Fri Dec 28/ 2007 – 11:27 am MST
In the beginning, there was created the heavens and the seas, and the birds and the bees, and humans. Sort of. So what is human, anyway. Well, a really good case could be made that humans are the animals with an advanced high capacity pre-frontal cortex. (Look, if you are gonna go there, leave me out, your making my eyes glaze over…)
The pre-frontal cortex is the part of the human brain that handles the executive functions of mind. These include the setting of goals, the preparation of a plan to accomplish those goals, plans to develop the capacity to fulfil the plan, monitoring the execution of the plan, and making corrections of action and behaviour to get back on course. For those who are interested, in most of us it is located behind and above the right eye. It is the last part of the brain to develop, as it was the last part of the brain to evolve, and is not fully matured until between 18 and 25 years of age, depending on environment and gender.
Types of Plans
In its most fundamental state, a plan is an elaborated to-do list. It might be a recipe, detailing what ingredients are to be combined in what orders under which conditions. It might be a project plan, with specific sequences of tasks assigned to certain individuals with appropriate equipment. It might be an agricultural plan, planning what seeds are to be planted in which fields at what times, together with fertilising and watering regimes. Here we are talking about business plans, and they are the most complex of all. Read More »
Sat Dec 22/ 2007 – 8:01 pm MST
Time for some clichés. “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” No? How about “The world stands aside to let anyone pass who knows where he is going.”
You are about to take a single step. The path in front of you has quicksand, bogs, steep hills, giddy downhills, siren songs, enemy armies, dangerous animals, a few snakes, some walls, and rivers and seas to cross. As you lean forward to step, are you sure that you are headed in the right direction? How do you know that, exactly? Ahh, you don’t you say. But it seems right. In fact, its obvious. Not so fast. Read More »
Sun Dec 16/ 2007 – 9:39 pm MST
Just to review, spreadsheets developed from large green ledger pages (no, green is not important) that accountants used to list expenses or revenues, or assets, or …. and then to categorise them. Every expense, for instance, was listed in column A, and if it was a material purchase, it was also listed in Column D, a labour paycheque was listed in column E, and an office overhead was listed in column W (for aWFUL - ok sorry…). Then each of the columns could be added up, and you had totals for materials, labour, overheads… This was called - spreading the expenses. Accountants are pretty simple folk, they could have called it categorising, and then we would have to call the ledger pages categorisheets… Read More »
Sat Dec 8/ 2007 – 5:27 pm MST
You are a small or medium business. You expect to get top value for your dollar, because that is how you operate in every area. This is particularly true of office infrastructure, which contributes little to the value you deliver to your customers. Nor do you like being bullied and lied to by major vendors of products, to whom you are not a valuable client.
If we have just described you - then save your money and go get Open office. Here’s how. Read More »
Wed Dec 5/ 2007 – 7:15 am MST
Productivity Tools
Lions and Tigers, and bears - oh my….Well, at least Writer and Impress and Calc - oh no. Computers were of course, originally developed to manage numerical manipulation according to a described methodology (a program). Along the way, the industry naturally realised that the same tools could also manipulate a great deal of other information - dates, for instance, words for another. Most people, in their work, need to perform a number of tasks that are common to many jobs. Communication is one of those things. Calculation is another. Forecasting the future is yet another. These things are often not directly beneficial to accomplishing a specific task, and so they form a kind of “overhead” on the task itself. Unclear isn’t it… Read More »
Mon Dec 3/ 2007 – 10:41 am MST
The last post reviewed 3 alternative archiving programs, and decided on the Open Source project 7Zip. Now we are going to install it, and learn to use it.
Download and Install
The download link is here. Unless you are running Windows x64 (we think you would know it if you were), the file you want is for Windows 32 bit, either in .exe format or if you prefer the .msi Windows installer bundle. (we went with the .exe) Read More »
Sat Dec 1/ 2007 – 1:01 pm MST
What is an Archive
Archiving is putting stuff in a bag/box, or an envelope.
Software developers tend to work with large numbers of constantly changing files -a typical development project can include thousands of files - source text files, compiled object files, linked executables and their supporting libraries. Each of these files might have as many as 100 or more different versions at progressive stages of development and debugging.
There was a need to group these files together, in part to keep them at the matching level of change, and in part, simply to help organise the files. Picture a marbles collection of ten thousand all of which need to be kept in neat sets. What do you do without bags to put them in? Read More »
Thu Nov 29/ 2007 – 8:14 pm MST
Learning the General Environment (Windows common feature set)
So you hate learning new software - don’t blame you. Most learn-to-use-it manuals would weigh down a small truck. Yeah, I did my post graduate work on Microsoft’s new product… Read More »
Tue Nov 27/ 2007 – 9:33 am MST
Software Choices and Decisions
Earlier, we pointed to a series of questions that needed to be addressed before making a software decision.
- product criteria establishment – determining the decision criteria for selection
- product acceptance - testing to ensure criteria are met
- product decision and selection
- time to convert all of your documents and other files,
When it comes to productivity suites ( Microsoft Office and alternatives to it), the product criteria have long been established. There is a list of tasks that most people need to accomplish, and that list is satisfied (more or less) by Microsoft Office. So any alternative that provides the same capabilities as MS Office (plus a couple more, just for bonus points) will satisfy those criteria. Similarly, formal product acceptance is also not necessary, although having the chance to kick the tires will provide some comfort. Did we mention that you can do that for free, probably in about an hour or so? Read More »
Sun Nov 25/ 2007 – 2:07 pm MST
“Daddy, why is the computer on fire?”
Open Source Software and Viruses/Malware
As said in previous posts, free software on the Internet has earned a bad reputation, especially with the early generation of internet users (people born before 1990). Shareware or freeware, as it used to be known, quickly developed a reputation for being badly built, sometimes embedded with programs you didn’t want to install (the kind that make pornographic ads pop up when your kid is researching a school project)
Maturity is a primary indicator of the vulnerability that might be associated with any given Open Source solution. Additionally, the sources adherence to various quality assurance processes and standards is helpful. A key metric is how many bugs have been discovered, what the impact was, and how quickly the source responds to those vulnerabilities. The Open Source development model has some advantages in this regard. Read More »
