Productivity

7 reasons to buy your laptop an external keyboard and a mouse

Posted September 5th, 2009 by Ali. 4 Comments

This is an unusual topic to be discussed in my software-oriented blog, but this morning I was staring at my wireless keyboard and I just thought how it (along with its companion mouse) made my life easier.

I use a wireless keyboard and a wired mighty mouse (broken 3 wireless mice already and I can’t afford it anymore) with my laptop. The tiny size of the keyboard allows me to easily use it on the go as well. If you are worried about the battery, the 3 AA Energizer batteries last for weeks (if you turn the keyboard off when you are not using it for a long time).

But a quick review is not why we are here, so let’s see why you should get yourself an external keyboard and mouse.

1. Less heat under fingertips

Boy, my MacBook Pro gets hot when I make her angry. With fans hitting 4000 rpm while working on something resource-intensive you can literally melt cheese on the touchpad. Living in the city of Summer, Dubai, makes it even more unbearable to work. It’s not hard to guess that the external companions are the only solution.

2. More distance from the screen

They say you should keep your distance from the screen, a minimum of 40 cm. But how is that possible when you are checking the latest tweets of your buddies (or something hotter), leaned toward the screen, like the letter C? Well, you know my answer: Get yourself external input devices.

3. More flexible screen positioning

People who use computers for a long time, tend to sit in weird positions, often in funny postures. That’s very wrong, you should sit correctly (no one sees me) all the time.

The point is that it helps a lot if you can put your laptop in a position higher than your hand, say 10-20 cm, to create a much better angle between your eyes and the display. There are many laptop stands that do the job for you, but I use a paper tray (works as a storage too) and I’m happy.

On the other hand, having a keyboard and a mouse, especially wireless, helps big tim in presentations where you don’t have access to a big screen. Just put your laptop on the table and let the people watch your jaw-dropping presentation while you are showing a lot of skill using your keyboard across the room.

4. Lowering the risk of CTS

Here comes the enemy of typaholics, CTS (Carpal Tunnel Syndrome). There are ways to avoid CTS, but for the average user, being careful while typing may be the most important thing to consider.

In my experience (suffering from some minor pain in my wrists) the external keyboard could help relieve the pain. You can easily position the keyboard (and the mouse) right, but the laptop itself is less flexible.

5. More hygiene

Did you know that the toilet (a public toilet to make it more disgusting) is more likely cleaner than your laptop? It is in fact 5 times dirtier than a typical toilet.

I’ll make it quick by saying that cleaning external peripherals is way easier than cleaning the laptop itself. And if you are obsessive about it, just throw them out and buy new devices. Easy.

6. Increased productivity

For some mysterious reason, I can work faster and type better using my external devices.

7. Better resale value for the laptop

This one has nothing to do with health, but when you make more money reselling your laptop, you automatically feel a lot better.

One of the ugly things about second-hand laptops is the shiny stains on each and every key, especially the space bar. Depending on the quality of the laptop, there can even be a bigger spot on the touchpad. Not nice at all. If you see my laptop (purchased and used passionately since Oct. 2007), there is no spot, stain, or anything like that. It’s all on my external keyboard. So a cleaner laptop means an easier sale, and hopefully a better price.

The secret of staying productive while coding

Posted August 30th, 2009 by Ali. 0 Comments

Most people use versioning systems like Subversion, Mercurial, and git to maintain their code while working on software and web projects. There are also hosted solutions like github and bitbucket providing developers with more features than a traditional version control environment.

But sometimes you just want to keep your code in a safe place and make sure you have reliable backup of the different versions, and that’s it! For smaller (or personal) projects especially, using versioning systems is an overkill. But what could be the solution?

If I want to summarize it quickly, the ideal solution will be a one that:

Is hosted in the cloud (online)
Is easy to setup
Works without you doing any administration work
Is cheap and preferably free
Keeps you productive
Keeps coding synchronized on multiple workstations
Allows you to maintaing other related material, like PDF documentations, next to your code.

I think I found how to answer all these questions with one answer, let’s see how.

Storage as a service

Dropbox is a cloud-based storage service that keeps your files safe and in sync between multiple computers. It is basically created for backup and file synchronization, but I use it for coding and maintaining other contents like my web projects, and the book/article drafts including the drafts of this very article.

You will get 2GB of online free space which is pretty enough for many purposes, but it is always possible to upgrade to bigger plans.

Getting started

First create a Dropbox account and install the application (Windows, Mac, Linux) on all the computers you are working with. It is good to take a tour before , to check out the features.

Dropbox creates a local folder on your computer that is synced to your online folder. A mirror in the cloud, literally.

The solution I am proposing would work the best if all your computers run the same operating system, because you should set an identical path for the local folder on all computers. For example if you have a Mac and a PC, the folder structure difference will cause 2 different Dropbox folders (e.g. /Users/user/Dropbox and C:\MyDocuments\Dropbox\).

In my case, I set it to /Users/ali/Dropbox/ on both my home Macbook Pro as well as on my office Mac Pro. When I work at home (on my MacBook Pro) I store my ongoing work and it syncs with the remote folder. When I’m at work it sync back with my workstation and I can continue the work with no interruption.

The reason behind having similar folder structures is that when you are programming, you often use absolute file and folder references in the development environment. So having all computers using the same folder structure will guarantee you won’t face any silly issues in the code testing procees.

Using Dropbox

Now that you installed Dropbox and setup the folders, move a working folder or file, e.g a web project or a document you are working on, to the Dropbox folder. It will automatically start to synchronize the contents of the local folder with the remote folder (in the cloud). As you update the files, Dropbox will synchronize it with the remote folder and the good news is that it keeps a copy of every single version of the files as backup.

For the free plan the versions older than 30 days will be deleted, but in the paid version they will stay forever! so you will have all the earlier versions of your files.

On the other hand, when you open the other computers (that are configured), the local folder of Dropbox will be automatically synced with the remote folder, updating all files that have been updated in other computers. Then you can continue working on your project from the line you have left on the other computer, without carrying USB sticks around.

That was easy.

Happy yet?

Dropbox offers an intuitive web access interface to all versions of your files, so you can restore or download any older version. You can also setup a shared folder between you and other Dropbox users (say, your colleague) to exchange data in a productive way.

: Dropbox Menu (Mac)

I am happily using Dropbox for syncing my files and it didn’t let me down even once. It also helps me keep the older versions in case I messed the current version. Every save you perform on your files is stored in Dropbox, so it is as if you have a live history of your work bit by bit.

Create your own news reader application for free

Posted April 18th, 2009 by Ali. 0 Comments

Many people use RSS news feeds to read the latest updates from their favorite websites synchronized in a single place. It is much more productive than surfing around and reading content surrounded by ads and useless stuff.

With the subscription list increasing in number, having a powerful new reader with a good set of features is a must. There are a lot of news reader clients available for all operating systems but many people still prefer the one and only Google Reader.

Google Reader offers you a host of features in an easy to use light-weight UI and is accessible from everywhere since it runs online. But still Reader users miss the luxury of having a desktop application that runs from the local computer.

With SSB (Site Specific Browser) application that create a standard application based on a website, it is possible for you to create a desktop application of Reader. Prism and Fluid will do the job for you just perfect.

However you can enable this feature in Firefox 3 in few simple steps. No need to install any other application.

Run Firefox and logo to Google Reader.
Click Tools > Add-ons and install Prism. You need to restart Firefox for the changes to take effect.
Click Tools > Convert Website to Application.
The URL is entered automatically. Simply type in a name and check the options as you wish.
Click OK and wait a few seconds for the application to be created.

If you chose to have Dock or Desktop shortcuts you can click them right away to run the Reader application, otherwise find it in the Applications folder.

Similar approach applies to Linux and Windows users (if they have this option available).

Note: Chrome users can enjoy this feature too. But since Chrome is still not supported on Mac OS, I focused on Firefox.

I bet you have now a list of eligible websites in your mind that can transorm into desktop applications.

Merge & filter news feeds with Yahoo Pipes

Posted December 4th, 2008 by Ali. 1 Comment

In the previous post, I talked about EventBox and how it can make your feed-loaded life easier. But here’s the thing: It’s again skimming through 100s of feeds. Could I be lazier?!

Well, there is a way that you can merge all (or a particular group of them) together and filter them against some keywords.

So what? Then you have a SINGLE feed filtered based on the topic you want to read about. Imagine you are interested about what is happening to GM and you check CNN, BBC, MSNBC, and millions of other feeds everyday. What if you could just check one single feed?

Getting Started

All you need is a Yahoo account. Yahoo has a brilliant tool, Yahoo! Pipes, that will let us create what we want. Actually Pipes can do much more than what we need and you can check it out if you are interested.

OK just login to Pipes page at pipes.yahoo.com to start creating your first pipe. There are useful demos and documentation for you to get into the details.

Click on “Create a pipe” to go to the design environment.

It might look a bit scary for newbies but it’s extremely easy to use.

Start with dragging a “Fetch Feed” component from the right sidebar and dropping it to the work area.

Suppose you want to focus on the “Large Hadron Collider” that CERN built to find out about the begining of the cosmos.

So we need to search in news and scintifics sites. If you don’t have any particular sources in mind, just create a related Google News feed and add it to the “Fetch Feed” component.

I added 2 more feeds (you can add as much as you want) from Reuters and Science Magazine to enrich my search scope. Try adding more sources yourslef.

Note: Don’t forget to save your work regularly or you lose your beloved pipe!

Now drag a “Filter” component from the sidebar and drop it below “Fetch Feed”. It’s in the “Operators” section.

Well, now to make the work flow to make sense, try to connect the output of the “Fetch Feed” (the circle on the bottom of the dialog box) to the input of the “Filter” (the circle on the top of the dialog box).

We need to put something in the “Filter”. Try “Large Hadron Collider” for the title of the feed. To make sure we won’t miss anything, enter “LHC” for feed title as well as “Large Hadron Collider” for the description.

don’t forget to change “Block” to “Permit” AND “all” to “any” at the top of the dialog box, otherwise you’ll see everything but what you were looking for!

Now it’s time for the output. Just connect the output of the “Filter” to in put of the “Pipe Out” and click on the “Pipe Out” itself (or click on “Refresh” in the debugger area down below the screen) to see the results of your very first pipe.

There’s one more step to go. To use the output of the pipe you need to add its RSS feed to you favorite news reader. Click on “Run the pipe…” on top of the screen. A new window/tab opens that has loads of options and tools like publishing tools and etc. All we care is to get the output as RSS. By clciking on “Get as RSS” you can add the feed to your reader and save time by checking ONLY one feed about a topic.

Just note that this pipe is very basic and you can fine tune it with other tools like Regular Exressions and etc.