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2010 Resolutions In Review

Random

I’ve become a big fan of setting goals/resolutions at the beginning of the year, but one of the biggest things people don’t like to do is measure how they did at the end of the year.  Well, since nothing helps you stay on track like accountability, here are my resolutions from last year, and how I stacked up:

Learn a foreign Language

I wasn’t sure which language when I made the resolution, but decided on German since I was planning on visiting Germany over the summer.  While I took some steps toward this, learning some basic phrases through podcasts and the like, it became clear relatively early in the year that the trip to Germany was going to fall through, and that pretty much shot any motivation I had.  I learned a little, but overall, did pretty bad with this one.

Be more active / Lose weight

While in the end, I didn’t really keep that much weight off through the holidays, I’m relatively okay with this.  Really I just wanted to get the the gym more, and I definitely did that.  This goal also led me to take lessons in “proper” swimming techniques that I really enjoyed.

Blog once a week

This one I also hit, in a matter of speaking.  While there were several weeks that I didn’t post (June-August especially) my total post number was 53 for the year, so that’s good enough for me.

Earn one certification

I had my eye on the CompTIA Security+ certification, because if I got it before 12/31/10 it would be valid for life (they switched to requiring renewals this year)  This one I also didn’t do so hot on.  I had two back to back weeks of 9-5 Windows Server 2008 and Exchange 2010 classes and that pretty much blew through any motivation for “higher learning”

No Pop for one year

This one I am very happy about.  I drank no pop for the entire year of 2010.  (Well practically no pop – I accidentally grabbed the wrong cup and drank a sip three days before new years – what are the odds!)

Complete 3 side jobs (paid)

This one I also completed.  I did some network troubleshooting work and also set up WordPress and trained trained users for a blog.  Technically that’s not three jobs, but since I also started my own business, I’m calling it good.

All in all, I’m happy with 2010, it was a good yearn pretty much all around.  I missed two goals, partially completed two more, and completed two completely.  There certainly are some things I will continue working on in 2011, but what’s the point of setting goals if they are too easy to reach?

Welcome!

Random

Since this is technically my first post, I thought I would explain a little about the older posts and what I’m planning for the site.

Background

One of my new years resolutions for 2010 was to blog once a week, so I started two blogs: teageek.org and geeksrc.com.

Posts on teageek.org were for tea, mostly reviews of different teas I have tried, but I am planning on doing some things differently this year.  Regardless, it went well and I posted more or less once a week, and will continue to talk about tea at teageek.org.

Meanwhile, geeksrc.com was more or less ignored.  It was supposed to be a place for my inner geek – tech talk, how-to, opinions etc, but with only a few posts over the course of the year, it was pretty pointless to maintain.

In addition to this, a few months ago I started a company blog (www.thewebcounts.com/blog) that deals with online reputation.

The Plan

This year I wanted to start a more personal blog, and having a separate blog for the few tech related articles I might write throughout the year just seemed silly, so I am rolling geeksrc.com into my personal blog here.

Long story short, here is my new blog.  I plan on using it as a place to share thoughts, goals, and generally just what I’m up to, and I’ll probably throw in the occasional tech post, because lets face it, I’m kind of a geek.

Reduce Windows Vista: The winsxs folder

Random

Just came across this quickly and thought I would spread the word.  If you are trying to free up disk space on Windows Vista or 7, check the Windows/winsxs folder.  Apparently windows stores old copies of system files here in case you ever need to roll back a service pack. If your system  has been stable for a while and you don’t anticipate this, you can safely remove some of the old files.  Windows even provides a tool to do it for you.

Just open a command prompt and enter C:\Windows\System32\compcln.exe then hit enter.  This is the Windows Component Clean Up Tool.  It will remove unused old copies of component files (.dll etc) and free up some space.  Mine went from 11.6GB to 9.33GB.  If you want more technical details on exactly what is going out check these out:

http://www.winvistaclub.com/f16.html
http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/itdojo/?p=1060

Hope it helps!

*NOTE: If you do this you WILL NOT be able to roll back a service pack  –  fair warning.

Web Editor: WinSCP and Notepad++

Code

I found a new combination for Windows web design/programming that I really like: WinSCP and Notepad++.  I have been a fan of Notepad++ for a long time.  It’s quick, has a ton of features I use (color coding, element matching, auto-complete, supports a ton of file formats, etc.) and all around it just works.  I also really enjoyed the built in FTP synchronizing. When I recently got a new computer with Windows 7 though, I found that the Notepad++ FTP plug-in isn’t available by default.  While trying to figure out how to enable it I found a post talking about the WinSCP/Notepad++ combo, so i gave it a try.

First the setup, it’s really pretty simple.  Just get WinSCP and run the installer.  The do the same for the latest Notepad++ .  After that run WinSCP and connect to a scp/sftp/ftp source.  Go to Options > Preferences > Editors and change whatever extensions you want (.htm, .html, .css, .php, etc) to use Notepad++.

Now whenever I open a file with one of those extensions from WinSCP it automatically opens in Notepad++.  If you modify the file and then save it, the changes will automatically be uploaded to the remote server.  I have been using this setup for about a week and really like it.  having a full features FTP client makes it a lot easier to move around images and other files that I am using on the site, and it integrates just as well with Notepad++ as their old built in plug in.

Overall, while it might not replace Dreamweaver if you are coding all day every day, Notepad++ and WinSCP work great for quick fixes and is usable enough that you won’t go crazy if you need to spend a few hours with it.  And the price is just right: FREE!

Migrating your media files with the command line

Random

Once you have installed Ubuntu and have it up and running, the next thing you will probably need to do is move your media files to onto it.  Since it is going to be used to serve up your video and audio, it is a great time to look at one of the better features of Linux: Job Control

Job control is the ability to send a command to the “background” so that you can continue to work on other things while it is running.  This can be accomplished primarily through two different ways: the bg command or the ampersand (&)

Say for example you wanted to copy files from an external hard drive to a share directory:

cp /media/external/music /home/shared

Once this command was executed you could stop the job by pressing CTRL-D and then using the bg command to restart it in the background and while leaving you an active command prompt.

Alternatively you could just append an ampersand on the end of the command and it would automatically run in the background:

cp /media/external/music /home/shared &

If you want to see the jobs that are running in the background, just use the jobs command to see any currently running jobs.  You can also use the fg command to bring a job back to the active terminal.

This makes it really easy to copy large directories from the command line without having to wait for the first to finish.  This really is just a fraction of the use you can get from the job management in Linux.  Check out some of these posts to get some more information if you’re interested:

http://linuxreviews.org/beginner/jobs/
http://linuxcommand.org/lts0080.php
http://linuxhelp.blogspot.com/2005/05/job-control-in-linux.html