Bouldering at Mission Trails, in the Rain.

by Al Bsharah | 04.11.2009 12:25 PM | Comments (0)

Decided to head over to Mission Trails today (5 minute drive) and climb some rocks.  It was cloudy, but didn't seem heavy enough to turn into rain.  Ha.  The minute I got to the top...and I'm not exaggerating...I noticed the clouds were much darker than earlier.  Then it started sprinking.  Of course, all of this happened within about 30 seconds.  <laughs>  Knowing how "fun" it is to climb down slabs of rock when they're wet, I decided to head back down and try to beat the rain.  Then, it started raining.  Now we're at the 45 second mark.  15 seconds later I'm digging out my rain coat and looking for a rock to hide under.

Of course, didn't find one until climbing down for 15 minutes or so.  Did a little slipping, had some entertaining decisions to make, and made it to a bit of a hiding spot until the rain passed over (about 30 seconds later).  Since there was no sun, hanging around and waiting for things to dry was really not an option...even the smallest amount of moisture makes a normally traction-strong rock useless.  So...I headed down.  After a couple more slabs and plenty of navigation, I made it down. 

I was busy trying not to fall off the hill so didn't really get any good shots, but here's a couple and a video for fun.  Couldn't stop singing "Slip Slidin' Away"...the entire way down the hill.  Ha.

A shot of one of the slabs, slightly wet.  Another shot between some rocks about half-way up.
   

A shot from about half-way up the hill, you can see my truck in the distance.

A video from the same rock formations about half-way up the hill.  No, I didn't climb up the face to the left.  <laughs> 

 

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Share Your To-Do List across Multiple PCs with OneNote and Dropbox

by Al Bsharah | 04.10.2009 02:19 PM | Comments (9)

EDIT 2009.05.30:  I've tested with SugarSync successfully, and have heard that Live Mesh works as well.

I just started messing around with OneNote the other day, and I have to say it's pretty impressive.  The ability to cut/paste, annotate, tag, and organize just about anything in any way is something I wasn't expecting but was pleasantly surprised to see.  <tips hat to Microsoft on this one>

One of the biggest criteria I have for just about any application I use these days is mobility.  I want to be able to use it at home, at work, on my phone, and on the web.  Simply put, I want it synchronized anywhere I am.  Some of the applications I use and share today:

  • Email.  I have my own mail server and connect to it using IMAP from Thunderbird, Outlook, my iPhone, and the web.
  • File Sharing.  I use Dropbox to maintain a small group of files that I need to access anywhere, anytime via multiple PCs, my iPhone, or the web.
  • Bookmarks / Favorites.  I use Xmarks (previous Foxmarks) to synchronize all of my favorites, across browsers or operating systems, on all my PCs and on the web.  Ultimately, these also get sync'd to my iPhone via iTunes.
  • Feed Aggregation.  I use Google Reader to gather the multitude of feeds and searches that I follow.  Available on the web from any PC and on my iPhone.
  • ...and now, after some messing around and testing, it seems I've come up with a solution for Note Taking.

Granted, I'm likely not the first person to do this...but hey, ya never know!

So...the trick is determining what to do with OneNote across the Internet.  How can you share it amongst geographically dispersed PCs?  Well, if you're trying to share it within your organization, OneNote will allow you to collaborate across a file share or other domain-type resource (built-in functionality).  But, if you're trying to share with a personal computer, a work computer, or a friend's computer in Timbuktu...you need an external solution.  That solution for me was Dropbox.

Dropbox is an application that you attach to a particular folder on your PC and it will syncronize it with the web and any other PC attached to this folder.  It's got good security, speed, and not too much overhead on your CPU.  When you make changes to file, particularly large ones, it will only push out the difference (as opposed to the entire file) - thus saving on time and bandwidth.

How do we go about connecting these two?  Below is a pretty straight-forward step-by-step for setting up OneNote to work over a Dropbox file share.  I've been using this between home and work for a week or so now, and it's been great.  The beauty of it, is you can collaborate with the other person...and within a few seconds of making a change on one PC, it will be seen on the other PCs!

 

Step 1:  Install Dropbox on PC #1

(http://www.getdropbox.com)

 

Step 2:  Install OneNote on PC #1

(http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/onenote)
OneNote is a part of Office, so you may just have to "enable" it if you've already got Office installed

 

Step 3:  Open OneNote

 

Step 4:  Create a New Notebook

 

Step 5:  Name Your New Notebook

Give your new Notebook a name.  Aside from the name displayed in OneNote, this will also become a sub-folder within Dropbox. 

 

Step 6:  Set Folder Location to a Dropbox Folder

Most Vista users will have a Path structure similar to this for Dropbox.  I've decided to put it in my "Private" Dropbox folder, and created a "OneNote" folder to include any and all of my OneNote Notebooks.  Also note the circled portion, with the "My Shared Network" folder being created.  This is the name chosen in the above step.

 

Step 7:  Set the Type of Sharing You'd Like to Have

My understanding is that the option I've chosen here allows multiple people to make changes to the Notebook simultaneously.  This is where the magic is.  Even if you have OneNote open on multiple PCs, changes on one will cause Dropbox to send updates to other machines.  When the other machines get updates, OneNote will make adjustments and display those changes on-the-fly.  It can take a few seconds, but it certainly works!  Of course, if you only use one of them at a time it will show the updates when you open at the other PC.

 

Step 8:  Repeat Steps #1 and #2 on your Second (Third, Fourth, etc...) PCs

 

Step 9:  Open the Shared Dropbox Folder on PC #2 (3, 4, etc...)

 

Step 10:  Start Taking Notes!

It's really pretty much that simple!

Now if I could only get OneNote working on my iPhone...I would be the happiest guy ever.  Is that weird?  If anyone has any thoughts on a better note-taking application (with similar features to OneNote) that might be available on the iPhone, I'd be interested to hear them...currently, that's the only drawback for me on this solution.

 

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