike gets a 60 mile (96km) range and a 100 mph (161km/h) top speed. An on board charging unit plugs into any 110V AC outlet to charge the bike in 5 hours. Siemens says it’ll charge in as little as one hour when plugged into a higher-voltage station (220V).

Mission One

This is a glimpse of the future I am really looking forward to. This electric motorcycle by Mission One has a top speed of 150mph (240km/h) and a range of 150 miles - although I'm pretty sure that range won't be achieved at 150mph. If you have a 240V outlet in your garage, it'll fully recharge in just under 2 hours.

The only thing I'm not cool with is the price ($69,000). But this is a specially designed performance bike and what's most important is that this shows the world what can be done with this new technology.

If twitter existed when....

More Twitter fun - historical tweets. I love the Adam & Eve one:

"(red) eve met someone. (red) @adam thinks he's the only guy on the planet."

How does the internet see you?

Personas is a product of the Sociable Media Group from MIT. It uses sophisticated natural language processing and the Internet to create a data portrait of one's aggregated online identity. It shows you how the Internet sees you. Enter your name, and Personas scours the web for information and attempts to characterize the person - to fit them to a predetermined set of categories that an algorithmic process created from a massive corpus of data. The downside is that
if there are many people with an online presence sharing your name, the result isn't really just you. But it is interesting. For some reason, Personas doesn't see me.

The picture is a shot taken while Personas was analyzing Calgary's mayor.

What recession?

So Calgary's newest indoor mall in 20 years opened today - CrossIron Mills. Some thoughts:

• Only one exit off of the main highway to access the mall. BOO.
• The mall has a Fossil store. YAY.
• The traffic Nazis decided where you could park. BOO.
• ATV taxis shuttling people from the perimeter of the parking lot to the entrances. YAY.
• A new burger joint called South Street Burger Co., but not open yet. BOO.

The funniest thing that we saw at the mall was in the parking lot. A rather large dog was in the front seat of a truck, its front paws resting on the steering wheel. I don't know who it was barking at, but each time it would bark, its body would lurch enough to bring its full weight back down onto the steering wheel, thereby honking the loud truck horn. So all you saw was "BARK! HONK BARK! HONK BARK! HONK..... HONK" You could see people looking all annoyed for the source of the honking and once they saw the dog, just start laughing. Which perhaps got the dog going more.

My life according to Pink Floyd

This is one of the latest memes going around (thanks Rob) and I thought it too cool to pass up.

Choose only song names from one artist and cleverly answer these questions. Try not to repeat a song title. It's a lot harder than you think! Pass it on. (You can't use the band I used)
Title your repost as "My life according to (band name)".

Pick your Artist:Pink Floyd
Are you a male or female: Embryo
Describe yourself: Biding my time
Describe where you currently live: Outside the wall
If you could go anywhere, where would you go: Point me at the sky
Your favourite form of transportation: Interstellar overdrive
Your best friend is: Corporal Clegg
You and your best friends are: Poles apart
What's the weather like: Obscured by clouds
Favourite time of day: Eclipse
If your life was a TV show, what would it be called: Shine on you crazy diamond
What is life to you: Echoes
Your fear: Learning to fly
What is the best advice you have to give: Breathe
Thought for the Day: Give birth to a smile
How I would like to die: The great gig in the sky
My soul's present condition: High hopes
Most Faithful Companion: The gnome
My motto: Welcome to the machine

Movie Maker issue

If you own a Sony Handycam camcorder and ever wanted to do some quick video editing before posting on Facebook or YouTube, you may have noticed that Windows Movie Maker doesn't play well with MP2 types of MPG files. If you ever try to import one of these into Movie Maker, you'll get an error like the one pictured ("nameoffile.MPG could not be imported. An interface has too many methods to fire events from").

The easy fix is to convert the movie clip into an AVI movie format first. The program Super does this job nicely. And it's free.

Thanks to PapaJohn for the solution.

Best party ever

Best Dilbert strip I've seen in a while.

Situation room update

You may have noticed that I blogged about migrating files from an XP computer to a Vista computer and wondered, "What's going on over there at White Noise headquarters?" Computer breakage - that's what's going on - and I'm not even talking about the old computer yet. But seriously, we had to buy a new computer for Darlene because her old one had become.... how shall we say..... unreliable. The new system came with Windows Vista [gack!] with a promise of a free upgrade to Windows 7 once it comes out (Yeah!). Vista doesn't perform badly - and it shouldn't on this machine with 4GB of memory, but once we got external things hooked up, that's when happiness left the building.

Let's start with the printer. We have an ancient (read 4 year old) laser printer which means - parallel port connection. Guess what? [said as Goldmember] "Obsolete technology." No problem - I bought a cable adaptor that allows a printer with a parallel port to connect to a PC via USB. Works like a charm. Unfortunately, Vista does not have a driver for this printer model. In fact, even the maker of the printer does not have a Vista driver for this model. But they do suggest to use an alternate model's driver that is built into Vista. That worked. But what is the likelihood of an average user figuring this out - not too good. Moving on.

Scanner. Not supported by Vista. Tried everything - no compatibility with Vista. Do you see a pattern emerging? The lesson to be learned is that when you buy a new computer with a new operating system (by Microsoft), anticipate that some of your existing hardware (and software) may not work with the new system.

On a brighter note, we did find a good deal on a computer, which we bought through Costco online of all places. What I liked about this deal is the same price as places like Best Buy, but with a free additional year's warranty and free shipping. Me likey.

The error message pictured is not real. I made it up.

Will Brad run for Mayor?

Brad Pitt joked that he would run for mayor of New Orleans in 2012. He will run on "the gay marriage, no religion, legalization and taxation of marijuana" platform. Good luck with that Brad.

This interview also lets Brad talk about his project of building homes for displaced residents after Hurricane Katrina - yes there are still people affected by that, sorry.

150X USB microscope

A Japanese company is selling a cool little microscope that can be hooked to computers via USB (Windows only). The device has a 2 MegaPixel CMOS sensor and features 5x to 150x zoom. Good enough for casual microscopic viewing of stuff.

The device comes with a stand, a flexible arm and an LED light.

Want!

I wanna hold your hand

Cat wants to hold person's hand.

File under extra-cute, controlling and feline overlord.

(I replaced 'guy' with 'person' as I am not sure)

Easy Transfer works as advertised - but not intuitive

If you buy a new computer with Vista (or Windows 7) on it and dread the task of moving all the stuff from the old PC to the new one, there's some good news. Microsoft makes available a program you can download called Easy Transfer (which is already installed in Vista) that will help with the process.

Easy Transfer can use a network connection, special cable, CD/DVD or other external media to copy everything over. It does not transfer any installed programs (nor should it), but it does offer to transfer program settings. I chose to use an external hard drive to copy everything over and it did a decent job. The desktop wallpaper magically appeared on the new system, IE's favourites were copied over and all the assorted directories containing files were copied as well. It did not transfer Mozilla Thunderbird or Firefox's profiles over (surprise surprise), but transferring those manually is not too difficult.

The only problem I had with it was lack of intuitive interface. You have to use their explicit process and that process isn't defined in the program, you have to search for it online. Other options aren't defined in the program either. I ended up installing a downloaded copy of Easy Transfer on the XP machine, but I could just as easily have run Easy Transfer on the new computer and copied the wizard over to the old one. Also, once I got the saved data onto the new computer, I had to figure out how to continue the process. Turns out you just right click the data file and Windows offers to open it with Easy Transfer. Then it continues to completion.

RPM #36 Music trivia

Here's some music trivia to liven up your day (I haven't done one of these in a long time).

This band was named after an excessive amount of ejaculate. Two of its founding members went on to produce music videos for The Police, Duran Duran and Herbie Hancock and many more in the 1980s.

Name that band......

Ways to make work better - Vol 1

I've come to the conclusion that you can actually talk too much about work while you're at work. And by talking, I really mean bitching. So I think a great resolution for the work place would be that instead of talking at the lunch table about work related things, choose a nice leisurely lunch filled with conversation about politics, film, sports or just the weather.

So here’s a new rule to adopt for lunch: stop talking shop.

No complaining about clients or bosses or sub-contractors. No agonizing over schedules, processes or projects. After all, lunch is the time to eat, smile and relax. Transform your lunch into a micro-vacation.

This may evolve into a series of posts.....

Billions

More from Information is Beautiful. This time it visualizes the billions of dollars that are spent on things, because it's really hard to visualize billions of dollars.

The graphic is very revealing.