Tablet 2.0!

Last Saturday, I rewarded myself with a new toy!

A few weeks back, my ipod touch’s button decided to stop functioning altogether. I haven’t tried getting it fixed yet, although I still use it in my car for music purposes. And there’s also the assistive touch available, which I haven’t tried yet. In other words, I was just looking for a good reason to actually get something new, as a replacement for my ipod touch.

I use my ipod touch for a lot of things – checking my email, doing research, reading various stuff from the web (especially from Wiki), etc. So not being able to use it was quite a challenge at times for the past weeks only because I was used to not having to open my computer anymore to do these things.

For the replacement, I was thinking about getting something bigger than the touch. Initially I just thinking of getting a Kindle instead, something to get me to start reading again. But I’m not quite convinced with Kindle’s product yet (Kindle Fire, that is) and the simple kindle reader was just too one sided for me. It was good for reading, and only reading.

I didn’t want to get an iPhone or something similar because I didn’t want to spend that much and have another small device like the touch. And I didn’t want an iPad or something similar as well because it is quite big, and very expensive too.

And so, my brother suggested, why not get something in the middle then – and the search for the Galaxy Tablet 2 – 7 inches began!

It’s a tablet the size of Kindle, where you can read properly, not too big like the iPad, and not too small like the iPhone, and most important of all, it’s not very expensive at all. Affordable, and right enough size for me.

And I finally have it here, with me, for two days, and so far, I have adjusted to the Andriod experience (which I think by the way, is waaaay better that the Apple experience), and I’ve been enjoying so far. Definitely a good buy. It is deeply integrated with your google account, which is pretty neat, and at the same time, quite scary (as Rhys points out) because of the fact that google knows so much about yourself now!

So now, I’m back online, even gtalk’s available in my tablet now! And I can finally stop opening my laptop all the time just to check something in the web.

Apps

Finally, after four years, I’ve been given the much awaited tech rollover, which means, I have a new laptop to replace my very reliable (but old) work laptop! And with the new machine comes with a freshly installed operating system, which means, I can start setting up my applications again, and finally organize my files and documents.

In line with this, I’ve decided to list down the must have applications I usually get for my computer and hopefully, the readers will be able to get something good out of the list below. 

1. Launchy is a must have utility for your computers! It’s a key stroke launcher that’ll save you a ton of time finding applications, files, documents, etc. All you have to do is index your file system, and launchy will be able to find it and you can do your search on the fly. If you don’t have this yet, you better get this now! Once I started using this, I got hooked!

2. FreeCommander is a file management application, which for me, is a very good replacement of the windows explorer. The best thing about free commander is that you can have two windows explorer-like windows at the same time. With that capability, you can easily click and drag files from one location to another, without having to change directories all the time. It sounds confusing, but it’ll look something like this:

3. Notepad++ is a great replacement for the ever lovable and simple notepad. This time, it offers you tabbed functionality, highlighting capabilities, etc. It definitely lives up to its name of notepad++.

4. 7Zip. If you want to zip and unzip pretty much anything, then get 7zip. And it’s free!

5. Google Chrome. I used to love firefox but when google chrome came out, and when I tried it out, I didn’t go back. Perhaps it has something to do with the usability and simplicity of the design. The feature I enjoy the most is its ability to do instant search in the url area of the browser. And for some reason, I feel like it performs better than firefox.

By the way, all these are free!

The applications I listed above are my must haves for any of my machines. But when it comes to work, there are a few more applications I would add to the list. Java SDK, Eclipse, Putty, Outlook (dreaded emails!), etc. But these are usually dependent on the type of work we’re doing too. Maybe I’ll have a separate post for my work related applications.

With this list, I hope I was able to share something useful to all. Feel free to share your must have apps as well!

Laptop = Waldas

My waldas days is not yet over, apparently.

And I finally got to buy my new laptop!

So the plan was just to buy a netbook. Something to play around with, and surf, chat, the usual. So while at Best Buy store earlier, I just couldn't get myself to buy the little netbooks there. For some reason, I'm just not impressed and convinced.  So I ended up getting the way pricier piece of toy - HP Pavillion dm4.

14 inches
2 kg (with battery)
i5!!
4 gig memory
500 gb HD

Pretty good specs. Hopefully this'll last me for the next 5 years or so. I'm sick and tired of my Acer Aspire. From day one may problema na. And mukhang nasisira na yung USB ports nito and I just don't like it anymore. Mainit pa!

So that's another thing crossed out from my list of "things to buy". I better start saving again. Been purchasing stuff here and there. Walang kapaguran.

New Tool: Synergy

An office mate recently introduced me to a pretty cool new lightweight tool called Synergy. Synergy allows one to be able to share keyboard and mouse over multiple computers.

For example, I have an office laptop and another office desktop computer I use at work. Whenever I'm in the office, it would be nice to be able to switch from one computer to another without having to switch which mouse and keyboard I have to used. And synergy fixes that issue for me!

All we have to do is let one of these computer be setup as a Server, and then the other is the Client attempting to connect to the Server box. Easy. Works well too. I even tried to add another computer to the right of my server computer (which is my laptop) and it worked. That time I had three computers sharing mouse and keyboard altogether.

Not a bad tool. Considering it's even free!

My first encouter with Mac Book Air

One of our officemates went to Best Buy earlier to buy himself a new laptop!!! Laptops here are very very cheap! If I didn't have one already, I probably would've bought one. Anyway, while looking around, I found this:



Mac Book Air is so thin, you're almost afraid to just place it anywhere. I think it's gonna crack if you accidentally sit on it! But it really looks pretty. It costs around 1900 CAD, a bit pricey, but specs are really good. Although, I don't think I'm going to buy one, nevertheless, it still looks really really pretty.

Ubuntu for my Desktop PC

My desktop pc has not been used for quite a while. Since the primary computer I use now is my laptop, which is running on Windows XP, I've decided to reformat my desktop, and install a different OS, Ubuntu instead. This way, I get to learn how to use a different operating system. I'm looking into learning more on the command line processing rather than using the gui altogether. Been working at the office using Unix and been wanting to learn more. I guess this is a good way for me to learn more and familiarize myself with Unix like environments.

Development Inspiration

I've been blog hopping for a whole full hour when I came upon a blog that talked about Software Development in the Philippines. The blogger himself is a Sun Certified Enterprise Architect. I love how he has this vision of creating true blue programmers and engineers in the Philippines. I can see that he's just a guy who wants his company to make it to the top, not by just adding clients, getting new hires, increasing income, but instead, want his company to make it to the top simply because they are excellent people with skills who deserve to be make it in the business.

Third World Software... Development

I got so inspired, that I just opened my Spring in Action ebook and continued where I left off a couple of days back. If my company can't provide a good enough project for me to learn something new, then I better start on my own. At least when time's right (which is a couple of months from now), I will be ready for the next big challenge out there. For me, programming is not just programming, it's an art. And I want to I want to work with people who really loves and knows what they're doing and talking about. That way, I can learn some more everyday.

LOC

LOC - Line of Codes

I was asked by our current development boss Josie to check out programs that can count the lines of codes from the source code of our project. Having looked through them, comparing each other if their resulting statistics are similar, I decided on using LocMetrics.

Counting lines of codes, logical lines of codes, blank lines of codes, is not consistent with all applications as each LOC application uses different algorithms to implement this. However, what I liked about LocMetrics (aside from the fact that it is free) is that it provides us with statistics and summary, and even creates excel files for the data extracted. It also has support for C#, C, SQL, Java. In addition, its application is just sized at around 530kb.

Laptop

I've recently bought myself a new laptop - Acer Aspire 5583WXMi. I've wanted one ever since and I was finally able to convince myself to buy it! And so far, I've had it for a month and I'm loving every bit of it! It's processor is Intel's core 2 Duo, with Nvidia GeForce 7300 graphics card, 120 gig hard disk space and 1 Gig DDR memory.

Not bad.