Stuff I use (if you are interested):
Home server running Vista (quad core Intel with 4gb RAM)
Home server running the LAMP stack (dual core Intel with 2gb RAM)
Laptop running Vista (dual processor 64 bit AMD with 3gb RAM)
I also run (on demand) a virtual LAMP stack server on the Amazon Cloud which I use for testing
I use 2 seperate external USB connected drives (500gb each) for data storage and Synctoy, coupled with Task Manager provides daily and periodic back-ups on the Vista machines, a cron script does the business on the Linux machine. In addition, because I am paranoid and because my professional background reinforces that paranoia, I have my own diverse backup policy, so I have an automated scripted back which copies my critical files to (variously)
- Amazon S3 storage ( Cloudberry and the S3 Firefox plug-in provide me with excellent access tools)
- Google (all my documents are Google Docs compatible)
- an FTP host
I have accepted the ubiquity of Windows as an operating system, despite my personal detestation of the bloatware. My job necessitates I work at clients site daily, but I’m damned if I will pay Microsoft for their god awful application software on my own machines.
Browsers:
I use Firefox by personal preference, with the add-ons shown below, plus Ghostery.
Ghostery is proving interesting as it shows what tracking scripts are hidden on a web page (i.e. the ad trackers) which collect information about your browsing habits. Not sure I will use it permanently, but for the moment it’s proving educational.
I have a number of reasons for using Firefox, apart from the fact that it’s not IE. One reason is that Firefox can be set up with a master security password, which means you can’t access my Firefox profile (which stores all the passwords of the websites I subscribe to, and my personal bookmarks) unless you know the master password. That’s over the top for my laptop, which only I use, but the desktop is used by the foreign language students that my wife and I regularly host, and I don’t want them either having access to, or trashing my set-up. The other main reason I use Firefox is its extensibility. There are now so many reliable, high quality add-ons, that I can customise Firefox to my own needs. None of the other browsers come near this level of capability.
Firefox Add-ons
Sor, for example, Xmarks is a real godsend if you have industrial quantities of bookmarks like me. In addition to being able to tag and organise my bookmarks, Xmarks means I have the same bookmarks across multiple machines and they are synchronised automatically.
I also use Google Chrome. I use that primarily on my laptop. It doesn’t have the same extensibility as Firefox yet, but I expect Google to add in features unique and specific to their own browser, so I keep a regular eye on it. It helps also when I have problems accessing specific sites with Firefox, which happens very occasionally. Anyway, I don’t like to keep all my eggs in one basket.
I spend my life writing documents. All my clients use Word but for me Word 7 was the last straw, talk about a useability degradation. Until Word 7 I used to keep a copy on my own machines so I could cross check for compatability. After weeks of trying to become comfortable with it ( and I class myself as a word processing guru), I uninstalled in a rage. I have used OpenOffice for years anyway and although its Word compatibility is not 100%, it suffices. I have an OpenOffice set-up that integrates with Google Docs, so offline I can work with OpenOffice and the same documents are also available to work on at client sites if I cannot use my laptop (and if you think you can just stroll into any company in London, say, and be allowed to connect to their network to get internet access, think again). When I connect my laptop to my home network, a script synchronises everything, so I end up with (a minimum) 4 copies of my latest documents (on the laptop, on the desktop, on the backup drives and on Google).
Getting rid of Outlook was quite hard. I have used email since the earliest days of the Internet (long before the web) and it is a primary tool. I have always managed my mail carefully and the integration with tasks and calendars that Outlook provides has always made it my most used piece of software. For a while I tried out Thunderbird, but it didn’t quite do what I wanted. However I have been trialling the Spicebird mail client for my main email and calendar management combined with Google Mail for some time and its proven reliable and does just about all I want. There are one or two annoyances, particularly in the address book, but it’s still in beta. For safety I use Google Gears on my laptop with the Offline Labs facility turned on, which gives me offline access to my mail on the off chance that Spicebird does screw up.
I use OpenProj for my project management work – it was a real relief to get rid of MS Project let me tell you, though all the organisations I do project work for only use MS Project. What they don’t know is that I use OpenProj on my laptop and read/save MSP files when I need to.
For my machinima work I use Audacity, Windows Movie Maker, and Fraps. I also have the Adobe Premier product which I use occasionally for chroma keying, but I avoid it like the plague if I am honest, the user interface is just awful.
GIMP and NVU do me for graphics and HTML
I use Skype and Google Talk for voice and chat, plus a BT soft phone.
