Twitter; thing 7

Thing 7 is "Create a Twitter account and interact with other Cam23 ‘tweeple’"

I don't think so. And certainly not if you can't speak plain English.

Google calendar; thing 6

I've seen a number of different types of electronic calendars, ranging from web pages, which look extremely dull and cant' easily provide reminders to Microsoft Outlook, which was quite nice, but meant you were more or less forced to use Microsoft's pitiful attempt at an email client [1].

Google calendar, as long as you ignore the web side of it, however is pretty good. Ignoring the web aspect of a web application may seem contradictory, but if you combine Google Calendar with Thunderbird and Lightning you can get a quite effective calendar. Here's how it works:

1. Install and configure Thunderbird; the Computing Service has instructions on configuring Thunderbird at http://www.cam.ac.uk/cs/email/muasettings/mozilla.html.
2. Download and install Lightning, an add-on for Thunderbird that allows you to create calendars on your PC, from http://www.mozilla.org/projects/calendar/lightning/.
3. Download and install the Provider for Google Calendar from https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/4631/.
4. Follow the instructions at http://bfish.xaedalus.net/2007/04/stay-in-sync-with-gcal-and-thunderbird/.
   

If I can find the time I'll expand on this later or somewhere else. The advantage of this is that you can set up a public calendar on Google, choose whether or not to have email reminders (I've turned them off), and then use Lightning to provide the reminders. Lightning can then have a non-public calendar for stuff you don't want everyone else to see. The only disadvantage is that you can't, as far as I can see, see other people's Google calendars in Lightning - you have to use the Web version of Google calendar to see that.

Why is this important? Part of the impetus for this was hearing that the Computing Service were talking to Google about Google apps, particularly the calendar application. Given that they were going to do this, there was bound to be some pressure from management for some or all staff to use this and I thought I might as well get some experience in how I would like to use it.

A pretty good tool on the whole.

[1] I could go on about how useless Microsoft is at Internet type stuff at great length. On the whole I'm OK with their operating systems and Office is quite good (particularly Access), but IE and Outlook/Outlook Express are pretty atrocious and have changed the way email works and not for the better.

Doodle; thing 5

Used it already. Very useful tool and, as someone pointed out in another 23 things blog, it saves the multiple email messages having to be sent.

Thing 4a

Registering my blog. I've just had a second go at this, as the first attempt doesn't seem to have worked. It's always possible that I've been banned for excessive cynicism. Next step I'll have to go and look at other blogs.

Things 1 to 3

Did thing 1 this a while ago. Here's the screen shot:
















As this can be read I've obviously done thing 3, and I created a blog a while ago; see:

http://antarctic-trips.blogspot.com/

I eventually decided that blogging software wasn't necessarily the best solution for this, despite making the HTML part a lot easier. One of the irritations was getting the entries in the correct order - correcting a spelling mistake for example basically seems to muck things up, which what's a diary is a bit of a pain. So much of a pain that I never updated the blog with the second trip.

Additional comments:
The problem I had with the order of entries being moved around does seem to have been fixed now (and was probably fixed a long time ago - I did tend to assume that this was how things were supposed to be). On the whole I'm not sure about blogs as a means of transmitting information. However you try and communicate with readers, you've still got to get them to read or otherwise ingest what you want them to know.

The 23 things

It seems I'm now up to thing 7, creating a Twitter account, at which point I'm passing. I'm afraid I really can't see the point of Twitter and I'm not having anything to do with it. On to thing 8.

What I like about computers

Just in case I'm giving the impression that I'm a dyed in the wool here are some things I like about computers:

• Email. One of the best inventions ever, and that's despite spam. The idea that I can send a message to someone else in the world and I won't have to worry about whether they're around at the time or whether they can read my handwriting is brilliant.
• Graphical user interfaces. I think I must have developed the need for a GUI before I actually got hold of one, when I was using DOS and WordPerfect and worked out that there was a "trap door" in the latter that took you back to DOS, from where you could run Kermit to check your email. You don't know what Kermit is? Look it up on Wikipedia - which leads me to ...
• Wikipedia. Yes it's got inaccuracies, but it's still a vastly better than the alternatives.
• Command line interfaces. It might seem a little odd citing this as well as the GUI, but there's a lot to be said for a command line interface. It's a lot easier to write down odd commands you don't use very often, rather than trying to remember being shown what's essentially a load of hand movements.
• Free software. I'm half Scottish, so the attraction should be obvious.