May

29

Canadian weather station on Mars brings you daily weather updates

Filed Under News | Leave a Comment

Welcome! You appear to be new here (or you've reset your cookies recently). If you're new here, you may want to browse around a bit and find out what the site is about. I encourage you to register for the RSS feed or to receive updates through email. Thanks for visiting!


Perfect weather to launch an invasion of the monkey-infested Earth. Let loose the dogs of war!

One of the ‘cooler’ pieces of being done on Mars by NASA’s Phoenix lander is the study of Martian weather patterns, courtesy of a ‘built-in-Canada’ weather station. A daily spinoff of this is the daily Martian weather report. Due to a glitch, the reporting should begin tomorrow.

On a local note, the Canadian Science Team at the University of Alberta have a significant stake in the Phoenix :

When the originally planned anemometer for Phoenix was descoped,
Professor Carlos Lange and his students demonstrated that a telltale
could be used to indicate wind speed and direction with help of the
onboard camera. He then helped researchers at the University of Aarhus,
Denmark, develop and test the telltale wind sensor that is now mounted
on top of the mast on Phoenix. For Phoenix, Dr. Lange uses
advanced Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) to simulate the
Martian .

May

29

Use Web 2.0 tools to save time and be more productive

Filed Under How to, In the life, Social Media | Leave a Comment


Someone's Lost Schedule Book
Creative Commons License photo credit: ASurroca

For a while I’ve been using a few 2.0 applications that, on their own, are great, but when when partnered with other 2.0 apps, become superstar efficiency optimizers.

The applications
Consider Jott, IWantSandy, and Twitter.

Jott is a to text . You call a number, say your message, and moments later it’s emailed to you (or a group), turned into a reminder, added to a list, or sent to 2.0 applications (called Jott ).

IWantSandy is a ‘virtual assistant’. She’s able to manage your , build and manage lists, manage groups, and share your lists with others.

is a ’status update’ that allows you to post your status (your to the “What are you doing?”).

Connections are key
Standalone, they’re all good, solid, 2.0 applications. But where they really begin to shine is when you let them talk to each other, and other applications. Here’s a example:

  • Use to have Sandy remind you to backup your blog on the 13th of each month
  • In the window type d s r the blog on June 13, 2008 @monthly
  • which means Direct message to Sandy (s is Sandy’s name), Reminder (r) …(the text Sandy is to remember) on June 13, 2008 (the start date of the reminder) @monthly (a special Sandy tag to make the event repeat.

Depending how you’ve got Sandy set up, you’ll be reminded through , or SMS message to your mobile device (or all three).

AFK? Use Jott When I’m out and about, I use Jott to work with Sandy to get things done. Here’s the same example using Jott:

  • (Dial into local Jott number, Jott answers) Who do you want to Jott?
  • (Me) Sandy.
  • (Jott) Sandy.(repeats to confirm) Is this correct?
  • (Me) Yes.
  • (Jott) Got it. BEEP-TONE-TO-RECORD
  • (Me) Reminder. the Blog on June 13th 2008. Tag Monthly.

Extending further
, Jott and IWantSandy all embrace openness, to varying degrees. Depending how you configure each, they can update your calendar ( Calendar, 30Boxes, etc), your local through CSV or iCal files, really the sky is the limit.

So, what have I missed? How are you using these (or other applications) to make your life easier?

May

27

Things I learned moving my blog to a new hosting service (it’s easy!)

Filed Under Blogging, How to | 3 Comments


Things I learned moving my blog to a new hosting service (its easy!) (image: 2526037333_07b840e3ec_o)Over the last few weeks you’ll may have noticed that I’ve been and twittering about my blog from the .net to .com.

A few years ago I managed to grab BradGrier.com when it came open, but I’d not decided what to do with it until recently. I’d been having some performance issues (my blog, that is) and decided to test a new hosting provider.

So, the issue. How to move the blog, keep the same look and feel, not lose any Google Juice, and not lose any feed subscribers. Not a trivial set of considerations!

Of course, I turned to my good for advice:

  • How to Move Your Wordpress Blog To A New Web hosting - great technical advice on backing up and restoring your WP blog
  • Use the WordPress Database Backup plugin - I wrote about it recently when my blog crashed, but backups created with it are entirely suitable for use in blog migration
  • Redirecting incoming traffic to the new blog - well, since I’m using the same data structures and permalink structure, the only is one from .net to .com, this was quite ; a .htaccess 301 redirect as described here and here. Slightly technical, but not really too tough.
  • subscribers was also quite , since I use Feedburner to manage subscriptions: simply the Feed Title and Original Feed URL on the Feedburner Feed Details page. DO NOT THE FEED ADDRESS as this will disconnect your readers from your feed — a bad thing :)

A couple of other observations:

  • Set up your new blog/destination site first. Complete importing your data and building your look and feel. Yes, also duplicate posting to this site. You will want to make sure as your readers move they don’t lose any …especially for the tardy ones.
  • Immediately the Feed address in Feedburner. Any new subscribers will never notice, as you are posting to both sites right?
  • Prominently post about the fact that you are your blog. Add a widget or two to the sidebar (make them obvious) to alert your readers to the fact that you are . You want them to begin to identify with the new URL, not the old one, as soon as possible.
  • After a week or two, close commenting on the old feed, with a message directing readers to the new site.
  • After another week or two implement 301 redirects. And test them! @hownottowrite and @lijit both recommended, through twitter, this HTTP header scanning tool and FireFox plugin to validate the redirects (thanks again!).
  • Finally, remember every place you’ve ever used the URL / name, and it.

So, after all that…did you notice? :)

Technorati Tags: , , , , , ,

May

26

We’re down, baby, we’re down!

Filed Under News | Leave a Comment


Were down, baby, were down! (image: n_nasa_phoenix_070802.300w)I’ve been a follower of NASA’s mars missions for a few years now. The Pathfinder Mission and the cute Sojourner were my introduction to robotic exploration of Mars.

Were down, baby, were down! (image: bounce-b)Well, today marks another milestone with the successful continuation of the Phoenix Mars Lander mission.

NASA successfully landed another probe on Mars, this time using a powered rocked descent, a riskier yet less hair-raising method of landing than the ‘controlled Michlin-man crashing into a planet’ descent of the Pathfinder .

First images are already available, but the best part today is the transcript of the engineers as the data of the landing was beamed back to . Read the entire landing sequence in this excellent Spaceflight Now article, but here’s a taste:

“Standing by for lander separation. Altitude 1,100 meters. Signal may drop out during lander separation. Altitude 1,000 meters.

“Separation detected! We have reacquired the signal, gravity turn detected. (cheers) Altitude 600 meters… 500 meters…

May

24

Did you Get Things Done? Measuring productivity with RescueTime.

Filed Under Doing, How to, Review | Leave a Comment


Did you Get Things Done? Measuring productivity with RescueTime. (image: )Did you Get Things Done? Measuring productivity with RescueTime. (image: home_screenshot)Last time I mentioned this great little Two Minute timer to help you manage your Processing.

Well, that’s great for when you’re actually hard at work and trying to be productive, but what about afterwards — when you want to know just what you spent your time doing (or not doing!).

  • Do you your memory to remember what you worked on?
  • Was the culprit?
  • How about surfing all those ?

Ok, those were my questions but lucky for me, RescueTime can them.

After a quick (and ) signup, you and install the RescueTime client ( / Mac / Linux !!! ), and get back to work.

RescueTime also has a package that tracks many users and groups, but that costs. The individual user tracking is .

So, after a few hours, log into your RescueTime dashboard and your progress. For the first few days, you’ll likely spend a bunch of time assigning tags and categories to various applications monitored by the RescueTime client. Persevere, because after you’ve made those assignments, you’ll be better able to track your usage.

But rather than go through all the features, check out the product tour, and learn for yourself. I’m finding it interesting…though I’m not sure if it’s telling me anything I didn’t already know. Using this in a workgroup situation would be interesting though :)

May

23

On time management and GTD

Filed Under Doing, Review, Social Media | 6 Comments


Moleskine Concept Diagram 1
Creative Commons License photo credit: jazzmasterson

Lately I’ve been working with a few that help me streamline my various tasks and workflows. Over the next few posts, I’ll dive into them and my reasons for using them.

First off, the Two Minute Timer.
If you’ve been been under a rock for the last few years then this to David Alan’s , Getting Things DoneOn time management and GTD (image: ) and the Two Minute Rule applied to Processing will be meaningless. The following is for you (via Wikipedia):

Process

When processing a , a strict workflow is followed:

  • Start at the top.
  • Deal with one item at a time.
  • Never put anything back into ‘in’.
  • If an item requires :
  • Do it (if it takes less than two minutes), OR
  • Delegate it, OR
  • Defer it.
  • If an item does not require :
  • File it for , OR
  • Throw it away, OR
  • Incubate it for possible later.

If it takes under two minutes to do something, just do it immediately. The two-minute rule is a guideline, encompassing roughly the time it would take to defer the formally.

The Two Minute timer in actionAll right then, you’re up to speed on the Two Minute Rule. The I’ve been using to help me keep track of two minutes isn’t the ‘official’ two minute timer, rather an un-official one created with .NET.

Elegant in its simplicity, the Two Minute Timer works. Plain and . Easy to read, and easy to use. Not much more to say but that’s part of beauty. It simply works.

May

17

Blogging at the Edmonton Public Library

Filed Under Blogging, In the life, News, Social Media | Leave a Comment


Blogging at the Edmonton Public Library (image: 2478969984_8e9f2ed8b9)A week and a bit ago the Public launched a variety of blogs.

doesn’t appear to use a standard (, TypePad, etc) but rather chose to develop their own platform.

On the topic of topics, the included are rather diverse, from Aboriginal Peoples, Comics, Manga, and Graphic Novels, RFID in Libraries, and more.

…and this is just another reason that my local library gets me! Well done !

May

14

Engaging in ‘high risk’ activity - moving my blog

Filed Under Blogging, Doing, Web | 2 Comments


Engaging in high risk activity - moving my blog (image: 20562069_7cf1e2aaec_m)I’ve decided to take the plunge and move my blog to a more traditional .com type (rather than the .net that I currently use). I’m going to keep the .net for more esoteric things, private server, etc.

If you’re this on the old blog (blog.bradgrier.net), then please jump over to the new one, bookmark it, and check it out to make sure it works as you expect. You can find it at blog.bradgrier.com.

The dot-com is more , have a standard ‘expectation ‘of a site or blog when it has a .com address. A .net address seems to have a different ‘expectation’. And I felt the need to try out a new provider.

So, this will mean a bit of :

  • feeds - already moved my feedburner redirects so there should be no disruption
  • Incoming - not sure what to do about this yet. Incoming add value to your ranking, so this transition will cost me some of that precious Google Juice
  • Site duplication - some of the articles I’ve been about domains suggest maintaining duplicate sites for a few months. I’m thinking about this. It may work, but I’d customize the so that some sort of ‘ moved’ message is appended to the feeds etc

But, I’m not the expert here, just the guy doing the work. Do you have any thoughts or opinions about domains? What should I watch out for? What should I do differently?

: David Asch

Technorati Tags: , , , , ,

Next Page →