Well, I’ve been saying I was going to stick some flavour of Unix onto my laptop for a while now, and yesterday I finally did it. I’ve read about the two releases of PC-BSD, and since I’ve always had Linux before I decided to go with a BSD distribution this time to see what all the fuss was about.

Getting it to like my laptop was fun, I kept getting this message:

acd0: WARNING: SETFEATURES SET TRANSFER MODE transqueue timeout - completing request directly

Except the problem is, it didn’t ‘complete [the] request directly’ it just repeated the message. So after half an hour and still no luck, I started playing. As PC-BSD boots up, it gives you about 2 seconds to hit a key after the kernel modules have loaded before it starts booting the Operating System.

The command ’show’ will show a list of environment variables - this is what was causing my problem:

hw.ata.atapi_dma=1

Changing this to 0 with the command:

set hw.ata.atapi_dma=0

Enabled me to start the operating system. I’ve eventually got my wireless working, although it seems to get disconnected after a while, although that may be my crappy router, which has been on its way out for a while.

This post has actually been written in Konquerer on PC-BSD, so I must have done something right!

I read an article on seochat.com the other day, entitled ‘How to Steal to the Top of Google: Use the News’ and came across this statement:

‘You see, the average person completely glosses over most ads on internet sites without even focusing on them’

I disagree, and I’ll tell you why :-

Over recent months I’ve been helping a family friend replace his company’s website with an ecommerce website selling recliner furniture straight from the page.

The one thing I’ve noticed while doing this site for them is the lack of significance of their Google Pagerank - their page doesn’t show up in the first 20 pages of google results for the term ‘recliner’ - even with a search limited to UK sites only.

The one thing that’s made their website a success is their GoogleAds campaign, and other advertising media.

So it just goes to show - Google Pagerank isn’t everything - I have proof!

Having finally got my Palm m100 handheld successfully synching with Microsoft Outlook 2003, I thought I’d share how I did it to stop others from suffering as I have.

The Problem
The major problem with getting email on the m100/m105 isn’t actually the fact that there’s no email client bundled with these handhelds, the major problem is that there’s no Mail conduit (which is the piece of software used to synchronise stuff from the desktop to the handheld) installed with the Palm Desktop software when you have one of these handhelds.

Requirements
You will need:

• The original software CD that came with your Device. Without
  this, you won’t be able to install the Chapura PocketMirror software
  needed to get Outlook synchronisation working properly
• The update to Chapura PocketMirror Standard version 3.1.7.1, available for free download from here.
• Palm Desktop 4.1 for Windows, available for free from Palm here.
• Both the e*Mail and MailStub applications, available (again, for free) from here.
• The Palm email conduit update from here.
• A large cup of coffee

Assumptions made
I have only tested this from scratch. If you already have your Outlook synchronisation working for everything else with the version of Palm Desktop from the CD, then just skip the first step. If you’ve upgraded the Palm desktop and still have your Outlook synch working, then you may only need the Mail conduit update and e*Mail/MailStub.

I’ve also assumed you already have Microsoft Outlook installed

From the beginning
The first step is to install the Palm Desktop from your CD. Make sure that when it asks where you want to synch from, that you choose Microsoft Outlook rather than the Palm Desktop. Once this process has finished, you’ll have a working system which synchronises your Tasks, Calendar, Address book and Notes from Outlook.

Install Palm Desktop upgrade
Next job is to install the Palm Desktop update. When you do this, the PocketMirror will break. DO NOT perform a HotSync or anything. If Palm Desktop Setup asks you to reboot, let it reboot your system and continue from here.

Install Chapura PocketMirror update.
Install this update - it’s fairly self-explanatory. Make sure you choose the settings to synchronise it all to Outlook (in this version you can specify to only synchronise certain applications)

Install e*Mail and MailStub
Careful - updating the Palm Desktop software removes the trusty ‘Install Tool’ from your Start menu/desktop and replaces it with the ‘PalmOne Quick Installer’ which doesn’t work with the m100 - However, the application is still safe, in your C:\Palm folder, look for InstApp.exe and run that. Click ‘Add…’ and add the eMail.prc file (which you’ve already unzipped, haven’t you?). Click ‘Add…’ again, and install the MailStub.prc file too. DO NOT HOTSYNC yet.

Right-click on the Hotsync-manager in your system tray, and click the Local Serial option. Right-click again, and click the Local USB option to stop the software looking for a USB Palm, which the m100 isn’t.

Right-click a third time, and choose Custom. For every option except the ‘Install’ and ‘System’ items, select each one in turn and choose ‘change…’ and select the ‘Do Nothing’ option. Now perform a HotSync. After the HotSync operation has finished, right-click the HotSync manager again, and choose Custom again, and make sure all the options are set to ‘Synchronise the files’ if they haven’t automatically reverted back.

Run e*mail
Take your palm from its cradle/cable and switch it on. run the e*mail program, then exit straight back to the Home screen.

Install the Mail conduit
Install the Mail conduit update package, which actually installs it if it doesn’t already exist. When the installer asks what you want to synchronise to, choose ‘Microsoft Outlook 97 or later’ and then keep clicking Next until it’s finished.

You’re done!
Now perform a final HotSync operation, which may take some time the first time around, and weep as the paltry little 2MB RAM in your Palm m100 fills up very quickly!

I hope someone finds this useful. I’ve run through these steps as I’ve been writing to check that they work. Please don’t hesitate to send me a message from my ‘About’ page if you encounter problems - I’ll try my best to help.

Recently there’s been a tidal wave blogs, websites etc harping on about usability. Indeed a friend of mine, Henning, recently posted about this very topic, and how hyped up it all is.

Indeed, a lot of those who have ‘mastered’ usability appear to believe
so because they’ve learned how to split their content from their
presentation by applying CSS to all formatting on their pages. Well
done, here’s a badge.

Henning’s post got me thinking about real usability, and how it
applies to software that I use every day. One thing I do every day i
use my computer at home, is to check for antivirus updates, firewall
updates, Windows updates, and less regularly updates for drivers and
other software I keep on my computer and use at least once or twice a
month.

What occurs to me is that there is no central place to update all these
- each application has its own individual update routines which run
independantly of one another. Aside from the fact that windows words
its critical updates as ‘updates for your computer’, and ‘keep your
computer up to date’ when it actually means Windows, not everything on
there, I believe that a centralised update centre would make security a
much easier process for the average home user to keep a tab on. Windows
updates come under several headings - critical security updates, driver
updates, windows updates, etc - and that’s just Windows itself!

Surely an average home PC user should have an easier way to spend less
time trying to keep their computer secure from hackers and the like, as
well as upgrading software to the latest featureset, and actually using the software itself?

My idea is to have an open ‘plugin’ architecture to replace (or extend)
the current Windows Update system. On install, applications could
register themselves as a client of the ‘Windows Update’ system
(accompanied by an alert to the user of having done so, to attempt to
prevent malicious software sneaking in and disabling updates).

When Windows Update was then run on the PC (or checks for updates in
the background) each individual application would be able to invisibly
start its own process of looking for updates, and reporting its
findings back to Windows Update.

The end result would be a fully centralised automatic updates system
which would leave the user more time to use the PC and less time
worrying about keeping all their applications up to date.

Comments would be appreciated.

I’d just like to say one thing to all the application developers out there:

Stop bloating my registry

Windows can crawl at times as it is, without ‘professional’ software
developers leaving their crap behind when I uninstall an application.
When I uninstall a piece of software, I do it because I don’t intend on
using it any more. Which means I don’t want its settings left all over
my computer ‘just in case’ I choose to install it again.

At least give me the option to choose whether to keep the settings in my registry, just in case I decide to install the application later.

One thing I cannot understand is why developers insist on writing
unnecessary values to the registry anyway. The registry is a shared
repository of configuration and other metadata. Surely if an
application doesn’t need to share its settings, it could store them in
a good old-fashioned plaintext configuration file?